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cosmic_cheeseyesterday at 7:29 PM1 replyview on HN

It'd be pretty interesting to compare how much the amount of information one can cram onto their ~27" screen has changed between 2005 and 2025, with the comparison points between between a Mac running OS X 10.6 and a Mac running macOS 26, which I think is a particularly salient and apples-to-apples comparison since Apple was selling 30" 2560x1600 displays back then, which are close cousins to modern 27" 2560x1440 displays.

My gut feeling is that the difference would be around 30-40%. Information density of the UI of OS X 10.6 and contemporary software was much higher than today's tabletized "bouncy castle" style UI.


Replies

2OEH8eoCRo0yesterday at 7:47 PM

It would be interesting but I don't think that information density necessarily makes a good interface.

As a personal pet peeve example, developers love to cram a search bar (or browser tabs) into the top of the window. It's more dense but it's also harder to use and drag the window.

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