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It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

tonsky.me

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Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#241
post #54

This isn't the only aspect of Tahoe that seems amateurishly designed by someone following "wrong rules", the wrong rule here being "for consistency, let's assign an icon to every action. Another wrong rules I've seen blindly followed is making everything an edge-to-edge canvas, so that the sidebar floats on top. Having a full-window canvas with floating sidebars can make sense for applications where content is expans…

I hadn't noticed, but I checked. One tiny correction: content can flow under the floating sidebar in Finder.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#242
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? UX in Linux is awful, there's no single desktop metaphor. You have hundreds of distros each with their quirks. There is no "Linux" other than the kernel. There's a lot more consistency in the Apple ecosystem. Don't get me started on the other crap with Linux distros: power management doesn't work, audio barely works, heck even though both Linux and MacOS use CUPS for printing, in MacOS it works way better.

I don't understand why this comment is downvoted, it is undeniably true.

GNOME and KDE have stepped up with their design and user experience. I recommend you give them another try.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#243
post #98

I’ve always respected macOS for being the 'stable' choice for not-as-techy people. But recent versions feel like a mess. Running Tahoe on my 2019 Mac Pro (Yes the cheese grater one) has been surprisingly frustrating. Simple things are broken: Ableton couldn't even trigger a microphone permission prompt, forcing me to meddle with a SQLite database, which is definitely not meant for end users to touch, just to get it w…

The talk you cited is excellent. I recommend it if anyone is interested in design, UIs and UX :P

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#244

Tahoe and Liquid Glass™ solidified for me the idea that Apple completely dropped the ball when it comes to design. Clearly they needed an a-hole in charge, Jobs would've crucified a few people. It's painful to see the decay, update after update, into a more confusing, cluttered, and tacky experience.

Steve Jobs died 14 years ago. If we're attributing this to those in charge, Jony Ive's departure is much more correlated.

Jony Ive’s elevation was the problem: neither he nor his protege Alan Dye (who worked on the boxes) had UI training or experience and that has shown since iOS 7 where the focus shifted to things which looked nicer on the side of the iPhone box than they are in actual use - stuff like Liquid Glass shipping with an illegible lock screen keyboard is possible because they never put the lock screen in a presentation or product screenshot.

As a complete outsider, my impression is that this started slow because they had to politically overpower Apple’s actual UI group. Liquid Glass probably managed that with a unified look across all devices pitch which should’ve weighted the relative impact on the popular platforms much higher than the niche Vision Pro.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#245
post #150

I never disliked an OS as much as I dislike what Apple is doing with MacOS (and iOS by extension). I've been with MacOS for 20 years, but I've switched at home to Linux full time 2 years ago and I don't regret it. At work I'm forced to be on MacOS. It's concerning how Apple doesn't care anymore about user needs, usability, design and consistency. Where it was the best OS in the past for me, it's not anymore. Other OS…

Seriously? UX in Linux is awful, there's no single desktop metaphor. You have hundreds of distros each with their quirks. There is no "Linux" other than the kernel. There's a lot more consistency in the Apple ecosystem. Don't get me started on the other crap with Linux distros: power management doesn't work, audio barely works, heck even though both Linux and MacOS use CUPS for printing, in MacOS it works way better.

Judging from this article, Linux seems to have more consistency between the thousands of applications all built by different people with no guidelines than MacOS right now.

At least half of those complaints on the article have standard, close to universally agreed icons.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#246
As it happens I updated to Tahoe a couple days back.

This entire UI refresh strikes me as completely unnecessary. I didn't even notice the menu icons. Thanks for that. Just another thing to be annoyed about.

But really, the glaringly obvious ones are already in your face.

1. There is no setting to get rid of the ridiculously over-rounded corners.

2. The dock, which I put on the left, now has about 10 extra pixels between it and the edge of the screen. 10 pixels that now will never, ever, be usable again.

3. All the icons have been forced into a rounded corner box. As it turns out, the human brain is really good at recognizing silhouettes. This just made that part of my brain useless. It retroactively restyled applications' icons that I've used for over a decade.

I'm sure I'll find others, but it's clear that Apple does not care about users. This all about power. They didn't even include settings to turn any of this off...just "take it like we wanna give it to you, plebes".

Infuriating.

And none of these things matter. Literally none of them are core to how an operating system works, just how it looks. I just don't understand UX people, and at this point I'm starting to hate them.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#247
It's hard to justify Liquid Glass in general. The wastefulness of flat design (in terms of space) married with the visual excess of skeuomorphism, but without even providing any affordances (does the sidebar being raised give you any new information on how to use a sidebar? No).

If you're a designer at a top 10 S&P 500 company making 6 figures, you owe it to yourself to have some love for your craft. If a PM tells you to shove a UI style meant for an unsuccessful VR device onto desktop and mobile platforms, say no. Get your colleagues to say no. Make that PM read everything the Nielsen Norman group has ever written. Read it too.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from what i've read on macrumors, Tahoe on the 2019 MP is quite messy. A lot of people complain about the UIs being sluggish.

Liquid Glass is horrible on my iPhone SE 2020. Slow and looks weird on the smaller screen. I tried to turn most effects off but it still is just worse in every way

That’s the case on larger screens as well.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#249
post #198

It's hard to justify snowflake animations on your website...

The audacity to critique Apple's use of icons (which is objectively justified critique, IMO) while having animated snowflakes falling over the text and images on the site is something on an entirely different level. Thank goodness for Firefox reader mode. That animation is so incredibly distracting.

Yeah. I immediately went to the snowflake icon at the top of the page thinking it would turn the animation off. Instead, it changed the background color :-(

I can't stand animations while I'm trying to read something, and this one is particularly egregious.

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