[HN Gopher] The window chrome of our discontent
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The window chrome of our discontent
Author : zdw
Score : 136 points
Date : 2026-03-06 22:38 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pxlnv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pxlnv.com)
| inatreecrown2 wrote:
| Unbelievable how bad the latest version of Pages looks against
| the oldest in the example. The "chrome" part - the buttons
| without labels, I have no idea what most of them would do and
| just glancing at them gives me a headache.
| masswerk wrote:
| It's still impressing how the entire chrome can be collapsed
| into a single background bit of information, indicating a
| presence that may be attended to for interaction. In contrast,
| the newer interfaces seem to be made to reduce the attention
| span anyone may apply to the content. (It's really stress
| inducing.)
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| It _can_ be good to reduce chrome and focus on content, and
| have minimal UI 's but there's a limit. Your UI still has to be
| discoverable, and intuitive. With everything hidden away it's
| unfriendly, particularly for new users.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Sure, but why can't we have both? Sensible, usable defaults
| for new users, configurable views for everyone else. I'd like
| a version of Pages where I can turn off the toolbar, turn off
| the title bar, fullscreen the remaining window and focus
| purely on the document. That really shouldn't be difficult.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Absolutely. It's totally doable. But Apple is swinging a
| bit too far into the minimal aesthetic right now.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It would be extremely easy to have both. Tab to hide/show
| chrome and controls. The Affinity software does this, and
| it's intuitive and works flawlessly.
| derefr wrote:
| I presume the difficult question there, would be what you
| would expect users to do to engage with that mechanism on
| iOS (since many Apple first-party apps, e.g. Notes, are
| now designed once to run on macOS + iPadOS + iOS as
| essentially a single [responsive] UI.)
| PKop wrote:
| I don't understand how decreasing the contrast between
| content and chrome helps you "focus" on content. The older
| design screenshot has _better_ content clarity than the
| current design.
| vintagedave wrote:
| I'll say. It really shows what we have lost. I deeply miss old
| OS X.
| SoKamil wrote:
| Since Big Sur redesign, light mode on macOS is borderline
| unusable.
|
| I need contrast in order to differentiate content. I need
| contrast on buttons to know where to click and what is clickable.
| I don't need to depend on muscle memory. On Catalina it was
| automatic. Chrome in moderation is not bad.
| vintagedave wrote:
| The curious thing about 'bringing users' content front and
| centre' or 'greater focus on your content' is that in the Tahoe
| redesign, the document and the window merge so much that the
| content (the document) is _less_ visible.
|
| They blur together. I can't see which is document and which is
| chrome. This is the article's point, but... how can Apple be
| saying what they have, when I feel that since Big Sur at least
| it's not only perceptively but arguably _objectively_ not true?
| wpm wrote:
| My favorite rendition of this phenomenon is video player
| controls that only appear if you mouse over the content. So, if
| I want to pause a video to focus on something, god help me if
| that something is in the lower third of the frame and centered
| (for Quicktime Player on macOS) or in the lower 100 pixels
| (YouTube), because odds are the fucking play/pause button is
| going to block it and it won't fade away if the video is
| paused.
|
| But we're making the UI gEt OuT oF tHe WaY .
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah. They just plaster the UI elements all over the video,
| VHS style, and they _remain on screen_ for several seconds.
| Browsers are particularly obnoxious: they display a giant
| icon right in the middle of the video. Depending on screen
| size and orientation, it can straight up block the entire
| content for several seconds, or indefinitely if the video is
| paused.
|
| One of so many reasons why I love mpv so much. Fine control
| via keyboard, allows turning off all the UI elements. Always
| a pleasure to use. I hate having to use any other media
| player.
| maliker wrote:
| I'll play slight devil's advocate. The buttons in the toolbar are
| duplicative of the options in the menubar, and I don't want to
| learn 2 locations for every feature. You can't turn off the
| menubar items, so I end up turning off the toolbar. So I don't
| care what that part of the UI looks like, and the sidebar for
| formatting they added, as pointed out in the article, uses the
| horizontal space on screens better than options stretched out
| over the full width of the menu.
|
| Now the visibility of the liquid glass stuff, that is definitely
| a problem. Can't recognize a UI element if it's constantly
| rendered differently and with very little contrast with the
| background elements.
|
| Well, I guess someone is going to vibecode a decent Linux GUI or
| fix the driver pains there or something and we'll be free of
| this. Because Microsoft/Apple and to a lesser extent Google have
| jumped the shark with their UI these days.
| kccqzy wrote:
| When I used to use Pages frequently I just memorized all the
| relevant keyboard shortcuts and turned off the entire toolbar.
