4 ms·

I think the term is signifiers, I think coined by Don Norman (The Design of Everyday things), basically every object has affordances (the things you can do with

I think the term is signifiers, I think coined by Don Norman (The Design of Everyday things), basically every object has affordances (the things you can do with it) and signifiers are the thing that communicate these affordances to the user. Apple has decided that usability is less important than making the whole bar one colour because they have totally lost the fucking plot. Apples whole design team should be fired into the sun.

achairapart 6y ago
The plot is really clear to me: The road to iOS look and feel exact match. There are millions of iOS users that now will look at macOS UI with more familiarity and confidence. And like any business goal, it is far more important for them than any usability perspective (not that they don't care, but...). Apple Silicon will help break this barrier even further. The two OSes will also share the same apps. This is also what Windows 8 and Chrome OS tried, even hard, and failed, more or less miserably. Ironically, the new Finder looks a lot more like the Windows 10 file explorer to me.
nubizus 6y ago
I think this "highly polished" visual first - usability second approach has cognitive overload for the user. In my view desktop interface must be designed around mouse pointer interaction which is precise and demands clear separation of UI. Here we have clear focus on content area which is in harmony with touch based interaction. There are two options in my mind: 1. Design team follows marketing brief - do it like iDevices ASAP. 2. Apple will introduce touch as a part of desktop experience in near future. Personally I don't find this design appealing or easy on the eyes, but I am interface designer and obviously I have personal bias.
m463 6y ago
It's obvious they're just lacking leadership at the top. I think all the groups have just kept doing what they've always done which is to incrementally improve what they're good at. so "I have these two codebases that are drastically different, let's combine them" - toolkit folks and "I have all this hardware that's drastically different, let's optimize and make them the same" - hardware folks and "I collect a little data, can I have a little more?" - marketing folks and on and on until it's all mud.
72deluxe 6y ago
Amazing how far we have come from the decades of macosx where they all looked pretty obvious that a button was a button. This obsession with flatness and completely undiscoverable user interface components without wildly flailing around the UI just to get things to appear (scrollbars, delete buttons on lists in iOS) is so stupid and I hope will disappear soon! Windows 3.11 looks like a work of art by comparison where you had to learn one way of controlling the UI and it worked everywhere. No wonder people who didn't grow up with computers (elderly grandparents) find touchscreen tablets so baffling from the plethora of bizarre swipes and gestures and not knowing that touching some undecorated piece of text is actually a button and has a side effect. It's stupid.

achairapart 6y ago

The plot is really clear to me: The road to iOS look and feel exact match. There are millions of iOS users that now will look at macOS UI with more familiarity and confidence. And like any business goal, it is far more important for them than any usability perspective (not that they don't care, but...). Apple Silicon will help break this barrier even further. The two OSes will also share the same apps. This is also what Windows 8 and Chrome OS tried, even hard, and failed, more or less miserably. Ironically, the new Finder looks a lot more like the Windows 10 file explorer to me.

nubizus 6y ago

I think this "highly polished" visual first - usability second approach has cognitive overload for the user. In my view desktop interface must be designed around mouse pointer interaction which is precise and demands clear separation of UI. Here we have clear focus on content area which is in harmony with touch based interaction. There are two options in my mind: 1. Design team follows marketing brief - do it like iDevices ASAP. 2. Apple will introduce touch as a part of desktop experience in near future. Personally I don't find this design appealing or easy on the eyes, but I am interface designer and obviously I have personal bias.

m463 6y ago

It's obvious they're just lacking leadership at the top. I think all the groups have just kept doing what they've always done which is to incrementally improve what they're good at. so "I have these two codebases that are drastically different, let's combine them" - toolkit folks and "I have all this hardware that's drastically different, let's optimize and make them the same" - hardware folks and "I collect a little data, can I have a little more?" - marketing folks and on and on until it's all mud.

72deluxe 6y ago

Amazing how far we have come from the decades of macosx where they all looked pretty obvious that a button was a button. This obsession with flatness and completely undiscoverable user interface components without wildly flailing around the UI just to get things to appear (scrollbars, delete buttons on lists in iOS) is so stupid and I hope will disappear soon! Windows 3.11 looks like a work of art by comparison where you had to learn one way of controlling the UI and it worked everywhere. No wonder people who didn't grow up with computers (elderly grandparents) find touchscreen tablets so baffling from the plethora of bizarre swipes and gestures and not knowing that touching some undecorated piece of text is actually a button and has a side effect. It's stupid.