181–190 of 270 posts
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.
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> 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. And Apple decided this was a problem with icons, rather than a problem with the way they implemented their vision tracking? Believable, and laughable.
"You're looking at it wrong"
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That's what made me switch to Android. At least you can have 3-button navigation
Its just as bad. Please define ‘back’
2. Go to previous app view. This is app-dependent though it will probably, successively with each press:
a. Close menus if open (context, sidebar, etc)
b. Go to previous (web)page if web/file browser c. Go out of submenus (ex: settings/WiFi -> settings) if not in a browser or if the oldest page has been reached. Keeps walking the tree upwards.
3. Reach the main app view (usually the one you land on when opening the app)
4. One more press minimizes the app.
It is fairly consistent, but some apps decide otherwise:
* some will minimize as soon as you press it (I've seen games do it)
* some will open a new menu (again, games: pause menu)
* some will seemingly walk you the history of visited pages instead of the hierarchy -- which may make sense but can be confusing
* some old apps will display a toast "press back twice to exit". This used to be common back when physical buttons were the norm, but I haven't seen this message a lot.
So, mostly consistent with some weird-behaving apps. Same as on desktop I guess?
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> There's so little joy and happiness left in computing Preach it! https://daveon.design/creating-joy-in-the-user-experience.ht...
Great article -but the image has issues with Safari (invisible drag corner), and iOS (a mess). I have found that we need to be very, very careful, when making the UI more "fun." Things like rounded affordances, short transition animations, easy-to-understand elements, etc., are good. They remove the "friction." However, cute icons, unprompted animations, and overuse of whitespace for the sake of design aesthetics, ca…
You can be all those things without being forgettable. What matters to the user is the cohesiveness of the whole experience, not individual widgets. People use apps, they don’t just stand there looking at it like a video playing.
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…
VisionOS, at least as it stands today, will be dead before you know it. If you don't understand what I mean, look up the rumor about the future of Vision Pro. What a waste of resource to invent the whole Tahoe "design language" only for nothing.
When trying to create a new category, customers need to have some faith it’s going to stick around and they won’t be abandoned. So it’s important to have that long term vision and conviction that the decisions made were the right ones.
That said, I bought the M5 Vision Pro and returned it after a week. It doesn’t feel like a product yet. Vision Pro as a future product might be questionable, but will they abandon spacial computing all together or switch to more of a true AR setup? I think real AR would be much better.
I think now that Cook is stepping down, we could see more change. Cooked seemed a little desperate to make sure Apple looked like an innovative company, when he clearly wasn’t a product guy. I don’t think a a full computer is needed on the face, that was the first mistake, they need a more purpose built device for the few things that make sense in the context of a HUD.
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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.
How do you think thay worked? Alan Dye alome came up with, designed and somehow forced Liquid Glass into every platform? Lemay, who was his second in command had nothing to do with it? It was Alan Dye single-handedly doing it?
If I were at Apple's leadership I'd consider that a major blindspot and focus deeply on fixing it.
It's still a bit jarring to me to see how far Apple embraced form over function with iOS and subsequently macOS. I remember reading the Human Interface Guidelines from the late Mac OS 9/early Mac OS X days and being taken aback by the level of detail and thought that went into those interfaces. Don't get me wrong, some things made no sense (brushed metal was... a choice) but there was a certain level of polish that I…
Yeah, for a decade now it's been a UX disaster. It "works", because so many people are used to it, but look at a new user trying to navigate iOS, it's bonkers. Swiping from random directions achieves different things (and how would you even know you can?). The home button has like 11 different functions depending on how you press it and when.
I find nowadays iOS is as complex as the Android I remember. I can navigate it just fine because I'm used to it but even my parents who've been using iPhones longer than me have found themselves getting lost in the OS with iOS 26 in particular.
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Some differentiation between elements must be sacrificed in order to build shared UX patterns between them. I think we can definitely go too far in either direction. An example of a nice compromise would be the macOS menu bar. Most status icons are monotone, which allows the ones with meaningful color differentiation to shine through without being drowned in the noise or increasing user fatigue.
> user fatigue Citation needed. What is user fatigue? Can it be empirically measured? Fatigued by what? Too much color? Lack of shape? Too much contrast? Lack of contrast? When is the last time you were "fatigued" by icons? Without hard facts the expression is just a wishy-washy way to promote a personal taste.
For a moment there, you almost had us thinking that you were interested in learning something.
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I find them gorgeous. Admittedly, the term is unavoidably subjective. But what I like about them is that they are distinct, and that each one has character. Honestly, the fact that they looked like pictures I could find in a child's book is the main part of what I like about them: they have simple ideas ("a bird") and forms so distinctive a child could tell them apart.
Ok, but how would you feel if the dashboard of your car had images that made it look like a child's toy? Or your watch? You've maybe grown accustomed to it on your smartphone, but it has little to do with great taste (imho).
A conputer interface does not have those. You need to track the cursor and then decide how you want to move it. There’s no muscle memory. And no tactile perception. What’s left is visual differentiation and it should be slightly exaggerated.
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Can you recommend me a non apple fanless laptop with similar power/battery life characteristics?
If you want a macbook, go for it. I wouldn’t presume to know your needs more than you. I want something that I can easily run OpenBSD on and is amd64. And none of the apple laptop fits the bill.