| ▲ | sen 5 days ago |
| This is very very cool, and unlike a lot of other "hobby" OSes actually looks usable as a daily driver if your needs are basic (kids, elderly, older/cheaper hardware, etc). While for nerds computers have become these monstrously powerful things that can do everything under the sun, there's definitely still plenty of people who just want a computer to write down notes, keep a calendar, use the calculator... eg the things home computers were originally made to do. |
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| ▲ | voidfunc 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| What youre describing is called iOS on a large iPad. Everyone from 4 year olds to my 77 year old computer illiterate Dad can figure it out. This doesn't look very usable at all by someone who isn't basically a computer nerd. |
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| ▲ | Nextgrid 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | True in theory, but in practice due to our economy being based on growth at all costs, iOS doesn’t really fit the bill anymore. Nowadays even iOS will randomly change its UI and send you “notifications” or “suggestions” (modern euphemism for “ads”) to subscribe to Apple TV* or iCloud. | | |
| ▲ | deaddodo 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I was forced to buy a new iPhone recently (my 16 was stolen), and had iOS 26 foisted on me. My god, is it bad (for me, I'm sure some like it). The ugly glass UX, the weird floating controls, the always on display, blah blah. It's not innovative at all, it's like they just had to redo everything simply to make it seem "new". | | |
| ▲ | Nextgrid 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Always-on display can be disabled but for the rest I agree. It doesn’t really do anything more that my 3rd gen SE but is way more annoying to use (bigger size, no fingerprint reader nor home button). | |
| ▲ | vosper 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The ugly glass UX, the weird floating controls, the always on display, blah blah I'm on the "some like it" boat, to my surprise. I think the glass effect is eye-catching in a good way, and is much-less of a readability issue than I had expected. I often notice how cool it looks over my rotating background photos. I also love the always-on display because I don't have a watch. |
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| ▲ | vasco 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So what is better? I think you're wrong and a tablet with iOS or android is the best form factor for computer illiterate people to get something done. Despite whatever bullshit they added, everything else is worse. But maybe you know of something better? | | | |
| ▲ | naikrovek 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Nowadays even iOS will randomly change its UI You and I have very different ideas of “random” I think. | | |
| ▲ | BolexNOLA 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Why with Tahoe did they get rid of the volume indicator that popped up middle of screen that they’ve had for 20+ years - a critical indicator that the volume controls are even working in the first place - in favor of a tiny set of bars at the top right of my screen in the menu bar where I can barely make them out? It’s also less precise about my volume level now. Why? That sure seemed random. It sure isn’t functional. | | |
| ▲ | Razengan 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Because before you many users complained "IT TAKES UP THE WHOLE SCREEN!!!!" and it was a bit annoying to be honest when it obscures a video or something else you're trying to view. | | |
| ▲ | BolexNOLA 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | But it doesn’t take up the whole screen, it flashes for like 2 seconds, and it has been around so long that it has created a very ingrained user behavior. I’d be very curious to see how many complaints they’ve actually gotten about it. This definitely struck me as “random” | |
| ▲ | exe34 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | what kind of video are you watching where you need to change the volume so often and missing two seconds of part of the video would be such an issue? | | |
| ▲ | Razengan 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Look. I wanted to change the volume. My hand went to the keyboard. I felt the key. I felt the key press down. The volume changed. That's all the feedback I need! I don't need my vision stuffed with that information. But yeah, it did look cute and should be an option between "Expressive" or "Minimal" UI. | | |
| ▲ | BolexNOLA 4 days ago | parent [-] | | The issue arises when my output is not what I think it is or the audio is otherwise not being adjusted (happens a lot when your pushing through an HDMI output). It could be going out my speakers, my headphones, or something else entirely. So when I’m pressing the volume up and down trying to see what is going on, I don’t want to have to squint at a very tiny set of bars in the top menu bar. That is annoying and far more distracting than an opaque layer that gives me clear information showing up for 2 seconds. At the end of the day I want Apple to adhere to the “it just works” philosophy. That little pop up served as a critical source of information I needed daily that tells me more than just the volume level. It’s easy to understand, it’s been consistent for I believe two decades, and it provides information to multiple questions instantly. It did not need to be changed and what they changed it to is worse. | | |
| ▲ | klardotsh 4 days ago | parent [-] | | * what they changed it to is worse _for you_ Some of us hated that floating overlay with a passion and wish it only the best riddance on its way out the door. | | |
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| ▲ | catoc 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > “You and I have very different ideas of “random” I think.” Indeed, not ‘random’. With respect to iOS26 what word should one use?
