"Apple [UI design] took on an impossible task… And even if the premise was solid, I still wish I could say: they did the best they could, given the goal. But that’s not true either: they did a poor job consistently applying the metaphors and designing the icons themselves.”

https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/

Yup. Tahoe's redesign, perfectly summarized: self-inflicted problems, executed poorly, contradicting their own stated principles.

Good riddance to its DRI. Fingers crossed for a better macOS 27.

@numericcitizen not to mention how long the page took to load

@marcoarment yeah this is a fantastic article.

I feel it’s partly a symptom of the massive growth Apple has been through. Where they used to have tiny teams that communicated well, I get the sense that they’re now a mega corp with lots of worldwide sub teams that aren’t all following the guidelines.

(Though at the same time, these examples demonstrate a style that is consistent… but misguided!)

@marcoarment /cc @nikitonsky

@marcoarment Great article! However, the falling snowflakes probably just sucked up over 15% of my iPads battery. Now that I’ve finally closed the window I can already feel my iPad cooling down again.

@marcoarment Hard to imagine a human being actually chose those icons. I wouldn’t be surprised if the job had been done through an AI model. That would explain a lot 😅.

@davidbures @numericcitizen @marcoarment if you need to look for a tiny icon to turn off a bad UI (or use reader) then you don’t actually care about bad UI—you just care abt complaining about other’s bad UI.

@davidbures @numericcitizen @marcoarment

I don’t log everything I read but this is the third ‘Tahoe Takedown’ I’ve been sent from a blog that has not just obvious but *egregious* default behavior in terms of baseline accessibility standards. I agree with the criticism, but it’s coming from critics almost comically lacking in self awareness.

@alexisb @marcoarment I had the same thought while reading. My guess, probably not, but how far to have fallen that there’s even any doubt!