I don't follow him closely, but I'd always thought that John Gruber - while often a very good writer - got a little too much exposure to the Reality Distortion Field. So I'm a little surprised to see him come down so hard on this.
Was I wrong about Gruber or is this a proverbial canary in the coal mine?
One thing about the AppleScript icon that you don’t notice until you pay attention is that that the paper curls to form an “S”. The rotation and the reduced emphasis on the paper's edge in the update breaks that imagery.
It's not a nit that has to be picked, but it does dim Apple's "whoa, they thought that through?" aura.
Edit: So, upon doing some more inspection, it looks like Apple's Script Editor already does use this fallen-over paper. So that should challenge our assumptions about what the rotation may or may not mean as a portent for Apple's design competency.
https://help.apple.com/assets/65DFB44F6D920677C90E20C9/65DFB...
> The problem isn’t that one little bird has died. The problem is that the bird might be dead because the whole mine is filling with deadly carbon monoxide or highly flammable methane gas
This is where I'm at with Apple at the moment.
I know this sounds crazy or stupid, and people on reddit made sure to tell me as much, but the recent iOS, macOS, and watchOS betas have actually caused me to abandon the Apple ecosystem. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't one bird dead, but a whole bunch of birds. I suppose I'm a little more sensitive than Gruber. I find the design language (or lack thereof?) in Apple's recent work to be largely void of life, inspiration, purpose, craft, or anything else I'd come to expect over the last 25 years of using their platform. The quality in terms of performance, efficiency, bugs, intuitive user interfaces, and so on has been dropping for years now. The last OS revision is exemplary of this decline in a deeply concerning way.
I've been so disheartened by things like this, and I'm confident it represents the end of an era so to speak, that I've already come to terms with it and started moving off of Apple's ecosystem.
For me, the move is a matter of pursuing systems which allow me a bit more freedom. Apple has restricted me in ways that I permitted for decades now, but I permitted it because the compromise was worth it. I don't see it being worth it in 5 or 10 years, so I'm starting the transition now. I sold my watch, gave away my iPhone, and started shopping for a ThinkPad.
It's hard to give up macOS and Apple hardware (the value prop has become kind of insane, really), but seeing their recent OS work takes the sting away. I'd love to see them recognize their mistakes and correct course, but... I don't think I'm their target customer anymore, frankly. The people who think I'm an idiot on reddit are their target market, I suppose. That's fine. I'll learn to love Linux and Windows for different reasons and regain some privacy and control over my machines.
My family will certainly stay on Apple's ecosystem.
> Apps that haven’t been updated with Tahoe-compliant everything-fits-in-a-squircle icons are put in “squircle jail” — their non-Tahoe-compliant icons are shrunk and placed atop a drab gray Tahoe squircle background, to force them into squircle compliance.
I've been replacing some app icons with their older, non-square versions for years (Firefox is probably my favorite). Will be disappointing to lose that option -- I've never understood why Apple feels the need to standardize app icons like this.
the wrench is uncanny, weird if you regularly see wrenches in real life... they likely did this to make the bolt larger, but it ruins the concept
might have been better off simply going with the bolt metaphor, sans wrench, even though it's less apparent... though the squircle also kind of fights with other shapes as containers
the old stethoscope on a disk icon is super cheesy, but at least it means something
To me it's insane to pick on these 4 icons when it's obvious that they were just bolted on together in the previous version as well. Now suddenly a whole Mac Pro laid on top of 2 tools is supposed to be a "great icon by Apple"? Get outta here.
Decades ago when we made a version of our Win32 desktop app for the USA, we changed the icon on our settings button from a wrench to something else (I can't remember what) because we were told that - for Americans - a wrench signified that something was broken and needed to be fixed. I guess it was about as good as all the other advice we got!
Mac OS X and Windows had their best design language from 2007 to 2011. Windows Aero and Mac OS X Aqua during these days were truly beautiful graphical shells. Everything since has been a barren wasteland of boring, overly white flat GUIs. The squircle-ifying (and on Android, circle-ifying) going on is just another step in this path towards the eternal uniformity of the heat death of fun, intuitive UIs.
The icons for Leopard-era programs were outstanding. Look at that dark indigo ink jar for Pages, or that wormhole graphic for Time Machine. The comforting smooth grey gradient of window title bars, contrasted with the large, globular traffic light buttons. A typeface that worked well with the lower-resolution displays of the time, and unique icons for everything at every single size. Apple actually had a massive human interface guidelines document, which was promptly binned with Yosemite.
On Windows, that dark blue Start orb and the cool dark task bar, signalling a whole new OS experience. The new Welcome Centre. Freshly rewritten programs and new ones like Windows Media Player and Windows Photo Viewer, and the absolute beauty that was the Windows Media Centre. Flip 3D, customising the glass window borders, and the huge, high-resolution 512 × 512 icons of the high-quality, no-ads games shipped with Windows Vista and 7, which still stand up to this day.
