Linked List: December 22, 2021

Wednesday, 22 December 2021

A Few About Boxes From Vintage Mac Applications 

Speaking of classic Mac OS, Riccardo Mori assembled a collection of screenshots of about boxes, many from really old apps. The MacPascal one has a build date from the day before the Macintosh was introduced in January 1984. No surprise, the ugliest one of the bunch is from Microsoft Word 3.0 in 1987. The early ResEdit about box asked for bug reports to be mailed — on paper — to an engineer at Apple’s headquarters.

Mori’s post is from 2015, but it was new to me. A lot of the later ones are quite elaborate and very distinctive. I miss cool about boxes — that’s where developers signed and got credit for their work.

(Via Dave Winer.)

‘Mac OS 9: OStalgia Edition’ 

Michael Feeney:

(mac)OStalgia is exploring my 2021 work-from-home routine from a nostalgic perspective. How would have the same workflow looked like with the tools of today and the limitations of yesterday. Unreliable internet, little disk storage, macOS 9 and much more.

This project is delightful: reimagining modern apps like Slack, Zoom, and Figma on Mac OS 9. There are numerous details I’d quibble with (multiple windows active at the same time, for example), but it brought me joy to explore these designs and watch his video of them in action. I miss this style of UI design very much — not the exact look, per se, but the spirit of emphasizing clarity above all else, where content fields are clearly content fields, input focus is clear, and buttons look like buttons.

The Incomparable Does ‘Get Back’ 

Here’s another good podcast about Peter Jackson’s 8-hour Beatles documentary Get Back — The Incomparable’s panel discussion, with Jason Snell, Steven Schapansky, Monty Ashley, Guy English, and Amy Gruber:

Toast, vests, London Bobbies sucking on their chin straps, Debbie the receptionist, Paul as “second boss”, Yoko’s knitting, George Harrison’s pinstripes, and most importantly, the amazing view of a bunch of musical geniuses having a very difficult time creating anything at all.