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I honestly think the days of the cohesive desktop platform are done. It arguably reached its peak with OS X (perhaps circa Snow Leopard), but the idea has been

I honestly think the days of the cohesive desktop platform are done. It arguably reached its peak with OS X (perhaps circa Snow Leopard), but the idea has been falling into disrepair even on the mac. It's hard to see any strong force moving us back to it, but given the current situation, if I were a desktop app developer I don't think it's something I would consider it worth investing too much effort in.

lozenge 7y ago
Maybe my memory is bad but I don't think OS X ever really had it. The flag-carrying apps (Adobe, Final Cut, Garageband) had custom UIs. Built ins like Calendar had skeumorphic UIs.
- crispinb 7y ago
  Oh, true of course, especially from the big guns. But there was a flourishing ecosystem of great apps like Textmate, Things, Acorn, and a bunch of others from outfits like Omnigroup, Panic, IconFactory. These tended to fit beautifully on the platform, and not just in aesthetic terms, but functionally with reasonably consistent keyboard shortcuts, AppleEvents support, etc. Not perfect (what is?), and many of the longstanding apps are still around, but the steam has arguably gone out of the platform.
- Razengan 7y ago
  > Maybe my memory is bad but I don't think OS X ever really had it. This is not a binary question of either a desert or either a rainforest, but Apple's side of the fence is definitely a lot greener than Microsoft's in terms of UI/UX consistency. I was a purely PC/MS user up until about 10 years ago, but I haven't suffered as many befuddled facepalm moments from Apple's UI decisions as from the Escheresque nightmare that Microsoft is even now. > The flag-carrying apps (Adobe, Final Cut, Garageband) had custom UIs. Built ins like Calendar had skeumorphic UIs. However, almost every macOS app has the same standard menus, same standard shortcuts, and most of them support the same OS extensibility features. Even as a developer you just need to build against the latest AppKit and you get not only all the current features, but usually future features for free too (e.g. most of the NSDocument stuff such as autosaving and previous versions.) Compare this to the hodgepodge of different interfaces even in Windows' builtin apps alone, and championing a different API almost every other year.

lozenge 7y ago

Maybe my memory is bad but I don't think OS X ever really had it. The flag-carrying apps (Adobe, Final Cut, Garageband) had custom UIs. Built ins like Calendar had skeumorphic UIs.

crispinb 7y ago
Oh, true of course, especially from the big guns. But there was a flourishing ecosystem of great apps like Textmate, Things, Acorn, and a bunch of others from outfits like Omnigroup, Panic, IconFactory. These tended to fit beautifully on the platform, and not just in aesthetic terms, but functionally with reasonably consistent keyboard shortcuts, AppleEvents support, etc. Not perfect (what is?), and many of the longstanding apps are still around, but the steam has arguably gone out of the platform.
Razengan 7y ago
> Maybe my memory is bad but I don't think OS X ever really had it. This is not a binary question of either a desert or either a rainforest, but Apple's side of the fence is definitely a lot greener than Microsoft's in terms of UI/UX consistency. I was a purely PC/MS user up until about 10 years ago, but I haven't suffered as many befuddled facepalm moments from Apple's UI decisions as from the Escheresque nightmare that Microsoft is even now. > The flag-carrying apps (Adobe, Final Cut, Garageband) had custom UIs. Built ins like Calendar had skeumorphic UIs. However, almost every macOS app has the same standard menus, same standard shortcuts, and most of them support the same OS extensibility features. Even as a developer you just need to build against the latest AppKit and you get not only all the current features, but usually future features for free too (e.g. most of the NSDocument stuff such as autosaving and previous versions.) Compare this to the hodgepodge of different interfaces even in Windows' builtin apps alone, and championing a different API almost every other year.