5 ms·

I'll also give the opinion that Apple consistently creates some absolutely crap designs and when they do this, release something really really mind mindboggling

I'll also give the opinion that Apple consistently creates some absolutely crap designs and when they do this, release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing they are instead met with applause on the "amazing design". It's a tiresome pattern repeated for decades now. eg. The 'breathing status light' that lit up the room at night due to extreme brightness which meant every macbook of the era had stickers or tape over the LED with endless Q&A's of "How do i turn the annoying light off? You can't!". This crap design was met by articles extolling the subtle sign wave and off white hue. I kid you not. https://avital.ca/notes/a-closer-look-at-apples-breathing-light https://avital.ca/notes/a-closer-look-at-apples-breathing-li... Apple today seem to have acknowledged their mistake here and taken away status lights completely (also a crappy design hailed as amazing since they've just gone to the other extreme) which highlights the fact that no matter what they do they're hailed as being amazing at design, even when it's contradictory from their own previous 'amazing designs'. Apple doesn't just get a pass on crappy design. It gets endless articles praising the virtues of everything they do even when, if you think about what they did for even a second you'd realize, "that's actually just plain crap design".

gerdesj 7mo ago
I recently had to get printing working for a family member on an Apple tablet. I'm not an Apple jockey so it took me a while to sort out and I've being using computers since 1980 and consulting since 1995. You tap an icon that looks like the outline of a rectangle with an arrow pointing up. Then you tap the name of the printer. Then you tap another rectangle with an up arrow and then tap the word "Print". I may have got the precise steps wrong but it really is that abstruse to print something on a tablet. Never mind that mDNS/Bonjour has done its thing - the steps to actually indicate that you want to print is frankly weird. What on earth is that box with an up arrow actually supposed to mean? Why does the interface switch from icons to text?
- 1bpp 7mo ago
  Android uses the 'share' icon to represent the same thing, which is maybe a little more legible, but still feels like shoving way too many actions under a confusing modal they shouldn't be in. Even worse when apps implement a custom share dialog.
  - toast0 7mo ago
    I usually see the Android share icon with the word share. Apple doesn't often present words with icons, so if you don't already know what the icon means, it's difficult to find out. Arguably, it's a bit off that you share a document with a printer in order to print it, but I feel like printing is no longer so common as to require a dedicated button everywhere; and printing from a phone still seems like a novelty to me (but I do use it; it feels odd, but useful and I know lots of people have no computer to print from)
- crooked-v 7mo ago
  It's supposed to be the "Share" menu, but that stopped meaning anything very fast because they just crammed everything into it for lack of other UX for system services. Macs have the problem multiple times over, because now they have the normal menu bar and toolbar, and a Share menu that just gets arbitrary stuff dumped into by App Store apps, and the Services menu that shows up in some contexts but not others, and the Quick Actions menu that shows up in some contexts but not others, and some services can just add things directly to right click menus.
  - xattt 7mo ago
    Apple UI designers wanted to avoid the Android hamburger so much that they doubled-down on the share menu to duplicate hamburger menu functionality. I guess printing it to paper is a form of sharing so they may have the last laugh.
  - zozbot234 7mo ago
    Windows Explorer supports its own equivalent to the "Share" menu, dubbed "Send To". It was there already in the original Windows 9x. Printers are generally not listed though, there is a separate "Print" option instead.
    - hakfoo 7mo ago
