Lessons from Retro Software – What Today’s Apps Can Learn from the Past

It’s 1998 – I ask my mother not to use the phone because I have to dial-up. I power up my Windows 95 PC and my modem to connect to the internet. I have to use a prepaid internet card which costs a little over a dollar to access the ‘world wide web’ for just 3 hours. My plan? Download the latest updates to Internet Explorer, Lotus Notes, and WinAMP.

A child’s curiosity is often in breaking apart toys and see how they work – mine was also the same, just with software. I was intrigued and fascinated by these software (no, these were not apps, that’s a Gen-Z term). I spend a couple of minutes queuing my downloads and then sit back and wait for these to download. Internet speeds were horrible back then, and software development companies had to really make sure that every byte was worth downloading. Software was designed to be robust, not just for distribution, but also to make sure it runs on everyone’s computers.

The craft has since then been standardized – what I mean by that is we don’t teach our developers how to manage the size of their creations enough. The size of the package, the overall software, the size of interactions, modules, screens, everything. This scarcity paved the way to think deeply about user experience, from downloading the software to actually using it. WinAMP, Internet Explorer, and Lotus Notes were my favorite, and here is why.

WinAMP: The OG Jukebox That Let You Be the DJ

Ah, WinAMP. The king of music players. This software really whipped the llama’s ass (yes, Gen-Z, that was its tagline). WinAMP wasn’t just a media player—it was your media player. It didn’t ask you to bend to its rules; instead, it let you create playlists, skin it to match your teenage angst, and customize every little detail.

The UI? Simple. Play, stop, next. A visual equalizer that made you feel like a sound engineer even if you had no idea what “treble” meant. It didn’t throw ads at you or suggest “Top 40 Hits.” It just worked.

Lesson for today’s apps: WinAMP teaches us to focus on doing one thing really well. Forget bloatware, tracking cookies, and features no one asked for. Apps today are like those Swiss Army knives that break when you actually need them. Your users want simplicity, not the 10th analytics dashboard they’ll never open.

Bonus wisdom: Bring back skins. People love customization.

Internet Explorer: The Gateway Drug to the Internet

Before the internet became a dumpster fire of memes and unsolicited opinions, there was Internet Explorer. Oh, sweet, naive IE. It came pre-installed on Windows, and for a lot of us, it was our first portal to the wonders of the web. Sure, it was slower than a sloth in molasses, but back then, no one cared. You clicked, waited, and just accepted your fate.

IE was basic but approachable. It had menus labeled in plain English—File, Edit, View. No weird hamburger menus or hidden options. If you didn’t know what something did, it was probably in the “Help” section, which actually helped.

Lesson for today’s apps: Users love clarity. Don’t make them guess what your icons mean or where the settings are buried. Stop over-designing your UI like it’s an art gallery. Internet Explorer may have been clunky, but at least it wasn’t trying to gaslight us into thinking it was user-friendly.

Bonus wisdom: Resist the urge to name anything “Edge.” It’s just cursed.

Lotus Notes: The Swiss Army Knife of the Corporate World

Ah, Lotus Notes. If you worked in the 90s, you know it. If you didn’t, imagine an app that combined email, calendars, databases, and collaboration tools—all before Slack tried to do the same thing (and gave us notification fatigue instead).

I know what you are thinking – what was a kid doing with Lotus Notes in 1998. I had a business with my father, and we had an actual website back then (yes, it is a bug deal, STFU). A website meant people wanted to reach out and in a couple of months, there were dozens of emails everyday. The Marie Kondo inside my wanted to organize stuff, and hence, I used Lotus Notes.

Lotus Notes didn’t hold your hand. It assumed you were smart enough to figure things out or, at the very least, read the manual (yes, software used to come with actual manuals). It was powerful, flexible, and infinitely customizable—qualities that came with a steep learning curve.

Lesson for today’s apps: Users appreciate tools that empower them. You don’t have to dumb everything down. Sometimes, the best apps are the ones that make you feel like a genius for mastering them. Today’s software could learn a thing or two from Lotus Notes about balancing flexibility with usability.

Bonus wisdom: Always keep a user manual handy. The FAQ page isn’t cutting it.

The Moral of the Story: Don’t Forget Your Roots

The software we grew up with weren’t perfect—it had bugs, quirks, and the occasional crash that required a Ctrl+Alt+Del exorcism. But it was thoughtful. Developers cared about every pixel and every kilobyte because they had to. And in their resourcefulness, they built products that people still remember fondly decades later.

Today’s apps have more tools, resources, and bandwidth than ever before. But sometimes, in the race to add more, we forget the beauty of less. So, dear developers, the next time you’re building the next big thing, remember WinAMP, IE, and Lotus Notes. Make it robust. Make it intuitive. And for the love of all that’s holy, make it worth downloading.

P.S.: If your app has a splash screen, at least try to whip the llama’s ass while you’re at it.