Man, I miss all those Ambrosia Software games (Apieron, Barrack, Escape Velocity, etc). I love how many are pre-loaded there, but the few I tested all seem broken. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosia_Software
Escape velocity works here!
Mac OS 9
151–160 of 356 posts
Re: Mac OS 9
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but— The fat borders for the windows and the control strip at the bottom left of the screen took up a lot of space on real monitors of the era. Try running at a more modest 800x600 or 640x480 and it will seem less efficient. Modern Mac OS X is actually quite efficient, with zero-pixel window borders on three sides, and narrower scroll bars. Worse, a bunch of applications had code that would set up window locati…
Not a fan of the new trend of zero window borders. I wish there was at least a way to make them customizable.
You can turn on Increase Contrast from the OSX System Preferences Accessibility section. I do that for this exact reason.
Re: Mac OS 9
#153It's a great reminder of how well MacOS 9 UI and UX were designed, and how space efficient the whole OS was on screen. Even the window handle bars were subtly shadowed, the window shadows evolved when they were collapsed. Like Windows 95 at the time, Mac OS 9 was a beautiful work of interaction design.
Are there any decent implementations of this UI for Linux?
Here you go: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/04/12/2330
You can theme XFCE to look really, really close. Won't behave identically, of course.
Re: Mac OS 9
#154how do I use this to play Dark Castle and Crystal Quest?
Re: Mac OS 9
#155It's a great reminder of how well MacOS 9 UI and UX were designed, and how space efficient the whole OS was on screen. Even the window handle bars were subtly shadowed, the window shadows evolved when they were collapsed. Like Windows 95 at the time, Mac OS 9 was a beautiful work of interaction design.
Mac UX is far worse compared to Windows, in my opinion. I feel very claustrophobic using it. How do you live without a simple maximize button? "Maximimze to contents" is ambiguous, and in practice, does not work at all for most apps. I find myself having to "manually" maximize windows. And now, I don't want a third party app.
To add to this, even after I "maximimze" windows, I have an ugly menu bar at the top, in addition to the windows own titlebar. Allow apps to have a menu in their own window, but don't force an ugly global menu. For the clock/systray, integrate it like windows in the bottom app bar.
I could keep listing frustrations. Many of these are objective.
Note: I'm not talking about app installation, or malware, or "polish". Mac is superior, will agree.
Re: Mac OS 9
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh, TIL. I had always thought it was always just up-res'ing variations on Chicago, up thru and including the first iPod. They look pretty similar but now that I look it them side by side I see it a bit. As much as it is the style, it's also that kinda.. not-True-type still-a-bit-pixelated edges look that is the nostalgia factor, I guess.
Original iPod did use Chicago though! Then when they got color screens they switched to Lucida Grande.
iPod used Chicago for the same reason Chicago was used on the original Mac—it was designed to make UI elements clearly readable on low resolution monochrome screens.
Re: Mac OS 9
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because it's never just nostalgia. Sometimes things were better in the past. Take Google search for example. Everyone on HN knows it used to be better and that it's been getting worse every year. Of course, a lot of that was not (originally) Google's fault because spammers get more sophisticated every year, but I think Google deserves a share of the blame because they have a conflict of interest by running the…
Can’t grandma still use the old computer while we all use our new computers with new software that’s enriching our lives? I have countless instruments at my disposal in VST form, 3D software like blender, DAW to write music in, stable diffusion to help with the creative process.
Sure, grandma can still use the old computer. That's not the point. I see people constantly make this conflation here on HN. It's the idea that you can't have new technology while keeping the benefits of old. It's rubbish! What made the Classic MacOS great and easy to use were its solid, fundamental principles. We have abandoned those principles for convenience's sake.
Re: Mac OS 9
#158It's a great reminder of how well MacOS 9 UI and UX were designed, and how space efficient the whole OS was on screen. Even the window handle bars were subtly shadowed, the window shadows evolved when they were collapsed. Like Windows 95 at the time, Mac OS 9 was a beautiful work of interaction design.
Mac UX is far worse compared to Windows, in my opinion. I feel very claustrophobic using it. How do you live without a simple maximize button? "Maximimze to contents" is ambiguous, and in practice, does not work at all for most apps. I find myself having to "manually" maximize windows. And now, I don't want a third party app. To add to this, even after I "maximimze" windows, I have an ugly menu bar at the top, in add…
> How do you live without a simple maximize button?
Classic Mac OS apps did not put the entire application UI in a single full screen window. Instead, it was typical for an application to contain multiple windows that could all be visible at once.
> To add to this, the "top" menu bar is lame.
This is related. In Windows, the entire UI of the app is contained in a single window, which you would typically maximize to fill the screen. In classic Mac OS, apps have multiple windows open at the same time, but the menu bar pertains to the application and not to the window.
Re: Mac OS 9
#159Look at that subtle off-grey colouring, the tasteful thickness of it... What the hell happened to modern GUIs, man. We peaked in the 1990s.
I lived through these times, and I thought OS X was a huge improvement over MacOS, I'd never want to go back! Software in general has gotten more bloated and slow since the '90s, but I don't blame it on the OS.
I didn't have too many major complaints about working on MacOS, but I've always preferred windows. I used Windows 3.1 before MacOS. It's probably since I used Windows first, but I've always preferred the Windows approach of window management. Whenever using a Mac, I would always end up with a jumble of windows and I'd frequently click the wrong one when and it would pop to the front and hide what I was looking for. Then the wrong application's tab strip would be visible. Arrrgggh! It was a common point of frustration for me when using Photoshop and Illustrator since there are a number of similar Windows.
In Windows 11, I like that there is reasonable support for dark UI and multiple desktops. I haven't used OS X that much in the past 10 years, so I can't comment on the improvements that have been made since then.
Re: Mac OS 9
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Believe it or not, full screen apps are a Windows thing. Apple has added full screen app support only recently, and any Windows convert who has switched to macOS and has problems adapting to its UI has one thing in common: they haven’t let go of the idea that all apps need to use the whole screen at all times.
Classic Mac OS supported full screen applications since the beginning. I'm not sure if Apple allowed it or whatever in their very strict interface guidelines, but from a programming perspective you just have to turn off the menu bar and take the entire screen as the GrafPort.
HyperCard was a fullscreen app. A stack could hide the menu by just… saying ‘hide menuBar’ in its background script.