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Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

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Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#281

Post by georgebcrawford »

thenaturalist wrote: post #266
dimal wrote: post #148

Oh no. It looks like every button and menu is now a translucent layer, so that any noise from the background shows through and muddles the text. This seems like an accessibility nightmare. Translucent layers generally make software unusable for me. In the video, I saw several instances that would be really really bad for me, where I’d be straining to understand the text. Looks really cool and futuristic though. Just…

Not autistic, but this is just so weird. Why would you design readability and visibility to depend on chaotic, highly varied and probably sometimes bad underlying backgrounds? I fail to see any systematic approach/ consistent design language at play here. Let's hope this does not survive for long.

What does autism have to do with it?

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#282

Post by slt2021 »

austinl wrote: post #265
dimal wrote: post #148

Oh no. It looks like every button and menu is now a translucent layer, so that any noise from the background shows through and muddles the text. This seems like an accessibility nightmare. Translucent layers generally make software unusable for me. In the video, I saw several instances that would be really really bad for me, where I’d be straining to understand the text. Looks really cool and futuristic though. Just…

This is also likely a performance nightmare. Funny that they mention that "new hardware has enabled us to..." which means that this will perform poorly on old devices. At a previous company, we were forbidden from using translucency (with a few exceptions) because of the performance cost of blending. There are debugging tools we'd use fairly often to confirm that all layers were opaque.

these performance hungry "improvements" are forcefully introduced to legitimately slow down older devices and force the device refresh across the user base.

I have been using 8 year old iPhone just fine, but features like these over time will make the experience slower and slower and slower, until I am forced to refresh my iphone

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#284

Post by thenaturalist »

georgebcrawford wrote: post #281
thenaturalist wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not autistic, but this is just so weird. Why would you design readability and visibility to depend on chaotic, highly varied and probably sometimes bad underlying backgrounds? I fail to see any systematic approach/ consistent design language at play here. Let's hope this does not survive for long.

What does autism have to do with it?

Check the parent comment.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#285

Post by nlarew »

surgical_fire wrote: post #279
nlarew wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think that Apple, of all companies, did a cross-platform UI refresh based entirely on vibes without considering user taste, usability, accessibility, etc? You've already judged the system as only good for "looking good on screenshots and marketing materials" when you haven't even seen anything other than the announcement.

> Do you really think that Apple, of all companies, did a cross-platform UI refresh based entirely on vibes without considering user taste, usability, accessibility, etc? We are talking about the same company that to make a the MCP a little bit thinner released that crap with only two USBC ports, forcing everyone to carry fucking dongles everywhere. And let's not forget that awful butterfly keyboard. So much usabilit…

Perhaps they learned something from that? Look at modern MBP models which have MagSafe, HDMI, and SD card slots.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#286

Post by amegahed »

I wonder how long this will take to trickle down into webdev, automotive dashboards, embedded systems, and basically every other thing with a GUI. It's probably already happening.

p.s. If you like Aqua, you might like this open source glass rendering CSS library: https://www.specularcss.org/#materials/glass

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#287

Post by mikestew »

slt2021 wrote: post #282
austinl wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also likely a performance nightmare. Funny that they mention that "new hardware has enabled us to..." which means that this will perform poorly on old devices. At a previous company, we were forbidden from using translucency (with a few exceptions) because of the performance cost of blending. There are debugging tools we'd use fairly often to confirm that all layers were opaque.

these performance hungry "improvements" are forcefully introduced to legitimately slow down older devices and force the device refresh across the user base. I have been using 8 year old iPhone just fine, but features like these over time will make the experience slower and slower and slower, until I am forced to refresh my iphone

And you base your first sentence on…? Surely not the ol’ “my phone slows down when my battery is failing so that I’ll buy a new phone” canard?

To be clear, these are new features that will likely have a setting to turn off. There’s no conspiracy, nothing “forcefully” added for the purpose of driving upgrades. (Ah, ninja edit): There’s not even a guarantee these features will be supported on an eight year old phone. EDIT: wait a minute...your eight year old phone won't even be supported.

(EDIT: reworded first paragraph to account for the ninja edit.)

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#288

Post by Synaesthesia »

austinl wrote: post #265
dimal wrote: post #148

Oh no. It looks like every button and menu is now a translucent layer, so that any noise from the background shows through and muddles the text. This seems like an accessibility nightmare. Translucent layers generally make software unusable for me. In the video, I saw several instances that would be really really bad for me, where I’d be straining to understand the text. Looks really cool and futuristic though. Just…

This is also likely a performance nightmare. Funny that they mention that "new hardware has enabled us to..." which means that this will perform poorly on old devices. At a previous company, we were forbidden from using translucency (with a few exceptions) because of the performance cost of blending. There are debugging tools we'd use fairly often to confirm that all layers were opaque.

Modern iOS and Mac devices have plenty of GPU power for a shader effect. They already do one with the translucent blue.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#289

Post by landl0rd »

c-hendricks wrote: post #274
austinl wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also likely a performance nightmare. Funny that they mention that "new hardware has enabled us to..." which means that this will perform poorly on old devices. At a previous company, we were forbidden from using translucency (with a few exceptions) because of the performance cost of blending. There are debugging tools we'd use fairly often to confirm that all layers were opaque.

These transparency effects have been in macOS, ipadOS, iOS, and tvOS for years though?

There's a difference between something like a transparent background (you can run i3/picom on a potato) and having to composite many little UI elements to render a frame.
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