So I guess my theory is: They make their own UI's to avoid showing copyrighted material -- and would it be fair to say that it's not important enough (to the plot) to hire an expert web designer, so they end up with something like what we see here?
Typically if you do a closeup of a computer screen in a movie/TV there's a specific action the user is performing or message they've received that is important to the plot. You want that message to be big and obvious enough that in the 1.5 seconds of footage of the screen, it's obvious to an engaged watcher what is being done. Real UIs rarely make one thing so much huger than everything else on the screen that it will immediately draw attention as fast as the film needs you to, so they make up their own.
Alternative theory: They approached everyone from Apple to Microsoft, Lenovo, the EFF, and every Elbonian penis pill spammer, and nobody would pay for product placement, so they _had_ to invent their own UI...
If you like this, you might also enjoy the SciFi Interfaces blog, which analyzes actual interfaces used in SciFi films and TV shows, and rates them based on usability, likelyhood, etc: http://www.scifiinterfaces.com/
What's interesting is that one episode in Season 1 was using Jenkins (a continuous integration tool) and they took the logo and name but made a new UI that was simpler with a giant progress bar. My guess on the reason is that showing the full Jenkins UI wouldn't allow casual TV viewers to grok it quick enough.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 37.3 ms ] threadah, if HAL was IBM... GERTY is... ??? Apple? Linux?...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11827005
http://www.1014.org/code/nullsoft/nbeep/
What's interesting is that one episode in Season 1 was using Jenkins (a continuous integration tool) and they took the logo and name but made a new UI that was simpler with a giant progress bar. My guess on the reason is that showing the full Jenkins UI wouldn't allow casual TV viewers to grok it quick enough.