notch was a programmer first, so i believe he made something programmers love - an intuitive and minimal interface. when microsoft took over minecraft, they hired designers and marketers to do interface for the bedrock edition which is cluttered with flashy annoying popups, drawn-out and "smooth" transitions and constant attempts to sell you something that's free. every person i've talked to who doesn't like bedrock cites this exact reason for why they don't like it - it feels janky and "too corporate". same goes for the electron-based launcher i'm really glad that the community had time to establish their expectations for java which forced the 1.14's texture update to only improve on what was already there (like smoothing out painful color combinations and adding a white border to hovered elements)

Definitely also consider the old Windows 3.0 to Aero era. Informed by UX design, accessibility features and accelerators everywhere, and a limited pixel budget (down to 640x480).

> It utilizes different shades of grey borders to convey a sort of faux surface-normal highlight on beveled edges to indicate whether the element is raised or sunken.

You mean this? https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/user_images/01HQQV8HYE6GKB...

That's the Windows 9x style ported to a low resolution UI, probably with some shaders because computers today are fancier than 1995. It's not interesting innovation, though I agree it's much better (and feels better) than the flat UI boring aesthetic.

Behold the peak of desktop UIs: https://blogs.ubc.ca/nancyhuang/files/2015/10/Windows95.png

See also SerenityOS with an Office 2000 look which added some flatter UI concepts, yet it still is tastefully tactile and three-dimensional: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SerenityOS/serenity/refs/h...

Apple should have called it Liquid Vista.

Type size would convey hierarchy much better than most graphic decoration.

If you want to dive into how to design for glance. Recommend Stephen Few's books.

Factorio has the best game UI widgets. It is a result of long development effort, as explained in their dev blog.

Apple is absolutely into the mature company phase if what they are coming up with is essentially a different bevel on buttons that "makes apps and system experiences more expressive and delightful". They are the IBM of the 90's at this point, way overvalued stock, not much room there for growth.

Setting that aside, video game visuals serve a different purpose than application UI widgets for menus, forms, buttons, etc. In a video game there are different reasons to highlight objects in a game world and relative to other objects and their movement or ability to move/interact with them. Objects in a game world might have their own light source, move in different ways so that the player knows its something they can interact with. If you look at open world games there are a lot of things happening visually in varying degrees of grabbing the gamers attention.

In a UI that is task oriented, like operating systems for PCs or phones, there needs to be less visual clutter, its not a game. It should be obvious to massive numbers of the population what function a UI element serves and accessibility standards come into play because often these OSes are used in corporate environments which should allow for people with different visual abilities to do their work.

> given a constrained pixel-art granularity budget.

That is the key point. If your app has such a constraint, then copying their techniques might make sense. But if it doesn't, you would be pulling in a solution to a problem you do not have.

minecraft ui shows how much you can do when you actually have limits. pixel art forces clever shading tricks to make buttons pop and show depth without wasting pixels. meanwhile modern “glass” ui just slaps on blur and calls it a day. games need info fast and clear or you’re dead, apps could learn a lot by stealing from this “do more with less” mindset instead of making everything look like a soap opera.