⚙️ Frame of Preference
Frame of Preference is an absolutely delightful website celebrating the history of Mac settings. It's the product of an incredible collaboration between Marcin Wichary and Mihai Parparita.
Marcin's introduction:
As a designer, I’m meant to dislike settings. As a user, I love them. Every year I celebrate Settings Day: a day when I take a look at the options and toggles in all the apps I use. I do this out of curiosity – what was added since the last time I looked? – but also because I love this way of getting to know software: peeking under the hood, walking the back alleys, learning what has been tricky or important enough to be equipped with a checkbox.
During the last Settings Day, I had a realization that the totemic 1984 Mac control panel, designed by Susan Kare, is still to this day perhaps the only settings screen ever brought up in casual conversation.
I kept wondering about that screen, and about what happened since then. Turns out, the Mac settings have lived a far more fascinating life than I imagined, have been redesigned many times, and can tell us a lot about the early history and the troubled upbringing of this interesting machine.
Join me on a journey through the first twenty years of Mac’s control panels.
You can read this site on any device, but for the best experience open it on a Mac or PC on a large display where you can see and interact with the embedded Mac OS emulators. As you undertake the actions suggested by the prose in the emulators, checkboxes in the text automatically mark themselves as complete. You're also notified when you've completed all of the given tasks for a particular emulator, or when you find one of the whimsical easter eggs scattered about. It's marvelous.
This is an outstanding example of what the web can and should be. A delight for the mind, a feast for the senses, shared for everyone to enjoy.
See also the associated Mastodon thread for some behind-the-scenes info.
Bravo!