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I am curious to know which GUI you think was better, Mac OS 8-9, one of the versions of OS X, or the original black and white Mac OS (System 6) I am currently

I am curious to know which GUI you think was better, Mac OS 8-9, one of the versions of OS X, or the original black and white Mac OS (System 6) I am currently writing a window manager / desktop environment, and I'm kind of torn. At the moment, I'm using the look of the black and white Mac GUI, which I prefer over the colorized Mac OS 8-9 GUI, but at the same time I am fond of the early OS X GUI (10.1 Puma or 10.2 Jaguar). You say that Mac OS X in the 2000s was the pinnacle of Mac, but then you say you want Apple's usability guidelines from the Mac OS 8-9 days. Which GUI do you think was better? What exactly was it that made OS X in the 2000s the pinnacle? My goal is to build a "desktop programming GUI environment" using the Objective-C runtime as the base, but with the look and feel of the black and white System 6 GUI. I've written my own simplified Foundation-subset (only the stuff that I need) as well. I'd like for it to be as simple as possible without making too many sacrifices. After all, the original Mac used 128K of RAM, the original OS X could run with 128MB of RAM, and the original iPhone also came with 128MB of RAM. It's ridiculous that everything requires gigabytes of RAM nowadays.

linguae 8y ago
I should've clarified in my original post my preferences regarding the Mac OS. When it comes to overall systems, I believe that Mac OS X is the pinnacle of the Mac due to its combined usability and stability, and I also believe that the Mac as a platform peaked around the Snow Leopard era (2009-11). Mac OS X has the usability and consistency of the Mac platform with the stability of Unix. Even though Mac OS X hasn't gotten worse since Snow Leopard, unfortunately it hasn't dramatically improved since then; if it weren't for the necessity of modern browsers and security updates, I could still be productive on a computer running Snow Leopard. And the hardware situation since 2012 has been discussed on Hacker News numerous times. However, when it comes to usability alone, I have a soft spot for the classic Mac OS. Personally I believe the classic Mac OS's interface is actually more user-friendly than Mac OS X's (Mac OS is really simple with its controls and its spatial Finder, while Mac OS X is more complex due to its NeXT roots), and I also believe that the Mac platform back then was more compliant with Apple's user interface guidelines than today (although unfortunately I don't know of a way I could measure this). I find Apple's A/UX and Rhapsody projects to be quite interesting attempts to bridge the classic Mac environment with Unix. I also like the conservative choices that Apple made at the time regarding color. While Mac OS X's Aqua is quite impressive, there's something about the subdued atmosphere of Mac OS, whether it's the original black-and-white interfaces of System 6, the light touches of color in System 7, or the Platinum theme from Mac OS 8 and 9, which is still quite conservative compared to Aqua.

linguae 8y ago

I should've clarified in my original post my preferences regarding the Mac OS. When it comes to overall systems, I believe that Mac OS X is the pinnacle of the Mac due to its combined usability and stability, and I also believe that the Mac as a platform peaked around the Snow Leopard era (2009-11). Mac OS X has the usability and consistency of the Mac platform with the stability of Unix. Even though Mac OS X hasn't gotten worse since Snow Leopard, unfortunately it hasn't dramatically improved since then; if it weren't for the necessity of modern browsers and security updates, I could still be productive on a computer running Snow Leopard. And the hardware situation since 2012 has been discussed on Hacker News numerous times. However, when it comes to usability alone, I have a soft spot for the classic Mac OS. Personally I believe the classic Mac OS's interface is actually more user-friendly than Mac OS X's (Mac OS is really simple with its controls and its spatial Finder, while Mac OS X is more complex due to its NeXT roots), and I also believe that the Mac platform back then was more compliant with Apple's user interface guidelines than today (although unfortunately I don't know of a way I could measure this). I find Apple's A/UX and Rhapsody projects to be quite interesting attempts to bridge the classic Mac environment with Unix. I also like the conservative choices that Apple made at the time regarding color. While Mac OS X's Aqua is quite impressive, there's something about the subdued atmosphere of Mac OS, whether it's the original black-and-white interfaces of System 6, the light touches of color in System 7, or the Platinum theme from Mac OS 8 and 9, which is still quite conservative compared to Aqua.