Steve Troughton-SmithJul 13, 2023

♻️ Recycled thread, June 22 2022

I had an inkling it might be possible to patch AppKit in Mac OS X 10.0 to re-enable the NEXTSTEP interface style after it was removed during the Developer Previews — and I was right! So here’s the shipping, consumer Mac OS X without Aqua turned on. It’s rather broken and crashy

Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithJul 13, 2023
I did it by returning NSNextStepInterfaceStyleDefaultValue from __NSGlobalInterfaceStyle, a four-byte patch. Have fun!
Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithJul 13, 2023
Follow-up: Platinum also works 😄 Such a fun collection of mixed idioms
Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithJul 13, 2023
Here’s some more Mac OS X v10.0.0 with Aqua turned off in favor of Platinum, for funsies. As you can see, the UI is in a state of pure chaos. Many apps crash, open/save panels show no UI, window backgrounds are all over the place
Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithJul 13, 2023

I whipped up a little library to inject into previously-crashing apps, like Mail, awkwardly patching NSDrawer and NSToolbar support back into Platinum 😅 Even getting Project Builder up and running required a bunch of little tweaks.

It’s fun to know that it would be entirely plausible to patch Aqua almost completely out of the early versions of Mac OS X. I had no idea any of this survived, in such a complete form, past the Developer Previews/PB

Show threadSteve Troughton-SmithJul 13, 2023
Bonus screenshot of OmniGraffle running in the OPENSTEP-style interface, on Mac OS X v10.0
Show threadMatt Diamond
@stroughtonsmith Aqua, yum! Still as lickable as ever.
Jul 14, 2023 at 12:13pmWeb