| It's easy: for each button in the toolbar find the equivalent
| in the menu, and the shortcut is written on the menu item
| itself. That's, however, entirely unacceptable for most users.
|
| The sidebar for formatting they added is strictly worse than
| the inspector UI in old Pages '09. The sidebar is constrained
| not to overlap with content, but the user _can_ choose to
| overlap the inspector. It's strictly better flexibility for
| users. If you are doing a lot of fine adjustments to a single
| text box, then of course it's fewer mouse movement if the
| inspector is located right next to the text box, despite that
| it has obscured other irrelevant text boxes. I dearly miss
| Pages '09.
| afandian wrote:
| Maybe I just don't get it, but the first example the controls are
| out of the way, leaving most the space for the content.
|
| In subsequent examples the controls have made less space for
| content and obscured it. And takes up space with less-often used
| things like line spacing and and drop caps. Feels like I'm being
| told that up is down.
|
| And the smudgy liquid glass effect just makes everything look
| grubby. Not classy.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| To me it definitely looks like the area for the document grew.
| The sidebar is a solution to not tacking a million things into
| the toolbar, it's not like it's open 100% of the time.
| jmull wrote:
| Of these all, I prefer the Big Sur design language, which this
| article calls an "atrocious regression".
|
| Arguing aesthetics is pretty pointless (it's a decided question
| to me: my taste is great; most others have very poor taste).
|
| What bothers me about Tahoe are all the sloppy bits, like things
| you can no longer click or scroll to. We're on 26.3.1 now and it
| looks/works like 1.0.
| cachius wrote:
| > We're on 26.3.1
|
| _I_ 'm still on macOS Sonoma 14 and iOS 18
| wtallis wrote:
| I think it's arrogant to call this merely "arguing aesthetics"
| unless you can point to real usability studies that say
| removing color from icons does not impair their legibility and
| recognizability, or that reducing contrast does not similarly
| have detrimental effects.
|
| What really matters is not how the screenshots look, but how
| easy it is to _use_ the software in action, with low error rate
| and without having to spend more than a fraction of a second
| finding the controls you need.
| jmull wrote:
| If you want to claim an objective difference, then _you_ need
| to be the one to substantiate that.
|
| Anyway, we know people read symbols by shape/lines/pattern
| just fine without color because that's how reading works.
|
| > What really matters is not how the screenshots look, but
| how easy it is to use the software in action, with low error
| rate and without having to spend more than a fraction of a
| second finding the controls you need.
|
| Indeed. Which is why this article is mostly blowing wind.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/articles/why-
| your-u...
| igtztorrero wrote:
| Few software companies consider this: users appreciate it when
| the interface remains constant over time, and especially if we
| can continue using previous versions without being forced to
| change, since learning new things again takes time.
| baggachipz wrote:
| It's laughable how often companies redesign the UI, when it's
| counter to what their users want. Nobody wants to re-learn how
| to interact with their software. Gradual changes, sure, but a
| total redesign and then releasing it as a "feature" is such a
| turn-off to so many people.
| netbioserror wrote:
| Side-by-side, it's incredibly clear that the newest version is
| total UX garbage. Monochrome icons were a complete mistake, in
| basically all cases everywhere. A mix of the Lion color,
| shape/texture, and spacing, plus the Catalina sidebar, would be
| the best.
|
| I really REALLY love the Lion icons. Colorful but subdued with
| only mild saturation, distinctive shapes, strong line borders
| with very slight halo, and mild gradients to make them pop.
| hbn wrote:
| Liquid Glass on macOS is such a joke. Most of the redesign was
| just turning buttons into Fisher Price-looking circles and ovals.
| I'm typing this from Safari which looks so stupid in Tahoe. The
| tab bar is a giant oblong oval with a bunch of tab titles and
| icons floating on a solid background, only separated by a short,
| faint vertical bar that doesn't go to the top/bottom to truly
| separate them. The current active tab is a small oblong oval
| within the giant oval. The perfect visual metaphor for tabs which
| Safari set the trend for in macOS is gone.
|
| And then just above is a bunch more ovals and circles. The
| sidebar button is an oval, the back/forward buttons are in an
| oval, the Wipr extension icon is in an oval, the URL bar is an
| oblong over, etc. And (at least in light mode) this is all white
| ovals on a white background. It all looks so amateurish.
|
| I'm so glad that Hack Alan Dye is gone and I pray to God that
| Stephen Lamay can get us back to reason. I doubt they'll do an
| overnight Cmd+Z update in macOS 28 or whatever, but perhaps he
| can direct Liquid Glass in a direction that isn't just rounding
| things for the sake of it.
