bhelyer.com

Stickies: Now and Then

I'm into old computers. More accurately, I'm into old software. The computers themselves -- while being pleasing objects -- take up space, and have components that rust and seize and leak and explode. Keeping the magic smoke inside the beige box is a constant battle.

Enter virtual machines and emulators. Many talented people have spent a lot of time making digital versions of hardware. This is vital for digital preservation; something which the original companies (if they still exist) seem to have no interest in. More germanely, it lets us fool about with this old software.

In this instance I was playing around with Macintosh System 7.5.3 on Mini vMac, emulating a Macintosh II. I'm a big fan of the UI design of System 7 and System 8. It's taking advantage of colour displays, but it's still a light touch.

System 7.5 desktop, running in Mini vMac26. The desktop has a tiling blue cat patterned wallpaper.
It was all downhill after the tiling cat wallpaper.

In the Apple menu there are a collection of applications (desktop accessories?). One caught my eye -- Stickies.

System 7.5 Apple menu, with Stickies highlighted

The reason they stuck out to me was that Stickies was an app ported to Rhapsody, Apple's initial steps at combining NeXTSTEP and the classic Macintosh operating system -- a direct predecessor to modern macOS and iOS.

Rhapsody DR2, in 86box, showing Stickies
Getting this screenshot probably wasn't worth setting up this VM.

Stickies is an application that is still shipped with modern macOS, making it one of the few through lines from the older Macintosh operating system, and not NeXTSTEP.

For example, Modern Finder derives more from File Viewer than classic Finder. The dock is from NeXTSTEP. If we compare System 7.5 to Windows 3.1, Microsoft's contemporary operating system, System 7.5 feels far more disconnected from modern macOS than Windows does from its earlier versions.

Windows 11 displaying a Windows 3 old-style file picker
Does anyone use this dialogue for anything but demonstrating this file picker?

This speaks to Microsoft and Apple's differing opinions on the value of backwards compatibility. Which is why finding an app like Stickies interested me. So how much of that original DNA remains?

A macOS Stickies.app note on the left, a Macintosh note on the right.

The square close button and general design are strikingly familiar. The macOS iteration has an extra button to roll up the note, and has done away with the resize affordance, instead changing the cursor to indicate you can resize the note.

They both have the triangle button, but they do different things. In the System 7 version, the triangle shrinks the note so that only the content is shown, a la the old OS X green plus button behaviour.

The triangle button on macOS instead makes the note take the entire screen. I'm not sure I would ever need a note to fill my 4K monitor, but the option is there.

A macOS desktop, entirely covered by a note with the text "I'm not sure how useful this is".

(The Rhapsody version of Stickies has the triangle behaviour of the System 7.5 original.)

Most of the colours are still present in the modern version, with the exception of black and white.

A yellow note on a macOS desktop with the text "Hello, world". In front of it are other notes of different colours, with different font-styles. Below the notes is a Mini vMac 26 window showing System 7 with a very similar arrangement of notes. The Monaco text on the red note uses the 'shadow' effect on System 7, but not on macOS. The System 7 arrangment has a black-and-white note, which isn't present in the macOS arrangement.
The real tragedy is the lack of a shadow style in the new versions.

The notes are much more primitive in the original version. The text style applies to the entire note -- you can't have a bold title, and normal text underneath. The modern stickies can have embedded images.

A macOS dialog box with the Stickies.app icon. Below that in bold text, "If you don't save this note, its contents will be lost". Then text in a regular font reads "Are you sure you want to discard this Stickies note?" There are three buttons arranged vertically. The first two are clumped together, apart from the last. The first button is blue, and reads "Save...". The other two buttons read "Delete Note" and "Cancel". Below that is a shot of System 7 with its own dialog. Text reads "Closing this note will delete it from the desktop. Do you want to save its constants as a text file before closing it?" Underneath the text, arranged horizontally are three buttons. The two on the right are clumped together apart from the first. From left to right the buttons read "Don't Save", "Cancel", and "Save". The Save button is highlighted with a bold border.

If this was interesting to you, see this post from the original author (Jens Alfke) about the origins of Stickies.