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It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

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Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#91

Post by paulcole »

vehemenz wrote: post #86
josalhor wrote: post #59

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.

Why is it highly implausible on its face other than the fact it makes arguing against him harder?

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#94

Post by filchermcurr »

ajross wrote: post #69

The irony here isn't so much that it's the minutiae of the menu design that's wrong, it's the top-bar menus as a whole are a dead paradigm . Nothing uses them anymore. Leave the mac for a moment and go to your windows device. Pull up Chrome. No menu. The file browser, nope. Not in the terminal either. VSCode still has one![1] But the office suite doesn't anymore[2]. And obviously, the proximate cause of that is that…

I use menus all the time...

I much prefer text to inscrutable icons.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#95

Post by vehemenz »

ajross wrote: post #69

The irony here isn't so much that it's the minutiae of the menu design that's wrong, it's the top-bar menus as a whole are a dead paradigm . Nothing uses them anymore. Leave the mac for a moment and go to your windows device. Pull up Chrome. No menu. The file browser, nope. Not in the terminal either. VSCode still has one![1] But the office suite doesn't anymore[2]. And obviously, the proximate cause of that is that…

The top menu is not necessarily for common functions. Nor is it true that no one uses it.

Chrome’s unique buried menu breaks user expectations. Casual users have trouble finding it.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#98

Post by finnlab »

I’ve always respected macOS for being the 'stable' choice for not-as-techy people. But recent versions feel like a mess. Running Tahoe on my 2019 Mac Pro (Yes the cheese grater one) has been surprisingly frustrating. Simple things are broken: Ableton couldn't even trigger a microphone permission prompt, forcing me to meddle with a SQLite database, which is definitely not meant for end users to touch, just to get it working.

Logitech’s software is also stuck in a loop denying it has Bluetooth access (Which it has). And with the added graphical glitches (Apple likes to call them liquid glass) and weird window artifacts (For some reason, all my windows had a black, rectangular border one day), it’s honestly less reliable than my macOS-style Linux rice from 2015. But I'm still stuck with MacOS since I NEED Adobe Lightroom for my work and there is still now way to run that with GPU acceleration on Linux. But if there was, there would be no device running Windows/MacOS left in my household

I've also recently come upon this talk by an ex-apple UI/UX engineer: https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQ I think what he's talking about is precisely what got lost at apple.

Edit: In case someone stumbles upon this after experiencing the same problem with ableton, here is the command I executed:

sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db "INSERT OR REPLACE INTO access VALUES('kTCCServiceMicrophone','com.ableton.live',0,2,4,1,NULL,NULL,0,'UNUSED',NULL,0,1725000000,NULL,NULL,'default',0);"

Disclaimer: I have absolutely no Idea what it does, as it was generated by Gemini. I do not have anything super important on this computer so I just executed it, but please don't touch obscure system files if you have data to lose.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#99

Post by postalcoder »

This is an excellent article.

Apple has been rudderless on the interaction design front for over a decade now. The windowing mess is evidence of it. We now have the cmd+tab (app switcher), Spaces, Mission Control, (full screen) split screen, Stage Manager, and now tiled window control. None of those interaction metaphors have been expanded upon since their initial launch.

I'm a "mac guy". I understood why Apple initially eschewed windows style alt-tab, given the emphasis on app-centricism. But now, they've created a thousand different ways to switch windows without giving us a proper window switcher. There are apps that bring alt-tab to Mac, but they are all bad because Apple doesn't give developers access to the low-level APIs to create performant and fully featured window management.

Before, Apple had an endless well of great ideas to tap. That's how we got the term "Sherlocked". However, now that they've locked down macOS so much, they've suffocated themselves of new ideas.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#100

Post by x0x0 »

robinhood wrote: post #38

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…

if they're going to just crap on their software, I'd be far happier with just neglect.

They did desperately need a distraction from the complete bedshitting mess they've made of AI though. Regardless of whether you think AI is good or wildly overpromised, getting on stage and lying through your teeth about what your AI does is what C-tier companies do, not Apple. Except they do now.

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