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Free the Icons

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Re: Free the Icons

#71

Post by MBCook »

jpease wrote: post #61

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.

No they were better. Whether someone likes the style better or not (I do) they were FAR more visually distinct from each other which made it much easier to find the program you wanted to use.

Right now my dock is a soup of squircles. I have to scan multiple times to find icons even though I know roughly where they should be.

They aren’t distinct. They don’t stand out.

That was never a problem until last year. 40 years of Mac was fine. Then that.

Re: Free the Icons

#72

Post by MBCook »

healsdata wrote: post #69

If 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.

You can’t. “Squircle jail” is a real thing. If your icon isn’t the right shape Apple puts it inside one for you.

Re: Free the Icons

#73

Post by josho »

jpease wrote: post #61

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.

I don't think it's superficial at all.

I genuinely find my apps harder to navigate now than I used to. Part of that is that I have far more apps installed today, but the uniform white borders also contribute. They make every icon look about 20% more similar, which adds just enough friction that scanning for the app I want takes a little longer.

Poorly executed icon shapes were distracting, but when they were done well they provided subtle visual cues that made the interface easier to navigate. I miss that more than I expected.

Re: Free the Icons

#74

Post by zapzupnz »

hbn wrote: post #43

> the much-celebrated Liquid Glass opacity slider The Liquid Glass slider is an embarrassing outright admission of failure. Apple built its brand as a tastemaker, so to put out this new, controversial design language, and after a year of tweaking, finally throw their hands up and say "we don't know what looks good, you decide" is so disappointing. That said, all the changes in iOS 27 are such a massive improvement fr…

> outright admission of failure

Right!? Who's out there going "oh no, translucent is too translucent; opaque is too opaque; but now that I can have 72.93% glass, my life is complete"?

Re: Free the Icons

#75

Post by materialpoint »

crazygringo wrote: post #36

I've got to disagree. I really disliked previously, when icon prominence could be wildly different because one icon takes up the full area with a big square, while another is a circle that necessarily has a significantly smaller area within the same extent. Icons from Apple were all nicely balanced in size, but third-party apps could be anything. Giving equal visual weight to each icon is an improvement. iOS was a st…

You seem to conflate different facts that have nothing to do with each other to arrive at a conclusion: There is nothing preventing Apple from not using said click masks while icons retain their distinct shapes. iOS is for mobile, its lessons don't transfer to desktop, and this was proven by Windows 8. That "squircles aren't ugly because they are functional" - how on Earth can those be mutually exclusive even in recognition? Functional very often is at the cost of making things ugly, the history lesson is that Apple more often than others managed to be both functional and beautiful. You also conflate convex pixel area with visual weight, but that is false too.

Re: Free the Icons

#76

Post by mrkstu »

WillAdams wrote: post #65
al_borland wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or squirqle jail just on vision OS

Re: Free the Icons

#77

Post by Jyaif »

Ever since the android debacle with icons having shadows going in different directions or length I've been thinking that icons should be 3D models (with restrictions to make them fast to render and/or fast to bake into flat images).

That would be a marvelous way to make icons unified and a differentiating move for Apple.

Re: Free the Icons

#78

Post by bleakenthusiasm »

Oh yes, I hate this. OneUI has that as well. It makes searching for an app so much more conscious and bothersome. I don't want my app drawer to look as neat as possible, I want it to work with the least amount of attention that I can possibly get away with.

Re: Free the Icons

#79

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #36

I've got to disagree. I really disliked previously, when icon prominence could be wildly different because one icon takes up the full area with a big square, while another is a circle that necessarily has a significantly smaller area within the same extent. Icons from Apple were all nicely balanced in size, but third-party apps could be anything. Giving equal visual weight to each icon is an improvement. iOS was a st…

[deleted]

Re: Free the Icons

#80

Post by al_borland »

MBCook wrote: post #70
al_borland wrote: post #23

While 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.

They were trying to make a unified design language across all their operating systems. If iOS and VisionOS both have their icons sitting on uniformly shaped tiles, macOS would break the convention.

I don't like it, but I believe that's the reason why.

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