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If you put Apple icons in reverse it looks like someone getting good at design
- walthamstow 9mo agoI like the middle ones but, come on, let's not pretend the ink pot isn't a load of skeuomorphic nonsense.
- yndoendo 9mo agoI would say the more detailed ones highlighted the quality of resolution and colors that Mac OS X had over Mac OS 9. It was way to bring back customers that left Apple for Windows. Microsoft had to update their OS icon standards to compete again.
- hahahahhaah 9mo agoNot really. Last 3 are too busy for icons. They are like clipart.
- lateforwork 9mo agoThe first 3 are just awful.
- cj 9mo agoI personally find uninspired boring icons way easier to visually scan than a collection of unique illustrated icons. But I agree they don’t look pretty.
- CooCooCaCha 9mo agoIt's utility vs soul.
- SirensOfTitan 9mo agoAnd we have plenty of utility everywhere in tech nowadays but very little soul.
- CooCooCaCha 9mo agoI honestly couldn't care less if my UI has soul. I just want it to work and get out of the way.
- notaustinpowers 9mo agoI get what they're trying to say, but I don't think a 14yo with their first Mac is going to know what an inkwell represents. Let alone what an inkwell is.
- eviks 9mo agoWhat kind of knowledge does a 14you have to parse the two sticks in the first icon easier vs. remembering some school trivia?
- bongodongobob 9mo ago[dead]
- notaustinpowers 9mo agoIt's a stylus and a line, a symbol representing writing. A stylus at that angle is how Edit icons are usually represented in iOS as well, so it has a visual similarity. I won't say the new icon is amazing, it is too simple for my taste. I'm just saying, I understand why we're seeing this shift, and I understand why this icon is being used to represent Pages.
- eviks 9mo agoAre you sure it's not a symbol for a regular pen/pencil? But also, how is a stylus easier to parse then an actual pen from the previous icons? And what's the line? Previously it was the drawing line from the pen, so it naturally stopped at the tip, but now it has a weird angled end and disconnected from the stylus. And why are we seeing this shift to worse / more ambiguous / less differentiated icons?
- gumby271 9mo agoI have no idea what app this is an icon for, but from the ones in the middle I have to assume it's Apple's version of Word? I'll agree that the inkwell one is dated and doesn't work well now, but how on earth is a pencil + line conveying anything useful?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- danpalmer 9mo agoIt looks like someone getting good at illustration. Older icons are far better illustrations. However icon design is not just about illustration, it's about clarity and affordances. Icons don't exist in isolation like an illustration, they exist alongside the rest of the UX and other app icons, and being recognisable is important. All that to say, the sweet pot was likely somewhere in the middle of this timeline. The earliest icons aren't recognisable enough as they're too illustrative. The later icons aren't recognisable enough because they're too basic. The middle are pretty, clear from colour, clear from shape, well branded.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- christophilus 9mo agoI agree. The middle one seems to be the best combination of clarity and simplicity.
- temporallobe 9mo agoI spent half a year designing and creating 200+ icons for a custom geospatial mapping app. I really enjoyed the work but it was grueling and tedious, especially the design part. Too many people had too many different opinions on which symbols meant what, which styles clearly conveyed ideas without being too detailed, and many other things that kept wasting my time and causing a lot of rework and inconsistencies. It was literally just me doing the work, so I stopped trying to get consensus and took a few weeks to redesign the entire set and even used color science to inform my design decisions. I created the entire set without external input, then presented it. Sure there was some tweaking here and there, but I believe it turned about to be great and no one really complained in the end. The most important part was that end-users were happy. I used Inkscape and developed a set of scripts to automate the build and had everything in a very organized Git repo.
- BTBurke 9mo agoI’d be interested in seeing those if you’re open to sharing.
- kuon 9mo agoI'm sure design theory says the new ones are better, but the very first one was much clearer for users. Also on the phone I could say "click on the ink with the pen".
- gumby271 9mo agoI like how the new icon forces you to do product placement for Apple devices just to explain it. Tap the icon with the Apple Pencil and rectangle. Just don't convey it using color, that's now completely unpredictable.
- tern 9mo agoThere is no such "design theory," only schools of design
- adastra22 9mo agoI wish this was better understood.
- crazygringo 9mo agoThere are basic principles of design -- of balance, emphasis, color, weight, etc. -- that are very much part of a general "design theory". That aren't dependent on any particular school of thought.
- jrowen 9mo agoI feel like this is actually quite a bold claim. Just within this thread there is wild disagreement. The term “design” is so insanely broad. There are Dieter Rams-style principles of functional objects that have sort of “won out”, but with graphical design, it’s essentially art, it’s all so subjective.
