Safari 15 on Mac OS, a user interface mess

Linked article refers to the changes in Safari as "thoughtless UI", which is a fairly common argument used against changes that people don't like. Against Apple, Microsoft, WinAmp, Reddit, etc.

But let's be fair and note that there quite certainly a lot of very proud, considerate, intentional designers and developers who are behind this change. People who probably put thousands (millions?) multiples of "thought" in considering the changes, versus someone saying "Whoa...this is different and I don't like different." The whine about site colors bleeding into the chrome seem particularly subjective, yet they're presented as if they're objective truths.

I use a macOS beta 15 device beside a 14 device, all day every day. At first install it was jarring, but then I became acclimated to it and it's fine. Tab groups are fantastic. I appreciate the aesthetics of chrome bleed, but that's just my subjective opinion. My only complaint about the browser is that it's crash-prone right now.

I love Apple and Safari and frequently provide bug reports to WebKit but I also absolutely hate the new safari and hope they reconsider it. I don’t mind change that is for the better and simply requires time to change muscle memory but this requires that and the end result is more clicks to do things, fewer static targets and the supposive benefits aren’t benefits for me at least. I find it most awful on iOS. The WebKit team is great and have to assume this direction to make the chrome of the app even smaller came from higher up. Hopefully more public backlash when the public betas come out so apple can rethink it. At the end of the day it’s still better than the alternatives for my use cases but hate that for me it’s a worse experience for something I use more than any other app.

> People who probably put thousands (millions?) multiples of "thought" in considering the changes

Thoughts maybe, but did they ask users what they wanted? Did they run usability studies to verify that these changes make sense? I can't imagine that they did. Certain UI changes in macOS, Windows, etc. are so obviously bad (and are eventually changed) that no matter how much they thought about it, they didn't care to check what users thought.

Do you honestly think this is a one-person job? While you might question the outcome of product development, assuming that a multi-billion R&D budget accounts for 1 designer is just unhelpful.

Even just the WebKit commits with Apple engineering contacts is enough to build a whole company around...

Tabs are imperative to web productivity.

On Google Chrome since tabs are on their own row at the top of the window and maintain their size and position you can fling your mouse to the top of the screen easily hit them. On Safari since the address bar expands from the active tab, the size and position of the tabs are drastically changing. This makes selecting a tab more difficult. Additionally, since the size the address bar is wider the distance your mouse has to travel to select the neighbouring tab increases.

In the end this leads to more effort and bad ergonomics. I would love it if they just had the tabs on one row and address bar one row, until then I will stick with chrome on the desktop.