10 ms·

It might be an unpopular opinion (in general), but OS 9 was actually beautiful. The design elements might look clunky by today's standards, but they were quite

It might be an unpopular opinion (in general), but OS 9 was actually beautiful. The design elements might look clunky by today's standards, but they were quite self-explanatory & functional, as compared to current macOS flat designs. I am stating purely from an angle of being friendly to an absolute beginner (e.g. a kid). I was in middle school in 2001 when I saw a paint program (MacPaint?) on an oyester iBook - It was way more intuitive and engaging than Windows counterpart. I think late Classic Macintosh (v8.6-9) to early OSX (~10.8) had a very good aesthetic balance between form & function.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> being friendly to a beginner (e.g. a kid) My child seems to intuitively get modern UI design, and doesn't seem to need many affordances to understand what to interact with or not. I think people who say older designs are better for beginners may be applying some retrospective thinking.
- chongli 5y ago
  Let's not underestimate neuroplasticity. Children can figure out almost anything. If you want a true test of UI intuitiveness then you ought to give the computer to an elderly parent or grandparent. Anecdotally, my 70-year-old father and several of my elderly uncles & aunts had a much easier time figuring out Classic Mac OS. Modern macOS and iOS are much more complicated. While they still use these systems, they do so in a much more superficial way and they tend to exhibit what (for lack of a better term) I would call a "fear response." That is, when attempting to do a novel task they refuse to experiment and instead resort to asking for help immediately. Classic Mac OS was much better designed to encourage experimentation and avoided surprising the user (in a negative way) as much as possible.
  - srvmshr 5y ago
    Here is a screenshot from my MBP which used to run 10.7 until two years ago :). I would anyday prefer these over the flatter icons. https://imgur.com/a/e6AEdwR https://imgur.com/a/e6AEdwR
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      But is that just based on what you're used to rather than what is intuitively better?
      - nine_k 5y ago
        Yes, it refers to well-recognizable imagery from outside the computer world.
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        But kids pick it up fine without these clues.
        jjoonathan 5y ago
        Hamburgers and hieroglyphs: this does not bring joy. Pretty objects: this activates the neurons.
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        I don't really know what you're trying to say, but my child seems absolutely able to pick up modern UI design, including the hamburger icon and others, and use it very happily and with joy.
        jjoonathan 5y ago
        I bet your kid could pick up on UI even worse than hamburgers & heiroglyphs and use it happily. Kids are amazing. Hamburgers and Heiroglyphs are not.
        wruza 5y ago
        Kids would be able to pickup CLI if that were the only way to start their favorite game. Kids also share knowledge even when your attention is away. We had a drive to learn MK combos and used that to win fights, but as adults, barely anyone in a random-100 group knows how to :q Vim. Give your kid a phone with zero interesting activities in it compared to other toys, and he/she would “pick” nothing out of it.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > If you want a true test of UI intuitiveness then you ought to give the computer to an elderly parent or grandparent. A second ago the test for intuitiveness was 'a kid'.
    - chongli 5y ago
      You can take my post as disagreeing with the GP as well on the kid test. Kids have been the ones figuring out computers and doing tech support for their older relatives essentially since the dawn of home computing. If a kid can’t figure out how to use your computer then it’s probably irreparably broken (kids figure out how to fix computers too).
  - srvmshr 5y ago
    Classic designs were touted as "something you could give to a grandma and a professional alike" in magazines of heydays :)
  - rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
    I’m not sure that giving the UI to the elderly is a truer test. Whatever difficulty they encounter, it’s just as likely that it could be because a previous experience with a different OS is shaping their expectations, or many other factors. It does seem that “time from 0 to successfully performing a novel task” is a good metric among many.
shp0ngle 5y ago
Yeah 90s design in general was quite good. Too bad the actual stability of these systems was horrid (both OS 8/9 and Windows 95).
zozbot234 5y ago
> The design elements might look clunky by today's standards They were optimized for the low-resolution screens of that time (hence 'pixel perfect' design was the norm), and there was also no expectation whatsoever of "touch friendly" controls so everything was a lot more tightly-spaced than today. Though the mockup does show how larger widgets could also be integrated quite well in that sort of design. "Flat design" is a disaster and the latest redesigns are slowly inching away from it by adding some 3d-rendered shadows to try and restore some intuition for "depth". But that sort of fancy, almost photo-realistic rendering just adds more weirdness to the overall "flat" look.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Yes and the touch friendly paradigms waste way too much space on platforms that don't even feature touch, like Mac.
- SllX 5y ago
  > and there was also no expectation whatsoever of "touch friendly" controls so everything was a lot more tightly-spaced than today Well if Apple’s Execs are to be believed, touch-screen Macs aren’t in the pipeline, which is aces with me because that’s what my iPad is for. So given that the preeminent pointing devices on a Macintosh are still the mouse and trackpad, I could do with them tightening up the spacing again and walking back the last 10 years of nonsense. We don’t have to go back to Snow Leopard, certainly not Platinum; but widgets and theming that are consistent with how a Macintosh is used and the hardware it actually runs on would be preferable.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    But ios apps are runnable on macs, aren’t they? And on that front apple does want some unification.
    - andrekandre 5y ago
      a lot of them arent available on the appstore (anymore anyways), and the few i tried were.... not that great (like iphone apps with non-resizable windows)...
adolph 5y ago
System 6 or gtfo. 7 was a RAM hog; 8 and 9 were lipstick on 7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_6

chrisseaton 5y ago

> being friendly to a beginner (e.g. a kid) My child seems to intuitively get modern UI design, and doesn't seem to need many affordances to understand what to interact with or not. I think people who say older designs are better for beginners may be applying some retrospective thinking.

