Comment by mk_stjames | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mk_stjames | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I completely understand people like Andreas from SerenityOS and the idea that there was a time that was a peak of GUI simplicity yet usefulness for power users.. In their case it's the Win2K aesthetic but I think OS9 is pretty close to that level of streamlining.

As amazing as OSX seemed when it was launched, I partially blame OSX and the whole "make everything round and groovy and graphical goodness" trend that started us down the path of making GUI's 'form over function'.

This is bleeding over from OS into power-user-oriented software like CAD and engineering tools and most everyone hates it. The whole "lets take away buttons and make the ribbon icons bigger and more graphically pleasing" to make products look more modern is a cancer for power users and productive people who just want access to everything as best and fast as possible. It's a delicate balance that I do indeed believe peaked well over a decade ago.

> As amazing as OSX seemed when it was launched

This reminds me: There was pretty interesting community of Linux users customizing X11 desktops in the late 90s and the very early 2000s... When the first screenshots and demos of OS X and Aqua came out, almost immediately, people tried to imitate that.

I remember WindowBlinds and an MP3 utility (but just vaguely) that used a theme similar to Aqua on Windows.

There were/are Winamp themes that looked like Aqua.

The frustrating part is that OS X was NeXTStep under the covers, and that had the late 90’s look down better than any OS. http://toastytech.com/guis/ns332.html

I ran windowmaker on my linux systems around 2000 to get that same look, but I had serious NeXT envy.

I liked NeXT and GNUstep in those days too.

I'm not sure they had it literally "better" than everybody else, but they certainly had something unique, well executed, etc.

You can still recognize NeXT patterns in modern Mac GUIs. They're usually not surface level anymore.

Still upset that I don't live in the timeline where GNUStep/Windowmaker became the defacto DE for Linux.

Oh, man, NeXTstep was an amazing UI, easily the best in the Unix world.

Still a disaster compared to System 7, 8, or 9.

I feel like BeOS was even cleaner. And it made my old PC feel really snappier than win98.

https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/beos-1....

Yeah I remember when putting your desktops on a cube and spinning it around was a thing. Compositors also had a bunch of weird and interesting effects.

It started as apple's knockoff but quickly spun out of control with amount of stuff you could setup with compiz/beryl.

Then people figure out most of it while very cool is not all that practical.

I have always felt that Win2K Pro was the pinnacle of the Windows UI.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com