It's hard to justify caring about one company's cosmetic design decisions.
It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
821–830 of 984 posts
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#822Does anyone have a good method for avoiding accidentally accepting an "upgrade" notification from Sequoia to Tahoe? With the potential to set off the installation flow with the wrong click (when its being shown over-and-over again), it makes me anxious and feel like I'm not even in control of my own computer anymore. For the time being, I've installed a management profile to defer updates, disabled the Settings optio…
Make sure to keep a backup of your Sequoia install
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#823Funnily enough, I find icons an improvement overall - even if those are inconsistent, it feels like it gives me more points to anchor my eyes on when skimming through an unknown menu and gives me any context. Starting to use Mac ~3 years ago, I often encountered giant blocks of text in right-click menus and while pleasing aesthetically, those were a chore to actually parse. For someone who daily drives macOS for, I a…
It’s best when only some of the items in a menu (like maybe a third of them) have icons, preferably the most important commands. This gives the menus a visual structure and can also help in better recognizing groups of related items. The classic Windows menu from the article is a good example: https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/word@2x.webp?t=1767611340
I agree, that would be ideal, mentioned that above (so used sparingly + colors is what I would love to see). The linked example I saw in the article is what I had in mind and agree with it being the best way to go.
Though even the visual clutter of everything having icons I find faster to scan with my eyes on the first "visit", as those usually suggest the functionality I might be looking for at least. Even if not perfectly distinct, I find iconography faster to parse and guide me towards what I seek. I don't even particularly mind reused ones, as those usually mark a "section" of their own.
However I understand that some people would probably take no icons at all rather than every option having one... or whatever Apple decided to do in a given menu, considering Tahoe's inconsistency all over the place).
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#824Tahoe 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.
> Jobs would've crucified a few people. Steve Jobs had good taste in many areas, but he also approved the puck mouse.
Everyone makes mistakes every now and then. He also approved the Ping "music social network", and a few other nonsense products that no one wanted or liked.
But when you see mistakes made consistently, year after year, you know the problem is systemic.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#825This is nice. People are finally noticing.
New Design, New Features, New Programming Language, New Products or even New Sector. It is like Apple without Steve Jobs again the first time around. None of them were done because it is better for the customers, but do so because it is better for paid promotion, justify their existing department budget or increasing it, and simply for profits.
In many ways Apple is still best of the pack, but they are no longer the same.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#826Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#827Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple just reduced Vision Pro production, but Liquid Glass was in motion well before that. What leaves me scratching my head is I never got the impression Apple believed in Vision Pro. It launched because after years of research, management wanted to see if the effort was worth continuing to invest in, but that wasn't a vote of confidence.
I'll have to second this. It's not even on Apple's homepage! I hadn't heard it mentioned for months before today. It had its niche share of users who actually found it useful, but apart from them it seems that the world is not ready for spatial computing (or maybe current spatial computing isn't ready for people, who knows?).
I have a vision pro (obtained on day 1 for development purposes), and have given demos of it to a number of non enthusiast/non techie people.
All of them immediately hate that it’s bulky, it’s heavy, it messes with your hair, messes with your makeup, doesn’t play well with your glasses, it feels hot and sweaty. Everyone wants to take it off after 5-10 minutes at most, and never asks to try it again (even tho the more impressive 3D content does get a “that’s kinda cool” acknowledgment).
The headset form factor is just a complete dud, and it’s 100% clear that Apple knew that but pushed it anyway to show that they were doing “something”.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#828Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cmd+~ switches windows of a given app in case you didn't know (not disagreeing with you but it is one shortcut I find super useful and it helps switch windows).
I heavily use this one actually.
On Linux I miss it and create a hybrid super-tilde action that cycles through apps of the same kind as the focused app.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#829To all the people whining about the Snow, click the buttons at the top of the page, come on now.
To all the people also whining about the snow, as if it invalidates the opinions written in the article, again, PLEASE click the buttons at the top of the page.
The author is clearly going for a fun, whimsical, playful vibe that works perfectly fine on a personal blog. Expecting something different from a workstation operating system made by one of the Fortune 10, especially one who heavily markets their design "prowess", is perfectly reasonable.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#830Earlier 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.
marketers are not designers and vice versa. of course the press release is going to be melodramatic no matter what the designers thought, or were told
“Marketers are not designers” is fine, except it was the designers themselves pushing the marketing drivel in those videos.