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Comment by coastalpuma | Hacker News Reader

I agree, I think it extends to anybody who wants a calmer experience or has vision trouble or strain. I guess you can turn those options off but if the aesthetic appeal of the design is based on them then I assume we'll be getting a second-class version of it. I was already leaning towards switching to Linux for other reasons but I think this is the thing that finally pushes me there. I think optimizing for VisionOS is quite a bad idea from a UX POV, since they're two entirely different usecases. With augmented reality you need and want to see things in the background, whereas on other devices you don't. It's a fairly fundamental difference, and it's sad that they chose to go this way in my opinion.

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To me it looks plain ugly, especially with all the bounces and transforms. Look at those sliders and toggles..

It's straight from the 2000s, with Linux users using Compiz and... Amethyst(?), stuffing their entire desktop full with gaudy transparency, transforms, jiggles and bounces.

More of a nit, but the sentence

  The new design extends across iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and tvOS 26 to establish even more harmony

is so ironic and funny. No one noticed how talking about "harmony" whilst having one single platform use a codename next to the version number just screams inattention to detail?

They switched the positions of the codename and version this time (macOS 15 Sequoia to macOS Tahoe 26). I'd give it one more version cycle until the codenames go away.

Or maybe they standardise on the codename across platforms? If they're going to aim for meaningful cross-compatibility, then that would make a lot more sense than confusing, boring version numbers.

Please no. I can never remember which Cali area we're on. I almost always know which year it is. This has been long overdue. Should have learned their lesson from OS X and gone that way after iOS 10 the latest.

Thought you guys were just being whiney until I looked at the linked “beautiful new design” page and saw the screen shots they selected. Literally gives me a headache to look at the first sample and I am one of the people that miss the candy coated look of early OS X.

The section on macOS only used the name Tahoe, like the 26 idea hadn’t made it to the copy for that section.

This is an existing and somewhat nitpicky issue, but it's also annoying how they specifically insist on rounded corners "because that matches all modern devices" in the announcement. Pretty much all third party external monitors don't, and even their latest top line laptops only have them at the top of the screen. So we're stuck with these dumb little triangles of background peeking out. It's kind of the "charging port on the bottom of the magic mouse" of MacOS.

You know something that almost never has rounded corners? Glass.

I have several objects on my desk made of glass with rounded corners. The glass lunch container I ate out of a little bit ago. A squircle glass bowl on my desk holding various nicknacks. The glass on the front of my phone. The glass I'm drinking out of right now has rounded corners. I used to have a kitchen table that had the top as one giant sheet of glass as a square with rounded corners. The windows in my car have some corners rounded. Tons of glass things have rounded corners.

And don't forget eyeglasses, which are named for the fact that they are made of glass, and which very often have rounded corners.

Here I was looking through them and not even thinking about them. Yes!

No you don't.

Just kidding: Yeah, it's just that when I think about a digital glass effect it feels more right with square corners than rounded corners. Because glass windows which we look through usually have square corners. Says I, who spend most of my time looking through a curved motorcycle helmet visor.

The fate of all perfectly squared glass sheets is to become quite round if you get them hot enough. If you get a moment, try looking up glass fusing. It is admittedly a niche hobby, but it's pretty interesting what starts happening when you apply a little heat.

Rounded corners is easier than straight. When you work glass, its usually somewhere between a liquid and non-Newtonian fluid. Molding it into round frames is trivial.

That's why we have round glass coasters, round lenses, round glasses for drinking, etc.

Almost every common glass object I can think of has rounded corners. The only obvious exception is most household window panes. I have to think pretty hard to come up with another one...maybe aquarium tanks? Some mirrors and glass tables, although the images that comes to mind for those are just as likely to be round as square.

I'm very curious which items you went through before concluding that glass almost never has rounded corners.

I should have specified glass panels/panes, specifically windows and mirrors, which you mention.

These likely have small radius rounded corners too.

Rounded corners vex me so much.

I can barely cope with their being no option to turn them off on Mac, especially for windows. I literally had to make my background pure black because the few pixels of backgrounds always showing pissed me off so much.

It makes taking nice screenshots so much more awkward, if not impossible. Just give us a quick toggle option, please!

Command+option+shift+4 then press the space bar to take a screenshot of a single window (shadow included).

FYI for anyone not aware it's CMD + Shift + 4 (no option)

Oops. Thank you!

"Turning off" could just put solid light/dark under the glass. That would be decent-looking (not much different than before), accessible, and easy to implement.

> I think optimizing for VisionOS

Yeah, this really looks like an Apple temper tantrum of "Nobody wants to program for the Vision Pro? Fine. We'll MAKE you program the iPhone like the Vision Pro. Take that developers. Now get back to doing our job for us, you lazy slobs."

What is the reasoning behind this comment?

This UI "update" is so obviously detrimental to anyone who doesn't have great 20ish-year-old eyesight, that it is going to negatively impact customer support costs, sales, engagement, etc.

So, you can either assume that Apple are blundering, incompetent dolts who have completely lost the plot (certainly possible) or that Apple has an actual purpose behind this.

If you ask for the purpose and the look at the GUI, you see Apple cramming a UI update targeted with the design language from AR (transparency behind everything, motion cues to activate orienting reflex, etc.) down the throats of all developers as opposed to just those on the Vision.

if you're switching to linux what device are you considering getting?

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