
The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's  Interface Decline - helb
http://www.nicholaswindsorhoward.com/blog-directory/2016/7/20/the-apple-goes-mushy-part-i
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56k
This article doesn't make any sense.

The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and
the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now,
this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years.

While I agree that new macOS icons aren't great (see the Game Center icon),
the old ones were silly. I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact
book only once when I was little. It doesn't make sense to have a skeuomorphic
contact book as an icon for Contacts. The old icon for Pages? I don't even
know what that is, I'm not into calligraphy.

The only thing I'd agree with is hiding UI controls. Apple has been making its
apps less usable to make them look pretty, hiding important elements in an
attempt to declutter the interface. I hate how Safari hides the full address
in the address bar, for instance. Or, how they removed scrollbars and force
people to actually scroll every piece of the interface to check if there's
something more to see, while before you could tell just by looking at
scrollbars. Of course, there are settings to go back to the old behavior for
both my examples, so power users are fine, but I fail to see how these moves
improve things for regular users.

I also disagree that Steve Job's death was detrimental to macOS's UI. He was
the one who kept Apple looking outdated with his obsession for skeuomorphism,
I'm glad they went for a flatter look right after his death.

Of course, everyone's taste is different, but I still think this is a bad
article.

~~~
phoboslab
> I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book once when I was
> little. It doesn't make sense to have a skeuomorphic contact book as an icon
> for Contacts.

There was a rhetoric not too long ago where OSx fanboys would make fun of
Windows' interfaces for still using the disk icon as the "save" button. Now
that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And
Shoot camera, when fewer and fewer people use those.

Skeuomorphism doesn't make sense anymore when the real world items it's based
on are vanishing.

Case in point – telling a young kid how to answer a call on the iPhone: press
the green banana button.

~~~
verisimilidude
> Skeuomorphism doesn't make sense anymore when the real world items it's
> based on are vanishing.

Does that really matter? A perfect case in point was the old Pages icon in OS
X: a quill pen in front of a cup of ink. Do you know any person who has ever
used a pen like that in real life? Have you ever even seen a pen like that?
I'm willing to guess not. But everyone still recognized the contents of that
icon, and correctly inferred that the app was for writing things.

Furthermore, the use of ye olde imagery in that icon was playful, like the app
was inviting you to an older time when writing was simpler and you could just
focus on your words. The app was aiming for that kind of simplicity too. The
use of way outdated imagery in the icon did not prevent Apple from conveying
deep meaning to a modern audience. If anything, it enhanced the point they
were trying to make with that icon.

~~~
kenbellows
I'd argue that the quill pen was a special case. As you point out, it was an
intentional anachronism to communicate a certain point. This was not the case
with, e.g., the floppy disk, the notepad, the contacts book, etc. Everyone
knew what the quill pen was because it was still frequently seen in portrayals
of the olden days when it was used; even today, portrayals of Victorian
England in Doctor Who or Revolutionary America in Hamilton inevitably show a
few quill pens in use. But the reason people recognized floppy disks, contact
books, and notepads was because they were still in active use at the time.

You point out that while the quill pen was long outdated when it was first
used, "everyone still recognized the contents of that icon", but that's
exactly the problem that the GP and GGP are pointing out: more and more of the
old skeuomorphic icons reference real world icons that younger users (and
indeed some older users) actually _don 't_ recognize. Notepads, sure, we've
still got those; contact books, eh, you'll see them once in a while, but tbh
when I see a bare "contact book" icon without a label it occasionally takes me
a second to figure out what I'm looking at; floppy disks, as has been argued
to death, are entirely a thing of the past, with the exception of old systems
and archives still in use in dusty university basements. Young users today
essentially just know the image of a floppy disc as "the save button" without
any skeuomorphic rationale backing it up.

The skeuomorphic link between computers and the physical objects we use is is
constantly degrading, to the point that using skeuo icons can sometimes
actually inhibit the user experience and slow the user down while they try to
figure out what they're looking at. We have common patterns emerging with no
or very little connection to the real world; a great example would the
"hamburger" menu button. If there's any metaphor there in the user's mind,
it's to the row items that will appear when you click on it, not to anything
physical, yet it's perfectly comprehensible to anyone who's been using digital
devices for any length of time.

~~~
emodendroket
> Young users today essentially just know the image of a floppy disc as "the
> save button" without any skeuomorphic rationale backing it up.

Yeah, but so what? It is, nevertheless, recognizable to nearly everyone. In a
world where cars still advertise their "horsepower" and pencils have graphite
compound "leads" we can probably live with an icon that is well understood but
whose original referent is no longer familiar.

~~~
spoondan
The icon is recognizable because younger people learn the weird boxy icon
means save. Even with an explanation of the icon's origins, for the younger
generation, the icon is _recognizable but not meaningful_. Can we devise a
more meaningful icon? Can we break with convention and just choose a different
icon that's recognizable but more aesthetically pleasing or consistent with
our style guides, even if it's still meaningless?

This isn't an argument against vestigial iconography. It's not even an
argument against skeuomorphism. It's a recognition that skeuomorphism
increasingly fails to serve its intended purpose of conveying a meaning. Once
we recognize that the old icons are dead metaphors, that we often times keep
them only because of inertia and not because they have any intrinsic value, we
can build momentum on the necessary work of establishing the visual language
of the digital age on its own terms.

~~~
marssaxman
What, you really think kids have no idea what floppy disks are? Of course they
do! They're young, not stupid. It's not as hard as you're making it sound.

Language is full of dead metaphor. Words and symbols have meaning because they
have been given meaning; most of the associations might as well be arbitrary.
Doesn't matter; humans are very good at recognizing these associations and
deriving the intent.

~~~
spoondan
Floppy disks have entirely disappeared from our daily lives except as an icon
(and then largely only on Windows). A computer-savvy 18 year old that grew up
on Macs could have entirely grown up without ever using a floppy disk and
rarely if ever seeing the icon. I know adolescents that have never seen a
floppy disk. Being unfamiliar with an obsolete media format doesn't make them
stupid.

As for the rest of your comment, I'm not sure what you think I was trying to
make sound difficult. I was arguing that it's entirely possible to replace the
floppy disk with an arbitrary symbol, and it's just inertia (user training and
a strange sacredness afforded this one random icon) that really keeps it
around. I think assosciating a distinct symbol with an action is pretty damned
easy, actually. (Designing a good symbol can be hard, though.)

~~~
marssaxman
One need not have ever personally used a floppy disk in order to recognize the
symbol and pick up its meaning through cultural context; this is exactly how
we learn to associate meanings with most of the symbols we use. We gain
familiarity with all kinds of obsolete technologies throughout the course of
an ordinary education, and easily recognize images of such devices whether or
not we've ever seen one in real life - but beyond that, we learn to recognize
all kinds of completely abstract symbols and use them as comfortably as words
or numbers. There's nothing harmful about the fact that the "save" icon
happens to look like an obsolete bit of storage media; the "save" symbol could
have any shape, as long as it doesn't already represent something else.

Of course it's _possible_ to pick a different symbol to represent the action
of saving data to permanent storage: but why bother? We have a symbol, and
it's as good as any other arbitrary symbol might be. Changing it would create
confusion for no benefit, since it's ultimately the association of the symbol
with the action that matters, and not the history of that symbol's origin.

------
arrrg
It’s not that important a point, but legal pads are a very US phenomena. I’m
German and I have never ever seen a yellow pad like that in person. The
current notes icon (with white paper) is much more in line with the note pads
you would encounter in Germany. Paper people write on to take notes is
typically just white. Maybe bound with a spiral on the left or top (and
perforated paper to tear off), maybe glued together at the top.

Maybe internationalization was a consideration here? Yellow paper doesn’t read
as anything recognizable internationally. (Yellow sticky notes are probably
internationally known, though.)

My overall point would also be that taste colors opinions in this case. Or
taste at least leaks into them. I think it’s important to be very careful with
that and to try and avoid to let taste color too much of what you think. (My
taste is very different from that of the author and as such I think many of
his points are just plain wrong-footed. There certainly are some good points
in there, but taste plays too much of a role.)

~~~
CatsoCatsoCatso
For me the old yellow colour implies that the notes taken within the app are
for easy disposal and will be poorly organised - just like how yellow paper is
used primarily for quick throw-away notes and scribbles in reality (at least
here in the UK).

The Notes app is far better than that, the white it uses now implies a more
permanent organised feel which better reflects the app. The texts I store
within it are important to me, they're not final documents but something I'd
treat better than a disposable scribble on a yellow-pad. With the app's
formatting, cloud and folder abilities this seems a good fit.

