[G3rn0ti]

> It still looks fresh and modern, although maybe a bit too playful so that it appears a bit childish?

The aesthetics is called „Frutiger Aero“. Lots of colors and especially of blue, lots of transparency effects and fake light reflections. It all is inspired by natural landscapes with blue skies or blue water surfaces. Also skeuomorphisms everywhere.

Windows 7 could be called the pinnacle of the use of Frutiger Aero in UI design when Apple already started to move away and embrace material design. Windows 8 was the big cut where its UI forcefully pushed material design onto its users without any transition grace period. That’s one of the reasons why everybody hated it.

Edit: On Macs even the hardware design reflected the transition from Frutiger Aero to Material Design: The early 2000 Macs were all semi-transparent plastic shells with bright shades of blue and green. Then Apple discovered Aluminum and silver unibody cases. Now there is no color left in the design universe. This also marks the time MacOS interfaces started to look decidedly more "grown-up".

I wonder what will be next or are we going to stick with heartless, cold metal designs forever?

[robertoandred]

Nah, the aesthetic is called Aqua, not a name borne out of a Windows OS that copied Aqua five years later. And Apple hardware never transitioned to a Google software interface concept.

[com2kid]

> Windows 7 could be called the pinnacle of the use of Frutiger Aero in UI design when Apple already started to move away and embrace material design.

Windows Media Center was the origins of the Metro UI, Windows Phone 7 was the industries 21st century intro to a typography first flat design.

Sadly the good design aspects of Windows Phone 7 mostly got forgotten about by the time Windows 8 came along, IMHO it is because WP7 had a small dedicated design team compared to whatever large group I imagine did Windows 8.

[pjmlp]

Plus Windows 8 with Sinofskys .NET hate, decided to go back to the original plan of improving COM, which could have been a good idea, if the execution hasn't been so tragically performed.

[theandrewbailey]

> I wonder what will be next or are we going to stick with heartless, cold metal designs forever?

CARI has probably cataloged it already. Apple is already going all in on colorful aesthetics recently, not sure if it will spread into hardware.

https://cari.institute/aesthetics

[concinds]

> not sure if it will spread into hardware

Already has for most of their devices (iPhone and iPhone Pro, iPad and iPad Air, iMac, HomePod). Their pro computers only come in one/two colors, which is understandable since their low volume would create an inventory nightmare if available in half a dozen colors.

[graypegg]

I wonder if we’ll ever find ourselves in a “aero” nostalgia cycle? I already see a lot of hazy glass and reflections on some apple UI! Maybe it’s time for it’s renaissance!

[golergka]

It was heavily referenced by vaporwave movement alongside windows 95 aesthetics. And vaporwave was 12 years ago.

[germinalphrase]

“ I wonder what will be next or are we going to stick with heartless, cold metal designs forever”

If any design folks have an opinion on which way the winds are blowing, I’d love to see an example.

[einr]

I think there's a tendency recently towards keeping the Apple-esque minimalism in terms of shapes, but moving the materials to softer, warmer, speckled, textile or textured, and the colors to earthier, more natural.

You can see these tendencies in stuff like the recent Microsoft Surface laptops and their textured handrests, the Acer Aspire Vero and its recycled plastic shell, but also in small ways in some Apple products, i.e. power cords for the Mac Studio and the handle for the box (!) being made of textured fabric instead of featureless plastic/rubber, as well as some of the new iPhone colors being Forest Green and the like.

It's not a huge change but it feels like a trend to me.

[bacchusracine]

> Also skeuomorphism everywhere.

I miss skeuomorphic design. :(

I hate how flat everything is these days.

[wildrhythms]

Yup. We used to apply shadows to things to give the user a sense of depth and contrast. Now everything is on a flat plane, and any overlapping elements are either indecipherable, or live on a full bleed scrim. Very boring!