Agreed, it's a poor benchmark, but it was also the most radical one I can come up with.
Another thing I loathe about Lion and Mountain Lion is the interface. I love mission control, and the lack of multiple workspaces is the number one irritant I have with windows machines. I'm referring to how Apple is whitewashing the entire OS. The buttons were round and friendly looking, with a shine and glow. The dock was old and outdated, but friendly. Really old versions of OS X had pin striping, which was subtle, but still made the OS look less stale.
Apple has been stripping out these lovely things. The interface feels cold and unfriendly. The biggest draw for windows 8 to me is the color (well, live tiles too).
I wish they would bring back the friendly aesthetics that made PC users cringe.
I absolutely agree. Perhaps others would disagree with me, but, bring back the lamp-style iMac (with modern hardware of course) and the aqua interface, and I'd be in heaven.
I remember when Mac OS REALLY started to look good, with OS 9. My Windows 98 machine, at the time, was so ugly, and stale, and pixely. But my OS 9 machine had fruit colored status bars and lots of cool interface features. Subtle and not necessarily necessary for performance, but you know, it's pleasant to use a good looking machine. The unofficial Apple tag line was always 'the back of our machines look better than the front of theirs', and I think the same was true of the OS, it looked better.
Granted, I still love Mountain Lion, but I do miss the old aqua OS themes, the sort of stainless steel windows, the pin striping, etc. Oh well! Times, they are a changin'!
I do, however, really like the launchpad and the notification center, other iOS-ish goodies. I don't think Apple is trying to turn my computer into an iPad, I think they are just thinking 'Hey, you know what, it's really nice swiping between a couple pages of apps and tapping the one you want, why doesn't OS X do that?'. I really love it. And although I find the multi-touch gestures for the notification center less than reliable, I do like it.
Edit: I should clarify... EARLY versions of Aqua, like Panther. I LOVED the way Panther looked!