| LoganDark wrote:
| I really want something between Sequoia and Tahoe. (Probably
| mostly Sequoia, but with _targeted_ applications of Liquid
| Glass.) I don 't like how Tahoe treats everything as floating
| on top, as if properly dividing windows into sidebars and
| panels is wrong... There's so much extra padding and rounding
| now, I hate it. Everything's lost the depth, detail and
| cleanliness it used to have, replaced by this bubbly mess.
| Like, sheets don't even slide out anymore, they overlay like on
| iOS. The charm, expressivity, and, well, Mac-ness is gone.
|
| I love Liquid Glass - the blur and refractive effects are so
| pretty and technically impressive - but it should be used
| tastefully instead of this nonsense. I feel like Tahoe in
| general is straying way, way too far from the battle-tested
| Cocoa foundation and into this total top-down crap. Liquid
| Glass feels like some sort of shareholder-enforced
| enshittification.
|
| macOS is supposed to be defined from the bottom up; it always
| has been. There has always been importance in having a solid
| base; a robust foundation for developers to build on. HIG,
| Cocoa, CoreGraphics, all of that is in service of this. The
| user experience and vertical integration is a result of this
| and couldn't exist without it.
|
| There's so much wrong with Tahoe that goes against everything
| Mac has ever been. We _don 't want_ to dumb down the interface;
| that has never been the goal. The goal has always been to make
| the interface intuitive enough that anyone can learn it. macOS
| and iOS are fundamentally different platforms with
| fundamentally different design constraints and considerations.
|
| Icons being able to escape the squircle was supposed to be a
| reflection of the fact that apps on Mac are less contained than
| apps on iOS. They have more expressive power and more advanced
| capabilities. You're working closer to the metal and in a less
| controlled environment. Because of that, you can do more and
| you're not constrained to the flows of the system.
|
| iOS always hasn't been this. The constraints of touch are
| different than the constraints of the desktop. Steve Jobs spoke
| about this a lot back in his day, about why iOS is so much more
| locked-down than Mac.
|
| But Mac has always been a platform for freedom and control. And
| Tahoe strips the soul of that.
| rwc wrote:
| "shareholder-enforced enshittification" what on earth could
| this possibly mean?
| Terr_ wrote:
| I assume the subtext is something like: "Customers are
| being abused to create the short-term illusion of
| improvement, to satisfy myopic investors in the financial
| markets and the personal compensation incentives of
| executives."
| hbn wrote:
| Can't speak for GP but I got the feeling that after Apple
| embarrassed itself shipping almost none of the Apple
| Intelligence features announced at WWDC 2024, they
| scrambled to get something drastic out the door to show
| they're still "innovating" and "doing big things"
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Shareholders want to maximize stock price, therefore they
| choose psychopathic CEOs willing to do literally anything
| to achieve that. People who view reputation and goodwill as
| just capital to be spent. Giving out free service to get
| people hooked then turning the screws on them is a proven
| strategy.
| LoganDark wrote:
| None of the siblings got it right. By 'shareholder-enforced
| enshittification' I meant when shareholders (or, generally,
| anyone from the top) enforce a direction that doesn't align
| with what's natural of the foundation. So the system ends
| up being stretched to afford it, corners get cut /
| shortcuts get taken, and then that becomes the final
| shipping version.
| signal11 wrote:
| > There's so much extra padding and rounding now
|
| I don't like it either, but I wonder if that's to support the
| touch-enabled Macs that the rumor mill is reporting about
| right now.
|
| In any case, Tahoe has many other issues beyond padding.
| LoganDark wrote:
| There are definitely other ways to do it than making
| everything look like this.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > But Mac has always been a platform for freedom and control.
|
| My impress has always been the opposite: MacOS is
| "opinionated", and the user can either accept the Apple way
| of doing UI or can take a hike.
|
| MacOS has offered token customization, such as allowing the
| user to change the color of menu bar highlights, but any
| substantive change required 3rd party intervention, which
| would inevitably cease to function at the next upgrade.
|
| These days the OS is even more locked down, making it all but
| impossible to modify OS files.
| krackers wrote:
| Catalyst was already sort of a death knell, since it's an
| admission that it's ok to port over iPhone/iPad HIG to mac.
| Maybe swiftUI too, since it's replacing appkit and all its
| various affordances.
| observationist wrote:
| It's the year of the Linux desktop. Break free of the walled
| gardens, there's no good excuse to throw your money away
| anymore. ElementaryOS and a few other projects have superb
| Apple flavored UI and UX. Apple just wants your money; they
| don't give a flying rat's ass about you or your needs.
