Huh? I don't get this at all. IntelliJ is a phenomenally great IDE. I'm sure that is blinding me to the ugliness you're seeing. But thinking about just the visual elements, I still don't see your point. What exactly is the problem?
Now Eclipse -- that's ugly, inside and out.
Font rendering is horrible (at least on linux), you have to try various l&f before finding one that is "acceptable", etc.
It's a great IDE, general usability is certainly better than Eclipse (it was meant to be an IDE as opposed to Eclipse which is a platform with an IDE built on top), but personally, font rendering was a deal break.
Re:Apple and the future of Java
by michaelneale on Tuesday October 26, 2010 @06:47PM
(#1836465)
Thankfully that bit is fine on a mac. And really - that is 90% of it there - the rest is a distraction.
Their icons are, well, tasteless is the best way to describe them.
I know people don't often talk about usability and developer tools - but it really really matters. You spend a LOT of time on it - may as well fuss over it and make it right. IDEA gets so much right.... and this is also a good example of when user experience can be great, but design (graphic) not so great.
But it is the ugliest thing... just horrible, but if you can get past that, it is a great tool.
OS-X users are a big paying contingent for Jetbrains - so I expect they will find a way, one way or another, to make it run well.