Though they were a step down from Kaleidoscope schemes and appearance manager themes in terms of what they could do, those early OS X themes remain some of the nicest looking, highest fidelity themes on any platform. In particular, those made by Max Rudberg[0] hold a special place in my heart.
Modern theming systems have high DPI support which is in theory an upgrade, but the desktop appearance zeitgeist has skewed so flat and dull that the extra pixels make no material difference.
> the desktop appearance zeitgeist has skewed so flat and dull that the extra pixels make no material difference
Yeah, this is definitely one of the saddest things about modern UI fashion. We have the highest-resolution, highest-DPI, cleanest-looking extra-bright, extra-deep-black HDR OLED screens, and... we've got flatter UI than ever, UI that would've looked dull even on a 90s CRT.
Yes, but we have layers over layeers of abstraction, tiny scrollbars (who needs scrollbars when you could scroll with the mouse wheel, if it worked - Microsoft is still not able to get mouse scrolling right) and rounded windows.
I used Siro for years in that era, great looking theme. IMO it was cleaner than the official theme, since this was Apple’s “brushed metal” era when someone decided that the Finder should literally embody a filing cabinet.
Modern theming systems have high DPI support which is in theory an upgrade, but the desktop appearance zeitgeist has skewed so flat and dull that the extra pixels make no material difference.
[0]: https://maxrudberg.com/themes.html