~~~
alex_hitchins
Where do you buy your notebooks? I've never come across yellow paper except in
US media.

I'd always assumed it was dyed yellow to hide poor quality paper. Is there any
truth in this?

~~~
Arnt
Never seen yellow notebooks, but yellow paper, sure. That yellow looks like
the colour of the A4 pads I bought at the university bookshop in Norway.

~~~
alex_hitchins
The only yellow paper I remember seeing was when I did a dunning cycle
application for accounts dept. Depending on the age of the debt, it would
either be white, fluorescent yellow or florescent orange. I remember thinking
this was a clever way to get your invoice noticed.

Perhaps yellow pads are the future.

------
jpalomaki
The camera icon is not just a picture of the physical world object. It is
pretty universal symbol for taking pictures. When the same symbol is used in
so many places, even people who have never used the physical object resembling
the icon, will recognize its meaning.

In my view the reason behind many of these user interface changes is not
really improved usability. The simple reason is that no matter how good
interface you design, after some years it just starts to feel old and boring.
Old and boring is hard to sell. Fresh and exciting is better. Therefore we
keep on changing stuff, even though from pure usability perspective it would
be better to stick to the old and boring but familiar.

Easy to use systems make happy customers, but they don't necessarily win the
customer's heart at that point when the purchase decision is made. Maybe this
is one issue for Apple? Maybe the "old Apple" was happy giving out xx% of
their sales for a bit of ideological reasons, but the one needs to find growth
where it can? One could see this kind of hints in the product lineup. I would
say back in the days it was pretty opinionated, now there's 4 different iPad
models (and countless variations).

~~~
josefdlange
This response is probably the most rational one I've seen here. It doesn't
dive into a holy war of UI opinions -- it sticks to observations of reality
and conclusions drawn from them.

Thank you for trying to introduce thoughtful conversation to the embers of a
flame war.

------
flohofwoe
The article misses the mark IMHO by focusing on skeuomorphic(sp?) icons.

Yes, usability has degraded during the recent 'flat design' craze, but not so
much because skeuomorphism was tossed out, but because the many little visual
design changes that kill discoverability.

The mobile operating systems started this trend where a lot of advanced
functionality was hidden behind 'magic' touch and swipe gestures that go way
beyond the simple and intuitive tap, zoom and rotate gestures, like 2-, 3- and
4-finger swipes, long and short touches, etc..., important features cannot be
visually discovered (how do I close an application again, on iOS, Android and
Windows8? how do I flip between applications? how do I take a screenshot?).

It's the many small things that kill usability for the sake of visual design:

\- the famous shift-key on iOS, what the hell were they thinking?

\- buttons are often indistinguishable from non-interactive label, leading to
idiotic trial and error clicking to find out which UI elements do something

\- scroll-bars that are hidden by default, loosing the information how far I
am into a document (OSX)

\- changing and moving things around just for the sake of confusing existing
users, not making anything more intuitive (especially Windows is guilty of
this)

And so on and on... the icon design is the least of the problems (and every OS
worth its salt should allow to replace the icon theme anyway).

One important reason I'm going back to the command line more and more is
because UIs have become so unusable for anything that goes beyond browsing an
image collection. Change itself is only good if it results in improvements,
but in the area of UI design, things that have been working just fine for 20
years have been broken for superficial visual effects.

It's like 90's web designers took over and are building operating system UIs
now (and may be there's a bit of truth in it).

It's not like the past was perfect of course, I mean... Alt-F4, Alt-TAB, ...
but that was on Windows which was always laughed at for its poor usability (at
least from view of AmigaOS and MacOS users).

~~~
josho
I don't like change for the sake of change either, as that is just setting
trends to help sell more product (e.g. the bi-annual iPhone case redesign).
But, the OS changes you highlighted all have real benefits that move the focus
from screen widgets to the actual content.

> \- buttons are often indistinguishable from non-interactive label, leading
> to idiotic trial and error clicking to find out which UI elements do
> something

How come everyone understands hyperlinks on the web, but when the OS follows
the same pattern you can't figure it out? I know a few apps have gotten this
wrong on occasion, but as long as the text for an action is coloured
differently than regular text then it's pretty obvious.

> scroll-bars that are hidden by default, loosing the information how far I am
> into a document (OSX)

On small screens (remember macbook airs are only 11" screens which I consider
small) this saves precious screen space. If you really need to know where you
are in a doc, resting your fingers on the trackpad and moving slightly brings
the bar back. I thought this was a brilliant design to reduce clutter on the
screen, not unlike how our browsers have been reducing their chrome to give
the content more room.

I'm all for removing clutter from my screen if it helps me focus on the
content.

------
petilon
EVERYTHING beautiful is skeuomorphic. The page turn in iOS 6 iBooks, page curl
in maps, cover flow, the shred animation in older versions of Passbook, the
date picker in iOS 6, rotating settings gear (when updating iOS 6), the Time
Machine interface in older versions of OS X, photo borders and shadows in
iWorks documents, etc.

This is not surprising, because our sense of beauty comes from the physical
world.

So what is the problem with skeuomorphism?

Tech enthusiasts would like their phones to look like something from the
future, not something from the past. But ordinary everyday people prefer for
it to look like things they are already familiar with, or can relate to.

Tech enthusiasts worry that the skeuomorphism was getting totally out of hand,
particularly where the UI metaphor started limiting functionality (e.g. an
address database that's limited to what a Rolodex can do, rather than
exploiting what is possible with a computer). But this is not really true. For
example, iBooks has instant search, something only possible with a computer.

Some people point out that many skeuomorphic elements reference things that a
large part of Apple's audience hasn't used in a long time, if ever. True, but
here's the thing: It doesn't matter whether the user has ever seen a reel-to-
reel tape. What matters is whether the visuals depict a physical object that
the user can model in his mind. If it is too abstract (that's the opposite of
physical) then non-tech-enthusiast users will find it hard to intuit.

Some people say skeuomorphism looks tacky. This is partly true. Skeuomorphism
is hard to do. When done poorly it does look tacky. But when done well it
looks very beautiful.

By removing all skeuomorphism Apple is throwing the baby out with the
bathwater.

~~~
rpgmaker
Honestly, I know things can't stay the same forever, particularly in the
design department, but to me Aqua still looks way better than current OSX
(granted, I only use OSX very sporadically for educational purposes). I have
to admit though that I'm not a huge fan of the flat designs that are currently
"in" where you can't easily tell when one UI element ends and the other
begins. I don't think that's very easy on the eyes generally but it seems that
I'm the only one that sees it that way. Whatever.

~~~
UIZealot
You are not alone. I also hate flat. And I also think the original Aqua looks
best, even today. I'm probably the only person who loves the Aqua pinstripes,
which Apple had to tone down gradually and finally completely remove,
presummably due to negative user feedbacks.

------
terda12
OS X looks better than ever. Yeah I agree with Notepad and Photos icons
looking not good but everything else is perfect. I'm typing this on an OSX
right now and it just looks great.

Worst part of the article by far was

> OS X packaging, once very elegant and eccentric (and printed on a physical
> box), has become thoroughly unremarkable.

This is 2016, no one uses CD's anymore. And that leopard print box design
looks like packaging for some kinky underwear.

~~~
carlosrg
>leopard print box design looks like packaging for some kinky underwear

It's funny witnessing how certain people that a couple years ago considered
Apple designs the pinnacle of design and far ahead of everything else using
the same arguments today that Windows fans used.

~~~
Gracana
I think you're making a big assumption about who is saying what.

~~~
zer0defex
Absolutely right.

------
fredsted
I like the minimalistic UI of El Capitan. It gets out of the way, and puts in
focus what I really want to look at: the content, Web pages, my code, my
photos. My computer is a tool, it's not an artwork I turn on to look at.

Buttons still look pushable, input fields still look editable. The Dock didn't
lose any functionality whatsoever by having the 3D effect removed.

In my opinion, the El Cap UI requires just as much talent as the overdesigned
(but very pretty) icons and graphics from the previous era. I don't miss the
brushed metal and pinstripes, though.

