Ugly Operating Systems

[mj_brooks]

I enjoy using both OS X and Windows for different things. Currently, I have Mavericks installed on my Mac and Windows 8.1 on my PC. The reason I haven't upgraded either of those is that I just cannot stand how flat the newer operating systems look. 

 

For OS X - The looks of Yosemite and beyond just totally destroyed everything I enjoyed about OS X visually. I love the subtle gradients on the buttons and icons on Mavericks, and even the taskbar just has this nice roundness to it that's really pleasant to look at. It looks really professional, elegant, and almost kind of polished, at least in my opinion. The newer OS's have this cartoony vibe that I just cannot stand behind. I think the dark mode thing is alright, but everything from the icons to the system text, to the plasticky transparent glassish vibe just makes it feel like an ugly phone OS on a computer. 

 

For Windows - My dislike for Windows 10 is mostly a color and shape thing. It just seems like a mix of dark colors with some highlights, and then just squared-off edges on seriously everything. Plus it just feels so washed out with just white and grey on some areas, especially on the taskbar and the minimize buttons and all that. The lack of vibrancy in the colors just makes it feel super dull and uninspiring to me, and I know a bunch of people would probably disagree with me on this, but I much prefer the brighter colors and vibrance that was shown on Windows 8. It made the OS more of a delight to use, and was more inviting and bright to look at. Windows 7 and 8 also both had some lovely, subtle gradients that were really nice, another thing missing from 10. 

 

It's kind of not important, but especially with the newer versions of OS X, I don't enjoy feeling like I'm falling behind in the past with an older OS, especially with certain programs and stuff that will only run on newer OS's. But at the same time, I would hate to upgrade to say Sierra, but then hate how it looks to the point where I just don't enjoy using it. 

 

Kind of a petty rant, but does anyone here share this sentiment with either OS's? I remember when Yosemite came out I wasn't totally alone on the whole "Yosemite is ugly thing," but I didn't know if most people have gotten over that or not.

[doomsriker]

Windows 10 lets you customize all kinds of things includeing color. P.S. When I read the post title, I imediatly thoght of windows 8.1, which in my opinion looks gastly. 

[mj_brooks]

4 minutes ago, doomsriker said:

Windows 10 lets you customize all kinds of things includeing color. P.S. When I read the post title, I imediatly thoght of windows 8.1, which in my opinion looks gastly. 

Yeah I did try and play around with the colors in Windows 10 for a while, and while I could get it to look better, it always still had this sort of darkness/flatness to it, especially with the start menu. I remember most people kind of hating the looks of Windows 8.1, but I feel like if you installed Classic Shell it basically just made it look like a glassier, more vibrant version of Windows 7.

[Mira Yurizaki]

I dunno, I like the "flat" look where modern OS design languages are heading. But not completely flat like Metro, because it has some design ambiguities (is this text a button? A label? A link?). I think Google nailed it with Material Design.

 

I'd rather the GUI focus on the UX over having pretty chrome. I don't think Aero Glass is cool anymore.

[mj_brooks]

6 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I dunno, I like the "flat" look where modern OS design languages are heading. But not completely flat like Metro, because it has some design ambiguities (is this text a button? A label? A link?). I think Google nailed it with Material Design.

 

I'd rather the GUI focus on the UX over having pretty chrome. I don't think Aero Glass is cool anymore.

Yeah I agree with you there, with both material design and the aero glass. I can be alright with "flat-ish," which is something I really liked about Windows 8.1. 

It still has the overall flat nature of newer UIs, but there are some subtle gradients and extra borders to give it a sense of dimension. Not super flashy, but not literally just single colors all around like 10 seems to have.

[Nena Trinity]

Jump to Linux?

[mj_brooks]

2 minutes ago, Nena360 said:

Jump to Linux?

I'd actually love to try Linux, but there's no way I could make it my primary OS, just because the software I use on a regular basis isn't available for it and it would make working on projects with others really difficult. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

12 minutes ago, mj_brooks said:

Yeah I agree with you there, with both material design and the aero glass. I can be alright with "flat-ish," which is something I really liked about Windows 8.1. 

It still has the overall flat nature of newer UIs, but there are some subtle gradients and extra borders to give it a sense of dimension. Not super flashy, but not literally just single colors all around like 10 seems to have.

I'd argue that's more ambiguous than what Windows 10 does. And this was actually a common complaint about Aero Glass: it's hard to tell what the active window at times.

 

The whole "flat UI" movement though is because modern GUI designers want to get away from skeuomorphisms. They don't buy us much now. I forgot where I found it, but I recall a blog that theorized the reason why skeuomorphism was a thing was because it helped with two things:

• Familiarize people with computers, as a way to bridge the real world to the digital world. i.e., to make a calculator app seem less intimidating, make it look like a calculator someone would use in the real world.
• Hide the ugliness of low resolution or low PPI displays

But now that computers are essentially ingrained in modern culture, the first point isn't really that necessary anymore. What was "ambiguous" then seems "intuititve" now. For example, when Microsoft initially made the Start Menu, it didn't have the word "Start" in it. People got confused how to use the OS. So they added the word "Start". Now, aside from probable trademark reasons, most people who use a modern OS don't need a button that says "Start". They see some unique looking button and think this must be some super menu that works like the Start Menu.

