Classic environments

What did we like in classic environments?
What do you not like in modern imitation? What would you want to correct?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_hinting
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_rasterization
vimeo.com/et/inge
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Classic environments were clean and not overly-designed.

Maybe they weren't as aesthetically pleasing but who gives a fuck. They made sense. That's all I look for in an environment.

no guys, the future is good

you're all just a bunch of dinosaurs

Who literally cares, that's not the point.

This. Could almost just here.

What made them work so well on so little?

I mean outside of the usual answers like "less bloat" and "they wrote in assembly/C". How are the graphics drawn that makes them so efficient in terms of system resources? I know that bitmap fonts are far better than truetype for resources but what about things like windows?

One thing that does always strike me about them is how efficient they are in terms of screen-space usage. For all the fuss made about "screen real estate" they had it nailed back then.

>use free insider edition
>surprised it has ads for a service from the company whose OS you're using for free
>No sign of this anywhere in the creator's update official release

Seconding

actually this shows up in the fully paid Pro edition you worthless disinfo shill

Funny enough if you disable Aero Windows 7 isn't that different from Windows2000

We liked consistent look and feel. Win 95 or 98 might have been the height of it on the Windows side. Mac OS seems to do well even today.

Modern Linux distros are better at this than the shitfest that is Windows 10. Someone post that picture of the 3 or 4 different types of context menu formatting and multiple control panels for the same thing. Keep in mind that's all first-party shit!

Yes, it's good.

I actually used my big brothers Amiga 1200 through the later part of secondary school and college back in late-90s/early-00s. It amazed me how capable it still was and I bet that, if you could still use it as a productive work horse even now.

I think that's what I like about classic environments: they aged better than those who want your money want you to think they have.

Honestly, they're just more simple. They're almost elegant in their simplicity despite the slight clunkiness here and there.

Honestly, I don't think there's anything I particularly dislike about modern systems, I just miss the simple days of using the computer for the sake of it, rather than them being "I want to get online and shitpost" machines.

Sure, Amigas are still pretty capable of doing some stuff. You can do some very basic browsing (no SSL for the most part though), and IRC and FTP work just fine. Plenty of text editors and other productivity software. It kind of depends on what you want to do, but a lot of basic things aren't a problem.

Then again, a decent Amiga these days costs you about as much as decent new PC, so whether it's worth it is another question.

That looks like an overdesigned abortion kys

Things I liked:
>simplicity

Things I'd fix:
>color depth
>font rendering
>get rid of desktop icons
>up the resolution

>wall of text
>some autistic spergout about Amigas
>can't adapt to new things or just plain edgy autistic vaporware bandwagon teenager
>furry
What a waste of life.

>I just miss the simple days of using the computer for the sake of it, rather than them being "I want to get online and shitpost" machines

One thing I have noticed is that modern computers are, and this sounds weird to say and I hope my meaning comes across, bad at being offline.

Font rendering is fine. Bitmap font are scientifically the best fonts for appearance since they're pixel-erfect.

>pixel perfect != good
They are typographically terrible. A good typeface is designed to have a nice even look by balancing many things including positive/negative space, curved/straight lines, etc... These bitmap fonts are sorely limited in that respect. Moreover you can't even scale bitmap fonts.

Modern font rendering uses techniques such as subpixel rendering and optical tricks to create fonts that are legible and comfortable to read at any size.

subpixel perfect > pixel perfect

information at a glance
things weren't hidden behind an additional 5 clicks just so there was more white space

Well, this was (as I said) in the late 90s and early 00s that I did this, where computers were still pretty rare (or rather, a "personal" computer was, there were increasing numbers of family computers), and here in the UK there were still Amiga games and magazines being made as I got it from my brother.

Of course what I was using it for then could now be done from any old computer, but that wasn't quite so at the time.

>typography

That's why god invented the print-preview.

>create fonts that are legible and comfortable to read at any size.

That's not true. I have a 1024x768 screen on this laptop and some fonts look disgusting. I use terminus as a main font simply for this alone.

I like the isometric pixel art icons. I wish BeOS didn't die the way it did but there was no chance competing with Microsoft. The only way it could have survived is if it were FOSS.

How about Haiku?

Classic environments were more humane and friendly. Icons meant something, they were informative and artful at the same time. Color-schemes felt warm, comfortable and professional. There was also a sense of adventure and excitement.

See for instance this picture: this computer is happy and smiling; this computer have a soul.