~~~
legulere
> My computer is a tool, it's not an artwork I turn on to look at

Things looking better actually has a positive effect on usability.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Hmm, not sure on that one. A beautiful interface can be better but I suspect
it's better to have an uglier consistent and intuitive interface.

I'm a long-term Inkscape user, they recently 'improved' the icons; it all
looks wrong (but handsome in a minimalistic, low-visibility of chrome, sort of
way) and disturbs my workflow considerably.

~~~
Silhouette
_A beautiful interface can be better but I suspect it 's better to have an
uglier consistent and intuitive interface._

I'm not sure why the parent comment was downvoted. If the above statement was
intended to mean that being consistent and intuitive is more important than
aesthetics then that is almost certainly true, in my experience designing and
testing UIs. Of course, the ideal is to have it all by using the aesthetics to
support the functionality. Being attractive and being functional aren't
mutually exclusive.

This is where, IMHO, a lot of generic minimalist/flat designs following the
current trend go wrong: they sacrifice so much detail and so many possible
ways to be visually distinctive or interactive that what remains inevitably
all looks very similar and loses some of the visual cues that could help to
guide the user in how the system works.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>Being attractive and being functional aren't mutually exclusive. //

But being fashionable and being functional are often opposing forces.

Seems to me flat web design was a reaction as the antithesis of an over-
indulgence in skeuomorphism. We just appear to have thrown out a lot of
affordance and visibility in that reaction.

~~~
Silhouette
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "over-indulgence in skeuomorphism".
However, if you're suggesting that the previous trend of almost photorealistic
visual styles could sometimes become _too_ detailed/cluttered/noisy or that
UIs in that style sometimes lost cohesion because being photorealistic was
about the only thing a lot of the iconography and window dressing had in
common, then I would agree with both of those points.

------
0942v8653
Note: This is my personal opinion!

I recently had to use a computer with OS X Mavericks on it (10.9 I think). I
was struck by how beautiful the interface was. I'm having trouble finding a
good screenshot illustrating this, but compare

[http://content.gcflearnfree.org/topics/243/2013_new_desktop....](http://content.gcflearnfree.org/topics/243/2013_new_desktop.jpg)

[http://download.softwsp.com/sites/12/2015/11/os-x-el-
capitan...](http://download.softwsp.com/sites/12/2015/11/os-x-el-capitan-
mac-012.jpg)

Everything just looks better on Mavericks. The gradients may be over-the-top
but they're at least consistent. Transparency on El Capitan is pointless and
ugly. Maybe I like the system font a little better.

Firefox is also a really good example; it looked great on Mavericks but has
not been able to fit in since.

Usually, I prefer simple UIs: i3, terminals, etc.. But the look they have done
for Yosemite/El Capitan just doesn't work.

~~~
daenney
Firefox's problem is that it does the whole UI by itself. This basically makes
it look out of place anywhere they haven't explicitly put effort into giving
it a similar experience.

It looks out of place on El Capitan and on macOS Sierra it's downright
disturbing. I don't want tab titles in Times New Roman (at least it reminds me
of that).

~~~
Sean1708
> Times New Roman (at least it reminds me of that).

Really? The tab titles on my firefox are very clearly a sans-serif font, and
don't look at all out of place.

~~~
daenney
Could be that that got fixed. I don't use Firefox on a daily basis so I tend
to be a few builds behind on the beta channel.

------
oneeyedpigeon
It seems as if the web has influenced the latest round of GUI designs,
especially the 'flat' design trend which has clearly harmed usability when it
comes to things like buttons. This is handled better by Android's material
design guidelines, but it's still a regression.

The problem with this approach is that the web has no guidelines whatsoever,
beyond user-agent defaults. So each and every site does their own thing
(whether 'good' or 'bad') and Apple (+ Google, etc.) decides to cherry-pick
what is 'popular' or thought to 'look good', seemingly without thinking
through the impact on usability. Or, possibly worse, they _have_ considered
the usability impact but deem the tradeoff worthwhile.

------
Shengbo
I have to disagree with the author. I understand his frustration with some of
the icon choices(Photos, Game center, etc.) but most of the things he's
grieving for are just tacky. The leopard pattern on the OSX box and the overly
cluttered illustration with the galaxy background, glassy surfaced "X", icons
and lens flare would look especially stupid in 2016.

I'm glad they removed all the silly shadows, 3d effects and animations and
defined more strict UI guidelines.

I don't need my OS to look like a Christmas tree.

~~~
lloeki
Case in point, just below the article you can find this:
[http://imgur.com/a/iQe0Z](http://imgur.com/a/iQe0Z)

The puzzle background goes contrarian to the text label and makes my eyes/mind
jump while trying to read the labels.

The first button makes me think of Wikipedia, the second one of Facebook. It's
precisely that kind of cognitive dissonance where you read "blue" written in
red and get asked to say the color or the word.

The last button has embossed text for some reason, possibly in an attempt to
make it readable in face of the noisy background, but in turn it makes it
stand apart from the other buttons.

The whole theme of the design reminds me precisely of the design language of
Mac OS X from its origins to Leopard. It's not bad _per se_ , but people don't
need as much no-so-subtle hints as before in the UI, which get perceived as
distracting noise. It's not zeitgeist anymore.

~~~
Shengbo
Yea, I didn't wanna be a dick by mentioning it but scrolling down to that
after reading the article just confused me even more about what the author
would define as "good UI".

I count at least 2 unnecessary textures, 4(or 5?) different fonts and a color
palette that makes no sense to me.

I know some people are enraged about how many "generic 3-column flat UI"
websites there are, but give me one of those any time instead of something
that can't make a decision over what unnecessary decorations to use around a
button that's already cluttered with a background texture and 3d effect.

~~~
x0
There's nothing wrong with unnecessary textures though. I think that's the
point the author was trying to make, stuff like that adds a bit of character.
Get rid of all the textures, and what do you have, another Bootstrap website.

------
zelos
The removal of colour from the icons in the Finder sidebar is the change that
feels the most clearly anti-usability to me. It clearly makes the items harder
to distinguish and has no benefits that I can see apart from fitting in with
the flat design concept.

~~~
wingerlang
That was probably the only thing I agreed with, because I sometimes have to
take an extra second to look for what I want there.

------
CPLX
I'm not sure how to tell this guy, but I'm over 40 years old and I have been
using Apple computers literally since elementary school. At a certain point
the reference to intuitive design can be to ones own past, if that past has
become sufficiently ingrained and intuitive to users.

I thought the lament about the photo app dropping the icon that looks like a
camera was particularly odd. He seems uninterested in even acknowledging the
point that _most cameras don 't look like that_ anymore, and there are many
(most?) full fledged adults who have never used a camera with a large attached
lens.

I'd even wonder at this point if there are more people in the world familiar
with Apple products than with actual apples that grow on trees, but I digress.

~~~
gurkendoktor
> the photo app dropping the icon that looks like a camera

But the old iPhoto icon was not only showing a camera, it was showing a camera
_and a photo_. The camera is part of the icon because iPhoto/Photos can also
be used to import photos from cameras that look exactly like the one in the
icon. The old icon really couldn't be more fitting for what the app does.

And even if users don't know what a camera is, they can still recognise the
other 50% of the icon.

Plus, Apple itself still uses the same type of camera in other icons, most
notably on the current iOS lock screen, so I don't think anyone is confused by
the iconography. Most people never compose a song and yet they know that
iTunes' icon is a musical note.

~~~
CPLX
It's a picture of a physical camera with a big lens, and a physical print of a
photo with a white border. Supposedly representing an app that people use to
store and organize photos they take with a phone and view on a display screen.

------
pankajdoharey
I totally agree with the author, in fact much of the hidden functionalities in
apps that use to exist is also gone. For instance in earlier versions of
previes you could join multiple pdfs into one single pdf by dragging the pdfs
into thumbnail preview panel. Now that functionality simply doesn't exist, it
seems like they (Apple) have done a rewrite of so many Apps, that they missed
out on smaller details.

~~~
cauterized
This is my biggest frustration with OS X these days. They're working so hard
to add marginally useful consumer crap like native maps that the power user
functionality that attracted me to the platform in the first place is
suffering badly. The mail app in particular has gone from nearly-perfect (for
my use case) to unusably broken in a dozen obvious ways.

~~~
zer0defex
Microsoft has clearly identified this weakness as well. It's no coincidence
the bash prompt has suddenly become available in windows...

