[zozbot234]

> The design elements might look clunky by today's standards

They were optimized for the low-resolution screens of that time (hence 'pixel perfect' design was the norm), and there was also no expectation whatsoever of "touch friendly" controls so everything was a lot more tightly-spaced than today. Though the mockup does show how larger widgets could also be integrated quite well in that sort of design.

"Flat design" is a disaster and the latest redesigns are slowly inching away from it by adding some 3d-rendered shadows to try and restore some intuition for "depth". But that sort of fancy, almost photo-realistic rendering just adds more weirdness to the overall "flat" look.

[com2kid]

> "Flat design" is a disaster

The original flat designs, Zune HD and the Zune software, Windows Phone 7, Windows Media Center, was incredibly usable.

All those were produced by small design teams at Microsoft, and for, relative to an entire OS, small projects. (Settings aside Windows Phone 7 for a bit, which IMHO actually had very few distinct UI elements.)

Heck Windows Phone 7, to this day, is unlike anything else on the market, It is still going to be more responsive, and look cleaner, than almost anything else out there.

I am not sure why someone decided "flat" means "no button border", that is where I think it all went wrong.

Oh and also people who think flat means getting rid of text! Windows Phone 7 loved text, text was everywhere!

[shp0ngle]

I always feel bad for Zune, because it honestly was not that bad to become a joke; on the other hand, it was crazy late - it debuted the same year as iPhone did!

iPhone (and iPod touch) had an actual WiFi and later apps, while Zune had... WiFi, where you could only connect two Zunes.

[srvmshr]

Windows Metro UI was not well received on the PC platform. But it was genuinely a leap forward in mobile space. It was very futuristic and ahead of its time.

[com2kid]

The Metro UI that debuted in Windows 8 was an abomination, it violated many of the design principles of the original Metro.

It was born out of Microsoft's fears that Tablets were going to take over everything, but at the same time Microsoft didn't want to invest 100% in a pure tablet experience, viewing the escape hatch to traditional Windows land as being a necessity. Win32 apps were going to be the advantage Windows tablets had over iPad!

So anyway that OS release was terrible.

To this day, Apple being the only company that was willing to go all in on tablets, is the only company with a successful tablet product and tablet software ecosystem.

[pjmlp]

No need for tablets when one can use a foldable laptop or 2-1 hybrids, which are quite successful in Europe, including the Surface models.

Now the Android tablets, that is another story altogether.

[com2kid]

In retrospect, sure. But back at the time, every tech news outlet was proclaiming the death of the desktop, and that iPads were going to take over the world.

So Microsoft panicked. Windows RT is the end result.

Eventually iPad sales dwindled, it turns out that if you make a really durable product and sell it to everyone, you do end up saturating a market!

Phone screens also got a lot larger, negating some of the need for tablets.

[SllX]

> and there was also no expectation whatsoever of "touch friendly" controls so everything was a lot more tightly-spaced than today

Well if Apple’s Execs are to be believed, touch-screen Macs aren’t in the pipeline, which is aces with me because that’s what my iPad is for.

So given that the preeminent pointing devices on a Macintosh are still the mouse and trackpad, I could do with them tightening up the spacing again and walking back the last 10 years of nonsense.

We don’t have to go back to Snow Leopard, certainly not Platinum; but widgets and theming that are consistent with how a Macintosh is used and the hardware it actually runs on would be preferable.

[kaba0]

But ios apps are runnable on macs, aren’t they? And on that front apple does want some unification.

[SllX]

On ARM-based Macintoshes, as an option that a lot of apps I personally use haven’t taken.

That kind of thing is gravy, where it works, but it’s not worth optimizing the entire UI around when you can optimize the UI around Mac apps instead.

[andrekandre]

a lot of them arent available on the appstore (anymore anyways), and the few i tried were.... not that great (like iphone apps with non-resizable windows)...

[GekkePrutser]

Yes and the touch friendly paradigms waste way too much space on platforms that don't even feature touch, like Mac.