Inspired? Yes. Inspiring? No. Based on the GUI of Apple’s Motion graphics software, the flat blacks, grays and whites of In Motion (also known as Black Pro) make for a refreshing change from the handful of slick, dark themes like JetBlack and NEOS, but fall prey to an all-to-common enemy: details.

Aesthetics
In Motion does a nice job mimicking the dashboards of its namesake. Surfaces are generally flat with little gradient and texture, window widgets are the most striking similarity, consisting of light-grey circles with the standard x-+ in darker grey, buttons and scroll bars have a slight gradient to give them depth, and buttons are set apart by a thin, white line.

Unfortunately, this brings up the first point of criticism. The white line appears pixelated in the corners, as do some of the white elements on Finder and Safari buttons. It’s examples like these that result in a theme that falls short of what it could’ve been. Smoothing out these lines and polishing up the buttons would do wonders toward making In Motion a top-notch theme. In examining the screenshots of Motion on Apple’s Web site, it seems like really light greys are used much more sparingly than in In Motion, and I think the theme would benefit visually (and from an accuracy standpoint) from toning down some of the lighter elements.

In Motion comes with several applications skins, including one for iTunes. I admire the designer’s effort, but iTunes should’ve just been left alone. The track-change and play/pause buttons appear lopsided with ragged edges.

It’s the small things — the details — that make In Motion a sub-par theme. A few tweaks here and there could make it a much more appealing and visually satisfying theme.

Usability
Unfortunately, In Motion suffers the same fate of many dark themes. It’s simply not usable for very long. Casual Mac users (those who check e-mail, surf the Web and instant message) may find it bearable for a week, but don’t expect that kind of life if you use Adobe’s CS suite or any Macromedia products. And the only other suggestion, to turn the theme off for these applications, is never a satisfying compromise. The main issue comes from text that needs to be light to stand out against the theme’s dark backgrounds, but is barely visible against a white backdrop. Even the Finder is only fully usable in icon mode.

In the navigation and function areas, In Motion excels. Too many monochromatic themes are confusing, with tabs, widgets and buttons that don’t give enough feedback. In other words, you can’t tell if a tab is selected, a widget is active or a button is available to be pushed. Not so with In Motion. Through careful use of gradients, the designer has made all of those little navigation pieces we take for granted unobtrusive, but clear, just like they should be.

Extras
The only extra In Motion comes packaged with is a grey stained-glass-looking desktop image, which surprisingly only came in one size: 800 x 600 pixels. Adding more and larger desktops plus a few other goodies such as a cursor or icon set would help me warm up to this bare-bones theme.

Conclusion
In Motion is worth a look, but I’d be surprised if anyone sticks with it for more than a few days. Once ShapeShifter has been updated to accommodate greater text flexibility and In Motion has been polished up, the theme could join the ranks of the could-be-used-all-the-time themes. But it needs some work.

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