Apple ended up purchasing NeXT in 1997.īefore the Aqua release, Apple used a UI called Platinum, a legacy of NeXT. Apple made several attempts to create a modern successor to the classic Mac operating system, but all of them were unsuccessful. Microsoft dominated in the field of personal computers, while Apple experienced substantial annual losses. The latter half of the 1990s was a dark time for Apple. Original Apple Macintosh OS user interface (1984)Īfter massive success in the 80s, Apple started to experience problems in the early 90s. If you look closely at Macintosh OS, you will notice that it has many attributes of a modern graphical user interface: the concept of a window, app icon, and system states. Macintosh OS set a foundation for graphical user interface design for the entire industry. A very brief history of Apple Macintosh OSĪpple released the Macintosh OS in 1984. In this article, I want to focus on the visual language of the Apple Aqua and why this language has such a tremendous impact on other products that Apple released.

Image by 512pixelsĭespite that the appearance of Aqua has changed frequently over the years, the foundation principles of GUI design that Aqua defined stayed the same up to 2020 when MacOS Big Sur was released. Apple described Aqua as the future of Macintosh, and it was one of the most fundamental design upgrades that Apple ever created. Apple unveiled Aqua, its next-generation user interface for MacOS X, at the Macworld Expo San Francisco in 2000.

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