I don't run this kind of skin unironically but I do think that desktop GUIs used to be a lot more intuitive in some ways. They were still educating PC users on how to use PCs and so there was less of a temptation to hide features and smooth things out for the sake of pure aesthetics.
(The slide-to-unlock on the original iPhone OS comes to mind as an analogy on the phone: babies could figure it out, but by iOS 7 they figured enough people knew how to unlock that they could make it less obvious.)
>I don't run this kind of skin unironically
… hang on, I’m still parsing this.
I absolutely agree that the interfaces up until 2005s and, in case of Mac, early 2010s or so were better in terms of usability, but somehow it’s hard to imagine coming back there from the modern UIs with all their shadows and transparencies and such.
There has to be a middle ground somewhere in this.