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I don't see it as a sign of "doom," but rather more regression. It took YEARS for Apple to admit that their keyboards were shit, and they still haven't admitted

I don't see it as a sign of "doom," but rather more regression. It took YEARS for Apple to admit that their keyboards were shit, and they still haven't admitted that the emoji bar on their so-called "pro" computers is an embarrassing and failed gimmick. In fact, they've doubled down on it and now don't offer ANY proper laptop keyboard. But that's off-topic to some extent; I scanned through this page looking for some good news for developers. Topping my list is support for SVG assets. NOPE. WTF? Android has had this how long? Apple's "@2x", "@3X" bitmaps were amateur-hour to begin with, but a decade later? No vector support? Come on. And still no user-definable color schemes. Windows (and Unix GUIs, for that matter) had them for decades, while Apple forced its late-'80s inverse scheme on every user that whole time. The hard-coded "dark" theme is a half-baked, belated admission that staring into a glaring light bulb with black text on its surface all day may not be the best way to work. This would also have been a great time to abandon the single menu bar, but nope; that poor decision continues to plague Mac users. Really, this should have been canned in the transition to OS X, but now there's even less of an excuse. I'm sure there will be some good changes, but from this list I'm not encouraged. Getting rid of the distinction between toolbar and app content... WHY? The "flat UI" experiment was a failure. Let's continue to take tasteful steps back toward GUIs that communicate in universal visual terms whenever possible.

doot 6y ago
> Topping my list is support for SVG assets. NOPE. WTF? From the Xcode 12 Beta Release Notes: > Added support for Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) image assets. These preserve their vector representation with deployment targets of macOS 10.15 or later, iOS 13 or later, and iPadOS 13 or later. (18389814) > Android has had this how long? Apple's "@2x", "@3X" bitmaps were amateur-hour to begin with, but a decade later? No vector support? PDF assets have been supported on all Apple platforms for many years. The announcements today represent years of work by thousands of engineers and designers. It’s impossible to cover everything in a 2 hour keynote, let alone one geared towards the media/general public. Even the 2 hour “State of the Union” that’s geared towards developers barely scratches the surface, let alone a single webpage.
- chrisweekly 6y ago
  PDF !!!= SVG
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    But it is vector.
    - chrisweekly 6y ago
      I know. IMHO, it's nitpicking on a technicality. Use cases are radically different.
- jbverschoor 6y ago
  @2 @3 allows you to remove detail when needed
eyelidlessness 6y ago
> But that's off-topic to some extent; I scanned through this page looking for some good news for developers. Topping my list is support for SVG assets. NOPE. WTF? Android has had this how long? Apple's "@2x", "@3X" bitmaps were amateur-hour to begin with, but a decade later? No vector support? Not that I don't think they should support it (they should), but this is almost certainly due to perfectionism and bias, not amateurishness. Apple has an institutional focus on good iconography, and good iconography almost always has different representations for different sizes. The icons scale within a certain size range, then switch to a representation more appropriate for the size. I would be shocked if this is ever completely eliminated from Apple's DNA.
- lloeki 6y ago
  They tried non integer scaling, and it just didn’t work out. You could enable it with some “default write” on 10.4-10.6 IIRC and you could witness the various iterations, but basically the result proved that pragmatically integer scaling gave much more consistent and predictable results.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    And yet it works pretty well on Win10, judging by my devices (that have scale settings ranging from 150% to 225%).
musicale 6y ago
> This would also have been a great time to abandon the single menu bar, but nope; that poor decision continues to plague Mac users. Really, this should have been canned in the transition to OS X, but now there's even less of an excuse. If you are using a precise mouse or trackpad, a menu bar at the top (or edge) of the screen is much easier to than a menu bar anywhere else on the screen, because it has "infinite" extent. This has been known for decades, and is why macOS places the menu bar at the top of the screen and the dock at the bottom or edge. However, Apple has made remarkable progress rethinking pointer design on the iPad, as seen in this excellent video, "Build for the iPadOS Pointer": https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10640 https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10640

doot 6y ago

> Topping my list is support for SVG assets. NOPE. WTF? From the Xcode 12 Beta Release Notes: > Added support for Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) image assets. These preserve their vector representation with deployment targets of macOS 10.15 or later, iOS 13 or later, and iPadOS 13 or later. (18389814) > Android has had this how long? Apple's "@2x", "@3X" bitmaps were amateur-hour to begin with, but a decade later? No vector support? PDF assets have been supported on all Apple platforms for many years. The announcements today represent years of work by thousands of engineers and designers. It’s impossible to cover everything in a 2 hour keynote, let alone one geared towards the media/general public. Even the 2 hour “State of the Union” that’s geared towards developers barely scratches the surface, let alone a single webpage.

chrisweekly 6y ago
PDF !!!= SVG
- saagarjha 6y ago
  But it is vector.
  - chrisweekly 6y ago
    I know. IMHO, it's nitpicking on a technicality. Use cases are radically different.
jbverschoor 6y ago
@2 @3 allows you to remove detail when needed

eyelidlessness 6y ago

> But that's off-topic to some extent; I scanned through this page looking for some good news for developers. Topping my list is support for SVG assets. NOPE. WTF? Android has had this how long? Apple's "@2x", "@3X" bitmaps were amateur-hour to begin with, but a decade later? No vector support? Not that I don't think they should support it (they should), but this is almost certainly due to perfectionism and bias, not amateurishness. Apple has an institutional focus on good iconography, and good iconography almost always has different representations for different sizes. The icons scale within a certain size range, then switch to a representation more appropriate for the size. I would be shocked if this is ever completely eliminated from Apple's DNA.

lloeki 6y ago
They tried non integer scaling, and it just didn’t work out. You could enable it with some “default write” on 10.4-10.6 IIRC and you could witness the various iterations, but basically the result proved that pragmatically integer scaling gave much more consistent and predictable results.
- int_19h 6y ago
  And yet it works pretty well on Win10, judging by my devices (that have scale settings ranging from 150% to 225%).

musicale 6y ago

> This would also have been a great time to abandon the single menu bar, but nope; that poor decision continues to plague Mac users. Really, this should have been canned in the transition to OS X, but now there's even less of an excuse. If you are using a precise mouse or trackpad, a menu bar at the top (or edge) of the screen is much easier to than a menu bar anywhere else on the screen, because it has "infinite" extent. This has been known for decades, and is why macOS places the menu bar at the top of the screen and the dock at the bottom or edge. However, Apple has made remarkable progress rethinking pointer design on the iPad, as seen in this excellent video, "Build for the iPadOS Pointer": https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10640 https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10640