Absolutely!
Just look at that Cheetah screenshot! The Aqua theme featured the most beautiful visual appearance ever. And by a huge margin that is.
How dull and boring is HS in comparison...
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Stephen Hackett Shares Over 1,500 Screenshots of Every Mac OS Release Since 2000
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Just look at that Cheetah screenshot! The Aqua theme featured the most beautiful visual appearance ever. And by a huge margin that is.
How dull and boring is HS in comparison...
I too miss the old aqua theme. It was more ‘fun’ and I’m sure plenty of people and pc lovers would find that ridiculous. But I’m a serious note I find newer ‘flatter’ designs harder to read.
Being dyslexic means the sheer amount of white space now seen in designs messes with me and I can’t differentiate each part of the program as well as I used to.
Being dyslexic means the sheer amount of white space now seen in designs messes with me and I can’t differentiate each part of the program as well as I used to.
I can dual boot (dual partition) an old 2010 Mac Mini into either Snow Leopard or El Capitan. To this day I consider El Cap as El Crap. Looks horrible in comparison.
Skeumorphism isn't the same thing as beveling, using 3D perspective and using drop shadows.
I no longer enjoy looking at a Mac screen anymore. It used to be lovely. Now it's blah ... and a lot harder to read the dim gray fonts.
Skeumorphism isn't the same thing as beveling, using 3D perspective and using drop shadows.
I no longer enjoy looking at a Mac screen anymore. It used to be lovely. Now it's blah ... and a lot harder to read the dim gray fonts.
I just want the colored sidebar icons back. It was easier to use. Didn't have to read the full name of each item to know what I was clicking.
Alł of the whimsy is gone today :/
Aqua would look stunning on a retina/4K screen
Aqua would look stunning on a retina/4K screen
I think the very latest releases, Sierra and HS, have been plenty stable. There was a long period of time after Snow Leopard where OS X was crap, esp Lion and Mavericks, but they've gotten it back together.
Honestly, that's the only old element I want back, too. Colour cues made things quicker to spot.
To me, Leopard and Snow Leopard were something of a "sweet spot."
I was not overly fond of Aqua and think it looks a bit dated today, although by Tiger they had toned the pinstripes down enough to make it palatable. Thank goodness we got back a functional Apple menu after Public Beta. I do have to say that I like the Jaguar and earlier system profiler was copied over from pre-OS X, though...the device tree is pleasant to use.
My Mac Pro 5,1 runs Snow Leopard as its primary OS. This isn't done out of nostalgia, but because I rely on it for some "heavy" tasks that are PPC native, and also want to interface those with Intel-native apps without having to transfer to a different OS or computer. SL is stupidly fast on that hardware(esp. since it boots off a PCIe SSD that came from a trashcan Mac Pro) but also rock-stable and just gets out of the way of me getting work done. Plus, I find it a visual pleasure to use.
As a last comment-does anyone else miss the big traffic lights?
I was not overly fond of Aqua and think it looks a bit dated today, although by Tiger they had toned the pinstripes down enough to make it palatable. Thank goodness we got back a functional Apple menu after Public Beta. I do have to say that I like the Jaguar and earlier system profiler was copied over from pre-OS X, though...the device tree is pleasant to use.
My Mac Pro 5,1 runs Snow Leopard as its primary OS. This isn't done out of nostalgia, but because I rely on it for some "heavy" tasks that are PPC native, and also want to interface those with Intel-native apps without having to transfer to a different OS or computer. SL is stupidly fast on that hardware(esp. since it boots off a PCIe SSD that came from a trashcan Mac Pro) but also rock-stable and just gets out of the way of me getting work done. Plus, I find it a visual pleasure to use.
As a last comment-does anyone else miss the big traffic lights?
Every desktop OS is still highly “skeumorphic”. Folders, for example, are an example of skeumorphism. Now, if you’re talking cgi leather and green felt... they looked tacky from day 1 and it bizarre that they ever shipped.
I think the new names for the OS are awful. Mavericks, bleh. Yosemite was ok, but El Capitan took a turn for the worst.