|
| Let liquid glass be your red pill - come join us in the real.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Not everyone uses Electron apps exclusively.
|
| The cross platform scene is much different these days.
| Electron apps suck, but at least they suck equally across all
| platforms. And there are many Electron apps.
|
| But a lot of people rely on Adobe, Microsoft or Windows-only,
| Mac-only apps. I don't see that changing anytime soon,
| unfortunately.
| observationist wrote:
| Breaking free is easier than ever. You don't need walled
| gardens.
|
| AI is making handling the edge cases that kept people
| locked in almost trivial. Any workflow, custom spreadsheet,
| specific OS-only app can be worked around, easily. Staying
| stuck on Apple or Microsoft is a choice - they're no longer
| returning value concurrent with the money they charge.
|
| You're free to continue giving them money, but the reasons
| to do so make less and less sense each day that goes by.
| thunderfork wrote:
| "Adobe Creative Suite not running on Linux can be worked
| around easily" is something that people have been getting
| wrong for decades, but injecting AI into the premise is a
| new frontier of funny.
|
| What's the AI workaround for Illustrator/After
| Effects/etc.? You're not suggesting generating vector art
| or video assets via LLM replaces these, surely?
| LevGoldstein wrote:
| I'm very curious what their workaround plan for something
| like U&I MetaSynth would be.
| fragmede wrote:
| Given than Adobe has their own GenAI trained on work
| licensed for that purpose in Photoshop, I think they
| would disagree with you on that.
| thunderfork wrote:
| Offering to add it to the workflow doesn't mean they
| think it can replace the whole product for all users - if
| they stop shipping the rest of the features, then that'd
| be Adobe "disagreeing with me on that".
| egypturnash wrote:
| I use Adobe Illustrator daily at a very high level and
| have about 25y of source files in its private format, as
| well as a bunch of plugins I rely on. How well can Linux
| deal with running a version of it written in this decade?
|
| Inkscape is not an option, nor is anything involving
| importing PDF/SVG, those have to expand a huge ton of
| stuff that's represented much more compactly in an .AI
| file. It's about as large a difference as that between an
| executable file and its source code.
| microtonal wrote:
| I don't think there is an answer. The best you can do is
| probably running Windows in a VM and limiting its use to
| applications that you really cannot replace. It's been a
| while since I used a VM on Linux, but VMware had a thing
| called Unity Mode where you can have application windows
| from the VM on your Linux desktop:
|
| https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/desktop-
| hyper...
|
| It seems like they removed it from VMware 17.6, but maybe
| another VMM still has this functionality?
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| I haven't tried it but I've seen this project promoted in
| some tweets and maybe even here:
| https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
| observationist wrote:
| https://www.vectorpea.com/ and https://www.photopea.com/
| are the lowest barrier to useable alternatives. You can
| even save them offline and convert to PWA, with very
| little friction. vectorpea and photopea should handle
| your .ai files admirably.
|
| Inkscape, Affinity, other open source alternatives exist,
| but have a remarkably different UI and don't capitalize
| on your muscle memory.
|
| The feature overlap is bordering on complete, but there
| are some Adobe Illustrator only perks, for sure. Most of
| it you can make up for with any of the frontier image AI
| models.
|
| There are plugins - if you're well versed in how they
| work, converting between AI and vectorpea should also be
| a piece of cake with AI.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| > Breaking free is easier than ever. You don't need
| walled gardens.
|
| There's nothing that comes even close to Photoshop. Same
| for a lot of similar professional tools.
|
| > AI is making handling the edge cases that kept people
| locked in almost trivial
|
| Not for anything remotely complex. Let's see how that
| looks in 5 years, but I'm skeptical.
| observationist wrote:
| Photopea.com exceeds CS6 but keeps the UI. All sorts of
| plugins, great project. You can also use various hacks
| like photoshop UI for Gimp and things like that, but I
| found that route to be unusable.
|
| I've converted over a dozen weird edge cases of
| spreadsheets and access apps and ancient scripts used by
| departments into standalone little apps or browser apps,
| ranging from budget and finance related bookkeeping to
| tracking sales to licensing management. The only
| advantage Excel has over this is ease of maintenance -
| it's a lot easier for someone to guide themselves through
| updating things on a spreadsheet, or to break an idea
| down into multiple pages, etc, if spreadsheets are what
| they're familiar with.
|
| If you're an engineering or finance firm dependent on an
| obscure, unique Excel feature, I could at least see the
| argument that your use case is too hard to migrate off of
| Windows.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Photopea is a really impressive project, don't mean to
| diminish it in the slightest, but it's a toy next to
| Photoshop.
