Gui for experience: Website emulates settings of numerous Macs

If you want to indulge in Nostalgie for the weekend, you can do so as a Mac friend on a website of the designer Marcin Wichery: with “Frame of Preference” Has started an offer that shows how Macs configured between 1984 and 2004. So it is a collection of the attitude dialogues that Apple MacOS has donated over the years. The special thing: The (very) extensive page not only shows pictures and videos, but also implements an emulation directly in the browser.

Hobby: Mac settings

System 1.0 to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, plus – as a goodie – Nextstep 2.2 are covered. If it is not possible to load the respective emulator, videos can also be started. Also very successful: Wichery also complements many additional graphics such as icons, writes his own rating and tells various anecdotes. In addition, there is an epilogue for today’s look (albeit still without Liquid Glass from MacOS 26) plus an excursus to the Lisa.

The idea behind “Frame of Preference” is to provide a journey through the attitude dialogues of the first 20 Mac years, wicker. As a designer, he shouldn’t be able to suffer any attitudes. But as a user “I love her”. He therefore celebrates a “settings day” every year: that is “a day when I look at all the options and buttons in all the apps I use”.

From Susan Kare to Panther

During one of these sessions, he remembered the 1984 Mac settings that the designer Susan Kare had created. He then asked himself what had happened since then. “Looks that the Mac settings have led a much more fascinating life than I thought.” So Apple has often redesigned it. “And that says a lot about the early history and the difficult youth of this interesting machine.”

By the way, the trip continues: With MacOS 26, Apple has also redesigned the settings. On request, you can now be very monochrome (and be confusing), like the rest of the system, rounder corners and various other new effects. As usual, it should take for many users to get used to it – but then they go into flesh and blood. Until Apple makes the next redesign.