This has been something that I've been thinking quite a lot about for the past few years. The early Apple was heavily influenced by the work that came out of Xerox PARC. Even during Apple's low point in the 1990s, Apple maintained a research lab that was the logical successor to many of the ideas that came out of Xerox PARC. The Dylan programming language would have been an interesting environment for programming Newton applications, and OpenDoc would have brought the idea of larger applications and compound documents composed from smaller applications and documents, which I find quite similar to the Smalltalk vision in some ways. Unfortunately Apple's research lab would be shuttered in 1997, but the rationale was understandable; Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy back then and Apple desperately needed to focus on its core product strengths.
Apple used to be the champion of personal computing. Personal computing is about empowering individuals by giving them access to computation in a relatively accessible and affordable fashion. Apple's mission was to empower the user through usability, and they applied the research from Xerox PARC and other places to accomplish this. Even though the classic Macintosh operating system is not as powerful as the Smalltalk environment, and even though certain important proposed additions such as OpenDoc unfortunately were cancelled, Mac OS enabled people to be more productive and more creative, and it even helped create many industries such as the desktop publishing market and the early web design market during the 1990s. Apple's usability guidelines for Mac programs were well thought out and enforced a coherent vision of usability for the entire platform. Mac OS X in the 2000s was the pinnacle of Mac, combining the Mac's focus on usability and good design with a solid Unix foundation that provided features that the classic Mac did not have such as preemptive multitasking and protected memory. And, let's face it, once competitors like the Amiga and BeOS died, Apple seemed to be the only major player remaining in the computer industry to have a coherent view of personal computing for the masses. If the Mac at its peak was like In-n-Out Burger, then Microsoft Windows is McDonald's, and the desktop environments for Linux are like frozen microwaveable burgers from the grocery store.
Unfortunately once Apple started making piles of money from the iPhone and other parts of the iOS ecosystem, Apple started to neglect the Mac (especially on the desktop hardware side) and the overall vision of personal computing as a way of empowering the masses. It seems today that all Apple is concerned about is the iOS ecosystem, which is a locked-down walled garden instead of the freedom and empowerment that the Mac provides.
Right now personal computing needs a champion. Many hundreds of millions of people, if not billions of people, rely on personal computers in order to carry out their business and creative tasks. Unfortunately there are no companies that are passionate about personal computing. Apple has become the iPhone company, Microsoft is focused on upholding its monopoly and building its cloud business, Google is all about mining personal data, and the Linux desktop world is too fragmented in order to put up a united front. Even worse, many of the major players in personal computing bought into the notion in the late 2000s and early 2010s that personal computers will be replaced with smartphones and tablets. This led to Apple's neglect of the Mac, Microsoft's failed Windows 8 Metro interface, and some odd design decisions in the early days of GNOME 3 and for Ubuntu. While the industry has been backing away from the thought that tablets will supplant personal computers, personal computing still lacks a champion.
My dream is for either a company or a team of open source software developers to pick up from where Alan Kay, Don Norman, and other people left off and create an personal computing operating system that combines the best ideas of Smalltalk, Lisp machines, Hypercard, OpenDoc, and Apple's usability guidelines from the Mac OS 8-9 days. It will be an operating system that is focused on composable documents similar to OpenDoc but with Smalltalk-like levels of flexibility and control. It will also have a strong emphasis on usability with a "back-to-basics" viewpoint instead of the flat design promoted by contemporary desktop and mobile GUIs.
I am curious to know which GUI you think was better, Mac OS 8-9, one of the versions of OS X, or the original black and white Mac OS (System 6)
I am currently writing a window manager / desktop environment, and I'm kind of torn. At the moment, I'm using the look of the black and white Mac GUI, which I prefer over the colorized Mac OS 8-9 GUI, but at the same time I am fond of the early OS X GUI (10.1 Puma or 10.2 Jaguar).
You say that Mac OS X in the 2000s was the pinnacle of Mac, but then you say you want Apple's usability guidelines from the Mac OS 8-9 days. Which GUI do you think was better? What exactly was it that made OS X in the 2000s the pinnacle?
My goal is to build a "desktop programming GUI environment" using the Objective-C runtime as the base, but with the look and feel of the black and white System 6 GUI. I've written my own simplified Foundation-subset (only the stuff that I need) as well. I'd like for it to be as simple as possible without making too many sacrifices. After all, the original Mac used 128K of RAM, the original OS X could run with 128MB of RAM, and the original iPhone also came with 128MB of RAM. It's ridiculous that everything requires gigabytes of RAM nowadays.
I should've clarified in my original post my preferences regarding the Mac OS.
