So the company that also lets you support your favorite podcasts via a subscription decided their competitor should pay 30% more just to do the same thing? Cool.
Don't forget they also directly compete with Patreon with podcast subscriptions. You can support a podcast through Apple podcasts or Patreon, but only one of those has a 30% chunk taken out.
They're really cool, I just wish they weren't an iPhone accessory. If I could do everything from my Mac I'd consider them, but Apple likes to assume every Apple customer also has an iPhone.
It feels like Apple did all of this in reverse. They created a new UI system and effects that look like shit with any amount of fine detail, and now suddenly their design guide says "actually fine details are bad for the user". They didn't come up with a good design, they came up with a shader tech demo and had to make a design that works with that new constraint.
That's fair, it's not like this is completely breaking usability. But I have to ask, do you think the most recent pages icon is really the most accessible and useful version for this app? The logical end of the flat design and minimalism trend got us here and I think it's grossly over done.
Microsoft's icons (until their most recent Liquid Glass redesign) were probably the best attempt at abstract but still useful to a new user. The Excel icon looked like a grid, Word had lines, PowerPoint a pie chart. They're not perfect, but it's interesting to see the new ones that have just less detailed and are a little more blobby, or melted.
Given the choice between "These icons look a bit garish in a subjective sense" and "what abstract art piece describes the Pages app" I'd rather have the one that's still useful. One benefit of skeuomorphism was the level of detail, that's fully been abandoned along with the affordances that brought.
I like how the new icon forces you to do product placement for Apple devices just to explain it. Tap the icon with the Apple Pencil and rectangle. Just don't convey it using color, that's now completely unpredictable.
For instance an icon with a pointy stick over top of a horizontal rectangle with a gradient applied conveys a tool for doing document and page layout. Got it.
Man I fucking hate this trend in icon design where they've both become so insanely basic and also tried to be "consistent" with all the icons to the point of being useless. Google started this a while back with their app icons on Android, where they all have some basic shape and the Google colors and it still sucks trying to find the right one. The horrendous icon theming users are able to do only makes it worse, reducing them to two-color versions.
Microsoft did this okay until their recent liquid glass redesign, which just went further into colored blob territory.
I have no idea what app this is an icon for, but from the ones in the middle I have to assume it's Apple's version of Word? I'll agree that the inkwell one is dated and doesn't work well now, but how on earth is a pencil + line conveying anything useful?
That ended abruptly, but yes I would tend to agree.
I also think in a few short years we'll have mountains of code generated by people that don't understand the fact that code is a liability, it has to be maintained and has a cost associated with it. It's not just a thing that stands alone once it's written, every bit you add has to be cared for forever. Most engineers get this because they live it, the people generating this stuff will not.
Damn that's a nice looking watch! Really feels like they got to build what they wanted to 10 years ago but the tech wasn't there. Can't wait to build some sleek round watch faces once I get mine (unless there's an emulator already?)
It's so disappointing to be fed crumbs like this instead of seeing real consumer protection laws put in place. Let users install software on their computers outside of what the manufacturer permits, why focus on browsers and "app stores"?
The web browser is the singular hole in Apple's grip over the user's device. While there are definitely arguments that can be made about security, I think it's naive to think that Apple is unaware of this and is operating on something other than protecting their app store fortune.
You would hope, but changing this font isn't about making anything better, it's that Calibre was apparently a DEI font and had to go. I can't imagine these people thinking highly of an open source (Oooh communism) font that's also designed with accessibility in mind.
I don't think using an engine that's equally controlled by a different big evil corporation is exactly an act of resistance. I don't disagree with their decision, but c'mon.
We thought the same thing, and they made pretty significant changes to it based on that pushback. Also the flat redesign didn't have basic problems like white text on an white background all while Apple is saying they spent obscene resources on it.
This defense feels so ridiculous every time I hear it (and it's almost always about Apple). People trot it out about Airpods too. If Apple is too big to care about this product line, we should be enraged, not shrugging or pointing out how successful they are.