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I feel like older user interfaces treated me like an adult. Whatever I did on Solaris [1] or even early OS X [2] felt like I was doing real work, important stu
by laurentdc 8y ago
I feel like older user interfaces treated me like an adult.
Whatever I did on Solaris [1] or even early OS X [2] felt like I was doing real work, important stuff, even if I was just messing around.
I don't know what changed, I use both Linux (Gnome 3) and macOS Mojave daily but they both lack that polished "workstation" feel. Maybe it's all in my head or I'm just getting old :/
[1] http://agilo.acjs.net/files/screenshot_solaris.png http://agilo.acjs.net/files/screenshot_solaris.png
[2] https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/picture-2-png.576210/ https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/picture-2-png.57621...
- fermienrico 8y agoEarly OS X [2] in no way looks like a "workstation" UI. It looks like an interface for a toy. Solaris [1] UI certainly does though!
- untog 8y agoEarly OS X looked like a weird candyland to me. Not as lurid as XP, sure, but the 3D-like glassy buttons and the sliding animation as you minimised something always struck me as kind of overkill.
- TazeTSchnitzel 8y agoWhen Jobs first showed off the Aqua UI, he was pretty excited about the æsthetics and what Quartz could do. There were also many practical things shown, but…
- bitwize 8y ago"I want to lick it!"
- protomyth 8y agoIt was quite the shock coming to OS X from NeXTSTEP. I actually ran with NeXTSTEP icons on OS X for a lot of years until they made it super hard with SIP.
- kitsunesoba 8y agoI miss old Aqua. The earliest revisions were definitely over the top, but the version that was part of Mavericks that had many years of refinements baked in struck me as a nice balance — it was more subdued and professional than its predecessors without being stripped of personality (unlike the flat theme that came with Yosemite). It was nice.
- bluedino 8y agoWhat about the stripes? What were they thinking with the stripes.
- pseudalopex 8y agoEarly Aqua looks like it was designed to match Apple's hardware. I don't think anyone misses the stripes, though.
- InfamousRece 8y agoIt's possible to get Solaris CDE working on Linux [1]. I'm not sure how usable it is though. [1] https://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/wiki/LinuxBuild/ https://sourceforge.net/p/cdesktopenv/wiki/LinuxBuild/
- peatmoss 8y agoXFCE was originally a visual clone of CDE, but coded in slightly less obtuse widgets (GTK vs Motif). XFCE has remained pretty great, supporting the new, but still keeping the spirit and speed of the old.
- anthk 8y agoCDE used XForms first.
- dfox 8y agoI used CDE on Linux for few weeks on laptop (IIRC only weirdness involved in building it was Imake, which makes sense for pre-X.org X11 related stuff). It works perfectly for the same values of "works" and "perfectly" as on commercial unices. In other words it is in the middle between lightweight WM and full desktop environment, mainly because there aren't any applications that meaningfully integrate with CDE apart from all the dt* stuff (text editor, terminal, calculator...) included with CDE distribution and for the CDE's design to be meaningful you really want CDE applications that integrate with it's object model and not just plain X applications, otherwise it is only somewhat mis-designed window manager.
- nonamenoslogan 8y agoAs a WM it is VERY useful and wraps windows for modern apps without issue. Some of the CDE apps though (dtcalendar and dtmail) are in need of a complete overhaul to be useful with modern protocols.
- coredog64 8y agoThere’s a port/tribute of the Irix 4dwm available for modern Linux. I don’t get the satisfying clunk when I drop a file in the dumpster, but otherwise it keeps me from wasting money on an Octane and all the gear necessary to output to a digital display.
- walrus01 8y agoI still think kde v2.x was a pinnacle of functional no bullshit GUI design.
- ianai 8y agoI think much is due to the mobile influence. Apples worked in a lot of hidden functionality into iOS. That’s led to things like the applications folder being nearly forgotten about and left out of UI. App switching used to be done by the top right drop down, but would never go now. Etc. I don’t know fully how to explain what’s missing, but something is.
