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It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

tonsky.me

121–130 of 984 posts

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#121

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

Came here to say the same. Not only is it redundant and distracting, destroying the reading experience, it even makes the fucking fan turn on and make noise because apparently it’s a lot of work for the video card. A presentation of valid arguments destroyed by something completely superfluous and ironically the same kind of stupidity that’s the target of the criticism made.

It felt quite ironic reading a complaint about icons and UI consistency through a hail of snowflakes that made it hard to even see the icons.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#122

Looking at the old Microsoft menu gave me a pang of nostalgia for what we lost. It was so clear and readable. The icons were clearly colored and so easy to understand. I think the key issue with macOS is that they don't seem to have someone who is looking at the whole ecosystem holistically to make sure that there's consistency and integration across experiences. You probably have development silos for different appl…

They do have a culture of silos and secrecy where employees are not allowed to talk to each other. This is actively enforced to prevent leaks but this also gets you this.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#123

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.

Steve Jobs died 14 years ago. If we're attributing this to those in charge, Jony Ive's departure is much more correlated.

Apple's UI design started going downhill with the iOS 7 "flat design" release which was very shortly after Steve's death, and seemed to correspond to Ive being given a little too much free rein in the leadership vacuum that followed.

Jobs had his own flaws, but he was definitely a huge part of why Apple's UI design (and product design in general) has historically been as good as it has.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#124

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.

This release of MacOS is the most retrograde backwards step I've seen Apple make.

To use a famous movie quote: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should"

Just because you have HDPI and opacity, doesn't mean that you have to use it by default, everywhere.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#125

Looking at the old Microsoft menu gave me a pang of nostalgia for what we lost. It was so clear and readable. The icons were clearly colored and so easy to understand. I think the key issue with macOS is that they don't seem to have someone who is looking at the whole ecosystem holistically to make sure that there's consistency and integration across experiences. You probably have development silos for different appl…

>I think the key issue with macOS is that they don't seem to have someone who is looking at the whole ecosystem holistically to make sure that there's consistency and integration across experiences. That person died in 2011.

Rose tinted glasses. Have a look through Jobs era UI again.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#126
post #33

It is incredible just how widely held the view is that Win2k (or XP in classic mode) was close to peak desktop UI. (Contenders also being Tiger to Snow Leopard and Windows 7). A key problem is that big US corps have always had a product design mentality that can produce monstrosities like your average cable TV remote and think it is in any way a good solution. That was clearly already an influence on things like XP.

Win XP was excellent, as was Win 7 I thought. However, since then KDE has in my opinion, gone even further and become even better. So, the peak is not gone, it has just moved to KDe.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#127
Can someone at Apple who's also on HN please forward this to Craig Federighi? Seems this is a bit of regression or someone asleep at the wheel. I'm overall happy with the stability of Tahoe but some of the design is getting a bit sloppy.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#128
What an indictment of not only Apple designers, but the entire "science of UX" It's clear now there is no science, it's just designers making... things. Very similar to other design fields where there is no "logic" just trends & vibes. Several generations of potentially brilliant engineers and designers have wasted their careers building advertising empires with shiny buttons.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#129

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…

what distro are you running at home?

ive had the most success with fedora x11 / xwayland but lately wayland has been pretty solid

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#130
post #27
post #2

I hate to be that guy, but there's some irony in putting a full screen animated snow effect over an article about unnecessary, distracting clutter.

If you hate to be that guy, why did you decide to be that guy?

Nobody loves to be that guy more than the guy that hates to be that guy.
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