When it comes to overall systems, I believe that Mac OS X is the pinnacle of the Mac due to its combined usability and stability, and I also believe that the Mac as a platform peaked around the Snow Leopard era (2009-11). Mac OS X has the usability and consistency of the Mac platform with the stability of Unix. Even though Mac OS X hasn't gotten worse since Snow Leopard, unfortunately it hasn't dramatically improved since then; if it weren't for the necessity of modern browsers and security updates, I could still be productive on a computer running Snow Leopard. And the hardware situation since 2012 has been discussed on Hacker News numerous times.
However, when it comes to usability alone, I have a soft spot for the classic Mac OS. Personally I believe the classic Mac OS's interface is actually more user-friendly than Mac OS X's (Mac OS is really simple with its controls and its spatial Finder, while Mac OS X is more complex due to its NeXT roots), and I also believe that the Mac platform back then was more compliant with Apple's user interface guidelines than today (although unfortunately I don't know of a way I could measure this). I find Apple's A/UX and Rhapsody projects to be quite interesting attempts to bridge the classic Mac environment with Unix. I also like the conservative choices that Apple made at the time regarding color. While Mac OS X's Aqua is quite impressive, there's something about the subdued atmosphere of Mac OS, whether it's the original black-and-white interfaces of System 6, the light touches of color in System 7, or the Platinum theme from Mac OS 8 and 9, which is still quite conservative compared to Aqua.
I have been thinking along similar lines, so if you ever start anything up please get in touch.
I think in order to pull this off one needs to build a new kind of personal computer from the ground up with specific end designs in mind.
I have become particularly attached to the idea that the "window manager" equivalent of such a system would be "Hypercard-like" in that all windows, icons, and behaviors at that level can be described, explored, and manipulated in the Hypercard-like thing. It would be powerful and enough for most users. If they needed to go deeper, they could peel back a layer and discover the (high level) systems language, someting like Lisp or Smalltalk with easy library abstractions that can also be explored and learned etc. Hopefully that makes sense.
Apple used to be the champion of personal computing. Personal computing is about empowering individuals by giving them access to computation in a relatively accessible and affordable fashion. Apple's mission was to empower the user through usability, and they applied the research from Xerox PARC and other places to accomplish this. Even though the classic Macintosh operating system is not as powerful as the Smalltalk environment, and even though certain important proposed additions such as OpenDoc unfortunately were cancelled, Mac OS enabled people to be more productive and more creative, and it even helped create many industries such as the desktop publishing market and the early web design market during the 1990s. Apple's usability guidelines for Mac programs were well thought out and enforced a coherent vision of usability for the entire platform. Mac OS X in the 2000s was the pinnacle of Mac, combining the Mac's focus on usability and good design with a solid Unix foundation that provided features that the classic Mac did not have such as preemptive multitasking and protected memory. And, let's face it, once competitors like the Amiga and BeOS died, Apple seemed to be the only major player remaining in the computer industry to have a coherent view of personal computing for the masses. If the Mac at its peak was like In-n-Out Burger, then Microsoft Windows is McDonald's, and the desktop environments for Linux are like frozen microwaveable burgers from the grocery store.
Unfortunately once Apple started making piles of money from the iPhone and other parts of the iOS ecosystem, Apple started to neglect the Mac (especially on the desktop hardware side) and the overall vision of personal computing as a way of empowering the masses. It seems today that all Apple is concerned about is the iOS ecosystem, which is a locked-down walled garden instead of the freedom and empowerment that the Mac provides.
Right now personal computing needs a champion. Many hundreds of millions of people, if not billions of people, rely on personal computers in order to carry out their business and creative tasks. Unfortunately there are no companies that are passionate about personal computing. Apple has become the iPhone company, Microsoft is focused on upholding its monopoly and building its cloud business, Google is all about mining personal data, and the Linux desktop world is too fragmented in order to put up a united front. Even worse, many of the major players in personal computing bought into the notion in the late 2000s and early 2010s that personal computers will be replaced with smartphones and tablets. This led to Apple's neglect of the Mac, Microsoft's failed Windows 8 Metro interface, and some odd design decisions in the early days of GNOME 3 and for Ubuntu. While the industry has been backing away from the thought that tablets will supplant personal computers, personal computing still lacks a champion.
My dream is for either a company or a team of open source software developers to pick up from where Alan Kay, Don Norman, and other people left off and create an personal computing operating system that combines the best ideas of Smalltalk, Lisp machines, Hypercard, OpenDoc, and Apple's usability guidelines from the Mac OS 8-9 days. It will be an operating system that is focused on composable documents similar to OpenDoc but with Smalltalk-like levels of flexibility and control. It will also have a strong emphasis on usability with a "back-to-basics" viewpoint instead of the flat design promoted by contemporary desktop and mobile GUIs.