Why are people calling Windows vista

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From day one of Windows 11, I wrote that Windows 11 felt like an unnecessary replacement for Windows 10. I’ve since changed my mind about that, in part because Microsoft has pivoted toward features like Windows Spotlight and adding AI capabilities like Copilot. MacOS Tahoe looks and feels somewhat like Windows Vista’s Aero Glass design language, but you can’t hold that against them—some of Microsoft’s early Windows efforts were fondly remembered for their UI.
Oh so he doesn't know what he is talking about. How has 11 gotten better with 'AI' or anything else.
- It's got what shareholders crave
  
  From day 1 I’ve been critical of Windows 11, but since then I’ve been told our sponsors don’t like that, so here’s why I’m now all in on 11.
  
  blood of slave labour children from the rare earth metal mines?
- Also, they don’t seem to remember that Mac OS X 10.2 used Aqua and glassmorphism in 2002 to match their iMac’ brand new translucent style 5 years before Windows Vista was released (2007).
- Also, everyone hated the UI in Vista at the time.
  
  I didn't mind it at all, but I had decent hardware, which apparently made all of the difference.
  
  I hated XP’s FisherPrice UI as well…
  
  I feel like I was the only person who liked vista. XP looked like shit, so I used win 2k instead and switched to Vista, never had any issues with it at all.
  
  Man I loved Aero and I’m excited for iOS and iPadOS 26. Shit looks beautiful.
- Who's "he", and where did that quote come from? I only see an image, did I miss an article cross-posted or something?
  EDIT: Apparently, it's from PCWorld.
  
  Source: him
- Well, hopefully their opinion changed from "unnecessary replacement" to "replacement with degraded performance and unnecessary malware."
- Context I had no idea what was going on until I found this at the bottom of all the comments.
  
  THANK you. Thought I was going crazy...
- Copilot is literally the last nail in the coffin for me to finally switch. 365 has been bad for some time now, with copilot it's basically unusable
- Didn't Vista get a ton of hate for its new UI?
  
  IIRC, vista got hate because to run it a massive number of users would have to…upgrade…their…hardware.

We've seen all the window border/ui design cycles by now. You can have:
Glassy
Metallic
Bubbly
Flat
Chiseled stone
They will just rotate every 7 years or so from here on out.
- Burning
  
  Bukakke
- The exact same trends go round and round in web design too (and now apps).
  At first things were square (because that was all the technology could do) then in the 2000s CSS exploded and everything went colour gradients and rounded corners, just because people could, then that became old-hat and everything went flat and square again, and then rounded came back (but without so many gradients)
  Everything is cyclical.
  
  Everything is cyclical.
  Be me still waiting for that cozy skeumorphism and UI with depth to come back. =/
  
  You're forgetting Flash. Flash every-fucking-where between 2002-2010 because fuck your CPU and your browser
  
  Color gradients weren't a feature in CSS for a long time, people still wanted them and made them using images, same with rounded corners, same with shadows. All this was standardised in CSS in the 2010s.

Ohhhhhhhhhh I get it! They called it Vista like a view, like something you would see out of a window (I am not very smart)
- And it's called Windows 11 to remind us of 9/11, because both are fucking tragedies.
  
  My throat hurts and you made me laugh too hard, I hope you are happy.
  
  I like Windows 11. It's the only OS currently in existence to actually implement HDR properly, and that's just sad.
- I’ve only just now made the connection because of your post.

Because people don’t seem to remember that Mac OS X 10.2 used Aqua and glassmorphism in 2002 to match their iMac’ brand new translucent style 5 years before Windows Vista was released (2007).
- People spreading these memes most likely weren’t born before either release 😀
  
  My back hurts
- Yeah and odd they don’t see the fundamental difference between these, Apple was always “glass widgets on/in a solid rectangle”
  Only on Windows were windows windows
- fucking dumbasses ROFL hahahahaa

I've run into gen-z people talking very nostalgically about 2000s UI design trends. They've even retroactively dubbed the era as 'futiger aero'.
I'm a bit older and don't as fondly remember that era; I remember a lot of excesses like nonsensical reflections and calendar apps with leather textures. The 2013 turn to "flat" design felt quite fresh to me, and I haven't really gotten tired of it yet.
- I miss the glass and translucent looks, the flat boring look of today is very bleak and dystopian looking imo. Don’t miss vista though, that was what started my move to Linux (with Compiz fusion and as many of the ridiculous effects as my poor $300 laptop could handle).
  
