5 ms·

It's still a bit jarring to me to see how far Apple embraced form over function with iOS and subsequently macOS. I remember reading the Human Interface Guidelin

by _0xdd 3mo ago

It's still a bit jarring to me to see how far Apple embraced form over function with iOS and subsequently macOS. I remember reading the Human Interface Guidelines from the late Mac OS 9/early Mac OS X days and being taken aback by the level of detail and thought that went into those interfaces. Don't get me wrong, some things made no sense (brushed metal was... a choice) but there was a certain level of polish that I don't think exists anymore.

nok22kon 3mo ago
it's market changed it started as a computer for professionals now its for people who want to look cool. so form is much more important than function, it's literally what you buy
- refactor_master 3mo ago
  Is that why their laptops routinely beat the competition year after year in reviews and reliability surveys? Because they “look cool”? I’m going to need some more numbers on that one.
  - FireBeyond 3mo ago
    All my devices are Apple: laptop, Studio, display, phone, iPad, watch... I will say that Apple has solidified on the design and reliability "recently". But let's not pretend that the MBP line, to pick on one, didn't go through some rough rough days. I've had laptops that had the delaminating screen, the 'single grain of sand can ruin it' butterfly keyboard, hell, I've had two models that had recalled logic boards. Early Magsafe connectors (fantastic invention) where the rubber would routinely fail even without tension (I had two that failed, exposing bare wire, even though they spent the entirety of their life on a desk, routed through a cable organizer, far away from any UV sunlight hitting them directly. But now? Things are much, much more solid.
    - TylerE 3mo ago
      Even the worst MBP is light years better than the plasticky crap on the Windows side.
      - FireBeyond 3mo ago
        If you're comparing an MBP to a $500 Acer (the Neo changes that nexus a bit, though I don't know much about it), then yes, of course it is, and for a reason (or 600-1000 reasons). I don't use anything, but it's not like Windows is AWOL - my partner's Dell is quality construction, and the Yoga Pro my stepdaughter uses for college. You could still say (and I'd agree) that the MBP is still better designed (for me: "except the edges" - I hate the sharpness) but it's not like "there's Macs and there's dogshit".
      - rolymath 3mo ago
        "Plasticky crap" like the x1 carbon? I daily drive a mac, but I would drop it in an instant once I can get linux on arm on thinkpad.
    - happymellon 3mo ago
      You missed the late Intel MBPs which I remember heating up hotter than the sun and exhausting it out the back which made the touch bar uncomfortable to touch!
      - LoganDark 3mo ago
        [dead]
      - nayroclade 3mo ago
        Some of the other examples you could maybe say are just poor industrial design or bad execution of a potentially workable idea, but the Intel MBP thermal debacle was definitely the most egregious example of Apple blindly pursuing form-over-function. They set a goal for ultra-slim laptop forms that the components they were using simply could never achieve. It would have been obvious from prototyping that temperature was a major problem, but whatever decision making process they had in place at the time overrode it. The best you can say is they seemed to have learned from their mistake.
- wpm 3mo ago
  Haha yeah! Mac users just buy them to look cool while they write their whatever in the coffee shop! This is definitely not a preposterous and outdated observation/joke!
  - dsego 3mo ago
    Wasn't there a trend where kids were just wearing dead apple watches as accessories? It's just a status symbol, like gold bracelets.
    - wett 3mo ago
      I just graduated college and I’ve never heard of this. Can’t find anything about it online either. You can get a functional Apple Watch on Facebook for 50-100 bucks. So not much of a signal for status. We have much sillier, trendier accessories to choose from :)
      - dsego 3mo ago
        Might be just a certain demographic then, there was a viral tiktok with athletes wearing dead apple watches.
        internet2000 3mo ago
        Are you not in the United States?
        dsego 3mo ago
        I'm not.
      - lukan 3mo ago
        Not every kid has 50-100 bucks avaiable.
    - KPGv2 3mo ago
      Yeah, and there are kids pooping in litterboxes in Texas schools! /s I would never trust media covering youth trends. It's a bunch of 50yos whose teenager told them something as a joke and they took it seriously. See also: latest millennial trend is avocado toast, and that's why they're all broke
- Quothling 3mo ago
