I had to convince my cousin I bought him a Mac, but I didn't want to support a Mac, so I tweaked KDE to look like OSX. He thought it was great how cheap he got a laptop, and was surprised Dell made Macs now. Had him fooled for about 2 years until he asked some kid to help him do something.
I just shrugged and asked him if he'd have known if he hadn't been told. Yah, cuz knows cows, not computers.
Apple is really the only company that did serious research on building their initial UIs with their human interface guidelines. It’s clear they don’t anymore, and everything is about driving engagement or whatever, but like during the golden era of OS X, Tiger, their UI was far superior, and most desktop environments borrow much of that stuff to this day. I now want a hat that says “Make macOS Tiger again”
I fucking love KDEs Windows 95 theming for some of the interface, while still looking sleek and fast as hell. That and the Plastik theme for the minimize, fullscreen, and exit buttons. :)
That is actually what brought me back to Linux, I used to run Ubuntu and then Mint around 2010 but had to switch to Windows for work (and stuck around because it works well enough) but the taskbar being stuck on the bottom bothered me enough to finally make the switch back.
I mean, if I had the time, skill, and drive, I'd probably go to Hell and back customizing my laptop to look like it's running xp since I think that look still holds up to this day.