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The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

nicholaswindsorhoward.com

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Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#381

Post by Animats »

If you give up skeuomorphism, you have no model for icons. You could have every icon be a smartphone, but that won't help. Without some real-world basis, icons are just abstract shapes. Text boxes might be better. At least you don't need an icon dictionary.

Everything now has to be mobile-friendly, which means 1) fat fingers, and 2) you can't see the thing you're touching. "Mouse-over" for more info is not meaningful for touchscreens. So icons can't have explanations.

Whatever happened to Google's "material design"? Did anything ever use that? Even Google's own web sites didn't use it, although Google had a react.js implementation.

Incidentally, don't use a compass icon for anything other than a compass on a device that actually has compass hardware.

Maybe the future of icons is corporate logos. That's what favicons are.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#382

Post by stcredzero »

verisimilidude wrote: post #311
phoboslab wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book once when I was little. It doesn't make sense to have a skeuomorphic contact book as an icon for Contacts. There was a rhetoric not too long ago where OSx fanboys would make fun of Windows' interfaces for still using the disk icon as the "save" button. Now that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And Shoot camera, when fewer an…

> Skeuomorphism doesn't make sense anymore when the real world items it's based on are vanishing. Does that really matter? A perfect case in point was the old Pages icon in OS X: a quill pen in front of a cup of ink. Do you know any person who has ever used a pen like that in real life? Have you ever even seen a pen like that? I'm willing to guess not. But everyone still recognized the contents of that icon, and corr…

Have you ever even seen a pen like that? I'm willing to guess not. But everyone still recognized the contents of that icon, and correctly inferred that the app was for writing things.

So what you're saying is that we should have skeuomorphism, but mostly with things we've seen in TV shows and movies, especially period ones. This would tend to make everything look like stuff from pirate/fantasy/sci-fi/superhero movies. Looking back on indy developer graphics, that does seem to be a trend.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#383

Post by eddieh »

Sommer717 wrote: post #370
eddieh wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The transparency is worse than pointless. It is so distracting and ugly, it makes using macOS awful. When scrolling though a webpage (on macOS & iOS) the flickering color of the titlebar always makes me think the display is starting to fail — then I remember it's the stupid transparency.

You can turn off transparency in the system preferences.

For sure. I have it turned off my Macs. Having it off makes for an even flatter and very plain Mac. I hate it, but not as much as transparency.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#384

Post by bitL »

verisimilidude wrote: post #311
phoboslab wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book once when I was little. It doesn't make sense to have a skeuomorphic contact book as an icon for Contacts. There was a rhetoric not too long ago where OSx fanboys would make fun of Windows' interfaces for still using the disk icon as the "save" button. Now that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And Shoot camera, when fewer an…

> Skeuomorphism doesn't make sense anymore when the real world items it's based on are vanishing. Does that really matter? A perfect case in point was the old Pages icon in OS X: a quill pen in front of a cup of ink. Do you know any person who has ever used a pen like that in real life? Have you ever even seen a pen like that? I'm willing to guess not. But everyone still recognized the contents of that icon, and corr…

iOS and OS X are still full of skeumorphisms. But why do they have to be so super ugly flat low-contrasty? Why can't we have futuristic inventive super abstract UI elements that are non-flat, with proper contrast and beautiful? Most people here conflate skeumorphism with non-flat stuff. So for you antonyms:

skeumorphism devoid of metaphor

flat three dimensional

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#385

Post by spoondan »

emodendroket wrote: post #352
kenbellows wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that the quill pen was a special case. As you point out, it was an intentional anachronism to communicate a certain point. This was not the case with, e.g., the floppy disk, the notepad, the contacts book, etc. Everyone knew what the quill pen was because it was still frequently seen in portrayals of the olden days when it was used; even today, portrayals of Victorian England in Doctor Who or Revolutionary…

> Young users today essentially just know the image of a floppy disc as "the save button" without any skeuomorphic rationale backing it up. Yeah, but so what? It is, nevertheless, recognizable to nearly everyone. In a world where cars still advertise their "horsepower" and pencils have graphite compound "leads" we can probably live with an icon that is well understood but whose original referent is no longer familiar…

The icon is recognizable because younger people learn the weird boxy icon means save. Even with an explanation of the icon's origins, for the younger generation, the icon is recognizable but not meaningful. Can we devise a more meaningful icon? Can we break with convention and just choose a different icon that's recognizable but more aesthetically pleasing or consistent with our style guides, even if it's still meaningless?

This isn't an argument against vestigial iconography. It's not even an argument against skeuomorphism. It's a recognition that skeuomorphism increasingly fails to serve its intended purpose of conveying a meaning. Once we recognize that the old icons are dead metaphors, that we often times keep them only because of inertia and not because they have any intrinsic value, we can build momentum on the necessary work of establishing the visual language of the digital age on its own terms.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#387

Post by Sylos »

flohofwoe wrote: post #167

The article misses the mark IMHO by focusing on skeuomorphic(sp?) icons. Yes, usability has degraded during the recent 'flat design' craze, but not so much because skeuomorphism was tossed out, but because the many little visual design changes that kill discoverability. The mobile operating systems started this trend where a lot of advanced functionality was hidden behind 'magic' touch and swipe gestures that go way…

> how do I close an application again, on iOS, Android and Windows8?

Christ, yeah, I still remember before Microsoft attempted to patch Windows 8 into a somewhat less unusable OS, I had opened one of those Metro apps to see what it was like. And then exactly that, I sat there for probably at least ten minutes not knowing how to close it, again.

Eventually, through pure chance, I moved the mouse to the top of the screen, and that then unhid what was essentially a window titlebar with a close-button on it.

But no indicator for it, no tutorial shouting at me how to do it, there was simply no reason for me to ever move my mouse to the top of the screen.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#389

Post by dkonofalski »

56k wrote: post #28

This 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…

To be fair, one of the big reasons that Safari decided to hide the full address bar was to minimize phishing attempts that took users to scamsite.com/bankofamerica.com/account/whatever where you'd only see "om/bankofamerica.com/account/whatever" in the address bar and people would be fooled into thinking they were at the right site. Now, scammers have to try harder and come up with things like bankofamerica.com.scamsite.com and most people seem to pick up on that just fine. It was a very purposeful decision that, I think, worked out for most people. You can click in the bar to get the full address and, most of the time, you're going to be copying it anyways.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#390

Post by UIZealot »

010a wrote: post #170
56k wrote: post #28

This 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…

Every single example he gave looked, in my opinion, better the new way. This entire article is just a vast list of opinions about their interface design disguised behind some inappropriate grand declaration of truth.

Not to me. Flat is ugly. Different for difference's sake. Designers' need to make their mark. Microsoft's desperate attempt to find any competitive edge against the iPhone. When Apple designer got suckered into going flat, they instantly made Apple a follower, instead of the leader they were in design, leaving no doubt that there's no one with a taste left at Apple after Steve died and Scott Forstal was forced out. iOS 7 was the saddest thing to happen to Apple in its entire history, imnsho.
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