Apple Desktop Interface

アップル・デスクトップ・インターフェース / 1984–1997 / Style / Apple UI

This is the design language Apple named itself, in the 1987 guidelines book whose subtitle reads The Apple Desktop Interface. Working with one bit of black and white, it wrote down a house style: halftone dot patterns standing in for gray, rounded window corners, a title bar of stacked horizontal rules, and a heavy bitmap face.

Apple Desktop Interface — Macintosh System 3 screen, 1986 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Macintosh System 3 screen, 1986 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

Apple Desktop Interface — MultiFinder in Macintosh System 4.2, 1987 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — MultiFinder in Macintosh System 4.2, 1987 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

Apple Desktop Interface — Microsoft, Office 2.5.1 for Macintosh screen — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Microsoft Corporation — Microsoft, Office 2.5.1 for Macintosh screen — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Microsoft Corporation

At a glance

Visual cues

Two tones only, black and white, with gray faked by a checkerboard of black dots
Window corners are rounded and the title bar carries several thin horizontal rules
A menu bar pinned to the top edge of the screen, the Apple mark sitting at its left end
Chicago, a heavy bitmap face whose letters are packed into a cell of 9 by 7 dots

Best used for

Redrawing early Macintosh screens for an exhibition panel or an article on a modern display
Designing for a device that can only print or light two tones, such as e paper or a receipt printer

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Dictionary entry

Type: A heavy bitmap sans, letters placed only on whole pixel positions, no anti aliasing; headings differ from body text by size rather than weight.
Composition: A full width menu bar owns the top edge and everything below it is the work surface; rounded rectangular windows overlap freely and margins step in whole pixels.
Material: Black and white alone; middle values come from checkerboard or diagonal dot patterns, soft shadows and gradients are out, and every boundary is a one pixel black rule.
Caution: Scaling the bitmap face by anything other than a whole number, or letting it anti alias, blurs the letterforms and erases the placed-by-hand dot density the style lives on.
Further study: the 1987 Apple Human Interface Guidelines itself, a copy of which sits on the Internet Archive / Susan Kare's original icon drawings in pencil on graph paper, the sketchbook held by MoMA / screenshots from System 1 through System 7 laid side by side, and how the use of halftone dots changed

Related entries

Aqua (アクア)Same Apple UI lineage.Compare Apple Desktop Interface and Aqua
Pixel Art (ピクセルアート)Shared effects: Nostalgia / Technique.Compare Apple Desktop Interface and Pixel Art

Often confused with

Platinum (プラチナ)compare

Cite this entry

The dictionary is meant to be linked to. Take whichever form fits where you are writing.

Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/apple-desktop-interface
Markdown: [Apple Desktop Interface — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/apple-desktop-interface)
HTML: <a href="https://indexstyle.org/styles/apple-desktop-interface">Apple Desktop Interface — IndexStyle</a>

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