Oh, that snow backdrop really hits hard while talking about other people's UI failures...
It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
401–410 of 984 posts
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#402It 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…
Maybe Apple just got so many things right early on, then the people with experience slowly left and inexperienced people kept showing up and they felt compelled to keep making changes to justify their jobs. How do they justify their job if they can't roll out huge visible changes? So they rationalize whatever change they wanna make and keep advocating for it until they get the green light, regardless of whether or no…
>How do they justify their job if they can't roll out huge visible changes?
This is the core rotting value in so much of big tech. So much of your bonus, performance review, promotion package, etc is hinging on "delivering impact" (ie: doing the flashy stuff). Imagine a world where some internal R&D team took a risk on liquid design but then thought it was okay to not ship it because it didn't work out.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#403It's lacking taste, as is everything from Apple these days.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#404Similar discussion on similar blog post from last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46196688
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#406The 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.
Do you have a cite for that? It's a hamburger menu, which is by far a more common menu paradigm in the modern world. Do you imagine some kind of "casual user" who... doesn't have a phone?
I repeat: the menu bar is a dying abstraction, preserved in a consistent form only on the Macintosh (even iOS has no equivalent), because it's presence is unavoidable. Users of modern apps don't see it used consistently, so it's absolutely not surprising that Apple's designers aren't doing it either.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#407This times 100000. I've been using Mac OS since 1992 and this version (both IOS and MacOS) has had me pulling my hair out more than every other version, and note, I did use OSX 10.0!
The first thing I did with Tahoe was go into the System Preferences to try and turn off as much as possible of the new UI because it's the biggest regression in Mac OS history (at least since I've been using Macs).
I used to mock Windows for the Explorer UI and general GUI experience, now I think I prefer using my Windows 10 PC over my Mac. It's just such a fucking mess, so inconsistent, shitty performance (even on brand new macs and phones), is actively harder to grok, much harder to use for my elderly parents, and doesn't even look "cooler" or "better" in any way. It's just worse on every possible metric, and made me start wondering about an Android phone, which has never happened since I bought an original iPhone.
I am and have been the ultimate Apple fanboy since 1992, but this release fucking sucks balls. I hope you're listening Apple.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, Liquid (Gl)ass is hideous. I'll stick to macOS Sequoia for the time being.
MacOS 26 highlights were... and this was _Apple's_ opening modal... "Icons that look like shit!" and "Notification summaries that may not be correct!" In general I feel as if Apple's software feels buggier and less solid lately across my iPhone and my computers. Won't be upgrading the personal computer for as long as possible
I finally talked my company into letting me swap out my MacBook pro for some little Dell. After the last year of updates, my Mac has stopped resuming from sleep reliably, everything is ugly, they took the already barely usable (imo) finder and system settings and found exciting new ways to make them worse. Sadly corporate security means os updates were not optional.
I've never really liked macOS but it feels like someone at Apple was hired just to make it even less likable for me personally lol
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#409Page about usability has distracting snow all over the page :)
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#410It'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…
Every distracting visual element of liquid glass looks like a tiny Ad to me which is constantly trying to distract me from what I am doing and trying to grab my attention. Super annoying.