~~~
spronkey
Microsoft have many of the same weaknesses though. The new Windows Modern UI
apps or whatever they call it now are awful. Mail? Calendar? Wow. Even Outlook
Express was better.

And the new Settings app? Dear holy deity..

------
krylon
One thing I really dislike about 10.10 is that "maximizing" a window will -
with a few exceptions - switch it to fullscreen. To maximize a window I need
to press Alt while clicking the maximize-button. And there is not even an
option to switch this behavior.

On a small laptop screen this behaviour might be preferable, but on a FullHD
display, I find it rather annoying.

~~~
Sean1708
Ah see I like that behaviour. I've never once wanted to fill the screen with
an app without putting it in fullscreen, I just don't see what the point of
doing that would be.

~~~
homingbrain
The point is being able to see the menu bar (with the current date/time etc.)
without hovering the mouse over it.

~~~
leadingthenet
To be honest, this comment section is a bit mind-blowing to me, it really just
goes to show how the behaviour that I take for granted isn't at all the
default for other people. I would never, ever, have thought about people
wanting to maximise the windows without actually hiding the menu bar.

------
dchest
_Above, on the left, you can see the creative, dazzling, H.G.-Wells-spirited
Time Machine interface and icon of yesteryear, receding into radiant oblivion
(complete with animated stars that drift toward you). Well-crafted, they
stirred the right mood. On the right, observe what Apple bulldozed the old
Time Machine for: a low-effort cartoony icon in place of the hatch to
hyperspace, and a blurred desktop background with flat grey controls in place
of a fantastic portal to the past. To me, this "update" to Time Machine stands
as one among many sad and uncaring obliterations of the heart Apple used to
have._

My head was spinning (literally) every time I used old Time Machine, so I'm
glad they removed this silly animation.

~~~
0xffff2
>My head was spinning (literally)

What would that even look like? On what access can a human head literally
spin?

~~~
dchest
Ha, got me! By literally, I meant in the medical sense (is it called
"vertigo"?), not as an idiom (meaning to confuse or overwhelm).

------
tcfunk
For me, the biggest issue with the past 2 or 3 OS X updates hasn't been the
interface at all. I can get used to a new interface, that's not a problem.

The real problem (imo) is the lack of meaningful updates to the OS. EVERYTHING
is an aesthetic change, or some new Siri or iPhone integration. Does anyone
actually start an email on their phone and finish it on their desktop? Anyone?

Where's updates like better window management? How is it 2016 and I still
don't have window tiling on a 4k (5k?) iMac? Apple is busy repainting their
bedroom varying shades of grey while Windows puts out integrated linux and
bash, improved window snapping, openssh integration, etc.

~~~
makecheck
That may be true of recent OS releases but it would be unfair to exclude what
is planned for Sierra.

Additions like picture-in-picture look _very_ useful. They definitely are
adding more window management: a “guiding” mechanism to let windows glue
together pretty easily, and tabbed windows in any application. Even if they
didn’t, you can’t blame Apple for not rushing to provide features like tiling,
etc. when there are multiple “tiling” and other window-management apps
available _on the App Store alone_ for a few bucks or less. Just go get one,
and fix your desktop.

And remember, features “never used by _you_ ” does not equal “never used by
anyone”. Can you not imagine someone starting a message on the couch from an
iPad, realizing they need to attach a document that’s on a Mac, and wanting to
go get it? Continuity is quite valuable, even if it isn’t used all the time.

------
adamlett
There is an old macintosh print ad in the article stating something like: "A
computer that everyone can use will get used by everyone". It immediately made
me think of iOS. No matter how good you think the UI paradigm of the mac was
at its peak, it doesn't compete with iOS in user friendliness. We've all heard
stories of or witnessed 2-year olds who can navigate an iPad. That was never
the case for a mac.

I wonder if some of the changes made to macOS (née OS X), were made because
iOS has freed the mac from having to serve complete novices and very casual
consumers, and instead focus more on serving a segment of professionals and
serious content producers whose needs are different from casual consumers, and
may be better served by a more subtle, muted interface.

~~~
pseudalopex
A 2-year-old can navigate an iPad because a touch screen requires less motor
control than a mouse. The Norman/Tognazzini article points out the loss of
discoverability, feedback, and recovery in iOS.

The most pointed criticisms I've seen of Apple's UI changes have been from
people who work in visual media. "Serious content producers" use Finder for
the same things as the rest of us. The interface isn't consistently more
subtle; where color hasn't been removed, it's brighter and more saturated. iOS
has moved in a similar direction aesthetically, so it isn't a matter of
different interfaces for different audiences.

~~~
adamlett
_A 2-year-old can navigate an iPad because a touch screen requires less motor
control than a mouse_.

That's certainly a large part of it, but I don't see how that detracts from my
point. The touch interface is as much software as it is hardware. To the
extent that we forget that, it really proves that Apple really nailed the
software. Things like flick to scroll and pinch to zoom seem obvious now
because they feel so natural, but they are a feature of the software, not the
hardware.

I also don't agree that the touch interface is the only reason an iOS device
is much easier to use. Anecdotally, my father in using his iPhone for the
first time feels like he masters a computer. Mind you, this is not someone who
is a stranger to computers. He has used a desktop PC for years at his office.

 _The Norman /Tognazzini article points out the loss of discoverability,
feedback, and recovery in iOS._

I don't know if I've read that particular article, but I've seen similar
criticisms before. And I do believe that there is something to them. But I
also feel like they are blown out of proportion and/or fail to take into
account the constraints of the small size of a phone screen. Not to say that
Apple hasn't made outright mistakes, but I do think they get it right far more
than they get it wrong.

 _The most pointed criticisms I 've seen of Apple's UI changes have been from
people who work in visual media_

That's hard to argue against, since you don't say what specific criticisms
they make.

 _The interface isn 't consistently more subtle; where color hasn't been
removed, it's brighter and more saturated._

I probably overstated that particular point. There is certainly lots of
evidence these days to suggest that Apple doesn't care all that much about the
pro market.

------
onion2k
I agree with the author that OSX has lost a lot of it's personality, but I
don't agree with the notion that this is a bad thing. I don't want my OS to
have much of a personality. It's a tool for getting things done. The less I
see of the OS the better.

~~~
gurkendoktor
I agree that OS X should out of your way most of the time, but what about the
unboxing experience? Buying or upgrading a Mac used to feel very satisfying
because you were welcomed by a cool intro video (10.3 was playing even
Röyksopp!):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gov-
XY7mDPE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gov-XY7mDPE)

Apple still produces videos like these, but only to show them at WWDC and on
their website. New users are only greeted by grey/white screens and lots of
cloud settings. :|

~~~
onion2k
Apple should not be designing icons that are optimised for their initial
visual impact. In fact, "impact" is not a word you really want to associate
with something you use on a daily basis.

------
rsync
It's worth pointing out that circa July 2016, it is still manageable and
reasonable to continue using Snow Leopard.

I use it daily on my primary system. Other than the cool "draw my signature on
a PDF" feature in Preview that showed up circa Mavericks, there is nothing -
_not one thing_ \- that I miss by running that older OS.

VMWare fusion works great. Current chrome+ublockorigin. Great multi screen
support. I don't run any services and keep a strict firewall (and also the
ublock Origin) so the lack of recent security updates (combined with the
gradual loss of interest in SL from exploit writers) isn't a problem.

YMMV.

~~~
callalex
Do you use a desktop or a laptop? The power saving technology that has been
added in later OS versions makes a HUGE difference, even/especially on my
older portable macs dating back to 2008

------
kstrauser
Skeuomorphic icons are probably OK, but skeumorphic behavior is horrific.
Consider the awfulness of the Mountain Lion era address book and calendar that
tried to emulate the behavior of physical objects by imitating their
limitations. That, for me, was the nadir of OS X usability. It might have been
great for someone who'd literally never seen a computer before, but anyone who
wanted to navigate a calendar without flipping through months one page at a
time had a real fight on their hands.

If you want an icon that looks like a physical object, OK. I can probably live
with that. But the moment you want to extend that to making the app act like
the object its icon represents, you've lost me. Perhaps Ive et al decided that
having a realistic Notes icon attached to a non-notebook-like app was more
confusing than keeping the old one? That certainly seems justifiable.

Also: who cares what the Safari compass looks like? To me, "compass" means
"compass". It's never represented a safari to me (not that "safari-the-
adventure" represented "Safari-the-browser"). What would that skeumorphic icon
be anyway - a rifle?

This is what we used to have: [http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/30/skeuomorphic-
design-or-one...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/30/skeuomorphic-design-or-
one-reason-we-can-be-thankful-scott-forstall-is-gone/) . I couldn't have been
happier when Mavericks ditched all that. It wasn't perfect, to be sure, but it
went a long way to restoring artificially-lost usability.

The article feels to me as though the author is caught up in nostalgia. That's
fine, but not mistake "I liked it that way" for "that way was objectively
better".

------
tim333
I think the greatness of OSXs past UIs is a bit over hyped. I changed from
Windows 7 to Mavericks a couple of years ago and still find 7 more intuitive.
You can see at a glance which programs are running from the bar in 7 unlike
OSX, I still have not figured out the Finder very well and so on. On the other
hand OSX seems better engineered in many ways, more stable, faster to respond
and so on.

