4 ms·

macOS 12 Monterey and User Interface Inconsistencies

60 points by ttepasse 5y ago

viraptor 5y ago
Those seem like issues where a framework should exist to make it hard to create them by accident. Otherwise, an extreme amount of QA work would be required. Since I have no experience with MacOS UI programming - is there likely some extra special code that causes the listed problems, or is it lack of code that makes things consistent?
GoToRO 5y ago
Ha! I started doing the same for iPhone. Gave up pretty quick as the defects were too many and I decided I don’t care.
80hd 5y ago
While my inner perfectionist finds these annoying - I can't help but feel there are bigger fish to fry here. Higher-level UI paradigms, user flows that should be adhered to, features that don't work reliably, other bugs etc seem like they would have a much bigger impact than "these two border radiuses don't match". I'm sure Apple places a much higher priority on these, and I'm not surprised you don't get much in the way of responses from them.
claviska 5y ago
Random observation: in the “Sidebar Text Layout” section, the author points out the form field is slightly higher but what’s more noticeable to me is the spacing around the inbox icon compared to the desktop icon.
- codeptualize 5y ago
  It's not visible in the screenshots of the article but I'm pretty sure that's because in mail app there can be nested folders, so they need to leave spacing for the expand/collapse caret icon.
DarthNebo 5y ago
For me there's one that's still carried over from Big Sur, the file transfer dialog stays pixelated in Mission Control if you have multiple transfers & only one remains. I think it tries to stretch the last image/thumbnail to the older window size, ends up looking blurry/distorted Along with some Safari bugs in compact view where opening the same website like HN(but for another post) would take me back to an existing tab instead of reliably opening it in the background
caterama 5y ago
Similar nit pick… Not sure if this is fixed in Monterey, but in Catalina the maps app is so close to being amazing. When you search, it shows suggestions but hitting tab defocuses the search and closes the suggestions!! It should select the next suggestion.
- simongray 5y ago
  No, it really shouldn't. The accessibility guidelines we have, e.g. WCAG, usually say that tab is used to tab through separate interface elements. When you're still inside an element - for example if you have triggered a dropdown list in a text input field - you use the arrow keys to navigate within and enter/space to select elements. Say tab was used for all (intra and inter) navigation tasks. In that case you risk suddenly having a thousand item list that keyboard users will then have to tab through to get to the next interface element. That is not good UI design.
  - caterama 5y ago
    Google Chrome, Firefox, and Slack select the next suggestion on tab from the url/search bar. That's a pretty big precedent. I like it... my arrow keys are far away from the home row but tab is not. Anyway, we can disagree about proper tab behavior here. My intention is to support the article by highlighting sloppy behavior from Maps.app. A case in point, the arrow keys don't work either. To see, type a few characters in "Search Maps" until suggestions appear, press down arrow key, ... no suggestion is select, instead the search box looses focus and the map moves?! While messing around with this... I noticed that pressing the right arrow before pressing down arrow (sometimes??) begins selecting suggestions. Seriously, go mess around with it... but it's super finicky. This is the state of Apple UI polish and consistency today.
    - simongray 5y ago
      Works fine for me, same version of macOS...
dt2m 5y ago
While I absolutely agree these inconsistencies are completely against the Mac OS philosophy, it's hard to not acknowledge how old the codebase must be starting to be, 20 years down the road. Windows has the same issues, where you'll see stuff dating back to the NT days in the Control Panel. I can't even begin to imagine how many different internal UI frameworks the Mac OS developers need to juggle now, compared to when Aqua looked as fresh as iOS 7 did at launch. Apparently, Apple had planned to completely scrap their computers before the 180° decision to move to M1 and cater to pro users again, so one isn't left wondering as to why Mac OS is this way when iOS is much more consistent. It's likely we won't ever see a new computer OS ever again, similarly to why the web seems to have settled on being a Blink/WebKit platform. Is it a shame? Absolutely. But it's going to be impossible to convince an entire sales team to get their developers to fix UI inconsistencies and rewrite every nook and cranny in the system to use AppKit, instead of working on marketable features that move parts of Mac OS to parity with iOS.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Where did you read this about some planning to scrap their computer line? Very interested in reading more about this. Fwiw I do think we'll be seeing new OSes. New lines of thought are still emerging like NixOS which combines infrastructure as code principles to the desktop.
- syspec 5y ago
  > Apparently, Apple had planned to completely scrap their computers before the 180° decision to move to M1 and cater to pro users again, This seems false, I've not seen this claim anywhere. What computers would they use within the company for all 60k corporate employees? How would they themselves develop iOS?
breatheoften 5y ago
Just because I haven't seen it called out anywhere ... I have an actual compliment about Monterey -- its a change which stood out to me as a major sign that perhaps old flaws are starting to become eligible to be fixed again - despite what Dragons they might've had to dig up and rebury to get it done :fingers crossed: ... There is a completely new display settings UI for configuring multiple monitors AND ... -- it works great and its a huge improvement!
flohofwoe 5y ago
It's weird that the macOS system UI framework even allows such inconsistencies to slip in. What's the point of using the system UI if it doesn't enforce a common style even for such minor details? I was always under the (perhaps naive) impression that the macOS UI isn't just layers upon layers of dead UI frameworks like on the Windows side and that style changes automatically would carry over to old applications too.
wdb 5y ago
Cool, Corbin, known for helping developing Borland Delphi UI and the easter egg of him sitting on a big frog

60 points by ttepasse 5y ago

Those seem like issues where a framework should exist to make it hard to create them by accident. Otherwise, an extreme amount of QA work would be required. Since I have no experience with MacOS UI programming - is there likely some extra special code that causes the listed problems, or is it lack of code that makes things consistent?

