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

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

#161

Post by jeroenhd » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:21 AM UTC

waspight wrote: post #99

jonpurdy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think Electron is quite amazing. It does not deserve this bad reputation that it for some reason has on HN.

Electron is amazing for developers; less so for the end users.

You get faster iteration and more features at the cost of humongous system resource usage. Running several Electron applications, each with their own slightly-outdated Chrome engine, is terrible for battery life and available system resources, but you do get fully-featured applications in no time.

If your users run 32GiB of RAM and at least 8 cores, then Electron should probably be the obvious choice of platform. For most applications, though, I don't think this approach is necessary or even a good idea.

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

#162

Post by nebula8804 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:22 AM UTC

sjmulder wrote: post #105

nebula8804 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

There's isn't a "the respective API" any more for Windows, it seems. Win32/ATL/Forms don't get the new widgets and design language (just a bit of lookalike styling). WPF, UWP, WinUI 2/3 are all bundled toolkits that mimic the Windows' fashion of the day to varying degrees.

oh ok so yeah, I'm hoping people can continue to write the standard Win32 apps. They can be quite quick. The OP gave me the impression that Win32 was gone. Who cares about the Metro or whatever they have now look. Yuck.

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

#163

Post by edgyquant » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:23 AM UTC

jcelerier wrote: post #155

edgyquant wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never seen anyone argue Mac OS was anything but beautiful but I guess there’s a first for everything. These threads pop up constantly and I always jump in to ask people claiming they find the blocky beige of late 90s OSS more aesthetically pleasing to explain how it is they believe this to be true. There are lots of complaints about modern OSs one can make but none of the major three are anything close to ugly…

> when just using these OSs was unintuitive to anyone but a tech enthusiast That's very far from my experience. I know a fair amount of people who had no trouble going from DOS -> win 3.1 -> 95, 98, XP, but starting from Vista using their computer became much harder and much more external assistance started to be required. I know no one who is learning how to use computers as easily with, say, Win 10 or the latest Ma…

I’m not sure how old you are, so I’m inferring, but isn’t the reason because most peoples computers are phones or tablets so what you’re calling them being computer illiterate is really them just being desktop os illiterate?

Also 15 years ago (that’s 2004) the UIs weren’t that different and were no longer the beige UIs of the 90s we’re discussing here. As for using super early windows being easier than modern day I disagree if they were only doing the exact same things I don’t see how it’s harder today. The thing is people use their PCs for a ton more stuff today than they did during say windows 3.1

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

#164

Post by nebula8804 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:23 AM UTC

waynecochran wrote: post #85

nebula8804 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Been working on Cocoa app all week... still using Objective-C too ...

Oh ok thats good. The OP gave me the opposite impression. Other than the boutique software companies that specialize in a few Mac apps, I don't see as much Cocoa anymore and thats a shame.

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

#165

Post by frereubu » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:24 AM UTC

micheljansen wrote: post #156

Surprisingly I found myself not preferring the OS 9 versions nearly as much as I thought. I have always thought of the OS 9 UI and the late '90s to early 2000s as representing the peak of OS UI design before everything went skeuomorphic, but a lot of the general aesthetic of that time just doesn't seem to have aged that well. I still miss the crisp lines and clear affordances of actual buttons and other elements of t…

"I still miss the crisp lines and clear affordances of actual buttons and other elements of that time..."

If you go into System Preferences > Accessibility > Display and turn "Increase contrast" on, it adds clear lines around almost everything, which is the closest I've found to that. I tried it for a while, but I found it too harsh in the end. It would be nice to have a setting which was inbetween the two extremes.

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

#166

Post by grishka » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:31 AM UTC

frereubu wrote: post #165

micheljansen wrote: post #156

Surprisingly I found myself not preferring the OS 9 versions nearly as much as I thought. I have always thought of the OS 9 UI and the late '90s to early 2000s as representing the peak of OS UI design before everything went skeuomorphic, but a lot of the general aesthetic of that time just doesn't seem to have aged that well. I still miss the crisp lines and clear affordances of actual buttons and other elements of t…

"I still miss the crisp lines and clear affordances of actual buttons and other elements of that time..." If you go into System Preferences > Accessibility > Display and turn "Increase contrast" on, it adds clear lines around almost everything, which is the closest I've found to that. I tried it for a while, but I found it too harsh in the end. It would be nice to have a setting which was inbetween the two extremes.

