I don't know if it's nostalgia but somehow this interface looks more lively and friendly to me than modern MacOS which feels flatter and has less personality (to me personally).
My favorite example are the icons in the iTunes sidebar, which used to be distinctly colored (and therefore quickly and easily distinguishable!) and then became a dull grey. It looks incredibly bland and it's harder to use.
Now it's split into multiple apps with monochromatic sidebars, which is slightly less boring but no more usable.
Buttons had depth and looked like candy…. I really liked them.
Tiger was a big improvement. And, the earlier versions of OS X still look way better than what we have now.
Tiger: Great new UI. Spotlight. Dashboard. Leopard: Quick Look. Time Machine. I hated it from a functional perspective, but wow it looked amazing. Snow Leopard: They just cleaned up everything.
10.6.8 was pretty good, but I've had similar stability on Mountain Lion (10.8) and Mavericks (10.9). I think Snow Leopard has developed a legacy partly because Lion (10.7) was pretty bad, and partly because Snow Leopard was the last release to support Rosetta.
Then again, Yosemite (10.10) was also really bad, and I seem to be the only one who thinks Mavericks was the actual pinnacle. *Shrug*
I have a neice who was born in 96. When she was 10 or so I found out she was listening to both Green Day and Patsy Kline with essentially equal interest.
That's when I got this idea.
She was born entirely after not only the existense of recordings that go back at least a few generations, not only after the existense of the internet, but after the mass adoption of the internet, digital copies of recordings, and countless distribution means, both centralized and peer to peer. The essential nature was not that different from today, the day she was born, let alone 10 years later.
For me, Patsy Kline was only on the oldies station at my grandmas house and the barber shop and which actually called itself the oldies station, and my parents wouldn't be caught dead listening to Green Day.
For my neice they are both just content.
I can go from Yes, to Twenty One Pilots, to Kansas, to TheFatRat, to Johnny Cash, to random youtuber, to Linkin Park, to Guns 'n Roses, to Elvis, and so on.
They're all just there, there's good stuff from every time period - why would you limit yourself?
Oh and don’t forget auto-tune ;) Although there are a few examples of it being used for pitch correction before 2000 (+ that Cher song), it wasn’t until the 2000’s that it got ratcheted up to T-Pain levels.
As if we lived in the Matrix.
As I recall, per the HIG, the official line on brushed metal was that it was for apps that interacted with physical hardware in some direct way: portable music players, synch. managers, optical drives, disks, something. Now if you think that’s vague, you’re not wrong; most apps could at least print something, and it wasn’t applied consistently even within the iLife suite which up until the inclusion of iWeb consisted entirely of apps that were intended to bring the Mac and peripheral devices together (CDs, digital cameras, MP3 Players/iPods, DV cameras, SuperDrives, MIDI). This vagueness and the low popularity of brushed metal Safari in particular was one of the reasons the brushed metal theming was retired after Tiger.
Anyway, I used Firefox and Camino around that time.
The aluminum stuff all came about just immediately prior to (about one or two month’s prior) or after Leopard’s release, but Tiger’s era (and Brushed Metal didn’t start on Tiger) was dominated by plastic input devices.
Tiger was solid - Leopard was where it was at. Snow Leopard may be my favourite, but as I can’t run it on any of my PPC systems I have no excuse to run it anymore.
There were hacks for absolutely everything. Simpler times...
When they moved them into a row and changed the way multi-screen worked it completely lost its usefulness for me. Before that I always used a 3x3 grid. It was one of the many ways macOS evolved against the grain for me.
Other major regressions: LaunchPad (cool for iPad users I guess but completely ridiculous on a 24" screen - Even Microsoft moved back from this). The incessant power saving tricks imposed that are all but impossible to switch off (I use mainly desktops so I care about performance, not battery). Notarisation, every app calling home to Apple every time it's run.. Wtf. Then there was Apple "Server" which became more of a joke with every release (the Leopard version was the last real one).
But really what it told me was that I hate an OS where every year some people sit around a table and decide what I should want changed, and offer no way to choose. In other words: I hate opinionated software.
I recently moved to KDE and wow, it's so amazing to have all the things I missed back. And also a more useful expose-style function again though the relative window sizing is unfortunately something it doesn't do.
64-bit started for me back when the G5 came out, and today that G5 screams, easily feeling as responsive as my girlfriend’s M1 MacBook Air most of the time.
It’s almost unbelievable how the G5 performs like it’s got bloody Sonic the Hedgehog trapped in there on a hamster wheel generator. My Intel machines never came close, and a lot of it seemed to have to do with major bloat as the OS moved along. Probably also bloat in Logic. My G5 can handle the hell of a lot more effects and VSTs with about 50% the impact they have on my Intel machines. It’s surreal.
I also find it absolutely pathetic and astounding that up until this year (16 inch MBP excluded) the maximum RAM a MacBook could have was the equivalent of a computer I got in 2005. 15 years later I still couldn’t get even 32GB RAM in a MacBook. And it was soldered so it couldn’t be upgraded. Shameful.