  I challenge you to find a laptop that can do what my macbook air m1 with 8gb of ram does at the $899 it was through the education store. No fan, awesome battery life, good trackpad and keyboard, the ability to not get hot while using it. I'm a senior platform engineer who at the time I bought it was a senior software developer, who can still use it for my daily tasks despite it having 8gb of ram. Until very recently the 32gb T14 I had ad work was frankly worse performant than the little air, while having a battery life of around 45 minutes a fan sounding like a jetengine and a keyboard so hot it made the sun jealous. My new model is way faster than my macbook air though, but the old model was technically newer than the air. Obviously the comparisson isn't completely fair since we run a lot of corporate enterprise stuff on our laptops, but still. I'd really like a Linux laptop, but a Framework laptop is expensive (and it has loud fans and runs hot). A tuxedo is even more expensive and has fans where you'd place it on your legs for whatever reason, and runs hot. Looking at the laptop market now, I can't see what you'd buy. A week ago I would've said the Neo (if the 8gb of ram holds up as well on the mobile chip as it does on the m1), but today I'm guessing a refurbished air with 16gb would be the only real option for someone who want's a cool low noise machine with decent battery time. Whether you run OS/X or Asahi, I really can't see what you'd buy other than these. At least if you actually use it on your lap and don't just have it sit in a dock on a table. Then again, I'm the sort of person who would buy the pink neo because it would fuck with the perception people have of my mid 40 Scandinavian conservativeish dad look. So maybe it is just about the message?
  - 21asdffdsa12 3mo ago
    Are there any laptops where the cooling is handled by the screen backside?
  - applfanboysbgon 3mo ago
    > $899 it was through the education store Comparing a subsidised computer for children to one that isn't isn't exactly a fair comparison, is it? > No fan, You know why Macbooks don't need a fan? It's because they aren't powerful enough to draw heat in the first place. A month ago, for the same price as a $1700 Macbook Pro (before the recent increase) I got a laptop with a CPU that is literally twice as fast on parellelisable workloads, has a 5070 Ti vs. nothing at all, and 32GB RAM. A superior screen, keyboard, and I can install my own choice of OS on it, too. Now that same dingy Macbook Pro costs $2000, or $2400 if you want 32GB RAM. Apple's greatest coup was convincing people that paying twice as much for half the hardware was a killer feature, and now everyone goes on and on about how Macbooks are the most premium hardware money can buy because they're so weak they don't need a fan to keep them cool. It's truly remarkable how susceptible people are to status-culture-based marketing. Username related.
- mfru 3mo ago
  MacBooks have the best value/money ratio at the moment. The combination of battery life, processing power and touch pad UX are unmatched
- ChrisMarshallNY 3mo ago
  > it started as a computer for professionals I feel as if it was the opposite. It started as a true "home computer," and nowadays, it's used to do work. The fact that MacOS is probably the worst gaming platform on Earth (and Apple doesn't seem to lose sleep over it -although I think they'd like iPad to be a better gaming platform), is an indicator that people use the computer to get work done; whether at home, or in the office. But there's a lot of pretty visceral hatred for Apple -especially in tech circles- so I don't expect much reasoned discourse about it.
- pndy 3mo ago
  I dare to say that this market change works both ways. Software is now created by people who have little idea about UI concepts, or even who don't want to bother themselves with these. Because the dominant type of a device is no longer a desktop computer. This isn't about strictly Apple as other companies also create, or allow to exist "awful" interfaces with no substance. Is it a bad thing? Not necessary. Smartphones revolution made Internet truly accessible to everyone by cost of dumbing down software by features and UI - turning effectively these devices to work like any other home appliance. Software today has to have that captivating appearance so user wouldn't be scared away. But nothing is perfect and there are examples where users are being treated with this nasty infantile approach by literally showing confetti and balloons as the satisfaction derived from interaction. The peak was flat style which not only introduced maximum simplified interfaces, design but also provided grounds for all sorts of darkpatterns where content is indistinguishable from active element. That let companies manipulate the user's informed choice.
matsemann 3mo ago
Yeah, for a decade now it's been a UX disaster. It "works", because so many people are used to it, but look at a new user trying to navigate iOS, it's bonkers. Swiping from random directions achieves different things (and how would you even know you can?). The home button has like 11 different functions depending on how you press it and when.
- altern8 3mo ago
  That's what made me switch to Android. At least you can have 3-button navigation
  - KronisLV 3mo ago
    I moved over from my old Android to an iPhone (needed to develop an iOS app for a freelance thing too) and that was the first thing that cause me off guard - it’s like controls that should be buttons of some kind were just omitted.
  - petee 3mo ago
    Even thats slowly being depreciated for gestures as the default option. A bunch of Google's own apps won't play nice with it anymore on the flagship Pixel, drawing buttons underneath
