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by solarkraft 2099 days ago
Mac OS wasn't this ugly.

Seriously: You can't just incorporate some design element and go "see, it looks like X". It won't. What most people making software seem to miss is that software look & feel isn't the design of widgets, but also click behavior, layouts, click paths, description texts, animations, delay after a click ...

/tangentially related rant
5 comments
II2II 2099 days ago
The article suggests that it was being used to test theming. In other words, it was not intended to ship. It is probable that it would be shot down if anyone proposed shipping it. (Why elicit a lawsuit from a competitor over something trivial?)

Given that, why would they go to the effort or recreating the whole visual appearance. The actual "feel" part was unlikely to be within the scope of the project.

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jjoonathan 2099 days ago
I think the complaint was more about the article being clickbait than about some jankily borrowed assets used to test theming.
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qz2 2099 days ago
There were lots of copycat themes for Linux window managers and toolkits around then which looked much worse than this attempt.

I really miss the windows XP theme. It was super clean and consistent compared to the shit show we have now.

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cpuguy83 2099 days ago
Back then people called it Fisher Price.

Probably my fav was during the betas before they added the intense blue/green "Luna" theme.

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FreakyT 2098 days ago
I loved the XP theme! It was undoubtedly very polarizing though, even to this day people argue over whether it was a beautiful step forward (as I believe) or a horrible Fischer-Price kids UI.
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shawnz 2099 days ago
Yes, obviously the complete finished product of Mac OS looked better than this half-finished "programmer art" demonstration that never even shipped. What were you expecting?
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anoncake 2099 days ago
As per the article, the theme was incomplete. Of course it was ugly.
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raverbashing 2099 days ago
Correct. This memo also applies to some Linux interfaces (usually one that begins with G and ends with ome)
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dr_hooo 2099 days ago
I strongly disagree with your example: Gnome has one of the nicest and consistent designs besides MacOS
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raverbashing 2099 days ago
It's fine to disagree but my point is with this:

> isn't the design of widgets, but also click behavior, layouts, click paths, description texts, animations, delay after a click ...

Which I find troublesome with Gnome

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