  I mean, I'm not entirely opposed to some translucency and gloss if it doesn't get in the way of legibility. For me early Mac OS X 'Aqua' circa 2003 is the peak of that aesthetic.
  Any UI theme should also be applied consistently. What I hated about Vista is the Aero theme was only surface deep. You were always only a few clicks away from some program that look liked it hadn't been updated since Windows 95.
  
  I feel the same way! I think a lot of hate for Vista was just instability and high system usage.
  I feel like things have definitely come a long way, where my KDE machines can have pretty glassy UI without crunching the whole system.
  I also really liked ME before XP, where there was a heavy emphasis on personalizing and theming.
  flat boring look of today is very bleak and dystopian looking imo.
  100%. It feels very corporate and like any artistic touch was forcibly extracted from it because trends say that aesthetic hurts readability or something. Blegh.
  It's like the UI equivalent to that "Memphis techbro" art style with the freakish flat purple people with wonky arms and tiny heads.
- I got tired of it in 2013. While it does work in some places (Android does it reasonably well), I haven't yet seen a good flat design on the desktop.
  Windows 8 and 10 looked garish and hard to read, especially since everything is a rectangle with a one-pixel outline. Is it a button? Is it a text field? Maybe a thick progress bar? Who knows, they all look extremely similar.
  While Apple did overdo it in the later big-cat OS X releases, I'll take a felt-textured widget panel and a calendar bound in leather over an endless sea of hairline rectangles.
- Hell yeah I love that shit. Gimme unnecessarily textured UIs, frosted glass effects and all the skeuomorphisms you can manage.
  
  skeuomorphisms
  No joke, that kind of design was super useful for touchscreens. Especially if the buttons animated like a button and visibly depressed upon being tapped. Made it real easy to tell if you mistyped or of the touchscreen was fucked up and registering your tap in a slightly different spot.
- I am definitely older (my first programming job involved a mac plus) and personally, I can't stand the flat look era.
  
  It would be fine if it had more ways to differentiate elements from each other - darkening around the edges of windows, buttons that actually look raised so they aren't identical to a text box, scroll bars that aren't SO FUCKING TINY that it's clear MS is embarrassed that they exist in the first place, etc. etc.
- Windows XP was the peak of Windows' UI.
  
  Disagree. 2000, Vista, and especially 7 all looked better than XP. XP was childish.
  
  Aged badly.
  However, the Embedded Edition theme looks fine.
- There was the unreleased Windows “Blackcomb”, basically prior to Redmond seeing Apple’s Aqua, which was like a bit Windows 2000, a bit ME, flatness, outlines, square corners, and it could’ve been metro.
  But resolutions and anti-aliasing were getting (slightly) better, so copy Apple, XP instead gets texture and rounds everything.
  Vista was another interesting take, especially weird was the window controls. We are still living with those weird long controls with a margin below, but not above them, a lot of the time, even in flat land Windows 11.
- The 2013 turn to "flat" design felt quite fresh to me, and I haven't really gotten tired of it yet.
  Man, I have. I liked it at first, but I’m so ready.
  The processing power wasn’t there yet in 2007 for the level of refraction and skeuomorphism that makes this look work on a system-wide level. In Vista and 7 Aero was just fancy transparency with some blurring and flares. But this design language Apple is showing off is beautiful. I hope others copy it (which will probably happen, since everything in tech is everyone copying everyone else).
  (That said, I would probably also take a return to the 9x/NT4/Windows 2000 2.5D grey UI over the flat stuff at this point, so maybe I’m not a good source of opinion. 😅)
  
  (which will probably happen, since everything in tech is everyone copying ~~everyone else~~ Apple no matter how good or bad their ideas are at the time.)
  FTFY although I wish it wasn't so. ._. Lol
- If they are really nostalgic for that, tell them to use react os.

https://xkcd.com/528/

Necessary "BTW, I'm using arch linux" comment coming through!

Cool, I'm glad to see UI that makes tech look fun and hopeful again instead of barebones corporate-flat, spartan rectangles.
"Oo look, they come in muted pastels and you can round the corners!"
Pfftftfttft...

Context

And it stills looks like shit. Idk, as much as I dislike Windows Vista asthetics, Apple managed to make them look good by comparison.

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