Isn't early OSX objectively easier to navigate?

[Starfia]

Good rant. Good because it didn't really seem like complaining so much as appreciating what your favourite time was.

I miss some of that old stuff too, but I think Big Sur is my favourite so far, even amid a few tweaks I don't like: Spotlight seems crippled now that the return key is unpredictable, Safari's title bar is tragically thick, and Music's EQ automatically turns itself off when you blink at it. I wish I could still run the occasional 32-bit (or even Classic) app without restarting or emulating. I appreciate the attempted harmony of the new app icons, but that came at the cost of the beauty of some of the classic ones.

But there's no way, for example, that I'd ever want to go back to a version of macOS without a system-wide dark mode; I just couldn't go back. A little skeumorphism can really help, but too much can weird you out and risk alienating the users who aren't delighted by it, so I'm glad that cooled off. I'm happy with the relative minimalism, and I don't see the problem as long as it can be augmented. And, of course, apps like Final Cut Pro and Logic are leagues beyond where their predecessors' versions were in the days of Tiger and Leopard.

 

[za9ra22]

Good rant.... Good because it didn't really seem like complaining so much as appreciating what your favourite time was...

I see what you did there, but not so much. I was actually referring no so much to personal preference as to a whole raft of users for whom the Mac platform was an accessible way into computing where DOS/Windows/Linux wasn't. Now we just have a whole lot of the same.

Importantly, the principle that good user interface design is about the user, seems to be no better understood in Cupertino now than Redmond.

It is good that it is working for some, but perhaps they could give us a button to switch back, for those who would actually benefit from it.

 

[rafark]

I bet it's really confusing for the computer illeterate.

I think this is interesting if you think about it. At this point most people are familiar with computers/devices, even the older generations have smartphones. We’re no longer in the 90s or even early 2000s. Some people back then would need lessons before they were able to use a computer! The younger generations have no problem using a computer or smartphone either.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

There's a reason I downgraded all my computers to Mavericks last year, and have spent tons of time making that setup work for everything.

I think Snow Leopard specifically is overrated, though. It's good, it's just not the pinnicle. I miss being able to rename documents from the window titlebar. I don't know why notes are integrated into Mail, and I don't like how mail's UI wastes vertical space for reading messages. While I appreciate the big noticeable buttons, but the accents in Snow Leopard stick out just a tad too much, compared to the more refined versions introduced in 10.7.

And then there are the, shall we say, more controversial features added in Lion. Autosave is great—I used iWork on a Snow Leopard computer in high school, and there were a couple times I lost many hours of work, because when I most get into the flow of writing, I also forget to hit ⌘S. I don't use full screen mode all the time, but when I'm watching a video or on a Zoom call, it's nice to have those full screen windows neatly integrated into Exposé (or Mission Control, whatever).

Lion itself is a buggy mess, but then Mountain Lion and Mavericks were better. Launchpad is a steaming pile of crap, but I forcibly got rid of it on my current Mavericks machine, and added back Snow Leopard's colorful Finder sidebar and larger traffic light buttons. Haven't managed to do anything about the tags on Mavericks—I agree with @eyoungren labels were better, but I don't mind that much, and there is some minor benefit it being able to add more than one even if I don't like the tradeoff on net.

 

[joykin]

But appearance and use are very different things, and in producing an interface that looks so clean and sharp, the result is one that also looks lifeless and gives the user no personal connections into the system.

Bingo, exactly. For those that are visual thinkers and doers, color, shape, dimension is huge.

At work, my favorite look for Word was 2010; which I didn't realize then was actually Apple-like. I love colored and shaped icons and dimensional buttons like MacOS used to have. Color and funky stuff is what makes Macs fun. When MS came out with the new "flat" format for their Office products, it was off-putting to say the least.

Apple went for the "pancake look" in their products - which to me simply screams "fragile, fragile!". And I guess that wasn't fragile enough, they had to put glass on both sides of the phone. Everything is flat, flat, flat. So my response is also, flat, flat, flat - totally not impressed.

If I work on a desktop, I expect a desktop quality product in form and function. Not a phone screen app style or tablet style. A tablet cannot do everything I need to do, so if I wanted it to be my 'computer default', would've done it already as it is so much lighter. Which makes me wonder about the pic of the upcoming 'tablet on a stick' desktop that may replace the iMac. That would mean having to buy all your RAM from Apple up front. They are taking all our options away to modify for the lesser-geeky of us.

Did note that the 10g internet capability was given to the Intel Mac mini.

