Rebuilt without specular and you still kind of get the glass feel. This is more how I expected to see LiquidGlass from Apple to be honest. I think the main difference between mine and Apples is the stroke width and more defined shadows. Thanks for the prompt about removing the specular. I think it's looking nice.
That’s mostly a distinction without a difference… It’s new and modern. A “modern” design uses current design trends and appeals to modern users. And macOS Tahoe uses modern design trends and appeals to modern users. I’m perfectly fine saying the design of Tahoe is more modern, or befitting of a modern device, than the previous one.
Wrong. There are many things that are more unified, some small, some big. For one, the design styles of macOS and iPadOS apps are identical now, or mostly so. So toolbars in apps are more consistent, sidebars actually look the same, rather than sidebars on iPadOS and iOS being a boring solid color while sidebars on macOS were transparent. Now both use a panel of glass for the sidebar, and that’s more consistent. I’ll grant you, that’s more cosmetic than anything else, but it is far less jarring when moving between devices having consistent design and aesthetic.
There’s not really any reason to make the basic stuff arbitrarily different. Buttons for the same functions don’t need to look different between platforms, for example. Sometimes a circle or squircle with drop shadow and SF Symbols are exactly what’s needed… Does Ford use completely different letters for the transmission gears? Heat and cooling? No? They’re more or less similar? Okay then, there are some benefits to more unified design… 🤷🏼♂️
Yet many new users owned an iPhone or iPad before the Mac. So when everything’s arbitrarily different like slapping music playback controls at the top of the window instead of the bottom where it is everywhere else, it can make things harder and more jarring. It adds unnecessary friction when moving between devices. One moment your reaching your cursor to the bottom of the window for music control, the other when you decide to pick up what you were doing on a Mac cause you left your iPad in the other room, your having to reach your cursor to the top. It just adds unnecessary friction… I’m glad to see Apple unifying these things better. It makes it far better to move between devices even for an existing user such as myself. And it will almost certainly make the Mac far more approachable and less odd-ball.
Sometimes space dictates smaller margins… 🤷🏼♂️. And I think there’s plenty of space between the corner and the F. It’s got like 5mm worth of spacing there…
They look very similar to the buttons we’ve had in iOS for many years now… 🤷🏼♂️. And you found two people who agree with you, and I can find people who agree with me too. Doesn’t mean anything… 🤷🏼♂️
I can clearly read them… 🤷🏼♂️. And bear in mind that the UI is designed for Apple’s own displays, not third-parties. That said, I have a 27” 4K 16:9 LG monitor, and everything looks perfectly clear to me. 🤷🏼♂️. Maybe the PPI being denser on my monitor makes some difference.
It already is clear in both modes. I just was proposing a compromise that would have presumably appealed to you since you were upset it wasn’t off-white enough… 🤷🏼♂️
I had no trouble seeing it small. Here’s the full screenshot linked at the bottom. The button is still clearly visible. And I find it highly unlikely people are going to be regularly aiming the camera in just the right way to overlay the button and a ceiling light very often… 🤷🏼♂️
I can also see it. But t isn't very clear and blends into the video in the background quite a lot. I think it legibility of GUI icons should be less dependent on the content being show, that's all.
Yeah. Probably younger. But it's not like I have bad eyesight. Do have glasses at times that makes things very sharp. And the designers I checked with are younger. One of them said like you did in some cases of this thread, that how the buttons looked were probably unintentional/bugs. But you think they look fine – which surprises me… But it's okay! 😀
enchroma.com
And that’s your opinion. But the point is, it doesn’t make any functional difference so the claim that web developers are going to have to do a bunch of work to completely change their web apps for rounded corners is absurd… Furthermore, the majority of web usage is on devices with rounded display corners, so it wouldn’t make any sense to not expect many of your users are viewing your web apps with rounded corners… The html and CSS courses I’ve done and skimmed all have emphasized the importance of adaptive web design, and designing your page to work on mobile and tablets…
You don’t know what the vast majority think… You’re assuming your position is the majority. But there’s no good reason to believe that’s the case. Niche forums like this aren’t an indicator of average user sentiment, nor are blogs or other such content from content creators trying to drum up artificial scandal for clicks…
The lettering is white in the button. Notice how low res that button is in your screenshot when you zoom in on it. Images like that at low res will tend to combine colors when you’ve got narrow lines like that. The text is not green, it’s white. But your low resolution image (either the scaling you have set for your display, or possibly compression when you saved the photo) is making it look green because pixels will sample surrounding pixels when compressed, and so it’s averaging the white and the green. This is a product of low resolution, not Apple’s design… But I’m sure if you are a designer, you’re already familiar with that. 😉
That is almost for sure your problem. You’re using it without scaling. You mention you have more space, so I’m guessing you’re using the most zoomed out scaling option. So it’s going to make things pixely and fuzzy... That isn’t an issue with the design, that’s an issue with your display settings… 🤦🏼♂️
I really don’t see any problem with the legibility. I aimed it straight at a lightbulb and it was still visible. I don’t see anyone in a realistic everyday use scenario aiming their camera just right to overlap with a lightbulb and keep it there persistently, oh, and also at the very moment they’re going to flip the camera. This just seems very implausible…
I said some looked like they were bugs. But the white text on green buttons looked fine to me. 🤷🏼♂️. And the current version of that button is white text on black.
