Comment by garganzol
7 days ago
In general, it is even smoother than the real Windows XP. Kind of a magnetizing experience, and I do not know why. There is something attractive in this idea in terms of UI/UX, aside from the obvious nostalgia.
Another interesting aspect of this particular implementation is that it blends naturally with a browser tab hierarchy, it does not try to overrule it, it just blends in. Probably thanks to a distinctive taskbar, or maybe it is due to the startup screen/login/sound that set up a distinctive boundary "you are here now, and this is a friendly place to be".
> There is something attractive in this idea in terms of UI/UX
Very fast response time for the UI interactions. "Modern" UIs can have a few fast transitions but the overall interactions with the different components have a human noticeable lag that make them uneasy.
Windows (or anything) is nice when its fast. Most things should work in under 20ms so I don't notice a delay.
20ms is faster than a fly reaction time, it's about the same time which 60HZ monitor takes to refresh the frame, 10 times faster than a typical human's reaction.
Everything under 150 ms is pretty much indistinguishably fast to a normal person.
I uh guess I’m not a normal person then
Working with soft synths, the difference between 65ms, to 15ms latency, 8ms latency, and 2ms latency - time from pressing the key to speakers emitting the sound - is agonizingly noticeable.
The numbers I’m quoting are ones I remember from various gear and upgrades over the years. It’s crazy to think about the levels of latency I was stuck with when I was a poor college kid. These days I wouldn’t settle for more than 10ms latency, and I don’t have to, thank the maker.
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If this were true, then a 10fps movie clip would be indistinguishable from a 24fps or a 60fps one. I have written several years ago about how optimizing my shell prompt from 50ms to 5ms was definitely a noticeable impact on how snappy the shell felt: https://xyrillian.de/thoughts/posts/latency-matters.html
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Reaction is not the same as perception. The typical human perceptual threshold is around 16ms, although persistence of vision "smooths" that out to around 40ms.
You're wrong. You can clearly see a difference between 20ms reaction time (as instantaneous as it gets because of what you say, 1/60 = 16.6666...), whereas 150 ms is a fast reaction but it definitely is a noticeable lag. I wish your opinion didn't exist because how can we expect to get rid of the lag everywhere if some people even claim it doesn't matter.
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Nice troll.
"Faster than a humans reaction" time is different from "indistinguishable".
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obviously the nostalgia is a huge factor but you might be onto something with the login sound haha. did you try logging out? :)
My thoughts exactly. I'm on macOS 26 Beta and this Windows XP felt like an upgrade. I think that's because it's simple, fast, intuitive and I know everything about how it works. Old Windows was also bad at multitasking due to single cpu core, which is better for the user to focus. In modern OS I have 20 windows open with hundreds of tabs, distributed over 6 different workspaces and 2 monitors. They all fly left to right with cool animations. I can't focus on anything.