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It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

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Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#511

Post by treymalikcruz »

I am very glad I have maintained my hesitance to update the operating systems on my Apple devices. The Liquid Glass announcement from the jump seemed really just like 1. a transparent (no pun intended) ploy to answer broad anti flat design sentiments from the public, without any expressed functional benefit and 2. a way to normalize this sort of design with an eye on a future of wearables and AR devices, something they seemed fairly invested in with the release of the Vision Pro. All of this is at the cost of immediate visual clarity, as it only adds more visual noise to the interface and removes (or at least inhibits) color as a core visual differentiator.

This new system of icons is something I was entirely unaware of until now, since I haven't updated or had to use an updated MacOS device. I've in the past been a defender of MacOS, but it really does feel like the decision making is completely off the rails and has no consideration of the most basic principles of design. Baffling.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#512

Post by tracker1 »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #224
postalcoder wrote: post #99

This is an excellent article. Apple has been rudderless on the interaction design front for over a decade now. The windowing mess is evidence of it. We now have the cmd+tab (app switcher), Spaces, Mission Control, (full screen) split screen, Stage Manager, and now tiled window control. None of those interaction metaphors have been expanded upon since their initial launch. I'm a "mac guy". I understood why Apple initi…

I strongly believe we need to return to the drawing board and design a Window Environment from scratch because we've gone so far down the "everything's a mess" route that it's impossible to work our way out again. Here's an example: panes, tabs, windows, apps, spaces. These things all fight against each other, have their own little silos, get treated differently by every single app, etc, etc.

You're welcome to use Cosmic desktop then... ;-)

I say this only half in jest, as it's what I'm using on my personal desktop. It's far from perfect though, for some reason the taskbar/launchpad just feels awkwardly shaped, some of the keyboard based navigation gets a little wonky sometimes. And I feel that there's a few areas where the split brain between docking regions and windows isn't quite as polished as it needs to be.

On the plus side, it performs better than Gnome, and is slightly more consistent than a lot of Linux desktop options. In the end, I do think that OSes need to expose a bit more details in a somewhat consistent way as cross-platform apps and even electron-like options are boing to become more common place as people jump between and need to support Window, Linux and MacOS targets, with the variances they all have.

Personally, there are a lot of things I like and dislike between all of them.. I spent a large amount of time tweaking Budgie to be almost exactly what I want at one point, and an update borked my setup... I just switched to Pop/Cosmic and dealt with it from there.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#513

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

titzer wrote: post #252
publicdebates wrote: post #196

I used to be a die hard UI perfectionist. I thought there were perfect UIs, and that you could go more or less away from or toward perfection with choices. But lately, over the past 5 or 10 years, it seems to me that perfection in UI is just as arbitrary and mutable as people's tastes and preferences. It's hard to admit it to myself, but I think my love for the early Mac OS and Windows 9x UIs was mere puppy love at f…

Imagine if Apple snuck into your house at night and rearranged your partner's face.

I don't know if this was intended, but in case it wasn't, rearranging someone's face is an idiom that means violent bodily harm.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#514

Post by ghaff »

technothrasher wrote: post #485
ghaff wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I tend not to use my iPad that much except when traveling--partly because I have an old MacBook that lives on my dining room table. If I didn't have that I would certainly use my iPad more (and would doubtless get more comfortable using it for more purposes).

I struggle to find any use case at all for my iPad. Even when traveling, I use my phone most of the time and when I want something bigger, I have the MacBook Air in my bag, which doesn't feel any more cumbersome to have with me than an iPad.

I won't really argue much. I can get by with just my iPhone. I think a MacBook (don't have an Air) is better for a lot of things even if the iPad is better for media on a plane. The weight difference is minimal if you count the keyboard. I don't draw so don't need an iPad for that. A Kindle weighs nothing so I can always bring that for reading.

Not sure I'll buy another iPad given my current lifestyle.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#515

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #491
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly believe we need to return to the drawing board and design a Window Environment from scratch because we've gone so far down the "everything's a mess" route that it's impossible to work our way out again. Here's an example: panes, tabs, windows, apps, spaces. These things all fight against each other, have their own little silos, get treated differently by every single app, etc, etc.

> Here's an example: panes, tabs, windows, apps, spaces. These things all fight against each other, have their own little silos, get treated differently by every single app, etc, etc. Disagree. The fact that these are independent is a huge organizational boon for those who know how to apply some combination of them. Example: I set up spaces (virtual desktops) to have themes: one of general web, one for iOS dev, one f…

I didn't really explain my objections very well in such a throwaway statement. My issue isn't that those things exist; pretty much the opposite. I think it's good that they exist and they almost certainly always should. My problem is when app A implements tabs differently from app B, app C uses the same shortcut for switching windows that app D uses for switching tabs, etc. It just all seems so disjointed.

