I personally find more modern (like MacOS 10) styles to look the best, and flat designs to be just as usable as more skeumorphic ones.
It seems to me that preference for UI styles is completely personal, probably being influenced by what OS we initially used. As someone (potentially a lot) younger than many of those on HN, I like newer designs, and vice versa holds as well.
My first GUI "OS" was Win3.1 and while i do have some bits of nostalgia for it, i do not think it is a particularly good UI. It is a bit better than Win95 in one element where they tried to introduce a consistency where every element that represented a command was supposed to have a 3D/bevel look while every element that was an input entry was supposed to have a 2D/flat look, but ultimately they didn't succeed completely (e.g. menus are flat even though they invoke commands) - and was ultimately abandoned once the "3d controls" were introduced (and later became the default style in Win95).
However i do think that Win95 is among the best styles not because it has the most pleasing looks, but because it is the most visually neutral while at the same time being among the most functional. During the 90s there were even games that used regular desktop controls and it felt fine because Win95's style didn't really clash with them (well, unless the user customized it, but that was up to the user's choice).
* that Windows 95 was the first GUI I used for any extended period of time and that I will naturally think it's the best one for this reason, for the same reason people tend to think things they liked when they were teenagers peaked when they were teenagers; and
* that Windows 95 really did rule - to repurpose Hoare, "not only an improvement on its predecessors but also on nearly all its successors"
...and those two could fight each other all day.
Taking off the rose-tinted glasses, I might miss the UI, but I definitely don't miss how unstable it was. 25 years on I can still rattle off a Windows 95 product key off the top of my head as a consequence of reinstalling it so often.
We had NT4 with that same look and it was much better.
Not doubt about it, the Windows 95 UI was never pretty, but I also don't believe that's why people like it... well, hate it less perhaps.
As someone how got started with Windows 95, looking back at my options over the past 25 years, functionally Windows 95 was less terrible than some of the current options. Sure, macOS is pretty (and I do prefer that UI), but the Windows 95 UI was simpler, it had to be.
Part of the issue, as I see it, is that we added more and more stuff to desktops as years has past us by, but how many of those features do I really use? There's absolutely nothing that I do my laptop today, that I couldn't do using a Windows 95 UI. On top of being much simpler, the Windows 95 UI is also consistent, much more so than any current alternatives.
Finally, Windows 95 has useful hints all over, allowing you to actually learn how to effectively use the UI. Microsoft had to add these hints, because when it was release no one knew who to use their new interface. It's very clear that talented UX people where involved, most likely the last project ever to care about good UX, everything is downhill from 95.
Bundle all that together, simplicity, ease of use and consistency, that's why people still care about the Windows 95 UI. It's not pretty, it was never pretty, but it is incredibly well designed, it has just taken some of us 20 year to come to that realization.
At the same time, flat design is objectively worse. Barely any indication as to whether something is a button or a text box or a label. Personally, I really like the path taken by WinUI3, since it addresses the UX concerns with a fresh paint of UI
> At the same time, flat design is objectively worse.
Gonna jump in this boat as well, though I do actively search out older UI's and OS's to use.
I am not familiar with MacOS styles. But from what I see on other platforms my problem with "modern flat" is not that it is in any way inferior by design. Problem is that the designers make for example clickable elements not any visually different than unclickable, make scroll bars that are impossible to locate, put light gray text on white background and lots of other demented things.
Me neither. I dislike anything that reminds me of old Windows. Some people are the opposite — when they move to other platforms, they seek out things that look like old Windows so that it becomes supposedly easier to use (?).
I like MacOS. I liked the old Unity. I like Gnome 3 except for the fact that it's consumes a lot of resources. I shy away from KDE even though I hear it's now more efficient because it reminds me of Vista from certain angles.
And even though XFCE can be a little bit like old Windows, I like it because it's very efficient, and therefore I give it a pass :) . The no-bullshit DE.
I've been on Gnome 3 for years now. However, I might switch to XFCE eventually because I tend to do memory intensive things.
Same. Definitely don't like gnome/gnome-shell 3+ dropping the global menu, featuring a useless file picker, and overall just wasting a lot of space on my favourite notebook sizes of 13.3" and 14", though preferring dark themes I could see that gnome maybe wanted to get rid of those cheesy non-scaling, always-black-on-white icon menus as leftovers from the 90s. Regarding KDE (Plasma) though, I've learned you can customize the hell out of it to get back most of gnome 2 + Unity [1], so that's something I'm going to try next when I get around to it.
[1]: https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/plasma-look-like-unity.h...
Looked "space age", and less like the drab office building which Win 9x/MacOS 9 looked like. Is there any nostalgia for that?
When I was using Windows 95 (and 98) the first thing I would do was change the colors to try to make my windows and buttons look less like a bunch of sidewalk blocks. When XP came out I was excited for the colorful, plasticky theme, but it hasn't aged well. Even Vista/7's glassy Aero has grown old, but for me Aero is still the best standard Windows theme (honorable mention to Royale and Watercolor). I think you're probably 100% right about the personal preference being the key here.
But that may just be the classic Mac OS fanboy in me speaking. Mac OS never used particularly dark grays, so the almost-perfectly-middle-gray seen in 95/98 felt almost depressing in comparison.
I agree that most of the preference is personal. I am not so sure on the age thing. I am likely on the old end of the curve here, yet mostly prefer the flat appearance. That said, there are a few elements of those old designs that I prefer. There are a few areas where those old interfaces shone: being able to distinguish between UI elements, higher contrast, consistency, and exposing functionality. That is to say: buttons don't need to be raised and links don't need to be underlined, but it is useful to know when you are looking at a button and a link.
Shouldn’t we separate looks from usability? KDE’s multifunctional search bar (similar to Spotlight on OSX) was a game changer for me. Every time I booted back into Windows (to play Anno 1602) I felt crippled.
Never cared much about looks, but functionality like that is what separates a great UI from an OK one. For me at least.
To me Amiga OS looks weird and "chaotic", but Windows 95 it's the perfect OS on usability, on par on Mac OS 6 and 7.