[dsego]

> It appears to have all the basic functionality expected from a modern operating system

The truth is, for the most part operating systems haven't really advanced that much, at least from a ux standpoint. Speaking as someone who started using computers in 1997 on windows 95 and a 133mhz pentium. All the basic metaphors and mechanisms have stayed the same. Tabs in browsers were considered like a huge leap (I know it's not strictly an OS thing), and that was almost 20 years ago.

[zokier]

Search as the primary interaction method instead of menus and icons is pretty dramatic shift though; compare vscode command palette to traditional vs, or windows 7 and later start menu to its predecessors. Another thing, especially on Windows, is the de-emphasis or straight out removal of menu bars, once staple of desktop interfaces. As a more generic trend, I think modal dialogs with forms were far more common interaction pattern back in the day than these days.

[kitsunesoba]

> the de-emphasis or straight out removal of menu bars

This change irks me quite a lot. Hamburger menus are terrible and while command palettes are nice, they aren't available everywhere, and so on Windows and Linux you end up with a lot of software not having any kind of index of its functionality and burying functions in dialog tunnels.

[robertoandred]

Macs have the best of both worlds: consistent menu bars with built-in function search.

[gedy]

> Search as the primary interaction method

Thanks, I hate it. Search is terrible for browsing/discovery, in spite of many people liking it.

[wildrhythms]

The Mac OS menubar search actually opens the relevant menus and submenus and puts a big floating indicator on the result. It does teach rather than simply surfacing the result.

[SllX]

Personally I love it, but I love it a lot more paired with a robust system for browsing.

[tgv]

One thing that makes macOS stand out, is the frameworks. Every version of the OS has come with improvements in the UI libraries. I remember being amazed at Cocoa's bindings, which developed into a way to bind arbitrary data to UI controls. It was reactive before React (although not taken that far, because the UI 'language' was limited). That's just one small part, and it's why replicating macOS is so hard.

[pjmlp]

Just like any other desktop OS since 16 bit home micros, with exception of MS-DOS.

BSDs and Linux distributions are the exception with their fragmentation, even other commercial UNIXes had a proper set of desktop frameworks.

[varjag]

20 year ago in mainstream; earlier if you used first implementations like in Galeon.