As Microsoft has expressed, Aero is "cheesy."

Despite nostalgia, it was stripped in pursuit of a mobile-friendly UI (at the time).

'...calling the UI that debuted in Vista and continued in Windows 7, “cheesy” and “dated.”'

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1437474/microsoft-dump...

All Windows UIs will die, on Microsoft's time, not the user community.

Yes "cheesy" and "dated" because new Windows version was about to be released in 3 months from publication of that article. So marketing machine portraying everything old as bad and everything new as better was running full speed.

In the end we all know how "well" W8 was received due to Metro components. Slightly modified Aero theme was still there, all resource files like icons, graphics were largely carried in. Aesthetically and visually that version of Windows was like 5-year old would made a papier mache operating system of two different products.

Aero was peak aesthetics. Flatcrap became commonplace because it was easy. No need for designers, just flat colors, resizable to fit any screen. Perfect for mobile slop!

Don't think I could disagree more. Aero was the peak of Windows UI design. It's such a shame they ruined it and walked away from it in Win8 and beyond.

The Shine 2 theme for Windows 7 still looks better than anything Microsoft has done in the 16 years since it was released:

https://www.deviantart.com/zainadeel/art/Shine-2-0-for-Windo...

Looks better than MacOS as well.

I didn't think it was cheesy, but when Windows 10 and 11 came along it sure felt like we evolved to shitty.