Not just wasted resources, a lot of modern eye candy actually makes the computer harder to use. For example, the recent 'flat' appearances make selected, unselected, and entirely-non-button areas look almost indistinguishable! Or animations that cause visible slowness locally and make remote display over any media slower than tens of megabits per second unusable.
A computer is a tool, most tools are not sleek, they have buttons and dohickies, sharp edges that do work, etc. There is nothing wrong with polishing something up, sure, but it has to be strictly secondary to usability.
The high contrast 3d look in motif wasn't because its creators had bad taste. They may well have also had bad taste, but the appearance served a utilitarian purpose. :)
> Or animations that cause visible slowness locally and make remote display over any media slower than tens of megabits per second unusable.
Hello, Firefox, I'm looking at you, especially during start-up. I don't know whose idea it was to "fade-in" the toolbars on start up, but I noticed that one right away, when firing it up over both x2go and (especially) X-over-SSH. Cute thing to do in the middle of a pandemic where everyone is using remote displays!
A computer is a tool, most tools are not sleek, they have buttons and dohickies, sharp edges that do work, etc. There is nothing wrong with polishing something up, sure, but it has to be strictly secondary to usability.
The high contrast 3d look in motif wasn't because its creators had bad taste. They may well have also had bad taste, but the appearance served a utilitarian purpose. :)