
The Apple Goes Mushy Part II: OS X's Interface Decline - j-kent
http://www.nicholaswindsorhoward.com/blog-directory/2016/7/28/the-apple-goes-mushy-part-ii
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carsongross
Flat UI and minimalism has destroyed UX. What's a button? What's a badge?
What's a tab? What's clickable? What's an indicator? Who knows? It's all plain
boxes or circles and it's all washed out.

There were problems with skeuomorphism, to be sure, but the design communities
reaction has been even worse.

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ramenmeal
Yeah I think Google's on a much better track with material design. It's "flat"
enough to look modern, but gives you better UX cue's.

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oliv__
To me, it looks like the worst of both worlds: ugly shadows stand as ruins of
the past, while usability still takes a hit as the guidelines still tend
heavily on flat design trends.

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ramenmeal
What gets me is this trend of taking random important buttons and hiding them
unless you hold the option key. It's so bizarre that they think this is a good
idea. Finding detect displays always requires a google search. They also did
it for the Library entry in Finder's "Go" menu.

~~~
quantumhobbit
I think this is often the result of conflicts between management. One manager
wants to have a clean interface and says get rid of the "detect displays"
button. The other says that detect displays is a important feature we can't
get rid of. What we get is the compromise that is worse than either option.

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peyton
Maybe, though here's another take: "Detect displays" is confusing. I don't
even know what it does. The option key is for people who already know what
they want and isn't meant to be discoverable.

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chasing
This feels like a list of complaints -- some legit, others not so much -- that
don't support the very major conclusion that Apple has a "declining aptitude
for the discipline of user interface design."

If you're going to draw that sort of conclusion, you need to support it with a
_lot_ more than just a laundry list of stuff like "progress bar animations are
more difficult to see" and "drop shadows are lighter."

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beautifulfreak
I upgraded from Mavericks to El Capitan the day before Part I of this article
appeared, and many of the points it raises are descriptive of difficulties
I've encountered. The argument isn't about aesthetics, it's about
functionality, a reduction in ease of use. The guy said there were many more
things he could list, and I believe him, because some of my own complaints
weren't on his list - some more serious than others. None is a show stopper.
We Apple fans just wonder what is the reason why. It looks like change for the
sake of change, with entropy included.

~~~
cassowary
"The argument isn't about aesthetics, it's about functionality, a reduction in
ease of use."

this. the problem is the functionality is the visual appearance of the system,
so they hire visual artists who think in terms of aesthetics, not design
engineers who think in terms functionality and easy of use.

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sidereal1
What I find interesting about this is that Windows manages to achieve all
these goals (most of the time) while having a flat modern design. High
contrast, responsive feedback, Windows 10 has that. Of course Windows falls
short in other areas like consistency, or stupid things like have a control
panel and a separate settings menu.

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Mikhail_Edoshin
My impression is that it all started much earlier. The old Apple (classic Mac
OS) had very strong interface design culture and it continued into early
releases of Mac OS X, but the decline began to feel in v10.6, I think, if not
earlier.

Take, for example, the new search interface, where you first type a query,
wait a little while it's hitting the search index, and only then get shown a
button to choose the search options. Compare it with the old search utility
(from the classic Mac OS) where you have both ways (simple and advanced) right
from the start. The new way was already a crime unimaginable in classic Mac
OS. Yet it happened, and I've just checked it -- it was in v10.4 in 2005.

Cultures die slowly, so the wrong turn has probably happened much earlier than
the author thinks.

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PhantomGremlin
Nobody has said it yet, so here goes ...

Steve Jobs warned about having "bozos" in a company. Perhaps there are just
too many of them working at Apple now that Steve isn't around to fire a few
every so often?

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/31/why-
every...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/31/why-every-
company-needs-a-no-bozo-policy/)

Edit: Found something. Here's a research analyst making the same point:
[http://www.streetinsider.com/Analyst+Comments/Is+Apple+(AAPL...](http://www.streetinsider.com/Analyst+Comments/Is+Apple+\(AAPL\)+Being+Run+by+a+Bunch+of+Bozos%3F/11185478.html)

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knucklesandwich
I'm not a design expert or necessarily even design literate. Stating up front:
I understand the importance of design and think it's a super important
profession. If anything, I'm envious of people who have the ability to
practice good design.

I have to say that when I read stuff like this it kind of scares me away from
trying to become fluent enough in design to practice it, because of where
subjectivity seems to hide. I think I understand the principles of contrast,
hierarchy, balance, scale, feedback, etc. in theory, it just seems very
difficult to holistically judge a design that may be emphasizing different
attributes to achieve these characteristics.

Take the complaint about button weight:

> Where thick, dark borders and arrow glyphs used to bulge the buttons toward
> one’s eye, the buttons now “weigh” so little that to distinguish them is a
> chore. The same goes for other buttons throughout OS X.

The borders may appear lighter in the displayed photo, but how can I judge
contrast without seeing the contrasted element(s) (i.e. the surface on which
the buttons rest, the positioning from other UI elements, etc.). Also in some
ways, there seems to be more contrast in the new buttons. For instance, the
button shapes seem to contrast from each other by not being cutouts of the
same rectangular shape. Perhaps that's the only contrast that's really matters
here, since another form of contrast may be in place to distinguish this
button group?

Similarly the discussion about drop shadows is difficult for me to grapple
with. What are the drop shadows on the dock doing for me? It seems like a drop
shadow is useful for distinguishing mutable elements (UI controls) from static
content, but the dock only serves to launch applications. As a user of Apple
products for years, I'm innately trained to understand this, but perhaps this
is untrue of a first time macbook owner? I understand that experimental design
to test these kinds of things is very difficult, but perhaps it'd be a more
convincing argument with some supporting evidence.

Or take the complaint about feedback with the "New Folder" button in Notes.
It's true enough that there's no visual feedback on the button itself, however
when you click the button a highlighted text field appears above, waiting for
you to enter in the folder name. I sort of understand this complaint, but when
I tried to play devil's advocate I came up with the explanation that the
feedback was actually drawing attention to the next task I needed to do (i.e.
naming the folder) instead of the button itself. Which way of seeing this is
valid?

I feel like these kinds of conversations are very interesting and important
for making design decisions that benefit the largest number of people, but it
seems like the conversation often relies on subjective judgements on design
elements that could be argued either way.