 

[retta283]

Here's my question, does anyone here really have a strong preference for Leopard's UI over Snow Leopard's? They're minor differences but I notice them instantly every time I use Leopard now. Personally Snow Leopard is much more refined but I'd be curious if anyone else thinks differently.

Mavericks can be themed to look like Tiger/Snow Leopard fairly easily which is quite nice, only thing is I have not found a good way to get a different theme of dock without using the horribly unstable cDock.

 

[MBAir2010]

what were they gonna do...house cat...maine coon, savannah cat?

Turkish Angora
then Black Turkish Angora

 

[Mr. Dee]

Older versions of OS X are not particularly easier to navigate. The latest versions, especially Big Sur are light years ahead of mainstream releases like Tiger and Leopard. This partly thanks to the hardware. The smooth scroll, finger gestures, you are not gonna find on a PowerBook G4 or G3. Even something like window management is way better, full screen mode, split view, etc. A recent feature like Stacks makes managing files on the desktop so much easier. Sure, things are more complex, that's the result of innovation. I have a PowerBook G3 with OS 10.0 and if I had to spend 9 hours using it, I would pull my hair out by the end of the day. Its just too basic. But the hardware advances is key part of macOS success.

 

[ian87w]

As a Windows user, my main stumble of macOS UI is the red-yellow-green buttons on the upper left. On Windows, we are accustomed to minimized, maximized, and close buttons on the upper right. On macOS, the red button is confusing. On some apps, it closes and quits the app. On most apps though, it just closes the window of the app, and the app remains active.

 

[TheShortTimer]

I think this is interesting if you think about it. At this point most people are familiar with computers/devices, even the older generations have smartphones. We’re no longer in the 90s or even early 2000s.

The OECD report referenced in this article shows otherwise - people own digital devices but there is a marked disparity in their competency and confidence with using those devices to their full potential. In the UK, 13% of adults do not use the Internet - a resource that's available to almost any smartphone owner.

Some people back then would need lessons before they were able to use a computer!

Again, as the article linked above highlights, there are significant numbers of people today who still require lessons in order to use a computer. I encountered a situation where a basement was packed with pallets of PCs because no-one possessed the IT skills to set them up. I've provided tutoring to people who are intelligent and would be regarded as educated. One of my friends has a PhD and works as a university lecturer and I had to guide him through reformatting his USB stick.

The younger generations have no problem using a computer or smartphone either.

That is not uniformly the case. This anecdotal article by a network-team manager and computing teacher makes for interesting reading. Also, the younger generations might not have access to a computer in the home. 700,000 children of secondary school age in the UK do not have a computer or tablet device in the home.

 

[hobowankenobi]

And then I switched over to cynicism-posting....

I can't wait for MacOS 12: Bubblegum Alley

It's gonna be sweet!!

 

[hobowankenobi]

As a Windows user, my main stumble of macOS UI is the red-yellow-green buttons on the upper left. On Windows, we are accustomed to minimized, maximized, and close buttons on the upper right. On macOS, the red button is confusing. On some apps, it closes and quits the app. On most apps though, it just closes the window of the app, and the app remains active.

True...but this is not new. Apple has been fairly consistent with: Closing the last window does not quit the app.

Yes, there are a few exceptions, but this one has been around for since the very first days of OS 10.

 

[ian87w]

True...but this is not new. Apple has been fairly consistent with: Closing the last window does not quit the app.

Yes, there are a few exceptions, but this one has been around for since the very first days of OS 10.

Yeah, I guess so. My first usage experience with macOS is with High Sierra.

 

[B S Magnet]

Here's my question, does anyone here really have a strong preference for Leopard's UI over Snow Leopard's? They're minor differences but I notice them instantly every time I use Leopard now. Personally Snow Leopard is much more refined but I'd be curious if anyone else thinks differently.

Mavericks can be themed to look like Tiger/Snow Leopard fairly easily which is quite nice, only thing is I have not found a good way to get a different theme of dock without using the horribly unstable cDock.

When I began working on the Snow Leopard for PPC project, I really began to take in the extremely subtle differences between the two, and it left me appreciating to the fine-tuned improvements when Apple did things like re-write Finder in Cocoa. In SL-PPC, at least the version I was testing (before a bad DC-in board halted that work), some icons, new for Snow Leopard, were evident, but most of the UX elements were no different than with Leopard. Snow Leopard, the version most people know, offers a acuity, or sharpness, to the Leopard UX (which I have always generally preferred over Tiger).

Someone up above said something about Snow Leopard being overrated or something to that effect.