- Someone 8y ago”felt like I was doing real work, important stuff, even if I was just messing around. I don't know what changed” You got more experienced. When you’re looking at your second, third, etc. system, there always are cases where you think “This is so easy on ‘Foo’, why does ‘Bar’ make it so difficult?”, and feel like wasting time, even if it isn’t really difficult on that system, but just different, or if it is difficult because you are working on step A, but the new system has a better workflow that does steps A thorough Z in one go. If you ask people what’s the most fondly remembered or impressive OS, computer game, word processor, mobile phone, music player, etc., it often is the first one they really used.
- dijit 8y ago> If you ask people what’s the most fondly remembered or impressive OS, computer game, word processor, mobile phone, music player, etc., it often is the first one they really used. I feel like this is an odd statement to make with no data. I can only speak for myself and my partner, but our current systems hold much more love than anything that came before. For me i3 on Linux is mature enough to not be intrusive into my life, mpd as a music player and so on. For my partner, she uses a Mac/iPhone/Apple Watch, and after coming from windows 7 she finds it “much better”, and “I would never go back” Games are another example. I played hundreds of computer games in my youth, from donkey king on the Commadore64 to rayman on the PlayStation. And my most fondly remembered game is almost certainly grand theft auto: vice city which is a much later title. I don’t think it smacks true that people love the first thing they learn on. I’m not keen on MS Windows 3.1 today, or MS operating systems in general, in fact quite the opposite.
- majewsky 8y ago> If you ask people what’s the most fondly remembered or impressive OS, computer game, word processor, mobile phone, music player, etc., it often is the first one they really used. Anecdata: I used Windows for the first 10 years of my computing life, and today I'd rather use any obscure Unix over any Windows. The "Unix philosophy" as an attempt to produce a consistent UX has held up pretty well over 40+ years.
- addicted 8y agoI don’t think it’s just personal experience. I had a similar feeling as the OP, but my feeling happened at a very specific time. I upgraded my MacBook from Snow Leopard to either Lion or Mountain Lion (I cant remember which version it was), and overnight I went from having my entire life spelled out on my calendar to basically not being able to use iCal (it might have been renamed by that point as well) at all. The new version of iCal’s only purpose was to look pretty and offer very basic functionality. The older version might have started looking dated, but I could use keyboard shortcuts and see details about my appointments easily at a glance. The new version didn’t even want me to know details existed. The same story played out in Mail.app, Address book, iWork, etc. MS’s new “Modern” apps show that the same influences have driven Windows development in recent times as well.
- lallysingh 8y agoI think the older systems had to prove that they weren't frivolous compared to text interfaces. The newer ones don't. I stick with KDE and have been happy.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y agoKDE is nice because of its configurability. You can make behave like Gnome or Windows or something else if you like.
- TelmoMenezes 8y agoOur overall computing environment acquired a distinct patronizing/infantilizing feel to it in the last decade. I don't think it's only visual -- or even visual at all, not sure.
- lozenge 8y agoWe've gone from "the process has performed an illegal operation" and "file not found" to "Oops!" and "we looked everywhere, but..."
- zozbot123 8y agoLinux has had "oops" for ages, though.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoLinux has had everything for ages, and that's kind of its problem, too. Everything that fits in one bin will have a counterpart somewhere that fits in the opposite bin.
- dfox 8y agoWith the crucial difference that the somewhat funny message is followed by actual detailed description of what happened instead of "something went wrong".
- anoncoward111 8y ago"Something went wrong" ugh, I HATE it so much, and they don't even dispatch a highly trained team of monkeys to fix it either.
- bitwize 8y agoAgain, pretend you're a normie and imagine how you'd react when you are told that your computer has performed an illegal operation. That's the sort of phrasing you don't want to inflict on everyday users.
- devereaux 8y agoI think it's nostalgia. CDE and Motif were uniquely ugly. I preferred Openwindow (Sunview) so much.