Premeditated? Deliberate? Maliciously? | | |
| ▲ | hulitu 4 days ago | parent [-] | | > Indeed, not ‘random’. With respect to iOS26 what word should one use? Premeditated? Deliberate? Maliciously? Ejaculated ? Something coming out of a reproductive organ, with no idea of real world consequences. |
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| ▲ | bathtub365 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Maybe a better definition is “for seemingly no reason”? | | | |
| ▲ | gouggoug 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | what are you trying to say here? |
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| ▲ | Razengan 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > What youre describing is called iOS on a large iPad. iPad was my gateway drug into Apple when I got it as a gift for my aunt and saw how easy and intuitive it was to use, and also to develop for. Then after Jobs' whip fell from his cold hands they went into the realm of "mystery meat" menus and arcane gestures where swiping from seemingly every different angle of the screen edge does something different. Swipe from the top-right corner to get the Control Center, but swipe from the center-top to see the Notifications?? Yeah not gonna bother training an elder on that. I can't dare get my mom a modern iPhone now where she has to swipe up to unlock: it has be an iPhone SE, the last iPhones with a Home button. I am the filthiest of nerds but I still can't get myself to remember how the heck iPad multitasking works. Apparently they can't either, they changed it again in 26 and now I can't easily get Notes etc. by swiping in from the side when watching a video etc. and I haven't bothered to look up how to do that now. In any case all this only shows that attempting a one-size-fits-all UI can't really go all the way. iPhones/iPad have had a respectable run, they were lucky to have an OS Usability tyrant in charge, but maybe it's time to accept that UIs need an option for Simple vs Expert or something. | | |
| ▲ | davedx 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > the realm of "mystery meat" menus and arcane gestures where swiping from seemingly every different angle of the screen edge does something different. Swipe from the top-right corner to get the Control Center, but swipe from the center-top to see the Notifications? Ha, I'm a heavy long term iOS and MacOS user, and I still haven't learned what all the swipes and clicks in random places actually do exactly. I just I know sometimes click by accident at the very bottom right of my display on MacOS and it swishes all the windows to the right (why? I have no idea?!), clicking again brings them back luckily. On iOS I resonate with your comments about the swiping from different places to get different things. The only gesture I can ever remember is swiping from top right to get the quick system menu to turn wifi on/off etc. I can never figure out how to clear my notifications or why they're sometimes displayed and sometimes aren't. And the other swipes and menus are completely beyond me. I'm a 40 year old life long software developer. "iOS on a large iPad" has some good affordances but is definitely NOT some kind of panacea for elderly or computer illiterate users! | | |
| ▲ | Hnrobert42 4 days ago | parent [-] | | > swishing right It could be 1. you clicked the desktop which causes the desktop to be revealed. Clicking the desktop again restores things. 2. You have hot corners configured to reveal the desktop. 3. Stage manager. Just my guesses. Maybe they will help. |
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| ▲ | bombcar 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | They removed the side thing in 26 and are bringing it back in 26.1. There’s a complete lack of project leadership and it’s strangely worrying. | | |
| ▲ | Razengan 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > There’s a complete lack of project leadership I mean, that's fine, if there is no overarching vision. Just let users CUSTOMIZE the UI the way we want. That's it. That would actually be easier on the UI designers too. Perhaps just a trifle bit complicated for the coders, but they have ＊AI＊ now, right?? | | |
| ▲ | bombcar 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I fully believe that those inside Apple fighting for customized UI are relegated to hiding them as accessibility options. Apple has never been very fond of customization (one way, Apple's way, or the highway). |
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| ▲ | hu3 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You mean the OS that "upgraded" to transparent background, sometimes hard to read text by default? I can't recommend those in good concience ton elders anymore. Kids always figure it out tho. | |
| ▲ | honeybadger1 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I agree with you. I see this as a passion project, and I think it's really cool. | |
| ▲ | bitexploder 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | iOS is tremendously more complex than it used to be. Still relatively easy to use but it has definitely lost the simplicity edge. | |
| ▲ | hulitu 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > What youre describing is called iOS on a large iPad. Is iOS able to work with files ? Asking for a friend. /s |
