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It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

tonsky.me

371–380 of 984 posts

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#371

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

And rightfully so. Tahoe is not just a step back, but it throws away so many good design elements that have been there for ages - and for no good reason.

I really hope they revert most of the design changes in macOS 27. I don't mind the Liquid Glass - the other changes they made to expose/highlight Liquid Glass are the real issue.

IMO we reached peak design in 2013 with Mavericks.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#372

I think that these icons are a great idea. With the rise of illiteracy, you can no longer count on people being able to read the labels in menus. What better way to ensure that Apple comes out on top in the post-apocalyptic wasteland than the genesis of a new primitive ideographic writing system? 10,000 years from now, when Apple users are grunting and hooting to argue about which icon means "make computer magic reme…

This article provided a good counterpoint; there is a picture where all text labels in menus have been removed and just the icons are left. It’s worse than having only text labels.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sluggish on a 2023 M3 Pro!

That's weird; almost the only issue I don't have with Tahoe on a 2023 M2 Mini is its performance. Do you have transparency enabled?

Yes, I have 'reduce transparency' set to true. Overnight after upgrade the UI became noticably sluggish.

The outstanding example is Spotlight. For years since the M1 release I have been able to bring the bar up and type C-H-R then Enter, in ~500ms I guess, and I would always get Chrome.

Now, I have to wait another 1-2 seconds for it to think. If I hit enter before it has finished thinking, Spotlight goes away and nothing else happens!

The UI and Spotlight are still fine on my 2020 M1 Air running Sequioa

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#374

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…

To be fair, they also made several infamous hardware design choices back in 2016, all of which they’ve later reverted.

I'm hopeful Apple will correct course about all these awful UI decisions but it'll take some time.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say I've never found anything wrong with the alt-tab app I use on macOS. I wonder if you're referring the permissions it has to ask for? https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos

Alt tab is okay but it has performance issues (sometimes window switching is instant, sometimes there's a slight but perceptible delay). The devs have acknowledged it and said that it cannot be fixed. Other pet peeves include the smallest window thumbnails are enormous and enabling mouse hover to switch windows causes me to switch to the wrong window, and thumbnails are often stale.

You can change the window size in settings

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#377

It's hard to justify Liquid Glass in general. The wastefulness of flat design (in terms of space) married with the visual excess of skeuomorphism, but without even providing any affordances (does the sidebar being raised give you any new information on how to use a sidebar? No). If you're a designer at a top 10 S&P 500 company making 6 figures, you owe it to yourself to have some love for your craft. If a PM tells yo…

My main gripe with Liquid Glass is how distracting it is. Many top bars have become a group of bubbles over the content, which we’ve been conditioned to see as floating notifications for years. Things shine and move when they don’t require attention, just because. The end result is that my OS feels like a browser without ad blocker. As much as people hated flat design, at least it didn’t grab your attention with tack…

My main gripe is that the visual shenanigans alone were enough of a change, why rearrange the buttons?! In the early iOS beta, the new tab button was at the top of Safari, as far away from your thumbs as it could be.

Genuinely believe Apple’s design team are rudderless or have unintentionally been forced to produce something to justify someone’s career, because this whole thing is disastrous.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#378
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alan Dye ruined everything at Apple, no idea how he clung on for so long. You know he designed the horrible ios7 as well? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSzjcVZXolc https://tjkelly.com/blog/ios-7-sucks/ And he also takes credit for the dynamic island. It is an assault on my senses to see everything constantly moving around on my screen. I have been working with Macs since 1995, but this year is my first using Pixel…

I will take the bottom bar of iOS7 Safari any day over the wretched mess that it is now.

Is it just me, or does answering a Facetime call now require pressing buttons at the opposite top and bottom corners of the screen?

How does that benefit anyone?

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#379

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

It's Christmas, lighten up. I think the animation adds a glorious bit of irony: "look, here's a horribly distracting effect that is almost designed to make it difficult to read the article, and it's still not as egregious as Apple's Tahoe design!"

Design is about how it works (my phone went 100% —> 84% while reading this, almost certainly thanks to the snow)

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#380
post #372

I think that these icons are a great idea. With the rise of illiteracy, you can no longer count on people being able to read the labels in menus. What better way to ensure that Apple comes out on top in the post-apocalyptic wasteland than the genesis of a new primitive ideographic writing system? 10,000 years from now, when Apple users are grunting and hooting to argue about which icon means "make computer magic reme…

This article provided a good counterpoint; there is a picture where all text labels in menus have been removed and just the icons are left. It’s worse than having only text labels.

The end of the world would not be complete without the death of humor.
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