- crazygringo 9mo agoI don't think so. Nobody disagrees that a brighter color draws more attention than a subdued one, or that the eye is drawn to a heavier weight before a lighter one. Nobody disagrees that it looks more balanced to have the round parts of letters like "O" and S" extend slightly beyond the baseline and cap line, beyond where the bottom and top os "E" and "B" are. These, and 200 (?) other things, are the basic principles that everyone learns and plays with -- that graphic designers are taught. It's the vocabulary of design, and is universal. "Design theory" is one way of referring to it -- theory of color, shape, etc. The things that make things clear or confusing. It's really quite objective, in the sense of what looks pleasing and balanced to the eye. It doesn't appear to be cultural. Schools of design have more to do with values and purpose, and following fads and trends and all that. Maybe that's what you're referring to? They can have their own "theories". But when people talk about "design theory" they're usually talking about the basic principles/vocabulary of design.
- taneq 9mo agoIcon design is actually really interesting because good icons are an attractor in a phase space defined by the expectations of the users of those icons. An icon doesn’t need to look like the action it represents. It needs to evoke the concept of the action when the user sees it. So in a perfect world the icon evolves towards the user’s expectation while the user learns their expectation based on the icon.
- gumby271 9mo agoFor instance an icon with a pointy stick over top of a horizontal rectangle with a gradient applied conveys a tool for doing document and page layout. Got it.
- calf 9mo agoIs that what they learn at Symbolics Systems.
- II2II 9mo agoI would argue that only makes sense if there is some consistency in the icon through time. There were four major changes in representation in the icons, and the change in contrast/colour between the first and second icons is sufficient to suggest a fifth representation in my mind.
- jxdxbx 9mo agoIcons should not be a uniform shape.
- gumby271 9mo agoMan I fucking hate this trend in icon design where they've both become so insanely basic and also tried to be "consistent" with all the icons to the point of being useless. Google started this a while back with their app icons on Android, where they all have some basic shape and the Google colors and it still sucks trying to find the right one. The horrendous icon theming users are able to do only makes it worse, reducing them to two-color versions. Microsoft did this okay until their recent liquid glass redesign, which just went further into colored blob territory. The worst are the icons that rely on the user using a previous version of the app to understand the very abstract version of the icon used today. See: https://mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/115072885331562510 https://mastodon.social/@BasicAppleGuy/115072885331562510
- Gigachad 9mo agoGoogle was the only one I disliked because literally all of their icons looked the same. The Apple ones are all fairly recognizable just by colour. Settings: grey, App store: blue, etc.
- gumby271 9mo agoExcept now the color can be completely themed right? By default it is, but it's hard to describe any of these icons if color is off the table.
- Gigachad 9mo agoThe colour theming of icons is a bad feature IMO. Driven by the need to show new things in the latest update but makes usability of the phone much worse. At least its something you can just not use and it doesn't cause issues.
- CooCooCaCha 9mo agoI understand some people like skeuomorphism and that's fine. But I've noticed a certain arrogance skeuomorphism fans tend to have as if it's THE right way to design and everyone else is wrong.
- CamperBob2 9mo agoIn the skeuomorphic era, people said, "This $object looks dumb." In the post-skeuomorphic era, people said, "I have no idea what this is, what it does, or what it means." Which is a better way to fail?
- Pannoniae 9mo agoBecause it is literally the best way to design and everyone else is wrong. Look at actual HCI studies. There's exactly zero arguments for any kind of flat or minimalistic design outside of art, or if you want to make a statement. The only reason it's used that it's cheaper and faster to make, is perfectly soulless not to make anyone upset, and it's trendy.
- torben-friis 9mo agoYou’re kinda proving the parent’s point. >There's exactly zero arguments for any kind of flat or minimalistic design outside of art Here’s one: helping the interface stay out of the way, removing clutter so the actual content of the app takes focus instead. I can tell you it works because with the new Glass stuff everything is begging for attention again, and I hate it. And just to be clear, I’m not voting for design overflattened to the point one can’t tell icons apart. For me, around 4 in the diagram is the ideal middle point.
- jmpeax 9mo agoFuture icon will just be this: ∠
- gumby271 9mo agoSlap a gradient on that bad boy and collect your Apple paycheck buddy!
- undebuggable 9mo agoThere was more meeting time and salary budget involved in picking the yellow-red gradient inside a pen from the first icon on the left, that in the entire process of creating and releasing the icon first from the right.
- BanAntiVaxxers 9mo agoIt seems like user interfaces should be decoupled from functionality of applications. Someone should be able to freeze their user interface in time if they wish.
- paulcole 9mo ago> Someone should be able to freeze their user interface in time if they wish. Why?
- layer8 9mo agoFor the same reason you can keep the interior design of your house the same for decades. Also, why not? It should just be a UI theme, decoupled from actual functionality.
