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

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#191

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:37 PM UTC

gcanyon wrote: post #74

pixelesque wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very annoying, but you can turn it off (snowflake icon, although then you get a yellow background), and IMO the article content is worth reading.

I literally didn't notice that the snowflake icon turned it off: 1. I scrolled through the article getting more and more frustrated with the snow 2. I scrolled all the way back to the top and saw the snowflake icon 3. I clicked the snowflake, saw the hideous yellow, said WTF and clicked again to go back to blue 4. **I never noticed** that the snowflake *does* stop the snow, but *only* stops *new* snow, so the existin…

[deleted]

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#192

Post by throwaway132448 » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

flumpcakes wrote: post #65

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 quite simple: Most people who work in software now aren't actually very good at their jobs, at least in terms of how that job would have been defined 15 years ago.

This is because incentives have changed such that being good at your job in your average mega-corp has very little to do with the outcome: To climb their ladder, you optimise for impact and move before you have to deal with the consequences.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#193

Post by dzonga » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

do posts like this ever reach the higher up at Apple say Tim Cook ? or they're buried at the lower levels so the next level boss can't look bad.

maybe apple or ex-apple people can comment ?

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#194

Post by fainpul » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

throwaway_ab wrote: post #8

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

It's an annoying website, but luckily you can just enable reader view and all problems are fixed.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#195

Post by weinzierl » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

The story goes that the looped square icon(⌘) was introduced because Steve Jobs hated to see apples in every menu line. Not only because of the clutter but he thought it diluted the brand.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#196

Post by publicdebates » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:42 PM UTC

I used to be a die hard UI perfectionist. I thought there were perfect UIs, and that you could go more or less away from or toward perfection with choices.

But lately, over the past 5 or 10 years, it seems to me that perfection in UI is just as arbitrary and mutable as people's tastes and preferences.

It's hard to admit it to myself, but I think my love for the early Mac OS and Windows 9x UIs was mere puppy love at first sight, and now is simply nostalgia.

To me, it seems very related to the idea of how to fall in love with a person. There seems to be nothing you can measure it against. You simply either do or do not feel a connection with the person, an inexplicable infatuation. And if you do, then that love cools and settles into something more subtle but just as real over decades, until you're holding hands on your deathbeds. Yet I can't for the life of me figure out how it begins, or what its metrics are, or where its catylists come from. I suppose this is what Randall Monroe wondered all those years ago when he came up with his blog's subtitle. If only I could ask him, perhaps I would have the answers to everything.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#197

Post by beders » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:42 PM UTC

hnarn wrote: post #79

This is the second time in just a few weeks I see a post from some UX person complaining about how some major tech company doesn't "understand" design while themselves having a design that is absolutely abysmal. What made this person think that having gigantic snowflakes flying down a page serving only text and images would be a good idea? _edit_: I'd also like to point out that I know it can be disabled, the questio…

It is enabled by default so you can enjoy the snowflakes.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#198

Post by nkrisc » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:42 PM UTC

throwaway_ab wrote: post #8

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

The audacity to critique Apple's use of icons (which is objectively justified critique, IMO) while having animated snowflakes falling over the text and images on the site is something on an entirely different level.

Thank goodness for Firefox reader mode. That animation is so incredibly distracting.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#199

Post by layer8 » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

throwaway_ab wrote: post #8

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

At least there’s a button to turn it off. But yes, I agree.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#200

Post by tuzemec » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

I'm still on Sonoma (14). And it pisses me off that there's no easy way to upgrade to Sequoia (15). I really don't want to touch Tahoe at all.