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Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

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Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#61
post #57
post #54

This feels suspiciously like the goals of Microsoft's "Metro" design from the Windows 8 era. It will be interesting to see if Apple can do a better job of keeping the same design without damaging the desktop experience than Microsoft did.

Definitely in the minority here but I liked Metro, I always felt it was just a decade ahead of it's time (as was Windows 8 generally)

I really liked metro on windows phone but I did not understand it on desktop. It didn’t help that they took away the usual UI

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#62
The form over function school of design continues its grim march towards decreasing usability.

Look at the most basic UI interaction - text cursor movement - and note how this new liquid glass adds more confusing visual noise by adding text reflection for no good reason, which makes, for example, an empty line appear as a line with some text due to this reflection, thus making it harder to see that your cursor is located at the top line.

> more focus to content

it's the opposite, you dilute focus on content by manufacturing non-existent noise.

And the claim to being "natural" in the video falls flat - compare to the actual physical movements a few frames before - the lens doesn't change in width or height! So the digital animation noise is unnatural!

Similarly with the menu sheet adding new rubberband effect in the corner- what underlying natural interaction does it reflect? What signal does that jiggly noise send?

But yeah, if you live in a "lively delight" fantasy of design, nothing would stop you.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#64
post #57
post #54

This feels suspiciously like the goals of Microsoft's "Metro" design from the Windows 8 era. It will be interesting to see if Apple can do a better job of keeping the same design without damaging the desktop experience than Microsoft did.

Definitely in the minority here but I liked Metro, I always felt it was just a decade ahead of it's time (as was Windows 8 generally)

The issue with Metro, imo, is that it was dizzying to use as you were swept away into new interfaces and for many tasks we lost a lot of usability.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#67
post #60

Every Electron app is going to feel incredibly out of place. And for the few that aren’t okay with feeling out of place, the devs of those apps will now have to contend with shipping more macOS specific styles and workarounds. I’m not looking to discuss Electron performance/etc so please ditch that discussion before it starts. I just find it interesting how comparatively tricky this particular UI styling might end up…

I won't be surprised if we see a CSS filter that attempts to model this in Safari. Then it'll just be a question of whether Chromium (and thus Electron) get it.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#68
Am I the only one that hates the concept?

I want a good UI to fade into the background. But this one is like a UI designer's promotion fever dream: The UI is at the center, no matter the content. The promotional video says "This material brings a new level of vitality to every experience" and then they show a video player where now the control overlay has more contrast, more movements, and more bright lights than the actual movie. And then the other features are just bull*: "It responds in real-time to your actions". Gosh I hope other UI frameworks would respond to my actions, what a novel idea! And yeah, ever played a video game? Things reacting to user input in real-time isn't exactly groundbreaking. And then they top it off with "a fluidity only Apple can achieve", which is just delusional. Desktop Linux box + RTX 5090 + current video game + 240 Hz screen => a fluidity that exceeds everything that Apple can achieve on a phone.

I mean I like SwiftUI and I like how apps look on the current iOS. But I think it's already borderline intense just to use the OS. It certainly should not have any more additional glitter, blinking, movement, or animations. It might be the direction that GTK could benefit from, but not SwiftUI.

In short, this feels like a step in the wrong direction for Apple to me.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#69

Liquid glass is gorgeous. But it's hard to reconcile next level design like this with complete disasters like Apple TV. Maybe spend some time on getting the fundamentals right too, before inventing the future

Genuine question, what happened to Apple TV to make it a complete disaster? I feel like I probably missed something. (There's no good way to ask that without sounding like a fanboy, sorry haha. I just genuinely don't know.)

I'm not sure what you call it, but the "unified view" thing where you're supposed to be able to view content across providers is a complete nightmare. I'm not actually sure how I end up there -- I think it happens after I finish watching a program on AppleTV+ (oh, yeah, the naming is a disaster too). I'm not sure how I'd launch it if, for some reason, I _wanted_ to use it, and the navigation is just incredible strange.

Figuring out which elements are selected in the UI is often hard.

The trackpad on the remote is not good -- I've tried setting it to disable trackpad and click on, but then I'll inevitably find an app that needs a trackpad.

Overall I'm quite happy with the AppleTV as a device, but the UI could use quite a bit of help.

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