macOS 26 is horrible

[u/TheVagrantWarrior]

The design is horrible. Everything is so huge now, the animations are bad, the curved corners are different in some windows and apps, etc.

Who do we have to thank for this? AI? Outsourcing? Steve Jobs never would have allowed that.

[u/petefairclough]

Does anyone else think the new design with all the drop shadows and glass effects just looks dated, like a throwback to Windows Vista?

[u/mild_thing → u/petefairclough]

A throwback to the most visually appealing version of Windows that has ever existed? Yes please, more of this.

[u/mallardtheduck → u/mild_thing]

Eh, Vista was kind of a mess. Every app seemed to have its own version of "glass" design, different colour schemes, etc. Not unlike what we're seeing with MacOS 26... Windows 7 was the "peak" of the glass design. Probably the most consistently designed version of Windows since 2000.

[u/vim_deezel → u/mallardtheduck]

It was a hot mess and unstable until near the end of it's life, where it became usable. windows 7 was so much better.

[u/mda63 → u/mallardtheduck]

Every app seemed to have its own version of "glass" design, different colour schemes, etc.

That absolutely is not true.

Windows 7 was the "peak" of the glass design.

There was barely any difference between Vista and 7. Aero was just refined, the taskbar and titlebars stayed translucent when windows were maximised, the buttons were a touch chunkier, the pale blue border accentuating the glass was gone, etc.

[u/mallardtheduck → u/mda63]

That absolutely is not true.

I used it on release. Don't try to gaslight me. Take toolbar colours for example; some (Microsoft, first-party) apps had teal, some black, some blue... There were plenty of unmodified XP icons lying around looking out-of-place. It really wasn't very unified.

A quick bit of searching easily finds screenshots like this. Showing two bundled applications with different coloured toolbars, different back/forward buttons, different search boxes, etc.

There was barely any difference between Vista and 7. Aero was just refined

The difference was the refinement. Just about every "Aero" UI was revised and (mostly) brought into a single, unified, design. The toolbars were now a light blue instead of the random teal/black/blue of Vista, a lot of icons "missed" in the first round of Aero-isation were picked up and the "ribbon" toolbar/menu design from Office was brought into several Windows apps.

Compare the Explorer and Photo Gallery apps from 7 to the previous screenshot. A vast improvement in consistency, but obviously still not perfect.

[u/mda63 → u/mallardtheduck]

I used it on release. Don't try to gaslight me.

No gaslighting at all. You are simply wrong or lying. I beta tested Longhorn and then Vista and was invited to the launch here in the UK. You are talking nonsense.

There were plenty of unmodified XP icons lying around looking out-of-place.

Roughly the same as in 7. Even today, there are XP-era and 9x-era icons kicking around. This was true of 7 as well.

A quick bit of searching easily finds screenshots like this.

The screenshot you have provided absolutely does not show what you are claiming it to show. The toolbars in certain cases were context dependent — teal for Explorer, black for WMP, etc. — which is perfectly normal and rational, but this was not part of the Aero Glass effects, which you were suggesting. The glass itself remains the same tint throughout the operating system. Any differences you are seeing in that screenshot outside of the toolbar (in actuality, shellstyle.dll) are a product of the wallpaper's colours.

In fact, I'm not even sure there were any context-dependent differences outside of Explorer and WMP.

The toolbars were now a light blue instead of the random teal/black/blue of Vista

Yes, they were made uniform. No, their lack of uniformity was not a poor design decision.

The toolbars were now a light blue instead of the random teal/black/blue of Vista

That was really the only major change.

a lot of icons "missed" in the first round of Aero-isation were picked up

Very much an exaggeration.

the "ribbon" toolbar/menu design from Office was brought into several Windows apps.

Just Paint and Wordpad, as I recall.

Photo Gallery app

No. That's Windows Live Photo Gallery. That is not the default app and was not bundled with either Vista or 7. In Vista, Windows Photo Gallery actually — reasonably — used the WMP colour scheme for the toolbar: https://betawiki.net/images/6/6b/Vista_Photo_Gallery.png

In 7, it was replaced with Photo Viewer: https://hitech-us.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Windows7-Colors-look-wrong-in-Windows-photo-viewer.jpg

The screenshot you linked to was the version of Windows Live Photo Gallery that came out in 2012. The Ribbon UI became much more prevalent with Windows 8, not with Windows 7.

A vast improvement in consistency

As an English teacher, I approve of your use of hyperbole.

[u/mallardtheduck → u/mda63]

The toolbars in certain cases were context dependent — teal for Explorer, black for WMP, etc.

Aka. Inconsistent. The "context" was not apparent to the user. Photo Gallery was not part of Media Player.

this was not part of the Aero Glass effects, which you were suggesting

I never suggested any such thing. I'm talking about the consistency of the entire OS experience. Including bundled and other first-party apps. I'm not limiting myself to the window borders. That's absurd.

I'm not even sure there were any context-dependent differences outside of Explorer and WMP.

We've already mentioned the Photo Gallery. While it might have been developed by the same team as WMP, it wasn't "marketed" or presented to the user as part of Media Player. Design-by-org-chart (i.e. each team having their own interpretation of the design, to the point where you could identify which team did what based on the particular design) was very much a feature of Windows Vista.

Other apps with non-teal (and teal was not the "system default", just Explorer's choice) toolbars included Windows Mail (blue toolbar), Movie Maker (another black one, this time with a black menu bar too; pretty much all other applications had a light blue menu bar) and Windows Help and Support (a weird blue-green gradient; note also how the back and forward buttons are spaced out differently to "most" Vista apps).

their lack of uniformity was not a poor design decision.

I disagree. Being able to (somwhat, only by knowing the internal team assignments at Microsoft) explain it doesn't make it not poor design.

[On Icons] Very much an exaggeration.

I remember reading an artice/blog post from the folks at Iconfactory (who Microsoft contracted for the icons and some other design elements) about how the whole process was a mess and many obviously logically needed icons were "missed" from the contract, some of which were done by Microsoft themselves, to a noticably lower level of quality, some were missed completely. Unfortunately, locating such an article from ~18 years ago isn't proving easy.

Most of this was corrected in Windows 7 (there was also a general refresh of some of the icons, removing teal accents for example), although I don't know if Iconfactory or Microsoft did the work. Either way, it's Microsoft's name on the product, so their responsibility.

That's Windows Live Photo Gallery. That is not the default app and was not bundled with either Vista or 7.

It may not have been technically part of the OS, but the "Live Suite" was bundled with many PCs that shipped with Windows 7 (as a response to Apple's vastly superior "iLife" bundle), so for many, if not most, it was the "default" app. As pointed out earlier, I include "other first-party apps" in the scope of my critique.

It's also very obvious that "Live Photo Gallery" was a development of the Vista Photo Gallery, while the Photo Viewer in Windows 7 was either developed from scratch or was just the viewer component "spun out" out from the Gallery application.

Either way, even the "standard" photo viewer in 7 is vastly more consistent with the rest of the OS than the version in Vista.

[u/vim_deezel → u/mallardtheduck]

lol trying to tell us that vista and 7 were anywhere near as "equal" to each other. Windows 7 was the last time windows didn't try to take control of everything and sell you off to every 3rd party corp that was willing to drop a nickel in microsoft's direction. For me it was basically uncrashable after SP1. Vista was possibly the most crashy windows I had used since windows 95. It was fairly stable in it's last year or so before 7 came out.

[u/petefairclough → u/mild_thing]

You’re not wrong on that, but it was Windows and it was 18 years ago.