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Comment by Shengbo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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Case in point, just below the article you can find this: 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.

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.

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.

Also note that he's conveniently forgotten to mention Calculator, Calendar, Contacts, Dictionary, iTunes, Maps, and others that I can't be arsed to list, all of which have managed to get that flat look style while still being an image of their real-world counterpart.

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