It's hard to justify Tahoe icons • Hacker News Board

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#141

Post by bdelmas » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

Zealotux wrote: post #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.

Liquid Glass was actually a big surprise for me, and it was a shock to see Apple moving forward with this and nobody stopping it. Microsoft did that with Vista back in 2006 and they stopped doing this. So Apple is copying a 2006 design? From Microsoft? Where even Microsoft stopped doing it because of all the known issues? So many questions...

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#142

Post by ido » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

SkyPuncher wrote: post #133

I tend to disagree with the author on this. Reading actual words takes time (and, for me, mental energy). I have to look at each character, say the word in my head, then visualize what action that word means. Where as icons have a lot more built in meaning (but lack specificity). I tend to use them as a _local_ fuzzy filter (unless it's a common, well known icon like share) then read the words to understand exactly w…

> Reading actual words takes time (and, for me, mental energy). I have to look at each character, say the word in my head, then visualize what action that word means.

It might sound flippant but I'm asking in good faith: do you have a reading disability (like dyslexia)? I (and I think this is generally the case) don't consciously read words character by character or say them in my head, it feels more like my brain pattern-recognizes whole words and I understand them "at a glance".

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#143

Post by diffeomorphism » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #19

Sorry, even though I agree with your piece, the incredible irony of writing about bad design decisions while having fucking snow flying past the text I'm trying to read is just too much... [edit] I just discovered the snow icon, which does turn off the snow but turns the background into bright yellow. Oh and the other icon which turns your cursor into a ...spotlight? On an otherwise black page? Do I have that right?…

It is called "making fun of" not "irony".

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#144

Post by pacifika » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #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.

Isn’t this in robust support of science in UX?

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#145

Post by mxfh » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:17 PM UTC

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.

Humans are definitely not the same as in 1992 when it comes to their everyday knowledge of computer interactions.

And even if human cognition itself were unchanged, our understanding of HCI has evolved significantly since then, well beyond what merely “feels right.”

Most UX researchers today can back up their claims with empirical data.

The article goes on at great length about consistency, yet then insists that text transformations require special treatment, with the HIG example looking outright unreadable.

Menu text should remain stable and not mirror or preview what’s happening to the selected text IMHO.

Also, some redundancy is not necessarily a bad thing in UI design, and not all users, for various reasons, can read with a vocabulary that covers the full breadth of what a system provides.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#146

Post by diffeomorphism » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:18 PM UTC

jsheard wrote: 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.

Nah, the irony is that you think that this was not done on purpose. E.g. look at the hamburger menu on the top right.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#147

Post by jval43 » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:18 PM UTC

aylmao wrote: post #54

This isn't the only aspect of Tahoe that seems amateurishly designed by someone following "wrong rules", the wrong rule here being "for consistency, let's assign an icon to every action. Another wrong rules I've seen blindly followed is making everything an edge-to-edge canvas, so that the sidebar floats on top. Having a full-window canvas with floating sidebars can make sense for applications where content is expans…

This is what happens when the people issuing the orders (assign an icon for every task) are not the ones doing the task.

And the ones doing it have no say in how it's done.

Being involved and in the loop is how great software is made. Otherwise you can just outsource and have tickets completed.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#148

Post by postalcoder » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #123

rco8786 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree. Jobs being around for the birth of the GUI probably played a big role in that. Pushing past text-based terminals to graphical interfaces meant having to spend every moment thinking about purposeful interaction and design.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#149

Post by curtisf » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #111

Zealotux wrote: post #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.

>Jobs would've crucified a few people Jobs liked to talk this side of the business up because creatives were the substantial part of the business. Now they sell to everybody it doesn't matter so much. The average person won't even notice the complaints in the original article. They aren't sensitive to it in the way that creative people are.

They might not _notice_ but that doesn't mean it's not affecting their ability to use their computer smoothly.

With computers such a huge part of almost everyone's lives now, it's a travesty for one of the largest companies in the world to inflict something so subpar on so many old-style

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#150

Post by juancn » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

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…

Seriously? UX in Linux is awful, there's no single desktop metaphor. You have hundreds of distros each with their quirks. There is no "Linux" other than the kernel.

There's a lot more consistency in the Apple ecosystem.

Don't get me started on the other crap with Linux distros: power management doesn't work, audio barely works, heck even though both Linux and MacOS use CUPS for printing, in MacOS it works way better.