Why are Close and Save so next to each other?
It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
941–950 of 984 posts
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#942The irony here isn't so much that it's the minutiae of the menu design that's wrong, it's the top-bar menus as a whole are a dead paradigm . Nothing uses them anymore. Leave the mac for a moment and go to your windows device. Pull up Chrome. No menu. The file browser, nope. Not in the terminal either. VSCode still has one![1] But the office suite doesn't anymore[2]. And obviously, the proximate cause of that is that…
> ", it's the top-bar menus as a whole are a dead paradigm."
clearly apple are doing their best to destroy them.
Top menus are good because of infinite size (fitts law) Discoverability - i can look in a menu add see what options are available to me. You can tell people either verbally or textually what to do e.g. Choose File Export as PDF instead of something like 'See the small icon that looks like a document with a folded corner, no not that one' yadda Menu are direct I don't need to open another menu to get to my menus (hamburger menu)
I use menus all the time. I totally agree with the article. You say 'no one uses menus' Not true.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#943Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We need to get rid of the "It's okay to be a UI/UX designer who doesn't code" cult. I don’t think designers who don’t code are really a problem. They just need to dogfood, and be lead by someone who cares (and dogfoods as well).
In the case of Apple, I really doubt its designers don't dogfood. Do you expect them to have Android phones and linux desktops?
I would think like you, but then some of their design decision are truly baffling. I like the idea of Liquid Glass, but there are thousands of rough edges that scream lack of care.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#944Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personal blog or no, I think the UX and usability critiques are equally valid. Whether or not the author cares will certainly be influenced by the fact it’s just a personal blog. I wouldn’t expect them to change anything for that reason alone, but the criticism stands nonetheless.
An author of a personal blog does not have to care about judgements of usability vs what they find appealing. A personal blog is a place of self-expression firstmost, not a public service nor a product that targets users. When usability is not the primary goal, you may take unconventional design decisions. If the author likes snowflakes all over the canvas, snowflakes it is. They put an easy way to disable them, I di…
I agree that the author has the right to self express. But in this case, I think the point being made is that it's less about what the author cares about, and more about the author's topic. They're writing about usability and design, while using (arguably) poor judgment and taste for both. It would be a little bit like an extremely out-of-shape person criticizing a marathon running program as being too hard on someone's body, or a homeless person writing that active investing is better than Vanguard's low-fee indexing model. The person's context doesn't make their arguments right or wrong, it just lowers their authority and believability.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#945Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In my opinion, I can be a worst UX expert in the world, and I still reserve the right to criticize bad UX elsewhere: the fact that you are a bad "creator" does not mean that you are a stupid "user". Yes, it is a bit hypocritical, but you can look at the content of the message and judge it without judging the presentation of the message, even if it talks about usability of interfaces in computer software.
Sure. But as Ray Dalio suggests in Principles (https://www.principles.com/principles/633d5d13-8610-425f-ad6...), you will be more likely to succeed at your task if you believability-weight the information you receive. When considering a military strategy, you should probably weigh the advice from a 4-star general who's served in similar circumstances over the advice of a 4-year-old boy who is relying on his experience watching Paw Patrol.
As the worst UX expert in the world, you can obviously feel free to criticize others, but you're probably going to lose a lot of people after the first sentence if you're using 2003 MySpace-style blinking text and animated GIFs to make your point.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#946The irony here isn't so much that it's the minutiae of the menu design that's wrong, it's the top-bar menus as a whole are a dead paradigm . Nothing uses them anymore. Leave the mac for a moment and go to your windows device. Pull up Chrome. No menu. The file browser, nope. Not in the terminal either. VSCode still has one![1] But the office suite doesn't anymore[2]. And obviously, the proximate cause of that is that…
> ", it's the top-bar menus as a whole are a dead paradigm." clearly apple are doing their best to destroy them. Top menus are good because of infinite size (fitts law) Discoverability - i can look in a menu add see what options are available to me. You can tell people either verbally or textually what to do e.g. Choose File Export as PDF instead of something like 'See the small icon that looks like a document with a…
> fitts law
Applies only to an increasingly obscure input device. No one talks about Fitts's Law on phones, because it's fundamentally wrong. The "size" of a control assumes you have a mouse or joystick or something trying to find it. Fingers don't do that, no one worries about moving to a control.
> Discoverability
Equally true of a hamburger menu.
> I use menus all the time
I do too! Because we're dinosaurs.
> You say 'no one uses menus' Not true.
