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It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

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Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#961

Post by bigyabai »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #902

The surface area of the Apple suite is now enormous. We now have an incredible array of devices, physical environments, and purposes. It's really quite staggering: just look at the spans between a) checking the UV index on Apple Watch and writing code in Xcode on Mac, b) tracking an outdoor run and navigating with Car Play and watching a movie on Apple TV, and c) messaging and maneuvering spreadsheets and designing/b…

> We all want consistency (probably to a degree greater than Apple is capable of delivering)

This thinking is the fatal poison of the tech industry. The further you repeat it, the faster the industry dies. Watch:

"We all want privacy, probably to a greater degree than Facebook is capable of providing."

"We all want browser competition, probably to a greater degree than Microsoft is willing to provide."

"We all want advertisement options, probably to a greater degree than Google can tolerate."

See what's happening here? You're not making a concession, you're flat-out accepting their failure. Apple can provide consistency, they're a trillion-dollar business that has every incentive to compete on their own merits. Instead they carve out arbitrary and harmful rules for each platform and then steelman it when any authority of any kind suggests that they're wrong.

This isn't a "perfect being the enemy of good" situation, it's degraded into "good being the enemy of intolerable defaults" instead.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#962

Post by brailsafe »

calf wrote: post #863
brailsafe wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say this is a pretty unhelpful, demanding, and borderline damaging take to spread. I've learned from experience that it's unlikely "a designer" should follow this advice or accept the archaic guilt-trip "because you make six figures" whatever that means. If you run your own design agency, you've got your own company's reputation and yours on the line, so be as opinionated as you find necessary, but otherwise if y…

I think your take is unhelpful, demanding, and damaging to engineering ethics. If you want to live in a 90s corporate workplace hierarchy model, that's your value system. But it is untenable and harms people in the long run.

Ethically speaking, the parent seemed to be demanding that some hypothetical designer put their livelihood on the line because good taste in UI design is paramount, we're not talking about building a skyscraper in a swamp out of twigs. Pat yourself on the back I guess if you want to volunteer to be a trillion dollar company's human meat shield, and relish in the virtue of being unemployed in a very bad market due to having a volatile emotional temperament, but I'd just recommend not doing that.

In the long run, no you don't want to set that much of your taste or expertise aside forever, but you shouldn't have to, it comes with all the things I said, trust & agency.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#963

Post by herbturbo »

JaggerJo wrote: post #371
Zealotux wrote: post #81

Tahoe 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 And rightfully so. Tahoe is not just a step back, but it throws away so many good design elements that have been there for ages - and for no good reason. I really hope they revert most of the design changes in macOS 27. I don't mind the Liquid Glass - the other changes they made to expose/highlight Liquid Glass are the real issue. IMO we reached peak design in 2013 with Maveri…

The golden rule from Apple in 2007 when they changed to flat design was icon or text - never both together.

Apple abandoned enforcing HIG for app developers around 2012 (Facebook tiled menu, modal abuse, and hamburger) but now seems to have given up on standards entirely.

The wall to wall interaction pattern is terrible too. Every time my hand brushes my phone some unexpected (and sometimes unknown) interaction occurs. Classic example is changing orientation while watching YT where accidental contact with the bottom-left (becoming top-right) part of the screen as you move the phone selects a new video. It’s becoming slop.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#964

Post by wu2Fe7sp »

JDegesys wrote: post #944
freehorse wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 someon…

> 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.

it absolutely would not, it would be more akin to someone wearing a fat-suite for a joke and criticizing someone for running with bad form

but you are taking this so seriously I can't quite tell if you're joking anyway

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#965

Post by necovek »

JDegesys wrote: post #945
necovek wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 experie…

Certainly!

But, if a 4-year old boy finds "there's more of them with bigger guns", and a general has a personal interest in hurting someone without you knowing that, you'd be unwise to not consider the words of the boy as you prep your military strategy.

Note that you were careful to establish hard-to-prove circumstances ("served in similar circumstances"), which seems to say that you don't want to discount what the non-expert is saying too easily either.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#967

Post by arthurofbabylon »

bigyabai wrote: post #961
arthurofbabylon wrote: post #902

The surface area of the Apple suite is now enormous. We now have an incredible array of devices, physical environments, and purposes. It's really quite staggering: just look at the spans between a) checking the UV index on Apple Watch and writing code in Xcode on Mac, b) tracking an outdoor run and navigating with Car Play and watching a movie on Apple TV, and c) messaging and maneuvering spreadsheets and designing/b…

> We all want consistency (probably to a degree greater than Apple is capable of delivering) This thinking is the fatal poison of the tech industry. The further you repeat it, the faster the industry dies. Watch: "We all want privacy, probably to a greater degree than Facebook is capable of providing." "We all want browser competition, probably to a greater degree than Microsoft is willing to provide." "We all want a…

My question "what systemic solutions are available on a scale like Apple's to maintain high-quality and strong consistency?" was sincere.

I'm neither complacent (as you seemed to imply) nor magically hand-waiving a "just do it" notion (as you seem to exemplify). I'm seriously interested in what it takes to effectively manage complexity as this scale.

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#969

Post by merlindru »

ctippett wrote: post #561

500+ 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…

I will never understand why adding a page to your homescreen in Safari goes like:

1. tap three dots

2. tap "Share"

3. tap "More"

4. scroll down

5. tap "Add page to home screen"

6. tap "Add to home screen"

other than that apple really doesn't want you to do this because they loathe PWAs and their entire services business model is built around the app store being the sole place of app distribution

Re: It's hard to justify Tahoe icons

#970

Post by merlindru »

ackyshake wrote: post #635
JaggerJo wrote: post #119

Good that Alan Dye is no longer at apple. Liquid Glass on macOS is a mass. The icons, the floating side menus, the inconsistent corners, the new tabs in Safari.. On iOS it's totally fine, but on macOS it's a disaster. I've only updated one machine so far and will keep all others on Sequoia until this mess is resolved.

> Good that Alan Dye is no longer at apple. Yeah, but I doubt that would change much; the amount of damage done would be difficult to roll back. What do you think Apple is going to do for the next macOS: "Look we told you to design all these extra icons last year. Guess what, this year we want you to remove them." I just can't imagine that happening. This is the fundamental thing that is wrong with this. They had the…

they'll slowly walk the changes back until the aesthetic is usable

in 8 years or so we'll probably get the next major overhaul

we're not stuck with the damage, except for the icons and such. the rest can be changed no problem. they could remove liquid glass tomorrow and make everything look like visionOS and the icons would still fit just fine

but they can't roll back to the previous design. which is a shame, because they poured in probably millions of man-hours to make it great. and the soulless app icons we now have won't ever match the 3d ish big sur icons that were filled to the brim with personality.

hell, there even were entire webpages and social media accts dedicated just to macOS icons. i regularly saw icon showcases on twitter with thousands of likes. not anymore :(

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