As someone who grew up on the classic Mac os this is astonishingly well done. Bravo
(mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9
31–40 of 231 posts
Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9
#32It might be an unpopular opinion (in general), but OS 9 was actually beautiful. The design elements might look clunky by today's standards, but they were quite self-explanatory & functional, as compared to current macOS flat designs. I am stating purely from an angle of being friendly to an absolute beginner (e.g. a kid). I was in middle school in 2001 when I saw a paint program (MacPaint?) on an oyester iBook - It w…
Yeah 90s design in general was quite good.
Too bad the actual stability of these systems was horrid (both OS 8/9 and Windows 95).
Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9
#33It might be an unpopular opinion (in general), but OS 9 was actually beautiful. The design elements might look clunky by today's standards, but they were quite self-explanatory & functional, as compared to current macOS flat designs. I am stating purely from an angle of being friendly to an absolute beginner (e.g. a kid). I was in middle school in 2001 when I saw a paint program (MacPaint?) on an oyester iBook - It w…
> The design elements might look clunky by today's standards
They were optimized for the low-resolution screens of that time (hence 'pixel perfect' design was the norm), and there was also no expectation whatsoever of "touch friendly" controls so everything was a lot more tightly-spaced than today. Though the mockup does show how larger widgets could also be integrated quite well in that sort of design.
"Flat design" is a disaster and the latest redesigns are slowly inching away from it by adding some 3d-rendered shadows to try and restore some intuition for "depth". But that sort of fancy, almost photo-realistic rendering just adds more weirdness to the overall "flat" look.
Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9
#34As a big fan of the Platinum theme used in Mac OS 8 and 9, I absolutely love this!!! This is a fantastic demo of what modern applications would look like had they been designed under the Apple Human Interface Guidelines of the Mac OS 9 era. If these weren't mockups and were actual redesigns of Spotify, Zoom, and Slack, I'd download them as soon as possible.
Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9
#35It might be an unpopular opinion (in general), but OS 9 was actually beautiful. The design elements might look clunky by today's standards, but they were quite self-explanatory & functional, as compared to current macOS flat designs. I am stating purely from an angle of being friendly to an absolute beginner (e.g. a kid). I was in middle school in 2001 when I saw a paint program (MacPaint?) on an oyester iBook - It w…
> The design elements might look clunky by today's standards They were optimized for the low-resolution screens of that time (hence 'pixel perfect' design was the norm), and there was also no expectation whatsoever of "touch friendly" controls so everything was a lot more tightly-spaced than today. Though the mockup does show how larger widgets could also be integrated quite well in that sort of design. "Flat design"…
Yes and the touch friendly paradigms waste way too much space on platforms that don't even feature touch, like Mac.
Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9
#36The Spotify design reminds me of Kazaa
Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9
#37Stimulates a bit of an impulse I had as a teenager and wanting to experience that on my PC, or get into BeOS or QNX, based just on witnessing screenshots and something deeply striking my fancy. Before I got into Linux (which was before I got a Mac in 2006), I used WindowBlinds and LiteStep to do exactly that, and more. I used to really care more about certain trappings of my experience, and I didn't have any actual w…
Qnx was pretty unique. We no longer have any RTOS with a desktop GUI sadly
Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9
#38It might be an unpopular opinion (in general), but OS 9 was actually beautiful. The design elements might look clunky by today's standards, but they were quite self-explanatory & functional, as compared to current macOS flat designs. I am stating purely from an angle of being friendly to an absolute beginner (e.g. a kid). I was in middle school in 2001 when I saw a paint program (MacPaint?) on an oyester iBook - It w…
> The design elements might look clunky by today's standards They were optimized for the low-resolution screens of that time (hence 'pixel perfect' design was the norm), and there was also no expectation whatsoever of "touch friendly" controls so everything was a lot more tightly-spaced than today. Though the mockup does show how larger widgets could also be integrated quite well in that sort of design. "Flat design"…
> and there was also no expectation whatsoever of "touch friendly" controls so everything was a lot more tightly-spaced than today
Well if Apple’s Execs are to be believed, touch-screen Macs aren’t in the pipeline, which is aces with me because that’s what my iPad is for.
So given that the preeminent pointing devices on a Macintosh are still the mouse and trackpad, I could do with them tightening up the spacing again and walking back the last 10 years of nonsense.
We don’t have to go back to Snow Leopard, certainly not Platinum; but widgets and theming that are consistent with how a Macintosh is used and the hardware it actually runs on would be preferable.
Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9
#39It might be an unpopular opinion (in general), but OS 9 was actually beautiful. The design elements might look clunky by today's standards, but they were quite self-explanatory & functional, as compared to current macOS flat designs. I am stating purely from an angle of being friendly to an absolute beginner (e.g. a kid). I was in middle school in 2001 when I saw a paint program (MacPaint?) on an oyester iBook - It w…
System 6 or gtfo. 7 was a RAM hog; 8 and 9 were lipstick on 7.
Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's not underestimate neuroplasticity. Children can figure out almost anything. If you want a true test of UI intuitiveness then you ought to give the computer to an elderly parent or grandparent. Anecdotally, my 70-year-old father and several of my elderly uncles & aunts had a much easier time figuring out Classic Mac OS. Modern macOS and iOS are much more complicated. While they still use these systems, they do s…
> If you want a true test of UI intuitiveness then you ought to give the computer to an elderly parent or grandparent. A second ago the test for intuitiveness was 'a kid'.
You can take my post as disagreeing with the GP as well on the kid test. Kids have been the ones figuring out computers and doing tech support for their older relatives essentially since the dawn of home computing. If a kid can’t figure out how to use your computer then it’s probably irreparably broken (kids figure out how to fix computers too).