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Comment by karel-3d | Hacker News Reader

10.4 looks and behaves basically the same as ... whatever is the latest macOS version. (I stopped caring about macOS versions few years ago) even with Liquid Glass it still behaves similarly.

The app installation is still the same "ikea dmg app dragging", and occasional zip or pkg. The Finder window already has bookmarks in the left bar. The dock behaves identically. (They went through their weird 3D dock phase but that was... Leopard? I think?)

There is no Mac App Store but barely anyone uses this nowadays anyway... Spotlight... was new in Tiger.

It is much more recognisable than Windows XP vs 11. XP behaves very differently to 11!

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The behavior hasn't changed radically, but it has changed. In most cases the differences diminish the OS. Eg: scrollbars hide themselves, multi-select options don't work everywhere, dragging window icons requires more steps, etc...

Re: looks, they are admittedly subjective. To my eyes, the difference between the Mac today, and the old Mac, is night and day.

Every Mac OS, starting with 10.7, has visual elements that strike me as sloppy or ugly. The link below has many screenshots from OS X 10.6; I find every element attractive, right down to the last pixel.

https://morrick.me/archives/9220

Sure but the question was "would user of modern macOS recognise Tiger" and he mostly would. Also user of Tiger could go to latest macOS without problems...

I mostly agree with criticisms of modern macOS, especially how it moves randomly closer to iOS, but one thing I disagree is the new Settings. It's still ugly as sin, but it's overall easier to use because everything is uniform (not each panel being its own special snowflake), and MUCH easy to search for. I used to hate it at first, but I got used to it.

But yeah macOS is obviously second fiddle now.

Now I remember, a lot of the Mac apps back then had this weird "side panel" thing where side panel went "out" of the window. I don't know the precise name of the pattern, but that would be probably the most confusing thing.

Oh also the + button didn't do full screen as today, but... it did... something. I never understood the point of the + button.

Re the side panel, you're probably thinking of "Drawers".

Here's a screenshot https://www.oreilly.com/api/v2/epubs/0596003706/files/tagore...

Yes, that exactly! They used to be common in 10.4 days.

> Oh also the + button didn't do full screen as today, but... it did... something. I never understood the point of the + button.

When I first came from Windows I was confused about this as well, but once I got the hang of it, it became the most logical thing to me.

The green + button zoomed the window to the minimum window size that showed the full content. (For example, one page in a word processor or one slide in presentation software.)

That functionality was adopted from Classic Mac OS, and I loved it. Too bad this isn't properly supported any more.

Hold down Option and the <> in the green circle for full screen will turn into a + for maximize.

You can also double click the title bar in most applications for the same effect.

It's called "maximize". You can get the + back by pressing Option while clicking the green circle.

Double clicking the title bar in many applications will also maximize the window.

It didn't maximize! It sometimes shrank the window! And in case of iTunes it changed the window entirely!

If the window is already maximized, the button should "restore" it to the previous smaller size. Unless you're describing something different?

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