      There's a very reasonable argument behind that, though. "Sending" a file to another disc or on the network is non-transformative. At the far end, it's still a file. But "printing" is inherently transformative-- you're expecting to get something clearly not a file (print-to-file pseudo-printers excepted). I can see the desire for minimalism-- having seperate rows for "share/send" and "print" is, well, two seperate rows. But if you offer adaptable and configurable interfaces, I could see suppressing one or both depending on context or user preferences. (You have no external drives or registered share-recipients? No "Send To/Share")
      - opan 7mo ago
        Obligatory: https://retrohacker.substack.com/p/bye-cups-printing-with-netcat https://retrohacker.substack.com/p/bye-cups-printing-with-ne...
- alexdbird 7mo ago
  It's called the Action icon, a generalisation of its original Share meaning. It's used throughout the Apple ecosystem so knowing that's where actions live is not a big expectation. You've mangled the steps. You only press one Action icon in this sequence, then you select Print, then you need to select the printer and any other options, then you tap Print. Which of these steps do you think 'abstruse'? Are you suggesting they should use a little icon of a printer, peripheral that takes many wildly different forms, instead of the word Print?
  - benj111 7mo ago
    There's a printer icon in windows and *nix. Many icons represent things that have wildly different forms. People and cars look different, but road signs manage to portray these things.
  - wtetzner 7mo ago
    We've had clear, legible printer icons for decades.
  - gerdesj 7mo ago
    OK so Action. I may have got the steps wrong but I do recall that the Action icon was again to the left of the Print text that performed the actual print. Again, why does the UI switch from icons to text arbitrarily? If Action is Action then label it Action and not an icon of a broken rectangle with an up arrow. That means nothing and is abstruse. I'm an IT consultant and my step mum is not. Neither of us had any idea what the Action icon means. I do now (it's now filed along with burger menu and other UI wankery). An icon of a printer is at least relatable. That Action thingie isn't.
throwaway290 7mo ago
I got no problem with that tiny LED or glowing apple logo personally But liquid glass and insane amount of bugs that arrived with it is killing me.
- AnotherGoodName 7mo ago
  Likely you experienced later gens where they toned it down. ~2010 it was one of the brightest LEDs you could purchase. As in they literally put a torch LED on the all white Intel macbooks of the era and it would shine through the laptop bags, pulsating.
  - throwaway290 7mo ago
    Maybe...
    - tomxor 7mo ago
      Not Maybe, I owned a 2009 MBP. Everyone with a macbook from that period that I knew had the same issue, they were absurdly bright, you could not keep it anywhere near a bedroom without putting very thick tape over the light. It was a poorly thought out design of aesthetics over ergonomics.
      - throwaway290 7mo ago
        nope. actually I remember I had that model first and yes I still don't care. simply the least annoying light compared to other bright color leds in a room. doesn't stand close to liquid glass chaos. loved battery level indicators on old macbooks too, they kind of brought it back with led on magsafe except this new led is more annoying.
  - IncreasePosts 7mo ago
    There's people who live their lives with the low battery beep on their smoke alarm going off every 5 minutes in their home and don't even register it happening.
cosmic_cheese 7mo ago
I liked the gentle amber sleep mode breathing power button on my circa-2000 CRT iMac. It wasn’t nearly as bright as that of later models and was quite nice.
- LtWorf 7mo ago
  I had one from 2010 and the bright light wasn't even the main problem at night. The charger emitted an annoying high pitch sound so I'd have to unplug it. And the device turned itself on randomly at night, and the CD-ROM reader and fans would spin up and make noise. I've now used a macbook air for work and I noticed that even when in "standby" for a week my router had a DHCP lease for it. So they still turn on for no reason, but at least the lack of fans and the fact that I can now use a decent usbc charger means they don't wake me up any more.
  - jaffa2 7mo ago
    You can disable it but yes macs will periodically wake up to get emails and notifications even while they are ‘sleeping’
  - windowsrookie 7mo ago
    You can disable "Wake for Network Access" in the battery settings if you want. It's a convenience option that lets MacOS check for new iMessages and other updates while it's asleep. That way all your messages are loaded immediately when you wake the device.