~~~
tjl
In the Dock Preferences, click the box "Show indicators for open
applications". You should get a black dot under (or to the side) of the app
icon. I've used this setting for years.

~~~
emodendroket
Yeah, but why exactly is it off by default? I can't see the benefit.

~~~
tjl
Because they don't want people to worry about what is open. That's what I
understand is their reasoning. I don't really agree with it, though.

------
codeulike
Guidelines from 30 years ago dont necessarily get to remain guidelines. Cos
stuff changes. We've been using guis for 20 or 30 years now. We dont need to
pretend they have shadows or include a realistic depiction of some related
artifact in the icon. People just get it now without all that clutter.

~~~
Angostura
> People just get it now without all that clutter.

That's certainly what the proponents of flat design contend. In terms of
measuring usability, I'm not so sure that's true. I've seen people hunting for
buttons that didn't quite look like buttons

~~~
Sylos
The Stock-Android Contacts-app has a pretty big design-flaw like that. When
you open up a contact, it shows you a list of the ways that you can talk to
this person. So, either call them, write an SMS, write an e-mail etc.

And the Call-button is for whatever reason merged with the SMS-button. It's
just one big button of which 4/5 is for calling and 1/5 to the right opens up
the SMS-app. There is an icon representing SMS in that 1/5 of the button, but
nothing indicates that it's a separate button from the 4/5 on the left.

~~~
tjl
Really? That's odd. The iOS Contacts app merges Facetime and phone calls, but
at least that's somewhat reasonable as that's still a call. CallKit in iOS 10
is standardizing it so all VOIP calls will be treated the same as FaceTime and
phone calls.

iOS Contacts has a set of icons that look like the symbols on the app icons.
That makes sense to me.

------
coldtea
> _Buttons across the system now look much less like real buttons. Almost no
> life-imitating textures survive. OS X, in large part prior to Yosemite, used
> to crawl with visual metaphors; why has Apple banished so many of the
> analogies that helped people feel comfortable with the Macintosh in the
> first place?_

Because thousands of idiotic designers and tons of media pundits lamented
their "anthropomorphic" interfaces and swooned over the abstract UIs of
competitors, to the point that it sounded like a real problem...

------
stupidcar
I see a lot of opinion here, and not a lot of hard evidence. Maybe the changes
in OS X, and the move away from skeuomorphism in particular, have hurt its
usability, but the way to prove that isn't through emotional op-eds.

Get a group of non-Mac users, randomly split them into two groups. Set them a
number of basic tasks: writing and sending an email, editing a photo, opening
a particular website, etc. Then have one group do it on an older version of OS
X, and the other on a new version. Then record how long it takes them, what
things they struggle with, etc. Ask them to report their level of frustration
and enjoyment.

It wouldn't be a perfect experiment, but it would at least produce some
concrete data to discuss.

------
return0
Ios is just as bad, still need about a minute to figure out how to add a
reminder if i can't use siri. icons still dont make sense (serious travesty,
my compass icon is actually safari, while my compass app has a cross icon).
And the sheer stupidity of flatness everywhere makes it slow to read the
interface.

~~~
vidoc
> icons still dont make sense

Couldn't agree more, My last IOS device was the Iphone 3G, so I kind of lost
touch with IOS. Recently found myself trying to help my mom print an email on
her Ipad, and felt quiet disarmed as none of those icons made _any_ sense at
all! Ended up clicking icons to see what happens, one in particular, was
apparently deleting messages, and I have yet to understand what the icon
symbol was all about :P

~~~
7Z7
That's odd, in the latest iOS, all of the options I can see for deleting
messages are accessed via the word "Delete"; one of which is on a red
background (swipe conversation left). The other two require three steps with
clear messaging/iconography: (Edit, select, Delete), or (long-tap message,
more..., hit the Trashcan icon or hit "Delete All").

Perhaps it was an older version.

~~~
shopkins
> swipe conversation left

iOS's heavy reliance on this gesture is a great example of how bad it's
gotten. Unlike drawers, which usually have some kind of pullable tab, or
reorderable items in a list, which have little icons indicating grabbable-
ness, there is no visual cue that items can be swiped left. If you've never
used iOS before, you have no way to delete important things unless you've been
instructed how to from friends or iPhone-using ancestors.

------
sbuk
This essay is nothing more than the authors opinion (which there is nothing
wrong with) presented as fact (completely take umbrage with this). Looking at
the authors website, the current design of Apple's UI elements are not to
their taste. An example would be this;
[http://www.nicholaswindsorhoward.com/blog-
directory/2016/1/2...](http://www.nicholaswindsorhoward.com/blog-
directory/2016/1/23/ios-icons) The odd idea is interesting, but it's massively
regressive.

~~~
barneybooroo
I particularly like that in this case apparently a picture of a sunflower is a
perfectly acceptable icon for "Photos"

------
mark-r
I think people miss the purpose of icons. To be effective, they need to be
distinguishable and memorable so that you can find them when needed. If I need
to find something that I'm not familiar with, I'm more likely to use a text
label to figure it out than to try to guess by the picture. An ideal icon
would have a lot in common with an ideal logo.

The current trends are somewhat troubling. Removing color makes an icon less
distinguishable, and changing icons yearly makes them less memorable. The
reason the floppy disk icon is still useful so many years after it stopped
being relevant is because it hasn't changed.

I do miss the richness of imagery that skeumorphism provided, I find it more
visually appealing than the abstract flat look. I realize this is a matter of
opinion though. How ironic that as enhanced displays allow for more realistic
renditions than ever, the trend is to move away from realism.

------
abrbhat
The change appears to be a part of the broader trend towards flat design from
realistic design in the UI community. A balanced point of view:
[http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/12/infographic-flat-
des...](http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/12/infographic-flat-design-vs-
skeuomorphism/)

~~~
dingaling
"Flat design versus Skeuomorphism" isn't really a valid comparison; flat
design can still use skeuomorphic elements like the infamous floppy-disk icon,
just without the subtle hints that the icon is actually a button. Battery
status is still shown, generally, through an AA-cell icon, the trash is a
dustbin, 'like' is a heart.

"Flat design" versus "visual nudging", for want of a better term, is what the
debate's really about.

~~~
vilhelm_s
I think "flat versus skeuomorphism" is the correct opposition, and it's the
"Apple Goes Mushy" article which is muddling the terminology by conflating at
least three different things.

* Skeumorphism is about rendering individual materials. E.g. compare the old and new Safari icons. Both show a blue compass, but the old one is drawn as a realistically rendered 3d-object with perspective and metallic reflections, and the new one is a flat 2d drawing. Similarly, the old design of the maximize/close buttons on windows were rendered skeumorphically, as a some kind of plastic 3d-object, the new ones are 2d.

* Then there is the use of visual metaphors versus abstract symbolism. E.g. the old icon for Photos was a picture of a camera and photo, the new one is an abstract symbol (apparently it's supposed to be a stylized sunflower?).

* And finally he talks about color choices: the old design used lots of saturated colors, the new one has more desaturated ones with a few saturated accents.

All of these can vary independently. A stylized line drawing of a battery is
not an instance of skeumorphism, but it is a use of visual metaphor.

------
xaduha
Windows Themes were a step in the right direction, why can't we have that in
OS X? Give me that Snow Leopard skin for El Capitan or whatever.