- computersuck 9mo agoBecause people are habitual, and mental load increases when you have to learn the UI again every update. Like if someone decided to change all your pots and pans every few months, it's harzadous for cooking.
- wtetzner 9mo agoSo you don't have to put up with constantly changing UIs that don't improve anything, but require effort to relearn?
- rpdillon 9mo agoBecause having somebody wander into your house one night and rearrange the rooms and the furniture is an impediment to getting work done the next day.
- paulcole 9mo agoBetween the situation I described and the one you described, one is a crime and one is not. I wonder if one is a bigger deal than the other!
- hackshack 9mo agoBetween this, and icon-only toolbars and ribbons, I think we're reinventing Chinese, badly. Ideographic characters can often convey meaning succinctly. My vote is to either go back to picture icons, or use Chinese characters with localized pronunciation, so 車 or 车 is car, and so on.
- adastra22 9mo agoChinese is not in any way ideographic unless you are already partially literate.
- cyberax 9mo agoSo... Like the current icon set? E.g. how is a picture of a gear connected to "Settings"?
- DiogenesKynikos 9mo agoThey are of you go far enough back. This is what 车 looked like around 1000 BC: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E8%BB%8A-oracle.svg#mw-jump-to-license https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E8%BB%8A-oracle.svg...
- SahAssar 9mo agoIt's still ideographic but not legible, right? Just like most software icons are not legible without prior knowledge like arrow down mean to save, a circle with a line mean power on/off, etc. Both are ideographic, and I guess some software icons might be a bit more pictographic (like a cogwheel meaning settings because you are interacting with the machine).
- cml123 9mo agoIncidentally, the largest group of Chinese characters are phono-semantic e.g. encode both meaning and pronunciation. Over half of all Chinese characters are in that bucket. That actually allows speakers to have some ability to guess both pronunciation and meaning of characters they have never seen. There are rules to guide this.[0] 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C7%92u_bi%C4%81n_d%C3%BA_bi%C4%81n https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C7%92u_bi%C4%81n_d%C3%BA_bi%...
- compounding_it 9mo agoMy sister is switching to macOS and she won’t be able to tell this is a word app. She won’t be able to notice it with the ink bottle either. These represent the pen when ideally they should represent the document which is what the word app does. I have to admit Microsoft office apps actually have / have had sensible icons.
- SecretDreams 9mo agoBut why threads?
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- toast0 9mo agoIt's been so long since I used a mac that I don't recognize any of these icons (or maybe it's a iPad thing?) What app is it even for? The middle one looks like writing something. The left ones look like drawing a line or testing/calibrating a stylus? The inkpot? I don't even. And the two on the middle right look like desktop publishing?
- benfrancom 9mo agoI’ve always liked Jakub Steiner’s Gnome icon work: https://jimmac.eu/ https://jimmac.eu/
- rsolva 9mo agoGNOME generally seem to have struck a nice balance over the years. Icons has a reasonable amount of skeuomorphism without too much hyperdetailed textures, most icons has distinct shapes (not just a bunch of boxes with rounded corners). I used to rice my linux desktop, but havefound less reason to do so the last ~5 years, and have been happy using the defaults in Fedora. I spend most of my time in a terminal, the browser and a few select GTK utilities apps, like Switcheroo, Curtail, Netsleuth etc. Maybe it is the somewhat slower, more iterative pace of GNOME, compared to macOS an Windows, that ends up with a more balanced end result?
- hollandheese 9mo agoHuh? GNOME releases new versions twice a year versus macOS' once a year and Windows' once a year. GNOME just doesn't feel the need to radically change things every few releases because they have no need to seem "new" to get people to buy things.
- seydor 9mo agoIt looks like a child growing
- heliographe 9mo agoOh hi everyone! So funny to see how my quippy little tweet blew up the last few days on all the platforms (much more than when I share actual things I make, to my great dismay - if you're an artist/photographer, check out my apps & tools: https://heliographe.studio https://heliographe.studio). There's lots of interesting discussions to be had around what makes a great icon (but social media platforms aren't the places to have those deep conversations). For example the original Mac HIG says that an app icon should: - clearly represent the document the application creates - use graphics that convey meaning about what your application does (https://www.threads.com/@heliographe.studio/post/DTehlciE3wY https://www.threads.com/@heliographe.studio/post/DTehlciE3wY) The first point might be a little outdated, as we tend to live in a "post-document" world, especially on mobile. The second is broad enough that it holds up, and under that lens it doesn't seem that an image of a pen/stylus is most appropriate for a word processor app. By that metric, the Mavericks/Catalina (5th and 6th on the linked image) seem like the strongest icons. The Big Sur (4th) one isn't too bad given the "must fit in a squircle constraints" that came with it, but it starts to feel less like a word processor app icon - it could as easily be an icon for TextEdit/Notes. The most recent 3 are very hard to defend - the main thing they have going for them is that because they are simpler and monochromatic, they fit more easily within a broader design system/icon family. Even then, the simpler shape doesn't make them more legible - a number of people have told me they thought it was a bandaid at first, or maybe something terminal-related for the orange on black one. The "line" under the pencil (or is it a shadow?) on the most recent one is almost as thick as the pencil itself, and blends with it because gestalt theory. I agree that the 7th one (original ink bottle) has a few issues that don't necessarily make it the best choice for an icon - but dang, the level of craft that goes into it makes it an instant classic for me. And it does retain a fairly distinct, legible shape that still makes it a solid icon even if the detail gets lost at smaller sizes. Icons need to be quickly recognizable, but at the same time an icon is not a glyph - and illustrational approach do have their place. Especially on devices with larger screens where they are going to appear quite large in most contexts. The big elephant in the room with all this is that icons 5/6/7 clearly take more craft skill to execute than icons 1/2/3, and Apple used to be the absolute reference - no debate possible - when it came to these matters. As a long time software designer (and former Apple designer myself through the 2010s, although I was on the hardware interaction design side, and not making icons), it is sad that this is no longer true.
