Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Gravity is worth asking about”

unsung.aresluna.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 149 posts

Re: “Gravity is worth asking about”

#81

Post by vnorilo »

jon-wood wrote: post #79
vnorilo wrote: post #9

Screenshot and share functionality get massively overloaded on iOS, but it's not because a product person / designer lacks the necessary taste, vision or "courage". It's because the OS is not capable of composing apps well: "I want to X, but with Y". As a result, functionality like screenshots, sharing, clipboard get overloaded with all kinds of adhoc half-baked workflows to work around the single app mindset.

I kind of agree with what you're saying, in that screenshot and share functionality is increasingly overloaded with options and things that just don't make any sense in that context. I disagree that this isn't because a product designer lacks vision, Apple control the entire stack on iOS, and there's nothing stopping them from rethinking things so that "Share" isn't a weird synonym for "Junk drawer menu". There is no…

Totally agreed; I was talking from the POV of someone designing an iOS app. Apple could fix a lot of this jank with better design, individual apps less so.

Re: “Gravity is worth asking about”

#82

Post by hvs »

alexpotato wrote: post #69

I know that "Great Man" theory is considered debunked. That being said, it seems a LOT of drops in quality trace back to some very senior person who cared about quality and put resources behind delivering quality and then either: - stops caring - leaves (retires, switches jobs or gets pushed out). Jobs is the classic example of this but I'm sure if you are reading this then you have an example from your own career hi…

The "Great Man" theory of history is considered debunked.

The idea that visionary leadership in a single organization can make a difference is very true.

Re: “Gravity is worth asking about”

#83

Post by hallway_monitor »

pixelesque wrote: post #45
microtonal wrote: post #27

Even the 'own stickers' joke doesn't really apply anymore. I recently saw ads for Apple Fitness+ and Apple Intelligence in the system settings (!, I'll forgive the ads for Apple Care). Apple Creator Studio ads in the former iWork Apps (including abusing toolbar icons for it). Finally (luckily I haven't experienced it), ads for their F1 movie in Apple Wallet. It is gross and destroys what Apple stood for. Their introd…

The really annoying thing to me about the "Ads" in the system settings for various things like Apple Music, iCloud, Fitness, etc (other than the fact they're there in the first place) is that they appear after a bit of a delay (around 500 ms?), so other items I actually want have to slide down to make space as I'm about to click something. Old Apple would never have done that I don't think.

IS THERE a name for the phenomenon? You are about to tap / click when the UI changes underneath you. You can end up tapping the wrong thing! I call it bait and switch and I am not sure how to fix it.

Re: “Gravity is worth asking about”

#84

Post by AlienRobot »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #83
pixelesque wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The really annoying thing to me about the "Ads" in the system settings for various things like Apple Music, iCloud, Fitness, etc (other than the fact they're there in the first place) is that they appear after a bit of a delay (around 500 ms?), so other items I actually want have to slide down to make space as I'm about to click something. Old Apple would never have done that I don't think.

IS THERE a name for the phenomenon? You are about to tap / click when the UI changes underneath you. You can end up tapping the wrong thing! I call it bait and switch and I am not sure how to fix it.

Google calls it "layout shift" in its web tools.

Re: “Gravity is worth asking about”

#85

Post by Gareth321 »

glimshe wrote: post #51

I really wanted to hear the opinion from Mac diehards about modern MacOS. I've used Windows for decades but bought a Mac M2 a while ago. I really like it so I'm not trying to say "Apple Bad". But I'm yet to see Apple's legendary simplicity, minimalism and attention to detail. I keep complaining about the fact Mac OS asks me whether I want to allow chrome to access the local network with every update. I tried to dig d…

I use and have used Windows and macOS for decades. I think Windows is better, but both are doing their best to drive users to Linux. Their relentless focus on extracting subscription and "service" revenue from others is fundamentally undermining the user experience in countless ways. Ads. Dark patterns. Nags windows. Auto-bundled games and software. Telemetry. Every year they make their operating systems just a little bit worse.

Re: “Gravity is worth asking about”

#86

Post by rubyfan »

apothegm wrote: post #60
glimshe wrote: post #51

I really wanted to hear the opinion from Mac diehards about modern MacOS. I've used Windows for decades but bought a Mac M2 a while ago. I really like it so I'm not trying to say "Apple Bad". But I'm yet to see Apple's legendary simplicity, minimalism and attention to detail. I keep complaining about the fact Mac OS asks me whether I want to allow chrome to access the local network with every update. I tried to dig d…

Roughly 2002-2010 that attention to detail was on display and the OS struck an impressive balance between features, ease of use, and power user access. Since then it’s been straight downhill. First they stopped investing in desktop in favor of mobile. Then they underwent some rewrites to OS and bundled apps that dumbed things down and exploded the defect rate. Then they started setting the stage for a touch experienc…

> And then there’s the travesty that is Tahoe.

Liquid Glass has no place on the desktop (or the phone really).

I migrated to Mac OS X from OpenBSD in like 2002 or so. MacOS has been a steady decline for many years, probably soon after the iPhone. Snow Leopard was probably the height of the MacOS experience. It’s been lots of little things along the way but I agree Tahoe is an inflection point.

Re: “Gravity is worth asking about”

#87

Post by Mindwipe »

glimshe wrote: post #51

I really wanted to hear the opinion from Mac diehards about modern MacOS. I've used Windows for decades but bought a Mac M2 a while ago. I really like it so I'm not trying to say "Apple Bad". But I'm yet to see Apple's legendary simplicity, minimalism and attention to detail. I keep complaining about the fact Mac OS asks me whether I want to allow chrome to access the local network with every update. I tried to dig d…

I doubt you will get many long term Mac users disagreeing that the attention to detail has got consistently worse every year since Lion.

Trying to push poorly done, rushed UI frameworks to match iOS in the wrong form factor has trashed the OS.

Re: “Gravity is worth asking about”

#89

Post by floriankarsten »

willtemperley wrote: post #12
JoshTriplett wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. GNOME 2.0 was a little rough because they swung far enough the other way, but it was still a huge improvement to remove all the "unbreak me" obvious preferences that only had one sensible answer. A few versions later, it was a delight to use.

GNOME 2 was lovely. Then GNOME 3 came and I switched to Mac.

Interesting because i kept reading that people dislike GNOME 3 because it's like Mac.

Re: “Gravity is worth asking about”

#90

Post by floriankarsten »

VorpalWay wrote: post #11
jdub wrote: post #3

That's part of the philosophical change that led to GNOME 2.0 https://ometer.com/preferences.html

And yet, KDE Plasma is so more usable than Gnome these days, because they swung too far into removing settings. You needed to install a separate Gnome Tweak tool to even be able to change font antialiasing settings last I looked, which is preposterous. I get literal headaches from the defaults.

You can't change font antialiasing on macos either. It might be the case that majority people wouldn't even touch whats in gnome tweaks. I use gnome on two machines and don't touch it. The font antialiasing seems fine?
Post reply on HN