| > Outside of very niche programs you didn't see skeuomorphic UIs much at all in the 90s or 00s. We must have lived in very different 1990s then. Everything was "files" and "folders" with icons that looked like files and folders. One of the big features of Windows 95 was the Microsoft Briefcase, and it sparked a big debate back in the day about whether or not we should stop using these real-life metaphors everywhere, because it was a really confusing program -- sort of, but also not sort of like a briefcase. E-mail/PIM programs had task pads that looked like paper pads and contact lists with initials sticking out of a pack like in a rolodex. Media players looked like real-life players. Word processors were full of elements straight of electric typewriters -- not just the icons on the buttons, but the page layout, the rulers... A lot of these things didn't look as good as they were going to look on Aqua because they were introduced back when you'd be drawing with GDI on -- if you were lucky -- 133 MHz machines. There was no compositing and few consumer machines could do proper OpenGL anyway. Aqua used colour and animation more plentifully, but other than the degree to which it used them, few things were new. It made it obvious that "Save" was the default action by colouring the button blue just like Windows made it obvious that "Yes" is the default choice using the dashed lines. (Edit: by the way -- that was definitely not the first time someone used colour like that. Since few other styling options were available, virtually all TUI interfaces for DOS indicated the current choice of button using by colouring it in a particular way). Icons bounced in the dock to get attention for dialogs just like taskbar buttons blinked. Aqua certainly did these things way better, but most of them were familiar to us, they just looked so damn good! Also, FWIW, making icons under the cursor larger had very little to do with Fitts' law -- since the icons were already under the cursor, there was no benefit to making them bigger. Maybe it helped make the current choice more obvious. I don't recall the "official" reasoning -- what I do recall is that most users turned that thing off because it wasn't just distracting, it was pretty hard to get at the icon you wanted. Making icons bigger shifted nearby icons a bit, and the zooming effect wasn't applied uniformly, which led to having to "chase" the right icon. I think Apple turned it off by default after a few years, too (around OS X Tiger or Leopard, I think?). Many people thought that OS X had done a great job at updating the Nextstep interface except for the damn dock, which it kindda ruined. > I'm sorry but Kai's Power Tools was not some sort of UI design trendsetter. I certainly never said that. KPT was a trend follower -- it was just a very representative example of one, just like Aqua and the iPhone. |
The whole desktop paradigm was also completely replaced the moment an application was run. No Windows or MacOS UI widget really mimicked some physical item. Few applications tried to look like a physical item of similar functionality. Word processors weren't themed to look like a typewriter, spreadsheets didn't try to look like graph paper, databases didn't act like card catalogs or filing cabinets.
In early iOS the skeuomorphic elements did try to take on a look of the physical things they represented. The calculator looked like an actual physical calculator. The address book looked like a paper address book. The notes app looked like a pad of lined papers and when you deleted a note it left a small ragged edge at the top of the view to look like ripped paper. The voice recorder looked like an old microphone and had an analog looking VU meter.
The classic MacOS and Windows UIs didn't do that sort of stuff. Neither did Windows Mobile or PalmOS. You didn't see that with CDE, GNOME, or KDE. In fact the few skeuomorphic desktop apps I can even think of are your KPT example and some audio software that let you wire together effects units as if they were physical boxes connected with quarter in audio cables.