This might be a bit off topic, but Windows 98, and to a lesser extent Windows XP and 7, always evoke a sense of nostalgic simplicity for me. The OS felt stable (as in, unchanging) and seemed to stay out of the way.
Since Windows 8, but especially with Windows 10 and 11, it’s felt complicated, busy, and intrusive.
I think the biggest problem is that, since 8, Windows has basically been trying to be two separate OSes, with two entirely different use paradigms, and it doesn’t work. And having multiple control panels, configs, etc. makes things messy and confusing.
Totally agree on 8 and even 11 appears to be busy despite their intent for the contrary. That being said I feel like 10 will go down in history with XP and 7 as being simple and usable. I could have blinders on though because I’ve been using it for like a decade now.
10 was definitely the best version of Windows in a long time but personally I’d still put it closer to 8 and 11 than XP or 7, it’s got far more advertising, telemetry, awkward inconsistency, and is more locked down/less customisable.
I was barely alive in 1998, but I definitely think Win98 was the perfect sort of skeuomorphism, not super showy or maximalist like a lot of skeumorphic design is. It’s like modern minimalism without the suck.
I’m a massive fan of skeuomorphic design, and Windows 98 was just so intuitive and practical. Things you could drag looked like you could move them, that bumpy texture thing was used in places it wasn’t obvious already, and 3D made clickable things look like buttons.
I’m a software developer and power user, and Android surprised me by having a horizontally scrollable area with absolutely no indication other than the visible items didn’t include something I was expecting to find.
Designed by none other than the legendary Susan Kare, apparently.
Also: no blinking aero stuff and invisible borders !
I usually try to remove all that fluff as much as possible but windoze makes it harder and harder (who in their right minds want to hide ALL windows just because you jiggled one of them a tingest bit is beyond me…)
Tis one of many reasons I run Linux mint
