The round corners of the menu bar in Mac OS seem to be an artifact from the early 1980’s, when the 9 inch CRT of the original Mac 128k had rounded bezels.

But apparently the Steve has a thing for roundrects, so it’s not surprising that they became an enduring feature of the GUI, present up to and including Mac OS X 10.4.11.

Like the typical Windows user, I once thought of the rounded corners as a meaningless affectation, another example of style superseding substance. Windows favored sharp corners. (Of course, Win 3.0 didn’t have a menu bar, nor a task bar for that matter.)

But with the release of XP, Windows adopted rounded corners for their title bars, and it actually took, since it’s also in Vista.

In an ironic twist of fate, Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” doesn’t have rounded corners.

Now, I’m a guy who likes to think that I’m above appearances. As long as the UI is usable, I can get by. I once used a computer with only 8 colors and no (built-in) GUI, after all. But the lack of the corners proved to be disturbing. I can’t explain it. Their absence seriously bugged me.

I can’t remember the last time a feature change like this bugged me so much.

Thankfully, there is Displaperture.app.