On tech forums like r/linux or hackernews, you'll frequently see posts by (presumably) old guys reminiscing about how great the user interface of their youth was.
"Oh how tasteful were these pixel art icons!"
"How utilitarian and consistent were the 3D effects!"
"How very intuitive are these menus!"
"It's all gone downhill since $PRODUCT. It's all flat and empty and useless now!"
Bollocks. These user interfaces sucked. The menus were a mess, because trying to shove 50 random items into 6 hierarchical categories, two of which are preordained to be "File" and "Edit", cannot be done in any way that isn't arbitrary and confusing. Thus you looked through all the little menus with your terrible mouse hoping to find something that sounded like it might be what you need, trying not to make a sudden move that made the submenu disappear.
Under the menu bar were between 30 and 200 tiny pixel art icons. They were just as incomprehensible as today's minimalist ones, only there were more of them and most of them looked like ass.
Oh and so many popup windows. Everything you did created a popup window. Why does the settings popup only use one third of the screen while having three tabs? Why can I see my document underneath it, half-obscured, but I can't actually click on anything there? Why do half the operations create an "OK" popup for me to click on?
Nothing about this was "functional" and yet it also looked grey and cramped and ugly. Like it was designed by C++ programmers (who by their choice of programming language have already proven that their opinion cannot be trusted, especially not in matters involving good taste), which of course it was.
Fucking brain worms, all of them.
First you're coming for my gas stove and now you're coming for my menu bar?
Most of the time, it seems that the "fixes" that have happened for user interfaces in the past have involved:
I have dealt with enough of these "improvements", personally. Add a search bar to supplement it, sure -- helped me pass my Office certifications. It shouldn't be the only way to access these same options. I should not have to move to my keyboard to access these things, I should be able to do it from my mouse and without scrolling a mile because some UI designer forgot that mice exist.
Ubuntu's unity desktop tried this and it was absolutely fantastic. You pressed alt to search through the active program's menu bar options, like you would press the "windows" key to search for a program.
I remember some settings from VLC's control panel being indexed there as well. Unity's treatment of the menu bar, letting you put it at the top like Mac OS, or make it part of the window's title bar, or even stuff it in a little hamburger if you choose, was just goated design. I don't know why they decided to abandon everything they had going there for gnome.
You lost me when you spoke positively about unity desktop. I can't stand it and had to switch to MATE.
Taskbars do not belong on the side of the screen!
Window management buttons absolutely FUCKING should not be merged into the MacOS style menu bar for maximized windows.
Once you know how it works it was really nice for the vertical space on a little dell chromebook 11 I had at the time. I was using profont for everything back when bitmap fonts were still universally supported and I was able to squeeze a lot out of the 1024x768 screen like that.
You could also hide it and use an alternative panel, or use unity tweak tool to move it to the bottom if you so chose :shrug-outta-hecks: