5 ms·

I love things like this. Aqua was such a revelation at the time.

by plun9 1y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
> Aqua was such a revelation at the time. Liquid Glass seems to hearken back to that era...
- smallmancontrov 1y ago
  I am so glad that we seem to be starting to crawl out of the minimalist local minimum.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    The one thing that I remember about Aqua, was what it did to performance. Before OSX was released, we were seeded prerelease copies, but with the original System 7 UI. It was really fast. When the first Aqua release came out, the performance dropped like a stone.
    - classichasclass 1y ago
      That sounds like Rhapsody/Mac OS X Server (which would have been Platinum). And it is, indeed, quite snappy. I have it on a Wallstreet G3 and it runs very well.
      - mrkpdl 1y ago
        The aqua interface first shipped in Mac OS X Developer Preview 3. So they could be referring to DP2 which had a platinum like interface but was released after Apple had moved on from the rhapsody concept.
        ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
        That sounds about right. It was a while ago, so my memory is fuzzy.
    - wmf 1y ago
      The slowdown was probably the switch from Display PostScript to Quartz.
    - schmidtleonard 1y ago
      A quarter century of Moore's Law smashes that from "small problem" to "utterly nonexistent problem."
mingus88 1y ago
Every Linux WM had an aqua theme. Apple delivered an OS that the “year of the Linux desktop” folk had been (and still are) trying to deliver for years. A mainstream Unix with all the usability for your grandmother supported by all big 3rd party apps as well. Home run.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Liquid Glass feels like a reprisal of all the visual garishness of Aqua with none of the usability lessons. Aqua was good because it could be learned quickly, it made a lot of sense to copy back then. Apple's current design language is sterile, but at least it's easy to read. The modern design trends are just a series of downgrades in usability, arguably continuing since System 7. Somehow, it looks like "overlapping low-contrast window content" has become the haute couture of UX, much to the dismay of grandmas everywhere.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    Personally I found System 7.6/Mac OS 8’s Platinum to be a step up in usability compared to System 7 and before. The light mid-gray it used in most of its UI was pleasant and easier on the eyes than the stark white that made up the majority of the original Mac UI, but it was still plenty legible.
    - duskwuff 1y ago
      The System 7.0 UI appearance - before Platinum - was a mess. It was little more than a partially colorized version of the monochrome System 6 user interface; in fact, it mostly fell back to the System 6 appearance on machines with monochrome displays, like the (brand-new in 1991!) PowerBook series. In a certain sense, Platinum was an attempt to reinterpret what Mac OS could have looked like if it had always been designed for a color display. It didn't just add color, like System 7.0 had; it added depth and texture to the interface which wasn't practical to display before. It also added a ton of new controls to the toolkit which previously didn't have standardized implementations or appearances. (For instance, System 7.0 didn't have a standard progress bar control - every application which used one had to provide their own implementation.)
alsetmusic 1y ago
> So this is the architecture, except there’s one more thing. The one more thing is, we have been secretly for the last 18 months designing a completely new user interface. And that new user interface builds on Apple’s legacy and carries it into the next century. And we call that new user interface Aqua, because it’s liquid. One of the design goals was when you saw it, you wanted to lick it. Steve Jobs
jonhohle 1y ago
Aqua is still a revelation. We've taken a huge step back in being able to just identify window controls. My hope is that some of that comes back with Liquid Glass, but honestly, Aqua still looks great. What all the copy cats missed (Windows Vista, Linux themes) is how consistent and usable everything was. It looked great, but better than that, it worked great.
- forgotoldacc 1y ago
  Mac OS design at the time was so good that I switched from Windows to Mac and never went back. Been over 20 years now. Now I find myself frustrated with Mac OS quite often, but the competition is so bad that I'm just kind of stuck.
- cyberax 1y ago
  I loved the "stripy" windows. Things lining up perfectly on the horizontal stripes were somehow so visually pleasing. I tried to replicate this look in my Java Swing UI using a commercial Aqua-like look&feel, but got hit by issues with controls rendering their own background, resulting in stripes being misaligned. I was so disappointed when Apple phased it out later.

