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

(github.com)
567 points elvis70 | 1 comments | 30 Mar 25 15:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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voidfunc ◴[30 Mar 25 16:25 UTC] No.43525330[source]▶
I got in an argument with an accessibility engineer about this recently...

The whole UI as branding thing has utterly killed usability.

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Lorkki ◴[30 Mar 25 19:36 UTC] No.43526880[source]▶
It's also repeating what the hellscape of inconsistent skinned UIs did in the late 90s and early 2000s. People are looking back at those times with a rather selective memory.
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1. Gormo ◴[31 Mar 25 12:24 UTC] No.43534162{3}[source]▶
The themed UIs of that era were very superficial -- if they applied to serious software at all, they were just a cosmetic layer on top of an otherwise well-engineered interface, and could be easily disabled. Most people I knew, for example, disabled the theming engine that shipped with Windows XP. Most applications that supported UI skinning still had a default or fallback UI that adhered well enough to modern conventions.

Not so much anymore. The abandonment of any coherent organizing principle to UI layout in favor of pure aesthetics has been a massive regression. Reasonably complex software often doesn't even include menu bars anymore, for example.