Spoiler: Here’s a thought experiment:

Had the direction of OS X not been toward going disc-less-only (with an often-vexing hidden recovery partition making cloning a far less straightforward process; injecting user analytics tracking; generating a compulsory closed software ecosystem walled fortress; and imposing iOS-based elements which never belonged with a workstation environment (which is what a desktop’s/laptop’s design potential allows), and instead been able to continue refining from the Leopard-Snow Leopard baseline, but in a different paradigmatic direction (which continued what those and prior OS X builds were striving to accomplish in functionality and “it just works” ethos), then one would have completely anticipated a $29 DVD or USB key for a OS X 10.7 Clouded Leopard and so on (absent those paradigmatic features and direction Lion ushered forward) to honour their end of a consumer-user/Apple bargain of continuing to integrate highly useful minor features (like changing filenames or directory names from an Open/Save dialogue box and, optionally, allowing users to AutoSave documents if they so chose under the General systemPref).

In a “Mac OS X 10.7 Clouded Leopard” direction, Apple would have been able to continue refining the UX along the same steady path which previously had convinced waves of consumer-users to ditch a Windows-exclusive environment on whatever hardware they’d been using (even up to ThinkPads, Apple’s closest hardware/workstation-analogue in the Windows-based ecosystem). A Clouded Leopard path would not have saddled consumer-users with annual, but incomplete major OS upgrades which, in effect, raced to inject analytics, tracking, and “locking in” Mac OS X/macOS folks within Apple’s now-infamous walled fortress (borrowed from iOS appliances) over the UX. A Clouded Leopard path would not have alienated consumer-users who’d been convinced of and sold on Apple’s usage-case when Snow Leopard was that evolutionary standard-bearer for a workstation UX which OS X 10.0 Cheetah promised it could be.

This could have been done for further aid and enhance the UX for OS X, and the UI would continue to evolve the “it just works” ethos. This, of course, did not happen. Enter sunk-cost theory. The reckoning for that, especially for consumer-users who have sunk well into five figures over the last decade on Apple hardware, hoping for that return to that “it just works” ethos, namely for workstations from MBA to Mac Pro, is a slow one to reach.

Apple executives executed a major change of direction for OS X probably back in the early days of 2010, when the company and its shareholders were getting punch-drunk on iOS appliance and iOS walled fortress revenue. What seems obvious, in retrospect, is Apple found themselves at a crossroads between shareholders (which wanted a wholesale expansion of those fast-money revenue streams, replete with tracking, surveillance, and walled fortress baked-into basic functionality, packaged in an easy-to-use UI/UX optimized for handheld appliances) and its dedicated consumer-users for their workstations. Unable to “choose both” (”both” is never an option), Apple chose the former path.

Consumer-users have paid for this decision ever since by enduring the “free” OS X/macOS major update model and Apple’s ongoing central focus on the trackable iOS/walled fortress elements Lion ushered for Big Sur and beyond (which, for workstations, are not an “it just works” paradigm). While longtime consumer-users saw the writing on that wall when Lion premiered, for others, that realization has come later.

tl;dr: Apple could have continued to rake in truckloads of shareholder revenue for its iOS appliances without compromising the consumer-user experience of its workstations. Instead, Apple chose to apply the appliance/tracking model to a UX environment which neither asked for it nor needed it. And here we are today, with macOS 11.x, its flat-affect UX, and a system which virtually cannot operate without an internet umbilical cord. In short, it is no longer a workstation. It is a literal internet appliance.

 

[B S Magnet]

As a Windows user, my main stumble of macOS UI is the red-yellow-green buttons on the upper left. On Windows, we are accustomed to minimized, maximized, and close buttons on the upper right. On macOS, the red button is confusing. On some apps, it closes and quits the app. On most apps though, it just closes the window of the app, and the app remains active.

Two things:

1) Red signifies “stop” or “halt” in a red-amber-green signalling context, and it has for a very long time.
2) Whenever one hovers over those buttons on Mac OS X/macOS, extremely similar UI elements you’re accustomed to in Windows or Linux — like X and _ — are illuminated:

is from High Sierra (10.13)

is from Leopard (10.5)

The key difference, of course, is Apple Mac OS X/macOS incorporates a menubar, an Apple UX element dating back to 1983, whose presence is a primary indicator of whether a selected application or utility is still active or has quit. And like Windows, an Alt-Tab function quickly lets one know whether an application is still active.

