I don't think you're wrong, but I also come from an Apple background.
Apple spent a lot of time worrying about its user interface. The Chicago font used until Mac OS 8 was designed to be easily readable on low-DPI screens. Apple later used that font in their iPods back when they had monochrome low-DPI screens.
The Mac's windows had a design to them. Even in System 7, they had horizontal pin-striping for the active window (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vyg7lQqohrw/U9M8FDTLWbI/AAAAAAAAQn...) rather than resorting to a solid royal blue to indicate the active window.
Mac OS 8 continued the pin-striping, but with a new platinum color (https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/ipod/images/2/23/1998_Ma...). I find the gray that Apple chose in OS 8 to be a lot more vibrant than the dull gray Microsoft chose (https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d968...). Mac OS felt light and airy compared to the dull and heavy gray of Windows - but that might just be my personal opinion. Plus, dark text on light grey feels better to me than white text on royal blue (for window title bars).
Likewise, the lilac folder icons weren't as rough as the yellow folders in Windows and the soft purple accent color for things like progress bars was a lot more subtle than the royal blue that Windows went with. A lot of Windows 95 felt like a very dull gray with lots of primary colors that don't go together. It was certainly fine, but it didn't feel clean. It didn't feel like people sat down to create something that had some beauty.
Even the close/maximize/minimize buttons show care on the Mac side. On Windows, they're functional, but not well styled. On the Mac, they're a subtle gradient.
Also, note how on Windows 95, the inactive windows have the same border as the active windows - only the title bar tells you which is the active window. On Mac OS 8, the active window has a beveled border and a black shadow while inactive windows have a flat border and gray shadow.
However, Windows 95 did feel pretty great technically. Windows 95 felt like Microsoft really listened to what would make Windows a modern experience. The Windows 95 Start/task bar was amazing. It allowed you to quickly switch between programs while having things maximized. Minimizing to the task bar was great compared to the stupid roll-up window that Apple introduced in OS 8 two years later (and the lack of any option before that). Windows 95's preemptive multitasking was simply better.
Windows 95 had its growing problems between registry issues, DLL hell, and drivers that could often be like pulling teeth (part of me remembers righting with a winsock modem way too often), but Windows 95 was quite a bit ahead of the Mac.
But I really do miss the Mac OS 8-9 UI design. It wasn't trying to be cool or hip or show off anything fancy. It was just well designed and consistent. There was a care in it.
I grew up with smaller micros, like ZX Spectrum 48k and Commodore 64, then I got my first PC and it ran DOS. I started using Windows 3.0 when it came out, and I've been a Windows user ever since. I tried Linux desktop a few times, but couldn't get used to it. I've never had a Mac, so I can't answer that part of your question, but I can give you my views on Windows GUI.
I find Windows 9x to be ugly now. Back then, I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Like I said, I didn't have a Mac, but I tried OS/2 Warp, and I hated it.
I think the Windows 9x nostalgia stems from the absolute usability fustercluck we have these days. Back then, the GUI was uniform -- you didn't have to guess which element did what for each app -- and it communicated clearly. You always knew if a toggle was on or off, if a button was pressed or not, etc. When a dialog popped up to open a file, a single Shift+Tab would take you to the file list, instead of silently and invisibly putting the focus on the list headers. You could move your mouse around without "helpful" hints popping up everywhere.
I would happily go back to these "obsolete" ideas of consistent and concise GUI design, but it won't happen. People have been harping on about this for years now, and things aren't improving. It's just not a priority, I guess.
> I think the Windows 9x nostalgia stems from the absolute usability fustercluck we have these days. Back then, the GUI was uniform -- you didn't have to guess which element did what for each app -- and it communicated clearly. You always knew if a toggle was on or off, if a button was pressed or not, etc.
Yeah, it has a lot less to do with aesthetics than it does with consistency and functionality. GUIs of today have regressed so significantly in these regards it's downright disgraceful.
I grew up with 9x and vastly prefer it to the UI/UX of classic MacOS - though obviously MacOS today beats the pants off Windows.
Modern MacOS is quite clearly the ultimate winner in the Mac/Windows design wars.
After Microsoft's awful Windows 8 identity crisis disaster, it unfortunately never fully recovered. The invasive ads in Windows now (I'm aware you can turn them off, the issue is they should never bloody be there to start) more than ruin the experience, as well.
Looking back, nostalgia glasses fully off, I'd actually say Windows 9x's UI/UX is actually some of the best of all time, and easily beats classic - and even modern - MacOS in a number of tangible ways.
Even today, in MacOS, what in the hell is up with that goddamn awful 'zoom' button?
Like, it never once behaved the way I'd have liked it to, in nearly 20 years, and coming from Windows, where the button usefully makes the window fill the screen, it's behaviour was already god awful.
But then in 10.7(?) they introduced this even worse behaviour of making it go to this thing called 'fullscreen mode', which makes it so when you command+tab between apps it throws you to different screens? There's a tool called 'RightZoom' that's the first app I install on any new Mac I'm using, or friend's Macs I'm setting up for them, but we shouldn't have to do that.
I think the 'zoom' button was literally the only complaint I had with (at the time it was called) OSX vs. (at the time) Windows XP, which I ran in 9x/'classic' mode. No Fischer Price for me, thanks - going to Aqua was like landing in paradise compared to XP's bizarre blue plastic chunks.
The Windows 95 / NT4 UI was strongly influenced by NeXTSTEP.
In 1995-97, it certainly felt a lot more modern than its Mac OS contemporary (System 7) which had almost an antique patina with its Chicago font and remnants of the original black-and-white design. Apple was supposed to ship an UI revamp as part of the Copland project, but it failed, leaving System 7 as the only option until 1997.
