That's not how I remember it. Back in the day the first thing you did was disable the Aero stuff to claw back some performance on Vista.
That said, who knows how efficient the implementation is compared to other changes in iOS 26. I turned liquid glass off with "reduced transparency" because even 1% extra battery usage for it would be too much even though I kinda appreciated the new look.
>>That's not how I remember it. Back in the day the first thing you did was disable the Aero stuff to claw back some performance on Vista.
I remember it being kinda like placebo - you did, you marvelled at how much faster it's working, but in reality nothing changed. I really liked the look, and it did run smooth unless you had something below the minimum spec(which a lot of people did at the time).
Yes, though I think it worth noting that at that point "low spec machines" was like 80% of laptops and maybe 50% of desktops. It also really hurt when you went from XP which ran great to Vista which noticeably dragged on your machine.
My friend had an Alienware laptop which absolutely screamed with Vista
XP Media Center Edition had a pretty slick theme, not at all toy-like. To say nothing of the Metro interface in its titular app, though it seems Metro was kind of a dud when they tried to apply it to other apps.
That said, who knows how efficient the implementation is compared to other changes in iOS 26. I turned liquid glass off with "reduced transparency" because even 1% extra battery usage for it would be too much even though I kinda appreciated the new look.