Hacker News Reader

Comment by notadoc | Hacker News Reader

Windows 95 had an obvious UI, but was rather cluttered.

The original Macintosh up through System 7 was perhaps peak of OS UI design, the simplicity and obviousness is a marvel. The modern Mac experience is no where near that simple, particularly since the Yosemite UI overhaul.

The original iPad had pretty great UI design too, until the iOS 7 redesign. Now I think it's probably the most confusing UI that exists on a modern OS. Nothing is obvious. Multitasking and copy/paste on iPad is befuddling to even the smartest and most technical people I know.

UI design that was perfected 30+ years ago has been completely shelved and lost by designers who are designing for other designers and their portfolios, rather than for users.

View on HN

> "The original Macintosh up through System 7 was perhaps peak of OS UI design, the simplicity and obviousness is a marvel."

I first used System 7 after having used DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95 and a bit of SunOS. With that background, I found System 7 and the silly hardware limitations to be anything but intuitive.

To this day I find it annoying to have to go all the way to to top of the monitor to get to a menu. Arguably that was less of a pain on the tiny screen of a Mac SE, but becomes real where than one app is open in a way that the windowed app feature is used in a meaningful way.

An example of silly hardware limitations includes substituting an eject button on the floppy drive for dragging it to the trash. The same action used to delete files or folders is used to regain possession of my precious files.

The single button on a mouse to make it simple sounds nice, but then there are modifiers using command - giving the same functionality a windows user would expect from a right click.

> An example of silly hardware limitations includes substituting an eject button on the floppy drive for dragging it to the trash. The same action used to delete files or folders is used to regain possession of my precious files.

1000x this. I remember using a Mac for the first time at school (1997-ish). I needed to put a file on a floppy, which was similar enough to Windows 95 up to ejecting the floppy. I ran my finger over the drive area and asked someone (a teacher, maybe), who said 'drag the floppy to the trash'. 'I want to eject it, not delete it!' I did it anyway (if it got deleted, just copy it again), and was surprised that it worked. I made another mental note that PCs were superior with their physical eject buttons, as I realized that a Mac could eat a floppy (like a stereo eating a cassette tape) if the drive (or OS or mouse) failed.

> The original Macintosh up through System 7 was perhaps peak of OS UI design

Interestingly, that was right around the time Apple's original interaction designer left the company.

I miss IRIX. I loved the tiles when a window was minimized.

Me too.

And a simple virtual desktop implementation I used constantly.

How about fun, common sense widgets?

Scalable, vector desktop icons...

And a CD player featuring, "Save Track As..."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com