I also think the modern Windows 10 UI is ugly, but the worst is that it's very inconsistent e.g. right click here and get this popup style, but if you right click there you get another one. Same goes when you browse some computer settings (not talking about the most obscure or very technical stuff).

And yeah it's ridiculous that we have incredible CPUs compared to what I started with yet simple apps take way more time to load with no benefit for me (argueably even looking worse). But that's the state of things and I don't see it changing - well, maybe the next calculator will be in Electron.

I agree. I remember when I bought a refurbished ThinkPad T430 to play with back in late 2016; it came with Windows 10. The interface looked gaudy on the laptop's 1366x768 display, with all of its oversized elements. It seems to me that Microsoft has a penchant for UI designs that consume a lot of vertical screen real estate (i.e., the Microsoft Office ribbon). On the flipside, I've had the opportunity to use Windows 10 on a 4K display at work, and it looks much better on it. It seems to me that Windows 10's UI is designed for high-resolution displays, but the problem with this assumption is that there are a lot of business laptop users out there making do with 1366x768 displays. The old-style Windows Classic or Windows 7 UIs with their conservative use of screen real estate would fit perfectly with these displays, but unfortunately these themes are unavailable in Windows 10, and it still wouldn't address the problem of applications written using Windows' modern UI guidelines.

macOS still looks good on my 1440x900 2013 MacBook Air, and I like how the Cinnamon desktop looks on my ThinkPad T430; I use Linux Mint on that ThinkPad now.

Tip: you can purchase a nice IPS 1080p display for ~110 (EUR)/~130 (USD) at aliexpress. Swapping it with the existing one is ~30 mins, if you are doing it for the first time.

(I've damaged my original 1600x900 TN panel and the quoted price for material was more than the third-party IPS, even without the work. The third party panel is much nicer).

Also related: macOS was originally optimized for 72 dpi; retina at @2x is 144 dpi. Windows (and also Linux DEs) optimized for 96 dpi, 200% is 192 dpi - which is much bigger jump and they look atrocious if the display is in the 140-180 dpi range. That's why macOS can look nice at ~WQHD displays that MBPs ship with, and Windows laptops needs at least 3200x1600 look nice at 200%.

One thing that's missing is hierarchy, frames and 3D borders were useful in knowing which controls affect which content.

Exactly. Without mousing over things, it's impossible to know the exact boundaries of a thing you might want to click on

I find the flatness to make things look horribly cluttered, for example in Outlook 2016 : too few borders, no distinction between buttons and plain text, no hierarchy, uselessly huge components ... (Edited to be more specific)

WinUI is at least not as square as before and it does have a “compact mode”. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/style/sp...

Let’s hope this makes the UI useable and less fisher pricy.

microsoft didnt start these trends, and it's sad that they are following. win7 was a gold standard of usability and speed. Humans have fast 3d contour perception for a reason, it helps us find buttons and fruits.

i dare you to find your sound device's control panel in win10

It's fascinating to watch how even babies pick up on what's a pressable button (and what's not) in the real world via contour perception. Before they even have an understanding of cause and effect, they love to find buttons on physical items and press them.

I wonder why UI designers stopped trying to leverage this principle.

Yeah, discoverability in modern computer UIs is terrible.

IIRC Microsoft did start these trends with Metro. Before Metro, all UIs (from MS, Apple, Google and even Linux) used more visually rich themes (it was during the time when Apple went a bit too hard on skeuomorphism). Also AFAIK even though most associate Metro with Win8, it started on Windows Phone 7.

Also there's a weird delay when you right click a number in the calculator app and the actual pop-up box slides open.

It's irritating, why can't they keep things simple?

My Windows 10 Calculator.exe uses around 20 threads. Seems a bit excessive for a calculator app. Any one having access to old classic calc for comparison?

Open up Task Manager and go to Details tab and show the column Threads (right click on column header and pick Select columns).

I installed Windows 7 style calculator via chocolately and it turns out to only use 6 threads.

choco install oldcalc

As a macOS / iOS user I am with you in a way. For iOS I much preferred the older Skeuomorphic design compared to the modern flat design that is seen everywhere these days.

The macOS UI is still fine for me though.

it is. had to get the old calc.exe.

It's so annoying, one time it even asked me if I was enjoying using it and would I like to write a review.

That's because they dont know how to use the telemetry from calc yet. Wait, they just sold it to an advertising company.

What you think is wasted space is most likely what makes it work in touch mode.

Yeah. So basically wasted space.

Seriously can you do a Visual Studio or Photoshop UI with this?

I hate the fisher price mode for the control panels on Win10 (which I guess is made using WinUI). It’s so much wasteful of space and half the options are missing. I wish there was a button to get rid of these entirely.

Yes. But I'm not in touch mode.