    - LtWorf 7mo ago
      I didn't even set it up with an apple account and thus I cannot possibly get any messages from iMessages.
    - just6979 7mo ago
      Do they have network performance problems such that messages need to be preloaded? Can't just fetch the new ones at wake up? That is a solution in search of a problem. I go from phone to laptop/desktop and continue messaging on various services all the time, and none of them sync until wake up and that's perfectly fine.
zzo38computer 7mo ago
Status lights can be helpful, although they should be dim, and should be red or green (or possibly yellow) rather than blue or white (unless you have already used the other colours and now you need more colours).
- f1shy 7mo ago
  Red and green, if the color has some meaning, should be avoided. 10% of males have problems with that colors (dyschromatopsia) specially with led colors. For indicators blue and white are very easy to see, even in not optimal lightning. The option to disable them is nice. > unless you have already used the other colours and now you need more colours In that case you will end up with Christmas decorations. Better solution is usually placement and form.
  - Sharlin 7mo ago
    Mixing red and green should be avoided. There’s no problem using either alone. Human color vision is the least sensitive to blue light, so a blue indicator led has to be made brighter than an equivalent red or green led to be as visible in bright ambient lighting. But that makes blue leds disastrous in low light, where the opposite is the case (vision is the most sensitive to blue). Of course there never was any reason for blue standby lights except the fact that blue leds had novelty value and looked futuristic compared to boring old red and green leds.
f1shy 7mo ago
> release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing I’m still trying to understand who came with the idea of charging the mouse from under, instead of from a position that would allow to use the mouse while charging…
- Sharlin 7mo ago
  Textbook case of form over function. Either an engineering constraint forced by the design and deemed an acceptable trade-off by higher-ups, or maybe more likely, the designer just thought a visible charging port would’ve ruined their design.
  - tavavex 7mo ago
    While the exact reason has never been documented, if you look at that mouse's design, you'll see that its first generation had a regular battery compartment on the bottom. When gen 2 arrived, they fully reused the same shell and only replaced that bottom part to now be an integrated battery with a charging port instead of a compartment for AAs. Moving the charging port would've required a brand new design, since every edge of the mouse tapers way too much for a port to be placed anywhere else. They would also probably need to change more of the internal structure, as opposed to just swapping a battery module and changing the bottom lid. In this case the constraint seems to just be about functionality and manufacturing. Apple has made many controversial design decisions that have no functional justifications in the past, yet people keep bringing up the mouse.
    - throw_away_623 7mo ago
      The reason people talk about the mouse is that it's one of the worst ideas they ever had. At the time, I remember someone claimed that the reason was that they were afraid people could leave it plugged in for convenience. Apple thought that would lead to a worse experience because their mouse was designed to be used wirelessly. I think it was actually more related to aesthetic "icks" by the designers, because people would have disconnected the cable if it was in the way.
zelphirkalt 7mo ago
I like the status lights on my old X200 a lot (on/off, battery, disk, wlan I believe, and more). It's a shame we don't have them like that any longer in Thinkpads. We only get one or two LEDs indicating on/off status. But such things need to be done right.
wolvoleo 7mo ago
Yes or the sharp edges on MacBooks cutting into your wrist. That started with the unibody design, the ones before that had a nice soft rounded plastic gasket there My powerbook was the last apple laptop I really enjoyed.
vee-kay 7mo ago
[dead]
h2zizzle 7mo ago
They're the flagship "design here, build there," company, so they got the Pollock treatment. I'm glad people are finally saying it. Eat your heart out, Nilay.