I feel like when I'm presented with most modern criticism of Apple devices/software I tend to agree, but despite all the mostly valid criticisms I see batted about, who is doing consumer tech better?
I've recently (finally) managed to purge the last instance of Windows from my life when I replaced Windows on my gaming desktop with Linux. So I've got Linux on the (gaming) desktop, a Steam Deck and Debian stable on a server, which is great.
But I mean, that covers my home office? I still need a phone (iPhone), a smart watch (Apple Watch) and while not critical, certainly adds a lot of value for me. The things that connects to the TV (AppleTV) is the best of all I've tried when compared to any other type of solution (Firestick, Chrome Cast, Home Media Server, Built-in TV Smarts). I've also got an M4 MacBook for dev, which is frankly fantastic when compared to whatever other hardware I could get here in NZ and would involve going back to Windows anyway?
So I mean, what are the actual valid options really? Apple still offer great devices and the integrations between them are the best on the market imo.
Perhaps in a perfect world Pine64 devices would be rock solid and I could run Linux everywhere, but failing that, what else ya gunna do?
I find it fascinating that the flashpoint is utility app icons. Not the OS architecture, not some major new feature... just icons. Are we just in an era of polishing spoons because there's nothing new to build?
> They all look like placeholder icons made by a developer who would be the first to admit that they’re not an artist.
Maybe. Some developers get really passionate about their work and try hard. The results can often fail on execution, but often show signs of overthinking things, and wanting to work.
I’ve been working with a design studio on a data science domain that isn’t your every day (ag tech analytics) and I find the results really disappointing. They can make things conventionally nice. It’s better than a generative solution, yet it’s still very “conventional” and “safe”. Every time we get to a chance to do some innovative infographic, they give it a half hearted effort and then say “let’s just use words” and get all typography geeky.
Point being, my experience is that quality iconographics are not the automatic domain of the gatekeepy designer profression (to be fair, I have worked with some design people that just have a knack).
A crescent wrench is a brand of adjustable wrench. I believe Gruber meant open-end wrench, or, because I’m Canadian a British etc roots, I call it a spanner. Either way, I agree the “artist” who drew this has never used such a device, and may not, in fact, qualify as an artist.
> The problem isn’t that one little bird has died. The problem is that the bird might be dead because the whole mine is filling with deadly carbon monoxide or highly flammable methane gas.
I don't get it, you've already been poisoned by those gases and can hardly breath, why do you need to look at dead birds for any signal?
Does anyone have an example of a design team concluding that the right move is not to change anything?
I really think a big chunk of the problem is that it’s very hard for anyone to say to their employer that they shouldn’t be doing work. People like having a job and finding work not to do feels scary.
I'm honestly curious why Apple (and other OS vendors like MS and various Linux distributions) still feel the need to tweak their UIs many, many years after having reached maturity.
How many iterations does it take before you get it right?
I get that there's a certain sense of fashion to it, but so often these changes are either neutral or worse, and it just seems so pointless. I don't see any concrete benefits of this year's UI design over what was already there 10-20 years ago.
> I'm honestly curious why Apple (and other OS vendors like MS and various Linux distributions) still feel the need to tweak their UIs many, many years after having reached maturity.
its hard to market something like an os to consumers and devs without some large noticeable changes
though one then has to wonder, why do we need a new os every year...
Disk Utility — a very important app — has an icon that’s just an Apple logo (inside the bolt that’s inside the wrench that’s inside the squircle). Not a hard drive, not an external drive, not an SD card. Just an Apple logo.
He is wrong... It's the glass disk that Tim handed over to Donald in the White House.
41 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 44.8 ms ] threadWas I wrong about Gruber or is this a proverbial canary in the coal mine?
you know what'd be rad though? an Eames Office of computing. You'd need figures like Charles and Ray though.
It's not a nit that has to be picked, but it does dim Apple's "whoa, they thought that through?" aura.
Edit: So, upon doing some more inspection, it looks like Apple's Script Editor already does use this fallen-over paper. So that should challenge our assumptions about what the rotation may or may not mean as a portent for Apple's design competency. https://help.apple.com/assets/65DFB44F6D920677C90E20C9/65DFB...
This is where I'm at with Apple at the moment.
I know this sounds crazy or stupid, and people on reddit made sure to tell me as much, but the recent iOS, macOS, and watchOS betas have actually caused me to abandon the Apple ecosystem. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't one bird dead, but a whole bunch of birds. I suppose I'm a little more sensitive than Gruber. I find the design language (or lack thereof?) in Apple's recent work to be largely void of life, inspiration, purpose, craft, or anything else I'd come to expect over the last 25 years of using their platform. The quality in terms of performance, efficiency, bugs, intuitive user interfaces, and so on has been dropping for years now. The last OS revision is exemplary of this decline in a deeply concerning way.
I've been so disheartened by things like this, and I'm confident it represents the end of an era so to speak, that I've already come to terms with it and started moving off of Apple's ecosystem.