Am I a try hard ?

Last thread an user posted some win95 files, I'm trying to reproduce that kind of look. Meh start.

Even something that "should be" boring in principle like Microsoft Money was somehow made cool and fun.

That computer is having a great day.

OP you forgot the father of all 90s "grey windows and chiseled widgets" desktop GUI designs.

>rather than them being "I want to get online and shitpost" machines

I know that feel. It's nearly all I use this machine for now...Could almost just use it for the web and have an "offline machine" that's different.

Happy Mac lives on in the Finder icon.

>he doesn't know Amigas were the furfag computer of choice in the 90s

I don't think it has anything to do with furfags, it was an artist thing.

I actually felt strangely hollow when I heard Sabrina Online ended.

So many things about it date it in such subtle ways. Like when Sabrina is looking for ISPs at a convention.

>serial ports

change "combine taskbar icons" to "never combine" and change the start menu button and you'll be golden desu

Never going to be released.

Never.

Never ever.

>tfw you'll never open the box to a brand new nextstation color
why live?

>you will never open a new ibm at and smell a new model m

That video made me really jelly.

My first pc was a windows 95 and i loved it. The start up intro theme music was tight and the 'its now safe to turn off your computer' made it feel yours.

So up your with your dinosaur crap

>print-preview
You are literally retarded or don't understand what typography or typesetting are.

>some fonts look disgusting.
That's because you have shit-tier font rendering thats probably misconfigured if configured at all.

>don't understand what typography or typesetting are.

Isn't that the thing they do when the set the type when printing? If only there was some sort of digital preview of such a practise...

Just create fonts by the pixel and keep to a grid. It's a fucking computer.

>That's because you have shit-tier font rendering thats probably misconfigured if configured at all.

No, what looks great for one font will look terrible for another, and since every single program wants to do its own thing you end up with a crisp menu but crappy content.

Besides, this all misses the point that this is an issue that never used to exist.

>but what about things like windows?
Well, it's not hard to draw a rectangle, let alone a couple of rectangles.
The problem is modern UI extensively use GPU for their drawing.
Look at Enlightment, it's beautiful, and yet it uses much less resources than many other WMs/DEs.

>Isn't that the thing they do when the set the type when printing?
No, retard. You are confounding a huge number of things. Typesetting is the study of how to compose text on a page so that it can be read and understood clearly. Print preview is useful for typesetting but it is just one of the many concerns that typesetters have (e.g. everything on the printer configuration side of things). Typography on the other hand is the study of typefaces -- different components of typefaces, how to classify them, how to arrange and use them, etc... In typography there's a bunch of theory about how to make a block of text easy to read with minimal eyestrain (stuff like not having your lines be too long, not having the space between lines be too small or too large, etc...). One of the many things that typographers talk about is having a balance of negative and positive space in your text, otherwise some letters will appear too bold or too thin and they'll draw the reader's attention. Other things that are important are having a consistent looking typeface (e.g. either smooth curves everywhere or flattened curves everywhere). These things are severely limited by having only rasterized (bitmap) fonts. In short, you are literally retarded if you think print-preview has anything to do with typography.

>No, what looks great for one font will look terrible for another
Educate yourself, son. Techniques like Subpixel rendering effectively increase the resolution of your display for fonts.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_hinting
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_rasterization
>and since every single program wants to do its own thing you end up with a crisp menu but crappy content.
Modern operating systems use a single font rendering engine for the entire system. The only thing that varies are the fonts chosen.

This was all just pushed literally by one furfag who made decent animated demo videos.

There were ads for his shit in ever amiga magazine.

I haven't use windows since 1999.
I have no idea what I'm looking at.

shame all the GNU replacements suck ass

literally the only good part is windowmaker

GNU mentality/methodology just differs too greatly from that of old NeXTies and BSDers.

The entire environment of NeXTSTEP (and modern macOS, by extension) is highly and consistently opinionated through and through. There's a "right way" to do practically everything, and if you write software for that platform you'll be shunned if you don't roll these conventions into your software. This is annoying sometimes but in reality it simplifies development and lets the dev focus on what's important.

