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  • I'm typically not a big proponent of skeuomorphism, but it's nice to have actual variety of experimental options, a bit like the crazy things people did with UIs back in the old days.
  • This is very funny. But I think it would make me feel like I was working inside of Papers Please or some similar game.
  • Man, first Felix Reiseberg[0], then OpenCode 2.0[1], and now this in the last 24 hrs. Really giving off heavy Myst vibes. They are briefly interesting encounters, buy I deeply hope this isn't a legitimate UI trend.

    It's hardly even skeuomorphism, it's a almost digital twin rendered with Phong.

    [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50082470

    [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50094994

  • This warms my heart.

    I was just thinking about this the other week, when I bought an old iPhone, from the skeumorphic era, for nostalgic purposes. I've wanted one for years -- I only had the newer ones that were flat.

    I always thought, nah, I'm just seeing thru rose tinted glasses, surely it wasn't that cool, I'm gonna be disappointed...

    Well, I finally got one, and oh boy. It's even better than I imagined. There's just so much love and care put into the designs. We really lost something special.

    (p.s. if you get a really old iPhone, don't reset the device. It's impossible to activate them now, found out the hard way.)

  • Love the idea, but in reality this is a heavy AI-assisted project riddled with weird graphical issues that completely detract from the experience. It's less a window manager, and more akin to a mid-90's CD-ROM puzzle game. For instance having to turn a key to allow shutting down your machine is a cute idea but the key turn animation plays inconsistently, meaning the state of some of the buttons isn't always obvious.
  • The main difficulty I see in these "RETVRN TO SOVL" things is not the window-manager or desktop itself but the UI toolkits for the applications. GTK2 had so many excellent themes. Now GTK or libadwaita seem designed to resist themes and introduce constant breaking of selectors or widgets or whatnot. I believe they griefed the themers into just giving up. I have less knowledge about Qt, but I assume it's probably the better pick these days.
    by d1l
  • I want more stuff like this. The era 20 years ago (e.g. Enlightenment) was way more fun than the bland monotonic design we have these days. If you like bland modern design, great, that should be an option as well, but we should still have good variety.
  • This is a really enjoyable take, pushing the feeling of what one does on a computer towards actually being at a desk and having to reach for various functions. I feel like that would enable spatial memory to do some cool things.

    I miss the 90s chunkiness of switches, buttons, hardware: being able to hear the computer "think" (HDD seeks), the hum of a CRT. Modern machinery feels so insubstantial, emphasizing clean glass and tidy machined chassis. (chassies?)

    I have this persistent daydream about a computer setup that feels like the Nostromo flight deck from Alien. I almost want to feel like I'm sitting _inside_ a computer when I'm at my desk, surrounded by powerful feeling electronics with substantial switches and such. Of course there's plenty of inconvenience there too, but something about it appeals to me.

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