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macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

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Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#101

Post by torben-friis »

threatofrain wrote: post #72
merlindru wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seemingly bright idea i disagree about that one. im not a UX expert by any means but my first impression at WWDC seeing liquid glass was "holy shit, they pulled that off? i know apple would never compromise on legibility, so... how? there are so many situations where this won't work, and they can't exactly control the content that the buttons are overlaid on top of" cue my confusion when it was exactly that: an obv…

If AR/VR took off then something along the lines of liquid glass would be the only option for the entire design space. Early on there's going to be a lot of embedding of app context into the AR/VR setting to get a jump-start on content. But if people are going to be walking around with rectangular panes around their head, it's better that part of the app chrome is transparent. Is this compromising readability? Yes, b…

The AR push is also an issue in itself. There are very fundamental issues that remain unresolved, and I would say untackled even.

VR setups make you isolated and vulnerable. Any VR device is really awkward to use in public (read: in your living room or in an office).

In turn, AR setups that let the world through reduce image quality by virtue of being transparent, and it is unclear that they provide advantages. You get a slightly more immediate access to notifications in return for permanently pointing a camera towards anything you look at, which is understandably not well received.

And that's just for content consumption. When you introduce work, input is still significantly worse unless you're sitting in front of a keyboard and mouse, in which case you might as well have a full laptop.

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#102

Post by roysting »

merlindru wrote: post #69
stein1946 wrote: post #45

It just seems to me that that Macbook Neo is basically them telling us that come next year they will unify iOS and MacOS and they are testing the waters at the moment. All this version alignment, the blurring of "here is a laptop with A processor and iOS" points to that direction. The errs of Tahoe are basically a result of the rush on that direction

i hope you're wrong. they certainly have seemed to test the waters on many other fronts. the $99/yr notarization fee is now basically required as running unnotarized apps is made hard and scary enough to turn off probably 97% of average users they also briefly took away the ability to disable gatekeeper per terminal command (now back) next they wanna launch a touchscreen macbook, presumably this fall

I hope they don’t ever do a touchscreen MacBook. They already have every angle of that use case covered far better than the competition; either you get an iPad if you absolutely need to be pawing at a screen, or you have the excellent trackpads that are far and away par excellence. I don’t see how a touch screen on top of also the industry standard for screen quality will in any way improve by having greasy finger trails distorting the tiny pixels.

Maybe I’m missing something. How would a touchscreen MacBook improve on something?

That being said, based on what I’ve been seeing at Apple, I would not be surprised if they did go down that mediocrity route.

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#103

Post by iainmerrick »

afandian wrote: post #97
iainmerrick wrote: post #93

I dislike Tahoe too, but this particular thing is not new. I just did an image search for "classic macos" and one of the first hits was from https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os . Look at those System 1 screenshots, from 42(!) years ago -- round corners on Puzzle and Calculator, square corners on Note Pad and Control Panel! No consistency at all, isn't it infuriating?

Puzzle and Calculator were Desk Accessories (DAs), a special kind of app. Some cool details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_accessory Like Tahoe, it was deliberate and there's an explanation for the difference. But I do wonder if people at the time felt the same way.

That led me to https://www.folklore.org/Desk_Ornaments.html which is a very fun read. Interesting to note that the UI style of the DAs is actually not consistent at all, some have round corners and some don't.

I particularly like this Bill Atkinson tidbit at the end:

Bill Atkinson complained to me that it was a mistake to allow users to specify their own desktop patterns, because it was harder to make a nice one than it looked, and led directly to ugly desktops. [...] So he made MacPaint allocate a window that was the size of the screen when it started up, and filled it with the standard 50% gray pattern, making his own desktop covering up the real one, thus protecting the poor users from their rash esthetic blunders, at least within the friendly confines of MacPaint.

(He was totally right, making your own desktop patterns was fun but the standard checkerbard was far and away the best choice.)

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#104

Post by tomovo »

The justification by Apple is that it keeps the concentricity between window corner and the red/green/yellow window controls. Which, as you may notice, it does.

It's wrong though, because the window is the higher element in the hierarchy (container) and should not be affected by what is inside. It creates a larger inconsistency than the "consistency" it supposedly brings.

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#106

Post by revolvingthrow »

It is difficult to put into words how much I dislike macos 26. I held out on upgrading for a long time since there were so many horror stories, but to my surprise both iOS and ipadOS 26 aren’t really any different than 18. Maybe because you don’t really do any proper work on it? The graphical differences aren’t anything major when the apps fill the whole viewport anyway.

But macOS? Good lord. I can only hope 27 will unfuck things somewhat, there are so many small annoyances and all of them add to a constant sense of unhappiness throughout the day. I’m really tempted to downgrade back to Sequoia. At least the M4 will be good enough for years if this truly is the new path Apple will take.

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#107

Post by iainmerrick »

douglee650 wrote: post #65

Feels sloppy (is sloppy) but I think the idea is to prioritize OS unification for hardware reasons, and UX across product suite — devices can share data, apps, screens, everything.

I'm seeing a lot of comments here about macOS/iOS unification, but I think people are getting worked up about nothing.

What do macOS window styles have to do with iOS? iOS (mostly) doesn't have windows!

What does the MacBook Neo have to do with iOS, other than coincidentally using some of the same components? Maybe Apple decided to make a cheaper Mac because they thought people might want to buy a cheaper Mac.

They are trying to use a common design language across all their devices, sure. But you would hardly expect them to do the opposite! They might try to make a hybrid tablet/laptop or something at some point, sure, but none of their current moves point inevitably in that direction. Except maybe for software notarization, but that has nothing to do with window corners or cheaper laptops.

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#108

Post by unfunco »

postalcoder wrote: post #12

This one really bothers me. Whenever maximizing or tiling my windows (which is all the time), I see multiple layers of oddly rounded corners. I think if there's any upside to Tahoe, the grievances may push me into blogging for the first time ever, because I can't keep these to myself. I actually feel sorry for Apple's developers because there's no way you ship software this bad and inconsistent unless you've been han…

Are the Apple-owned app windows inconsistent too? I see some inconsistencies but it's generally 3rd party apps mixed with Apple's apps.

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#110

Post by jaffa2 »

Ultimatt wrote: post #70
marxisttemp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firstly, alt-tab I assume you mean cmd-tab. >doesn’t consider windows, it considers apps. So if you have multiple browser windows or word windows open, you can’t alt-tab between them. It’s totally confusing. You use cmd-tilde to switch between windows. >So I install an app just to get the normal alt-tab behavior of other OSs, to alt-tab between windows (mine is called alt-tab, and it’s a bit buggy and slow, I think…

I am mildly shocked after almost two decades of Mac use I never came across cmd+tilde thanks a lot!

Next try CMD+H to hide instead of minimising, like in Windows Land.
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