  - jaffa2 3mo ago
    Its just as bad. Please define ‘back’
    - MayeulC 3mo ago
      1. Hide virtual keyboard if shown 2. Go to previous app view. This is app-dependent though it will probably, successively with each press: a. Close menus if open (context, sidebar, etc) b. Go to previous (web)page if web/file browser c. Go out of submenus (ex: settings/WiFi -> settings) if not in a browser or if the oldest page has been reached. Keeps walking the tree upwards. 3. Reach the main app view (usually the one you land on when opening the app) 4. One more press minimizes the app. It is fairly consistent, but some apps decide otherwise: * some will minimize as soon as you press it (I've seen games do it) * some will open a new menu (again, games: pause menu) * some will seemingly walk you the history of visited pages instead of the hierarchy -- which may make sense but can be confusing * some old apps will display a toast "press back twice to exit". This used to be common back when physical buttons were the norm, but I haven't seen this message a lot. So, mostly consistent with some weird-behaving apps. Same as on desktop I guess?
_jackdk_ 3mo ago
It's such a shame because back then even Windows was motivated by actual human user research and had thorough guidelines. https://ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/courses/ICS104/course-notes/Microsoft_WindowsGuidelines.pdf https://ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/courses/ICS104/course-notes/Micro... (HN discussion from a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475521 .) https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-06-16/0/POSTING-en.html https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-06-16/0/POSTING-en.html was an interesting look at Win2K's UI controls and how much clearer they are compared to modern UIs.
ivorius 3mo ago
The past 10 years have been a sad, slow decline for Apple's UIs. I'm really hoping for them to reclaim some of their former UI glory. At least, in Golden Gate, they reverted their own HIG violation of excessive icons back to factory: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/11/macos-27-golden-gate-menu-items/ https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/11/macos-27-golden-gate-me...
- kridsdale1 3mo ago
  The time span and visible effect are both fully attributable to Alan Dye being head of design. It (what we have today) was his style. He made this world. He’s out now. We can start to do something else.
mghackerlady 3mo ago
I think OS 9 (and that entire era of computer graphics design) had the perfect mix of form and function. I won't comment on it aesthetically as that is entirely subjective, but its use of shape and depth made things very human friendly. Buttons looked distinctly buttonable. The icon design was also great, they were skeuomorphic enough that you generally got the idea of what you were clicking but also flat enough that they weren't distracting
graypegg 3mo ago
> brushed metal was... a choice Man... I stand by it being an interesting idea that they fumbled by not following their own HIG. Even if it is a bit of a silly line of reasoning, there was (at least originally) a purpose to the brushed metal UI. Anything that was capable of external IO (quicktime for ingesting firewire feed from camera, itunes for syncing with an iPod, finder for disks) was supposed to have a brushed metal interface. There's a world where 2 different classes of windows stuck around (one for things INSIDE the computer, one for things OUTSIDE of the computer) and I bet we would've gotten a lot more afforadances for real-life devices. Maybe a predictable device status UI in those sorts of windows or something. Maybe they'd just be those white panes with fancy animated product shots that show up when you get an Apple-blessed bluetooth device near an iPhone. There's at least some reasoning to treat external IO windows as sharing some sort of common UX. (Answering pretty common gadget questions like: is it connected, is it charging, is it lost, etc etc etc) But then the waters get muddied with the calculator being brushed metal because it's trying to look like a calculator. And safari... because I guess the network is external but...? I think a little after John wrote this blog post I'm using to jog my memory, all pinstripe windows were gone except maybe the preferences panes... so it was definitely arbitrary form over function at that point. (Jogging my memory from: https://daringfireball.net/2004/10/brushed-metal https://daringfireball.net/2004/10/brushed-metal)
dillondoyle 3mo ago
The abandonment of their own guidelines is sad. Great post below visually outlines how they've totally funked macos drop downs. Too many icons you can't focus, inconsistent color, icons are unclear, repeated, or have 10 versions of an icon to 'add new folder' or other actions across their own apps. at least iOS has great features. Surfacing them though.. I regularly learn new ones from tiktok. For instance i just learned about the motion sickness dots. https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/ https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/

