The Apple Goes Mushy Part II: OS X's Interface Decline | Hacker News Reader

The Apple Goes Mushy Part II: OS X's Interface Decline

nicholaswindsorhoward.com

48 pointsj-kent18 comments

Flat UI and minimalism has destroyed UX. What's a button? What's a badge? What's a tab? What's clickable? What's an indicator? Who knows? It's all plain boxes or circles and it's all washed out.

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

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

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

Still not enough depth, but it is better.

Eventually I hope we settle on something between bootstrap 3 and the original OSX visual easements.

> There were problems with skeuomorphism, to be sure

One big problem was that UX people never figured out what the correct way to operate a thumb dial with a mouse was.

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

This was the final nail in the coffin for any reasonable interface. This creates an environment where the user can never know what options are fully available without hitting the option key. So when in doubt, on every single panel, perform an extra action to find something that could be available to you. Nonsense.

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

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

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

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

I happen to agree with the article. What else would you like to see? Or maybe you're willing to accept a lot more of these flaws than others.

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

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

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

it's because this is a continuing trend that seems to be speeding up rather than slowing down. from one OS X version to the next, there continues to be a decline of the user interface and experience, where every new OS X version requires even experienced users to search "how do i do the thing i used to be able to do". it's not even about being able to do new things. it's just being able to continue using features you knew only to find out they've been changed for some seemingly arbitrary reason.

the number one example i have is that at one point, they thought it was a good idea to have facetime automatically reduce all system volume when on a call. fine. maybe. but there is no option to turn that "feature" off when it should be a trivial matter to do so. so now, when facetiming with my brother, i have to go get another device or hang up and call him back if we want to share a youtube video or a song or whatever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/31/why-every...

Edit: Found something. Here's a research analyst making the same point: http://www.streetinsider.com/Analyst+Comments/Is+Apple+(AAPL...

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

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

Take the complaint about button weight:

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

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

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

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

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

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