Comment by amyjess
10 years ago
I still maintain that Windows 95 was the pinnacle of desktop UX. Nobody else, before, since, or at the same time, has released anything better.
Every Windows version since has been incrementally worse. Hell, Microsoft started ruining it with Windows 98, by merging Windows Explorer and IE into something really terrible. I still miss Windows 95 Explorer. And then there was Microsoft's obsession with trying to turn the desktop into a web page... they ruined a lot of things, like the Find utility, and several Control Panel applets with that.
Been a very, very long time since I had this argument, but I do think System 7 was better. Absolutely not technically, but definitely in terms of a coherent and consistent desktop metaphor, especially across shell and apps.
W95 broke its own metaphors all the time (hell, it supported both MDI and SDI!) and wasn't consistent. Sure, you can drag and drop this document icon to this window, but try to drag a document icon on top of a window minimized to taskbar and you get a popup that tells you "we know what you want to do and why, but we're not going to let you. Do something else", which is a cardinal UX sin.
Even the look, which I really liked at the time, is a shameless lift of NextSTEP (another competitor for "pinnacle of desktop UX") with other bits pinched from OS/2.
What made me pick Win95 over System 7 is that Win95 absolutely nailed window management, while System 7's lack of good window management drove me up the wall.
The taskbar, and more importantly the ability to minimize windows to the taskbar, was a godsend. WindowShade didn't compare (and it didn't come with the OS until 7.5), and the oddball options in System 7's multitasking menu were frustrating to deal with. System 7 was a singletasking OS hacked to support multitasking, and it really shows.
About the only thing System 7 did better than Win95 with regards to window management was that they made sure to put the close box on the opposite side of the titlebar from the zoom box and the shade box, to prevent a misclick from closing your window (I've since incorporated this into my KDE configuration).
Oddly enough, it's the technical aspects of the classic Mac OS that fascinate the hell out of me. The whole OS was made of clever hacks. Resource forks were a stroke of genius, and I wish modern OSes had them. I spent so much time hacking around with ResEdit on my Mac as a kid, and later on I learned to appreciate the subtler things about resource forks. Like how the System 7.1 (and above) Finder lets you drag and drop FONT resources between files as if they were folders (they called this a "suitcase" instead of a "folder", but the UI was identical). And then there was the brilliant -- and rather scary -- hackery of how desk accessories were implemented (something that became unnecessary with System 7, but Apple still had the sense to hack the System 7 Finder to treat DA suitcases as programs, which itself was pretty clever).
Or, for that matter, System 7's extensions were the single most flexible method of modifying the behavior of the OS I've ever seen. Mind you, it wasn't exactly stable (untangling extension conflicts was a nightmare, even after 7.5 added a utility to help with it), and it was certainly insecure, but I really miss that flexibility and hackability in modern OSes. The only thing I've seen that comes close is Android's Xposed Framework.
Honestly, if there was one thing I missed about the '90s, it was the UX design across the board. Just thinking that Windows 95, System 7, and NeXTStep were all competing with each other at the same time makes me realized how blessed that period of time was, and how things have really gone downhill since.
You're right that W95 offered a better window management paradigm, but for me that was also hobbled by the inconsistencies: MDI apps handled windows differently from SDI apps, for instance, and you couldn't be certain what was minimized where. The Mac did have fewer features, but they all worked in a totally consistent and coherent way.
(You're also right about the technical aspects — Mac OS was a talking dog that also said very interesting things. Don't forget how you could install Control Panels and Extensions in the right places just by dropping them on the System Folder, or how you could make a disk bootable with just two files).
I too am pretty disappointed with the state of competition in UX right now. Man, at one point we had Amiga Intuition, SGI's Irix, OS/2, Sun NeWS, NextSTEP, Mac OS, W95 and NT all contributing pretty smart ideas to the desktop UI, and it was a genuinely exciting time. Android vs iOS is miserably dull in comparison.
Windows 95 is the best of Windows — no doubt about it. I think NeXTSTEP was the pinnacle of all UX and it is pretty clear to me that Windows 95 copied NeXTSTEP, albeit rather badly. If only Apple would return to a refined NeXTSTEP like interface, I'd be much happier than with this disastrous flat-transparent-color-bleed-blurry-crap interface. The way Apple's been going feels like Windows 98 era of Windows. The webification of Windows ruined it for me and whatever you call what Apple is currently doing, is ruining macOS for me now.
I think Apple's contemporary OSes (System 7 and System 8) did a much better job, personally.
Windows 95 has the advantage that tons of people used it day-to-day, where Apple's systems were less popular. But as a person who used both, I definitely preferred Apple's design, and their dedication to designing everything about the experience.
Even the keyboard layout. Macintosh was the system that logically and sensibly separated the function of "Enter" from "Return". Two functions should have two keys, dammit. Every time I have to use shift-Enter to put a newline in a IM window instead of just hitting return, I die a little inside.