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

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

#131

Post by preg_match »

wwalexander wrote: post #124
preg_match wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

But they don’t actually, Apple will use different icons for the same function across their platforms (and even on the same platform across applications!) That was part of the problem with the menu icons.

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

#132

Post by brycewray »

hbn wrote: post #130
jeroenhd wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Hope you don’t get floaters when you age. You may be caught between a rock and a hard place.

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

#133

Post by hbn »

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,…

The other issue is the few icons that existed before Tahoe generally highlighted import or more frequently used actions. And acted as a visual anchor point so if you frequently used another item you know, "it's 2 items below the save which has the save icon"

When everything has an icon it all just becomes clutter and no one is going to waste their time trying to parse tiny glyphs that are inconsistent between apps anyway. You could try to figure out which of the 4 icons with a plus button is the "New X" option you're looking for, but you'll probably just be reading the titles anyway so the icon does nothing.

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

#134

Post by pseudalopex »

projektfu wrote: post #79
dormento wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess no because in this case the whole system is the duck.

I'd think it's like, the whole Tahoe version had a lot to complain about, but enough people focused on the menu icons that they didn't focus on other things. Look how relieved they are the icons are gone!

More people complained of Liquid Glass than menu icons. And many of these comments continued to complain of Liquid Glass.

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

#135

Post by crimsontech »

ta8903 wrote: post #59
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've been using firefox's viewport zoom to improve website visibility a lot these days. Traditional zoom reflows the page, but the viewport zoom keeps the page the same, just makes it bigger. You might know this from pinching out on the touchpad on a laptop, but you can do this on a keyboard by setting `mousewheel.with_$KEY.action` to 5 to perform viewport zoom by having a keyboard key pressed. I use it with alt, and…

I didn't know about this, I'm on my laptop right now running macos and just tapped the trackpad with two fingers and it zoomed in. Usually I'm using a mouse and keyboard, I'll have to figure out how to do this with a keyboard shortcut.

Thanks!

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

#136

Post by Grombobulous »

torben-friis wrote: post #90
Grombobulous wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liquid Glass motivated me to sell my Mac. But also, Linux becoming genuinely amazing and being able to play all my PC games played a role there as well. I don’t find Android nearly as compelling, and Liquid Glass seems at least a bit less of a disaster on the iOS platform. My suggestion to you is follow the Panther Lake laptops that are coming out as your potential future Mac off-ramp. I have a Framework 13 Pro on pr…

Thanks for the suggestion! For the moment I'm dual booting, since the m1 MacBook is still a decent piece of hardware for my needs and asahi Linux offers good support. Given the current market I intend to hold on as long as possible, but I'll probably be eyeing the Frameworks when it's time to change. Apple's change of direction makes me hopeful that they'll recover, but the current trends in tech have moved me away f…

Holding as long as possible is a good play.

I like the YouTube channel Just Josh Tech for laptop reviews. They also have a price tracking website.

Something that’s perhaps hard to get used to with switching to a non-Apple piece of hardware is that Apple sales are not the same as Windows laptop sales. If you watch retailers like a hawk there are sometimes pretty incredible discounts.

In other words, lots of Windows laptop MSRPs are just completely not real prices and it makes them look really bad against MacBook hardware.

That said, with Apple’s stable pricing, alternative laptops being the “cheap alternative” to a Mac is pretty much over. Your next upgrade might just be a newer but still used MacBook when the newer hardware gets better Asahi support.

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

#137

Post by _diyar »

preg_match wrote: post #121
_diyar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i agree, but that want my point. i was trying to point out the rationale behind the root comment to my parent comment

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

#138

Post by hbn »

reddalo wrote: post #52

I'm just sad that Intel MacBooks will be stuck with Tahoe, which is essentialy a botched beta for Golden Gate. Bad customer experience for a company like Apple.

It's possible dropping the second architecture is what enabled a lot of the enhancements in Golden Gate

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

#139

Post by troupo »

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…

> Good grief, hopefully in v28 Lemay will also throw away the absolute crap that is Liquid glass.

Why would he? He was a) one of the most senior designers, b) directly responsible for its implementation and c) "driving force behind Liquid Glass" https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/15/ios-27-macos-27-no-majo...

Why the hell do people keep assuming that whats-his-face was the one singular person responsible for Liquid Glass? How do they imagine Liquid Glass happened? By magic? Unbeknownst to any person in the company? Including the people who spent two hours on stage last year praising it?

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

#140

Post by hbn »

michelb wrote: post #97
talkingtab wrote: post #29

"it’s proof that the rot has been rooted out of Apple’s software design team" I know little about Apple, but have quite a bit of experience with how software products get "designed". Goofy and offensive things happen when corporations decide not to pay attention to customers. The decision to ignore customer and focus on market wow is not the software design team. It is a systemic and structural thing.

"it’s proof that the rot has been rooted out of Apple’s software design team" Weird sentence given that three staunch supporters of liquid glass are still in that team, including Lemay. I highly doubt it's going anywhere, hopefully it gets a few more improvements before it will be replaced for The New Thing in MacOS 29.

Liquid glass isn't inherently bad, it just needed someone to dial it back when the prettiness is hurting legibility/usability.

There are lots of things (well, in iOS) that I think are a big improvement, like menus spawning from the button you tapped instead of a bottom sheet popping up from the bottom of the screen. And the nested list menus are very nice.

But completely eradicating toolbars and replacing them with a fade that still doesn't allow buttons legible in all cases was clearly a mistake. And it's something they're backtracking on!

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