As a designer, I couldn't disagree more. The screenshot you linked is far better than 99% of design today. It took time and effort to create such engaging and aesthetically pleasing design. Today's designers don't care — the profession is overrun by MBAs calling themselves UXers.
The 10.4 version and especially the 10.9 version of Aqua was basically perfect in my eyes… they had dimension and contrast without being overbearing and were bright and cheery without being blinding. I know people are fond of the 10.5 and 10.6 Aqua but I found its darker grey window chrome a bit too dreary looking.
Great point. I think part of this is that computers are now so ubiquitous, there is less call for making them approachable to people who are not using them.
Personally I like the friendly stylings of old which were empathetic to users' needs. Computers these days seem to take themselves too seriously, and we've lost a bit of the fun as a result.
I've never used them, but from what I've read 10.0–10.2 were pretty bad across the board, and 10.3 (Panther) was when OS X became a truly viable product.
I think Apple knew this, too. If you look at the timeline of macOS releases, 10.0–10.2 were released in the span of just over a year, and 10.3 had barely a year of life before Panther replaced it (incremental annual releases are the norm now, but they weren't then). And of course, Apple was still supporting OS 9 at the time.
When this design came out, I thought it was bold and futuristic. The "juicy" look is dated now, but to hear it described as "vaporwave" makes me feel old.
This. When I say OSX Tiger after sufffering Windows 98 (and having KDE3 in parallel) I was amazed, that doesn't look vaporwave at all. If anything, Amiga OS 3.1 and before is vaporwave. OSX Tiger was "UI done right".
The good thing about Material Design is that we don't have to wait for it to go out of fashion among developers. People have been saying it's butt ugly from day one.
