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
#2this is likely some Microsoft's employee's uncredited work, like most windows components
Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac
#3Windows 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.
Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac
#4It 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.
Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac
#5Windows Codename Whistler (beta codename for XP) actually contained a Watercolor theme that looked like a modernized version of the classic theme[0] that this seems to be based off of. That theme actually looked quite nice.
[0]: https://www.deviantart.com/rainingskies/art/Windows-Whistler...
Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac
#6XP 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, desktop CPU-o-meter dials to a whole modern look.
Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac
#7XP 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,…
Most Linux desktop environments disagree. :)
Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac
#8XP 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,…
Are you aware of the very large number of desktop environments and window managers available on *nix systems?
“Skins” were popular in the windows ecosystem around XP, but it was far from the peak of customization.
Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac
#9It 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 keyboard shortcuts don't work like how you expect, while something significantly different like Gnome or i3 makes it obvious that you have to learn something differnet.
Re: Microsoft had a secret Windows XP theme that made it look like a Mac
#10XP 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,…
Are you aware of the very large number of desktop environments and window managers available on *nix systems? “Skins” were popular in the windows ecosystem around XP, but it was far from the peak of customization.
Enlightenment got me into linux, and when I discovered you couldn't run it on Windows, I discovered Litestep. And then spent so, so many hours of my life tweaking themes. Ahh, memories.