It was hyperbole that I genuinely thought was clear from the text. You know exactly what I meant. Menus are secondary devices at this point only seriously used on one platform, so it's 100% unsurprising that design paradigms for using them are changing ("decaying", I suspect you and the other dinosaurs would say) to reflect patterns used elsewhere in the industry.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#947Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This is a strategic play by Apple No, this is the fault of a company and industry with way too much money and not knowing what to do with it. So they hired a bunch of artists who would otherwise be carving wood in a decrepit loft somewhere after taking half a mushroom cap. These people now decide how computers should operate. I remember watching a documentary from the 80s where Susan Kare explained how every pixel i…
> a bunch of artists who would otherwise be carving wood in a decrepit loft somewhere after taking half a mushroom cap. These people now decide how computers should operate. …brother, you’ve just described the history of the personal computer and the Internet. It’s not the hippie artists causing this problem, I promise you that.
Bill Atkinson designed HyperCard on LSD.
https://www.mondo2000.com/the-inspiration-for-hypercard/
The last decade or so of Apple designers have been as out of their minds on ego and cocaine as Donald Trump Jr.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#948500+ comments and no one's mentioned the jack of all trades "share" button? I would really love to see the internal metrics around how many users press share because they're actually sharing something versus wanting to use any one of the myriad of other functions it hides. Exhibit A: In Safari I had to "share" this page to use the "Find on Page" feature to search whether anyone had mentioned the share button yet. Bon…
> Exhibit A: In Safari I had to "share" this page to use the "Find on Page" feature to search whether anyone had mentioned the share button yet
Or type your search in the address bar, scroll to the bottom to the "On this page Find ..." functionality.
A rare example of two different ways to do the same thing on iPhone
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#949Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with Apple's execution of Liquid Glass is that the intended audience isn't the iOS user, it's the onlooker watching the iOS user (FOMO). That was an effective strategy when iPhone popularity was growing rapidly. Now that we're in a plateau of market saturation (post-peak Apple), anything directed at the onlooker which detracts for the actual user will hurt their bottom line.
How would this work? The only place I've ever heard of liquid glass is from iPhone users complaining about it incessantly and tutorials on how to turn it off or diminish it. What would I fear missing out on?
I'm merely saying that Apple is cargo-culting their own success formula and it's failing.
Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons
#950Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ", it's the top-bar menus as a whole are a dead paradigm." clearly apple are doing their best to destroy them. Top menus are good because of infinite size (fitts law) Discoverability - i can look in a menu add see what options are available to me. You can tell people either verbally or textually what to do e.g. Choose File Export as PDF instead of something like 'See the small icon that looks like a document with a…
> fitts law Applies only to an increasingly obscure input device. No one talks about Fitts's Law on phones, because it's fundamentally wrong. The "size" of a control assumes you have a mouse or joystick or something trying to find it. Fingers don't do that, no one worries about moving to a control. > Discoverability Equally true of a hamburger menu. > I use menus all the time I do too! Because we're dinosaurs. > You…
> Applies only to an increasingly obscure input device. No one talks about Fitts's Law on phones
I'm not talking about fitts law on phones though, I don't think anyone is. This is about Tahoe/mac OS on Macs.
But I'd hardly call a mouse, or a trackpad 'increasingly obscure' I use the fact that I have an infinite target area with my trackpad everyday. It's one of those things that a user might not consciously notice until it's no longer there. Much like a lot of what we are seeing with Tahoe in general that people like me, you, the author of this article. We are pointing out the UI issues that are suddenly immediately apparent, and the bit that is really astounding us all is --- how on earth are Apple, supposed bastions of UI interface detail, and polish , are making such an almighty meal of all of these things that used to work but now just don't, and not even don't work -- the 'new ways' are objectively worse.
The only criticism of the top menu bar interface is that on big hi res monitors (which are relatively recent in terms of the Mac OS desktop) sometimes have the menu bar 'miles away' from the actual app that may be in a smaller window. But this is where fitts law comes in -- so the choice is shorter distance but you need to be more precise smaller target (windows) or large distance but infinite target. I prefer the latter.
It's probably in some ways almost a direct holdover from the time of 9" screens and single tasking -- apps were usually taking up most of the screen so having a menu bar at the 'top' wasn't that weird. Having multiple menus bars would have been really weird and taken a lot of space.
I mean Apple could offer an option like I used to see on gnome where you could have a global menu bar or a per app menu bar. That would be more useful than stage manager ever has been I'd bet.