(mac)ostalgia – how Spotify, Slack, Chrome, Figma could look on Mac OS 9

Wow, this is incredible. Can’t imagine how much work this took.<p>Seeing this makes me think about how many modern applications could learn a few things from the old Mac OS 8&#x2F;9 Human Interface Guidelines. [0]<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mirror.informatimago.com&#x2F;next&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;mac&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;HIGOS8Guidelines.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mirror.informatimago.com&#x2F;next&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;doc...</a>

Surprisingly I found myself not preferring the OS 9 versions nearly as much as I thought. I have always thought of the OS 9 UI and the late &#x27;90s to early 2000s as representing the peak of OS UI design before everything went skeuomorphic, but a lot of the general aesthetic of that time just doesn&#x27;t seem to have aged that well. I still miss the crisp lines and clear affordances of actual buttons and other elements of that time, but there was also a LOT of visual clutter that we no longer need. There&#x27;s much to say about modern design fads, but we have also come a long way.<p>The author has certainly done a great job of capturing the zeitgeist of the era (the garish bevels on the Spotify app are spot on!), but I would love to see how the OS 9 UI would hold up in modern times, on a retina screen with more than 256 colours, modern anti-aliased typography and much more screen real estate.

incredible work (really) but this is obviously not a realistic user experience: I can tell what&#x27;s clickable on the screen easily and things are generally too consistent and simply make too much sense<p>I mean, neat concept, but really lacking in the user hostility that today&#x27;s users demand

Stimulates a bit of an impulse I had as a teenager and wanting to experience that on my PC, or get into BeOS or QNX, based just on witnessing screenshots and something deeply striking my fancy. Before I got into Linux (which was before I got a Mac in 2006), I used WindowBlinds and LiteStep to do exactly that, and more. I used to really care more about certain trappings of my experience, and I didn&#x27;t have any actual work to do. Now I settle for whatever in my 30s.<p>Let&#x27;s see, what is my first extant contribution to the Internet… oh yeah, I thought this was handsome. It was a theme for an explorer.exe shell replacement.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wincustomize.com&#x2F;explore&#x2F;litestep&#x2F;154&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wincustomize.com&#x2F;explore&#x2F;litestep&#x2F;154&#x2F;</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;skins14.wincustomize.com&#x2F;1&#x2F;53&#x2F;153855&#x2F;6&#x2F;154&#x2F;preview-6-154.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;skins14.wincustomize.com&#x2F;1&#x2F;53&#x2F;153855&#x2F;6&#x2F;154&#x2F;preview-6...</a>

It&#x27;s amazing how much more usable applications become when their UIs are consistent with the other UI of the platform. Unfortunately, marketing wants every product to &quot;stand out&quot; and thus (even before the Electron fad started) they develop custom controls and other annoying &quot;uniqueness&quot;.<p>The Zoom one reminded me of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;CU-SeeMe" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;CU-SeeMe</a> --- yes, videoconferencing was actually possible on the hardware of the time.

I definitely can’t help but wish a version of Slack that actually gave a passing concern for integration into a system UI exists. The “look we can do custom CSS everywhere and not look like ANY of our target platforms” garbage has the bane of my work day since it became popular.

I know at least one person who would pay _very good money_ for a version of Slack that opened channels in separate windows.

Page requires js to see images and I didn&#x27;t feel like making a noscript exception just to read text and see images so I guess I&#x27;m moving on. Please, support raw html fallback web!

As a big fan of the Platinum theme used in Mac OS 8 and 9, I absolutely love this!!! This is a fantastic demo of what modern applications would look like had they been designed under the Apple Human Interface Guidelines of the Mac OS 9 era. If these weren&#x27;t mockups and were actual redesigns of Spotify, Zoom, and Slack, I&#x27;d download them as soon as possible.

This is amazing.<p>And, wow, actual separate windows for things! I am constantly frustrated by Slack’s inability to show more than one conversation at a time.

This would not only look great, but run incredibly fast:<p>Low-res bitmap icons, bitmap fonts, no antialiasing, no composition, etc.<p>On Linux you can still have a pretty old school desktop with some of these elements... but may not run well on HiDPI.

It might be an unpopular opinion (in general), but OS 9 was actually beautiful. The design elements might look clunky by today&#x27;s standards, but they were quite self-explanatory &amp; functional, as compared to current macOS flat designs. I am stating purely from an angle of being friendly to an absolute beginner (e.g. a kid).<p>I was in middle school in 2001 when I saw a paint program (MacPaint?) on an oyester iBook - It was way more intuitive and engaging than Windows counterpart. I think late Classic Macintosh (v8.6-9) to early OSX (~10.8) had a very good aesthetic balance between form &amp; function.

