See for example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36446933 - Windows NT on 600MHz machine opens apps instantly. What happened? (2023-06-23)

Follow up to the above by the original author:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36503983 - Fast machines, slow machines (2023-06-28)

They're opening Notepad and Paint, very simple apps even for the time. Try MS Word.

Also Windows NT was released in 1993 when typical PCs were more like 100MHz, so this is getting a 6x speedup from the designed experience.

The second article has videos of more comparisons with different software on a greater variety of hardware:

https://jmmv.dev/2023/06/fast-machines-slow-machines.html

The point is that the good old days aren't just pure nostalgia, some parts were genuinely good compared to modern bloated software.

The interface themselves were snappy when there was no or little I/Os. Spinning drives were killing their snappiness.

Now we don't have such excuse, at least for non networked apps.

Same for MacOS 6 and 7 on period hardware. It’s anything but snappy. MacOS 7 on PPC was snappy compared to Windows 95 on Intel, and that’s it. Amiga was snappy, compared to Windows, but I have a working Amiga 600 and it’s not a great platform even for email.

Comparing A600's 68000@7.14MHz with the strongest macs running system 7 isn't fair.

If you're gonna do that, then remember how much faster a well-expanded Amiga was. Even faster than any real 68k Mac when emulating Mac.

7.5 is really fast on a 68040 as long as you’re not bound by I/O

The apps were snappy, but the hardware wasn't. Every menu/window opened immediately and without unnecessary animation... unless it needed some unexpected processing - then you were potentially waiting for the spinning rust to handle the swap file.

The UI was minimalistic, but with better hardware we also wanted nicer fonts, transitions, wobbly windows (I actually miss those) and countless other nice things that take time.

Also, it’s pointless to open a menu in less time than it takes the screen to refresh.

> Also, it’s pointless to open a menu in less time than it takes the screen to refresh.

No, that would be the goal.

How many times do you want to refresh it without the user seeing it?

Once should be quite enough.

wobbly windows - did you know that they're still available in modern KDE Plasma Desktop Environment? No need to actually miss them! :)

https://userbase.kde.org/Tips/Enable_fun_desktop_effects_on_...

There's an option to disable animations in Windows, but I find it disorienting.

Most desktop have such options, kde and gnome too.for instance.

I am pretty sure this is good old resistance to change. You would disabled them on all your systems, then force yourself to use them that way for a month and I am pretty sure that "disorientation" would quickly disappear.

Windows Vista gave this feeling retroactively