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(mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9

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Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9

#41

Post by zozbot234 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #37
floam wrote: post #5

Stimulates 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

Linux with the PREEMPT_RT patchset is pretty much a true RTOS nowadays. Though you still need to be careful in developing userspace to achieve true "hard" time bounds, and that's largely incompatible with a "desktop" workflow.

Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9

#42

Post by zozbot234 »

hiptobecubic wrote: post #26
wraptile wrote: post #25

Why did it take us so long to get rid of these oversized scrollbars? I can't recall monitor quality of 90s/00s but surely the scrollbars didn't need to take 5% fo the real estate, right? Makes me wonder what sort of currently extremely common UI elements we'll look down on in the near future.

It was common for mice not to have wheels. In fact, the mouse that came with the computer shown only had one big button. People needed to be able to actually click on the scroll bar to use it.

It's still common for trackpads not to have wheels. "Two-finger" scrolling is clunkier IME than just using tap-and-drag on a scrollbar widget.

Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9

#43

Post by [deleted] »

hiptobecubic wrote: post #26
wraptile wrote: post #25

Why did it take us so long to get rid of these oversized scrollbars? I can't recall monitor quality of 90s/00s but surely the scrollbars didn't need to take 5% fo the real estate, right? Makes me wonder what sort of currently extremely common UI elements we'll look down on in the near future.

It was common for mice not to have wheels. In fact, the mouse that came with the computer shown only had one big button. People needed to be able to actually click on the scroll bar to use it.

[deleted]

Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9

#44

Post by nebula8804 »

jonpurdy wrote: post #9
jonpalmisc wrote: post #2

Wow, this is incredible. Can’t imagine how much work this took. Seeing this makes me think about how many modern applications could learn a few things from the old Mac OS 8/9 Human Interface Guidelines. [0] [0] http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/doc...

It’s amazing to me how much more usable those UIs are. Not to mention how much more performant they’d be than modern Electron garbage. But forget about Mac OS 9, we don’t even have native OS X or Windows interfaces anymore. Doesn’t help that Apple dropped the ball on following their own UI guidelines.

>we don’t even have native OS X or Windows interfaces anymore

Wait you can't just call the respective APIs anymore? I thought the reason people don't use them is not because they aren't available but that 2 different codebases would have to be maintained hence things like Electron.

Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9

#45

Post by nebula8804 »

martinald wrote: post #30
zrail wrote: post #24

I know at least one person who would pay _very good money_ for a version of Slack that opened channels in separate windows.

Yeah, watching that video really reminds me how poor slack performance is. It genuinely feels like it could fit into a couple of MB of RAM back in those days and been super snappy. I literally do not use slack for anything that IRC wouldn't do back in the late 90s, with the exception of threads, embedded images, and emojis. It is crazy how close but how far IRC was. Session persistence, notification support even when…

You know whats crazy? A few years back I had this Core i3 Haswell system and I installed Windows 7 with Office 2003 on it. The PC shipped with Windows 8 but I decided to go backwards. My god the performance was out of this world. Everything was instant! It was such a pleasant experience I didn't feel again until I got my M1 mac. Even now the bloat is slowly beginning on even the m1 Mac. I think we need to find every developer/designer/project manager who introduces this software bloat and lock them on a remote island.

Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9

#46

Post by srvmshr »

chongli wrote: post #15
chrisseaton wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being friendly to a beginner (e.g. a kid) My child seems to intuitively get modern UI design, and doesn't seem to need many affordances to understand what to interact with or not. I think people who say older designs are better for beginners may be applying some retrospective thinking.

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…

Here is a screenshot from my MBP which used to run 10.7 until two years ago :). I would anyday prefer these over the flatter icons.

https://imgur.com/a/e6AEdwR

Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9

#48

Post by userbinator »

It's amazing how much more usable applications become when their UIs are consistent with the other UI of the platform. Unfortunately, marketing wants every product to "stand out" and thus (even before the Electron fad started) they develop custom controls and other annoying "uniqueness".

The Zoom one reminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe --- yes, videoconferencing was actually possible on the hardware of the time.

Re: (mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9

#50

Post by chrisseaton »

srvmshr wrote: post #46
chongli wrote: post #15

Earlier 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…

Here is a screenshot from my MBP which used to run 10.7 until two years ago :). I would anyday prefer these over the flatter icons. https://imgur.com/a/e6AEdwR

But is that just based on what you're used to rather than what is intuitively better?
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