I feel like I'm becoming a fan of old gray interfaces (win 95, macos 9). They feel like tools to me, like a calculator is just a tool, and it's comforting.
> Does anybody else feel like that?
Honestly, no; the parts of the UI that I see and work with are limited to the menu bar (just flat text, no embellishments), three dots and sometimes the Spotlight bar but I don't actively look at it unless it's slow. Same thing with Windows. I never work with the OS and rarely with native apps, it's all browser based and/or crossplatform applications that use third party design systems.
Sad part is there's really no reason they couldn't offer this look & feel in modern MacOS, except for the obvious reason (poorly designed software that lacks modularity). I'm tired of pretending that software companies are remotely good at software.
My favourite one is 10.3 Panther with the mix of aqua and brushed metal. 10.4 Tiger is similar but it has a glossy top menu bar that didn’t age well in my opinion. 10.5 Leopard has the fancy cheesy 3D dock, transparent top menu bar, and the more modern gradients. It looked great at the time but gradients aren’t as cool as brushed metal and aqua.
Everything after is a bit boring.
Panther was peak OS X. Spotlight, in Tiger, was amazing, but Tiger’s performance was significantly worse.
I had the same reaction looking at the screenshots. Sure it could use a new coat a paint (maybe not _everything_ needs to be gray) but the foundation is fantastically usable.
To me, Mac OS X looks so much better than todays Mac OS. It looks clear and orderly and I feel like "Great in this environment I can get some work done!".
Current Mac OS feels like "Help, I fell into a sack of candies, how do I get out of here?" to me.
Does anybody else feel like that?