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Mac OS 9

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Re: Mac OS 9

#131

Post by iforgotpassword »

potatolicious wrote: post #50
dzikimarian wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript/Electron - single code base for multiple desktop platforms.

+1. I can't speak to Windows but I suspect it's similar: if you're running a well-implemented native app (ex. Pixelmator) the responsiveness is entirely there and in fact significantly better than it was in the 90s. Even fairly graphically heavy apps have no issues resizing and otherwise being real-time interactive. I would hazard that the vast majority of "jank" you see in desktop apps today is due to cross-platform…

I recently used a legacy win32 app at work, on a windows 10 laptop. It looked old, even though the buttons etc got styled the win10 way. Since the app had some issues, I wanted to rule out a compatibility problem with modern Windows, and ran the app in a windows XP VM on the same laptop. Unfortunately the same issues arose, but I was really surprised by how snappy the app felt. Everything was just immediate, sub-windows popped up instantly. Sure, the machine was an order of magnitude faster than the typical XP machine back in the day, so it's not an apples to apples comparison, but still it was one of these revelations that we just seem to be taking one step forwards and at least one step back every time we improve something.

Re: Mac OS 9

#132

Post by yamtaddle »

sharikous wrote: post #128
yamtaddle wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you see, they've traded end-user performance for productivity. This is why it only takes a team five times as large to deliver the same functionality as a comparable program from the 1990s, and that team can make a buggier initial release in merely twice the time.

There might be something in what you are saying but it's not really like that. The current macOS is humungous, kernel aside. There is a variety of systems running under the hood (Spotlight, fsevents, Apple Events, duet, launchd, MIGs, XPCs, caches, endless network services, launch services, anti-malware background programs, AppleID agents, diagnostics, cloud/AppleID integration, auditing, RAM compression, energy mana…

One might expect all those extra services and capabilities would make application development faster, though. Less for application developers to worry about, since the OS and built-in services do way more than a typical 1990s OS—and any that aren't helpful, ought at least not be getting in the way. So, sure, the situation for our industry's even more embarrassing than my original post implied.

Re: Mac OS 9

#133

Post by throwaheyy »

cogman10 wrote: post #32
sph wrote: post #23

Look at that subtle off-grey colouring, the tasteful thickness of it... What the hell happened to modern GUIs, man. We peaked in the 1990s.

And why is everything just so slow! That's what always annoys me. I have a computer that's easily 100x or 1000x more powerful than my 1995 desktop yet so many actions have noticeable lag. Like, try it, resize outlook right now (just stretch the side left and right). You'll see so much jank and jitter. How is something like that not instantaneous?

It's not slow. It's just that modern OS's redraw at every intermediate size between the initial size and the final size. The name of the setting in Windows is "Show window content while dragging", you can disable it and all your windows will be 100x snappier than Mac OS 9.

Re: Mac OS 9

#134

Post by sho_hn »

retrac wrote: post #99
toasteros wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any decent implementations of this UI for Linux?

You could theme some window manager, but it's not the same. It'd be a tough project! The Mac UI was holistic. Early on, it didn't even make much of a distinction between application and operating system. Just getting the menu bar right (shared between OS and application) when every program has its own idea on how to present a menu would be a major challenge. Applications really do need to be designed for the classic…

Linux has a standard protocol (dbusmenu) for exporting menu structures supported by most common app UI libraries, and environments like KDE's Plasma use this to offer a global menu bar option, too.

Re: Mac OS 9

#135

Post by grishka »

tambourine_man wrote: post #14

I managed to get over most of the nostalgia in my life. After a certain age, I feel it’s a bit counterproductive and not a net positive. But old Macs hit me hard and it’s something I can’t seem to build an immunity to. The aesthetics, the simplicity, the cohesion of the metaphors… so good.

I don't share any of the nostalgia about old Macs most of HN seems to have. They weren't around me in my childhood, and even trying to get anything meaningful done on classic MacOS in the modern times on an emulator is an exercise in frustration because of how poor the support for Cyrillic characters is.

But! I do have a similar feeling about old Windows versions. The UIs of both the system and the applications were denser (not yet ruined by the existence of touchscreens) and much more thought out. They actually felt like extensions of your mind, not something you have to fight all the damn time.

Two things frustrate me immensely about modern computers: the dumbing down of everything, and the insistence on using touchscreen-inspired UI controls and patterns where they don't belong. The third thing, that kinda encompasses the second one, is the erosion of affordances. Is it a label? Is it a button? Is it a text input? You never know!

Re: Mac OS 9

#136

Post by genewitch »

philistine wrote: post #113
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the lack of a proper fullscreen function...

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.

i see to recall america online was fullscreen on macOS 8 and 9.

Re: Mac OS 9

#137

Post by cogman10 »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #131
potatolicious wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. I can't speak to Windows but I suspect it's similar: if you're running a well-implemented native app (ex. Pixelmator) the responsiveness is entirely there and in fact significantly better than it was in the 90s. Even fairly graphically heavy apps have no issues resizing and otherwise being real-time interactive. I would hazard that the vast majority of "jank" you see in desktop apps today is due to cross-platform…

I recently used a legacy win32 app at work, on a windows 10 laptop. It looked old, even though the buttons etc got styled the win10 way. Since the app had some issues, I wanted to rule out a compatibility problem with modern Windows, and ran the app in a windows XP VM on the same laptop. Unfortunately the same issues arose, but I was really surprised by how snappy the app felt. Everything was just immediate, sub-wind…

Even if you take a step above win32 and use a framework like GTK or QT, you'll find that sort of responsiveness.

Re: Mac OS 9

#139

Post by retrac »

philistine wrote: post #113
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for the lack of a proper fullscreen function...

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.

Re: Mac OS 9

#140

Post by dieulot »

ezfe wrote: post #126
dieulot wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern macOS is a significant counterexample to that claim. Most of it is janky. Zooming and dezooming the Finder is not something a 2.5 years old MacBook Air (€1200) can keep up with smoothly, for instance. Opening a Save dialog takes over 3 seconds, and expanding/collapsing the file explorer in it is comically janky.

That's simply not true. A 2019 MacBook Air has no trouble with any of these things. If you're having trouble with these, something is seriously wrong with your computer.

Proof: https://dieulot.fr/~temp/Screen%20Recording%202022-12-05%20a...

It’s more pronounced while recording but that’s the idea.

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