[brhsagain]

I wonder if this has to do with the Steve Jobs/Apple-ification of software, followed by a bastardization of those principles. It feels like during the "computers as the intersection of art and technology" era, it was understood that while the goal was to create something beautifully designed, the way to get there was through feats of technical ingenuity, and that design included a large functionality component. Then computers got super duper fast, and it became possible for web software to keep the "art" part (being visually gorgeous) but not the "technology" part (being slow as shit).

[mike_hearn]

That seems harsh. Apple famously hardly uses the web stack and prefers their own platform. Their software is also pretty high performance in general and starts quickly, partly as a consequence. Software would have focused on branding no matter what, that was already a trend in the 1990s with WinAmp, every Office version having a unique look etc.

[ehaliewicz2]

Just wait until you try Ventura. Every submenu in the systems settings menu has gone from being perfectly fast, to taking around two seconds to load (at least on my 2019 MBP)..

[mike_hearn]

I know :( People remark on it though exactly because it seems like a sudden and recent decline in standards.