Hacker News Reader

Comment by labster | Hacker News Reader

I feel the same way. I have an original iPhone that I still use as a music player, and the old UI still looks insanely great compared to the flat, gray expanse we find ourselves in today. System 7 was pretty solid design work as well. Imagine what our desktops would look like if they had gotten Copeland running.

View on HN

UTM (the Virtualization and Emulation software for Mac) has a system9 image on their gallery which is easy to install. It also looks great.

But to do anything more interesting than boot up, it quickly becomes cumbersome and non functional.

I'd love to use OS9 in UTM daily, but it's really just a tech demo.

Ah ok. I also only booted it up and checked old memories but nothing more. I did a simple network setup and wanted to know if the internet works (well with the security restrictions it has)

I will forever miss skeuomorphism.

I suspect it will return as we realize newer generations of people don’t really know how to use anything? Maybe that’s more of a hope than anything :)

I suspect newer generations will instead try to change the reality so that it resembles the digital world.

It’s been happening for some time. Look at how many touchscreens get used on things that shouldn’t have them.

same. I really thought the community made a mistake entirely rejecting the concept in the past 10+ years

I'd argue it was a reaction to "rich Corinthian leather", yellow-lined notepads and green baize, which only appeared in Lion and Mountain Lion. The more subtle use of skeuomorphic elements (aqua buttons, brushed aluminum, etc.) was collateral damage.

I was on the team that implemented all those things. We hated it. We did it because Steve had an epiphany while flying back from Hawaii on his jet that the seats were like, really nice. He wrote an email that all the apps needed to be like that. And thus we spent a year doing it.

not surprised. this anecdote is some good evidence for how i felt at the time: apple took a good thing way too far and as a result now we have to suffer through the google / windows flat UIs everywhere which are just plane lazy

Reply on news.ycombinator.com