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Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room

(github.com)
567 points elvis70 | 3 comments | 30 Mar 25 15:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.008s | source
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metadat ◴[30 Mar 25 16:14 UTC] No.43525239[source]▶
This looks nice and easy to use.

My hypothesis is today's "modern" OS user interfaces are objectively worse from a usability perspective, obfuscating key functionality behind layers of confusing menus.

It reminds me of these "OS popularity since the 70s" time lapse views:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cTKhqtll5cQ

The dominance of Windows is crazy, even today, Mac desktops and laptops are comparatively niche

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esafak ◴[30 Mar 25 16:29 UTC] No.43525364[source]▶
Microsoft Windows programs hid functionality under layers of menus and the registry. MacOS, at least, surfaces much less functionality, because it offers sensible defaults. I never had to do anything akin to fiddling with the Windows Registry.

I did like some Windows things, though, like the ribbon, and reconfigurable UIs. Today's UIs are more immutable, for the worse.

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brandon272 ◴[30 Mar 25 16:36 UTC] No.43525437[source]▶
There is an entire ecosystem of free and paid Mac apps meant to augment the Mac experience because MacOS does not provide functionality or configuration needed for a sensible computing experience out of the box.
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exiguus ◴[30 Mar 25 17:24 UTC] No.43525857{3}[source]▶
I think, the main difference of MacOS and Windows is, that Windows allow drivers from 3rd-party. MacOS does not. Drivers means also hardware. So you can build your own PC. Same as with Linux.

This is the Apple secret of success IMO. No 3rd-party drivers and hardware, means, it will just work and no one will blame you for stuff 3rd-parties messed up.

But its also like: There is only a red and blue t-shirt. Choose. No gray, no white, no yellow, no printings.

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1. cosmic_cheese ◴[30 Mar 25 17:32 UTC] No.43525905{4}[source]▶
macOS allows third-party drivers too, Apple just wants vendors to write them in userspace rather than kernelspace. That’s probably not the worst thing, because proprietary driver code is notoriously shoddy and should be run somewhere that limits the blast radius.
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2. exiguus ◴[30 Mar 25 17:49 UTC] No.43526042[source]▶
Sure, i think the userspace restriction is also the reason, that nearly no 3rd-party hardware for Mac exist.
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3. cosmic_cheese ◴[30 Mar 25 18:01 UTC] No.43526138[source]▶
That’s mainly restricted to graphics cards. Audio cards like used for production as well as I/O (USB, etc) and networking cards have drivers and work fine given you have a PCI-E slot to plug them into, and of course almost anything external connected via USB or Thunderbolt works fine. For GPUs, it’s only a specific subset of users that needs a discrete GPU, especially as the GPU built into M-series SoCs has become powerful enough for most uses outside of high-end gaming.