Again, my guess is your monitor settings may be a big part of your problem here. And as I said earlier, that should have originally been white text on the green button, but with less pixels and downscaling/compression, it was shifted light green.And it's also about how we see color! Maybe we see color differently?
Just ran through the test here:
EnChroma® Free Color Blind Test | Test Your Color Vision
Take the free Enchroma color blind test to accurately assess your color perception. The results provide a recommendation for EnChroma color blind glasses.
View attachment 2602116
I really enjoy seeing your renditions! This looks good to me.
The changes weren’t arbitrary. They bring macOS in line with Apple’s other platforms. Rather than being the black sheep of the herd that uses ugly and antiquated design and thinking… Before, macOS was beginning to look like a forgotten and abandoned/dying legacy project they hid in the basement out of embarrassment.
The platforms aren’t that different, nor should they be… They’re all computers. The iPad and Mac have similar range of features and similar display size. The iPhone has a smaller display, but Apple has already worked out translating a sidebar structure app on iPad and Mac into a more compact form with a “Browse” button or similar to access the sidebar as a full-screen page on the iPhone. There’s no reason for arbitrary difference for difference’s sake. They should be mostly similar…
My point is you keep appealing to your personal experience to make blanket “truth claims” like “macOS Tahoe makes things less readable or functional”, etc. Such claims aren’t true, they are merely your opinion, and citing your personal experience doesn’t prove your opinion to be true… 🤷🏼♂️
Since you are young and, essentially, continue to reject any idea that every object can serve different purposes... have you ever considered the idea (out of fashion nowadays) that “the right answer lies somewhere in the middle”? There is no question that operating systems must evolve, but their evolution must primarily be linked to their function. Let's be clear: they are all computers, but an iPhone is not an iPad, and an iPad is not a Mac. They may sometimes overlap in their use, but they can produce very different results.
Think I figured it out. How about this?
They are not different enough to warrant completely different designs in every aspect, or even most. macOS doesn’t need a radically different toolbar design in apps vs iPadOS, for example. They can both use the same button shapes and icons. App window corner radius doesn’t need to be different. The App Dock doesn’t need to be totally different. There are many areas where the platforms can and should function the same way… There’s no reason app icons shouldn’t be the same for the same apps on the different platforms. They aren’t as different as many want to make them out to be. It would be like insisting a truck can’t use normal headlights, rear view mirrors, speedometer gauges, steering wheel design, etc. because it’s “different from a car”. Yes, cars, SUVs, and Trucks differ to some extent, but there’s not really any reason for the infotainment and heating/cooling controls to be radically different… 🤷🏼♂️.
I vastly prefer Apple’s design. 🤷🏼♂️. Not to be rude or anything, and I get you probably wanted to be time efficient, but it looks kind of cartoonish. It doesn’t really have any of the light rendering properties of Liquid Glass. It has more of a plastic look and feel to it. It doesn’t really look very glass-like, it looks more like the “reduced transparency” setting, it just doesn’t look very good.
I would say that we should not confuse the advantages of having certain aspects in common with justifying the laziness of the younger generations in having to learn different interfaces for different uses. They make sense, a sense that prevails over the ‘immense burden’ of having to learn to use other interfaces in order to produce more, better, and in less time. But, as things stand, these discussions are already outdated; soon there will only be voice commands to AI.
