But back to my ‘gut-reply’, I wanted to be certain that my fond memories of Snow Leopard weren’t just nostalgia. While I am confident when I say that Snow Leopard is the most stable version of Mac OS, I wanted to make sure its user interface was really the good user interface and experience I was remembering. So, after a few frustrating attempts at creating a virtual machine on my current iMac with Mac OS High Sierra, I decided to install Snow Leopard on a USB flash drive, and boot my 2009 MacBook Pro (yes, it’s still alive & kicking) in Snow Leopard from that flash drive.
It seems to be a rather widespread conviction that it’s been downhill for macOS for years now, and I can’t say I disagree. Especially the current version looks like a touch-first operating system, but without a touchscreen. So many huge targets, lots of needless whitespace, things you have to swipe, buttons hidden until you mouse-over – it feels like Apple is trying to out-Windows 8 Windows 8.
Needless whitespace PLUS the removal of all the title bars =( The dialog boxes look amateur now. And menus/dock with rounded rectangles on every side, such a huge reduction in valuable context. The icing on the cake is the motion and blur that make people literally sick.
Of course what you’re omitting is that everyone is going crazy with their shite redesigns of paradigms that worked perfectly well: Microsoft’s abysmal Ribbon has stuck around for years now, GNOME is a dumpster fire, and even KDE are giving us garbage like the new Kickoff menu in 5.21 (thankfully the “Legacy” one is still available although unlike the one from two designs back, it has to be installed explicitly). Falkon now gives you that ridiculous hamburger menu instead of traditional ones, although once again, thankfully you can restore the old one, and future versions of Firefox are getting in on that act too.
I’d like to think the Falkon changes aren’t a harbinger of wider changes coming to KDE, but that’s probably a forlorn hope. I’m not a Windows or Microsoft fan, but I’ll say this for them: the Start menu/taskbar interface hasn’t been surpassed, and they walked back the disaster that was Windows 8 as quickly as they could. GNOME3 has been with us for what must be a decade, and it still sucks.
Still, it’s disappointing that macOS is making the same mistakes as everyone else.
Apple started it. Let’s not forget that the flat UI paradigm was largely introduced by Apple with iOS7, to get away from the (also pretty awful) “pseudo-realistic” interfaces of iOS6 and below.
Did they though? The look of the desktop is quite a different thing to its functionality. I happen to quite like the look of early versions of Mac OS X, but I wouldn’t go back to it at the cost of the UI working like GNOME. Some people say GNOME3 is supposed to be Mac-like, but if that’s true they have singularly failed in the attempt. In fact Big Sur is more GNOME-like than GNOME is Mac-like
Oops, managed to cut myself off. Was going to say that the only thing the Mac does even now that’s remotely like GNOME is the title bars, and hopefully they’ll see the error of their ways.
Although I’m not a fan of Google and Microsoft’s approach to privacy, I sometimes wish Linux distros tracked the changes people make to the UI. It would be interesting to know, for example, how many people who have KDE 5.21 immediately ditched the new Kickoff for the old, like I did. After all, it was user feedback that led to Microsoft ditching the Windows 8 interface, but we of course don’t have the same channels for sending feedback that MS users do.
No it was Windows 8 that started it with flat text based design. Then flat Android followed. iOS 7 came out one whole year after Windows 8.
I disagree with all of this.
The Start menu/taskbar paradigm is trash, and I can’t stand it. KDE and the rest of the Start menu DEs are included. No one has come up with a way to improve that albatross.
Gnome 3 is superb. It’s minimal, gets out of my way, and it is easy to drive with a keyboard. It’s matured quite well.
KDE really needs to slim down and quit being so ornate. I get it. “Be everything to everyone” is the mantra, but that gets in the way of making a really good DE. Plasma is interesting, but they need to ditch the Start menu and Taskbar to get away from the 50% this, 50% that problem.
Gnome 3 can be made to look like Gnome 2 or Windows by the way. It’s a matter of enabling some extensions that are probably included by default.
Well, a good friend of mine likes GNOME3 – vanilla, afaik – and thinks KDE is too complicated.
But for me KDE is fine as it is (give or take 5.21’s Kickoff menu, which I’ve already mentioned) and GNOME3 is unsalvageable even when you’ve faffed on installing the system that allows you to install the extensions, and then installed the extensions – and not just because, when you’ve done that, either you find that the extension you want is no longer developed, or it won’t install, or it when you’ve installed it it won’t work, or when you’ve installed it and gotten it to work it crashes, potentially bringing the whole sorry mess down with it.
