The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by callalex » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 10:42 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #273

It's worth pointing out that circa July 2016, it is still manageable and reasonable to continue using Snow Leopard. I use it daily on my primary system. Other than the cool "draw my signature on a PDF" feature in Preview that showed up circa Mavericks, there is nothing - not one thing - that I miss by running that older OS. VMWare fusion works great. Current chrome+ublockorigin. Great multi screen support. I don't ru…

Do you use a desktop or a laptop? The power saving technology that has been added in later OS versions makes a HUGE difference, even/especially on my older portable macs dating back to 2008

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

#402

Post by white-flame » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 10:44 PM UTC

carlosrg wrote: post #87

terda12 wrote: post #39

OS X looks better than ever. Yeah I agree with Notepad and Photos icons looking not good but everything else is perfect. I'm typing this on an OSX right now and it just looks great. Worst part of the article by far was > OS X packaging, once very elegant and eccentric (and printed on a physical box), has become thoroughly unremarkable. This is 2016, no one uses CD's anymore. And that leopard print box design looks li…

>leopard print box design looks like packaging for some kinky underwear It's funny witnessing how certain people that a couple years ago considered Apple designs the pinnacle of design and far ahead of everything else using the same arguments today that Windows fans used.

Every time Apple says "This is the best way to do X!" it invalidates their last version's claims of "This is the best way to do X!" especially when it undoes exactly what the prior version brought, and especially when it's about ergonomic or ease of use elements whose theoretical maxima really shouldn't vary much.

The cycle is really tired, and their wild claims have worn out their novelty to non-Apple people.

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

#403

Post by x0 » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 10:47 PM UTC

Shengbo wrote: post #153

lloeki wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point, just below the article you can find this: http://imgur.com/a/iQe0Z The puzzle background goes contrarian to the text label and makes my eyes/mind jump while trying to read the labels. The first button makes me think of Wikipedia, the second one of Facebook. It's precisely that kind of cognitive dissonance where you read "blue" written in red and get asked to say the color or the word. The last button h…

Yea, I didn't wanna be a dick by mentioning it but scrolling down to that after reading the article just confused me even more about what the author would define as "good UI". I count at least 2 unnecessary textures, 4(or 5?) different fonts and a color palette that makes no sense to me. I know some people are enraged about how many "generic 3-column flat UI" websites there are, but give me one of those any time inst…

There's nothing wrong with unnecessary textures though. I think that's the point the author was trying to make, stuff like that adds a bit of character. Get rid of all the textures, and what do you have, another Bootstrap website.

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

#404

Post by x0 » Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 11:02 PM UTC

I agree with this so much. Two other things that annoy me about the new OS X design:

- Helvetica everywhere. Helvetica, whilst not bad, has somewhat poor readability (not legibility) in body copy. I find it much harder to read than the old Lucida Grande, and it annoys me I can't change it back easily. In fact I jailbroke my iPad just to change the font (to Iowan Old Style, absolutely beautiful serif)

- No favicons in Safari. I can't even understand why they would do that, and have absolutely no way to turn them on, for those of us who like to switch tabs without spending 5 seconds reading them all.

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

#405

Post by frabcus » Wed, Jul 27, 2016, 12:09 AM UTC

marssaxman wrote: post #400

spoondan wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mean…

What, you really think kids have no idea what floppy disks are? Of course they do! They're young, not stupid. It's not as hard as you're making it sound. Language is full of dead metaphor. Words and symbols have meaning because they have been given meaning; most of the associations might as well be arbitrary. Doesn't matter; humans are very good at recognizing these associations and deriving the intent.

Yeah, so in this video of at 4 mins 25 seconds they show floppy disks to the kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk

The younger ones don't seem to know what one is, but the older ones do.

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

#406

Post by sjwright » Wed, Jul 27, 2016, 1:07 AM UTC

sopooneo wrote: post #399

spoondan wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mean…

I bet when you see a red octagon, you just think of it as a thing on the side of the road that means "stop", don't you? But despite your not knowing its origin, not knowing why it means stop, it still works well right?

That's an arbitrary, abstract shape. Combined with a near-universal colour association of red for stop/end/abort. It doesn't need an origin.

If stop signs showed the picture of the brake lever from a Ford Model T, you'd have a point.

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

#407

Post by ksec » Wed, Jul 27, 2016, 1:34 AM UTC

If Skeuomorphic means trying to mimic things in real world. Then i guess everyone would have a different skeuomorphic perspective. Especially with different age group.

Today's Kids dont even know what a Matchstick is. And the likely hood that a Phone will replace 90% of all consumer camera in next decade. Leaving DSLR for Professionals. There isn't cassette, Betamax or Type. And kids born today likely dont know what Floppy or even Optical disk are when they are 20.

So it really is a little bit of forward thinking from Apple. Given how a 5 - 7 years old are now using iPad. They have a different group of future loyal users to cater for.

Side Note - Tech is good, and it is everywhere. But what happens to good old days when kids were young they go out to do stupid things and have fun in the park. Instead of starring at the iPad screen.

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

#408

Post by WayneBro » Wed, Jul 27, 2016, 4:04 AM UTC

eddieh wrote: post #343

WayneBro wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who really like Windows (including me) generally seem to dislike the full-screen button in OS X though, so how is that placating anyone? Everywhere I look I find people saying that window management in Windows is miles ahead of OS X. Even from people who wouldn't want to use Windows. If Apple wanted to placate those people, they would make the green button maximize by default, get rid of that ghastly global me…

All that stuff sounds awful, please stick to using Windows.

Of course. Why wouldn't I?

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

#409

Post by UIZealot » Wed, Jul 27, 2016, 5:55 AM UTC

rpgmaker wrote: post #371

petilon wrote: post #310

EVERYTHING beautiful is skeuomorphic. The page turn in iOS 6 iBooks, page curl in maps, cover flow, the shred animation in older versions of Passbook, the date picker in iOS 6, rotating settings gear (when updating iOS 6), the Time Machine interface in older versions of OS X, photo borders and shadows in iWorks documents, etc. This is not surprising, because our sense of beauty comes from the physical world. So what…

Honestly, I know things can't stay the same forever, particularly in the design department, but to me Aqua still looks way better than current OSX (granted, I only use OSX very sporadically for educational purposes). I have to admit though that I'm not a huge fan of the flat designs that are currently "in" where you can't easily tell when one UI element ends and the other begins. I don't think that's very easy on the…

You are not alone. I also hate flat. And I also think the original Aqua looks best, even today. I'm probably the only person who loves the Aqua pinstripes, which Apple had to tone down gradually and finally completely remove, presummably due to negative user feedbacks.

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

#410

Post by tinus_hn » Wed, Jul 27, 2016, 6:32 AM UTC

phoboslab wrote: post #33

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…

> 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…

> Now that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And Shoot camera, when fewer and fewer people use those.

Actually a problem with this icon is that it is misleading. The iPhoto app is not a camera app. It is a photo library with some minor editing capabilities. You can't use it for creating photos which is what the icon suggests.

A better icon would be a photo album or a stack of photos but that's hard to fit in an icon.