|
| > exceeds CS6
|
| I wish. It's not even on par with Photoshop 4. No LAB
| mode, handles only 4 profiles. I could be here all day
| listing missing features. Also, have you tried to open a
| 6GB PSB file with it?
|
| I've used Photoshop almost daily since 1994. I really
| wish there was an open source competitor. There isn't.
| charcircuit wrote:
| This year I switched from the Linux desktop to MacOS. I
| finally got tired of how unprofessional Linux operating
| systems were being run.
|
| I think Liquid Glass looks good.
| hbn wrote:
| We aren't given an option at my work, but if we were I'd
| still choose the Mac anyway. I love the Mac and that's why I
| care so much about this design regression. I like that it
| unlocks with my watch or fingerprint from a wireless
| keyboard, I like that I can push files and browser tabs
| between my Mac and phone just by sharing, I like that if I
| can push my mouse off the side of the screen and control my
| iPad with my keyboard and mouse with zero setup, or if I want
| one more monitor I can turn my iPad into that with 2 clicks.
| I could go on.
|
| They just need to get back into the mindset that design is
| how it works. Not forcing some aesthetic into everything with
| the superficial idea of "focusing on content" as a backwards
| justification for making everything transparent cause someone
| thought it was prettier.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > They just need to
|
| Linux is for people who want to get rid of "they". If
| "they" start screwing things up, you switch to a different
| "they". Alternatively, you become "they" by forking the
| project.
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| > Alternatively, you become "they" by forking the
| project.
|
| This doesn't make sense for the vast majority of people.
|
| Linux desktop doesn't have the vast majority of the
| niceties that living in the Apple ecosystem gives you. If
| I was going to rebuild any one of them for Linux, it
| would easily become a major project that would suck up
| all my free time.
| pmontra wrote:
| About the UI I become "they" but installing the GNOME
| extensions that I need to make my desktop look like 99%
| of what I would it to look and behave. It takes a few
| minutes to get to 80%, a few hours to get to 95% and days
| (a few minutes here and there) to 99%. Those huge menus
| and tabs on GNOME terminal eventually became skinny with
| a good deal of CSS and AI.
|
| Do most people want to get through that research?
| Absolutely no, I don't expect many people to follow me
| into that rabbit hole. They can get the default or
| Windows or a Mac, no problem with that.
| fragmede wrote:
| But with AI, "go through with that research" is tell
| Claude code how you want things to behave, and it'll make
| it happen for you.
| hbn wrote:
| You're kinda skipping over the 75% of my comment where I
| said I like everything else, including things Linux can't
| replicate.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I skipped over those arguments because they miss the
| point. You're not going to get Apple tier caretaking from
| Linux distributions.
|
| Nothing inherently prevents Linux from replicating those
| features. It's just that somebody's gotta put the work in
| to make it happen. That somebody could very well be _you_
| if nobody else cared to do it.
|
| My laptop has fancy RGB keyboard LEDs. Manufacturer
| shipped a shitty Windows app to control them, as well as
| the internal fans. My choices were: either give up on
| those features or implement them myself. So I reverse
| engineered what I could and made a Linux program to
| control the LEDs. Threw it out there on GitHub just
| because and woke up one day to discover that not only did
| I have users but somebody else had independently built a
| GUI on top of it.
|
| The idea is not to change Linux distributions into Apple
| tier experiences. The idea is to convert _you_ into a
| contributing user who is capable of solving his own
| problems and making his own features. The idea is to
| elevate users from consumers to contributors who take
| ownership of their system.
|
| That's the only way you can ever be free of "they".
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I think people should stop replicating "Apple-flavored" user
| interfaces on Linux. That just leads to constant
| disappointment.
|
| I'd rather Linux developed an identity of its own. I feel
| like keyboard driven tiled windows are the closest it has to
| that.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| What's a good invoicing app for small businesses /
| freelancers on Linux?
|
| What's a good calendar app on Linux?
|
| What's a good e-mail client?
|
| What's a good photo and image editor?
| signal11 wrote:
| Liquid Glass is Apple's Windows Vista. They had a ton of fun
| with Vista in their "switch" ads, if the Windows team were in
| better shape they could have a field day just screenshotting
| Tahoe on Social Media. Lucky they're distracted with their own
| challenges.
|
| Liquid Glass does have some good points, but it feels like
| someone turned in C- level work.
| hbn wrote:
| I see the Vista comparison a lot but I'm not sure I agree
| with it. I never thought Vista was that ugly, I thought it
| was more most of the computer hardware people were buying at
| the time just wasn't capable of running those visual effects
| (and I recall it was pretty buggy too)
|
| It had a glassy aesthetic but the similarity doesn't go much
| further than that description. They didn't make all the
| buttons into glass blobs floating on top of the content with
| distracting warping effects; the window chrome was still
| generally separated from the content.