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| ▲ | hollerith 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >if your needs are basic (kids, elderly, . . .) Most kids and most elderly need to run a mainstream browser from time to time, and this Visopsys will almost certainly never be able to run a mainstream browser. |
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| ▲ | wizzwizz4 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Then we need to change what is meant by "mainstream browser". | | |
| ▲ | graemep 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I would love to see that happen, but its not going to. It is the people with basic needs who need to stick to the mainstream stuff because they can get support and it does what they expect. People need bank and other complex websites to work. They want to watch online video. Kids will need educational apps. Also do not make assumptions about elderly people. Not long ago I met a woman (guess in her 70s?) who used to write embedded software for nuclear reactors. I have known many people or similar or greater age who need quite complex stuff. Its the geeks who can manage with the non-mainstream stuff. | | |
| ▲ | wizzwizz4 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Web browsers have three purposes: document viewer, remote paperwork machine, and cross-platform application framework. I could throw together a browser fully capable of the first two in a month. (Much less time, if you're okay shipping a prototype, which personally I'm not.) Bank websites are not complex, unless you count the business logic: there's no reason they shouldn't work in Dillo. | | |
| ▲ | xp84 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > document viewer, remote paperwork machine, and cross-platform application framework Can I get a show of hands for anyone else who has had multiple jobs where The Frontend People have decided that in order to show something that can only honestly be defined as "a basic document" or complete a few simple <form> tags, the tooling necessary for the job is a React or Next.js app over 1,000 NPM dependencies, and fully reimplementing all built-in functionality from scratch in JS? The Web is simply the land of excess. Nothing is too simple to be overengineered poorly in JavaScript. | | |
| ▲ | wizzwizz4 3 days ago | parent [-] | | This would simply not be possible, if basic web browsers were more popular. The React / Next.js app wouldn't run, and then the users would complain, and the Frontend People would try to say "just use the WHATWG VM", and then the Enterprise People would say "we've blocked that so people can't play video games at work: fix your end" (ignoring that they only blocked programs named chrome.exe, and everyone's got Firefox or a renamed Chrome installed), and then the Frontend People would have to fix it because that's what the client demands. (For B2B, at least, but B2B is lucrative enough that best-practices proliferate.) It's a chicken-and-egg problem. The harmful consequences of Postel's principle are well-known, but the solutions are also well-known. We only need to get past a certain threshold before the problem's effectively solved, and that can be done by starting in a particular domain and working our way outwards. |
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| ▲ | hollerith 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, almost any competent developer could define a simple document format that would make it easy to write viewers for all the niche OSes, but he cannot persuade content creators to adopt the simple format because most creators (writers) don't see anything wrong with publishing on the web and don't see anything wrong with relying on intermediaries like Wordpress, Medium and Substack to help them publish on the web. Those intermediaries do not want to switch to a simple document format because the user's being dependent on a mainstream browser helps them to track users and to monetize. So 99% of the time, a user ends up needing the full complexity of a mainstream browser just to read a static document. |
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| ▲ | 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | Rygian 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| From the Visopsys "About" page: > [...] realistically the target audience remains limited to operating system enthusiasts, students, and assorted other sensation seekers |
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| ▲ | rvz 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > and unlike a lot of other "hobby" OSes actually looks usable as a daily driver if your needs are basic (kids, elderly, older/cheaper hardware, etc). While building a non-Linux OS is very impressive, however this is not useful as a daily driver at all. If the OS doesn't even have basic browsers such as Chrome or Firefox, it can't be remotely used as a daily driver to anyone who isn't a computer enthusiast. |
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| ▲ | xuhu 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I wonder if Visopsys, Windows 3.11 and others could work as a daily driver running in qemu, started from a Linux initrd that has just a browser and qemu. "Opening" the browser in Visopsys actually switches to the browser running on the host, and Alt-Tab switches back to Visopsys. |
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| ▲ | Levitating 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I couldn't tell you how many operating systems fit those requirements, hobby or not. |
