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macOS has gotten a lot less fun, starting with X. I remember no end of UI-customization utilities for pre-X Macs, some of which were really powerful, like Kalei
by _zzaw 5y ago
macOS has gotten a lot less fun, starting with X. I remember no end of UI-customization utilities for pre-X Macs, some of which were really powerful, like Kaleidoscope. I loved being able to make the system look like an NeXT box (there was even an Irix theme) or design my own UI entirely. Even Apple briefly considered the idea of building theme support right into the OS.
But they didn’t, and the few quirky things that OS X did, like the puff-of-smoke effect, have been quietly removed. I hate how sterile Apple’s products have gotten. Sure, they’re beautiful, but they don’t have the kind of character the old ones did.
I wish something like Kaleidoscope (or Burn My Windows) existed for Macs.
- rbanffy 5y agoI remember one, "Out of Context Menus" that allowed things like adjusting the vertical and horizontal settings of windows, as well as applying a gaussian blur to them. You can read more about Eric Trout's extension here: https://tidbits.com/1999/07/12/the-machack-hack-contest-1999/ https://tidbits.com/1999/07/12/the-machack-hack-contest-1999...
- dhosek 5y agoOn the flip side, I remember in the late 80s that pretty much every Mac disk had a virus on it thanks to fairly loose OS security in those days. I'm guessing that no more talking moose is the price we pay for not having to worry about getting a virus anytime something is put in the computer.
- _zzaw 5y agoHeh, I remember reading about a few of the infamous ones. Most of them seemed generally harmless; I never got one, although if I’d gotten more software from MUGs and mixtape-style floppies, I might have. You are definitely correct about loose OS security. It was possible to do a lot of damage with just a HyperCard stack, and those were pretty widely distributed.