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Recreating Aqua is the easy part. Recreating all the applications you would use day-to-day to fit the design language specified by Aqua is another. Apple's visu

Recreating Aqua is the easy part. Recreating all the applications you would use day-to-day to fit the design language specified by Aqua is another. Apple's visual OS design was never that far ahead of the curve, but they managed to convince developers for their platform to stick to their guidelines rather than reinvent the wheel, making the entire computer feel more like one integrated system than a toolbox filled with differently branded tools. This is also why most "windows style" themes fall flat: you can copy the window decorations, button backgrounds, and icons, but unless your applications are designed to look and work like the OS your mimicking, it'll all just look weird and off. At this point "operating systems" in a commercial sense are so large that only relatively new entries can afford to rebuild their stock applications to fit the current UI theme (ChromeOS comes pretty close but you'd need to appreciate Google's design to enjoy that). macOS, Windows, and even Linux to some extent all have decades of old software to support so they can't redesign their core GUI stack without breaking everything. In the days that an internet browser wasn't considered a core part of the operating system, there just weren't as many places to get the design wrong or off-template without Q&A noticing.

overfeed 8mo ago
> they managed to convince developers for their platform to stick to their guidelines rather than reinvent the wheel, making the entire computer feel more like one integrated system than a toolbox filled with differently branded tools. Browsing the web on non-Apple platforms was annoying for a few years, with web designers aping the skeuomorphic design-language of whatever the then-current MacOS X release was. Besides cargo-culting, there was no justifiable reason for brushed aluminum or linen web page backgrounds, though I'm sure it looked really great on the designers Apple computer. If you, dear reader, did this when you were younger, I hope you have grown as a person and a designer. > [...] unless your applications are designed to look and work like the OS your mimicking, it'll all just look weird and off. Exactly!
- nekooooo 8mo ago
  i no longer use luxurious wood, linen, and metal textures. these did serve a purpose at the time, though. skeumorphic design was a guidepost for a far less digital-literate user.
  - dylan604 8mo ago
    One of the early DAWs (long forgot the name of it) had an interface that recreated the look of a flatbed with animated reels. It ran on an old monochrome green/black monitor. I saw this in the mid-90s and was already used to seeing a waveform in timelines, so this thing really felt ancient. Apparently, the makers felt sound editors would be unable to grasp a new interface???
    - FarmerPotato 8mo ago
      Isn't it a thing for DAW developers to strive for a real-world-looking interface? What I hate is knob re-creations!
      - dylan604 8mo ago
        This didn't look real. It looks like what we'd consider a TUI today
      - ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
        Interesting thing though, in some pretty extensive testing I've found that two versions of the same plugin[1] get very different opinions on sound quality depending on whether or not I use the skeupmorphic interface or a "flat" one drawn with normal toolkit graphics (I don't have a screenshot but think in terms of Ableton's vector graphics knobs). Almost everyone seems to think the one with "real-looking" knobs and front panel "sounds better", "sounds more like the real synth", "has better filters" and so on than the flat design one, even though the DSP code and control ranges are identical between the two. If you don't want to use knobs, what would you use instead? [1] https://gjcp.net/plugins/peacock/ https://gjcp.net/plugins/peacock/
        8mo ago
alexpotato 8mo ago
> but they managed to convince developers for their platform to stick to their guidelines rather than reinvent the wheel This attention to detail and "one integrated system" leads me to my favorite MacOS story: - Windows and Linux machines would always DHCP for IP addresses - MacOS would see if you had connected to the network before and just reuse the old IP you had under the assumption that is was probably still valid - This worked most of the time and if you turned on a Mac and Windows laptop at the same time, the Mac would have a working IP first As someone pointed out, this was probably one of the reasons why MacOS users would often say it just "felt better" than Windows. The fact that Mac owned both hardware AND software and treated it as a holistic system led to an overall better user experience.
- akdev1l 8mo ago
  why is this a good thing? This sucks, it would randomly cause IP conflict in some cases
  - worthless-trash 8mo ago
    Users would assign it to 'just that network is flakey'.. not 'my hardware is not behaving properly' because it works elsewhere.
    - silon42 8mo ago
      I do observe this at work sometimes, on Linux I have no issues with wifi/network, but Apple users are complaining.
  - vladvasiliu 8mo ago
    If they implemented it well, they could have just sent an arp and check if it was already taken. Then again, I haven't ever been limited by the speed of DHCP servers... Windows is just dog-slow for a lot of things, so yeah, macos just "feels better" generally. I doubt it was related to just this IP thing.
  - MrDOS 8mo ago
ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
> but unless your applications are designed to look and work like the OS your mimicking, it'll all just look weird and off. Actually worse than not looking like Windows, at that.
Cthulhu_ 8mo ago
> Recreating all the applications you would use day-to-day to fit the design language specified by Aqua is another. This is (maybe tangentially) something I don't understand about the software market today; how come only Microsoft and Apple seem to be in the market for building a suite of native deskop applications, while other companies make one-off applications? Why isn't there a successful company building and maintaining a suite of common alternative desktop applications? I can make some guesses of course.
- fsloth 8mo ago
  "Why isn't there a successful company building and maintaining a suite of common alternative desktop applications?" Sure there are but in other domains than "office". For example CAD has few incumbent companies with their portfolios - Autodesk, Trimble, Nemetchek, Bentley. (etc) For design - Adobe, Affinity (well it's all Canva now), then legion of smaller offerings like Clip Studio Paint. CAD is the only domain in which I have domain knowledge but I would be surprised if there are no others.
xanderlewis 8mo ago
> Apple's visual OS design was never that far ahead of the curve That tends to happen when you're the one defining the curve.

