Seeing all those old icons makes me realize how much I miss them.
Superficial, perhaps, but they were one of the things I loved about OS X when I made the switch back in 2005 or 2006.
Free the Icons
61–70 of 270 posts
Re: Free the Icons
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no real love for Alan Dye but you should probably understand that Gruber feels it is a personal affront that someone might work for a company that is not Apple.
Are you suggesting Gruber is upset at Dye for leaving Apple? We all disliked Dye before he left. People were taking potshots at Apple's design direction under him for 10 years.
He thinks Dye was never good enough to be at Apple and that he would think of leaving proves it
Re: Free the Icons
#63They've gone too far on enforcing uniformity of icons and abusing liquid glass, but I disagree that arbitrary shapes were better. All the random icon shapes looked cool in isolation, but were harder to scan at a glance. The uniform squircle is a useful constraint. I wouldn't mind if they allowed something similar to that audio hijack icon, where you require the rounded rect as the guiding frame but are allowed to hav…
Early on, when UI/UX was emerging as a discipline, user reaction times and accuracy were measured across a large number of participants. There are many stories during the development of the Lisa and Mac of unexpected user behavior and results.
We shouldn’t be guessing if uniformity helps distinguish between apps or not. We could very easily test it.
But UI/UX has long distanced itself from science, for whatever reason. Maybe because users are so proficient these days that almost anything works. We used to required training on how to use a mouse, menus and windows.
It’s been probably a decade since I’ve heard anyone mention Fitt’s law, for instance, and Liquid Glass atrocities are direct a consequence of disregarding all that was learned in this field.
Re: Free the Icons
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alan Dye was brought in during the Jony Ive era when they were launching the first Apple Watch because he came from a fashion/print background. Before Apple really figured out what the Watch was going to be (a health/fitness accessory for your phone) they were going for the "luxury fashion" angle. Somehow when Ive left, Dye got put in charge of design even though he had zero experience in software design that anyone…
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Gruber does not have a monopoly on disliking Alan Dye’s work. On the contrary, I never met anyone who knew UI design was a thing that liked what he did.
When you’re using a tool for 40 years and someone who really has no clue gets in charge, starts breaking basic functionality for no good reason and affecting your day to day work, it’s not hard to get infuriated.
Re: Free the Icons
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure visionOS requires it? Having an icon be a few px smaller so a microphone can stick out, doesn't seem like a big deal for tracking.
The thing sticking outside of the icon draws the eye to it, which means your focus is at the edge instead of the center, which makes for a more error prone experience. Since the eyes are the cursor, this is a problem. Desktop and mobile don’t have this issue.
Obvious solution, two different icons, round one for Vision OS, more shapely one for everyone else.
Re: Free the Icons
#66Tahoe was such a huge mess, but I'm hopeful that the new CEO will turn things around and bring things back to normal. If they do, I'll consider upgrading both OS and laptop, but right now I'm holding on to Sequoia
Golden Gate is better but it hasn't fixed your icons unfortunately
The thing which kills me, is that with entirety of the State of California's Gazetteer to pull from, Apple didn't pull a page from Android and use an alphabetically ordered naming scheme so that folks could determine ordering of versions.
Re: Free the Icons
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you suggesting Gruber is upset at Dye for leaving Apple? We all disliked Dye before he left. People were taking potshots at Apple's design direction under him for 10 years.
He thinks Dye was never good enough to be at Apple and that he would think of leaving proves it
Is there something you perceive as unfair about judging a guy on the output of the work he was responsible for over a long period of time?
Re: Free the Icons
#68Tahoe was such a huge mess, but I'm hopeful that the new CEO will turn things around and bring things back to normal. If they do, I'll consider upgrading both OS and laptop, but right now I'm holding on to Sequoia
It really was Mac OS X's Vista moment. Edit: It'll always be Mac OS X to me, not macOS.
Mac OS X 27.
10.27?
But that means there were two each of 10.11, 10.12, 10.13, 10.14, and 10.15 :-)
Re: Free the Icons
#69If one is this passionate about icons, why not just install (or even make) a custom icon pack? The default icons for Google Apps on Android are awful, but I haven't seen them in years aside from setting up a new device.
Re: Free the Icons
#70While I wholeheartedly agree, I suspect the required backgrounds are to create a uniform format between system, where VisionOS requires round icons for more reliable eye tracking. It seems like every OS got a little harder to use in order to better vibe with VisionOS, the least popular platform they have. While I applaud the commitment to building a new platform, I don’t like that’s is coming at the expense of the ot…
So what? Thats not MacOS.
I think things are fine on iOS. I don’t mind the rectangles, they fit the grid. That’s how it’s always been.
I don’t care about VisionOS. Circles are odd, whatever.
But the Mac shouldn’t be forced to lose great design because iOS was under different constraints almost 20 years ago. That’s just dumb.