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Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

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Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#51

Post by im3w1l »

flohofwoe wrote: post #44
Ayesh wrote: post #6

XP was the peak of desktop customizations. There were "theme packs", one of the most popular being a Vista Theme Pack. The teen in me, with a Nokia 6600 besides the computer, was in awe when a single installation of Vista Theme Pack and rebooting a couple times meant that everything on my 40GB HDD Pentium computer was changed from the login screen to icons, wallpaper, fonts, shell, file copy boxes, disk space meter,…

I'd argue that Linux desktop was always the peak of customization via themes, and today remains the last platform to even allow such customization. Most Linux desktop themes don't look all that great (simply because of the '90% of everything is crap' rule), but there are a few really great ones that are aesthetically much more pleasing than both Win10 and macOS (of course this is very personal and subjective, which m…

Windows can still be customized a lot.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#52

Post by marbletiles »

unnouinceput wrote: post #46

Quote: "Microsoft was developing Windows XP during an era when there was fierce competition with Apple over desktop operating systems" I'm sorry, what? Talk about joke of the week. Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share. Not even today when it's at the highest peak ever, and in 2001 they were more like 1%. Sorry to burst your bubble Tom Warren, you do realize US is like 35 people out of 800. As…

Think of it as "rivalry", perhaps. Think of a mass-market car company that outsells a luxury brands 5x or 10x but whose designers still swipe ideas from them.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#53

Post by dr_hooo »

raverbashing wrote: post #45
solarkraft wrote: post #33

Mac OS wasn't this ugly. Seriously: You can't just incorporate some design element and go "see, it looks like X". It won't. What most people making software seem to miss is that software look & feel isn't the design of widgets, but also click behavior, layouts, click paths, description texts, animations, delay after a click ... /tangentially related rant

Correct. This memo also applies to some Linux interfaces (usually one that begins with G and ends with ome)

I strongly disagree with your example: Gnome has one of the nicest and consistent designs besides MacOS

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#54

Post by chrisseaton »

unnouinceput wrote: post #46

Quote: "Microsoft was developing Windows XP during an era when there was fierce competition with Apple over desktop operating systems" I'm sorry, what? Talk about joke of the week. Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share. Not even today when it's at the highest peak ever, and in 2001 they were more like 1%. Sorry to burst your bubble Tom Warren, you do realize US is like 35 people out of 800. As…

> Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share.

Right but you can differentiate markets.

Apple may be 10% worldwide, including Asian markets like India.

But what is the market for affluent and influential tech workers in the West? Probably like 95% MacBook Pro.

Which market do you think they care more about?

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#55

Post by unnouinceput »

marbletiles wrote: post #52
unnouinceput wrote: post #46

Quote: "Microsoft was developing Windows XP during an era when there was fierce competition with Apple over desktop operating systems" I'm sorry, what? Talk about joke of the week. Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share. Not even today when it's at the highest peak ever, and in 2001 they were more like 1%. Sorry to burst your bubble Tom Warren, you do realize US is like 35 people out of 800. As…

Think of it as "rivalry", perhaps. Think of a mass-market car company that outsells a luxury brands 5x or 10x but whose designers still swipe ideas from them.

Rivalry? In 2001? When only 2 years earlier Billy boy had to buy Apple's shares to keep them afloat? I know Billy boy did that to get off the hook with US govt., not like he was any saint - but from that to "rivalry" is a tall order.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#56

Post by amalcon »

chrisseaton wrote: post #54
unnouinceput wrote: post #46

Quote: "Microsoft was developing Windows XP during an era when there was fierce competition with Apple over desktop operating systems" I'm sorry, what? Talk about joke of the week. Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share. Not even today when it's at the highest peak ever, and in 2001 they were more like 1%. Sorry to burst your bubble Tom Warren, you do realize US is like 35 people out of 800. As…

> Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share. Right but you can differentiate markets. Apple may be 10% worldwide, including Asian markets like India. But what is the market for affluent and influential tech workers in the West? Probably like 95% MacBook Pro. Which market do you think they care more about?

> But what is the market for affluent and influential tech workers in the West? Probably like 95% MacBook Pro.

Not in the late 1990s, when Windows XP was being developed.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#57

Post by wruza »

MereInterest wrote: post #14
101008 wrote: post #3

Windows XP original theme was the best. Not at a nostalgic level only (which of course affects me and my memory), but I felt it was so easy to use and so easy to find everything. Today, Windows 10 control panel is a mess.

> Today, Windows 10 control panel is a mess. Oh gosh, yes. It gets a little bit better if you organize it alphabetically, but then it is alphabetical left to right, top to bottom. It's as if somebody intentionally designed it to be as difficult to scan through as possible.

Upvoted this, because I always found rtl-then-down ordering confusing af. On top of that, every generation of windows renamed items, like "Software ...", "Programs ...", "Add/remove programs ...", etc.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#58

Post by wodenokoto »

Arainach wrote: post #9
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #4

It would be have been great if the different OS's had similar surface look & feel, to facilitate people being able to use both. I fear intellectual property concerns at the time may have discouraged MS from making this public.

Being close but not identical causes confusion and frustration. A radically different UI sets expectations that things don't work the same. A skin can't change the fact that Mac is document-centric and Windows is program-centric. It's similar to Linux window managers - things that try to copy Windows exactly inevitably cause frustration when certain behaviors (hovering over taskbar icons, dragging to edges) or keyboa…

> A skin can't change the fact that Mac is document-centric and Windows is program-centric.

I would have said that windows is window centric and macOS is application-centric.

On windows you alt-tab between windows and on MacOS you alt-tab between applications and alt-~ between windows inside the currently selected application.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#59

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #54
unnouinceput wrote: post #46

Quote: "Microsoft was developing Windows XP during an era when there was fierce competition with Apple over desktop operating systems" I'm sorry, what? Talk about joke of the week. Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share. Not even today when it's at the highest peak ever, and in 2001 they were more like 1%. Sorry to burst your bubble Tom Warren, you do realize US is like 35 people out of 800. As…

> Apple never had desktop world bigger than 10% as market share. Right but you can differentiate markets. Apple may be 10% worldwide, including Asian markets like India. But what is the market for affluent and influential tech workers in the West? Probably like 95% MacBook Pro. Which market do you think they care more about?

>But what is the market for affluent and influential tech workers in the West? Probably like 95% MacBook Pro.

I'm also dev in the West and no, it's not even close to being 95% MacBook Pro. Maybe in The Bay Area it's 95% but where I live(Europe) It's mostly Windows 10 + WSL or Ubuntu.

And I wouldn't call tech workers here as influential, not at all. Again, Maybe in the Bay Area they are but here nobody cares about what your job is or what expensive laptop you have.

Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac

#60

Post by cpach »

solarkraft wrote: post #34
slipheen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the extent to which people altered things, such as https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiteStep

Speaking off shell replacements: Are there any worthwhile ones today? I know Cairo, but it's "meh". The windows default shell is just buggy and glitchy as hell (even though I generally mostly like it - a version with fewer glitches would be enough for me, really).

AFAIK: No. These days the default Windows WM seem to dominate. I don’t know of any viable alternatives to it.
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