Yeah, I’ve always hated that about Apple, and I primarily use Apple products. They have opened up a little bit in the last few years though. Like in macOS you can choose from a few different accent colors, you can turn borders on around buttons (I think that’s a contrast setting in accessibility), you can turn off transparency, and you can change the color of your mouse cursor (mine is now hot pink—never lose sight of it).

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’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.

Was this one of those jump scare pranks?