~~~
cmiller1
Even better was Kaleidoscope on Mac OS 7-9

~~~
masswerk
Since it's now Mac OS again, I want the Appearance Manager back, too!

(Note: In Mac OS 8+ Appearance Manager was the built-in part and Kaleidoscope
2 rather provided a more accessible way of hacking the resources and switching
themes.)

------
rekshaw
Currently, on the same front page on HN there is an article: Humans once
opposed coffee and refrigeration: why we often hate new stuff.

This applies perfectly to you, dear self-righteous blog author.

~~~
coldtea
By the same logic you can dismiss every critique.

Not everything new is an improvement.

~~~
qmr
Change for change's sake disgusts me. It is rampant in Apple's macos, iOS, as
well as Google's Android.

~~~
coldtea
And yet Apple changes surprisingly little between versions.

And usually to assemble piecemeal some functionality related to a long term
master-plan (usually of the "All your Apple devices as a digital hub"
category).

------
typpytyper
I'm 100% in agreement with the article. I haven't upgraded from Mavericks for
the very reasons he outlined - stark white UIs with no feedback. (Well that
and the WIFI issues in Yosemite.)

As for skeuomorphism, look no further than the phone icon in iOS - it's a
handset from a traditional 80s phone. If Apple designers were to take their
flat minimalist mantra to the next level the icon would be a picture of a
black rectangle representing an iPhone.

------
intoverflow2
To understand the photos icon you have to be familiar with iOS 6 to remember
the photos icon was a sunflower because the new one is an abstract
representation of that flower.

Honestly couldn't believe it when they shipped it.

------
noir-york
Agreed with the sentiments of the author. While I don't expect an OS to be
"beautiful" \- attractive would perhaps be the better word, the general
grayification and over-simplification has made OSX harder to navigate.

Compare it to Atom which I, and I am sure many others here, use every day"
syntax highlighting, coloured icons, etc all make navigating code/screen
faster.

------
rubyfan
Great points here. The iconography is an important element of navigating a
system and recent iterations of both macOS and iOS have suffered at the hands
of trendy flat design.

------
franze
I'm writing this post form an late 2015 Mac Book Retina (not air, not pro).
The mac book stands on a book, a small fan points to it's back so that I can
write this. Without this the machine would get to hot, which results into a
slower user interaction (think: write a letter, wait for it, wait for it, wait
for it, letter appears on the screen). On the left hand side a huge adapter
(99EUR) is plugged in. It enables me to plug into an USB device and the
charger. I do a lot of presentations. so basically the adapter is part of the
machine. The color of the keyboard begins slowly to fade. Especially the "S"
is now more grey than black. The Max Book is advertised to have a battery
lifetime of 8 to 10 hours, I normally get up to 4, sometimes less.

It's garbage!

~~~
Infinitesimus
My general rule of thumb for Macbooks: If you want to do anything other thank
browse facebook and write word docs, and want the machine to last you for more
than 3 years - get a Pro.

Vote with your wallet, if you can replace the Macbook experiment* with a Pro
or some other computer, go for it. As it stands, Apple has no incentive to
make it better since they have your money anyway unless enough users skip the
product

* I'm convinced "the new Macbook" was born because someone lost a bet and had to answer "how bad can we make a computer and still make people buy it?"

~~~
puranjay
My wife wants a Mac. She's a teacher and uses it mostly to write documents,
watch movies, and read PDFs. Would an Air be good enough for her?

~~~
watmough
It sounds like an Air would be fine, but she might want to also consider a
Chromebook.

~~~
puranjay
Thanks, hadn't thought of that. She actually has a Nexus and isn't really tied
into the Apple ecosystem so this might actually be a good idea

~~~
keithpeter
[https://www.neverware.com](https://www.neverware.com)

You could (both) try out ChromeOS on a Windows laptop before traipsing down to
the shop to test keyboards. Needs an 8Gb USB stick that you can erase.

~~~
puranjay
This is great. Thanks for sharing.

I'm downloading it right now and taking it out for a spin on my computer
first. Never used ChromeOS before!

~~~
keithpeter
You can dd the bin file to a USB stick (bin file is 5Gb so 8Gb stick needed)
and just run a 'live' session without installing. Watch out for the installer
screens when you boot from the stick!!

I used the product for the same reason: to see what ChromeOS was like.

------
bitL
I think the main problem with UI is the movement towards scalable graphics
fitting all types of displays which unfortunately can't be as complex as
raster graphics with the same size constraints. Hence flatness and overly
abstract, "simple-gradiented" shapes everywhere. I think once people realize
that 8K will be the final resolution of displays, raster will come back as the
number of display formats that need to be supported will be limited and
graphics could be rescaled on the go. For now we have to suffer through the
"modernism" phase of UI design which like in art makes only around 5% of
people inspired, rest is underwhelmed; or stick to the last bearable OSes like
Win 7, Mavericks, iOS6...

------
ruffrey
In my opinion, this article focuses on all the wrong things. Things that
matter in OSX to me - and why I continue to choose it as my most basic tool
for work - are: \- exceptional workspaces and swipe navigation \- the safety
of time machine backups \- for the most part things are very fast and the OS
gets out of the way of what I am trying to do \- I have not wasted any time on
hardware/OS compatibility issues \- I only reboot every few months, if that \-
battery life is excellent (os is not a hog)

Quite honesty I could give a shit what the icons look like as long as the OS
is a reliable and fast tool to do my work. time machine saves your ass, who
cares that the icon doesn't meet your tastes.

------
squozzer
To me, flat design just looks cheap. Maybe texture and shading for icons makes
as much sense as tail fins on cars, but even the most strident minimalist
designer still wants to convey some sense of quality with the details they
choose to keep.

------
greenimpala
I really agree with this - I thought it was me getting slower but every time I
open finder or Dock I have to spend that split second extra effort to discern
between the "Applications" folder or "HD" icons etc.

------
acr25
WYSIWYG has NOTHING to do with UI design. It refers to being able to print a
document (fonts, sizes, lines, pictures) in such a way that it precisely
resembles what you see in the application's document window.

~~~
whatever_dude
Yeah, I was also very confused by that. The article made it sound as if the
WYSIWYG explanation was a quote from Apple's guidelines, or maybe from XEROX,
so I wondered whether I misunderstood WYSIWYG this whole time.

Searched, and nope, that whole box is by the article author, not a quote. The
author doesn't know what WYSIWYG is and wrote some projected explanation. Very
likely he didn't go through the WYSIWYG era; it was a big deal, and wouldn't
be that easily misinterpreted.

------
ebbv
Wow this guy really misses the skeumorphic interface and really doesn't like
minimalist design. Sheesh.

Personally I think OS X has been improving as its gone minimal. I don't like
skeumorphic apps. They seem at first glance like they are easier to use, but
the analogy actually many times makes they interfaces more misleading for
novice users when they can't do everything that they expect they should be
able to.

The Finder side bar is a perfect example, for me, on how minimizing an
interface can make it more clear. The old Finder side bar looks cluttered and
noisy and it can be hard to easily understand everything that's going on
there. The more minimal one is easier to read. Could it be improved at this
point by bringing some color back? Probably. But sometimes you have to go "too
far" minimal to then find where you can bring things back in a way that really
improves things.

The OS X interface was in dire need of a reset like this. If you ask me the
main problem with the OS X move towards minimalism is that it's been too slow
and didn't go far enough in some areas. I would have preferred that OS X went
all the way right off the bat and then we could have already been on the path
to bringing some more color and shading back in that will probably happen over
the next several years.

At least, though, I agree with the author that the Game Center icon is awful.

------
ldom66
From a usability perspective I totally agree with this article. From a design
standpoint though, people generally prefer minimalism over realism in UI
design. I also much prefer the design of macs today over PCs, even though I
prefer Windows for usability. Apple these days is more looks over function,
while Steve Jobs thought the other way around was the way to go in my opinion.
So there is a decline over what Apple stood for after Jobs.

------
hollander
Many of the icons like Safari and iTunes haven't changed that much, just have
progressed with current designs. Take a look at the Mozilla icons, or whatever
app you're using like Evernote or LibreOffice. Do they remind me of a
webbrowser or Office app? Not really. It's just that they are significantly
different from other apps. After one or two times use, I remember what it
looks like and that's all you need.

------
swiftisthebest
I agree with literally nothing this dude said. The old mac interface was
needlessly complicated and distracting. Simple is better! I don't want to
spend time deciphering what some thing is supposed to be. It is a waste of
brain cycles. Just give me a memorable glyph that is different enough from the
other ones to not be tough to spot, and let me focus on what's important. My
work!

