Currently, on the same front page on HN there is an article: Humans once opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we often hate new stuff.
This applies perfectly to you, dear self-righteous blog author.
The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
61–70 of 440 posts
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#62>Buttons across the system now look much less like real buttons. Almost no life-imitating textures survive. OS X, in large part prior to Yosemite, used to crawl with visual metaphors; why has Apple banished so many of the analogies that helped people feel comfortable with the Macintosh in the first place?
Because thousands of idiotic designers and tons of media pundits lamented their "anthropomorphic" interfaces and swooned over the abstract UIs of competitors, to the point that it sounded like a real problem...
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#63This essay is nothing more than the authors opinion (which there is nothing wrong with) presented as fact (completely take umbrage with this). Looking at the authors website, the current design of Apple's UI elements are not to their taste. An example would be this; http://www.nicholaswindsorhoward.com/blog-directory/2016/1/2... The odd idea is interesting, but it's massively regressive.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#64I think the greatness of OSXs past UIs is a bit over hyped. I changed from Windows 7 to Mavericks a couple of years ago and still find 7 more intuitive. You can see at a glance which programs are running from the bar in 7 unlike OSX, I still have not figured out the Finder very well and so on. On the other hand OSX seems better engineered in many ways, more stable, faster to respond and so on.
I think the hype goes back further than that, with OS X 10.5/10.6 vs Windows Vista. Windows 7 really narrowed the gap between Windows and OS X, and at the same time OS X 10.7 took many steps backwards (black & white sidebar icons, no Save As, terrible multi-screen experience).
Snow Leopard and Windows 7 marked the respective pinnacle of each OS to me, UI-wise. Windows 8.1 has some nice incremental touches... If only they'd applied them to Windows 7's basics. I haven't spent much time with newer OSXes, admittedly, and I'm basing most of my opinion here on co-workers' muffled curses.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#65To understand the photos icon you have to be familiar with iOS 6 to remember the photos icon was a sunflower because the new one is an abstract representation of that flower.
Honestly couldn't believe it when they shipped it.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#66This article doesn't make any sense. The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. While I agree that new macOS icons aren't great (see the Game Center icon), the old ones were silly. I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was lit…
> The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects.
I disagree strongly. If you were new to a machine, is there anything in the new Photos icon that tells you that it anything to do with images, photos or image manipulation? No.
The new icon for Pages is fine by the way,
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#67Windows Themes were a step in the right direction, why can't we have that in OS X? Give me that Snow Leopard skin for El Capitan or whatever.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#68This article doesn't make any sense. The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. While I agree that new macOS icons aren't great (see the Game Center icon), the old ones were silly. I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was lit…
"The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years." I disagree strongly. It is now more needed than ever. 40 years ago, the majority of people using computers knew what they were doing. Now, they're everywhere, and people interact with them every day. It's very commo…
>40 years ago, the majority of people using computers knew what they were doing.
You think that 10 and 20 year olds growing up with computers and even smartphones available for all of their life, know less of computers than people in the past?
Even a 7 year old that plays games can almost run circles around a 1980s propellerhead computer programmer in using a GUI. Compared to regular people (e.g. office workers) from 40 years ago that just used DOS and some word processor or POS or accounting program, there's just no comparison.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree in parts with you The Photos icon "metaphor" doesn't work for me, for example
You know, Google Chrome's icon doesn't depict a webpage, but I know I can click on it and use it to browse the Web.
The difference with icons for Web browsers is that there really is no real-world equivalent of a Web browser, so producing icon metaphors is not an issue.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#70This 'flat design' ic created by designer who merely know how to create things, and is more easy to create things with one color and flat objects. I don't now why it is so popular