Compare this to GNU/Linux where there's 500 ways to do everything and if anybody asserts that any particular one is right, he'll have his figurative head lopped off by the rest of the community. This makes it much more difficult to create a consistent desktop experience since one has to burn useful energy making the DE work with every distribution and configuration known to man. The DE's core features and experience don't get anywhere near the level of attention they deserve.

yeah, i wish GNUstep was a decent replacement

GWorkspace is so buggy

>tfw regularly using windows 98
comfy as fuck

UI nowadays is minimalist for the sake of minimalism making function a secondary priority. Everything is overly spaced, there is far too much negative space, things that shouldn't be oversized are. It feels like they've tried to mold the UI to the human, but in doing so did the opposite.

They're machine-like, simple and professional. They strike a good balance between the limitless potential of the virtual space while still feeling grounded in physical ideas, and you just feel more serious about what you're doing when you use them.

There is of course some nostalgia involved, motif interfaces like CDE for example bring me back to a tour I (relatively recently) took of a semiconductor fab in high school that was lined with Ultra 30s running trashy looking home grown Java applications controlling test equipment. I enjoy that.

>What do you not like in modern imitation? What would you want to correct?
They mostly use the same fundamental ideas and models, so nothing really. There's something to appreciate in every stylistic age.

I hate how, for all their "minimalism" they end up spending about 10x the amount (in system resources) to do it.

Do all typography rules apply to computer programs? Screen is not like a paper leaf.

Is there anything like amiga workbench for Linux? I think FVWM with a massive config file would do, but maybe something exists more alike out of the box?

You still look at it with your eyes and interpret it with your brain the same way as any other text.

Amiwm, but really you'd be better to look at something like Icaros.

subpixels won't matter in a few years anyway because everyone will have a HiDPI display

regarding OP's question; I guess it's 50% nostalgia and 50%

What this could have been. Such a wasted potential.

>wintoddlers will defend this

actually, i think windows 10 is a step in the right direction. luna and aero are horribly distracting, as is aqua. win10 is clear and functional again and i guess ms will have perfected it within the next 2 years.

>ads in the file manager
>ads in the task bar
>ads in the start bar
>ads in the lock menu

just fuck my shit up

>So many things about it date it in such subtle ways. Like when Sabrina is looking for ISPs at a convention.
Sabrina trying to get online were some of the first ones in the series, as far as I remember. Those first few are even hosted on Aminet still since god knows when.

>The start up intro theme music was tight
They never quite got the vibe right with later start up themes desu.

>There were ads for his shit in ever amiga magazine.
I've yet to see one, but I haven't actually dug through all the ones I have.

AmiWM just never felt right to me. Maybe I never dug deep enough into the configs though.

Yes. Typography is focused on reducing eyestrain and communicating extra information through the typeface (e.g. some typefaces are perceived as conveying certain emotions).

Font rendering is all about trying to faithfully reproduce proper typography on the screen.

Here is something that's difficult to capture with 'pixel-perfect' typefaces.
vimeo.com/et/inge
Watch from 22:00 to 26:00. (tl;dr: balancing negative and positive space so that it looks good to the eye requires computing a bunch integrals and making them equal). You can also find colossal faggot Steve Jobs talking about typography at 16:45.

i have not a single ad in win10pro, but that's maybe just the power of european customer protection.

But why? Who cares? This is just falling into the marketspeak UX trap.

The only classic environment there is Finder/Mac OS, BeOS and Windows are nowhere "classic".
Wheres TOS, Workbench, GEOS?

>a decent Amiga these days costs you about as much as decent new PC
You think people use them or recommend them as daily drivers? Are you retarded?

are you retarded? It was just a autistic person who did animation on Amiga.

>In a world where people are spending more and more time reading information off of screens, who cares about reducing eyestrain on screens.
You are literally eating shit because tremendous marketing douchebags are telling you not to.

>You think people use them or recommend them as daily drivers? Are you retarded?
Read my post again and what I'm replying to very carefully. I never said anything of the sort. If you really desperately want to use an Amiga for daily work then maybe you can get away with it if you're so desperate.

My point was that although it's possible, there really is no argument for them being cheap and plentiful for someone without any fucking money to pick up and use as a desperate daily driver.

Then why bring price up? It's a niche for retro enthusiasts and nothing else.
Nobody is talking about daily use.

Reading from the surface of a light bulb will cause strain no matter what. If you want to reduce eyestrain print it out.

I'd argue that they could be used as a daily driver if you emulated it. I'm pretty sure the newer SoCs can emulate them pretty well now if you drop the screen res a bit. I emulated DOSBox quite well on a Pi 1 by dropping it down to 640x480.

