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I've always loved Apple Platinum (the Mac OS 8 and 9 interface). I'm not a UI/art person, but the gray color they used always seemed so clean compared to the du

by mdasen 4y ago

I've always loved Apple Platinum (the Mac OS 8 and 9 interface). I'm not a UI/art person, but the gray color they used always seemed so clean compared to the dull gray of Windows 95/98. Likewise, it wasn't the blinding white of light-mode in macOS/Windows today. The purple used was soft and pleasant, unlike the harsh yellow of folders in Windows or the harsh royal blue of Windows progress bars. Plus, everything had lots of contrast without feeling harsh. One of the things that bugs me about modern UIs is the lack of contrast. I don't need a high-contrast mode, but it would be nice to get back to the contrast of 90s operating systems.

phendrenad2 4y ago
I would take Mac System 6, 7, 8, 9, OS X 10.1 aqua, windows 95, 98, ME, or XP over Windows 11's GUI.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
>I've always loved Apple Platinum (the Mac OS 8 and 9 interface). I'm not a UI/art person, but the gray color they used always seemed so clean compared to the dull gray of Windows 95/98. I feel similarly. The Win9X gray is just a touch too dark, it reminds me of a dark overcast day or something. Platinum's shade of gray is great, and the shade that they switched to in Windows 2000 is also very good. For this reason on the Windows side of the fence I've always considered Win2K's UI the peak of Win9X-type UIs.
- akx 4y ago
  The win9x default gray was from an age where you didn't necessarily have the option to use an arbitrary shade of gray - meanwhile Macs had full control of the hardware (as they still do) and could pick any old color. That said, you _could_ customize all the colors in Win9x if you liked, which you couldn't do with Macs.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    > That said, you _could_ customize all the colors in Win9x if you liked, which you couldn't do with Macs. Well, until Kaleidoscope[0] was created way back in 1991, followed by Apple's own Appearance Manager[1] in Mac OS 8.5 in 1998, both of which allowed all-encompassing theming that could stop just short of changing colors or radically change your UI's appearance. Windows wouldn't get an equivalent until the addition of visual style themes in XP in 2001 (which still had to be hacked to allow arbitrary third party themes) and was by predated the third-party WindowBlinds[2] by three years. To date I've not seen OS theming that was as capable as Kaleidoscope was. Kaleidoscope schemes could change practically any aspect of the Mac OS UI (e.g. moving titlebars to the bottom or left/right edges of windows) which led to the creation of some extremely creative and zany schemes. Even the theming systems of modern Linux desktop environments which are built with customization as a central tenant aren't as capable as Kaleidoscope was. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope_(software) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance_Manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance_Manager [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds
    - akx 4y ago
      Haha, fair point! :) My exposure (but there was a lot of it) to classic Macs was the ones at my school which notably didn't have Kaleidoscope.

by mdasen 4y ago

phendrenad2 4y ago

I would take Mac System 6, 7, 8, 9, OS X 10.1 aqua, windows 95, 98, ME, or XP over Windows 11's GUI.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

>I've always loved Apple Platinum (the Mac OS 8 and 9 interface). I'm not a UI/art person, but the gray color they used always seemed so clean compared to the dull gray of Windows 95/98. I feel similarly. The Win9X gray is just a touch too dark, it reminds me of a dark overcast day or something. Platinum's shade of gray is great, and the shade that they switched to in Windows 2000 is also very good. For this reason on the Windows side of the fence I've always considered Win2K's UI the peak of Win9X-type UIs.

akx 4y ago
The win9x default gray was from an age where you didn't necessarily have the option to use an arbitrary shade of gray - meanwhile Macs had full control of the hardware (as they still do) and could pick any old color. That said, you _could_ customize all the colors in Win9x if you liked, which you couldn't do with Macs.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  > That said, you _could_ customize all the colors in Win9x if you liked, which you couldn't do with Macs. Well, until Kaleidoscope[0] was created way back in 1991, followed by Apple's own Appearance Manager[1] in Mac OS 8.5 in 1998, both of which allowed all-encompassing theming that could stop just short of changing colors or radically change your UI's appearance. Windows wouldn't get an equivalent until the addition of visual style themes in XP in 2001 (which still had to be hacked to allow arbitrary third party themes) and was by predated the third-party WindowBlinds[2] by three years. To date I've not seen OS theming that was as capable as Kaleidoscope was. Kaleidoscope schemes could change practically any aspect of the Mac OS UI (e.g. moving titlebars to the bottom or left/right edges of windows) which led to the creation of some extremely creative and zany schemes. Even the theming systems of modern Linux desktop environments which are built with customization as a central tenant aren't as capable as Kaleidoscope was. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope_(software) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance_Manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appearance_Manager [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds
  - akx 4y ago
    Haha, fair point! :) My exposure (but there was a lot of it) to classic Macs was the ones at my school which notably didn't have Kaleidoscope.