 

The second point though was more about how skeuomorphic graphics can have its faults. The biggest one is that it doesn't scale well. The flat looking icon of say Outlook is much easier to scale to various resolutions than say Apple's old Mail icon:

 

I know, I sound like an apologetic to flat UI design, but to me the reasoning behind it make sense. It's like this: The UI should present the content, not itself. This is why I don't like Aero Glass anymore and think things like Compiz on Linux, while neat, is pointless. It focuses too much on flashy presentation than presenting the content in a clear way. I mean a common "hack" in Windows to "speed it up" was to get rid of the extra animations the UI was doing.

[mj_brooks]

29 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I know, I sound like an apologetic to flat UI design, but to me the reasoning behind it make sense. It's like this: The UI should present the content, not itself. This is why I don't like Aero Glass anymore and think things like Compiz on Linux, while neat, is pointless. It focuses too much on flashy presentation than presenting the content in a clear way. I mean a common "hack" in Windows to "speed it up" was to get rid of the extra animations the UI was doing.

Thanks for the insightful answer, all that stuff does make a good bit of sense, especially with function in mind. The skeuomorphism stuff is pretty trippy, and I think I've read about that in places before. I guess I just feel like the liveliness of the operating system is starting to go away too with certain design changes, and I prefer the more touchable, skeuomorphic design style. Who knows, maybe they'll end up developing something that is a bit more "in-between" that I'll like, although I'm kind of panicking in regards to the direction Apple's going as a whole right now.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, mj_brooks said:

Thanks for the insightful answer, all that stuff does make a good bit of sense, especially with function in mind. The skeuomorphism stuff is pretty trippy, and I think I've read about that in places before. I guess I just feel like the liveliness of the operating system is starting to go away too with certain design changes, and I prefer the more touchable, skeuomorphic design style. Who knows, maybe they'll end up developing something that is a bit more "in-between" that I'll like, although I'm kind of panicking in regards to the direction Apple's going as a whole right now.

That's why I think Google has the right idea with Material Design. It's flat, but not so flat that it hides contextual cues.

[mj_brooks]

28 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

That's why I think Google has the right idea with Material Design. It's flat, but not so flat that it hides contextual cues.

Yeah exactly, flat but also almost like soft looking and lively

[treeroy]

Windows 10 is a great OS in my opinion but I don't like the way it looks. Not a fan of the rectangular design on everything, and having the colours as solid and dull. I wish I could reskin it to look like Windows Vista which was my favourite Windows in terms of looks, that thing looked gorgeous.

[Satisfoxy]

I think the word you are looking for is grey. The newer operating system colors and interfaces are this ugly mixture of grey. Even cars and such are doing this too. Look at all the colors you can get for cars now adays, do you see any bright colors anymore? Nope, color+grey.

 

I completely agree with you but unfortunately as much as I'd like to use the older operating systems I haven't a chose in my work.

[captain_to_fire]

On 12/13/2016 at 1:51 AM, mj_brooks said:

Kind of a petty rant, but does anyone here share this sentiment with either OS's? I remember when Yosemite came out I wasn't totally alone on the whole "Yosemite is ugly thing," but I didn't know if most people have gotten over that or not.

I think you and I have similar thoughts on both Windows and Mac. Though I'm a little disappointed that they've taken away the amazing "Dock Exposé" feature in OS X Snow Leopard as well as coverflow in iTunes.

 

[mj_brooks]

On 12/13/2016 at 6:50 AM, treeroy said:

Windows 10 is a great OS in my opinion but I don't like the way it looks. Not a fan of the rectangular design on everything, and having the colours as solid and dull. I wish I could reskin it to look like Windows Vista which was my favourite Windows in terms of looks, that thing looked gorgeous.

Yeah I think at the time it was made Vista was one of the sexier operating systems, though it was pretty widely hated until many believe Windows 7 "fixed" it. And yeah Windows 10 is extremely rectangular with everything, which may also have something to do with being more optimized for touch-related tasks. But I think it could be a bit more lifelike.

On 12/16/2016 at 1:07 PM, Satisfoxy said:

I think the word you are looking for is grey. The newer operating system colors and interfaces are this ugly mixture of grey. Even cars and such are doing this too. Look at all the colors you can get for cars now adays, do you see any bright colors anymore? Nope, color+grey.

 

I completely agree with you but unfortunately as much as I'd like to use the older operating systems I haven't a chose in my work.

Yeah I see what you mean with the grayness. I definitely think a little bit of gray or unsaturation in many things is good, I don't think I'd want to see just extremely vibrant reds on an OS or anything but a sports car, but again, I feel like there's somewhere in the middle that would look a bit nicer. And I could imagine that with work, especially if you're working with others who have similar software or a software that only works on a certain OS.

On 12/17/2016 at 8:30 AM, hey_yo_ said:

I think you and I have similar thoughts on both Windows and Mac. Though I'm a little disappointed that they've taken away the amazing "Dock Exposé" feature in OS X Snow Leopard as well as coverflow in iTunes.

 

Yeah I feel that lately "features" hasn't really been a huge word in Apple's dictionary. While I'm sure they're getting rid of and adding some definitely useful things like better RAM management and things like that, they tend to be getting rid of widely used things these days and losing sight of what people actually want or would care to use.

 

And after reading through part of your post, yeah there are definitely a lot of things we agree on. I really enjoy the elegance and build quality of modern day Macs, but for gaming and managing files and windows I much prefer the Windows OS.