As for the idea that it “gets out of your way,” it’s an oft-repeated mantra by the GNOME people, but it’s an oft-repeated mantra that I find laughable. None of the UI elements are discoverable unless you faff on trying to find them, and when you do EVERYTHING IS SO DAMN BIG that you think it must have been designed by a blind person, and you want to tear your eyes out because it’s so ugly it must have been designed by a blind person with no taste, and it makes them hurt. (Admittedly Yaru, by the Ubuntu people, is nice, and I’d love it to be in Ubuntu MATE, but it certainly isn’t worth putting up with the rest of the hot mess that is GNOME – with apologies to hot messes – just to see it.)
If they need to get rid of *anything* in KDE, it certainly isn’t the “Start Menu” and taskbar – they’re the main difference (though by no means the only one) that distinguish what makes KDE actually good from (I CANNOT stress this enough) the *utter disaster* that is GNOME. And to a certain extent you can make GNOME3 look like GNOME2 – I’ll take your word for it that you can make it look like Windows – or KDE – except that MATE does GNOME2 better, and KDE does KDE better. On the few occasions I’ve made the mistake of using GNOME3 – which if I have any sense will all remain past tense – I’ve ended up getting it to look something like KDE, only not as good, and then thought to myself, “I could have just installed KDE.”
GNOME3 is a horrible, horrible experience.
I don’t have to look at it or think about it. That’s the point.
I don’t know what to say. You have bad taste, and I’m sorry about that.
Hilarious. You GNOME people really are a piece of work. For no apparent reason you design* a system that doesn’t work like anything else (*if that’s not an insult to the word “design”), and clearly hasn’t had any thought put into aesthetics, then you pretend it’s not godawful and declare that anyone who doesn’t like your shitshow of a system because it’s completely unintuitive must be a moron, or because it looks like ass that we don’t have taste. Try looking at the design of KDE, Amiga, even Windows 10 if you want to know what taste is. (Sadly Mac has apparently started taking design cues from you.)
It’s been said of the people who designed the personal computer (lowercase p and c), Unix and the Mac that they were arrogant, but had the genius to justify the arrogance.
You remind me of them, but without the talent.
Well, this thread sure devolved… let’s not go crazy judging each other’s pixels though, haha. A DE is a personal choice that we shouldn’t judge each other for. Such things are too superficial to be important in the grand scheme of things and certainly not worth loosing respect over. How about a beer on me guys, eh? 🙂
Flatland_Spider,
We have different tastes in DE’s. haha. I actually prefer menu & taskbar in KDE (and XFCE for that matter) over GNOME3. I like having a task bar and frequently used launchers to be always visible. It’s true that it’s an old paradigm, but I don’t care since it still works well for me. To me GNOME3’s large UI elements could be more desirable on a touchscreen or tiny screen, but it’s not how I want my desktop to be.
Of course it all comes down to subjective preferences, so I’m thankful that we have choices 🙂
Exactly.
The wheel is an old paradigm, but there’s a reason why people have been using circular wheels for centuries – because they work, and square or diamond-shaped wheels don’t. It’s no bones to me what DE someone uses as long as I don’t have to use one that I don’t like, but when I see words like “superb” bandied about to describe GNOME, it does make me chuckle.
The wheel gets updated every so often. We’re not running around on wood and metal buggy wheels.
You have chosen the wrong analogy. You can’t compare GNOME vs KDE or anything else to metal vs. wooden wheels. GNOME is more like a wheel that for no apparent reason is diamond shaped, and has a rabid fan club despite being completely unsuitable for its intended use.
You never get over your first love. For me it was the RISC OS desktop. I still use it occasionally and there are still things about it I much prefer to the way Gnome 3 does things (which, for the record, I really like). Drag-to-save and no-auto-raise spring to mind.
But if I try to be objective, some of it can be put down to nostalgia, some of it can be put down to taste, and many of the changes to modern shells which I don’t much like are necessary for supporting other functionality which I do like (e.g. high-res displays, touchscreen input, security, cross-platform toolkits…).
Eventually I’ll transition fully to the command line, just like everyone on usenet said I would back in 1995.
I used RISC OS very briefly in the early nineties, at school, and was pretty impressed, though for me my first love was the Amiga. I’ve used RISC OS on my Pi 400 fairly often (when it’s not running Linux), and I quite like it. Just a shame it doesn’t run a browser with all the bells and whistles.
I don’t remember this, but apparently, the year my parents got me the Amiga I had asked for an Atari ST, but the guy in the shop convinced them that I wanted an Amiga instead. He was right, but I doubt I’d have been upset if they’d gotten me an Archimedes, either.
That may be true, but I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss Snow Leopard affection as nostalgia. At least personally, I’d been using computers for 20 years before it was released, and it still represents a kind of peak where the interface works so well that it becomes invisible. It also happened when Apple made durable and serviceable devices (my white Macbook with replaceable disk, memory and battery is still running great.) Unfortunately the reward for making fantastic products is being unable to sell the next product, so vendors are disincentivized to make a habit out of it.
