Hacker News Reader

Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like this may be done in an effort to improve the reliability of eye tracking in VisionOS when dealing with checkbox, not Apple just throwing the design book out the window for no reason.

>In general, prefer circular or capsule-shape buttons. People’s eyes tend to be drawn toward the corners in a shape, making it difficult to keep looking at the shape’s center. The more rounded a button’s shape, the easier it is for people to look steadily at it. When you need to display a button by itself, prefer a capsule-shape button.

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

View on HN

Even a rounded rectangle would be more distinguishable than a circle. This is a poor excuse that decreases usability masquerading as an increase to usability.

“The sudden realization that the throne was empty.”

Is this a biblical reference?

No.

Looks like a misquote of a Slavoj Žižek tweet from 2016 right after the U.S. election? That’s as far as I got with 2 minutes of digging.

I'm glad you actually brought a reason to this debate. Not sure I agree but there is at least a reason.

Well, the checkmark itself is pretty angular and hard to look at. I think we should take a page out of East Asian visual language and adopt the circle as the "yes" mark. That is, radio buttons and check boxes should look like this:

  ( ) Radio button off
  (·) Radio button on
  ( ) Checkbox off
  (O) Checkbox on

It isn’t clear which is which if they all are unchecked

So we reduced surface area of elements and made GUIs worse to accommodate disability. Wasn't that Apple's MO all along?

I may be missing a fundamental point of your comment or from the linked content, but given the minuscule number of users who’d be concerned with this in practical presentation, I sincerely hope that the UXers involved didn’t optimize for this use case.

From the OP’s article:

>Apple is the first major operating system vendor who had abandoned a four-decades-long tradition. Their new visionOS — for the first time in the history of Apple — will have round checkboxes.

So the death of the square checkbox they are predicting is only in the context of VisionOS. Apple’s HIG explain why this decision was made (my link), so I don’t think it is part of a larger trend and we shouldn’t expect it to impact anyone not using VisionOS, or other such headsets with eye tracking. It was done for technical reasons relating how the person will interact with the device, not style reasons.

> Apple’s HIG explain why this decision was made (my link), so I don’t think it is part of a larger trend

After seeing everybody adopt the Android flat UI (win 10), i really think that stupidity is contagious.

Do you not remember when Apple started this trend with iOS 7?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_7

I think UI in general is changed so often for no reason other than because it's like art to the UI staff. And then others follow thinking that there is a good reason for those changes made by Apple or whomever. And some FOMO in there too.

> Apple’s HIG explain why this decision was made

Honestly, I wouldn't trust any modern Apple HIGs. After the UX butchery of BigSur they retroactively updated the HIGs to justify their decisions.

It's not a "minuscule number" because visionOS is controlled by looking at things and pinching your fingers. If people subconsciously stare at the edges of a square button, can you imagine how often they'll misclick? (mispinch?)

Controls are highlighted in visionOS when you focus on them, making it clear when the pinching will or won't work.

Other eyetracking software solves this and all related problems by simply showing you a pip of some sort where it senses you "looking". It's stupidly intuitive, low intrusiveness (and can go away when it senses you don't need to "look" at anything like when you are looking at a movie screen with no controls on it) and works just fine. Only Apple decides the solution to their broken UI is to break more of the UI.

Great point. Very disappointing to read an critique that tries to appear thoroughly thought through, but not even considers that the company that has been very consistent in UX design choices, might have thought about what they're doing in a system, that probably requires fundamentally different approaches to UX.

I mean: > Apple is the first major operating system vendor who had abandoned a four-decades-long tradition. Their new visionOS — for the first time in the history of Apple — will have round checkboxes.

And yet the author is too lazy to think about that this might have a reason other than "they're stupid, look at all my screenshots, i know better than them".

Btw: not saying i agree with this decision. But why even take the time to write when not trying to actually think about what you're criticising?

Laughable.

Dad must know better, surely! It's absolutely impossible that almighty Apple is now full of subpar UX wannabes.

Apple design has been on a downright trajectory for a long time now, basically since Ive was promoted to the very top (yes he left now, but the damage was done). The Peter Principle doesn't make exceptions.

If someone spends over an hour writing a blog post than the normal expectation is that they at least spend a few minutes confirming the point based on information, or lack of, in publicly available resources, such as Apple design documents.

Well i wasn't defending apple as if they wouldn't make mistakes or couldn't be led by people who don't know what they're doing. My point had nothing to do with the design choices themselves. But if the point isn't obvious, there is no point to be explained.

Apple & elon musk make people on HN act so weird. Sad.

Totally agree. I'm surprised that a post making a big claim with little research and shallow content like this got to the frontpage with over 800 upvotes. Sad you're being downvoted too.

Thanks. I am baffled by the downvotes. It is not even about the design choice.

Like i just said in another comment: apple & elon musk make people on HN act weird.

You get downvoted because you argue that Apple definitely has a great idea behind the change. Why do you think that? And what are they doing about the fact that checkboxes now look like radio buttons? All you're doing is paying homage to Apple without contributing anything meaningful.

> You get downvoted because you argue that Apple definitely has a great idea behind the change. [...] All you're doing is paying homage to Apple without contributing anything meaningful.

Yeah, no. Not at all. But if you still don't get that my comment has absolutely nothing todo with the design choice itself a t a l l , it's truly pointless.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com