But yeah these things were beasts. The dual-CPU and then the dual dual-core were seriously impressive. I really wanted one at the time but could not justify it. I finally got one for €100 2 years ago, now it sits next to a G4 Cube. Both are some exceptional pieces of engineering.
Or there was a hack to backport certain things from Snow Leopard onto Leopard PPC...
It is real Snow Leopard with a Snow Leopard kernel, but a lot of components are copied over from Leopard, and there are still a lot of issues. I'm not clear as to whether or not anyone has gotten graphics acceleration working, for example—it certainly doesn't work on most models.
Fun fact: OS X Public Beta had an Easter egg setting that I can’t quite remember, defaults write com.Apple.something or other, that would set all Cocoa apps to a straight-up NeXTSTEP appearance. It completely broke usability, though, as windows would minimize into little squares in the corner of the screen a la NS rather than into the dock.
Wow I've never read about this -- know of any screenshots? Would be really interesting to see what some of the default OS X apps looked with the NeXTSTEP appearance.
https://macosx-dev.omnigroup.narkive.com/WZX5AkMk/extras-rsr...
https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/macosxdp2
I also like to use Jagwire's Extras.rsrc on Tiger to get my sweet sweet pinstripes back: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/jaguar-ui-on-tiger-proj...
Even though we have many gaping holes in the details of the current UI due to the many paradigms (SwiftUI, AppKit, Catalyst), skin-deep macOS is much more agreeable.
Cocoa apps are mostly fine in modern macOS. Their main issues are the lack of contrast*, but things like the dark theme are great. From what I have seen SwiftUI is fine too, although it still has some way to go to catch up with AppKit, and has some rough edges. Catalyst is plain garbage, though.
* a pet peeve: I have to click 3 times when I want to make sure that the shuffle mode is either on or off in Music. Another one: document proxy icons are getting hidden and harder to use, even though they are a fantastic feature of the OS. There's a bunch of others features that are becoming more and more obscure, which is a damn shame.
It's not just apple, its everything in big tech. Venmo just released an update where they moved key workflows around for no reason at all, and now I don't have muscle memory for the app anymore, but I'm sure some project manager justified it with telemetry and got a huge bonus for rolling out an update and showing downloads grew by 1% (which they probably would have anyway).
If you'd let people mix and match elements from different eras of macOS, I'm sure you'd see some patterns regardless of when people got into Macs; similar to how people have lots of abstract opinions about architecture, but somehow the tourist buses always stop at the same cozy-looking old towns. Beauty and usability are not entirely subjective.
But more importantly, they existence of change is inherently important to the large-scale advancement of computing over time. Even if it is the case that a certain UI overhaul of a major operating system harmed productivity, the solution is not “permanently halt all software changes after this specific version that I have learned and enjoy using.” We ought to reject arguments that forced stasis is the solution any time changes introduce risk.
We also ought to reject the idea that forced change is the solution.
Look at the MacOS release feature lists before and after the iPhone. It's pretty clear that the Mac teams got cannibalized and didn't recover for years.
Mobile platforms benefit more from high contrast, very simple and flat designs.
Beyond just the touch screen convenience features -- A significant portion of users is seeig their UI under conditions of extreme sunlight, water droplets, or cracked screen at any given time. These things all inform design choices for mobile.
Now then, why is Apple making the same mistake as Microsoft Windows 8 by forcing these design elements onto Desktop and Laptop market segments? Apple doesn't really think of the PC market much. According to their financial reports, they make more money selling chargers for their mobile devices than they do on the entire PC market.
The answer, I assume, is apathy.
This design move is at this point getting to be a decade old. So this explanation from you makes zero sense.
I was mostly describing my feelings and guesses of it.
They weren't the only or primary reasons but they had significant role. I personally love the new flat interfaces MUCH more TBH.
I couldn't really stand the tiger-era MacOS either; but early iOS and *MacOS Snow Leopard* we're the pinnacle of UI/UX for me.
I still remember the high pixel density of the devices being shown off so well with the crisp rendition of paper and leather. The way it felt like it was popping off the screen.
Back then I had really good eyesight (I was 20-22~) and those UI elements sold me on the quality of the hardware.
That, and it was much smoother in it's animations than android/windows/compiz.
I'm definitely in the minority in that I actually prefer the 2019 keyboard over the others. It's the "fixed" version with the rubber gasket that prevents dirt getting in the works and I've never had an issue with a stuck key. Maybe it's because I'm a very light typist, but the 2019 butterfly keyboard never leaves my fingers feeling tired after a day of typing, where the 2007 keyboard did.
I didn’t like the older thinkpad keyboards; noticeably too stiff for my taste. But this IBM "portable" keyboard is a dream: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100
Key travel is only important to assist in your typing + provide feedback, but unless you type like a brute (I've a friend whom I would NEVER lend my laptop too, as I would be worried for my keyboard) or have sensory nerve issues like from diabetes, you don't need much travel.
I was dubious of the newest Lenovo keyboards, but after using my X1 Nano for a few hours, I was convinced: while the keys themselves have less travel, it has a strong opposing force that gives a lot of feedback.