When I think about my “first love”, OS/2 2.0 was high on the list, but I’d hate to use it today. It was very innovative and helped move things forward, but the disadvantage of going first is being unpolished in a lot of details. Win95’s new menu is so much nicer than Templates, and the taskbar is so much better than Minimized Window Viewer, etc.
Yes, I think AmigaOS would suffer in comparison to modern GUIs if I used it now. One of the main (fixable) things I complain about on Linux is fonts – they usually have to be fiddled with to get them to look anywhere near right. And they’re definitely not particularly good, by comparison with modern OSes, in any version of AmigaOS I’ve seen.
However, I only agree with maybe half of the points in the article – mostly the toolbars and the visibility (or otherwise) of GUI elements. In fact I’d switched my scrollbars to be always visible and had forgotten that that isn’t the default, but it should be. However, I suspect that the difference between the way Bookmarks worked in Safari in Snow Leopard vs. Big Sur is merely a matter of taste, as is the difference between the colourful icons in the Finder in SN vs. the monochrome ones in BS: They’re still differentiated enough by shape in macOS 11 that I don’t have any problem distinguishing them. As for the little icon in the corner that tells you how the icons are sorted, I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that, as a cursory look at the icons should tell you that anyway.
Finally, I think Apple must have changed the way the Show/Hide Sidebar toggle works since he wrote the blog post, as for me, when I click “Show Sidebar” it then becomes “Hide Sidebar,” and vice versa.
Of all his niggles, however, the damned combined title- and toolbar is the only one I really wish they hadn’t changed, which won’t surprise you if you’re familiar with my rants about GNOME. I just hope Apple don’t end up swapping the Menu Bar for something more “modern”. Apple, if you’re reading this and I’ve just given you an idea for something “better,” please DON’T.
Yes, I should have made clearer that I’ve rarely used macOS, so I don’t have much insight into the details of the article. It’s still fascinating to read about the development of the OS, and the often relatively small details that users grow to love or hate.
Back in the day the UK still had an IT manufacturing base but a combination of the mammoth US economy being a competitor and Far-East manufacture being so cheap and schizophrenic government support for industry plus an amoung of “splendid isolation” from the rest of Europe leads us to where we are today.
I liked a lot about RiscOS and ARM. RiscOS had some cool ideas. Alas RiscOS was niche and never had mainstream attraction.
I think being dependant on US domination of IT is a bad thing. I think snipping the transatlantic cables has its appeal.
I do find it sad that RISC OS (and other innovative OSes of the era) don’t get more credit for shaping the operating systems of today. History has a survivor bias.
But the one thing that is clear, at least to me, is that since that era we’ve benefited from greater plurality in the tech sector, from the US, Asia, China, Europe, everywhere. It’s always better when there’s more sharing of ideas, and less imbalance of power.
You have the inbuilt bias of population size and media and money pushing the usual suspects. They have no interest in people being aware of alternatives or underming their own creator narrative. Survivor bias is a good point. It’s not just globally but even within the US the US is crushing its own ecosystem. I wouldn’t want to work for a US company in the UK because they usually import their own obnoxious business practices. I’d like Europe to get back on its feet with things and have no major issue with Far-East production or collaboration. Sharing of ideas and balance of power like you say.
Leopard and Snow Leopard were the absolute pinnacle of Mac OS design. Everything was consistent with the grey gradient unified title bar and toolbar, and the light blue sidebar. During this era, Apple were heavily marketing switchers with the slogan “if you can use iTunes, you can use a Mac”.
Before Leopard, there was a weird mix of Brushed Metal, Pinstripe and the Mail app’s own custom “pills” UI. After Snow Leopard, Apple went a bit “texture crazy” with the stitched leather Calendar app and the yellow notepaper Notes app.
Mavericks was also a good release with a consistent UI when it first launched – on a par with Leopard and Snow Leopard. Sadly, subsequent updates brought bits of the iOS 7 UI to Mavericks – iTunes 12, Safari 9 and iWork are full of plain blue text on white backgrounds.
I’ve still got a few old Macs running Snow Leopard and Mavericks with era-appropriate software, just to remember how good Mac OS used to be. It’s fallen a long way.
There was only one problem with Snow Leopard – you can only resize windows from the bottom right corner. Resizing a window by grabbing any edge wasn’t added until Lion.
Leaopard and Snow Leaopard I agree were the pinnacle. Hackintosh was a thing and there was still goodwill and the idea that apple might open their OS to generic PCs was stilla hope. Sadly Jobs got more paranoid as the got more ill so this door closed. After then more walled garden, greed, and letting things rots and flat design came along. If I had any residual posiive feelings for Apple they evaporated instantly this happened.