- bze12 9mo agoApple mostly cares about legibility and consistency in icons now, not art. All the new iOS features like tints and liquid glass don't lend themselves well to intricate designs. It's disappointing, but I tend to agree that the skeuomorphic icons are harder to read. From their icon guidelines: "Embrace simplicity in your icon design. Simple icons tend to be easiest for people to understand and recognize. An icon with fine visual features might look busy when rendered with system-provided shadows and highlights..." https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/app-icons https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... Self plug, but I made an app related to this - it's a conceptual art gallery for app icons. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to remove the functional premise and just let an icon be a decorative symbol. It's called 001 (https://001.graphics https://001.graphics)
- amluto 9mo ago> Apple mostly cares about legibility and consistency in icons now, not art. The second-to-oldest one is legible. The word “PAGES” is quite legible. It’s pretty clear what’s going on. In fact, it’s the only one in the entire set where I would look at the icon and quickly recognize what it is and what it’s for. (The one that is one iteration newer is worse because it’s less legible.)
- dd8601fn 9mo agoNobody is mentioning that there’s essentially nowhere you see the icon now without the name (internationalized) unless you’re already familiar with it, and pinned it to a launcher or something. The first time you see most of them they’re on a page with screenshots and descriptions. Nobody needs to know what the Word icon is before they know what Word is.
- amluto 9mo agoI have icons of apps I’ve used many times visible in a launcher, and I still have to think about which is which because they are so nondescript.
- 9mo ago
- canadiantim 9mo agoWhat’s even more surprising is someone linking to a threads link!
- samlinnfer 9mo agoIt's just fashion, it's cyclical, what is out of style (skeuomorphism) comes into style again, then it goes away for simplicity.
- sippeangelo 9mo agoIs it? I've seen us going from obvious skeuomorphism to more and more abstract shapes, until we hit peak Windows 8 hubris where everything is a coloured square with a monochrome symbol in it. Then back to icons where shades of colour and contrast finally start meaning things again, but getting stuck in an endless balancing on the edge where icons are abstract enough to confuse but not clear enough to describe their function. We've never gotten fully back to actual skeuomorphism.
- samlinnfer 9mo agoI would argue that realistic looking icons that look like the real object is skeuomorphism.
- sippeangelo 9mo agoYeah, that's what I'm trying to say! The furthest right icon of this post is peak skeuomorphism, but we've never actually gotten back to it. Someone's always gone "wait, this icon looks a bit too much like the real thing, we can't have that!". It has never been cyclical!
- zabzonk 9mo agoOff-topic, I guess, but on-screen icons are not the only things you have to puzzle about. On my quite new Asus laptop (which I really like) there is a key on the keyboard that launches Asus's My Asus application, which does hardware-specific configuration. I like the app, I like easy access to it - what I don't understand is why the label on the key is "//]".
- sedatk 9mo agoIt's the MyASUS app logo. Possibly designed to look like letters M & A mashed together.
- zabzonk 9mo agoYes, you are right, it is a (bad) representation of what the My Asus app puts up on the Windows taskbar - I hadn't noticed that. But even then, I can't see it as M & A. But this is all OT, and I'm not expecting any explanations here. Thanks.
- sedatk 9mo agoThink of an italic M and an upright A.
- LandoCalrissian 9mo agoI tend to like skeuomorphic design, however, if you design an entire interface that way, it will look dated, for better or worse. The one in the middle is probably what I would gravitate towards myself. The right three really wear their date on their sleeve.