| djfdat wrote:
| I think the idea of the Window Chrome "getting out of the way" of
| the user is a good concept, but we fail to consider what the user
| expects at arms length. We also have to consider the chicken-or-
| egg problem
|
| In the example, we have a sidebar for the formatting in the newer
| example vs havign that in the toolbar in Lion. Was it that back
| then, people were more likely to configure fonts & formatting
| settings, and we've gradually as a society de-emphasized our
| formatting in word processing? Or did UI changes such as this,
| hiding formatting options push us towards a world where we care
| less about formatting? I'd like to think it's a bit of both; as
| the user-based broadened, you had less percentage-based people
| that cared so heavily about formatting, so UI changes were made
| to optimize for that, further pushing people in that direction.
|
| On a different note, I want to call out just how badly the
| sidebar is laid out compared to the toolbar. In the Lion toolbar,
| there were unlabeled sections but it was pretty clear what the
| purpose of each group was. Then you have the sidebar, where
| labels are added in some places, excessive space given where
| uneccesary, tabs that are sectioned off from the settings they'll
| show/hide, collapsible sections that can also be shown/hidden,
| some dropdowns using up/down caret while others just use the down
| caret, most dropdown carets being right-aligned but not the gear
| one, and in the liquid glass versions, the overlay of toolbar
| buttons over the sidebar creating confusion.
| lateforwork wrote:
| The "content over chrome" trend was started by Microsoft's Metro
| design language. Windows 8 and Metro are one of the biggest UI/UX
| disasters since the dawn of computing. Why would Apple keep
| copying the worst ideas from Microsoft?
|
| NNGroup has written about this trend:
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/content-chrome-ratio/
| derefr wrote:
| Metro worked perfectly well on tablets. And every OS since W8
| has actually kept some version of Metro (in the form of e.g.
| larger touch-targets), because having a single version of
| Windows UI for both touchscreen and mouse-and-keyboard
| computers, is what enabled the creation of the "2-in-1" or
| "convertible" touchscreen notebook, a design that basically
| every modern Windows notebook instantiates.
|
| Liquid Glass also makes more sense on tablets. I think Apple is
| copying Microsoft because Apple is also moving toward full UI-
| level unification between their desktop mouse-and-keyboard UI
| and their mobile/tablet touchscreen UI. They've already done it
| for some apps (e.g. Notes.)
| lateforwork wrote:
| MacBook Neo is getting a lot of attention for good reason. It
| is a great laptop. The fact that it isn't "convertible
| touchscreen" notebook doesn't seem to bother anyone.
|
| Apple copying Microsoft is a mistake. It used to be the other
| way around.
| beart wrote:
| The Windows 8 equivalent server edition also included the
| upgrade to Metro UI. I don't know, I guess MS figured IT
| wanted to provision Windows services using a surface tablet?
|
| I actually really did like Windows Phones though. I can
| imagine a world with a third competitor in that space
| today... But MS didn't seem to have any understanding or
| ability to develop an ecosystem that works. Even when they
| were literally paying people to write apps for their app
| store, it was just terrible.
| signal11 wrote:
| If you believe the rumor mill, Touch-enabled Macs _may_
| launch this year[1].
|
| [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/08/apple-planning-
| macbook-...
| vintagedave wrote:
| That article was written in 2014, just a few years after the
| trend started, and still today, over a decade later, Apple,
| once famous for its UX, is still failing to follow it.
|
| What puzzles me is that information like this is out there. How
| did Apple get it so wrong?
|
| I am hopeful for the new UX VP. He has his work cut out for
| him.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Why would Apple keep copying the worst ideas from Microsoft?
|
| Remember also the "Get a Mac" ads that parodied Windows Vista
| permission dialogs, but now macOS is a permission dialog hell.
|
| Tim Cook was an IBMer. I'm sure that Cook was a fine hire as an
| operations manager, but I doubt that Steve Jobs intended for
| someone like Cook to be in charge of everything at Apple,
| including UI design. (Jobs never put Jony Ive in charge of
| software, by the way, whereas Cook did.) Indeed, I doubt that
| Jobs groomed anyone to be his successor. By the time Jobs
| learned he had a fatal illness, it was too late, and he had to
| turn over the company to someone the board of directors would
| accept, which was Cook. Jobs was CEO but didn't own the
| company; infamously, the Apple board of directors chose John
| Sculley over Jobs in an earlier power struggle.
