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Mac OS 9

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Re: Mac OS 9

#171

Post by reaperducer »

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.

Apple has added full screen app support only recently

I read somewhere that the reason Apple finally added full-screen support to macOS (back then OS X), wasn't because of the Windows switchers. It was to get a bit more real estate out of the MacBook Air's small screen size.

Re: Mac OS 9

#172

Post by PeterCorless »

OMG. Original Warcraft was so terrible. But at the time, we thought it was SO COOL. Very simple "guns or butter" simulator. [Also runs slow like molasses in the emulator.]

Re: Mac OS 9

#174

Post by gnicholas »

A tiny nit — this refers to showing the experience of using a Mac in the mid-90s, but the screen looks like it's the 15" display that Apple released in 2000. Or perhaps I'm wrong, and they had something like this in the 90s?

Re: Mac OS 9

#175

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

gnicholas wrote: post #174

A tiny nit — this refers to showing the experience of using a Mac in the mid-90s, but the screen looks like it's the 15" display that Apple released in 2000. Or perhaps I'm wrong, and they had something like this in the 90s?

Mac OS X came out in 2001, so even though Mac OS 9 was mostly a 1990's experience, it did survive into the 2000s.

Re: Mac OS 9

#176

Post by sitzkrieg »

outworlder wrote: post #162
klodolph wrote: post #44

Earlier 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…

Yes, but also keep in mind that the pointing devices in use were very primitive compared to what we have today and that many users were not as proficient. All contemporary operating systems had thick borders and some had very prominent resizing handles.

sure but this trend of tiny/hidden until you magically know to mouse over a 10px wide area on the right to reveal the scrollbar is simply user hostile

Re: Mac OS 9

#177

Post by klodolph »

outworlder wrote: post #162
klodolph wrote: post #44

Earlier 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…

Yes, but also keep in mind that the pointing devices in use were very primitive compared to what we have today and that many users were not as proficient. All contemporary operating systems had thick borders and some had very prominent resizing handles.

The thick borders took up valuable screen space and weren’t necessary. They weren’t present prior to Mac OS 8, and they weren’t present after Mac OS 9. You might consider the era of thick borders as a 5-year blip on the timeline from 1997 to 2002.

If anything, modern pointing devices are often less precise. We now commonly use trackpads, touch, and pens. In the 1990s, it was usually the mouse, so you find a lot of 1990s UI elements that are very small. The only reason our modern scrollbars on macOS are so small is because it’s assumed that you can scroll without them, either with a scroll wheel or with a touch gesture.

I’m not sure if the list of contemporary operating systems is particularly illuminative. You might look at Windows ’95, CDE (Solaris), or BeOS and find chunky borders. Or you might look at TWM or Window Maker (OpenStep) and see thin borders. The only conclusion I draw is that everyone agreed that you should have borders.

Re: Mac OS 9

#178

Post by deergomoo »

reaperducer wrote: post #171
philistine wrote: post #113

Earlier 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.

Apple has added full screen app support only recently I read somewhere that the reason Apple finally added full-screen support to macOS (back then OS X), wasn't because of the Windows switchers. It was to get a bit more real estate out of the MacBook Air's small screen size.

I think it was also to try to get some i(Pad)OS users back to the Mac—one of the major advertised things about OS X Lion (which introduced full screen) was all the iOS stuff they were bringing "back to the Mac".

Re: Mac OS 9

#179

Post by deergomoo »

truetraveller wrote: post #155
slowmotarget wrote: post #10

It'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?

Why would I want a webpage which stops showing additional content after ~1200 pixels wide to take up the entire of my 2560px wide monitor?

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