4 ms·

"authoritarian minimalism" Can we blame this on Apple?

epistasis 5y ago
I think we can blame it on a poor imitation of what Apple does. However even Apple has copied the atrocious flat UI fashion that has destroyed the ability of users to decipher what can be interacted with, and how. If I have to deal with another goddamned toggle that has reinvented the wheel and in so doing destroyed the ability to decipher the current state and what toggling will cause to happen... well I'll be very unhappy and then continue to eat the dog food because I have no other choice.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  Ok, so this light grey text and toggle means it's not selected, I assume? Click. Oh, the text has now changed to the other option and the toggle is green, so that means the text is telling me what option is actually currently selected, whilst the toggle colour indicates which option the system thinks is equivalent to 'on'. Yep, many interfaces I've come across require me to interact with the toggle to work out what the current setting is.
  - stonedartist 5y ago
    Many web interfaces use iOS style toggle and somehow use "double negatives"(?). It's a binary decision but still, they somehow make it seemingly confusing like you mentioned. It's like - is the text label, the result of what happens after you click this, or is it showing the current state?
    - ihateolives 5y ago
      That's my pet peeve as well. It should read "activate feature x" not just "feature x" and then change to "deactivate feature x".
  - daemin 5y ago
    Worst one is when the button text changes. Does the new text represent the current state of the system, or does it represent the state which the system will be in when I press it?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bmitc 5y ago
  Apple is terrible at this. How do you close all tabs in Safari on iOS? Press and hold the tabs button. God forbid there was a button when viewing tabs.
esalman 5y ago
I want to throw in Tesla too. The minimal, buttonless dash is as dumb as the Windows 11 UI.
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  But it sells. And I agree by the way.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    You would, with that moniker. Vroom, vroom!
anigbrowl 5y ago
Yes. Years and years ago there was a funny chain email called 'if you car was an operating system' about how different operating systems would make a simple trip to the store unnecessarily difficult. The Mac entry was 'You get in your car to drive to the store, but it takes you to church instead.' I've had an antipathy to Apple gear over this since the very first tech job where I worked with Mac SEs, because when they'd crash they'd display this amusing bomb graphic and an utterly unhelpful numeric code. There was no way to explain what had gone wrong to the person using the machine (who had just lost a pile of work) and more often than not the more experienced people in the support department would just shrug and reinstall the operating system. This Fisher-Price toy mentality now pervades personal computing and is making problem solving itself obsolete. Many people just don't have the patience or inclination to figure something out when they could just reset it.
sschueller 5y ago
Yes, most profitable company in the world. People copy all including the really bad ideas. Just see how car makers have copied stuff out of the Tesla that is really bad like touch screen only controls. Some are thankfully going back to tactile switches as they realized the safety concerns.
grishka 5y ago
I'm not sure. Yes, latest macOS versions do have their share of misguided decisions, but at least most of the time it still feels like it's built by people knowing what they're doing and what their users need. It feels like there's some sort of contention going on between those who want shitloads of whitespace and other attributes of "UI like an art piece", and those who want their users to have great, empowering, and easy to use tools.
CRConrad 5y ago
> Can we blame this on Apple? We can always blame everything on Apple. Quite a lot of the time, we'll even be right.

I think we can blame it on a poor imitation of what Apple does. However even Apple has copied the atrocious flat UI fashion that has destroyed the ability of users to decipher what can be interacted with, and how. If I have to deal with another goddamned toggle that has reinvented the wheel and in so doing destroyed the ability to decipher the current state and what toggling will cause to happen... well I'll be very unhappy and then continue to eat the dog food because I have no other choice.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago
Ok, so this light grey text and toggle means it's not selected, I assume? Click. Oh, the text has now changed to the other option and the toggle is green, so that means the text is telling me what option is actually currently selected, whilst the toggle colour indicates which option the system thinks is equivalent to 'on'. Yep, many interfaces I've come across require me to interact with the toggle to work out what the current setting is.
- stonedartist 5y ago
  Many web interfaces use iOS style toggle and somehow use "double negatives"(?). It's a binary decision but still, they somehow make it seemingly confusing like you mentioned. It's like - is the text label, the result of what happens after you click this, or is it showing the current state?
  - ihateolives 5y ago
    That's my pet peeve as well. It should read "activate feature x" not just "feature x" and then change to "deactivate feature x".
- daemin 5y ago
  Worst one is when the button text changes. Does the new text represent the current state of the system, or does it represent the state which the system will be in when I press it?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bmitc 5y ago
Apple is terrible at this. How do you close all tabs in Safari on iOS? Press and hold the tabs button. God forbid there was a button when viewing tabs.

esalman 5y ago

I want to throw in Tesla too. The minimal, buttonless dash is as dumb as the Windows 11 UI.

MonaroVXR 5y ago
But it sells. And I agree by the way.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  You would, with that moniker. Vroom, vroom!

anigbrowl 5y ago

Yes. Years and years ago there was a funny chain email called 'if you car was an operating system' about how different operating systems would make a simple trip to the store unnecessarily difficult. The Mac entry was 'You get in your car to drive to the store, but it takes you to church instead.' I've had an antipathy to Apple gear over this since the very first tech job where I worked with Mac SEs, because when they'd crash they'd display this amusing bomb graphic and an utterly unhelpful numeric code. There was no way to explain what had gone wrong to the person using the machine (who had just lost a pile of work) and more often than not the more experienced people in the support department would just shrug and reinstall the operating system. This Fisher-Price toy mentality now pervades personal computing and is making problem solving itself obsolete. Many people just don't have the patience or inclination to figure something out when they could just reset it.

sschueller 5y ago

Yes, most profitable company in the world. People copy all including the really bad ideas. Just see how car makers have copied stuff out of the Tesla that is really bad like touch screen only controls. Some are thankfully going back to tactile switches as they realized the safety concerns.

grishka 5y ago

I'm not sure. Yes, latest macOS versions do have their share of misguided decisions, but at least most of the time it still feels like it's built by people knowing what they're doing and what their users need. It feels like there's some sort of contention going on between those who want shitloads of whitespace and other attributes of "UI like an art piece", and those who want their users to have great, empowering, and easy to use tools.

CRConrad 5y ago

> Can we blame this on Apple? We can always blame everything on Apple. Quite a lot of the time, we'll even be right.