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This one really bothers me. Whenever maximizing or tiling my windows (which is all the time), I see multiple layers of oddly rounded corners. I think if there'

This one really bothers me. Whenever maximizing or tiling my windows (which is all the time), I see multiple layers of oddly rounded corners. I think if there's any upside to Tahoe, the grievances may push me into blogging for the first time ever, because I can't keep these to myself. I actually feel sorry for Apple's developers because there's no way you ship software this bad and inconsistent unless you've been handed a terrible design spec from Dye's team. edit: On my screen, three layers' corners https://hcker.news/tahoe-corners.png https://hcker.news/tahoe-corners.png

create-username 7mo ago
“Calm down, Postalcoder. We can vent tonight on our blog”
torben-friis 7mo ago
There is so much of that in modern apple. Clear issues caused by a seemingly bright idea, but the idea still pushed forward no matter what. One example that I hate on iOS: the notification/lockscreen curtain is supposed to cover the content as it slides down. That’s what a curtain does, this has been the language for years. Now the curtain is transparent, so it can’t cover the content behind. How does the content disappear then, as you slide the curtain down? … it doesn’t. Icons do a buggy looking animation crashing toward the user and through the screen, and if it’s an app there is just no transition. You can check by sliding the curtain down slowly and then letting go.
- aucisson_masque 7mo ago
  Yeah I found that surprising too and assumed it was a bug. I see this kind of trend with apple since big sur. It's not new but it's becoming more obvious with every release.
- merlindru 7mo ago
  > seemingly bright idea i disagree about that one. im not a UX expert by any means but my first impression at WWDC seeing liquid glass was "holy shit, they pulled that off? i know apple would never compromise on legibility, so... how? there are so many situations where this won't work, and they can't exactly control the content that the buttons are overlaid on top of" cue my confusion when it was exactly that: an obviously problematic idea implemented with all the obvious flaws showing up they have largely fixed it now, half a year later, but the liquid glass isn't very liquid anymore. it's frosted. which is fine, but obviously not the original idea they were going for contrasty backgrounds are fundamentally incompatible with legibility
  - threatofrain 7mo ago
    If AR/VR took off then something along the lines of liquid glass would be the only option for the entire design space. Early on there's going to be a lot of embedding of app context into the AR/VR setting to get a jump-start on content. But if people are going to be walking around with rectangular panes around their head, it's better that part of the app chrome is transparent. Is this compromising readability? Yes, but now there's another kind of perception problem, and it's whether you can see what's literally in front of your eyes in physical space.
    - torben-friis 7mo ago
      The AR push is also an issue in itself. There are very fundamental issues that remain unresolved, and I would say untackled even. VR setups make you isolated and vulnerable. Any VR device is really awkward to use in public (read: in your living room or in an office). In turn, AR setups that let the world through reduce image quality by virtue of being transparent, and it is unclear that they provide advantages. You get a slightly more immediate access to notifications in return for permanently pointing a camera towards anything you look at, which is understandably not well received. And that's just for content consumption. When you introduce work, input is still significantly worse unless you're sitting in front of a keyboard and mouse, in which case you might as well have a full laptop.
  - hulitu 7mo ago
    > i disagree about that one. Why ? I'm sick of square windows. I want disc windows. And instead of scrolling them, i want to rotate them. /s Fixing bugs is hard. Better focus on the aesthetics.
    - dmd 7mo ago
      I've got great news for you! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_extension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_extension
      - RattlesnakeJake 7mo ago
- s3p 7mo ago
  This one has always confused me. And then, to be even more confusing, if you start sliding up slowly, the background does not disappear. It stays this time around. Pull down slowly, no background, just the glass effect. Pull up slowly, still have the background, no glass effect. I guess I don't necessarily hate it, it's more of a neutral thing, but who is deciding these strange things??
  - coldtea 7mo ago
    >I guess I don't necessarily hate it, it's more of a neutral thing, but who is deciding these strange things?? Probably nobody, just some artifact of the overlay APIs used default behavior that they didn't bother to streamline.
    - StilesCrisis 7mo ago
      In this case, the behavior is so weird and easy to trigger that I'm sure someone has filed a radar by now. So somebody has at least written a post-hoc justification?