There's a setting to "show shapes of toolbar buttons" or whatever it's called in English. It adds 1px faint grey lines around them. I turned it on the day I got my M1 mac. Doesn't help with the fact that the icons on these buttons are drawn as if there's no pixel grid and so are a blurry mess, but better than nothing still.

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

#167

Post by jeroenhd » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:38 AM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #150

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #116

Mac OS UI is a great example for why one shouldn't "improve" software just for the sake for changing something. UI design peaked at Windows XP style. the design portraied here falls for my opinion in that category. As a user of xfce (on Linux Mint) which is basically Windows XP with different icons I am super happy. Apple actually came up with only a single valuable UI element and that is the three finger swipe to sw…

I have never seen anyone argue Mac OS was anything but beautiful but I guess there’s a first for everything. These threads pop up constantly and I always jump in to ask people claiming they find the blocky beige of late 90s OSS more aesthetically pleasing to explain how it is they believe this to be true. There are lots of complaints about modern OSs one can make but none of the major three are anything close to ugly…

> I have never seen anyone argue Mac OS was anything but beautiful but I guess there’s a first for everything.

Well, allow me to be number two, then. In my opinion, macOS is bland, unclear and the general UX is peculiar to say the least. I dislike the concept and the design of the system bar at the top and the blur effect they add to some UI elements (which Microsoft copied for their latest Metro design language) just looks excessive to me. The iPhone-i-fied controls that have been added to macOS are a step back, in my opinion, because now there's a giant system status popup that looks like you're supposed to touch it but Apple doesn't want to introduce touch screens to macOS.

The thing the macOS-ecosystem does well is integration, which is arguably much more important than just design. I rarely use any tool on Windows that follows Microsoft's guidelines, whatever those are this month, but on macOS the UI designers seem to be focused on integrating well with the looks of rest of the system. This has the unfortunate side effect of putting some of developers using the macOS design language on other platforms as well, fragmenting the system even further, but for macOS users this is a great benefit. Even an awfully ugly system (like the BeOS look which some people love, but also the Gnome 2 "3D" look) is still much more usable than most "modern" designs because you know what to expect from applications running on that system.

You can disagree with me, and that's alright. Any design is liked and disliked by different people. I personally enjoy the simplicity and elegance in designs like the SerenityOS UI, but I can definitely see why others hate it.

But, if you truly have never met heard anyone say that they didn't like macOS' design, then you're part of some very different social circles than I am.

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

#168

Post by grishka » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:39 AM UTC

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #116

Mac OS UI is a great example for why one shouldn't "improve" software just for the sake for changing something. UI design peaked at Windows XP style. the design portraied here falls for my opinion in that category. As a user of xfce (on Linux Mint) which is basically Windows XP with different icons I am super happy. Apple actually came up with only a single valuable UI element and that is the three finger swipe to sw…

I am a Mac user for 10 years and just can't fathom using anything else at this point so I might as well be called a "Mac fanboy". Yet, Monterey's (12.0) UI is a clear regression in comparison to Mojave (10.14). The utter lack of attention to the pixel grid, the unnecessary horizontal paddings where horizontal space is valuable like sidebars, these top bars that are way too huge and combine the title bar with the toolbar so neither fits comfortably, too much spacing between menu bar icons, the "control center" that's clearly made for touchscreens despite macOS devices having none, and this list goes on and on. This redesign was clearly done by someone who 1) prioritizes looks over function and 2) wants change for its own sake.

edit: you know you're making terribly misguided UI decisions when people build software to revert them: https://github.com/MacEnhance/MEMiniMe

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

#169

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:41 AM UTC

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #116

Mac OS UI is a great example for why one shouldn't "improve" software just for the sake for changing something. UI design peaked at Windows XP style. the design portraied here falls for my opinion in that category. As a user of xfce (on Linux Mint) which is basically Windows XP with different icons I am super happy. Apple actually came up with only a single valuable UI element and that is the three finger swipe to sw…

[deleted]

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

#170

Post by sneak » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 10:43 AM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #161

waspight wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Electron is quite amazing. It does not deserve this bad reputation that it for some reason has on HN.

Electron is amazing for developers; less so for the end users. You get faster iteration and more features at the cost of humongous system resource usage. Running several Electron applications, each with their own slightly-outdated Chrome engine, is terrible for battery life and available system resources, but you do get fully-featured applications in no time. If your users run 32GiB of RAM and at least 8 cores, then…

It can also download and execute arbitrary javascript from the web, outside of a normal browser sandbox, effectively turning every app into a potential vector for system takeover, because it is RCE by design.