I love things like this. Aqua was such a revelation at the time.

by plun9 1y ago

I love things like this. Aqua was such a revelation at the time.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

> Aqua was such a revelation at the time. Liquid Glass seems to hearken back to that era...

smallmancontrov 1y ago
I am so glad that we seem to be starting to crawl out of the minimalist local minimum.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  The one thing that I remember about Aqua, was what it did to performance. Before OSX was released, we were seeded prerelease copies, but with the original System 7 UI. It was really fast. When the first Aqua release came out, the performance dropped like a stone.
  - classichasclass 1y ago
    That sounds like Rhapsody/Mac OS X Server (which would have been Platinum). And it is, indeed, quite snappy. I have it on a Wallstreet G3 and it runs very well.
    - mrkpdl 1y ago
      The aqua interface first shipped in Mac OS X Developer Preview 3. So they could be referring to DP2 which had a platinum like interface but was released after Apple had moved on from the rhapsody concept.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
        That sounds about right. It was a while ago, so my memory is fuzzy.
  - wmf 1y ago
    The slowdown was probably the switch from Display PostScript to Quartz.
  - schmidtleonard 1y ago
    A quarter century of Moore's Law smashes that from "small problem" to "utterly nonexistent problem."

mingus88 1y ago

Every Linux WM had an aqua theme. Apple delivered an OS that the “year of the Linux desktop” folk had been (and still are) trying to deliver for years. A mainstream Unix with all the usability for your grandmother supported by all big 3rd party apps as well. Home run.

bigyabai 1y ago
Liquid Glass feels like a reprisal of all the visual garishness of Aqua with none of the usability lessons. Aqua was good because it could be learned quickly, it made a lot of sense to copy back then. Apple's current design language is sterile, but at least it's easy to read. The modern design trends are just a series of downgrades in usability, arguably continuing since System 7. Somehow, it looks like "overlapping low-contrast window content" has become the haute couture of UX, much to the dismay of grandmas everywhere.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  Personally I found System 7.6/Mac OS 8’s Platinum to be a step up in usability compared to System 7 and before. The light mid-gray it used in most of its UI was pleasant and easier on the eyes than the stark white that made up the majority of the original Mac UI, but it was still plenty legible.
  - duskwuff 1y ago
    The System 7.0 UI appearance - before Platinum - was a mess. It was little more than a partially colorized version of the monochrome System 6 user interface; in fact, it mostly fell back to the System 6 appearance on machines with monochrome displays, like the (brand-new in 1991!) PowerBook series. In a certain sense, Platinum was an attempt to reinterpret what Mac OS could have looked like if it had always been designed for a color display. It didn't just add color, like System 7.0 had; it added depth and texture to the interface which wasn't practical to display before. It also added a ton of new controls to the toolkit which previously didn't have standardized implementations or appearances. (For instance, System 7.0 didn't have a standard progress bar control - every application which used one had to provide their own implementation.)

alsetmusic 1y ago

> So this is the architecture, except there’s one more thing. The one more thing is, we have been secretly for the last 18 months designing a completely new user interface. And that new user interface builds on Apple’s legacy and carries it into the next century. And we call that new user interface Aqua, because it’s liquid. One of the design goals was when you saw it, you wanted to lick it. Steve Jobs

jonhohle 1y ago

Aqua is still a revelation. We've taken a huge step back in being able to just identify window controls. My hope is that some of that comes back with Liquid Glass, but honestly, Aqua still looks great. What all the copy cats missed (Windows Vista, Linux themes) is how consistent and usable everything was. It looked great, but better than that, it worked great.

forgotoldacc 1y ago
Mac OS design at the time was so good that I switched from Windows to Mac and never went back. Been over 20 years now. Now I find myself frustrated with Mac OS quite often, but the competition is so bad that I'm just kind of stuck.
cyberax 1y ago
I loved the "stripy" windows. Things lining up perfectly on the horizontal stripes were somehow so visually pleasing. I tried to replicate this look in my Java Swing UI using a commercial Aqua-like look&feel, but got hit by issues with controls rendering their own background, resulting in stripes being misaligned. I was so disappointed when Apple phased it out later.