by _0xdd 3mo ago

nok22kon 3mo ago

it's market changed it started as a computer for professionals now its for people who want to look cool. so form is much more important than function, it's literally what you buy

refactor_master 3mo ago
Is that why their laptops routinely beat the competition year after year in reviews and reliability surveys? Because they “look cool”? I’m going to need some more numbers on that one.
- FireBeyond 3mo ago
  All my devices are Apple: laptop, Studio, display, phone, iPad, watch... I will say that Apple has solidified on the design and reliability "recently". But let's not pretend that the MBP line, to pick on one, didn't go through some rough rough days. I've had laptops that had the delaminating screen, the 'single grain of sand can ruin it' butterfly keyboard, hell, I've had two models that had recalled logic boards. Early Magsafe connectors (fantastic invention) where the rubber would routinely fail even without tension (I had two that failed, exposing bare wire, even though they spent the entirety of their life on a desk, routed through a cable organizer, far away from any UV sunlight hitting them directly. But now? Things are much, much more solid.
  - TylerE 3mo ago
    Even the worst MBP is light years better than the plasticky crap on the Windows side.
    - FireBeyond 3mo ago
      If you're comparing an MBP to a $500 Acer (the Neo changes that nexus a bit, though I don't know much about it), then yes, of course it is, and for a reason (or 600-1000 reasons). I don't use anything, but it's not like Windows is AWOL - my partner's Dell is quality construction, and the Yoga Pro my stepdaughter uses for college. You could still say (and I'd agree) that the MBP is still better designed (for me: "except the edges" - I hate the sharpness) but it's not like "there's Macs and there's dogshit".
    - rolymath 3mo ago
      "Plasticky crap" like the x1 carbon? I daily drive a mac, but I would drop it in an instant once I can get linux on arm on thinkpad.
  - happymellon 3mo ago
    You missed the late Intel MBPs which I remember heating up hotter than the sun and exhausting it out the back which made the touch bar uncomfortable to touch!
    - LoganDark 3mo ago
      [dead]
    - nayroclade 3mo ago
      Some of the other examples you could maybe say are just poor industrial design or bad execution of a potentially workable idea, but the Intel MBP thermal debacle was definitely the most egregious example of Apple blindly pursuing form-over-function. They set a goal for ultra-slim laptop forms that the components they were using simply could never achieve. It would have been obvious from prototyping that temperature was a major problem, but whatever decision making process they had in place at the time overrode it. The best you can say is they seemed to have learned from their mistake.
wpm 3mo ago
Haha yeah! Mac users just buy them to look cool while they write their whatever in the coffee shop! This is definitely not a preposterous and outdated observation/joke!
- dsego 3mo ago
  Wasn't there a trend where kids were just wearing dead apple watches as accessories? It's just a status symbol, like gold bracelets.
  - wett 3mo ago
    I just graduated college and I’ve never heard of this. Can’t find anything about it online either. You can get a functional Apple Watch on Facebook for 50-100 bucks. So not much of a signal for status. We have much sillier, trendier accessories to choose from :)
    - dsego 3mo ago
      Might be just a certain demographic then, there was a viral tiktok with athletes wearing dead apple watches.
      - internet2000 3mo ago
        Are you not in the United States?
        dsego 3mo ago
        I'm not.
    - lukan 3mo ago
      Not every kid has 50-100 bucks avaiable.
  - KPGv2 3mo ago
    Yeah, and there are kids pooping in litterboxes in Texas schools! /s I would never trust media covering youth trends. It's a bunch of 50yos whose teenager told them something as a joke and they took it seriously. See also: latest millennial trend is avocado toast, and that's why they're all broke
Quothling 3mo ago