| philistine wrote:
| You are rewriting history. Any time Jobs had to step aside
| from the CEO position, Cook took over immediately. He was
| Jobs' designated successor for a decade when he learned he
| was sick. They merely implemented the succession plan they
| already had.
|
| When Cook took over, he was unequivocally the only choice. He
| steered the company in his own direction, with a focus on
| operational health to the detriment of other things. He kind
| of lost the plot somewhere in there and has been spinning his
| wheels for a while. That's not what I'm contesting. It's your
| idea that Jobs didn't want Cook. Jobs loved Cook.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Any time Jobs had to step aside from the CEO position,
| Cook took over immediately.
|
| Any time Jobs had to step aside from the CEO position
| _temporarily_ , Cook took over immediately. Metaphorically
| speaking, Cook kept the trains running on time. Cook did
| not set or change the direction of the company at the time,
| and Jobs was still available for consultation.
|
| Sick is not the same as dying. Jobs initially didn't think
| he was dying, and tried to treat his illness with some
| hippie-dippie "alternative" medicine, when aggressive
| treatment might have saved his life.
|
| > He was Jobs' designated successor for a decade when he
| learned he was sick.
|
| Citation needed.
|
| > Jobs loved Cook.
|
| In what way? According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs
| lamented that Cook was "not a product person".
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| It worked so incredibly well on the Windows Phone 7, but
| translated horribly to the Windows 8 desktop. Especially the
| weird mouse gesture to get to the neutered Settings panel, the
| redundancy of that panel to begin with, and the entire UWP app
| experience. Windows 10 was a great marriage of these two
| concepts, even if the Settings menu was still redundant, it was
| functional. Then comes along Windows 11 even it's most recent
| feature updates feels like a half-finished UI.
| drooopy wrote:
| Oh, man... What I wouldn't give to have Pages (and other apps)
| appear like they did in OS X Lion. This is just depressing.
| wobfan wrote:
| While I feel so too, I do actually think that objectively
| Catalina is a UX-side step up. Current displays have 16:9 or
| even 3:2. Putting less things in the top bar and more stuff in
| the sidebar, especially in something like Pages where your
| content does not even fill half of your display horizontally, I
| think it makes sense.
| systoll wrote:
| From the first version of iWork, the inspector panel had the
| same basic purpose and layout as the sidebar. (Screenshot:
| http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/120609-inspector-
| win... ).
|
| The formatting bar was an (IMO unnecessary) option added in
| iWork 08.
|
| With iWork 2016, they took the existing inspector panel setup
| and docked it into each window.
| wffurr wrote:
| Why do they do this? I just don't understand the regression in
| user interfaces in the major operating systems over the years. Is
| there some academic discourse about this? Is there some trend in
| UX or designer education that's produced this? It can't be just
| change for change's sake as there's a trend to minimize the OS
| chrome to the point that it's unusable.
| graemep wrote:
| Its partly driven by wanting to match mobile design, but I
| think more putting more value on aesthetics and usability.
|
| From a commercial point of view branding and how it looks is
| more important. People buy what looks simple - they are not
| going to spend time trying something out to asses what is
| simple.
| bityard wrote:
| The trend is "less is more". For the past decade, UX designers
| have fetishized flat, monochrome, low-contrast designs with
| zero visual cues or opportunities for feature discovery. From
| what I'm to gather, their idea of a perfect computer is an
| empty white (or black) screen on which you can do absolutely
| nothing except yell out, "um, hey Siri? Are you there?"
|
| I do wonder if we'll see the pendulum swing the other
| direction. We used to have UX designers that actually studied
| users and how best to mold the interface to them. I think now
| is the best time ever to get into UX design and make your mark
| by showing the world that software doesn't _have_ to be flat,
| lifeless, and radiused to hell and back in order to be great.
| wffurr wrote:
| >> For the past decade, UX designers have fetishized flat,
| monochrome, low-contrast designs with zero visual cues or
| opportunities for feature discovery
|
| Yeah but why? Is it just a design trend? Is it just fashion?
| Or is there some underlying reason why it went this way?