I can see Apple’s design, and it looks much nicer… 🤷🏼♂️
Wow, you have such a great opinion about younger generations… 🙄🤦🏼♂️. It just makes a lot of sense for the UIs to be more unified and consistent…. Again, it’s like trying to argue that trucks should have a completely different infotainment system or climate control scheme from SUVs and cars. Why? You wouldn’t want these newfangled younger generations getting lazy thinking a fan symbol means blower control because that’s what all the Ford range of vehicles use. Ford trucks must use their own different symbol for the blower, maybe it should be a snowflake instead… Why must it be a different symbol? “Because a truck isn’t the same as an SUV”… It just doesn’t make any sense. That argument doesn’t hold up. Nobody’s saying a Mac (or truck) shouldn’t have some additional horsepower and carrying capacity (things like the souped up versions of Apple Silicon chips that can run in thicker chassis, Terminal, etc.). Or for that matter, that Apple should make iPhone or iPad’s thicker to stuff souped up M-Series chips in them, or even necessarily shoehorn a Terminal onto the iPhone or iPad. As I said, there are some differences that make sense. But there’s no reason to use completely different button designs, app icons, sidebar designs, toolbar designs, etc… Those should be largely the same and consistent. 🤷🏼♂️
OK, that is the smallest of the problems with the new GUI anyway…
Everyone I talk to agrees. It's not anecdotal. You are the first one I come across that actually defends this. I can continue to ask the rest of the designers at my company and see what they think if you want. How many do you need to say it's bad for us to agree there is some kind of objectivity behind it? 🙂
No, that is not my problem.
If you don’t think the flip camera icon is rather merged with the video behind and not very clear I don’t know what to say…
You first said it was fine and very readable, then you said it was fizzy and the text wasn’t white due to my display settings…? 🤔
If I could find a way to bring up the dialog again I could scale up the GUI (makes it sharp and look Retina-ish) I could take a look again if the text really is white. But like I said, other dialog buttons are fine to read even with the scaling I use on my display – it’s not a general problem.
And one of the ones people here in this forum are complaining inordinately about…
That is anecdotal… 🤦🏼♂️. You don’t know the entire world. Just because a few friends agree with you doesn’t mean the majority of all Mac users think macOS Tahoe’s design is bad… 🤦🏼♂️. Nor is it objective. It just means that a few people’s subjective opinions align…
I realized I was looking at call filtering in the Phone app, and you were looking at call filtering in FaceTime. The popup in FaceTime does use very light green text on a darker green background. I do agree that white text would be better, but light green still contrasts well enough to be very visible, and it’s a one-time pop-up anyways, so I don’t think it represents any major functionality issue… And it very well may have been meant to be white text on the button, as other buttons in the UI do use white text or symbols on a green button.
That particular button is actually light green text on a green background as I said, but seeing as it’s a one-time pop-up, and the text is a much brighter green than the background, it’s still very visible and has sufficient contrast. White would be better, but light green isn’t bad. 🤷🏼♂️
Well, I just don’t. It’s very easy to see it’s the camera flip button… 🤷🏼♂️
No, I said that low resolution and/or compression could have given the white a green hue, because colors will shift and such with less pixels. But that turns out to not be the case, it was originally light green text on a darker green background.
As I said, the text in that button is light green for me as well. So that does appear to be something that may have been overlooked, but I could see how it could be very easy to considering it’s a one-time pop-up. And even as it is, I was easily able to read it in your screenshot on my iPhone display without zooming. 🤷🏼♂️. Still, I’m not against it using white text, I agree that would be better, I just don’t see it making any meaningful difference since it’s a onetime pop-up. It’s not like it’s a main UI button for regular functionality of the app. 🤷🏼♂️
So I looked back through this thread, and didn’t see any posts from you that indicated that. It’s hard to keep track because I’m holding like 3 or 4 concurrent discussions on this at once. So sorry, I probably confused you with someone else. 🙂👍🏻
As I said, there are very few examples of “poor legibility”. None of them pose any major issues for functionality, and most if not all are likely bugs, like the CMD-Tab app switcher not switching color. There are always going to be some minor things like this at first when you transition a complex OS to a new design. 🤷🏼♂️. And a few people’s opinions don’t equal majority representation. There are probably millions of designers in the world. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong, if you’re talking about the few minor things you’ve mentioned here, then I’d agree some are bugs. Others, like the camera flip button, I don’t really see as an issue, I could still see it clearly when purposefully aiming it at a lightbulb. But I respect your opinion. 👍🏻
I agree that white text would be better, though, as I said, I don’t really think it’s going to make much difference for most people from a functionality/practicality perspective. Considering that it isn’t a major UI button and is just a one-time popup.
That's a strawman argument - a few people you know in no way becomes a majority opinion
I've not really run into too many areas in Tahoe that legibility is worse or poor. Control Center has one area that needs tweaking, but from the betas to the .2, apple has been improving, dialing in and improving the polish of Tahoe.
