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".