- stateofinquiry 7mo ago
  "Clear issues caused by a seemingly bright idea, but the idea still pushed forward no matter what." .. well put. It occurs to me that this is the case on the HW front with Apple as well. I remember the butterfly keyboard, the notch, everything glued in and unservicable, the removal of ports like magsafe, ethernet, USB-A... well, at least some of the HW mis-steps have been reversed. We see some movement in that direction from the later versions of Tahoe.
- wmeredith 7mo ago
  Steve Jobs may have been the ultimate editor. Jobs was an expert at saying "No" when it came to product decisions. He is sorely missed at modern Apple. It took a while for the cracks to pile up, but the dam has fully broken now.
ajkjk 7mo ago
[flagged]
- otikik 7mo ago
  It's like getting invited to dinner at a friend's house and you notice that half of the knifes and forks they put on the table are a bit dirty. If they have managed to fumble something so basic then one can't help but extrapolate what the state of the rest is.
- Towaway69 7mo ago
  There are people who have OCD and can’t help but seeing these things. It’s great for coding and seeing minor changes but its shit for real life - trust me. The number of times auto update of some app has caused the thought process “but that wasn’t like that yesterday… or was it… hm… oh it was an update”. Just minor things, small mostly unnoticeable if don’t have an “eye for details”.
  - ileonichwiesz 7mo ago
    That’s not OCD, it’s just paying attention to detail.
    - Towaway69 7mo ago
      True, it's not OCD but in combination with OCD you can get into strange thought loops.
  - embedding-shape 7mo ago
    > There are people who have OCD and can’t help but seeing these things. It’s great for coding and seeing minor changes but its shit for real life - trust me. I don't have OCD, but easily notice inconsistencies in various design choices these mega-corporations continue to fumble. It's less "OMG I can't focus on coding because Calculator and TextEdit aren't sharing the same border radius" but more "The UX/UI department seems like they're on perpetual vacation if Apple is letting simple things like this slip through", and this specific case is just an example, every version of macOS seems to get worse when it comes to consistency.
unfunco 7mo ago
Are the Apple-owned app windows inconsistent too? I see some inconsistencies but it's generally 3rd party apps mixed with Apple's apps.
- coldtea 7mo ago
  Some do, yes.
- isanengineer 7mo ago
  Yes, I noticed this shortly after the update. I forget the specifics, but Apple first party apps definitely have this issue.
- embedding-shape 7mo ago
  > Are the Apple-owned app windows inconsistent too? I see some inconsistencies but it's generally 3rd party apps mixed with Apple's apps. Does it matter if it's 3rd party apps or not? Wasn't a huge part of the sell with Apple's own GUI toolkits that all native apps work uniquely, but look familiar and like part of one and the same? The consistency and "all apps look and work great" I seem to recall being one of the "features" people used to tout about OSX. FWIW; TFA compares the border radius of TextEdit and Calculator, both two Apple apps, built-in nonetheless.
- steve1977 7mo ago
  Yes, for example Safari and Terminal have different radiuses. Most of the 1st party apps seem to be the same as Safari, so I guess Terminal didn't fully get "glassed".
  - data-ottawa 7mo ago
    I don’t know if they fixed it, but at release the Automator traffic lights appeared outside the corner radius. Edit: it is fixed and they polished up the UI since then.
- bitvoid 7mo ago
  Yes. The article only shows Apple-owned apps: TextEdit and Calculator. And it shows the various border radiuses for different elements straight from XCode's UI builder.
WillAdams 7mo ago
The thing which killed me is this is one of the things Windows 10 got _right_ (well, took the path of least resistance) with square corners which made screen grabs look good/work more easily --- I run a utility to get them back in Windows 11 (and have seriously contemplated investigating if removing the glass from my laptop screen and scraping away the paint which obscures the corners is an option to get those pixels back....) Used to be this sort of thing "just worked" on Mac OS --- you'd think with a diminishing number of UI tool kits/dev tools this sort of thing would get better/more consistent.... always liked "Themes" and this just gives me one more reason to wish that they would come back.
mring33621 7mo ago
The 3 slightly different corner styles are, honestly, pretty funny. Or some well-done malicious compliance.
ulfw 7mo ago
OCD is a real thing
eproxus 7mo ago
They obviously have been cutting corners.
- ncr100 7mo ago
  This made my spin my head right round.
CGMthrowaway 7mo ago
Assuming the corner radius scales with the size of the window, there is an argument to be made (I won't sign onto it) that the different corners actually give you additional useful information about which window each belongs to, helping you select the right one.