I challenge you to find a laptop that can do what my macbook air m1 with 8gb of ram does at the $899 it was through the education store. No fan, awesome battery life, good trackpad and keyboard, the ability to not get hot while using it. I'm a senior platform engineer who at the time I bought it was a senior software developer, who can still use it for my daily tasks despite it having 8gb of ram. Until very recently the 32gb T14 I had ad work was frankly worse performant than the little air, while having a battery life of around 45 minutes a fan sounding like a jetengine and a keyboard so hot it made the sun jealous. My new model is way faster than my macbook air though, but the old model was technically newer than the air. Obviously the comparisson isn't completely fair since we run a lot of corporate enterprise stuff on our laptops, but still. I'd really like a Linux laptop, but a Framework laptop is expensive (and it has loud fans and runs hot). A tuxedo is even more expensive and has fans where you'd place it on your legs for whatever reason, and runs hot. Looking at the laptop market now, I can't see what you'd buy. A week ago I would've said the Neo (if the 8gb of ram holds up as well on the mobile chip as it does on the m1), but today I'm guessing a refurbished air with 16gb would be the only real option for someone who want's a cool low noise machine with decent battery time. Whether you run OS/X or Asahi, I really can't see what you'd buy other than these. At least if you actually use it on your lap and don't just have it sit in a dock on a table. Then again, I'm the sort of person who would buy the pink neo because it would fuck with the perception people have of my mid 40 Scandinavian conservativeish dad look. So maybe it is just about the message?
- 21asdffdsa12 3mo ago
  Are there any laptops where the cooling is handled by the screen backside?
- applfanboysbgon 3mo ago
  > $899 it was through the education store Comparing a subsidised computer for children to one that isn't isn't exactly a fair comparison, is it? > No fan, You know why Macbooks don't need a fan? It's because they aren't powerful enough to draw heat in the first place. A month ago, for the same price as a $1700 Macbook Pro (before the recent increase) I got a laptop with a CPU that is literally twice as fast on parellelisable workloads, has a 5070 Ti vs. nothing at all, and 32GB RAM. A superior screen, keyboard, and I can install my own choice of OS on it, too. Now that same dingy Macbook Pro costs $2000, or $2400 if you want 32GB RAM. Apple's greatest coup was convincing people that paying twice as much for half the hardware was a killer feature, and now everyone goes on and on about how Macbooks are the most premium hardware money can buy because they're so weak they don't need a fan to keep them cool. It's truly remarkable how susceptible people are to status-culture-based marketing. Username related.
mfru 3mo ago
MacBooks have the best value/money ratio at the moment. The combination of battery life, processing power and touch pad UX are unmatched
ChrisMarshallNY 3mo ago
> it started as a computer for professionals I feel as if it was the opposite. It started as a true "home computer," and nowadays, it's used to do work. The fact that MacOS is probably the worst gaming platform on Earth (and Apple doesn't seem to lose sleep over it -although I think they'd like iPad to be a better gaming platform), is an indicator that people use the computer to get work done; whether at home, or in the office. But there's a lot of pretty visceral hatred for Apple -especially in tech circles- so I don't expect much reasoned discourse about it.
pndy 3mo ago
I dare to say that this market change works both ways. Software is now created by people who have little idea about UI concepts, or even who don't want to bother themselves with these. Because the dominant type of a device is no longer a desktop computer. This isn't about strictly Apple as other companies also create, or allow to exist "awful" interfaces with no substance. Is it a bad thing? Not necessary. Smartphones revolution made Internet truly accessible to everyone by cost of dumbing down software by features and UI - turning effectively these devices to work like any other home appliance. Software today has to have that captivating appearance so user wouldn't be scared away. But nothing is perfect and there are examples where users are being treated with this nasty infantile approach by literally showing confetti and balloons as the satisfaction derived from interaction. The peak was flat style which not only introduced maximum simplified interfaces, design but also provided grounds for all sorts of darkpatterns where content is indistinguishable from active element. That let companies manipulate the user's informed choice.