------
zeveb
I think this is just the blah and boring exterior of modern Apple hardware
being carried over to the software inside.

I remember the beauty of the original iMac (compare the G3 to the current
model at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac)), or
the beautiful clamshell iBook G3
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook)).
Likewise, System 9 was beautiful, and the original OS X was even more so: it
looked like candy, translucent and shiny.

Now, everyone praises Ives for turning out yet another rectangle with some
circles on it. Someone really should buy him a French curve to augment his
straightedge and compass …

The new macOS looks much the same: flat, boring, staid, plain.

Now, I personally don't really mind that (my own WM is dark, muted and mostly
invisible), but it seems rather a betrayal of what Apple used to stand for:
actual beauty rather than simply the lack of ugliness.

------
kartickv
Since the article spends quite a bit of time talking about icons, let me focus
on that, too.

I think the old icons had too much detail in them to be visible at typical
icon sizes. They ended up looking cluttered and over-designed. The new icons
are simpler visually, making them clean and fresh. And they come in brighter,
happier colors.

I much prefer the look of El Capitan over older OSs.

------
Unbeliever69
The abandonment of skeuomorphism was part rebellion and part caving to the
ebbs and flows of popular design. When you move away from tactility and
recognizability (familiarity), there is a greater burden on the user to
interpret the intent of the designer. This is one of the reasons there has
been a big surge in the use of animations in UI; because flat designs aren't
as effective at communication as recognizable, tactile ones. Younger users of
unique UIs and gestures have proven that you can adapt to new visual
conventions and forms of interaction. The problem is that this is not Apple's
ONLY audience. The Mac has always been attractive to people who want a more
approachable, simple, user-friendly, less virus prone computer. This audience
is typically less tech savvy and probably not a millennial. I further argue
that the visual style of Steve Jobs was more in alignment with the innate
desires of this archetype.

------
fredfoobar42
There's some good points in the article, in particular the draining of color
from the Finder sidebar and a few other glaring usability issues that haven't
been addressed.

But, man, seriously, the original Time Machine UI was garbage. The Yosemite
version is so, so, so, so much better. It's not great, but it's a lot better
than what it used to be.

------
Animats
If you give up skeuomorphism, you have no model for icons. You could have
every icon be a smartphone, but that won't help. Without some real-world
basis, icons are just abstract shapes. Text boxes might be better. At least
you don't need an icon dictionary.

Everything now has to be mobile-friendly, which means 1) fat fingers, and 2)
you can't see the thing you're touching. "Mouse-over" for more info is not
meaningful for touchscreens. So icons can't have explanations.

Whatever happened to Google's "material design"? Did anything ever use that?
Even Google's own web sites didn't use it, although Google had a react.js
implementation.

Incidentally, don't use a compass icon for anything other than a compass on a
device that actually has compass hardware.

Maybe the future of icons is corporate logos. That's what favicons are.

~~~
dragonwriter
> "Mouse-over" for more info is not meaningful for touchscreens. So icons
> can't have explanations.

I suspect the period of not having a decent UI for surfacing alt-text (on web)
or equivalent help for native apps on mobile devices is probably not going to
extend long into the future. I don't know what the UI convention will be (gaze
tracking? light-touch with pressure sensitive screens? some gesture?). Touch
UIs are (despite being ubiquitous with the explosion of the last decade) still
relatively immature.

------
HoppedUpMenace
The older aesthetics reflected an OS that could get everyone excited about its
potential, kind of like back in the day when people would look at the graphics
depicted on records, VHS covers, video game boxes, ect... Now, nobody draws
quite a connection with that sort of art or media so you have something with
no soul that conveys the idea that people are just happy with whatever you
give them cause they could care less about people making a connection, just
that it works and does, at a minimum, what its supposed to do.

A bit off topic... Same idea could be applied to what happened in video games
in the past, like Super Mario RPG style transforming into Paper Mario or
Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask style being dropped for Wind Waker cartoon like
aesthetic, both examples devoid of any human connection built up to that point
in previous iterations but it gets the job done as its still the same kind of
game.

------
ksec
If Skeuomorphic means trying to mimic things in real world. Then i guess
everyone would have a different skeuomorphic perspective. Especially with
different age group.

Today's Kids dont even know what a Matchstick is. And the likely hood that a
Phone will replace 90% of all consumer camera in next decade. Leaving DSLR for
Professionals. There isn't cassette, Betamax or Type. And kids born today
likely dont know what Floppy or even Optical disk are when they are 20.

So it really is a little bit of forward thinking from Apple. Given how a 5 - 7
years old are now using iPad. They have a different group of future loyal
users to cater for.

Side Note - Tech is good, and it is everywhere. But what happens to good old
days when kids were young they go out to do stupid things and have fun in the
park. Instead of starring at the iPad screen.

------
dahart
_All_ UI has gone less Skeuomorphic and flatter. Google's doing it and giving
"material design" talks at all the major conferences. Just look at their
design
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_Design](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_Design)
Windows embraces flat design _way_ more than Apple does, maybe the author
needs to check out an Xbox or use a Surface for a few minutes? Websites
everywhere are minimalistic and flat compared to five years ago. This is the
current design thinking, the author is stuck in the past. On top of that, this
article shows the opposite of what it says it does - it's demonstrating how
Apple is doing all these "bad" things less than everyone else.

~~~
emodendroket
> maybe the author needs to check out an Xbox or use a Surface for a few
> minutes?

Indeed, how could he not have experienced these resoundingly successful
designs?

------
S_A_P
I think I would switch to windows if I had to look at a vintage OSX version. I
think its great for nostalgia to look back at the evolution of UI and not
every change is an improvement, but I find the latest versions of windows/OSX
to be perfectly usable and nice to look at. I dont need such literal
translations of my icons for them to make sense. This argument is kind of
bogus anyway- how many times of looking at an icon and clicking it does it
take to remember what goes where?!?! I use the application Reason quite often
but that icon offers no clue as to what type of application it is. Flat
layouts are easier on the eyes and all the shading gradients and other
elements required for "realistic" ui are tiring. Completely disagree with this
article here.

------
BlakePetersen
The irony here is this design critique takes place on one of the ugliest sites
on the internet.

Also, everything he points out is to the benefit of a society that's making
it's first steps into computing using GUIs. Once you've accomplished that
first introduction, you optimize for efficiency. Do you really need to sit
there and parse an icon's details every time before you actually click the
icon and move on to the actual task you intended to do?

I'm sure Apple considers a lot before making design changes, from UX
efficiency to cross-platform aesthetic consistency to iPhone battery life
(does displaying white icons encourage darker backgrounds which ultimately
have more pixels using lower energy to light up or some such nuance?), which
this article ignores entirely.

------
makecheck
The thing that bothers me most about the direction of icons is the sameness of
all their _shapes_ , ignoring the rest of their appearance.

This is a problem in both the Dock (where it seems everything is a circle
nowadays) and in toolbars (where everything has an ugly white rounded-
rectangle behind it, and is _really tiny_ ).

There used to be explicit mention of the importance of varying shapes in
toolbars, as part of Apple’s own interface guidelines. At a glance, it’s _far
easier to find things_ when there’s a triangle-like icon next to a round icon
next to a square icon next to a home-plate-shaped icon, etc. If every icon has
the same shape, and has been shrunk into that shape to leave even less space
for meaningful details, it‘s almost not worth having an icon at all.

------
WayneBro
Here's a much better article on why OS X is an exercise in bad UI design -
[http://aaronhildebrandt.com/archive/osx-an-exercise-in-
bad-u...](http://aaronhildebrandt.com/archive/osx-an-exercise-in-bad-ui-
design)

------
sdkjfwiluf
article misses the point that things change. it's a different world now and
the metaphors need to change with it. the desktop is now the computer, so
desktop metaphors make no sense. flat design looks clean and quiet, I don't
miss the days of skeuomorphism.

------
athenot
While a streamlining of UI elements is not necessarily a bad thing (especially
as the meaning of metaphors sink into the general public's consciousness), I
have noticed that it takes me longer to find and converge to the right app
icons on the dock & app switcher.

It seems the general trend regarding logos is "blobs of color in some abstract
pattern". And those that still depict some meaning end up blending in, by
adopting the same approach of using multiple sturated primary colors. Maybe
it's just me but visually, they all register the same in my brain and I need
to take a second look to tell them apart. And if I need to take a second look,
the whole advantage of an icon vs. a keyword is lost.

