I really don't understand why that adjective is so commonly used to presumably denote something positive. To me, "cleaner" evokes images of emptiness, like a house you've just built and haven't started to actually use. The cleanest room has nothing in it. I think that's precisely the opposite of what you want.
Have you ever shopped for closets? Every major closet retailer has pictures of their product holding a ridiculously small number of apparel.[1][2] I, and especially my wife, have more than 4 shirts. I would like to see how a closet design looks when full. Sure the nearly empty closet looks cleaner, but it does not represent my use case, or that of anyone I know.
The same could be said for architectural renderings showing a handful of visitors at a place designed to be crowded.
> Have you ever shopped for closets? Every major closet retailer has pictures of their product holding a ridiculously small number of apparel.[1][2] I, and especially my wife, have more than 4 shirts. I would like to see how a closet design looks when full. Sure the nearly empty closet looks cleaner, but it does not represent my use case, or that of anyone I know.
Ok. That explains it. So the new UI's (or UX's) are like closets waiting to be used. You just have to add a pipe (you need to figure out where because real programmers don't ...) and a closet seat lid and it's ready for use.
I don't think anyone claimed that lack of shades and shadows automatically makes something beautiful. NeXTSTEP was simply designed by people who had more experience and taste in design. Also, that windows screenshot was when they were using sort of a hybrid "character mode" to display a graphical interface, which is quite a limitation.
I like some shading and 3d-ness, but it can be taken too far.
Windows 1.0 doesn't have shades and shadows. It is "cleaner" in that sense than NeXTSTEP. But few will argue that it is more beautiful.
Here's Windows 1.0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0#/media/File:Window...