Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 108 posts

Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4

#81

Post by _abox »

kergonath wrote: post #66
strict9 wrote: post #29

Flags are not the way to define a language preference. This design decision assumes 1:1 parity with flag and language which is just not true. This move makes language preferences less ambiguous or potentially less offensive and I applaud Apple for doing it.

There’s an easy way out: just make it a choice, like for the user menu.

Apple hates offering choices. But yes this would be the obvious option. Though in this particular case I don't really care but I can imagine some people would. It's also not really nice to change this in a point-update. UI changes should remain reserved for major updates IMO.

Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4

#82

Post by bombcar »

akersten wrote: post #8
bombcar wrote: post #3

I don't really see how having "EN" instead of a US or UK or whatever flag is really going to make people happier or sadder.

Out of the corner of my eye I can see if my keyboard is in US mode (red/white/blue) or Spanish (yellow/red). Can't do that now, need to actually move my eyes to the corner of the screen to read low contrast grayscale ES or EN. Horrible UI regression.

DYMO has a little colored logo in my status bar, so it should be a few hours of someone who knows what they're doing to make a little app that replicates the original functionality.

Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4

#83

Post by jfengel »

ATMs in the EU have apparently started to use the Irish flag for English. Brexit removed the UK from the EU, and Ireland is the only EU country with English as its primary language.

Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/ezsjhj/all_atms_in...

I suspect the Irish aren't much happy about being the symbol for "English", either.

So... removing flags seems like a fine idea. They make so much sense in the common case, but there are enough corner cases to ditch the whole thing.

Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4

#84

Post by samrolken »

kergonath wrote: post #76
samrolken wrote: post #18

This is ultimately a good move, and matches trends and emerging best practices on the web and elsewhere. Some countries have more than one language. Some languages have more than one country. And the political implications of all of this all mixed in.

> This is ultimately a good move, and matches trends and emerging best practices on the web and elsewhere. It solves some issues and creates others. Icons are more helpful than words in the menu bar, particularly as it gets more monochrome. And the complete confusion between buttons that look like text, links, actual buttons, and weird typography we find on the web is not exactly a good model to emulate. I really wou…

In general, the vast majority of UI elements are labeled with text instead of pictures, and have been for a long time. (Other issues with UI notwithstanding.)

Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4

#85

Post by GekkePrutser »

kergonath wrote: post #71
widowlark wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that how Apple operates with everything in every instance?

There are plenty of boxes to check or uncheck in the system preferences, so no, this is not how “Apple operates with everything in every instance”.

Compare it to other OSes and you will see that 'plenty' is not actually a lot in this case.

I really was thrilled when I finally moved over to KDE from macOS. Over the years they had forced a number of changes I was really unhappy with. Like the inability to put virtual desktops in a grid, among others, that was pulled somewhere around 10.9 or so.

It turned out that KDE just offers this and most of my other annoyances with options. You want them in a line, you want them in a grid? Whatever you please. Also, choose what kind of transition, how you'd like to identify which one is active, etc etc. Everything can be configured. You can even name them if you like. It's really amazing being able to set everything up the way I need it again.

Apple had an OK baseline for me around the Tiger/Lion era, but after this they started going downhill. Launchpad, Mission Control etc were all regressions from the previous options like Expose. Also moving to ever lower-density UIs that mimic mobile devices (without actually offering touch support that necessitates bigger buttons) really annoyed me.

Very happy with the choice and the Qt-based FOSS software is similarly better than Apple's for the same reasons. Many configuration options and choices.

Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4

#86

Post by _abox »

jfengel wrote: post #83

ATMs in the EU have apparently started to use the Irish flag for English. Brexit removed the UK from the EU, and Ireland is the only EU country with English as its primary language. Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/ezsjhj/all_atms_in... I suspect the Irish aren't much happy about being the symbol for "English", either. So... removing flags seems like a fine idea. They make so much sense in the commo…

> Ireland is the only EU country with English as its primary language.

Speaking of politically correct, I can imagine some people from the gaeltacht would not approve of the description of English as the primary language in Ireland.

The good thing about flags is that they are visual icons. Country codes are usually in English and our script. How would this work in countries that can't read that? Or people visiting an ATM in e.g. an Arab country and having to find which option is "English" in Arabic. This is where flags really shine.

Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4

#87

Post by GekkePrutser »

anentropic wrote: post #36

Surely a flag (country symbol) is the wrong identifier for a language though? There is a many-to-many relation between countries and languages, so flag for language is a bad UI choice.

It is but it has become a standard over time. People know what it means. There are many cultural and language things that make zero sense but just became that way.

Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4

#88

Post by jchw »

A lot of people are pointing out that flags are not 1:1 with layouts. (Not languages people; languages and layouts aren’t 1:1 either!) True… but, Alpha 2 ISO 3166 codes are also not 1:1 with layouts. Apple wasn’t just using flags, they were using icons with more or different details depending. I haven’t seen the two letter icons but I’m having a lot of trouble believing they can convey as much information as the old iconography.

You can also have multiple layouts per proper locale (for example, en-US,) or multiple IME modes. Icons with more detail are strictly better. Flags are intuitive and recognizable. I feel as though people are being contrarian about this.

Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4

#89

Post by jchw »

jfengel wrote: post #83

ATMs in the EU have apparently started to use the Irish flag for English. Brexit removed the UK from the EU, and Ireland is the only EU country with English as its primary language. Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/ezsjhj/all_atms_in... I suspect the Irish aren't much happy about being the symbol for "English", either. So... removing flags seems like a fine idea. They make so much sense in the commo…

OK… but this is keyboard layouts. There is in fact a United Kingdom keyboard layout, which has little to do with geopolitics.

I will venture to guess it would turn into the letters “UK” in this case.

Re: Apple Removes Flag Icons in Monterey 12.4

#90

Post by [deleted] »

yenwodyah wrote: post #50
ceejayoz wrote: post #4

The Unicode Consortium has indicated they won't accept new flags as emoji. https://www.engadget.com/unicode-no-flag-emoji-please-131509... Given this, it's a sensible move; it won't be long before the available set no longer reflects the full set of countries.

This is incorrect. Most flag emoji are based off of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2[0], which will continue to be updated. The Unicode Consortium’s decision to not accept new flags refers to flags outside that standard, like the pride flag or the flags of subnational regions. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2

[deleted]
Post reply on HN