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

Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 173 posts

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#121

Post by preg_match »

_diyar wrote: post #72
skydhash wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I could see how they might be alien and uncomfortable to someone that has only ever experienced mobile interfaces They are different devices. Just because you can drive a sedan does not means you can drive a bulldozer. Or playing piano qualifies you to play the organ. So going from touch and a small screen to keyboard/mouse and a bigger screen, you should expect that the interactions will change.

true, but ~all new users have a stronger mental model of how their phone works vs. big-screen devices.

The solutions is then them building a mental model for the desktop. Using phone strategy on larger screens is a usability issue, because it doesn’t translate well or take advantage of a mouse and keyboard. We went through this with windows 8. It’s a nice idea, but in practice it makes the desktop much more cumbersome to use. It might have a benefit for very new users, but it’s temporary in nature.

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#122

Post by wwalexander »

jxdxbx wrote: post #116
wwalexander wrote: post #110

Icons in menu bars serve the same purpose as icons elsewhere: quickly identifying buttons. I don't know why this is such a big deal.

It's one for one or two items to have icons. The vegetarian dishes on a restaurant can have the leaf icon for instance. But it would be stupid if every single dish did. The whole point is that icons pop out so putting them on EVERY item is just counterproductive.

What about toolbars? Those almost universally have both text and icons for each item. Why should menus be any different?

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#123

Post by adjejmxbdjdn »

antran22 wrote: post #80

Good grief, hopefully in v28 Lemay will also throw away the absolute crap that is Liquid glass. Aesthetically it looks horrible, it slows my iPhone 13 — which never before lagged in all its life since iOS 15 – to a maddening crawl. Liquid glass should be taught in design school as an example of what not to do when you design UX. And also in business school as a case of how middle management can fudge up something tha…

I don’t think Liquid Glass is inherently bad.

I think Apple’s implementation and overuse of those effects is bad.

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#124

Post by wwalexander »

preg_match wrote: post #118
wwalexander wrote: post #110

Icons in menu bars serve the same purpose as icons elsewhere: quickly identifying buttons. I don't know why this is such a big deal.

The main problem with icons is that they need to be universally understood, otherwise they are a usability issue. In the past, this was achieved through Skeuomorphism and consistency across software. However, as time has gone on Skeuomorphism has lost value, because people don’t necessarily recognize the old things they’re trying to reference. So we’ve been seeing a movement away from that for the past 10 years. But,…

> In addition, every software company seems to go their own way and have their own “style”

Hence Apple using the same set of SF Symbols across all their platforms. And I don't think icons are intended to be used to initially identify the purpose of a button, but instead to provide a quick visual anchor once you are already familiar. Sure, there are some buttons that everyone will use more (like Save or Open), but I don't think there's anything wrong with allowing every button to have this sort of quick visual lookup. Predicting user behavior is hard.

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#126

Post by manwe150 »

wwalexander wrote: post #122
jxdxbx wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one for one or two items to have icons. The vegetarian dishes on a restaurant can have the leaf icon for instance. But it would be stupid if every single dish did. The whole point is that icons pop out so putting them on EVERY item is just counterproductive.

What about toolbars? Those almost universally have both text and icons for each item. Why should menus be any different?

Toolbars (pre office-ribbon design era) were understood to only have frequently used items which are the ones that also happen to have icons. Then the office-ribbon thing happened, and everyone complained about that because it meant everything had to have an icon and everyone had to memorize what every icon meant (I’m exaggerating slightly)

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#127

Post by NotPractical »

chalmovsky wrote: post #102
foo12bar wrote: post #41

Sometimes who can't be bothered to make the text on their website not extremely tiny when viewing on mobile shouldn't be writing multi-page rants on the other people's UI.

I dont think you are really bothered by it either given you are discussing this on a website which has exactly the same behavior :)

Nope, HN's CSS accommodates smaller screen sizes [1]:

    /* mobile device */
    @media only screen
    and (min-width : 300px)
    and (max-width : 750px) {
      #hnmain { width: 100%; min-width: 0; }
      body { padding: 0; margin: 0; width: 100%; }
      td { height: inherit !important; }
      .title, .comment { font-size: inherit;  }
      span.pagetop { display: block; margin: 3px 5px; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal }
Not perfect by any means but at least there's an attempt.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#128

Post by stouset »

wwalexander wrote: post #122
jxdxbx wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one for one or two items to have icons. The vegetarian dishes on a restaurant can have the leaf icon for instance. But it would be stupid if every single dish did. The whole point is that icons pop out so putting them on EVERY item is just counterproductive.

What about toolbars? Those almost universally have both text and icons for each item. Why should menus be any different?

Toolbars already focus on the most-used actions one wants to perform. A menu contains everything.

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#129

Post by ckcheng »

kibwen wrote: post #85

> I don’t know if all the untalented hacks are gone, but the untalented magazine-designer hacks with clout and influence all left with Alan Dye. As usual for Gruber, this is fanboy cope. Dye may be a convenient scapegoat, but he was not a lone wolf, he was operating with the full assent of executive leadership, which is to say, the same leadership that appointed his successor.

It’s important not to forget the (work) politics while looking at the work produced. Unfortunately when you get a politically astute Mad Men (for real, from Ogilvy) in the organization, great damage can be done for a very long time without much recourse.

You’ll note Dye was an Ive decision. And you’ll see the successor was not in Dye’s camp. Because (work) politics.

From https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job

> Gurman reported that Billy Sorrentino, a Dye deputy who has served as a senior director of design at Apple since 2016, is leaving for Meta with Dye.3 I don’t have any other names, but word on the street is that other members of Dye’s inner circle are leaving Apple for Meta with him. But those who remain — or who might remain, if they’d have been offered the promotion to replace Dye — simply can’t be trusted from the perspective of senior leadership, who were apparently blindsided by Dye’s departure for Meta.

> Putting Alan Dye in charge of user interface design was the one big mistake Jony Ive made as Apple’s Chief Design Officer.

> Dye had no background in user interface design... Before joining Apple, he was design director for the fashion brand Kate Spade, and before that worked on branding for the ad agency Ogilvy.

> Alan Dye is not untalented. But his talents at Apple were in politics. His political skill was so profound that it was his decision to leave, despite the fact that his tenure is considered a disaster by actual designers inside and outside the company. He obviously figured out how to please Apple’s senior leadership. His departure today landed as a total surprise because his stature within the company seemed so secure.

Re: Sweet Jeebus, macOS 27 Golden Gate Removes the Dumb Icons from Menu Items

#130

Post by hbn »

jeroenhd wrote: post #51
foo12bar wrote: post #41

Sometimes who can't be bothered to make the text on their website not extremely tiny when viewing on mobile shouldn't be writing multi-page rants on the other people's UI.

Even on desktop the site is quite difficult to read. White on gray isn't a great reading experience regardless of font size. Accessibility technology like reader mode is once again proving its worth.

White on gray is the only dark mode that doesn't hurt my eyes. I use light mode for practically everything except IntelliJ which has a great built-in "Darcula" theme (which is now opt-in in favor of a more standard dark mode that I hate) which looks similar to DF's theme.

White on black or dark gray makes my eyes bug out. I have pretty good vision but that's the only thing that actually hurts my eyes.

Post reply on HN