------
pipio21
I disagree. I use mac all day and the icons don't pose a problem to me either
to the young people in my family.

Really frustrating for me are the changes in Spotlight launcher. It used to be
instantaneous search and launch. Now it is painfully slow in all my computers.

~~~
gurkendoktor
I'm finding that its faster now to pinch with all five fingers on the trackpad
and then use find-as-you-type in the Launchpad UI. This works even when
Spotlight is busy rebuilding its index for whatever reason.

------
dingo_bat
While I personally think the new icons and UI looks better, I agree that
everything is too white. I hate white. It wastes power on phone and laptops,
and it hurts my eyes. Let's make everything black. A good example is Holo-era
Android.

------
x0
I agree with this so much. Two other things that annoy me about the new OS X
design:

\- Helvetica everywhere. Helvetica, whilst not _bad_ , has somewhat poor
readability (not legibility) in body copy. I find it much harder to read than
the old Lucida Grande, and it annoys me I can't change it back easily. In fact
I jailbroke my iPad just to change the font (to Iowan Old Style, absolutely
beautiful serif)

\- No favicons in Safari. I can't even understand why they would do that, and
have absolutely no way to turn them on, for those of us who like to switch
tabs without spending 5 seconds reading them all.

------
gastrointestine
Yeah, they had some amazing meticulous artistry that they use to put into
everything. I remember one of my old bosses (who use to work at Apple) talking
about a special guy that Steve had, that use to create all the icons. He'd
even make all that the imagery of the iphones and stuff on the home and
product pages of the website by hand, all vector... But the newer stuff is
less busy and way more navigable. Yes, there's less color, and concepts that
are sometimes too abstract. But it's all still better for the user, in my
opinion... Great, thought provoking article, though.

------
petilon
Here's another blog that documents the decline of Apple's user interface
design: [http://uxcritique.tumblr.com/](http://uxcritique.tumblr.com/)

------
rahoulb
Personally I feel Mac OS's Platinum was the pinnacle of "desktop" user-
interface design and OS X/macOS is generally on a path of returning to that
look (although not that feel)

------
api
This is really just a pro-skeumorphism rant. I'm personally not a fan of
skeumorphism, especially when taken to extremes like the silly leather
calendar in previous OS X versions.

The real problem I have with Apple is the abysmal developer service their app
stores offer and the technical stagnation of some of their products. They've
got plenty of money and should be really really pushing the envelope. Where's
my octacore laptop? Where's my really good issue tracker in the app store with
60 minute turnaround?

------
ethanpil
Very funny to see Apple playing catch up on design to Google in the area of
flat style design. Google are the ones who pushed flat design into UI and
everyone else is following their lead.

------
dschuetz
I suppose Apple truly intends its MacOS to become more mature and streamlined.
I also loved the beauty of Leopard and Lion versions. I don't think that
making all icons flat and less colorful makes Apple's products more mature.
The decision might have been made as Apple decided to move from glossy devices
to mat, so later after that all the icon designs also moved from glossy to
flat. It took almost 10 years, btw.

------
mrcwinn
I agree with the general sentiment that Apple isn't very good at software, but
it's worth remembering they are solving not just for the desktop, but for many
platforms. I cannot imagine that ugly 2008-era iPhoto icon on my big flat
screen. The thought of that rips into the very fiber of my being and makes me
question all that I know about life.

Put another way: relax. Hope things get better!

------
pbhjpbhj
Anyone link me to Apple's research papers on useability that underpin their
design ideals? Or is it just fashion in the face of useability?

~~~
coldtea
Or they make their own internal testing and don't provide links to their
"papers"? How about that?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Quite possible, do you think they they lead the design primarily with
usability or fashion?

~~~
coldtea
I think they take both into account, as they should.

Usability is great and all, but if your products dont sell because they're
perceived as unfashionable it's not that good...

------
everydaypanos
I mainly disagree w/ the points he makes, but the "vampiric" screenshot of the
sidebar is very hard to neglect. There is something magical that goes away
when you take away all the color and replace all the icons w/ glyphs.
Especially on places like the sidebar where you interact w/ it too often and
99% of the time you are scanning/looking for stuff.

------
rcarmo
I've been using Macs since, well... Forever, and writing about them for over a
decade over at [http://taoofmac.com](http://taoofmac.com)

I'd say this piece is too opinionated by design - not only does it ignore the
almost relentless iterative approach Apple has taken with aesthetics, it reads
a lot like linkbait.

But hey, that's just my opinion. :)

------
brudgers
To me, if there is a weakness in Apple's interface due to evolution that
weakness is in evolving too slowly. The premises for "easy to use" in 1984 are
radically different from those of today. The "for who?" and the "for what?"
and the "what artifact am I using?" have changed.

The last matters. It ain't so much skeuomorphism ain't relevant no more, it's
computers are ubiquitous => to the point that the computers we carry in our
pockets are taken for granted as computers.

Interface designs that draw on folders and writing pads and cameras and
folders are headed to the dustbins. The best skeuomorph for X is the thing
closest to X itself. I'm not saying that hamburger menus haven't irritated me,
only that I know what it means when I see one and how it _ought_ to behave
because it skeuomorphs to it's own computer interface => and there it draws on
a long self-referential skeuomorphic tradition of the floppy disk "save" icon.

To me it seems, the better we make skeuomorphs the further we get from icons
and the closer we get to words. Siri, Alexa, Cortana lead the way back from
hieroglyphs for middle mangers afraid of catching keyboard cooties. I don't
want to say that everyone knows how to use a computer, but it's not 1984 and
so many people around the world are comfortable typing to the point that many
Africans have mobile payments over SMS.

Mobile payments over SMS shows that the efficient skeuomorphism of text. Our
phones are/have cameras. "Use camera" pretty much tells the story.

------
sevensor
I think the arguments about usability are missing the point. This looks to me
like the reemergence of the old debate between baroque (skeuomorphic) and
classical (flat) styles, with usability thrown in by both sides as a red
herring.

------
johnwheeler
I like the new look and feel and where the OS has been going in general.

------
read_it
This 'flat design' ic created by designer who merely know how to create
things, and is more easy to create things with one color and flat objects. I
don't now why it is so popular

------
EGreg
This would not be the case if Steve Jobs still ran Apple:

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234)

------
Sean1708
For reference, here are screenshots of just the stock El Capitan Apps:

[https://imgur.com/a/uRfvc](https://imgur.com/a/uRfvc)

------
rahkiin
The only thing I miss from previous versions, is the stars effect in Time
Machine. It was crazy awesome to move through the stars.

------
nickgrosvenor
I don't even fucking understand how to use the music app on my iPhone anymore
. So needlessly complicated.

------
cyphunk
tldr; this article is arguing _for_ skeuomorphism.

Actually I'm not sure this isn't a satire. It made me rotflmao. But also, it's
good to see that there are people out there (perhaps many, perhaps most!?)
that see the world of good design in complete opposite.

------
swingbridge
Meh... Fair point on the icon for the photos app, but other than that the
article is grasping at staws

------
lacion
and all of this from a site that looks like its still hosted in geocities

------
brandonmenc
It would help if they just started drawing borders around things again.

------
skrowl
If you think this is a steep decline, wait until they report earnings after
this market closes this evening. Another quarter of iPhone sales drops and
they're expect to announce iWatch down by over 50% from last year.

~~~
coldtea
> _Another quarter of iPhone sales drops_

You mean, just a few months before the next model is announced? Who would have
thought...

~~~
skrowl
Year over year sales drop, not quarter over quarter. They sold less this
quarter of this year than the same quarter last year.

------
shanacarp
Do you miss color, or do you miss skeuomorphism?

I'm trying to decide

------
jacobmorse
A post about garish design on a garishly designed blog. Appropriate.

------
joe_momma
Nail on the head.

------
chadlavi
Old Man Yells At Cloud

------
ommunist
I miss Glass.

------
jccalhoun
I have a hard time taking design advice from a web site whose design consists
of a narrow band of text and 2/3-3/4 empty space.

------
misterdata
As people start getting used to computers and digital, virtual concepts (such
as scrolling, windowing, buttons), the need for them to reflect tangible,
real-world objects diminishes - I think abolishing skeuomorphism is the right
way to go.

