So there are coffee table books with beautiful photos of Braun equipment, Apple computers, collections of corporate brand standards, typeface specimens etc.

I was just looking at Scala on Amiga and look how beautiful!

(Source + kudos to Stone Tools: https://stonetools.ghost.io/scala-amiga)

Early NeXT, obviously (a bit Unixy, but has some elegance)! Magic Cap?

There are probably some more strange and beautiful text-only DOS apps. Some particularly memorable semigraphics.

In my head, I can see a beautiful 17"x11" spread with a hypothetical Windows 3.11 CRT that’s 3000x2000 and it has a lot of windows, icons, Minesweeper, the goods. Especially the later “platinum” Windows 3.11 appearance.

You know? Stuff like that.

Early skeuomorphic iOS, early webOS, various Mac things of course, BeOS, the later Norton Utilities aesthetic, XCopy on the Amiga! TOS was always so elegant. And some lesser-known things. Newton?

I think Psion was very nice, too.

@mwichary any Breadbox Ensemble love?

http://toastytech.com/guis/bbe.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(16-bit_operating_system)

I mean look at this stuff!

This, or IBM 2260 also had this wild-looking font.

I mean look at this stuff!

This, or IBM 2260 also had this wild-looking font.

Early NeXT, obviously (a bit Unixy, but has some elegance)! Magic Cap?

There are probably some more strange and beautiful text-only DOS apps. Some particularly memorable semigraphics.

@mwichary SGI

@mwichary Beagle Bros products for Apple 2

@mwichary WOW, what a photo

I mean look at this stuff!

This, or IBM 2260 also had this wild-looking font.

I mean look at this stuff!

This, or IBM 2260 also had this wild-looking font.

Some of these are stark but maybe kinda beautiful – especially if you pair them with some of the nicer PC fonts?

So there are coffee table books with beautiful photos of Braun equipment, Apple computers, collections of corporate brand standards, typeface specimens etc.

But outside of some nostalgic video game coffee table books, have their ever been coffee table books showing primarily software? Graphical user interfaces or apps?

The closest I can think of is the macOS/iOS app icon book (by Michael Flarup), but that’s specific to icons.

@mwichary speed disk and Norton disk doctor (those were the days…) were the absolutely epitome of TUI to 15yo me

@mwichary https://www.amazon.com/Make-So-Interaction-Lessons-Science/dp/1933820985/

It's not exactly coffee table sized, but has a bunch of photos of UI from scifi movies.

In my head, I can see a beautiful 17"x11" spread with a hypothetical Windows 3.11 CRT that’s 3000x2000 and it has a lot of windows, icons, Minesweeper, the goods. Especially the later “platinum” Windows 3.11 appearance.

You know? Stuff like that.

Early skeuomorphic iOS, early webOS, various Mac things of course, BeOS, the later Norton Utilities aesthetic, XCopy on the Amiga! TOS was always so elegant. And some lesser-known things. Newton?