I do enjoy these sorts of things. There was a time when it was about "user interface design" instead of "user experience". Back then it was about "human interface guidelines", consistency, efficiency, and minimal use friction.<p>Nowadays it's all about the prettiest farkle and the most novel interface. Where friction actually means "more time eyeballs spend looking at my design", and consistency has zero value.<p>Teams, I'm looking at you. Every election app? You suck at usability, and my laptop is too hot. Windows metro? You <i>obviously</i> sucked and no one misses you. Ribbon instead of menus? Thanks for making me move my mouse and eyes ten times as far just so I can enjoy your pretty icons.
Like big revolutions in fine art or music, the UI patterns seem obvious and common to contemporary users, but you have to judge them by the genius it took for MS to arrive there on their own for the first time.<p>I would argue that a step up the size of what we saw from Windows 3.1 to 95 hasn’t been seen since, certainly not on the desktop.
> The final Start Menu integrated functions other than starting programs, to give users a single-button home base in the UI.<p>Windows 95 must also be one of the better marketing campaigns for any software product.<p>As I was reading this I had flashbacks to their TV commercials showing the start menu and started humming “start me up” to myself :)