GoToRO 5y ago

Ha! I started doing the same for iPhone. Gave up pretty quick as the defects were too many and I decided I don’t care.

80hd 5y ago

While my inner perfectionist finds these annoying - I can't help but feel there are bigger fish to fry here. Higher-level UI paradigms, user flows that should be adhered to, features that don't work reliably, other bugs etc seem like they would have a much bigger impact than "these two border radiuses don't match". I'm sure Apple places a much higher priority on these, and I'm not surprised you don't get much in the way of responses from them.

claviska 5y ago

Random observation: in the “Sidebar Text Layout” section, the author points out the form field is slightly higher but what’s more noticeable to me is the spacing around the inbox icon compared to the desktop icon.

codeptualize 5y ago
It's not visible in the screenshots of the article but I'm pretty sure that's because in mail app there can be nested folders, so they need to leave spacing for the expand/collapse caret icon.

DarthNebo 5y ago

For me there's one that's still carried over from Big Sur, the file transfer dialog stays pixelated in Mission Control if you have multiple transfers & only one remains. I think it tries to stretch the last image/thumbnail to the older window size, ends up looking blurry/distorted Along with some Safari bugs in compact view where opening the same website like HN(but for another post) would take me back to an existing tab instead of reliably opening it in the background

caterama 5y ago

Similar nit pick… Not sure if this is fixed in Monterey, but in Catalina the maps app is so close to being amazing. When you search, it shows suggestions but hitting tab defocuses the search and closes the suggestions!! It should select the next suggestion.

simongray 5y ago
No, it really shouldn't. The accessibility guidelines we have, e.g. WCAG, usually say that tab is used to tab through separate interface elements. When you're still inside an element - for example if you have triggered a dropdown list in a text input field - you use the arrow keys to navigate within and enter/space to select elements. Say tab was used for all (intra and inter) navigation tasks. In that case you risk suddenly having a thousand item list that keyboard users will then have to tab through to get to the next interface element. That is not good UI design.
- caterama 5y ago
  Google Chrome, Firefox, and Slack select the next suggestion on tab from the url/search bar. That's a pretty big precedent. I like it... my arrow keys are far away from the home row but tab is not. Anyway, we can disagree about proper tab behavior here. My intention is to support the article by highlighting sloppy behavior from Maps.app. A case in point, the arrow keys don't work either. To see, type a few characters in "Search Maps" until suggestions appear, press down arrow key, ... no suggestion is select, instead the search box looses focus and the map moves?! While messing around with this... I noticed that pressing the right arrow before pressing down arrow (sometimes??) begins selecting suggestions. Seriously, go mess around with it... but it's super finicky. This is the state of Apple UI polish and consistency today.
  - simongray 5y ago
    Works fine for me, same version of macOS...

dt2m 5y ago

While I absolutely agree these inconsistencies are completely against the Mac OS philosophy, it's hard to not acknowledge how old the codebase must be starting to be, 20 years down the road. Windows has the same issues, where you'll see stuff dating back to the NT days in the Control Panel. I can't even begin to imagine how many different internal UI frameworks the Mac OS developers need to juggle now, compared to when Aqua looked as fresh as iOS 7 did at launch. Apparently, Apple had planned to completely scrap their computers before the 180° decision to move to M1 and cater to pro users again, so one isn't left wondering as to why Mac OS is this way when iOS is much more consistent. It's likely we won't ever see a new computer OS ever again, similarly to why the web seems to have settled on being a Blink/WebKit platform. Is it a shame? Absolutely. But it's going to be impossible to convince an entire sales team to get their developers to fix UI inconsistencies and rewrite every nook and cranny in the system to use AppKit, instead of working on marketable features that move parts of Mac OS to parity with iOS.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Where did you read this about some planning to scrap their computer line? Very interested in reading more about this. Fwiw I do think we'll be seeing new OSes. New lines of thought are still emerging like NixOS which combines infrastructure as code principles to the desktop.
syspec 5y ago
> Apparently, Apple had planned to completely scrap their computers before the 180° decision to move to M1 and cater to pro users again, This seems false, I've not seen this claim anywhere. What computers would they use within the company for all 60k corporate employees? How would they themselves develop iOS?

breatheoften 5y ago

Just because I haven't seen it called out anywhere ... I have an actual compliment about Monterey -- its a change which stood out to me as a major sign that perhaps old flaws are starting to become eligible to be fixed again - despite what Dragons they might've had to dig up and rebury to get it done :fingers crossed: ... There is a completely new display settings UI for configuring multiple monitors AND ... -- it works great and its a huge improvement!

flohofwoe 5y ago

It's weird that the macOS system UI framework even allows such inconsistencies to slip in. What's the point of using the system UI if it doesn't enforce a common style even for such minor details? I was always under the (perhaps naive) impression that the macOS UI isn't just layers upon layers of dead UI frameworks like on the Windows side and that style changes automatically would carry over to old applications too.

wdb 5y ago

Cool, Corbin, known for helping developing Borland Delphi UI and the easter egg of him sitting on a big frog