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It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

tonsky.me

81–90 of 984 posts

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#81
Tahoe and Liquid Glass™ solidified for me the idea that Apple completely dropped the ball when it comes to design. Clearly they needed an a-hole in charge, Jobs would've crucified a few people.

It's painful to see the decay, update after update, into a more confusing, cluttered, and tacky experience.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#82

It's hard to justify snowflake animations on your website...

Yeah, on an article ranting about clutter in the macOS UI, this is a mindboggling design choice.

Once you try the dark mode, you'll realize the irony is done on purpose.

Edit: I'm not implying it's a good thing.

It's a joke that did not drop. Given the audience is trying to read text. And he's making it annoying to read text.

It's like a stand-up comedian telling a joke, in a wild accent; where the audience cannot discern what he's saying.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#83

It's hard to justify snowflake animations on your website...

A hint to the site developer: add an option to purchase the Weather Control Pack Platinum Pro+ to get to choose your site weather any way you like. It would fity nicely next to that 'Personal Information' section. Who knows, someone might even 'purchase' it since that seems to the thing to do in the Cult of the Fruit.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#84
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a damned if you don't, damned if you do. Apple could release a new system with zero UI updates and tons of internal improvements and people would call it 'old' and 'dated' and 'lack of innovation'. It's a bit like adding new emojis in an OS release. There's been reports that new emojis are one of the drivers for getting people to upgrade. No one cares about a zero day security flaw, but that new kiss emoji every…

It's been 16 years since Snow Leopard. I think we're ready for another one.

I agree, but I'm pointing out why UI changes happen. Apple could certainly do UI changes as part of a cleanup release though. Basically start with getting back to consistency pointed out in the article.

But, having worked with users I've seen first hand out tons of internal improvements are ignored while one small UI change makes 'everything seem new'.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#85
Funnily enough, I find icons an improvement overall - even if those are inconsistent, it feels like it gives me more points to anchor my eyes on when skimming through an unknown menu and gives me any context.

Starting to use Mac ~3 years ago, I often encountered giant blocks of text in right-click menus and while pleasing aesthetically, those were a chore to actually parse. For someone who daily drives macOS for, I assume, multiple years more than me, it probably comes down to memorisation, and how it looks becomes more important (with Tahoe breaking habits), but I find the inconsistencies and icons something that actually helps me find my ground.

Granted, the execution leaves a lot to be improved, I won't argue against it. Tahoe in some places feels downright amateurish. Despite that, I'll still take what Tahoe added over no icons at all... I feel like color icons + using them more sparingly would certainly be better though.

I guess a justification for Tahoe icons on my end is - those help me navigate the UI despite all their shortcomings (and ugliness they bring in many places).

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#86

Interesting. The article starts with this: > Sequoia → Tahoe It’s bad And I look at the image... And I like it? I agree with the author that it could be better , but most of the icons (new, open recent, close, save, duplicate, print, share etc), do make it easier, faster and more pleasant for my brain to parse the menu vs no icons. Again, I don't disagree that you could do it better, I just disagree with the premise…

The author addresses this. Humans are the same in 2026 as 1992.

Besides, that interface designers or even the average computer user understands more than in 1992 is highly implausible on its face.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#87

Reminder, you can turn off the animated snow effect with the snowflake icon at the top

No you can't, it just turns the background yellow. EDIT: the snow stops _but after a few seconds_. I toggled it to find out if it would turn off the snow, and the immediate feedback was that it doesn't. That's really _really_ bad UX.

It's a fun little winter feature. People need to give it a break.

fwiw I went through the whole article with the snow effect on and found it just fine too.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#88

I never disliked an OS as much as I dislike what Apple is doing with MacOS (and iOS by extension). I've been with MacOS for 20 years, but I've switched at home to Linux full time 2 years ago and I don't regret it. At work I'm forced to be on MacOS. It's concerning how Apple doesn't care anymore about user needs, usability, design and consistency. Where it was the best OS in the past for me, it's not anymore. Other OS…

I thought that was supposed to be Apple’s thing. “We decide how to make it and you decide to buy it or not.”

It makes it seem like they’re designing for you until they’re not.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#89

It seems like Apple's hardware design is universally loved with much acclaim, why is their software getting progressively worse? It's not Microsoft-add-all-the-bloatware-and-adverts-we-can worse, but it's 20-year-old-operating-systems-were-better-designed worse. We're getting to a point where I think Linux windowing systems like KDE are better designed. And it seems that all they had to do was not change much over th…

It's just enshittification.

Going to continue to get worse as time goes on.

Even the hardware will go at some point I'm betting.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#90

Funnily enough, I find icons an improvement overall - even if those are inconsistent, it feels like it gives me more points to anchor my eyes on when skimming through an unknown menu and gives me any context. Starting to use Mac ~3 years ago, I often encountered giant blocks of text in right-click menus and while pleasing aesthetically, those were a chore to actually parse. For someone who daily drives macOS for, I a…

I don't even look at them, they're just visual clutter to me.
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