It's still a bit too stiff for my taste (it seems to have been made for big burly guys) and I'd prefer something more like the current Macbook keyboards, a self-avowed heresy for any Thinkpad fan :)
It's too bad that laptop switches will likely never see the huge and varied aftermarket that we have with mechanical keyboards. There's a switch for everyone, and it'll work in almost any keyboard if you're handy with a soldering iron or have one with hotswappable switch sockets.
Is there one for me, who likes little key travel, softness, and silence?
So far the best solution I've found : thinkpad USB keyboards everywhere :)
Indeed. Even if it's antithetical to the mechanical keyboard idea, I wish MX style keycaps (wide availability, for ex this is how I could get a Cyrillic keyboard) could be made compatible with rubber domes (with no mechanical switch)
It's a tough engineering problem, that's for sure. I agree that older ThinkPads are a little bit stiff.
Apple went too far with butterfly, but I think they landed a good place with their current line up. They have very little wobble. Cherry MX switches (and clones) are excellent in terms of off-axis binding. Some clones are significantly less wobbly than others, for various reasons but none of them sacrifice off-axis performance. It took decades to get to this point though.
On a related, Alps mechanical switches are notorious for dust and dirt ingress issues as they get older and they're extremely hard to clean. For some reason Cherry MX switches have fared much better over the years.
This is not accurate. You are thinking of cheap Alps clones. The “complicated” SKCM/SKCL switches from the mid 80s through early 90s have fancy switchplates that give an extremely clean electrical signal and have contacts entirely enclosed in a switchplate. All sorts of 20+ year old keyswitches (including Cherry MX switches) start to feel “scratchy” when they get used with a lot of dust/dirt inside, because the plastic gets scraped up.
I’m really surprised to read this comment because it really disagrees with what I’ve read and my own experience.
No this is not why people want the older Cherry MX switches. The older MX switches used less worn-out molds and/or different plastic, and were much smoother straight out of the factory than MX switches from a few years ago which are quite scratchy feeling when new (this may have improved more recently, I’m not sure).
> my AEK and AEK IIs with creams and salmons that don’t feel so hot today
Feeling scratchy is very common for 25-year-old MX keyboards as well, and other kinds of keyboards. Stuff that sits on a shelf or table (not in a box) for decades collects a lot of dirt inside. Alps also applied some kind of lubricant to the slider in the factory, which may not be there anymore. Alps switches might be a bit more susceptible to scratchiness from decades of dust inside than MX switches because the slider slides against 1 or 2 leaf springs which provide resistance; in linear MX switches the slider is only moving up and down in a plastic channel and scraping a bit against the sides but the resistance is all provided by a helical spring.
(You could probably improve your key feel by disassembling all of the switches, putting the parts in an ultrasonic cleaner, and applying some lubricant when re-assembling them. You might not consider that to be worth the effort though.)
But I would generally expect both of your keyboards to be electrically quite reliable (at least at the switch level, with a very clean signal across each switch, not much chatter).
If a keyboard is stored for an extended time with key(s) depressed, it can end up deforming the springs. Deformation of the leaf springs can reduce the switch resistance and tactile snap in Alps switches; you can try to restore this by bending the leaf springs outward yourself, but it is pretty tricky to make them consistent.
I also have an AEK keyboard which stayed in a box somewhere sealed for 25 years or whatever, and is amazing today.
I did try ultrasonic cleaning some of my Alps switches, but it’s hard to replicate the factory lube. The lubes we use for MX switches aren’t ideal.
I would fully expect a new old stock AEK to be amazing. All of my AEKs are indeed electrically reliable, but they are scratchy.
0: https://rndkbd.com/collections/broken-in-switches/products/u...
Unused new-old-stock MX switches from the mid 1980s have noticeably smoother feel and don’t make the scratchy sound you get with new MX switches from, say, 2010.
Artificially wearing in keyswitches with 100s of thousands of robot keypresses seems really silly to me, though I guess it’s easier than disassembling every switch and sanding down the friction points with fine-grid sandpaper or applying fancy aerospace lubricant or whatever the kids are doing these days. YMMV.
i duno... "they don't make em like they used to"? :P
A lot of the people working on these systems weren't working professionally when 10.0 came out. Most of those people have moved on. Apple is not the same humans.
A corporation is a shield behind which humans plot and practice their most deliberate, libidinous schemes of avarice, moderated not by morality or community, but only by laws and markets. And for that, corporations have lawyers, resumes and advertising.
It is a rare corporation that retains a soul for longer than its founders presence, because lawyers, resumes and advertising cannot sense what founders could: a creative future.
I keep a Snow Leopard VM around to occasionally run old software in and the difference in shadow size is always striking. I personally like the more focused look of pre-10.7 shadows.
You may be thinking of Yosemite, which definitely toned down the shadows a bit as part of flattening everything.
Was the graphite option for gray button bubbles available in 10.0? I can't remember anymore.
Interestingly, though, Aqua holds up better than the Brushed Metal OS X phase.