matsemann 3mo ago

Yeah, for a decade now it's been a UX disaster. It "works", because so many people are used to it, but look at a new user trying to navigate iOS, it's bonkers. Swiping from random directions achieves different things (and how would you even know you can?). The home button has like 11 different functions depending on how you press it and when.

altern8 3mo ago
That's what made me switch to Android. At least you can have 3-button navigation
- KronisLV 3mo ago
  I moved over from my old Android to an iPhone (needed to develop an iOS app for a freelance thing too) and that was the first thing that cause me off guard - it’s like controls that should be buttons of some kind were just omitted.
- petee 3mo ago
  Even thats slowly being depreciated for gestures as the default option. A bunch of Google's own apps won't play nice with it anymore on the flagship Pixel, drawing buttons underneath
- jaffa2 3mo ago
  Its just as bad. Please define ‘back’
  - MayeulC 3mo ago
    1. Hide virtual keyboard if shown 2. Go to previous app view. This is app-dependent though it will probably, successively with each press: a. Close menus if open (context, sidebar, etc) b. Go to previous (web)page if web/file browser c. Go out of submenus (ex: settings/WiFi -> settings) if not in a browser or if the oldest page has been reached. Keeps walking the tree upwards. 3. Reach the main app view (usually the one you land on when opening the app) 4. One more press minimizes the app. It is fairly consistent, but some apps decide otherwise: * some will minimize as soon as you press it (I've seen games do it) * some will open a new menu (again, games: pause menu) * some will seemingly walk you the history of visited pages instead of the hierarchy -- which may make sense but can be confusing * some old apps will display a toast "press back twice to exit". This used to be common back when physical buttons were the norm, but I haven't seen this message a lot. So, mostly consistent with some weird-behaving apps. Same as on desktop I guess?

_jackdk_ 3mo ago

It's such a shame because back then even Windows was motivated by actual human user research and had thorough guidelines. https://ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/courses/ICS104/course-notes/Microsoft_WindowsGuidelines.pdf https://ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/courses/ICS104/course-notes/Micro... (HN discussion from a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475521 .) https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-06-16/0/POSTING-en.html https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-06-16/0/POSTING-en.html was an interesting look at Win2K's UI controls and how much clearer they are compared to modern UIs.

ivorius 3mo ago

The past 10 years have been a sad, slow decline for Apple's UIs. I'm really hoping for them to reclaim some of their former UI glory. At least, in Golden Gate, they reverted their own HIG violation of excessive icons back to factory: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/11/macos-27-golden-gate-menu-items/ https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/11/macos-27-golden-gate-me...

kridsdale1 3mo ago
The time span and visible effect are both fully attributable to Alan Dye being head of design. It (what we have today) was his style. He made this world. He’s out now. We can start to do something else.

mghackerlady 3mo ago

I think OS 9 (and that entire era of computer graphics design) had the perfect mix of form and function. I won't comment on it aesthetically as that is entirely subjective, but its use of shape and depth made things very human friendly. Buttons looked distinctly buttonable. The icon design was also great, they were skeuomorphic enough that you generally got the idea of what you were clicking but also flat enough that they weren't distracting

graypegg 3mo ago

> brushed metal was... a choice Man... I stand by it being an interesting idea that they fumbled by not following their own HIG. Even if it is a bit of a silly line of reasoning, there was (at least originally) a purpose to the brushed metal UI. Anything that was capable of external IO (quicktime for ingesting firewire feed from camera, itunes for syncing with an iPod, finder for disks) was supposed to have a brushed metal interface. There's a world where 2 different classes of windows stuck around (one for things INSIDE the computer, one for things OUTSIDE of the computer) and I bet we would've gotten a lot more afforadances for real-life devices. Maybe a predictable device status UI in those sorts of windows or something. Maybe they'd just be those white panes with fancy animated product shots that show up when you get an Apple-blessed bluetooth device near an iPhone. There's at least some reasoning to treat external IO windows as sharing some sort of common UX. (Answering pretty common gadget questions like: is it connected, is it charging, is it lost, etc etc etc) But then the waters get muddied with the calculator being brushed metal because it's trying to look like a calculator. And safari... because I guess the network is external but...? I think a little after John wrote this blog post I'm using to jog my memory, all pinstripe windows were gone except maybe the preferences panes... so it was definitely arbitrary form over function at that point. (Jogging my memory from: https://daringfireball.net/2004/10/brushed-metal https://daringfireball.net/2004/10/brushed-metal)

dillondoyle 3mo ago

The abandonment of their own guidelines is sad. Great post below visually outlines how they've totally funked macos drop downs. Too many icons you can't focus, inconsistent color, icons are unclear, repeated, or have 10 versions of an icon to 'add new folder' or other actions across their own apps. at least iOS has great features. Surfacing them though.. I regularly learn new ones from tiktok. For instance i just learned about the motion sickness dots. https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/ https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/