[BrenBarn]

> I think Windows 95/2000 and the contemporary MacOS (including the then future MacOS X) have the best UI in everything I used in my 30+ years of tech life.

Agreed. I do wonder how much of it is personal, in that that UI hit at a certain formative time in my life. But ever since then it's been the benchmark that I evaluate all other UIs by. The lack of a "classic" mode in Win10 was one thing that motivated me to switch fully to Linux. To make the switch, I spent a good amount of time trawling the themes to find one that mimicks the look of Win95/95/2000. (The one I use is a KDE theme called "Reactionary".)

[giantrobot]

> I do wonder how much of it is personal, in that that UI hit at a certain formative time in my life. But ever since then it's been the benchmark that I evaluate all other UIs by.

I know some of my preferences for UIs are informed by what I first really learned how to use. But I also have preferences that are informed by decades of heavy computer use.

I despise UI widgets that just look like the window background with no borders or shadows. I can't stand massive amounts of useless white space. UI widgets don't require oxygen to survive so they don't need to fucking "breath" that much. I also despise mystery meat UIs that change their arrangement because I clicked one button more often than another.

Everything that increases my cognitive load and doesn't allow me to build up muscle memory in a UI is supremely frustrating. I might like the "look" of Mac System 7, it was a great intersection of functional and whimsical in my opinion. The consistent behaviors and learnable interface go beyond subjective visual appeal however.

[BrenBarn]

Another thing is that part of my liking for the UI of that time is connected with the fact that it was consistent across all apps. Like you could set the font and color for a menu bar and every app would have that. This era of web apps drives me nuts because now it's switched to "this app should look the same for all viewers", when I want it to be "all apps should look the same when I use them".