171–180 of 270 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Golden Gate is better but it hasn't fixed your icons unfortunately
The thing which kills me, is that with entirety of the State of California's Gazetteer to pull from, Apple didn't pull a page from Android and use an alphabetically ordered naming scheme so that folks could determine ordering of versions.
> Let’s return to a world of gorgeous app icons like these: Seriously, they look like pictures you could find in a child's book, and it's a form of occupational deformation when you think of those icons as "gorgeous".
Admittedly, the term is unavoidably subjective. But what I like about them is that they are distinct, and that each one has character. Honestly, the fact that they looked like pictures I could find in a child's book is the main part of what I like about them: they have simple ideas ("a bird") and forms so distinctive a child could tell them apart.
> the much-celebrated Liquid Glass opacity slider The Liquid Glass slider is an embarrassing outright admission of failure. Apple built its brand as a tastemaker, so to put out this new, controversial design language, and after a year of tweaking, finally throw their hands up and say "we don't know what looks good, you decide" is so disappointing. That said, all the changes in iOS 27 are such a massive improvement fr…
It's prideful too since just undoing it would be an actual admission of failure. This is a hollow apology and compromise
That's just big corporate politics. Ever been involved in a 'lessons learned' exercise? Everything gets politically massaged so as not to upset individuals or functions, so that by the end of it, there are very few meaningful lessons remaining, and those that are still present need background understanding to divine.
This approach just protects the people, the function, and ultimately the corporation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, for a decade now it's been a UX disaster. It "works", because so many people are used to it, but look at a new user trying to navigate iOS, it's bonkers. Swiping from random directions achieves different things (and how would you even know you can?). The home button has like 11 different functions depending on how you press it and when.
> Swiping from random directions achieves different things (and how would you even know you can?) Cultural context, the same way you'd know tapping on an icon opens an app.
> Let’s return to a world of gorgeous app icons like these: Seriously, they look like pictures you could find in a child's book, and it's a form of occupational deformation when you think of those icons as "gorgeous".
I find them gorgeous. Admittedly, the term is unavoidably subjective. But what I like about them is that they are distinct, and that each one has character. Honestly, the fact that they looked like pictures I could find in a child's book is the main part of what I like about them: they have simple ideas ("a bird") and forms so distinctive a child could tell them apart.
It's still a bit jarring to me to see how far Apple embraced form over function with iOS and subsequently macOS. I remember reading the Human Interface Guidelines from the late Mac OS 9/early Mac OS X days and being taken aback by the level of detail and thought that went into those interfaces. Don't get me wrong, some things made no sense (brushed metal was... a choice) but there was a certain level of polish that I…
it's market changed it started as a computer for professionals now its for people who want to look cool. so form is much more important than function, it's literally what you buy
I feel as if it was the opposite. It started as a true "home computer," and nowadays, it's used to do work.
The fact that MacOS is probably the worst gaming platform on Earth (and Apple doesn't seem to lose sleep over it -although I think they'd like iPad to be a better gaming platform), is an indicator that people use the computer to get work done; whether at home, or in the office.
But there's a lot of pretty visceral hatred for Apple -especially in tech circles- so I don't expect much reasoned discourse about it.
Tahoe was such a huge mess, but I'm hopeful that the new CEO will turn things around and bring things back to normal. If they do, I'll consider upgrading both OS and laptop, but right now I'm holding on to Sequoia
There's so little joy and happiness left in computing. Reverting to the older style of icons, plus perhaps a few UI tweaks, certainly help bring a bit of whimsical back into the macOS platform. That's something many of us would love.
> There's so little joy and happiness left in computing Preach it! https://daveon.design/creating-joy-in-the-user-experience.ht...
I have found that we need to be very, very careful, when making the UI more "fun."
Things like rounded affordances, short transition animations, easy-to-understand elements, etc., are good. They remove the "friction."
However, cute icons, unprompted animations, and overuse of whitespace for the sake of design aesthetics, can cause the UI to be too prominent.
UI needs to be approachable, useful, and unobtrusive. i.e. "forgettable." Many designers absolutely can't stand the idea of designing stuff that no one pays attention to; but that's actually exactly what most UI needs to be.
The metaphor that I use, is that most waitstaff at restaurants, wear black.
The reason is, is because people don't go to a restaurant to pay attention to the staff (with a couple of ahem exceptions ). They go for the food, and the ease of having it provided without the need to cook and wash up.
I feel that UI needs to be the same.
I am currently working on a version 2 of a pretty popular app that has been out for a couple of years. The original was almost entirely designed by a professional graphic designer, and he did a great job -for the most part. It looks great, and people like it.
But I am constantly encountering people that have no idea about some of its most important features, mainly because the affordances were deprecated in service to visual aesthetic. The new version uses a distinct "accent color" for elements that can be manipulated, as well as simpler, clearer design. It's working well.
Another example is my "Spinner" UI element[0]. This was a UIKit element that I designed, to provide an interactive "prize wheel" spinner feature for iOS. It works nicely.
But I have never been able to justify actually using it for any of my projects. It's too "in your face."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple Silicon at present beats every single laptop on the market at CPU-bound workloads [citation needed] > It is implausible that mass market products with mass adoption find their success solely on status. People still pay a massive premium for blood diamonds over physically indistinguishable lab diamonds. You underestimate how wildly irrational the market is when it comes to status perception.
Can you recommend me a non apple fanless laptop with similar power/battery life characteristics?
While I wholeheartedly agree, I suspect the required backgrounds are to create a uniform format between system, where VisionOS requires round icons for more reliable eye tracking. It seems like every OS got a little harder to use in order to better vibe with VisionOS, the least popular platform they have. While I applaud the commitment to building a new platform, I don’t like that’s is coming at the expense of the ot…
I understand this logic, but at some point it makes sense to design the system for the millions of people on macs rather than make compromises for the sake of dozens of Vision Pro users.
A lot of confident guesswork is done at HN regarding companies' motivations.