Windows 9x and Word 9x at 800x600 resolution. Spacious. Comfy
It's whitespace.  There's wayyyy too much god damn whitespace in modern UIs, and it's awful.<p>We have higher resolutions and bigger screens.  I understand some people don't like the idea of adding more buttons to the UI because it can make it look cluttered and confusing, but rather than just adding padding around everything, why not make the icons higher resolution and maybe slightly bigger to take up the increased available screen real estate?<p>I'm sick of people associating "modern" with "good" and "dated" with "bad".  Modern flat UIs are <i>terrible</i> for discovery, as it makes it impossible to tell what elements are interactable.  And IMO, they're just plain ugly, but that's a matter of personal opinion.<p>Windows 7 with the Classic theme (which really was just a slight evolution over Win2K) was peak UI/UX, and you'll never change my mind.  It's been downhill ever since, getting worse and worse with each generation.