[VerifiedReports]

"Barely usable?" WHAT was? The scheme editor was perfectly usable, for well over a decade.

"Many developers used the colors of the default theme no matter what"

Which is what they were supposed to do, resulting in usable software that honored the user's preferences. And developers didn't have to dick around with color palettes. Win/win.

"Others used the Windows-supplied colors for the background color and maybe the main foreground color, then used fixed, non-customizable colors for everything else, making everything invisible or hard to see if you used anything but a white-ish background"

Yep, some did. And? If developers issue defective software, the OS should be degraded? What's your point here? Let's say developers somehow mess up sound reproduction: Should the OS no longer support audio playback?

[stavros]

Exactly this. Everyone used the default, we never thought about it, and all software looked the same. As a result, everything was consistent, you knew at a glance what everything was, and you could start using it right away. I miss that era, I feel like we've regressed, not least because we no longer have those underlined keyboard shortcuts on every single UI element.

[balamatom]

PulseAudio sez hi