I was really happy when they added the pictures! Dyslexia, the icons are 100% faster for me, I don't use those menus often enough to know what is in there word wise, but I can read the icons super fast.
For a company that used to pride itself on its clean and consistent UI, this is really shoddy work. It feels like Microsoft now, every app designed by a different team and nobody coordinating together.
And this would have been a really minor job to coordinate properly. It probably would have saved time in fact having predefined icons for common functions. Now theres been 8 designers working on a different icon for the same function. It seems just complete disinterest in consistency. "Just do whatever" is not the apple way.
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Get a bunch of people in a room, show them menus where the textual labels are gone, and see who can get the most right.
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Icons won't help you when they are inconsistent, or don't mean anything.
It's impossible to find a suitable visual metaphor for every possible action of every possible app and cram it into a tiny monochrome icon.
Processing images is always faster than processing text for everyone.
I like it in theory but the execution seems more harmful than helpful so far. If I'm wrong and it's helping some people, that's great.