I think it was particularly egregious when macOS Big Sur came out. It was abundantly clear that they no longer cared enough to even apply a basic sense of unif

I think it was particularly egregious when macOS Big Sur came out. It was abundantly clear that they no longer cared enough to even apply a basic sense of unified style in their artwork, with a weird mix of 2D-ish and 3D-ish icons, every color combination imaginable, etc. And on top of it, so many of the “new” icons were just plain ugly and some were outright weird, and many had really basic problems like improper shadow effects. Frankly they should have delayed the entire OS release by two months just to fix the icons, and it’s still in that bad a state. It is even more frustrating that the OS is slowly being locked down so much that you basically can’t “fix” UI annoyances anymore, not without rebooting into Void My Warranty mode. You can’t fix bits and pieces of apps because they’ll no longer pass code-signing and fail to launch. In the old days you could pretty much hack any cool icons you wanted into any part of the system, and it was really amazing what people came up with.