That's pretty much the only way to make those devices useful for anything outside of novelty.

LED screen
>light reflects off of a white surface and shines through a screen before reaching the viewers eyes.

Paper
>Light reflects off of a sheet of paper and reaches the viewers eyes

How embarrassing for you

Well, perhaps. Browsers are lacking though, so unless you're okay with very light web use, it might get annoying really fast.

>Browsers are lacking though

It's not a bug; it's a feature.

More of a lack of features, supported by amiga nerds that keep shouting they want updates without considering touching an assembler/compiler themselves.

Staying away from the cancerous modern web is easily a feature.

what is it that makes a retro ui look good, ,if we can boil it down to the essentials it will be so much easier to capture the magic in modern ui

someone write an alysis

define "modern web". Not even Sup Forums renders correctly on iBrowse. Literally the only site that works the way it should is Aminet, which you'd fucking hope since it's the primary software repo.

>tfw you just can't see yourself using something else than your custom windows classic theme

I am so happy but proportionally worried.

Amiga rules... forever.

Just received my Vampire 500 v2+

gnucash

it doesn't actually look good it's just nostalgia, whether fake or real

Beta1, soon.

Besides a load of years of improvements, it'll have the new package manager, fully functional, including whole-system upgrades.

protip: Use nightly builds. Alpha4 is ancient.

amiwm, but due to its license, it's hopeless.

There's always AROS, the AmigaOS reimplementation as free software.

Systems like dragonfly bsd, haiku, genode and fuchsia inherit some good Amiga ideas.

Linux is just hopeless. Least sucking option for now, but hopeless.

>Just received my Vampire 500 v2+
get the fuck out with your fantasy FPGA shit.

>get the fuck out with your fantasy FPGA shit.
Haters gonna hate.

I personally think it's just buyer's remorse... these shitty ACAs aren't worth their volume in water.

The amount to which the fanbase jerks off to them certainly suggests that.

They're the mactards of retrocomputing.

I bought my ACA620 before the Vampire was even a thing. No regrets. I'll gladly take an actual 020 over something that turns the A600 into a glorified keyboard for a purposefully half-assed FPGA clone of an Amiga.

Still no FPU because they seem to be too busy implementing fantasy shit that most likely nobody can be arsed to develop for.

I won't deny that it's an interesting piece of kit potentially, but with the price, waiting list and empty "maybe in the future" promises for actual useful features, it's just not as appealing when you already have an A600/020 and A4000/060/RTG at your disposal.

The main advantage of things like that is that they can use modern interfaces, like SD cards.

I'm pretty sure you could do that pretty easily already, there's SD adapters for fucking everything now.

Yeah, but in one device you get HDMI, an increase in memory and CPU speed, as well as a replacement for aging IDE drives/CF cards and slowly rotting floppies.

>it's just not as appealing when you already have an A600/020 and A4000/060/RTG at your disposal.
Sure, but I had neither of these things. Just some plain A500s and an A1200 with a bliz 1230mkIV.

> I'll gladly take an actual 020 over something that turns the A600 into a glorified keyboard
It seriously is just an FPGA implementation of a very fast 68k clone, and a shitload of ram. Everything else is optional; You're not forced to actually use any of it.

On the A500, it provides IDE which I wouldn't otherwise have and do welcome. It *will* also solve the A500 network problem by providing wireless once drivers for that are written. The RTG is also anything but unwelcome.

>Still no FPU because they seem to be too busy implementing fantasy shit that most likely nobody can be arsed to develop for.
Can't really blame them for having fun, or set their priorities. I'd rather appreciate if they put some effort into FPU and MMU support, but I'm glad the vampire is a thing at all to begin with.

They have a hobby, what's your excuse? They don't actually use them for work, but for wasting time and playing games.

>Still no FPU because they seem to be too busy implementing fantasy shit that most likely nobody can be arsed to develop for.
What? Things get actively ported to use the new instructions all the time. Stop living under a rock.

You just seem butthurt because they have something cool while you stay 100% pure. It's a expensive hobby, I have shitloads of Amigas, some with 68k chips or accelerators, some with PPC accelerators, a few with Vampires. They all rock.

>I bought my ACA620 before the Vampire was even a thing.
Retard, should have gotten a Furia

Unity because Unity is now kill when 18.04 comes out.

The wannabe Amiga fags are the best.
You will never be as cool as us, piss off pleb.