 

[MacArctic]

I also started to wonder about the education market. Having grown up in the early 2000s, I remembered how cool it was to see our computer lab filled with iMac G3s. Since I didn't live through the 90s, I never knew a time when computers were just black boxes, so it was a shock to me when my next school had a lab full of Windows boxes, and I just wondered to myself why the boxes had to be so huge and heavy, when we had a more powerful iMac G5 at home.

Aww, you're so young, those boxes used to be beige when I was in school. 😄

 

[Amethyst1]

I have a PowerBook G3 with OS 10.0 and if I had to spend 9 hours using it, I would pull my hair out by the end of the day. Its just too basic.

OS X 10.0 is a steaming pile of crap. Using that should count as torture under UN regulations. To most people here I presume, "early" refers to the Tiger through Snow Leopard period. Everything before that is "really early" to me.

 

[B S Magnet]

Aww, you're so young, those boxes used to be beige when I was in school. 😄

Awwh, you’re so young, those boxes used to have the stylized ][ when I was in school.

 

[RobynH]

“this "minimalism" trend has got to stop.”

Exactly. Minimalism for it’s own sake is foolish.
Why don’t we just we just go back to 80x25 text only monochrome?

 

[Amethyst1]

Awwh, you’re so young, those boxes used to have the stylized ][ when I was in school.

Awwh, you're so young, these boxes used to be steam-powered when I was in school.

Why don’t we just we just go back to 80x25 text only monochrome?

Well, if that is HiDPI 80x25 text only monochrome I'm all in!

 

[SirAnthonyHopkins]

Not only did skeumorphic, 3D designs of the early OSX era look great, but they were extremely intuitive.

Skeuomorphism is only intuitive if people are familiar with what is being skeuomorphed, or if the original itself had a very clear universal design purpose. Mimicking real world objects that aren't used in the real world and which aren't recognised by many users just for the sake of skeuomorphism is less intuitive.

I'd also say that, sure, if you're coming to Big Sur for the first time ever and you've never used a computer before, then yeah it's less intuitive than, say, Tiger, which was definitely better at "teaching" you how to use it through its interface.

But how many people have never used a computer before? Even if Big Sur is your first Mac OS, you've probably used Windows and know generally how windows work. I think as the population is now generally computer literate, it's not as necessary to design an OS in such a way that just looking at it makes it obvious what everything does. The "dragging windows around" example you give is a good one here. It may seem more obvious to you, because of how you learned, how to do that in Tiger, but I'm not sure there's any evidence that's objectively true. In Big Sur you can click almost anywhere at the top of a window and move it, which if anything I'd argue is more intuitive.

I don't love some of Big Sur's design choices, but they're more aesthetic issues that I have. So to answer the OP question, I don't really think early OSX was "objectively easier to navigate" no.

 

[lostom]

Awwh, you’re so young, those boxes used to have the stylized ][ when I was in school.

Me too, feel like I've seen it all.
Kind of have actually..

 

[lostom]

I've read this thread from the beginning until the end, I agree and disagree.

Here's a question for all , how much did Johnny have to do with the "developments of macOS.??

Personally I don't see JI as the genius he is considered to be, but smarter minds disagree, the race to make everything smaller, thinner, ports , etc is my main issue and I kind of question how much he had to do with the industrial design of the OS.

Possible I'm far off, though I hope now he is gone, Apple may get new ideas and implementations and make things work as the customers want..

 

[SirAnthonyHopkins]

I've read this thread from the beginning until the end, I agree and disagree.

Here's a question for all , how much did Johnny have to do with the "developments of macOS.??

Personally I don't see JI as the genius he is considered to be, but smarter minds disagree, the race to make everything smaller, thinner, ports , etc is my main issue and I kind of question how much he had to do with the industrial design of the OS.

Possible I'm far off, though I hope now he is gone, Apple may get new ideas and implementations and make things work as the customers want..

He would have had input into and oversight of all of the aesthetic design choices of both OSX and iOS at the time, because that's how Apple works. Whether or not he was the primary decision driver I couldn't tell you, but Chief Design Officer will have final sign-off on all design choices of both hardware and software.

 

[retta283]

There were next to zero consumer computers when I was in school. Only later in college did they start to appear and I never saw them at the college. Personally I would've have it any other way.

OS X 10.0 is a steaming pile of crap. Using that should count as torture under UN regulations. To most people here I presume, "early" refers to the Tiger through Snow Leopard period. Everything before that is "really early" to me.

IMO, Jaguar and especially Panther were pretty solid overall. Jaguar was pleasant overall but showed some rough edges, Panther was rock solid everywhere but my PowerMac.