gerdesj 7mo ago

I recently had to get printing working for a family member on an Apple tablet. I'm not an Apple jockey so it took me a while to sort out and I've being using computers since 1980 and consulting since 1995. You tap an icon that looks like the outline of a rectangle with an arrow pointing up. Then you tap the name of the printer. Then you tap another rectangle with an up arrow and then tap the word "Print". I may have got the precise steps wrong but it really is that abstruse to print something on a tablet. Never mind that mDNS/Bonjour has done its thing - the steps to actually indicate that you want to print is frankly weird. What on earth is that box with an up arrow actually supposed to mean? Why does the interface switch from icons to text?

1bpp 7mo ago
Android uses the 'share' icon to represent the same thing, which is maybe a little more legible, but still feels like shoving way too many actions under a confusing modal they shouldn't be in. Even worse when apps implement a custom share dialog.
- toast0 7mo ago
  I usually see the Android share icon with the word share. Apple doesn't often present words with icons, so if you don't already know what the icon means, it's difficult to find out. Arguably, it's a bit off that you share a document with a printer in order to print it, but I feel like printing is no longer so common as to require a dedicated button everywhere; and printing from a phone still seems like a novelty to me (but I do use it; it feels odd, but useful and I know lots of people have no computer to print from)
crooked-v 7mo ago
It's supposed to be the "Share" menu, but that stopped meaning anything very fast because they just crammed everything into it for lack of other UX for system services. Macs have the problem multiple times over, because now they have the normal menu bar and toolbar, and a Share menu that just gets arbitrary stuff dumped into by App Store apps, and the Services menu that shows up in some contexts but not others, and the Quick Actions menu that shows up in some contexts but not others, and some services can just add things directly to right click menus.
- xattt 7mo ago
  Apple UI designers wanted to avoid the Android hamburger so much that they doubled-down on the share menu to duplicate hamburger menu functionality. I guess printing it to paper is a form of sharing so they may have the last laugh.
- zozbot234 7mo ago
  Windows Explorer supports its own equivalent to the "Share" menu, dubbed "Send To". It was there already in the original Windows 9x. Printers are generally not listed though, there is a separate "Print" option instead.
  - hakfoo 7mo ago
    There's a very reasonable argument behind that, though. "Sending" a file to another disc or on the network is non-transformative. At the far end, it's still a file. But "printing" is inherently transformative-- you're expecting to get something clearly not a file (print-to-file pseudo-printers excepted). I can see the desire for minimalism-- having seperate rows for "share/send" and "print" is, well, two seperate rows. But if you offer adaptable and configurable interfaces, I could see suppressing one or both depending on context or user preferences. (You have no external drives or registered share-recipients? No "Send To/Share")
    - opan 7mo ago
      Obligatory: https://retrohacker.substack.com/p/bye-cups-printing-with-netcat https://retrohacker.substack.com/p/bye-cups-printing-with-ne...
alexdbird 7mo ago
It's called the Action icon, a generalisation of its original Share meaning. It's used throughout the Apple ecosystem so knowing that's where actions live is not a big expectation. You've mangled the steps. You only press one Action icon in this sequence, then you select Print, then you need to select the printer and any other options, then you tap Print. Which of these steps do you think 'abstruse'? Are you suggesting they should use a little icon of a printer, peripheral that takes many wildly different forms, instead of the word Print?
- benj111 7mo ago
  There's a printer icon in windows and *nix. Many icons represent things that have wildly different forms. People and cars look different, but road signs manage to portray these things.
- wtetzner 7mo ago
  We've had clear, legible printer icons for decades.
- gerdesj 7mo ago
  OK so Action. I may have got the steps wrong but I do recall that the Action icon was again to the left of the Print text that performed the actual print. Again, why does the UI switch from icons to text arbitrarily? If Action is Action then label it Action and not an icon of a broken rectangle with an up arrow. That means nothing and is abstruse. I'm an IT consultant and my step mum is not. Neither of us had any idea what the Action icon means. I do now (it's now filed along with burger menu and other UI wankery). An icon of a printer is at least relatable. That Action thingie isn't.

throwaway290 7mo ago

I got no problem with that tiny LED or glowing apple logo personally But liquid glass and insane amount of bugs that arrived with it is killing me.

AnotherGoodName 7mo ago
Likely you experienced later gens where they toned it down. ~2010 it was one of the brightest LEDs you could purchase. As in they literally put a torch LED on the all white Intel macbooks of the era and it would shine through the laptop bags, pulsating.
- throwaway290 7mo ago
  Maybe...
  - tomxor 7mo ago
    Not Maybe, I owned a 2009 MBP. Everyone with a macbook from that period that I knew had the same issue, they were absurdly bright, you could not keep it anywhere near a bedroom without putting very thick tape over the light. It was a poorly thought out design of aesthetics over ergonomics.
    - throwaway290 7mo ago
      nope. actually I remember I had that model first and yes I still don't care. simply the least annoying light compared to other bright color leds in a room. doesn't stand close to liquid glass chaos. loved battery level indicators on old macbooks too, they kind of brought it back with led on magsafe except this new led is more annoying.
- IncreasePosts 7mo ago
  There's people who live their lives with the low battery beep on their smoke alarm going off every 5 minutes in their home and don't even register it happening.

cosmic_cheese 7mo ago

I liked the gentle amber sleep mode breathing power button on my circa-2000 CRT iMac. It wasn’t nearly as bright as that of later models and was quite nice.

