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It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

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Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#531

Post by cosmic_cheese »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #515
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wan…

macOS actually has native tab support built in. It supports everything you’d expect from a tab system, including merging windows into tabs and splitting them back out. All third party devs have to do is opt in and tell the OS which windows are intended to participate. It’s been a feature for a long time now.

Problem is that most third party apps don’t opt in and instead reimplement tabs themselves. It’s mostly native Mac apps made by small boutique developers that use native tabs.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#532

Post by auxiliarymoose »

Much of the problem stems from inconsistent application of icons. This would have gone better if Apple established (and followed!) clear guidelines for exactly which icon to use for which standard action (e.g. search).

That the icons exist is not necessarily a problem, since they can help teach users which buttons in the UI do which actions. (menu bar for discovery, app UI for less mouse travel + contextual options). But that requires consistency, which the current implementation lacks...

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#533

Post by ethbr1 »

progbits wrote: post #517
staplers wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bit of column A, bit of column B.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#534

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

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…

"Perfection" is an irrelevant concept here, but "principled" is not. The reason people favored certain older OS UIs is because they were substantially more principled in their designs, not because the executions of those principles looked a particular specific way.

The Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, especially the old ones, were seriously well thought out. Apple just doesn't follow them anymore, and that leads to demonstrably poor design choices. "Consistency" is still one of the three banner concepts (see https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...), and Apple just fails wildly at paying attention to itself.

Windows 2000 and Mac OS 9.x.x were contemporary with each other, are both considered to be strong examples of principled interface execution, and they were very different from each other in both behavior and appearance. They were also notably both the last generations of iterative executions of principled designs before both companies started veering off into the wilderness.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#535

Post by phantasmish »

xnx wrote: post #455
sirwhinesalot wrote: post #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 yo…

> 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.

No kidding. “Reverting” to something pretty similar to Mac OS in the late ‘90s, as far as visuals and basic UI behavior (but not removing modern features) would be a big improvement. And once they did that they could just leave it that way. It’d be fine. UI churn sucks enough that it’s not worth it for users unless it’s a huge improvement, and nothing has been.

Though if we could get the newer settings panel of macOS a few versions back, before they inexplicably ruined the best OS GUI settings interface I’ve ever used, that’d be great.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#536

Post by ethbr1 »

naikrovek wrote: post #528
staplers wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

design for design's sake is bad, and that's what Liquid Glass is. There was no thought behind it. It is 2026 and UIs are still abysmally slow in many cases. How is that even remotely possible? Now, with that in mind, consider (just for a moment) why people might think that UX people don't know what they're doing.

> It is 2026 and UIs are still abysmally slow in many cases. How is that even remotely possible?

Because UI/X teams were separated from engineering. (Same thing happened with modern building architecture)

It's fundamentally impossible to optimize if you're unaware of physical constraints.

We need to get rid of the "It's okay to be a UI/UX designer who doesn't code" cult. (Looking at you, Adobe and Figma...)

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#537

Post by treymalikcruz »

cyberge99 wrote: post #482
solfox wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. I recall watching their launch video about Liquid Glass. It was filled with ego-driven "we're changing the world here" nonsense. They were designing in a bubble and wanted to do something different so they could justify the work. It was never about the user.

You’re not looking far enough ahead. Liquid glass isn’t about Mac. It’s about VisionPro and wearables. This is a strategic play by Apple.

I think this is the right read in terms of intent but I also feel it offers a lens into the silliness of Apple's current strategy around all this. VisionPro appears to be currently floundering, and no matter how much they try to make it unintrusive and airy and transparent in its interface, it's presently an unwieldy device not designed to leave the home or office. Predicating company-wide design systems on this line being the future feels aspirational at best and delusional at worst. And what good is liquid glass on a Mac? To show me an obscured glimpse of my desktop background and add visual clutter?

(Apologies to @cyberge99 if my tone comes off intense, this is not to come at you but rather is just me venting my frustrations with Apple. I think you are correct in your assessment of the idea here.)

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#538

Post by realusername »

cyberge99 wrote: post #482
solfox wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% this. I recall watching their launch video about Liquid Glass. It was filled with ego-driven "we're changing the world here" nonsense. They were designing in a bubble and wanted to do something different so they could justify the work. It was never about the user.

You’re not looking far enough ahead. Liquid glass isn’t about Mac. It’s about VisionPro and wearables. This is a strategic play by Apple.

Sounds like Windows 8 designing their touch-first interface for a desktop, with about the same success.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#539

Post by cmckn »

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

> I have literally no idea how to get to my home directory

Just add it to the sidebar. Finder > Settings > Sidebar > Locations. Or drag it into Favorites.

> doesn't have a button to navigate to the parent folder

View > Show Path Bar. You can also right click on the directory name at the top of the window and it’ll give you the same options.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#540

Post by lynndotpy »

juancn wrote: post #150
robinhood wrote: post #38

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.

Your experiences are not universal. I'm sorry that happened to you, but I've personally never had a power management, audio, or printing problems with Linux in 17 years of using it.

Having no single desktop is a huge bonus. If you don't like one distro, you might like another. "Consistency" is a poor way to restate, "Windows or MacOS might be bad, but at least someone can unilaterally make it worse against your will."

I'd rather choose a drink from a soda fountain than get a more consistent flavor from a urinal. But to each their own.

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