- VerifiedReports 9mo agoGUIs' beneficial "skeuomorphism" probably peaked around the mid-'90s, where controls and their states were clearly demarcated but not absurdly photo-realistic. The bevel on a button told you if it was depressed or not, but that amounted to flipping the brightness on a couple of pixel-wide outlines. Apple did contribute to the backlash (and the over-correction to no design at all, AKA "flat") with their brain-dead skeuomorphic UI. One example hobbled iTunes for years: Apple depicted the current-track display at the top of the iTunes window as an "LCD" with a glass window over it; obviously you wouldn't try to interact or press on a glass-covered LCD. But in iTunes, there were controls hidden in there. WTF? Why would you ever even attempt to click in it? Equally stupid was Game Center, where Apple depicted controls as painted onto the felt of a Blackjack table. Who the hell would attempt to "operate" the paint on a felt gambling-table surface?
- bigstrat2003 9mo ago"Dated" is subjective, and not worth worrying about. I don't care if something looks dated, I care if it's clear and easy to use.
- dd8601fn 9mo agoLittle children operate these devices competently. The usability of this stuff is not worse. It’s just taste.
- Nextgrid 9mo agoEnough trial and error will allow you to learn any system no matter how obtuse - it doesn't mean the system is well designed. I'd argue the usage patterns of children using the device for entertainment and adults using the device for productivity are quite different.
- nemosaltat 9mo agoSee also: https://rakhim.exotext.com/benjamin-button-reviews-macos https://rakhim.exotext.com/benjamin-button-reviews-macos
- timcobb 9mo agoNothing like arguing about icons on HN on Saturday night. Bless you folks
- cycomanic 9mo agoWhy are people arguing that icons should be intuitively tell you what the app is about? Since when was that the goal of an icon (in paritucal an app icon)? It should be easily distinguishable from other icons. If I don't know what the icon means it will take me exactly 1s to find out by clicking on it, after that I will know what the app icon is for, and I only care if I can distinguish it easily from other icons, so I don't accidentally start a different app.
- VerifiedReports 9mo agoYou must be a huge fan of purposefully obscure HN titles. And Concentration. Click on the giraffe to get to the Print dialog! Hm... what was the Print dialog hidden under again?
- qingcharles 9mo agoMy language app is an owl. My web browser is a fox curled up. My media player is a traffic cone. Out of the 40 app icons on my taskbar, maybe three of them remotely indicate the product's purpose.
- VerifiedReports 9mo agoapp icons ≠ icons for functions within an app But you knew that.
- morshu9001 9mo agoThe first comment was about app icons. Nobody is suggesting putting confusing buttons in an app UI.
- VerifiedReports 9mo agoNo; they're actually doing it! But... your point is valid. I didn't interpret the original comment as being limited to app icons, but on another read you are right; it does emphasize them.
- moonshadow565 9mo agoThat website (threads.com) does not load properly on firefox on phone. Most of images are missing and layout is all messed up.
- megablast 9mo agoThe designers at Apple have a lot to answer for. It’s as if we can no longer trust Apple to make new versions better.
- Bad_Initialism 9mo agoAs the icons progress to the left, identification increasingly depends on colour and shape. Since there are a limited number of colours and shapes, they tend to get reused. This increasingly leads to mis-identification of icons. This is particularly true for the visually impaired and some elderly and neuro-atypical people. What matters in an icon is uniqueness. Only the skeuomorphic icons to the right can be unique enough for proper identification. Trendiness of visual appearance has no place in the functionality of a complex machine. If you think it does, I submit the following for your consideration: you. are. a. monster. Yes, I said that and I mean it. You followers of Jony Ive and his ilk are assholes. The rest of us don't give a shit about your design schools. We just want to be able to click on the right thing. Hate me, but it's true.
- anonymous908213 9mo ago> identification increasingly depends on colour and shape. If only they would stop there. These design terrorists won't even let us have that much; Google's Android apps all use the same 4-color-rainbow scheme. Not only did they get rid of the ability to visually identify the icons by color, but you can't even really identify them by shape because applying four highly constrasting colors to a simple shape breaks up its silhouette into something that is not quickly recognisable at a glance. It's as though they're intentionally trying to make the icons have as little functional utility as they possibly can.
- hliyan 9mo agoThe worst part is, when computer screens were monochrome or had only 16 colors, (and perhaps 16 pixels a side) to work with, designers managed to create more distinct icons or pictograms. Perhaps they may not have looked as elegant as a set of items on a collector's display case, but they helped the end user quickly zero in on the part of the screen they were interested in.
- quitit 9mo agoGoogle's icons are basically just different shapes of the same rainbow camouflage. While I agree that Google's is not a good approach, that is not what has gone on here.
- Insanity 9mo agoDe gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum. I prefer the consistent design language which is harder to do with the less abstract designs from earlier Mac days.