For me, the move is a matter of pursuing systems which allow me a bit more freedom. Apple has restricted me in ways that I permitted for decades now, but I permitted it because the compromise was worth it. I don't see it being worth it in 5 or 10 years, so I'm starting the transition now. I sold my watch, gave away my iPhone, and started shopping for a ThinkPad.
It's hard to give up macOS and Apple hardware (the value prop has become kind of insane, really), but seeing their recent OS work takes the sting away. I'd love to see them recognize their mistakes and correct course, but... I don't think I'm their target customer anymore, frankly. The people who think I'm an idiot on reddit are their target market, I suppose. That's fine. I'll learn to love Linux and Windows for different reasons and regain some privacy and control over my machines.
My family will certainly stay on Apple's ecosystem.
> Apps that haven’t been updated with Tahoe-compliant everything-fits-in-a-squircle icons are put in “squircle jail” — their non-Tahoe-compliant icons are shrunk and placed atop a drab gray Tahoe squircle background, to force them into squircle compliance.
I've been replacing some app icons with their older, non-square versions for years (Firefox is probably my favorite). Will be disappointing to lose that option -- I've never understood why Apple feels the need to standardize app icons like this.
might have been better off simply going with the bolt metaphor, sans wrench, even though it's less apparent... though the squircle also kind of fights with other shapes as containers
the old stethoscope on a disk icon is super cheesy, but at least it means something
The icons for Leopard-era programs were outstanding. Look at that dark indigo ink jar for Pages, or that wormhole graphic for Time Machine. The comforting smooth grey gradient of window title bars, contrasted with the large, globular traffic light buttons. A typeface that worked well with the lower-resolution displays of the time, and unique icons for everything at every single size. Apple actually had a massive human interface guidelines document, which was promptly binned with Yosemite.
On Windows, that dark blue Start orb and the cool dark task bar, signalling a whole new OS experience. The new Welcome Centre. Freshly rewritten programs and new ones like Windows Media Player and Windows Photo Viewer, and the absolute beauty that was the Windows Media Centre. Flip 3D, customising the glass window borders, and the huge, high-resolution 512 × 512 icons of the high-quality, no-ads games shipped with Windows Vista and 7, which still stand up to this day.
Happy to die on this hill defending this opinion.
some low points:
- low-contrast low-color shading
- thin fonts that are less readable
- hidden toolbars requiring multiple taps or drag to expose
- links or buttons with no visual clue they are selectable
I think the only thing I hate more is "touch anything in ios phone app to immediately place a call, even to a phone spammer"
unfortunately all of this got picked up by tesla, where you get all of these "features", but while driving a moving, bouncing car you have to control.
Disk Utility, like a lot of the apps, has been progressively getting worse, IME. Even the way OS X mounts an external drive has become unreliable.
I've recently (finally) managed to purge the last instance of Windows from my life when I replaced Windows on my gaming desktop with Linux. So I've got Linux on the (gaming) desktop, a Steam Deck and Debian stable on a server, which is great.
But I mean, that covers my home office? I still need a phone (iPhone), a smart watch (Apple Watch) and while not critical, certainly adds a lot of value for me. The things that connects to the TV (AppleTV) is the best of all I've tried when compared to any other type of solution (Firestick, Chrome Cast, Home Media Server, Built-in TV Smarts). I've also got an M4 MacBook for dev, which is frankly fantastic when compared to whatever other hardware I could get here in NZ and would involve going back to Windows anyway?
So I mean, what are the actual valid options really? Apple still offer great devices and the integrations between them are the best on the market imo.
Perhaps in a perfect world Pine64 devices would be rock solid and I could run Linux everywhere, but failing that, what else ya gunna do?
Maybe. Some developers get really passionate about their work and try hard. The results can often fail on execution, but often show signs of overthinking things, and wanting to work.
I’ve been working with a design studio on a data science domain that isn’t your every day (ag tech analytics) and I find the results really disappointing. They can make things conventionally nice. It’s better than a generative solution, yet it’s still very “conventional” and “safe”. Every time we get to a chance to do some innovative infographic, they give it a half hearted effort and then say “let’s just use words” and get all typography geeky.
Point being, my experience is that quality iconographics are not the automatic domain of the gatekeepy designer profression (to be fair, I have worked with some design people that just have a knack).
I don't get it, you've already been poisoned by those gases and can hardly breath, why do you need to look at dead birds for any signal?
I really think a big chunk of the problem is that it’s very hard for anyone to say to their employer that they shouldn’t be doing work. People like having a job and finding work not to do feels scary.
How many iterations does it take before you get it right?
I get that there's a certain sense of fashion to it, but so often these changes are either neutral or worse, and it just seems so pointless. I don't see any concrete benefits of this year's UI design over what was already there 10-20 years ago.
though one then has to wonder, why do we need a new os every year...
He is wrong... It's the glass disk that Tim handed over to Donald in the White House.