The Platinum theme in Mac OS 8 was inherited from Copland. It was a definite improvement, but not much more than closing the obvious look-and-feel gap in comparison to Windows.
The finer points of the classic Mac OS UI like the spatial Finder were only appreciated by a small minority. For most people, Windows offered much more tangible advantages like actual multitasking and memory protection (so an application crash won't take down the whole system). It's easy to forget just how primitive classic Mac OS was.
It's funny because I've always thought NeXTSTEP looked kind of... homely, compared to the classic Mac OS before, and OS X after, which is odd because all were heavily influenced by Steve Jobs. Maybe it's the detailed-but-not-quite-photorealistic icons?
I'm guessing this wasn't the popular opinion at the time (or now), though, based on how much Microsoft copied it.
Having grown up on Mac OS, I definitely find the Platinum theme of 8.x-9.x to be better looking and more pleasant overall.
My main beef with the Win9X look is the dark and dreary colors it uses, which is mostly fixed with the Win2K version. That said, when XP came out I made heavy use of its new Kaleidoscope/WindowBlinds-like theming engine. There were a lot of .msstyle themes around back then that looked nicer than both the Win9X theme and Luna.
I think it's more a question of "can they do it?" versus "should they do it?" Edit-and of course Win95 had the famous reactions of people mobbing through stores for it. The reaction itself was fanatic for those times.
But also, I grew up with 95/98 and never had the money for a Mac until college. For me, the G4 Cube or the Lampshade iMac were both wild form factors wildly out of my range. Not helped by building my own gaming machines around those times and going the linux direction. i.e. I think those Mac OSes might benefit from having not been obtainable and thus desirable. For sorta similar reasons, I and others might be hoping Haiku OS gains traction/a commercial application some day.
Having said all that, this looks really well done.
Personally I find Windows 2000 style to be my favorite one generally - it certainly is not pretty but it is simple and no nonsense and seems to take minimum screen space.
Yeah it felt ugly back then but somehow it felt like it was supposed to be ugly. I never used macs with any regularity until recently and older windows OSs just make more sense to me. Even more than newer windows systems. Now thats likely because I spent countless hours fiddling with them growing up but I quite like that ugly style.
This was posted here last week and I installed it yesterday. The excitement and joy it brings me is entirely nostalgic. I want to admit it’s ugly but I can’t.
Might be a matter of opinion? I've always liked the brushed platinum look of Macs at the time, but I was disgusted by the Aqua interface. History seems to repeat itself: I came to like the look of Yosemite, but greatly dislike the design of MacOS 11+.
Lucky! I was stuck with Packard Bell Navigator. Microsoft Bob would have been a step up from that heaping pile of garbage. The first thing I learned how to do on that computer was to disable it on startup and boot directly into Win95.
Linux Desktop evangelists could never get their head out of their ass enough to bother trying to truly understand why people didn't want to use Linux, so they kept coming up with stuff like this. They sincerely seemed to believe that looking like Windows was enough, or having a set of default applications was enough, or being able to run a web browser was enough, etc. Now that none of that has worked, they've chosen to believe it is because Linux isn't installed by default on new PCs. Anything to avoid admitting the existence of real issues that people actually have I guess.
All valid points, and TBF, the obstacles to adoption that advocates identified were/are legitimate. The truth is, people don’t care about GNU/Freedom or whatever they’re OS is. They just want things to work.
Ironically, Linux has made it to the desktop. It’s ChromeOS.
Last week I did a clean install of xubuntu and added Chicago95 after seeing it on HN. Some impressions so far:
- Their setup script/app makes the whole process very easy. I'm sure earlier on it was a bit rough to make all the changes, but it was very smooth now. I especially liked the nod with the classic 95 setup background picture (the old blue CD's etc).
- Some parts feel right at home. I like the terminal, even giving the option of having a "C:" prompt at the start of the path.
- Icons match things well for the default software, and there's a large catalog of icons you can use for your other apps.
- The start menu obviously isn't perfect, but it's a "good enough" mix between the theme and usability. Likewise file manager isn't 100%, but the icons and overall look give enough of the theme that I don't care.
- One thing I haven't got working yet was the "make your modern browser look like netscape navigator", which was disappointing. I'm using firefox but also tried the epiphany browser which I read somewhere was supposed to work with it. I'll try that more later.
Overall I'm having a lot of fun with it. It's not for everyone (as the comments here make clear), but for me it's a simpler interface with a lot of nostalgia for a time when I just "got things done", so I'm happy to use it in my hobby gamedev projects to get me in the zone.
People legitimately like and consume music that is 60 years old, cars that are 50, movies that are 40, Nintendo games that are 30. Why not an operating system?
windows 95 looked the way it did, not because the people making it thought it was the optimal look, but due to hardware limitations.
A designer in 1995 seeing you waste a modern 4k LCD monitor’s potential to display blurry low res 256 color icons? They would think you are clinically insane.
Windows 95 was great not because of the icons, colors, or anything like that. It was great because the UI was consistent and intuitive. There were a few weird things in there like the briefcase but for the most part it was just enough UI and software to be really effective without getting in the way.
Because user interfaces are supposed to be usable, too. Being pretty is not sufficient to make it a good UI. Windows 11 isn't as profoundly misguided as Windows Vista was, but the most notable UI changes in 11 are pretty much all detrimental to usability.
Or to put it another way, a good UI must not ignore the second half of "look and feel".
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30474690 ("Make Linux look like Windows 95")