- nntwozz 9mo agoHere's a wild idea, what if the option was given to the user to select the level of detail for icons? We have such a vast library of icons now, make it an option in System Settings. Call it themes or whatever, I'm sure every macOS enjoyer would love to play with the options and reminisce. Celebrate your rich design history, don't trample it!
- kyleee 9mo agoThe fancy design types will never allow it. They love controlling people and forcing their designs and “improvements” on people
- mrweasel 9mo agoCustomization = You can pick a different wallpaper, if you really want to.
- Nextgrid 9mo agoSame reason as to why they make it so difficult/impossible to opt out of updates or control them granularly - I suspect deep down they know full well nobody wants their new trash so the only way to get any kind of adoption is to force people.
- dang 9mo ago[stub for offtopicness]
- Jabrov 9mo ago[flagged]
- Kye 9mo agoThreads pages don't load for me. Is there a non-Threads option for this?
- heliographe 9mo agoMastodon: https://mastodon.social/@heliographe_studio/115890819509545391 https://mastodon.social/@heliographe_studio/1158908195095453...
- derrida 9mo agoThat link is hidden. No I am not signing up to what ever site that is because it breaks the web and obviously wants to live rent free on open standards.
- heliographe 9mo agoHere is the same post on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@heliographe_studio/115890819509545391 https://mastodon.social/@heliographe_studio/1158908195095453... I publish all my posts on Threads/X/Bluesky/Mastodon because I have to meet my customers where they are, but Mastodon is the preferred platform that I point everyone to for open standards reasons. (if a moderator doesn't mind updating the link, that'd be great)
- wizzwizz4 9mo agoYou can email hn@ycombinator.com if you don't want to wait for one of the (very small) team to stumble across your comment.
- gmd63 9mo agoThe old skeuomorphic Apple icons were so easily distinguishable and yet still identifiable as Apple, a tough act to balance today amid competing design languages in oceans of competing apps. I thought they were great. That pen and ink icon had a classic feel to it. It made me think about the time and effort demanded by handwriting that I was bypassing by opening that app. That kind of visual poetry is lost in these flat designs, where communicating membership in a brand's ecosystem seems to beat out other priorities.
- chongli 9mo agoThe best icon is the original MacWrite icon by Susan Kare [1]. No superfluous details, simple, and communicates the act of writing perfectly. Susan’s suite of original icons for the Macintosh set a high watermark for legibility, usability, and comforting design. We really haven’t returned to that level of ease of use ever since. [1] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XLfMbsAfWqc/Vtae74eUHmI/AAAAAAAAHVw/VChoxemU10I/s1600/FirstVersions_Mac-OS_Icons.png https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XLfMbsAfWqc/Vtae74eUHmI/AAAAAAAAH... (bottom row, 3rd from right)
- stego-tech 9mo agoOne thing I'm not seeing much of in the comments, that I think is worthwhile to highlight: Every single one of these icons should be available to choose by the user. Some folks make good icons; others do not. Taste is highly subjective, and this applies to user interfaces moreso than user experience. Interfaces should always be customizable; experiences should always be consistent.
- dudus 9mo agoGhostty is an example of a program that gives you a bunch of different icons to choose from and an easy way to customize it even further. I don't know any other
- stego-tech 9mo agoPlex does - if you give them money. A lot of app packages offer customizable icons provided you give them money for the privilege. I disagree with this approach, and vendors that lock such changes down. If a user wants to replace every single app icon with a PNG or SVG of their choosing, that should be permissible at the OS-level. Users should always have the final say over their interface choices, and corporate or software-maker changes regarding aesthetics/interfaces should never override what the user has chosen for themselves. Right now there's strong overlap in interfaces and experiences that make this difficult, if not impossible to execute on. Separating the two again is critical for computing to be accessible to all, as is maintaining a consistent experience throughout interface changes.
- jicea 9mo agoGitHub official app icon on iOS is also configurable with ~40 variants.
- crazygringo 9mo ago> Every single one of these icons should be available to choose by the user. They are. You can replace the icon of any app straight in Finder, in the Get Info window. Copy the icon from somewhere else, click the icon in Get Into to select it, and Cmd+V to paste. I mean, you'll need to get the original icon, but that's not too much work. I don't think Apple themselves should be shipping every high-resolution icon they've ever used for every app. OS's are already large enough.
- CharlesW 9mo ago"I don't like the style of Apple's icons. It's like they're not even trying!" Meanwhile, at Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/products/catalog.html https://www.adobe.com/products/catalog.html
- stephen_g 9mo agoMy favourite is actually the one right in the middle, it’s like things improved and then started going downhill again
- onion2k 9mo agoThe icons have moved from representing a writing implement as a pen to an Apple Pencil. I doubt that's unintentional.
- gnarlouse 9mo agoIf you work at Apple, I hope you see this.
