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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

#181

Post by KptMarchewa »

userbinator wrote: post #69
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.

Native Windows - Win32 - still exists, but all the trendy "modern" stuff seems to be avoiding it, probably because the web stuff is easier to find developers for.

Or, because it's nearly unusable due to 30 years of supporting legacy?

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

#182

Post by KptMarchewa »

vbezhenar wrote: post #103
userbinator wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native Windows - Win32 - still exists, but all the trendy "modern" stuff seems to be avoiding it, probably because the web stuff is easier to find developers for.

It's not only about web stuff. Microsoft themselves iterated on their standard UI: WPF, then WinRT which is different from win32 UI. It's a mess. Though it's a mess in Linux as well: Gtk, Qt and some lesser known frameworks. Not sure about macOS.

Mac just ruthlessly breaks compatibility. Sometimes, that's a good thing.

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

#183

Post by KptMarchewa »

grishka wrote: post #173
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…

Two things. - The UIs of the 90s were made with mice and keyboards in mind. The designers' minds weren't yet compromised by the existence of touchscreens, both on phones and Windows laptops. - IT companies were building tools to empower users and actually competed with each other fiercely. It was important to make sure your UI doesn't suck, because otherwise someone else will. This competition required the companies…

How is mac UI "compromised by the existence of touchscreens", when there's not a single MacOS device with a touchscreen?

>IT companies were building tools to empower users and actually competed with each other fiercely.

Glorifying 90s feature factories? That's a new one.

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

#184

Post by KptMarchewa »

linguae wrote: post #158
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…

The problem with modern UI design isn't necessarily about new designs being uglier than old designs. Windows 11, macOS Monterey, GNOME 3, and KDE 5 all look nice in my opinion, and I cringe when I see old screenshots of Motif and CDE. The problems I have with modern UI/UX design are as follows: 1. It is often tailored to the needs of mobile interfaces instead of the needs of desktop computing environments, often resu…

> Another example is a trend in newer versions of GNOME and macOS where the title bar is fused with the toolbar.

It's not a new mac feature. It's an original mac feature: https://i1.wp.com/lowendmac.com/wp-content/uploads/about.png

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

#185

Post by grishka »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #183
grishka wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things. - The UIs of the 90s were made with mice and keyboards in mind. The designers' minds weren't yet compromised by the existence of touchscreens, both on phones and Windows laptops. - IT companies were building tools to empower users and actually competed with each other fiercely. It was important to make sure your UI doesn't suck, because otherwise someone else will. This competition required the companies…

How is mac UI "compromised by the existence of touchscreens", when there's not a single MacOS device with a touchscreen? >IT companies were building tools to empower users and actually competed with each other fiercely. Glorifying 90s feature factories? That's a new one.

Have you seen how unnecessarily huge some controls are in the latest macOS redesign?

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

#186

Post by KptMarchewa »

grishka wrote: post #185
KptMarchewa wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is mac UI "compromised by the existence of touchscreens", when there's not a single MacOS device with a touchscreen? >IT companies were building tools to empower users and actually competed with each other fiercely. Glorifying 90s feature factories? That's a new one.

Have you seen how unnecessarily huge some controls are in the latest macOS redesign?

I'm using Monterey daily, so which ones? The top bar/toolbar is smaller than any windows bar, dock size is fully customizable, menus are normal size I'd say.

Rest of space is used by applications, not wasted by system. Coincindetally, none of them are really native. Firefox, jetbrains IDEs, Iterm (well, this one is, but might as well not be since it's just a terminal), Spotify, Slack.

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

#187

Post by thiht »

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…

> less so for the end users

Speak for yourself. As a user I love Electron apps for all the features they bring out of the box to developers. The alternative to a full featured Electron app is not a full featured native app, it’s no heavy client at all, because almost all the native frameworks suck in more ways than Electron does.

Also I don’t give a crap that my applications all look the same as long as they make sense. And most of the criticism of « buttons that don’t look like buttons » seem just like hidden nostalgia to me, I’ve never seen a button and wondered if it was a button. There are tons of discoverability issues in modern design, but the look of buttons is just not a problem.

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

#188

Post by movedx »

thiht wrote: post #187
jeroenhd wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> less so for the end users Speak for yourself. As a user I love Electron apps for all the features they bring out of the box to developers. The alternative to a full featured Electron app is not a full featured native app, it’s no heavy client at all, because almost all the native frameworks suck in more ways than Electron does. Also I don’t give a crap that my applications all look the same as long as they make sen…

You've just described your self as a developer, not an end user. End users are Sharon in HR or Bob in the warehouse.

The comment you replied to is referring to end users who are generally not-technical people and just want to get work done.

Your comment, instead, talks about the developer friendly features of Electron.

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

#190

Post by KptMarchewa »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #133
Duckton wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples on why you think Windows XP is better than macOS and also how macOS is crap?

- Finder - Applications not actually being terminated when clicking on the close icon - lagging / unreliable context menu opening with middle-index-finger on apps in dock bar - the concept of installing something by moving it from an icon on the left to an icon on the right - or when you can't start apps due to connectivity issues - app removal is totally opaque and sometimes requires to download a custom uninstallat…

>app removal is totally opaque and sometimes requires to download a custom uninstallation tool (adobe creative cloud f.x.)

I mean, maybe, but you're comparing it with Windows that never had anything other than custom uninstallers that leave garbage all over your file system. Windows is 10x worse here.

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