> I vividly remember how lost and frustrated I was when those old IDEs would launch with multitudes of windows by default...
Tiger and Xcode 2 is quite old and I think is not really the version of macOS many people yearn for. It was the first version many started using (10.0-10.3's graphics were terrible - pinstripes! - and 10.4 was the 'Redmond, Start Your Photocopiers' release which was genuinely exciting. Although I'd used OS X at uni, I bought my first Mac with 10.4 Tiger. Since for many it was the first used, it's what's remembered - but using Tiger this month, I realised that several things I fondly remembered were actually in newer versions.)
The 'best' version is very likely 10.6 Snow Leopard (2009), or possibly Mavericks (2013), the last pre-flat-design OS X. Snow Leopard had a clean, fairly modern UI (so your concerns about multi-window were heard) yet was still joyful.
> I very much prefer 16:9/16:10 ratios (4:3 begone)
The iMac G4, which runs 10.4 Tiger and 10.5, has a 16:10 aspect ratio screen if you buy the 17" screen option. (Source: just bought one, to investigate if it's truly nostalgia or things really were better back then.)
> I much prefer the Win95/OS 7/etc. designs than skeuomorphic ones
Much of OS X was bright and colourful, with pretty graphics, which as you note is very different to Win95/OS 7. However the skeuomorphism wasn't as strong as its reputation is these days. Much of the interaction (say, Cover Flow) is what we'd today call skeuomorphic but really was just a fairly natural way to interact. The real skeuomorphic elements, like the Calendar app using stitched leather, were fairly rare.
> the current flat designs are better but way too saturated and I tend to lose my focus quickly
100% agreed. I personally find it very hard to distinguish elements at a glance in modern macOS.
> IMHO user friendliness is over the roof compared to those supposedly golden times.
I think early 2000s OS X was not as golden as remembered, but mid-2000s to 2012 was extraordinary. OS X really ramped up and improved in those years. Then when they switched to flat design, they lost a lot of usability tweaks along with it. Running current and old OSX/macOS side by side on one desk, as I'm doing, you can clearly see it's the same OS, but today's has much more onscreen, taking more space, but has many small UX indicators missing, and yet despite the amount onscreen the design feels austere and soulless. I find UIs with UX hints built in to their design, and designed for visual beauty, both usable and pleasing for my mind the same way any beautiful object is, and I dearly miss them.
I wonder how your iMac G4's arm is. Seems like the 17"s and up all seem to suffer from stretched springs (the lower weight on the 15"s has preserved them).
Tiger and Xcode 2 is quite old and I think is not really the version of macOS many people yearn for. It was the first version many started using (10.0-10.3's graphics were terrible - pinstripes! - and 10.4 was the 'Redmond, Start Your Photocopiers' release which was genuinely exciting. Although I'd used OS X at uni, I bought my first Mac with 10.4 Tiger. Since for many it was the first used, it's what's remembered - but using Tiger this month, I realised that several things I fondly remembered were actually in newer versions.)
The 'best' version is very likely 10.6 Snow Leopard (2009), or possibly Mavericks (2013), the last pre-flat-design OS X. Snow Leopard had a clean, fairly modern UI (so your concerns about multi-window were heard) yet was still joyful.
> I very much prefer 16:9/16:10 ratios (4:3 begone)
The iMac G4, which runs 10.4 Tiger and 10.5, has a 16:10 aspect ratio screen if you buy the 17" screen option. (Source: just bought one, to investigate if it's truly nostalgia or things really were better back then.)
> I much prefer the Win95/OS 7/etc. designs than skeuomorphic ones
Much of OS X was bright and colourful, with pretty graphics, which as you note is very different to Win95/OS 7. However the skeuomorphism wasn't as strong as its reputation is these days. Much of the interaction (say, Cover Flow) is what we'd today call skeuomorphic but really was just a fairly natural way to interact. The real skeuomorphic elements, like the Calendar app using stitched leather, were fairly rare.
> the current flat designs are better but way too saturated and I tend to lose my focus quickly
100% agreed. I personally find it very hard to distinguish elements at a glance in modern macOS.
> IMHO user friendliness is over the roof compared to those supposedly golden times.
I think early 2000s OS X was not as golden as remembered, but mid-2000s to 2012 was extraordinary. OS X really ramped up and improved in those years. Then when they switched to flat design, they lost a lot of usability tweaks along with it. Running current and old OSX/macOS side by side on one desk, as I'm doing, you can clearly see it's the same OS, but today's has much more onscreen, taking more space, but has many small UX indicators missing, and yet despite the amount onscreen the design feels austere and soulless. I find UIs with UX hints built in to their design, and designed for visual beauty, both usable and pleasing for my mind the same way any beautiful object is, and I dearly miss them.