- yndoendo 9mo agoThe share holders are the users that big business now focus on, no the actual end users any more. They care more about the stock than the quality of product.
- pibaker 9mo agoThere are many complaints about "modern" logos being illegible and how it is impossible to guess the purpose of an app from the logo and I do not understand it. There was never a period of time when you could just look at any logo and know what it is. Just to name a few examples here - Photoshop (used to be an eye, was briefly a feather, now just the word mark PS) - Foobar2000 (Alien???) - WinAMP (lightning?) - Google Chrome (I never figured out what it was supposed to be, just a ball of colors?) - Microsoft Word (what does W mean?) - Microsoft PowerPoint (look at the office 2000 version of PowerPoint, it has a pacman in it) - VLC player (what does a traffic cone have to do with playing video?) I think if anything has changed now and then, it was not how comprehensible logos became, but how cynical we ended up. We seem to have developed a knee jerk reaction to find anything about "modern tech" to hate on (on a forum owned by the company that funded much of the modern tech nonetheless) and it had colored our perception of how things really were in the past.
- zapzupnz 9mo ago> There was never a period of time when you could just look at any logo and know what it is None of your examples are for built-in applications. You have to go out of your way to download those programs. You'd know what the traffic cone means because you downloaded the program with the traffic cone. You went out of your way to get it. Let's go back to that era and look at some other built-in apps, like Pages is (these days). Notepad: a blue-covered notepad with some lined pages visible. Wordpad: a fountain pen writing on some lined paper. Eventually the pen disappeared but the paper remained. Paint: a paint palette, then a bucket of art supplies, then a glass cup with paintbrushes, then back to a palette but with a brush. Solitaire: a deck of cards. Outlook Express: an envelope. MSN Messenger: two people next to each other because they're communicating with each other. Windows Movie Maker: a film reel/strip. Internet Explorer: a big 'e' (for Explorer) with a planet-like ring around it, suggesting a planet that you could traverse. (Okay, a bit abstract) Over the Mac, there was: SimpleText: a pencil writing on a sheet of paper. Later re-used for TextEdit. Sherlock: a detective's cap and magnifying glass, indicating searching. The magnifying glass was later re-used for Spotlight. Disk First Aid: A floppy disk on the back of an ambulance. Disk Utility: a doctor's stethoscope pressed against a hard disk. etc. > it was not how comprehensible logos became, but how cynical we ended up Because, on macOS, none of the icons became any more comprehensible than before. If anything, they got less comprehensive even when the visual metaphor remained the same because the representation is so poor. That's what made everybody cynical.
- cstuder 9mo agoFurther essay on this topic: https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/thoughts_and_observations_regarding_apple_creator_studio https://daringfireball.net/2026/01/thoughts_and_observations...
- gethly 9mo agoNew icons are clearly made for mobile apps and not desktop programs. I think this trend started with iPad actually. And it makes sense if your entire OS UI is unified, but that is not the case on desktop computers, no matter the OS. So these new icons look out of place. Either immediately or after some time, after the novelty dissipates.
- qwertox 9mo agoI was thinking that the simpler the icons get, the easier it will be for the company to replace the designers by AI, then I started to guess the probability of it also being able to generate those "more elaborate" ones from the right. Sounds like they're in trouble. It will be so easy to automatically generate entire sets of icons.
- timeon 9mo agoThis could be also: "which item does not belong to the sequence?" Answer would be: newest one. It feels uncanny. It tries to be simplified abstraction. But it is not. There are unnecessary details that are misleading. It does not abstract from the true meaning. Instead it transforms previous abstractions without understanding them.
- PunchyHamster 9mo agoIt's weird trend, the more pixels we have the simpler and shittier designs are. Now Apple isn't too horrible (yet) but Google is downgrade after downgrade
- nashashmi 9mo agoThis. I thought that as pixels went up, the designs would become more intricate. Granted, gradients are some show of that intricacy.
- altern8 9mo agoThe main problem with app icons these days IMO is that they have to place them into identical rounded boxes. They all look the same. When it was just the icon one was square, one was round, etc. and it was easier to tell them apart. There is also less room to work with, if 1/3 of it is padding for the rounded box.
- makerofthings 9mo agoI like the older icons so much more. I'm not in so much of a rush that I care about icons making it 2ms faster to differentiate and click the right thing. I want some character and some love in my GUI. I want different components clearly laid out, I want scroll bars. Favourite GUI, Windows 95 and Snow Leopard. I demand Whimsy.
