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Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

daringfireball.net

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Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#22
post #13

I’m still on Sequoia because of all the Tahoe complaints. Not so much the rounded corners, but I heard performance was poor. Have updates to Tahoe improved things?

Nope. Genuinely made my new Mac Mini feel broken. The only fix was going back to Sequoia.

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#24
No good reason to be excited about the old garbage UI returning after the new garbage had been trashed.

> This updated advice in the HIG is perfect.

> Use an icon to highlight the most common actions and key features of your app

Saving a document is the one of the most common actions in your average app, but I * never* need an icon there in the menu, there is no benefit in focusing my attention on an action I always do with a shortcut!

The perfect advice would be easy and powerful user customization, so that, for example, I could right click on the app's File>Save menu and select an option to hide the icon, reformat the rich text field and have this change propagate in all the other apps. Or click on a web link from someone who has already done it better and add the theme. Then I wouldn't even care about the back and forth design changes between major OS releases.

And that could also fix another sin in the screenshot - the text is not vertically aligned! "visual consistency" misunderstood

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#25
post #24

No good reason to be excited about the old garbage UI returning after the new garbage had been trashed. > This updated advice in the HIG is perfect. > Use an icon to highlight the most common actions and key features of your app Saving a document is the one of the most common actions in your average app, but I * never* need an icon there in the menu, there is no benefit in focusing my attention on an action I always…

The garbage that threw itself out was "the untalented magazine-designer hacks with clout and influence [who] all left with Alan Dye" and that's worth celebrating. Especially because Meta collected the trash.

https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job

>My favorite reaction to today’s news is this one-liner from a guy on Twitter/X: “The average IQ of both companies has increased.”

https://x.com/shipulin/status/1996318006335401997

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#26
post #13

I’m still on Sequoia because of all the Tahoe complaints. Not so much the rounded corners, but I heard performance was poor. Have updates to Tahoe improved things?

I've always used reduced transparency and reduced animations and haven't noticed any performance issues.

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#27
post #17
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m on an M1 Max device and the GPU performance drops have not gotten back to Sequoia levels on Tahoe patches. Golden Gate hasn’t changed anything either.

They toned down the effects in Golden Gate but the backend is doing the same amount of work to blend all that pointless stuff in. You'd get the performance back if they gave up on the translucently to the point of removing the code.

I'm so upset that Liquid Glass is visibly pixelated now. Like, it's barely even blurred at the least transparent setting -- it just looks like a very obviously downsampled background. Like distractingly/annoyingly downsampled. Ugh!!

Screenshots:

https://logandark.net/files/3SQ5P9OP-PP373NQ7-RS6RP2QR-P772S...

https://logandark.net/files/3SQ5P9OP-PP373NQ7-RS6RP2QR-P772S...

https://logandark.net/files/3SQ5P9OP-PP373NQ7-RS6RP2QR-P772S...

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#29
"it’s proof that the rot has been rooted out of Apple’s software design team"

I know little about Apple, but have quite a bit of experience with how software products get "designed". Goofy and offensive things happen when corporations decide not to pay attention to customers.

The decision to ignore customer and focus on market wow is not the software design team. It is a systemic and structural thing.

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#30
post #13

I’m still on Sequoia because of all the Tahoe complaints. Not so much the rounded corners, but I heard performance was poor. Have updates to Tahoe improved things?

I've always used reduced transparency and reduced animations and haven't noticed any performance issues.

Done the same, that should really be the default experience. Reducing animations so often makes things feel snappy again, and less distracting
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