[CD1212]

Having been born 9 years after 1984, I look at this and think how little desktop operating system GUI's have changed in 32 years. The same menus, windows, icons are all still very familiar, albeit with more visual 'eye candy' nowadays.

[strictnein]

Was about to correct you on "32 years" then realized you were correct. Wowsers... time flies.

[maxxxxx]

Back then they actually tried to make things simpler and easier to use. Now it seems most "innovation" is geared towards more control by the supplier or some designers who got bored and change things for change's sake.

Functionality-wise it seems both Windows and Mac are stuck somewhere in the 90s.

[digi_owl]

Frankly i find a repeating pattern with all tech development.

You have a early "runway" phase where you get the basics hammered out, then you get a near vertical phase as those basics get rapidly refined. Then it plateaus as those the ROI on those refinements worsen.

Between the 60s and now we have had multiples of these "S" curves happen back to back. And now most, or all, are plateauing.

[pwthornton]

The original MacOS and Macs lacked tons of features (compared with peer computers at the time), but it clearly was a sea change, and it's paradigms have stood the test of time.

But there are big changes you can't see here. The biggest that the original Mac didn't have was networking. Ubiquitous networking has radically changed computing.

[digi_owl]

To the point that these days you need a GPU just to show the desktop...