What I want is for an OS that treats things like tabs as first-class citizens, not a byproduct that each app implements in its own way.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#516

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #466
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly believe we need to return to the drawing board and design a Window Environment from scratch because we've gone so far down the "everything's a mess" route that it's impossible to work our way out again. Here's an example: panes, tabs, windows, apps, spaces. These things all fight against each other, have their own little silos, get treated differently by every single app, etc, etc.

I feel like there are a million reasons why this is the wrong choice. There are probably 10 xkcd comics alone that explain why this is a bad idea. "Let's throw every away and start from scratch" is a tempting idea, but it rarely works. Even taking your example of panes, windows, tabs, apps, and spaces, each of those have a separate and identifiable use case that, IMO, is valid. At least in my mind, I have a mental mo…

I misworded that. See my other comment; tldr, I want windows, tabs, etc. to be properly implemented by the OS, to a standard, rather than in many different conflicting ways.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#517

Post by progbits »

staplers wrote: post #510
xnx wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a PM tells you to shove a UI style More than likely designers are making up work to justify their jobs. Not good for your career if you admit the desktop interface was perfected in ~1995.

Uber, Airbnb, Robinhood all took off because they created easy to use beautiful apps (compared to their predecessors). The anti-design bias in this forum is genuinely unhinged. I see some saying the entire destruction of the natural world stems from design lol.

No they took of because they used illegal practices and VC money to undercut competitors.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#518

Post by lynndotpy »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #224
postalcoder wrote: post #99

This is an excellent article. Apple has been rudderless on the interaction design front for over a decade now. The windowing mess is evidence of it. We now have the cmd+tab (app switcher), Spaces, Mission Control, (full screen) split screen, Stage Manager, and now tiled window control. None of those interaction metaphors have been expanded upon since their initial launch. I'm a "mac guy". I understood why Apple initi…

I strongly believe we need to return to the drawing board and design a Window Environment from scratch because we've gone so far down the "everything's a mess" route that it's impossible to work our way out again. Here's an example: panes, tabs, windows, apps, spaces. These things all fight against each other, have their own little silos, get treated differently by every single app, etc, etc.

I agree. If you (or anyone else who shares your sentiment) hasn't tried it before, you might enjoy "distro hopping" across different Linux distros, using something like Ventoy to make it easy to try out different desktop environments.

There's a veritable zoo to try out. KDE, COSMIC, XFCE, GNOME and its many derivatives (like Pantheon or the previous COSMIC), Unity, etc. Also interesting are the old XMotif based ones like CDE (which has the delightful "chiseled marble" look of 90s-era DEs).

Windows also has its own share of alternative shells, but AFAIK only Cairo DE is actively supported and developed.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#519

Post by shantara »

williamdclt wrote: post #452
queenkjuul wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally talked my company into letting me swap out my MacBook pro for some little Dell. After the last year of updates, my Mac has stopped resuming from sleep reliably, everything is ugly, they took the already barely usable (imo) finder and system settings and found exciting new ways to make them worse. Sadly corporate security means os updates were not optional. I've never really liked macOS but it feels like som…

> already barely usable (imo) finder been using a Mac for years, and to this day I don't know how it's possible to navigate directories using Finder. It only has shortcuts for a few folders by default (photos, documents...) and doesn't have a button to navigate to the parent folder. I have literally no idea how to get to my home directory, I need to use the CLI

Even after decades of using macOS I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that Finder has no single button shortcut for opening a file - the most common operation a file manager should do. It’s Cmd+O, and it cannot be changed to anything sane like Enter key.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#520

Post by BalinKing »

williamdclt wrote: post #452
queenkjuul wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally talked my company into letting me swap out my MacBook pro for some little Dell. After the last year of updates, my Mac has stopped resuming from sleep reliably, everything is ugly, they took the already barely usable (imo) finder and system settings and found exciting new ways to make them worse. Sadly corporate security means os updates were not optional. I've never really liked macOS but it feels like som…

> already barely usable (imo) finder been using a Mac for years, and to this day I don't know how it's possible to navigate directories using Finder. It only has shortcuts for a few folders by default (photos, documents...) and doesn't have a button to navigate to the parent folder. I have literally no idea how to get to my home directory, I need to use the CLI

Off the top of my head, I want to say you can right-click on the current folder name to see (and navigate to) all its ancestors.
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