Maybe we can take a look at the progressive destruction of the network pref panel! Or the always more plain uni color and flat stuff. Damn I miss these brush metal and aqua look. I still feel nostalgic about snow leopard. It was fast not the resource ogre of the Lion+ OS X. Now running a recent os x without ssd is plain suicide. The os is not getting faster but slower with each release. I wish snow leopard was open sourced and available for any x86 hardware. Bah anyway I’m done of os x as my main computer. My razer blade arrive tomorrow! Windows 10 with Linux as Hyper-V. Just need to fix my Linux distro now, sadly it won’t be os x.
Cool. I'd imagine these steps no longer work in current versions of macOS, though, given HTMLEdit (and its frameworks) were only ever compiled for 32-bit PPC and never 64-bit Intel.
Not to mention that it's quite likely that other frameworks its dependent on probably aren't part of macOS anymore, either.
If the program is lightweight, which it looks like it is, it'd probably be easier to just rewrite the whole thing.
Or if the source code is available somewhere, it could always be recompiled to run on a more current version of macOS.
Nostalgia is everywhere. I could bet if Aqua of macOS reverted to pre-Yosemite or even pre-Leopard today, more people would criticize.
Sigh how I miss the old days. Sure the skumorphism seemed to get a little out of hand towards the end of the Forstall/Jobs era but it all made sense. There was something unique about the way OSX and iOS look and felt that no android skin could match in my opinion and windows is windows. I was initially happy to see it scaled back and iOS 11 to has finally started to look a little more coherent across the board but that comes at the expense of functionality and beauty in the OS. I feel like google is essentially copying the same ideas and I just wonder if we're headed to a future where every app is blindingly white with almost zero personality.
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I keep a machine running Tiger as an iTunes jukebox. The Aqua scheme at its most excessive and is still gorgeous.
This flat featureless helvetica everywhere drek is a cheesy, ugly amateurish fad (it's the dressing of your aliens/future man characters in silver cliche) that's the result of a hardware guy designing software, and I can't wait til it dies a horrible gurgling death at the hands of whatever management shakeup happens next.
I keep a machine running Tiger as an iTunes jukebox. The Aqua scheme at its most excessive and is still gorgeous.
This flat featureless helvetica everywhere drek is a cheesy, ugly amateurish fad (it's the dressing of your aliens/future man characters in silver cliche) that's the result of a hardware guy designing software, and I can't wait til it dies a horrible gurgling death at the hands of whatever management shakeup happens next.
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As an ex-IT guy that imaged and deployed many Macs in a span of a few days, ABSOLUTELY NOT.
I remember attending a screening for OSX Panther; where I got the Dog Tags from. Been using Mac OS X/OSX from Puma on PowerMac G4 to Lion before breaking back to Windows for work, and lost my way. To me Puma was NOT slow ... just very limited but that "hum" from the G4 was just exquisite!
Running OSX Panther on a PowerMac G5 Dual Core (2x CPUs) at 2Ghz was insanely great to enjoy that speed!
Panther was the first fast and refined OSX release, everything else was great after that until that "Mavericks" junk.
Wikipedia and John Siracusa ...
The Dock has been bland since Mavericks ... looks like a basic colour piece of paper. I honestly don't see it performing any faster today than it did since OSX 10.2 to be quite honest; so what gives with the bland?
The familiarity was to have those using physical things to feel a warm welcome not unlike the original Mac did with Typeface within the system. Feel familiar, you'll tend to use longer, learn more, enjoy more ... hallmarks of the Mac. Hence the reason Finder has a smiling Mac.
That balance seems to be lost now. What we're seeing in the UI seems to be less of an eye shocker or appeal since people are a LOT more commonly technical with computing than they where 18yrs ago. Case in point set a Mac or Windows to boot in command-line interface and many would freeze (common non-technical users).
I feel in a sense ... Apple's OSX was like bringing computers to the world ... very much like Disney introducing Tron.
