Most beautiful GUI (OS 4, Windows 8, ...)?

[commodorejohn]

My vote is on Mac OS Classic, more specifically System 7. The simplicity and elegance of the GUI elements, along with the great bitmap fonts and icons made by Susan Kare are just perfect together. OS X is ugly by comparison.

This, so very very much. Original NEXTStep has a certain elegance to it as well, but classic Mac OS is the only operating system that is beautiful.

[commodorejohn]

BeOS is sort of like if you took Windows and UNIX and hybridized it between them. Its very pretty looking but I find the entire system lacking in expandability, the design choices are questionable such as using bash as the only UNIX shell ( I was never able to load ksh or zsh on it ) and generally it seems while its very overall efficient, it has cons in the areas of security and it just feels uncomfortable to use. Its a hard feeling to describe.

It was a mistake for BeOS to ever try to mimic Unix - a command shell would've been good, but nothing else about the system matches up with the Unix-like paradigm, right down to the fact that it's fundamentally object-oriented while Unix is a conglomeration of processes communicating through pipes. Just terribly misguided - but I suppose this was when POSIX was the New Hotness that everybody wanted to be in on.

I did not prefer NeWS at all, especially because when I used it was under SunOS on a friend's box with a monochrome monitor. It felt very broken but I guess lack of use on a colour monitor may have skewed my views.

NeWS on a color monitor isn't any better - OpenLook is ugly as hell and it's at least as balky as X on my Ultra 1.

[commodorejohn]

Ah. With that context, I'd have to agree. I haven't seen that horrible implementation of Motif before, nor that appreciable look for NeWS. I'd only seen the ugly-ass "everything is ovals and corner brackets!" look that Solaris used for OpenLook:

[commodorejohn]

And why so many people on XP not wanting to shift?

Maybe because XP lets them use their computer the way they've been using their computer for the last nineteen years and doesn't expect them to alter their entire workflow because Microsoft's design department isn't feeling appreciated enough?

[commodorejohn]

XP had a number of significant driver issues early on in its lifespan, but they really did get it together by SP2. It's on the clunky side by now, but it's still quite solid and usable.

[commodorejohn]

And by the way just for kicks I messed around with NeWS on SunOS on my SPARCSTATION 20. All I have to say is its basically a rudimentary version of Quartz or Display PostScript. NeXTSTEP is awful too.

NeWS on Solaris is horrible; ugly as sin and about the best thing that can be said is that at least it's not as slow as their X implementation.

As for NeXTSTEP, the icon-dock concept has grown on me, but the default "black bars" look is unappealing, and that three-column file manager is just ridiculous. I don't know how they ever expected people to get any serious work done with that.

[commodorejohn]

You make it sound like a dependency issue. But I like the way you angrily try to blame other people by making stuff up. Maybe this reaction is triggered because you don't feel appreciated enough?

I make it sound like a giant freaking hassle, which it is. But I like the way you try to play armchair psychoanalyst and invent more complicated reasons for people being frustrated at Win8 than simply "they just want to actually get stuff done the way they've been getting stuff done for the last nineteen years."