chongli 5y ago
Let's not underestimate neuroplasticity. Children can figure out almost anything. If you want a true test of UI intuitiveness then you ought to give the computer to an elderly parent or grandparent. Anecdotally, my 70-year-old father and several of my elderly uncles & aunts had a much easier time figuring out Classic Mac OS. Modern macOS and iOS are much more complicated. While they still use these systems, they do so in a much more superficial way and they tend to exhibit what (for lack of a better term) I would call a "fear response." That is, when attempting to do a novel task they refuse to experiment and instead resort to asking for help immediately. Classic Mac OS was much better designed to encourage experimentation and avoided surprising the user (in a negative way) as much as possible.
- srvmshr 5y ago
  Here is a screenshot from my MBP which used to run 10.7 until two years ago :). I would anyday prefer these over the flatter icons. https://imgur.com/a/e6AEdwR https://imgur.com/a/e6AEdwR
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    But is that just based on what you're used to rather than what is intuitively better?
    - nine_k 5y ago
      Yes, it refers to well-recognizable imagery from outside the computer world.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        But kids pick it up fine without these clues.
        jjoonathan 5y ago
        Hamburgers and hieroglyphs: this does not bring joy. Pretty objects: this activates the neurons.
        chrisseaton 5y ago
        I don't really know what you're trying to say, but my child seems absolutely able to pick up modern UI design, including the hamburger icon and others, and use it very happily and with joy.
        jjoonathan 5y ago
        I bet your kid could pick up on UI even worse than hamburgers & heiroglyphs and use it happily. Kids are amazing. Hamburgers and Heiroglyphs are not.
        wruza 5y ago
        Kids would be able to pickup CLI if that were the only way to start their favorite game. Kids also share knowledge even when your attention is away. We had a drive to learn MK combos and used that to win fights, but as adults, barely anyone in a random-100 group knows how to :q Vim. Give your kid a phone with zero interesting activities in it compared to other toys, and he/she would “pick” nothing out of it.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > If you want a true test of UI intuitiveness then you ought to give the computer to an elderly parent or grandparent. A second ago the test for intuitiveness was 'a kid'.
  - chongli 5y ago
    You can take my post as disagreeing with the GP as well on the kid test. Kids have been the ones figuring out computers and doing tech support for their older relatives essentially since the dawn of home computing. If a kid can’t figure out how to use your computer then it’s probably irreparably broken (kids figure out how to fix computers too).
- srvmshr 5y ago
  Classic designs were touted as "something you could give to a grandma and a professional alike" in magazines of heydays :)
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y ago
  I’m not sure that giving the UI to the elderly is a truer test. Whatever difficulty they encounter, it’s just as likely that it could be because a previous experience with a different OS is shaping their expectations, or many other factors. It does seem that “time from 0 to successfully performing a novel task” is a good metric among many.

shp0ngle 5y ago

Yeah 90s design in general was quite good. Too bad the actual stability of these systems was horrid (both OS 8/9 and Windows 95).

zozbot234 5y ago

> The design elements might look clunky by today's standards They were optimized for the low-resolution screens of that time (hence 'pixel perfect' design was the norm), and there was also no expectation whatsoever of "touch friendly" controls so everything was a lot more tightly-spaced than today. Though the mockup does show how larger widgets could also be integrated quite well in that sort of design. "Flat design" is a disaster and the latest redesigns are slowly inching away from it by adding some 3d-rendered shadows to try and restore some intuition for "depth". But that sort of fancy, almost photo-realistic rendering just adds more weirdness to the overall "flat" look.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Yes and the touch friendly paradigms waste way too much space on platforms that don't even feature touch, like Mac.
SllX 5y ago
> and there was also no expectation whatsoever of "touch friendly" controls so everything was a lot more tightly-spaced than today Well if Apple’s Execs are to be believed, touch-screen Macs aren’t in the pipeline, which is aces with me because that’s what my iPad is for. So given that the preeminent pointing devices on a Macintosh are still the mouse and trackpad, I could do with them tightening up the spacing again and walking back the last 10 years of nonsense. We don’t have to go back to Snow Leopard, certainly not Platinum; but widgets and theming that are consistent with how a Macintosh is used and the hardware it actually runs on would be preferable.
- kaba0 5y ago
  But ios apps are runnable on macs, aren’t they? And on that front apple does want some unification.
  - andrekandre 5y ago
    a lot of them arent available on the appstore (anymore anyways), and the few i tried were.... not that great (like iphone apps with non-resizable windows)...

adolph 5y ago

System 6 or gtfo. 7 was a RAM hog; 8 and 9 were lipstick on 7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_6