-
jzp
5 months ago
|
link
| on:
Katahdin - a programming language where the syntax and semantics are mutable at runtime
…so it’s basically Rebol? Or am I missing something?
-
-
This is delightfully nerdy :D
I expected some more practical write-up about how Macintosh System Software (remember, MacOS was MacOS only after version 7.5(?) of System Software) can be useful today for some tasks like text wiring, light office usage or printing. Instead we got something like wow old macos is black and white you know that? and animations are carefuly designed, same for icons and GUIs which took a whole article but can be summarized in single paragraph.
For example, Grackle68k is a recently released Twitter client for Classic Macs. I would like to get know about other new software fo these 68k Macs, too.
Yeah, I didn’t like the article’s fixation on said irrelevant details.
What made the old Mac work was its UI; the attention to detail that both Apple and third parties had. Things were consistent, and things felt direct in a way modern Mac OS lacks. You manipulate the actual control panels in the control panels folder; opening them, removing them, booting with them, etc. There’s no mental abstraction like there is on Unix.
Reading this it’s very clear that the author didn’t use an old Mac for their post. The desktop animation is pulled from archive.org.
Haha, great.
But what I noticed most is that he didn’t really care about presentation of the images, they’re blurry and checkerboard background of Mac desktop makes that well known Moire effect which looks terrible unless used intentionally.
Low End Mac has a great collection of articles for making use of aging Apple gear.
As for the article; yeah, it does go on quite a bit on the pixels, but I feel that the gist is true: That the limited hardware and the focus on inexperienced users pushed for a UX that had to convey its intentions and affordance clearly, and that the UI/UX design of today doesn’t primarily focus on usability. (Broad strokes, of coure.)
I’ve always loved the classic Mac OS interface (indeed, my avatar is a poor Susan Kare homage), but I’ve thought of it as nostalgia. When I think of it now, I know that it isn’t just a matter of fuzzy feelings, but that the original Mac OS design did a lot of things right.
LEM’s never been worthwhile; in the past it peddled misinformation about old Macs (see: Left/Right 32) and now serves as the author’s site for misplaced rants.
I knew something was off when I dreged the reference out of my memory. I stopped following way back when for a reason.
I believe 7.6 is the first time they used the “MacOS” branding in the OS itself.
Really want to get a development environment set up for my Quadra. I have one for Mac OS 9 on a PPC, but it’s not quite the same, too easy to avoid the Toolbox by using good modern-ish libraries like SDL.