I miss when application software was allowed to have multiple windows.

As someone who grew up on the classic Mac os this is astonishingly well done. Bravo

Some interactive nostalgia is available here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;felixrieseberg&#x2F;macintosh.js&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;felixrieseberg&#x2F;macintosh.js&#x2F;</a><p>&quot;This is Mac OS 8, running in an Electron app pretending to be a 1991 Macintosh Quadra. Yes, it&#x27;s the full thing.&quot;

I enjoyed this, though the pull down menus at the top are shifted down a little further than the real thing and spaced a little far, and the labels on the desktop icons weren&#x27;t quite that fat. Hey, when it comes to the uncanny valley, it&#x27;s the little things.<p>But the apps ring true. The splash screens are a nice touch.

God... the classy Platinum look is peak MacOS to me. I was never super fond of Aqua, and the modern design ranges from &quot;pretty usable&quot; with Mojave to &quot;I think this is an Ubuntu skin&quot; with Big Sur. Platinum just feels... right, to me at least. It&#x27;s aged pretty gracefully compared to the look of Windows 98, and manages to look equal parts fun and professional. The only real sticking points are the graphics used in the icons, if they were replaced with more appropriately lo-fi versions of the NeXTStep ones I think it would be a true Renaissance system.

Nicely done — but what would be even more interesting would be an attempt to see where Mac OS would have gone had a) Aqua not happened, and b) Had they resisted the trends in interfaces that most OSes have followed since. I&#x27;m genuinely curious to see where Mac OS (or Windows 2000, for that matter) might be today, especially from the perspective of usability, going their own, user- and content-focused, ways.

The Figma redesign shows an MDI interface, which was simply never a thing on Mac. It would have had floating palettes, like Photoshop: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macintoshrepository.org&#x2F;683-adobe-photoshop-4-0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.macintoshrepository.org&#x2F;683-adobe-photoshop-4-0</a>

Mac OS UI is a great example for why one shouldn&#x27;t &quot;improve&quot; software just for the sake for changing something. UI design peaked at Windows XP style. the design portraied here falls for my opinion in that category. As a user of xfce (on Linux Mint) which is basically Windows XP with different icons I am super happy. Apple actually came up with only a single valuable UI element and that is the three finger swipe to switch workspaces or display running applications. The rest is crap and I am flabbergasted at how Mac fanboys are willing to jump through hoops to justify and praise whatever Apple dumps on them.<p>Working in IT they gave me an MBP (the edition w&#x2F;o an Esc key) and now my second IPhone (13PM). I say with confidence that the only reason why Mac &#x2F; IPhone is more popular than a TP (be it with Windows or Linux) &#x2F; Android is simply b&#x2F;c it is more expensive and a status symbol. That&#x27;s it. A status symbol. Congratulations to Apple for conning even IT experts who are at the end of the day also just human beings with psychological weaknesses to be capitalized on.

Why did it take us so long to get rid of these oversized scrollbars? I can&#x27;t recall monitor quality of 90s&#x2F;00s but surely the scrollbars didn&#x27;t need to take 5% fo the real estate, right?<p>Makes me wonder what sort of currently extremely common UI elements we&#x27;ll look down on in the near future.

Has anyone tried the Unreal Engine&#x27;s &quot;The Matrix Awakens&quot; * tech demo on the PS5 or XBoxen? The settings menu looks like this. Another recent homage to the late 90s.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;WU0gvPcc3jQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;WU0gvPcc3jQ</a>

The Spotify design reminds me of Kazaa

I really loved OS 9. My first mac dual booted OS 9 and Mac OS X. This was around 2004-2005 I think.

This is cool. I must say that I prefer the OS9 version of Zoom with the detached windows.

A decent Platinum skin for, say, FVWM would really make my day. I seem to remember this sort of thing existing 20 years ago but can&#x27;t find much any more.

I still have a G3 iMac Bondi Blue that runs Mac OS 9, my son plays some of the educational games on it. Stuff that doesn&#x27;t work in OSX.

Now swap the components and do the same for Aqua interface, with translucency and 3D :-) Jokes aside, incredible job.

Hmm my cursor disappears and from time to time flickers into existence on this page (FireFox 95.0.2 on Win 10).

Love how the designs in Figma themselves also change to reflect that era&#x27;s web designs.

Ironically, the website is broken when viewed on Safari. Just white blank page. :(

This visually looks so much easier to use than the modern versions

I&#x27;d much rather use that version of Slack.

I’ve used OS 9 and earlier versions. It wasn’t until OSX did an Apple OS feel right GUI wise.

just ... wow