LtWorf 7mo ago
I had one from 2010 and the bright light wasn't even the main problem at night. The charger emitted an annoying high pitch sound so I'd have to unplug it. And the device turned itself on randomly at night, and the CD-ROM reader and fans would spin up and make noise. I've now used a macbook air for work and I noticed that even when in "standby" for a week my router had a DHCP lease for it. So they still turn on for no reason, but at least the lack of fans and the fact that I can now use a decent usbc charger means they don't wake me up any more.
- jaffa2 7mo ago
  You can disable it but yes macs will periodically wake up to get emails and notifications even while they are ‘sleeping’
- windowsrookie 7mo ago
  You can disable "Wake for Network Access" in the battery settings if you want. It's a convenience option that lets MacOS check for new iMessages and other updates while it's asleep. That way all your messages are loaded immediately when you wake the device.
  - LtWorf 7mo ago
    I didn't even set it up with an apple account and thus I cannot possibly get any messages from iMessages.
  - just6979 7mo ago
    Do they have network performance problems such that messages need to be preloaded? Can't just fetch the new ones at wake up? That is a solution in search of a problem. I go from phone to laptop/desktop and continue messaging on various services all the time, and none of them sync until wake up and that's perfectly fine.

zzo38computer 7mo ago

Status lights can be helpful, although they should be dim, and should be red or green (or possibly yellow) rather than blue or white (unless you have already used the other colours and now you need more colours).

f1shy 7mo ago
Red and green, if the color has some meaning, should be avoided. 10% of males have problems with that colors (dyschromatopsia) specially with led colors. For indicators blue and white are very easy to see, even in not optimal lightning. The option to disable them is nice. > unless you have already used the other colours and now you need more colours In that case you will end up with Christmas decorations. Better solution is usually placement and form.
- Sharlin 7mo ago
  Mixing red and green should be avoided. There’s no problem using either alone. Human color vision is the least sensitive to blue light, so a blue indicator led has to be made brighter than an equivalent red or green led to be as visible in bright ambient lighting. But that makes blue leds disastrous in low light, where the opposite is the case (vision is the most sensitive to blue). Of course there never was any reason for blue standby lights except the fact that blue leds had novelty value and looked futuristic compared to boring old red and green leds.

f1shy 7mo ago

> release something really really mind mindbogglingly stupid that it should be embarrassing I’m still trying to understand who came with the idea of charging the mouse from under, instead of from a position that would allow to use the mouse while charging…

Sharlin 7mo ago
Textbook case of form over function. Either an engineering constraint forced by the design and deemed an acceptable trade-off by higher-ups, or maybe more likely, the designer just thought a visible charging port would’ve ruined their design.
- tavavex 7mo ago
  While the exact reason has never been documented, if you look at that mouse's design, you'll see that its first generation had a regular battery compartment on the bottom. When gen 2 arrived, they fully reused the same shell and only replaced that bottom part to now be an integrated battery with a charging port instead of a compartment for AAs. Moving the charging port would've required a brand new design, since every edge of the mouse tapers way too much for a port to be placed anywhere else. They would also probably need to change more of the internal structure, as opposed to just swapping a battery module and changing the bottom lid. In this case the constraint seems to just be about functionality and manufacturing. Apple has made many controversial design decisions that have no functional justifications in the past, yet people keep bringing up the mouse.
  - throw_away_623 7mo ago
    The reason people talk about the mouse is that it's one of the worst ideas they ever had. At the time, I remember someone claimed that the reason was that they were afraid people could leave it plugged in for convenience. Apple thought that would lead to a worse experience because their mouse was designed to be used wirelessly. I think it was actually more related to aesthetic "icks" by the designers, because people would have disconnected the cable if it was in the way.

zelphirkalt 7mo ago

I like the status lights on my old X200 a lot (on/off, battery, disk, wlan I believe, and more). It's a shame we don't have them like that any longer in Thinkpads. We only get one or two LEDs indicating on/off status. But such things need to be done right.

wolvoleo 7mo ago

Yes or the sharp edges on MacBooks cutting into your wrist. That started with the unibody design, the ones before that had a nice soft rounded plastic gasket there My powerbook was the last apple laptop I really enjoyed.

vee-kay 7mo ago

[dead]

h2zizzle 7mo ago

They're the flagship "design here, build there," company, so they got the Pollock treatment. I'm glad people are finally saying it. Eat your heart out, Nilay.