I remember installing the OS X Developer Preview 3 on my bondi blue iBook when I was in high school. Worked at a movie theater over the summer, and saved up enough money to get the iBook - first computer that was every truly "mine." I think I was a member of the Apple Developer Program for Students - because I remember being shipped the CD for free...but I could be wrong, it was a long time ago. In any case, as cool as the DP3 looked (at the time), and as neat as some of the features were (I especially loved the Dock magnification), it was buggy and slow! But honestly, it didn't matter. I had grown up using Macs, even had a subscription to Macworld, and I knew how dire things were for Apple. As good as Classic Mac OS had become, it was still drastically limited compared to Linux and even Windows at that point - OS X was the future, and there was so much potential in that DP3. By the time the Public Beta was released, I was in my freshman year of college - my family came together and bought me a gorgeous PowerMac G4 for H.S. graduation, and I set up a duel boot system so I could run Mac OS 9 and OS X together - as Classic in the Public Beta wasn't great (nor was the Public Beta for that matter). I miss those days sometimes, computer weren't as streamlined yet, OS X was a gorgeous mess, and Mac OS 9 was like the little OS that could - considering it's limitation it's amazing how far Classic Mac OS brought us.
But I digress...
I know there are a LOT of opinions on these forums about Forstall, and Cook, and of course Jobs - but perhaps, just for a moment, we can all take a step back and appreciate how far Apple has come since OS X came out. Even after Jobs came back, even after OS X was officially released, Apple was not in a good place...and now, they're the first company to be valued at a trillion dollars. Some may not like the decisions Apple has been making these past few years, put dammit if Apple isn't still Apple. Look through all the screen shots, yes the look and feels has changed, things have become "flatter" and more streamlined (I personally like it, but I respect those who don't), but the core is still there - macOS is still fundamentally OS X, which owes a lot to Classic Mac OS - Apple is still Apple...and I'll never stop being a fan.
But I digress...
I know there are a LOT of opinions on these forums about Forstall, and Cook, and of course Jobs - but perhaps, just for a moment, we can all take a step back and appreciate how far Apple has come since OS X came out. Even after Jobs came back, even after OS X was officially released, Apple was not in a good place...and now, they're the first company to be valued at a trillion dollars. Some may not like the decisions Apple has been making these past few years, put dammit if Apple isn't still Apple. Look through all the screen shots, yes the look and feels has changed, things have become "flatter" and more streamlined (I personally like it, but I respect those who don't), but the core is still there - macOS is still fundamentally OS X, which owes a lot to Classic Mac OS - Apple is still Apple...and I'll never stop being a fan.
You know that's not really a good thing, not reading. I know you meant easier to spot a location for rapid reference though. I think most youth today don't read the names of application on iOS/Android just recognize and launch based on the colour.
PS: I'd love for Apple and developers to do a 1 hour App Store update across all apps by changing the icon ... as a literacy test. You can see how so many people would freak out! lol, would be hilarious in the Steve Wozniak of ol fashion though.
You know ... kinda makes you wonder. Jobs said the Mac OS X / OS X UI was called Aqua because it looks so good you want to eat the buttons. Maybe Apple chose to rid that urge to keep us from finger print blurring our screens
I loath the names as well, even the childish "high Sierra" name presentation poking fun at pot smokers. Prior to 1990 you could easily guess which Apple staff (director level or higher) would toke ... today it's the old IBM with lame jokes with saying like "but I digress" meh.
Great trip back through time. Preferred releases for me are Snow Leopard and Tiger. It is interesting to note the Tiger like similarity of Yosemite up to present day
https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/mac-os-x-10-4-tiger/
https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/os-x-10-10-yosemite/
https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/mac-os-x-10-4-tiger/
https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/os-x-10-10-yosemite/
iOS 12 feels like it could be a Snow Leopard. I'm really impressed with the performance on the recent builds.
I always loved how older versions of OSX had the Aqua and pinstriping effects, which was actually present in the design some of the physical hardware too.
Apple is making some great products these days, but I do really miss the days when they were a bit more niche.
Apple is making some great products these days, but I do really miss the days when they were a bit more niche.
Along with the more recent "flat" UI look came an emphasis on making everything on the screen look smaller. Tinyer text, etc. Which I personally dislike. I prefer big, chunky stuff on the screen like it used to be. Much easier to see. The newer stuff is probably a big reason why so many journalists and editors for major news outlets allow so many typos to slip through. It's harder to read stuff off of more recent mac screens! Hopefully the dark mode we'll soon be getting will help. I've been wanting dark mode for a long time, and fortunately there is an app called mouseposé that has a "flashlight" feature that has toned down all the harsh whites on the screen for me for years. I would have been a really miserable mac user for years if it weren't for mouseposé.