- morshu9001 9mo agoThe old ones are easier to differentiate too
- nashashmi 9mo agoThere is so much hate against these simple icons. But let's back up a second. Do you remember in 2008 when more and more startups were coming up and they didn't have the budget for really nice detailed icons? Those startups were so cool and simple. They made simple products. And users loved them. They established a trend: make your product dumber and simpler. Make it more accessible to these new little twerks from elementary grammar school who don't understand too much. Right now products are pretending to become simpler with a UI face. But tomorrow you will see them actually become simpler in functionality as well (like Markdown). Google workspace is riding this wave. They make their products for high schoolers. And now those same college going kids struggle with complex MS Office products.
- pshirshov 9mo agoI've preferred to use Mac for years until they reworked the settings. After that I've migrated to NixOS desktop. Just had a feeling that old Mac is dead and it's time to look for alternatives. But I kept buying Mac laptops. After Tahoe I've purchased a Framework laptop. This visual mess of small icons, huge rounded corners with varying radiuses, low contrast and blur is unbearable. Also a nice touch: the default wallpaper for dark mode was dark in all previous OS versions since Mojave. In Tahoe it depicts a sunny day (Tahoe Day). It's like Apple finally lost all the common sense.
- QuadmasterXLII 9mo agoFrom a usability perspective, icon attributes ranked by importance: design consistency < contrast and ease of distinguishing < design that communicates what the icon does <<<<<< not changing after I memorize what the icon does
- RicoElectrico 9mo agoI personally prefer ones in the middle.
- robin_reala 9mo agoThe worst output of Apple’s iconography attempts recently has been Pixelmator’s revised icon. Compare and contrast the original: https://www.pixelmator.com/cdn-web-assets/app-icons/ico_pixelamtor-pro-2.0@2x.png https://www.pixelmator.com/cdn-web-assets/app-icons/ico_pixe... versus Apple’s new Creator Studio version: https://www.apple.com/v/pixelmator-pro/a/images/overview/welcome/icon_pixelmator__c7419wo9wf8m_large_2x.png https://www.apple.com/v/pixelmator-pro/a/images/overview/wel... I have basically no idea what it’s meant to represent, apart from a very vague indication of the concept of “layers”.
- jiehong 9mo agoThe new icon looks a bit like the shortcut app icon to me.
- DetectDefect 9mo ago"To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript. Alternatively, try one of the native apps for Mastodon for your platform." Why do I need Javascript to look at some icons and (presumably) text? The server can't render these for me?
- unparagoned 9mo agoI’m not sure which way they are going. I like the ones on the left is that now or old?
- quitit 9mo agoThe original inkpot Pages icon was beautiful, it looked great when steve jobs had it large on screen at macworld 2005 stating that Pages was "Word processing with an incredible sense of style". At the time this made sense for the Pages icon. However there are 3 things I notice about this discussion: 1. Gorgeous detailed renderings aren't symbols, nor are they necessarily good icons. Symbols are mentally quicker to understand, and that makes them ideal as the foundation of an icon, where their purpose is to communicate, not just be pretty. The new icons do this better than the older icons. Secondly the detailed illustrations aren't effective at small sizes, to use the ink pot example: the pen is lost in the detail of the ink pot, at typical viewing size it's a visually noisy design. I recall a criticism at the time being that people didn't know what they were looking at. 2. People such as John Gruber who referenced this post don't have the self-awareness to recognise that they are neither an expert on the topic nor the target demographic. Watching Gruber riot about unimportant minutae over the last few months has been an interesting case study. At no point does he show a modicum of charity whereby he tries to understand why the changes were made, instead his response can be summarised as a whiney/bratty version of "it's the children who are wrong". 3. There is an amusing and unpredictable cross over between people who think the ink pot is peak icon design, but have argued in the past that the much more recent floppy disk is too old to be used as a save icon.
- stephenlf 9mo agoI didn’t learn much about icons in this thread, but I did learn that iconographers are a feisty bunch
- aristofun 9mo agoOne of many examples of how you can take anything too far and make it worse
- morshu9001 9mo agoSnow Leopard was right about everything
- shatsky 9mo agoVibes of sunset of beautiful architecture. "It shouldn't be beautiful it's just a tool it should be practical, if it steals your attention [from some tiktok brainrot] to admire it it's not good thing". Can't say I like most detailed icons most, but not least detailed either.
- m4r1k 9mo agoI deeply miss Steve Jobs
- heraldgeezer 9mo agoWhen people say soul vs soulless is not real link them this.
- jasonm23 9mo agoHey, at least it lowers expectations enough that Linux Desktop is good enough with the latest KDE Plasma and to a some extent Gnome. Apple lost it's broken but incessant leader, and Tim Cook is lets' face it a chair warmer in comparison. Say what you want, but the disillusionment is sat there, in your view, or you simply never knew Apple when it was "good". Hey, maybe people will actually understand why proprietary software is, if not immoral, it's the on-ramp for mass control and manipulation that makes the TV central broadcast propaganda soup era, nothing at all in comparison to the manipulation of people by software.