overfeed 8mo ago

> they managed to convince developers for their platform to stick to their guidelines rather than reinvent the wheel, making the entire computer feel more like one integrated system than a toolbox filled with differently branded tools. Browsing the web on non-Apple platforms was annoying for a few years, with web designers aping the skeuomorphic design-language of whatever the then-current MacOS X release was. Besides cargo-culting, there was no justifiable reason for brushed aluminum or linen web page backgrounds, though I'm sure it looked really great on the designers Apple computer. If you, dear reader, did this when you were younger, I hope you have grown as a person and a designer. > [...] unless your applications are designed to look and work like the OS your mimicking, it'll all just look weird and off. Exactly!

nekooooo 8mo ago
i no longer use luxurious wood, linen, and metal textures. these did serve a purpose at the time, though. skeumorphic design was a guidepost for a far less digital-literate user.
- dylan604 8mo ago
  One of the early DAWs (long forgot the name of it) had an interface that recreated the look of a flatbed with animated reels. It ran on an old monochrome green/black monitor. I saw this in the mid-90s and was already used to seeing a waveform in timelines, so this thing really felt ancient. Apparently, the makers felt sound editors would be unable to grasp a new interface???
  - FarmerPotato 8mo ago
    Isn't it a thing for DAW developers to strive for a real-world-looking interface? What I hate is knob re-creations!
    - dylan604 8mo ago
      This didn't look real. It looks like what we'd consider a TUI today
    - ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
      Interesting thing though, in some pretty extensive testing I've found that two versions of the same plugin[1] get very different opinions on sound quality depending on whether or not I use the skeupmorphic interface or a "flat" one drawn with normal toolkit graphics (I don't have a screenshot but think in terms of Ableton's vector graphics knobs). Almost everyone seems to think the one with "real-looking" knobs and front panel "sounds better", "sounds more like the real synth", "has better filters" and so on than the flat design one, even though the DSP code and control ranges are identical between the two. If you don't want to use knobs, what would you use instead? [1] https://gjcp.net/plugins/peacock/ https://gjcp.net/plugins/peacock/
      - 8mo ago

alexpotato 8mo ago

> but they managed to convince developers for their platform to stick to their guidelines rather than reinvent the wheel This attention to detail and "one integrated system" leads me to my favorite MacOS story: - Windows and Linux machines would always DHCP for IP addresses - MacOS would see if you had connected to the network before and just reuse the old IP you had under the assumption that is was probably still valid - This worked most of the time and if you turned on a Mac and Windows laptop at the same time, the Mac would have a working IP first As someone pointed out, this was probably one of the reasons why MacOS users would often say it just "felt better" than Windows. The fact that Mac owned both hardware AND software and treated it as a holistic system led to an overall better user experience.

akdev1l 8mo ago
why is this a good thing? This sucks, it would randomly cause IP conflict in some cases
- worthless-trash 8mo ago
  Users would assign it to 'just that network is flakey'.. not 'my hardware is not behaving properly' because it works elsewhere.
  - silon42 8mo ago
    I do observe this at work sometimes, on Linux I have no issues with wifi/network, but Apple users are complaining.
- vladvasiliu 8mo ago
  If they implemented it well, they could have just sent an arp and check if it was already taken. Then again, I haven't ever been limited by the speed of DHCP servers... Windows is just dog-slow for a lot of things, so yeah, macos just "feels better" generally. I doubt it was related to just this IP thing.
- MrDOS 8mo ago

ErroneousBosh 8mo ago

> but unless your applications are designed to look and work like the OS your mimicking, it'll all just look weird and off. Actually worse than not looking like Windows, at that.

Cthulhu_ 8mo ago

> Recreating all the applications you would use day-to-day to fit the design language specified by Aqua is another. This is (maybe tangentially) something I don't understand about the software market today; how come only Microsoft and Apple seem to be in the market for building a suite of native deskop applications, while other companies make one-off applications? Why isn't there a successful company building and maintaining a suite of common alternative desktop applications? I can make some guesses of course.

fsloth 8mo ago
"Why isn't there a successful company building and maintaining a suite of common alternative desktop applications?" Sure there are but in other domains than "office". For example CAD has few incumbent companies with their portfolios - Autodesk, Trimble, Nemetchek, Bentley. (etc) For design - Adobe, Affinity (well it's all Canva now), then legion of smaller offerings like Clip Studio Paint. CAD is the only domain in which I have domain knowledge but I would be surprised if there are no others.

xanderlewis 8mo ago

> Apple's visual OS design was never that far ahead of the curve That tends to happen when you're the one defining the curve.