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Comment by Mtinie | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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