create-username 7mo ago

“Calm down, Postalcoder. We can vent tonight on our blog”

torben-friis 7mo ago

There is so much of that in modern apple. Clear issues caused by a seemingly bright idea, but the idea still pushed forward no matter what. One example that I hate on iOS: the notification/lockscreen curtain is supposed to cover the content as it slides down. That’s what a curtain does, this has been the language for years. Now the curtain is transparent, so it can’t cover the content behind. How does the content disappear then, as you slide the curtain down? … it doesn’t. Icons do a buggy looking animation crashing toward the user and through the screen, and if it’s an app there is just no transition. You can check by sliding the curtain down slowly and then letting go.

aucisson_masque 7mo ago
Yeah I found that surprising too and assumed it was a bug. I see this kind of trend with apple since big sur. It's not new but it's becoming more obvious with every release.
merlindru 7mo ago
> seemingly bright idea i disagree about that one. im not a UX expert by any means but my first impression at WWDC seeing liquid glass was "holy shit, they pulled that off? i know apple would never compromise on legibility, so... how? there are so many situations where this won't work, and they can't exactly control the content that the buttons are overlaid on top of" cue my confusion when it was exactly that: an obviously problematic idea implemented with all the obvious flaws showing up they have largely fixed it now, half a year later, but the liquid glass isn't very liquid anymore. it's frosted. which is fine, but obviously not the original idea they were going for contrasty backgrounds are fundamentally incompatible with legibility
- threatofrain 7mo ago
  If AR/VR took off then something along the lines of liquid glass would be the only option for the entire design space. Early on there's going to be a lot of embedding of app context into the AR/VR setting to get a jump-start on content. But if people are going to be walking around with rectangular panes around their head, it's better that part of the app chrome is transparent. Is this compromising readability? Yes, but now there's another kind of perception problem, and it's whether you can see what's literally in front of your eyes in physical space.
  - torben-friis 7mo ago
    The AR push is also an issue in itself. There are very fundamental issues that remain unresolved, and I would say untackled even. VR setups make you isolated and vulnerable. Any VR device is really awkward to use in public (read: in your living room or in an office). In turn, AR setups that let the world through reduce image quality by virtue of being transparent, and it is unclear that they provide advantages. You get a slightly more immediate access to notifications in return for permanently pointing a camera towards anything you look at, which is understandably not well received. And that's just for content consumption. When you introduce work, input is still significantly worse unless you're sitting in front of a keyboard and mouse, in which case you might as well have a full laptop.
- hulitu 7mo ago
  > i disagree about that one. Why ? I'm sick of square windows. I want disc windows. And instead of scrolling them, i want to rotate them. /s Fixing bugs is hard. Better focus on the aesthetics.
  - dmd 7mo ago
    I've got great news for you! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_extension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_extension
    - RattlesnakeJake 7mo ago
s3p 7mo ago
This one has always confused me. And then, to be even more confusing, if you start sliding up slowly, the background does not disappear. It stays this time around. Pull down slowly, no background, just the glass effect. Pull up slowly, still have the background, no glass effect. I guess I don't necessarily hate it, it's more of a neutral thing, but who is deciding these strange things??
- coldtea 7mo ago
  >I guess I don't necessarily hate it, it's more of a neutral thing, but who is deciding these strange things?? Probably nobody, just some artifact of the overlay APIs used default behavior that they didn't bother to streamline.
  - StilesCrisis 7mo ago
    In this case, the behavior is so weird and easy to trigger that I'm sure someone has filed a radar by now. So somebody has at least written a post-hoc justification?
stateofinquiry 7mo ago
"Clear issues caused by a seemingly bright idea, but the idea still pushed forward no matter what." .. well put. It occurs to me that this is the case on the HW front with Apple as well. I remember the butterfly keyboard, the notch, everything glued in and unservicable, the removal of ports like magsafe, ethernet, USB-A... well, at least some of the HW mis-steps have been reversed. We see some movement in that direction from the later versions of Tahoe.
wmeredith 7mo ago
Steve Jobs may have been the ultimate editor. Jobs was an expert at saying "No" when it came to product decisions. He is sorely missed at modern Apple. It took a while for the cracks to pile up, but the dam has fully broken now.

