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I don't know if it's nostalgia but somehow this interface looks more lively and friendly to me than modern MacOS which feels flatter and has less personality (t
by _teyd 5y ago
I don't know if it's nostalgia but somehow this interface looks more lively and friendly to me than modern MacOS which feels flatter and has less personality (to me personally).
- nly 5y agoI agree. Modern UIs are soulless
- petepete 5y agoI agree to an extent but the thought of having an application spread across seven or eight windows makes me feel nauseous.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoIt can be a good way to make use of smaller screens (e.g. on laptops). Multiple "virtual desktops" makes it easier to manage
- dijonman2 5y agoI use many, many windows and tools to help me switch including virtual desktops. Carryover from X11 days.
- ptx 5y agoIt helps that you can press Command+Option+H to hide all other windows (from other applications) to reduce clutter.
- abraxas 5y agoYeah, it's like everyone fell in love with the X/Athena widgets all of a sudden. I'd never have guessed that after all these years we'd go back to UIs looking like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Athena_Widgets#/media/File:Screenshot_of_%22Xman%22_program.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Athena_Widgets#/media/File:S...
- sneak 5y agoApple's post-Steve brain drain is real, and a lot of the internal redesign projects are now simply resume-driven development. A lot of the people working on these systems weren't working professionally when 10.0 came out. Most of those people have moved on. Apple is not the same humans.
- wombatmobile 5y agoA corporation is neither a human nor an AI. A corporation is a shield behind which humans plot and practice their most deliberate, libidinous schemes of avarice, moderated not by morality or community, but only by laws and markets. And for that, corporations have lawyers, resumes and advertising. It is a rare corporation that retains a soul for longer than its founders presence, because lawyers, resumes and advertising cannot sense what founders could: a creative future.
- imwillofficial 5y agoThis comment was amazing.
- hhh 5y agoI would think an increasing amount don’t remember it either. I was three at the time. The earliest OS X version I remember hearing about was Tiger, and I used Leopard.
- ImprovedSilence 5y agoWow, Agreed. The window shadows here really help them pop way more than I remember, and they seem to do a much better job delineating overlapping windows than the current “styles”.
- yoz-y 5y agomacOS still has window shadows and they are still the same size (by eyeballing them). The only difference is that in dark mode the shadows are of course less visible because the contents of windows are darker.
- kitsunesoba 5y agoAt some point, window shadows became much more diffused. I think the release that implemented this change was mountain lion. I keep a Snow Leopard VM around to occasionally run old software in and the difference in shadow size is always striking. I personally like the more focused look of pre-10.7 shadows.
- yoz-y 5y agoAh yes. When looking at it it does indeed look darker towards the window in the screenshots.
- Wowfunhappy 5y agoI just took a look, and I really can't see any difference between the window shadows on my Mavericks machine and my Snow Leopard VM. The Mavericks shadows may be ever-so-slightly stronger. You may be thinking of Yosemite, which definitely toned down the shadows a bit as part of flattening everything.
- xanathar 5y agoWindows 11 also has shadows again, fwiw.
- germinalphrase 5y agoMy nostalgia is that iPhone rumor render at the bottom. Kind of love and want it.
- Scene_Cast2 5y agoSame. I remember a lot more of that type of content around that era (2005-2012) - does anyone know where there's similar content now?
- Toutouxc 5y agoWhat do you mean by "similar content"? For unreleased device rumors and leaks there's https://www.macrumors.com https://www.macrumors.com.
- lalwanivikas 5y agoIs it possible to get it(old look) back? I tried searching for it but did not find anything promising.
- SllX 5y agoAny method I can think of to replace UI assets would be prone to breaking with every patch Apple pushes out. I’m not going to say it’s impossible, but it’s probably not worth your time. If you want to explore what the UI felt like, you’re better off exploring VMs or old hardware and install media.
- Klonoar 5y agoTo be honest, with the way Apple does support for releases 1 or 2 back from current, you could potentially do this easier nowadays: just don't support the current version (e.g Monterey), only target Catalina or Big Sur. When Monterey is no longer the new one (only receiving security patches), that's when you roll it forward.
- can16358p 5y agoTo be honest I really kept away from that old Mac interface for years. When they switched to a cleaner and flatter design, I literally went "now I want to jump on Apple ecosystem". Same for iOS 7 update. They weren't the only or primary reasons but they had significant role. I personally love the new flat interfaces MUCH more TBH.
- anthk 5y agoFlat interfaces today on desktops are unusable compared to OSX Tiger, KDE3 and Windows 9x/2k/XP.
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y agoAbsolutely. It feels like playing battlefield. Just like you do not see the soldiers in that game, you don't know where the buttons or clickable things are. Does this page when scroll? Who knows. Maybe it does.
- dijit 5y agoI understand some of what you mean with this. I couldn't really stand the tiger-era MacOS either; but early iOS and *MacOS Snow Leopard* we're the pinnacle of UI/UX for me. I still remember the high pixel density of the devices being shown off so well with the crisp rendition of paper and leather. The way it felt like it was popping off the screen. Back then I had really good eyesight (I was 20-22~) and those UI elements sold me on the quality of the hardware. That, and it was much smoother in it's animations than android/windows/compiz.
- can16358p 5y agoAll of them were the right choice for their time though. Especially early iPhone and its skeuomorphic design taught (practically) the whole world how to use a touch interface with buttons, lists etc. and it looked great for the time. Similar for old Macs too. Then flat design, IMO, cleaned up the general UI after teaching it.
