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Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

I still think the early Mac versions were some of the prettiest, friendliest UIs I've ever used. Sadly, there's nothing today with that combination of simplicity, elegance and friendliness.

I think the downfall started with the Macintosh II and colour …

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I find the old icons were easier to distinguish between each other than today's saturated and color-filled icons. Of course today we have way more icons / apps than there was on the old mac, but today's icons all have very similar shapes. Switch your screen to grayscale (in Accessibility settings) and many of the modern app icons in the Dock all look very similar.

I'm of the opinion that there was a time, very early and ever-so-briefly, when icons were useful in distinguishing on thing from another. But now we have so many of them, all demanding our attention, and looking quite similar to one another. App icons on macOS maybe not so much, but for sure toolbar icons. IIRC, there are even usability studies out there that back me up on this, though I'm too lazy and apathetic on the topic to go look them up.

Point being, useless as icons might be these days, "we've always done it this way" and either no one dare go against the grain or no one has a better idea.

I use fewer applications than I used a few years ago (a lot of them got "eaten" by the web browser or by emacs), and still have difficulties telling them apart with "modern" icon themes. This isn't because there are so many applications (they're fewer!) but because the icons are all flat, non-descript and brightly-colored. Virtually all of them consist of a single geometrical shape or a capital letter on a contrasting-color background.

I know this is supposed to be "honest" and "clean" and to present "the essence" of that application. It sounds great on paper or in a book on design, but it's absolutely terrible on a computer screen.

You're probably correct, though subjectively I didn't start feeling like something was amiss until Mac OS 9, perhaps as early as 8.5.

I think OS X, as the child of NeXTSTEP and Mac OS, ended up somehow less than the sum of its parts.

As an Amiga guy I hated the Mac GUI. I was always hunting fro something in the menu and couldn't find till my Mac friend came and helped me. Funny thing is I am still that guy on OS X.

There's a search box in the Help menu that filters/locates menu items.

The problem is Apple uses different words for what I want. I remember when I couldn't find render for exporting a video project. I was then informed that it isn't called render on Apple. I threw something and broke it (I forgot what I broke but it wasn't expensive but I felt like a HUGE jerk)

I don't know. Maybe I just used my Macs differently, but I didn't really notice a lot of changes to the GUI after it went color. It was the same, just in color. What elements are you thinking of that went away or got worse after the Macintosh II?

Well, nothing was particularly bad about the colour Macs; it's just that in retrospect they were the start of the movement to photo-realistic colour, and I miss the old B&W pixelart.

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