- msla 8y agoWindow Maker achieves what OS X tried and failed to emulate. http://www.windowmaker.org/themes/ http://www.windowmaker.org/themes/
- Jaruzel 8y agoMy first real (i.e. work) usage of a GUI was DECWindows[1] on a VAXStation, which felt like a real GUI for getting work done. I believe it and Solaris GUI share a common heritage. Even now, I miss the utilitarian feel of it. You can install DECWindows/Motif style themes for Linux but it just doesn't feel 'right'... --- [1] http://toastytech.com/guis/DWindows.html http://toastytech.com/guis/DWindows.html
- nonamenoslogan 8y agoYou can build CDE on most major Linux distros and run it for that MOTIF flavor. I have been using it daily on Debian and Ubuntu since it was open sourced a few years ago.
- Novashi 8y ago>I feel like older user interfaces treated me like an adult. They did, because usually only adults used PCs. Now kids through elders use PCs and there's nothing wrong making the UX more friendly to people unaccustomed to working in tech. It's in your head because I think you're missing the roles PCs now play for everyone in society.
- jplayer01 8y agoIt seems to me then that a big problem is designing interfaces to the lowest common denominator, then removing options for advanced users. This is a problem I see even (especially?) on Linux, which gives you limited GUI control and if you want to do anything beyond the most basic changes, expects you to know how to configure everything on the command-line.
- wwright 8y agoA lot of it, I think, isn’t trying to design for the lowest common denominator, but trying to find abstractions that fit problems more accurately. When that works well, you end up with much higher accessibility and fewer errors. As with all abstractions, though, they tend to leak. Software design tries to minimize those leaks, but they have to prioritize which ones to fix. Advanced users like you or me don’t need those abstractions nearly as much, so we’re not prioritized. Which is probably fine. We end up seeing the leaks in the abstractions a lot more because of it, though.
- ColanR 8y ago> As with all abstractions, though, they tend to leak. That's part of the problem, though, and not something that should be brushed aside. The old designs were good partly because they operated one abstraction level lower, where the leaks were inherently much smaller.
- TuringTest 8y agoYes, but that lower abstraction level also meant that much less people was able to use those systems.
- deathanatos 8y agoFWIW, I switched to MATE[1] instead of GNOME 3 after GNOME 2. It's a fork of GNOME 2 that retains the look and feel of GNOME 2, and thus far, I've been fairly pleased with it. [1]: https://mate-desktop.org/ https://mate-desktop.org/
- pantalaimon 8y agoUbuntu Mate also ships with Compiz, so you can have all the desktop effects still.
- pseudalopex 8y agoOlder interfaces were designed to help users learn. Newer interfaces are designed to let users do fewer things with less learning. GNOME went from underlining shortcuts in menus to eliminating menus.
- TuringTest 8y agoNo, older interfaces were designed to expose as much as the available functionality in the system as possible. There was nothing in common widget libraries or development processes that helped users learn how to operate the system. Merely exposing all the functions is of no use if you don't already know what's their meaning and how you're supposed to use them. People learned more those days not because the interface made it easy, but because they had no choice if they wanted to use the system at all.
- samstave 8y agoI think this can be partially attributed to: A: You didnt used to have a "workstation" at your house B: The machine you had at your house was a completely different platform than say, Solaris machines or terminals/mainframes etc. C: The UI/UX of the work machine and the home machine are now the same -- so its easy to do the "home stuff" on the work machine now. D: Fewer people than ever have a dedicated "work machine" and do a lot of personal stuff on that "work laptop" regardless of if they arent supposed to.
- zozbot123 8y agoMuch of the appeal of early microcomputers was actually their similarity to the more powerful machines that were being used for "real work". This was true even in the 8-bit era with CP/M, a command-line system that was used almost exclusively for work purposes. That CP/M interface took quite a few elements from the microcomputer and mainframe terminals of its day, and the trend continued with MS-DOS and early Windows. Pure "home computers" did exist during the same time period, but they still looked a lot more professional than the toys we get today, and you could even use them for some light office work.