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| The Lion screenshot is just perfect. Everything you need to do is
| right there. And with every version from then on the usability
| goes downhill and stuff you need to do is more and more hidden
| and requires several clicks to access.
|
| Pretty sad state of affairs. Software isn't build for usability
| but purely for whatever designers find fashionable at the time.
| skywhopper wrote:
| "Perhaps Apple has some user studies that suggest otherwise"
|
| I can guarantee you they have done no such research. This
| redesign is a clear top-down imposition to make the visual
| language uniform and match some lead designer's specs, not to
| actually make anything more useful or usable.
| aaroninsf wrote:
| Nothing enrages like change.
| wolpoli wrote:
| None of the reason for the redesign in 2014, 2020 and 2025 had
| anything to do with solving any problem users had with the
| interface. The goals were just to blend controls and content
| visually and make the interface feel fresh, which I doubt that
| any users were asking for in the first place.
| nycticorax wrote:
| The whole thing of calling controls "chrome" is basically a
| metaphor gone horribly awry. The term was coined in the 1990s
| because (at least on Windows) the "content" usually had a white
| background, and the controls usually had a gray background. But
| of course the use of the word "chrome" inevitably implies that
| this stuff (the controls) are like the chrome on a car:
| nonfunctional, inessential visual frippery. And so UI chrome must
| be bad, and something to eliminate. But of course this is nutty:
| The UI controls are what you use to manipulate the content! It's
| like calling the steering wheel and the pedals in a car "chrome"
| and deciding you need to deemphasize them so that the driver can
| 'focus on the road' or something. The controls are important!
| They are how you drive the car!
| beachy wrote:
| For some reason UI taste influencers have outsized influence
| within companies. IMO it's because they have the ear of execs
| who react viscerally to eye candy - as we all do - but lack
| understanding of basic usability principles.
|
| As an exec sitting there frustrated by the slow pace of
| software development, at least you can always yell at the UI
| guy and demand changes that your gut tells you "look cool", and
| you can be an active, though uninformed particpant in sessions
| with design mockups.
|
| Car UIs are a great case in point. People have been yelling for
| years at the poor usability of touchscreens in cars as opposed
| to discrete buttons/controls. Yet the enshittification of car
| UIs continues unchecked. My ioniq 5 has multiple touch panels
| and buttons, yet something as simple as directing air flow to
| the dash vents requires me to prod at a tiny touch area and
| look at a separate tiny display area well away from the touch
| control to see what I managed to select. It is 10 times worse
| than an old school rotary dial that I could operate instantly
| by touch alone. My workaround now is to prod the control, wait
| for 5 seconds to see if I feel air start flowing, and if not,
| prod the control and wait again.
|
| Peak usability of most computer UIs was back in the 90s when
| simple (to use) but deep and powerful hierarchical menus were
| uniformly placed at the top of the page, and right clicking on
| objects in the UI opened context-sensitive popup hierarchical
| menus.
|
| For cars it was in the 2000s before touch screens.
| rzwitserloot wrote:
| Not to mention that the _actual controls_ in a car (from
| gearshift to button to change the brightness on the on-board
| display to 'open garage door' button of a built in radio wave
| thing) are never called _chrome_ for fairly obvious reasons.
|
| However, jargon words are just jargon words. There really are
| only two options:
|
| 1. Police them ruthlessly. Even if the word would only cause
| confusion in the amateur / casual observer, they must be
| eliminated anyway. I venture that this means almost all jargon
| words must be turned into words totally devoid of meaning.
| Jargon is useful - nobody wants to spend the same 3 paragraphs
| to convey a complex but very common concept - they invent a
| word for it. So, are we ready for the 'floobargle' and the
| 'glorpnitz'?
|
| 2. Just let them be, and instead police the idea that words
| that are jargon _imply anything at all_. Police the idea that
| their plain english dictionary definition holds any relevance
| beyond being a memento for what the jargon word is truly meant
| to convey.
|
| In other words: The problem lies with those who realise
| 'chrome' is a jargon term and then kneejerk into '... it is
| frippery' anyway. That's stupid. Those who do that should be
| ridiculed.
|
| I think that's the only way partly because that feels right and
| because I think it would lead to eliminated of jargon (bad
| endresult) or always ending up with jargon that is just a
| random word that has no meaning at all and wasn't in any
| dictionary.
|
| No, it's the only feasible way, because of pragmatic reasons:
| Changing existing jargon? Hoo boy. That is extremely difficult.
| wobfan wrote:
| The biggest problem of all this crappy development in Windows and
| macOS is that they just threw customization out of the window.
| Remember Windows 98, when you could actually just right click on
| the Desktop and select your own colors for basically everything
| in the UI. With each Windows it got less, until in Vista and 7
| only like 10% remained. This continues to get less.
|
| This is pushing AI down my throat (+ privacy, but IMO Apple is at
| least okay-ish in this regard) is my main reason why my next
| laptop will not run macOS. Maybe Asahi Linux will finally support
| Thunderbolt, but maybe I'll just switch to a Framework. I'm just
| happy that I stayed on 15.7.5 until now. As soon as this gets no
| updates anymore, I'm gone.
| JaggerJo wrote:
| Let's hope macOS 27 fixes liquid glass. For now I'm not updating.
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