“If I had any residual positive feelings for Apple they evaporated instantly”
You should try one of the new M1 Macs. They are so shockingly good that I have positive feelings for Apple hardware and macOS for the first time in almost a decade. Really. Almost impossibly good battery, super fast, decent GPU, and decent prices.
Yes, they’re really good.
Having said this: “If I had any residual positive feelings for Apple they evaporated instantly” I don’t care if it’s made out of diamond encrusted platinum. I do not like Apple and how I feel about Apple having made my decisions overrides anything and everything they are trying on.
Snow Leopard is the last release that I’m certain everyone who designed, developed and tested OS X actually used the end product after release. Hopefully as Apple moves onto a new arch, they also fire everyone who has had a hand in ruining the software experience. Firing the talentless hack Jony Ives is only part of what they could have done. Surely they have commit logs to track these people down and pink sheet them.
That “talentless hack” was responsible for the look of every piece of Mac hardware from at least 1997 till about 2019.
What he didn’t have a hand in was the software.
I don’t know Ive’s specific contributions, but depending on who you ask Apple’s made plenty of mistakes with hardware. Off the top of my head, trash can macpros, compromising on keyboard quality, MBPs that overheat and can’t handle sustained loads, limited upgrades. As someone who’s in the function over form camp, and given that apple tends to trade off function for form, their products can be disappointing. I won’t pretend everyone’s like me though, everyone has different needs and plenty of people fit into the hardware-is-a-status-symbol group. Apple has marketed itself very effectively to them.
The 2019 macpro is an exception where apple clearly bucked their normal form over function emphasis. They did a 180 and gave their engineers a much bigger role rather than usual and in doing so they created a product most engineers would find impressive. The biggest technical gripe I have is that they vendor locked the M.2 SSD, which is an anti-consumer move, but I’d appreciate the engineering that went into it. Alas, the pricing leaves a lot to be desired, at a $6k starting price you don’t even get decent specs.
I might be interested in apple’s ARM laptops (I think apple has the best ARM laptops), but only once it’s running linux natively (I’m not interested in emulating linux).
https://www.techradar.com/news/you-can-now-run-linux-and-windows-on-the-m1-macs
It’s being reported in the news that the M1 macs have some kind of bug (“feature”?) that is consuming SSD lifespan extremely quickly. This is problematic especially when you consider that unlike x86 macs, apple doesn’t allow M1 mac to boot directly off of external media, it could quickly become an unusable out of warranty brick, but we’ll see how apple addresses it.
https://knowtechie.com/apples-new-m1-macs-are-showing-worrying-ssd-usage-stats/
Nope. Jony took over software direction after Forstall was forced out. Here’s some links proving his role during the fall of mac and macos (owing to him in fact being a talentless hack who should have been sacked a decade before the mental gymnastics Apple execs took part in attempting to fool people into believing he was leaving of his own volition and that Apple hadn’t screwed up a decade’s worth of software and hardware at the whims of perhaps the most talentless hack to ever walk the earth):
https://www.imore.com/all-jony-ive-drama-explained
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come
@jonnyvice
I’ve read some stuff on Jonny Ive. There is very very little critical information. Most of what is available is the usual soft-focus autobiographical marketing. I don’t know what happened behind closed doors but he did have a design vision early on which got traction but note also that Ive wasn’t operating in a vacuum. A lot of design decisions were by their nature collaborative or involved other people making decisions to approve or not approve. Some of those decisions would be from the top, other departments, or in some cases possibly even suppliers who have their own input.
My opinion is the thin and light school of design was pushed beyond what was sensible. There’s far too many lack of repairability issues for a start. Flat design is also a total mistake. The gimmicks and price gouging really belong back in the 1980s.
There’s no doubt Apple have made mistakes, but that’s very far from Johnny Ive being a “talentless hack”.
As Accidental Tech podcast pointed out, smartmontools and SMART don’t force every manufacturer and OS developer to report the same stats the same way, so we don’t yet know whether the way Big Sur handles swap will shorten the life of SSD’s. If it does, however, I’d agree that between that and the scissor switch keyboards Apple need to get their act together.
We’ll have to see whether being free of Intel’s disappointing roadmap means Apple give us more bang for our buck, but there’s something to be said for the fact that as the only supplier of Macs, (not to mention iPads and iPhones, etc.) Apple need a bit of a cushion to avoid becoming just another commodity PC maker. Whether you think that’s good or bad is of course personal choice.
JeffR,
Sure, I wasn’t the one calling him a talentless hack though. I think there are legitimate gripes that may have been the result of his design choices, but I don’t really know what his specific contributions were. In any case I accept that everyone has different needs and opinions and that’s ok 🙂
@JeffR
Marco Pierre White? Is that you?