ajkjk 7mo ago

[flagged]

otikik 7mo ago
It's like getting invited to dinner at a friend's house and you notice that half of the knifes and forks they put on the table are a bit dirty. If they have managed to fumble something so basic then one can't help but extrapolate what the state of the rest is.
Towaway69 7mo ago
There are people who have OCD and can’t help but seeing these things. It’s great for coding and seeing minor changes but its shit for real life - trust me. The number of times auto update of some app has caused the thought process “but that wasn’t like that yesterday… or was it… hm… oh it was an update”. Just minor things, small mostly unnoticeable if don’t have an “eye for details”.
- ileonichwiesz 7mo ago
  That’s not OCD, it’s just paying attention to detail.
  - Towaway69 7mo ago
    True, it's not OCD but in combination with OCD you can get into strange thought loops.
- embedding-shape 7mo ago
  > There are people who have OCD and can’t help but seeing these things. It’s great for coding and seeing minor changes but its shit for real life - trust me. I don't have OCD, but easily notice inconsistencies in various design choices these mega-corporations continue to fumble. It's less "OMG I can't focus on coding because Calculator and TextEdit aren't sharing the same border radius" but more "The UX/UI department seems like they're on perpetual vacation if Apple is letting simple things like this slip through", and this specific case is just an example, every version of macOS seems to get worse when it comes to consistency.

unfunco 7mo ago

Are the Apple-owned app windows inconsistent too? I see some inconsistencies but it's generally 3rd party apps mixed with Apple's apps.

coldtea 7mo ago
Some do, yes.
isanengineer 7mo ago
Yes, I noticed this shortly after the update. I forget the specifics, but Apple first party apps definitely have this issue.
embedding-shape 7mo ago
> Are the Apple-owned app windows inconsistent too? I see some inconsistencies but it's generally 3rd party apps mixed with Apple's apps. Does it matter if it's 3rd party apps or not? Wasn't a huge part of the sell with Apple's own GUI toolkits that all native apps work uniquely, but look familiar and like part of one and the same? The consistency and "all apps look and work great" I seem to recall being one of the "features" people used to tout about OSX. FWIW; TFA compares the border radius of TextEdit and Calculator, both two Apple apps, built-in nonetheless.
steve1977 7mo ago
Yes, for example Safari and Terminal have different radiuses. Most of the 1st party apps seem to be the same as Safari, so I guess Terminal didn't fully get "glassed".
- data-ottawa 7mo ago
  I don’t know if they fixed it, but at release the Automator traffic lights appeared outside the corner radius. Edit: it is fixed and they polished up the UI since then.
bitvoid 7mo ago
Yes. The article only shows Apple-owned apps: TextEdit and Calculator. And it shows the various border radiuses for different elements straight from XCode's UI builder.

WillAdams 7mo ago

The thing which killed me is this is one of the things Windows 10 got _right_ (well, took the path of least resistance) with square corners which made screen grabs look good/work more easily --- I run a utility to get them back in Windows 11 (and have seriously contemplated investigating if removing the glass from my laptop screen and scraping away the paint which obscures the corners is an option to get those pixels back....) Used to be this sort of thing "just worked" on Mac OS --- you'd think with a diminishing number of UI tool kits/dev tools this sort of thing would get better/more consistent.... always liked "Themes" and this just gives me one more reason to wish that they would come back.

mring33621 7mo ago

The 3 slightly different corner styles are, honestly, pretty funny. Or some well-done malicious compliance.

ulfw 7mo ago

OCD is a real thing

eproxus 7mo ago

They obviously have been cutting corners.

ncr100 7mo ago
This made my spin my head right round.

CGMthrowaway 7mo ago

Assuming the corner radius scales with the size of the window, there is an argument to be made (I won't sign onto it) that the different corners actually give you additional useful information about which window each belongs to, helping you select the right one.