I don't run this kind of skin unironically but I do think that desktop GUIs used to be a lot more intuitive in some ways. They were still educating PC users on how to use PCs and so there was less of a temptation to hide features and smooth things out for the sake of pure aesthetics.

(The slide-to-unlock on the original iPhone OS comes to mind as an analogy on the phone: babies could figure it out, but by iOS 7 they figured enough people knew how to unlock that they could make it less obvious.)