- bluedino 5y agoIMO the last few versions of the Classic MacOS were the peak. There was a lot of hate for Aqua and the fisher-price look. Remember the pinstripes? Tiger was a big improvement. And, the earlier versions of OS X still look way better than what we have now.
- BoxOfRain 5y agoTiger remains to this day my favourite look for macOS. It's not that I don't like the modern look, but there's something incredibly friendly and inviting about the 10.4 era Aqua interface. I wish you could still skin macOS because I'd totally run a Tiger desktop on modern macOS if I could. Best I can get is a brushed metal theme for Firefox to mimic old-school Safari!
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoTiger looks over a Snow Leopard core. What more could anyone possibly want?
- hyperbovine 5y agoDo not fear--it's only a matter of time before the "design conscious" crowd, which includes a large contingent of Apple employees, alights on the year 2005 as the pinnacle of "retro" and starts creating throwback versions of everything. By my estimation we're at about 1994 right now so ...
- mirkules 5y agoI still have a working 2007 16” MacBook Pro (fully loaded 4GB of RAM, yeah!). It’s not just the software that was better but the hardware too. That keyboard has so much travel compared to these newer ones, it’s crazy. It actually feels like a real keyboard.
- jacobolus 5y agoThe newest generation of Apple keyboards has a bit more travel than the previous generation, but the laptops from 15 years ago are nicer. None of them come close to the glory of this keyboard though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Portable
- pram 5y agoWow that thing looks bigger than the IIc I had. Portable indeed!
- salamandersauce 5y agoIt is. Also really heavy because it used a lead acid battery. It was also wired in such a way that if the battery died it wouldn't turn on anymore unlike modern laptops that can run off the AC adapter directly. My parents threw theirs out because of that.
- jagger27 5y ago15" or 17"? I have a PowerBook G4 from the same era, and I think the keyboard is the same as that. Indeed it has better travel, but I find the keys are slightly wobbly and a bit unrefined. Having torn one apart a while ago, I'd suspect it's due to looser tolerances than more modern designs. I think ThinkPads from the same era have significantly better keyboards. They're less mushy and have a better texture.
- jacobolus 5y agoThe wobble in keyswitches is often intentional: it prevents keys from binding when pressed off-axis, and makes them a bit more forgiving when they get dust inside. I didn’t like the older thinkpad keyboards; noticeably too stiff for my taste. But this IBM "portable" keyboard is a dream: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100
- TillE 5y agoThere's definitely some ugly bits from that era, but I miss...color. My favorite example are the icons in the iTunes sidebar, which used to be distinctly colored (and therefore quickly and easily distinguishable!) and then became a dull grey. It looks incredibly bland and it's harder to use. Now it's split into multiple apps with monochromatic sidebars, which is slightly less boring but no more usable.
- philistine 5y agoImagine if they kept the monochrome design but gave every icon a different shade of red. It would get us so much closer to the colourful past !
- duxup 5y agoI ran into a site I was fixing that used an older css framework. Buttons had depth and looked like candy…. I really liked them.
- macNchz 5y agoI had some firsthand experience of how many people were bothered by the grey iTunes icon change after I released a little hack to restore them. The demand blew through a month of my web hosting bandwidth in a couple of hours, and people kept sending me emails about it for years! Comment from a previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24638381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24638381
- kergonath 5y agoHey I think I used that! That's about 10 years late, but thank you!
- gurkendoktor 5y agoThanks! I think I've used that, and a SIMBL bundle for Finder when it became necessary.
- sdevonoes 5y agoI think, in general, UIs back then felt more "human": soft, intuitive, yes, sometimes a bit clunky, and yes, sometimes with contradictions (like any human being). Now they feel more "robotic": harsh, darker (or is it that designers nowadays tend to use softened colors?), precise as any machine (but this doesn't always mean that they are easier for humans to use). Robotic, though, doesn't seem too far off: society is becoming more and more robotic I believe.
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y agoDefinitely. It feels lively and exciting. Jonny Ive's decision to go with flat killed all joy in the UI space and millions of designers copied it mindlessly which I find especially egregious.
- johnebgd 5y agoScott Forstall was fired for the Apple Maps mess up. He championed good designs like this. When he left it was a race to the bottom at Apple for their UI/UX.
- diskzero 5y agoScott created a lot of friction and animosity amongst various high-level managers and executives. Steve protected Scott. With Steve gone, the other executives had to deal with this issue. I won't name who, as I am sure the story has been told elsewhere, basically said Scott had to go or they would go. Scott may have gotten Apple Maps pinned to him on the way out the door, but there were many, many more issues leading to his departure.
- astrange 5y agoCalling Forstall the ideal of good design is kind of funny because he invented WordArt as an MS intern.
- sebow 5y ago(In case there needs to be a reminder) Take a look at hellosystem if you want this kind of interface on a modern OS(FreeBSD, that is).Yes, it's nowhere near a complete solution for most work or even some average usage, but it looks promising and we don't deal with apple.
- majormajor 5y agoAt the time, some of us went out of the way to get rid of the blue parts of Aqua in particular. Was the graphite option for gray button bubbles available in 10.0? I can't remember anymore. Interestingly, though, Aqua holds up better than the Brushed Metal OS X phase.
- foofoo4u 5y agoI also found the older UIs of Tiger and Snow Leopard to be more intuitive. Modern flat UIs are difficult to discern what is presentation and what is intractable. Buttons used to look like buttons. It was obvious back then that you can click on them. Today, buttons are so flat that you have to think harder about whether what you are looking at is a button or a text label with a backdrop shape.