Tahoe’s icon mess

[johnrlaporta]

Not much to add other than...I totally agree.

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

wow this is great honestly, i'd much rather have that on the right

as for this icon, the "select all", I think it means command+A

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

What's wrong with icons in the menus? I skimmed through the article posted, but still don't get why the icons are a problem. The post is fairly accurate about the inconsistencies and detailed icons at small sizes. It’s weak, however, when the author turns those design failures into a blanket claim that the entire concept (icons in menus, or icons for most items) is inherently misguided. That's because the author asserts that claim rather than demonstrates it through any sort of data. In other words, he treats a debatable premise as a law of UX and then goes through a process of selecting examples (some might say cherry picked) to support that premise. The problem is, again, that the starting premise might not be correct, especially because Apple is trying to have a more unified design across all its devices -- computers, smartphones, VR/AR device, Apple TV, Watch, etc. That wasn't as much of a problem back in the 1990s when the guidelines he references were developed.

Also, are the icons actually slowing down people's use of menus? It's likely the opposite is true, they help people find things more quickly. Without data, the author is just making claims to fit his biases, rather than have a data-driven set of evidence.

Also, icons can serve multiple purposes in menus besides scanning speed:

• redundancy (text + icon reduces misreading words for some users)
• cross-language support (less reliance on any particular label)
• learnability for new users
• recognition in peripheral vision if the icon set is consistent. This is because we can more easily process an image in our peripheral vision than text.

It looks like some of the icons need to be fixed, but that doesn't mean they need to be removed or somehow break some immutable law of UX.

he's saying that

1. icons for every action/item are confusing and a bad idea

2. they're too small on tahoe due to the rounded design and such

3. they're hard to discern

4. because there's an icon for every single item, it quickly becomes messy and several actions share the same (or nearly identical) icon, exacerbated by legibility issues

5. black on white icons are elegant but impractical

and several other points

he doesnt say icons are bad and even proposes an example of solution which I find fantastic

 

[bluespark]

What's wrong with icons in the menus? I skimmed through the article posted, but still don't get why the icons are a problem. The post is fairly accurate about the inconsistencies and detailed icons at small sizes. It’s weak, however, when the author turns those design failures into a blanket claim that the entire concept (icons in menus, or icons for most items) is inherently misguided. That's because the author asserts that claim rather than demonstrates it through any sort of data. In other words, he treats a debatable premise as a law of UX and then goes through a process of selecting examples (some might say cherry picked) to support that premise. The problem is, again, that the starting premise might not be correct, especially because Apple is trying to have a more unified design across all its devices -- computers, smartphones, VR/AR device, Apple TV, Watch, etc. That wasn't as much of a problem back in the 1990s when the guidelines he references were developed.

Also, are the icons actually slowing down people's use of menus? It's likely the opposite is true, they help people find things more quickly. Without data, the author is just making claims to fit his biases, rather than have a data-driven set of evidence.

Also, icons can serve multiple purposes in menus besides scanning speed:

• redundancy (text + icon reduces misreading words for some users)
• cross-language support (less reliance on any particular label)
• learnability for new users
• recognition in peripheral vision if the icon set is consistent. This is because we can more easily process an image in our peripheral vision than text.

It looks like some of the icons need to be fixed, but that doesn't mean they need to be removed or somehow break some immutable law of UX.

I disagree -- read the article in detail and you'll see a number of clearly articulated reasons why having an icon for every menu function is less useful than using icons only to highlight particular functions. But also, he's referring to the much lengthier material in the HIG, which is well worth studying if you are interested in interface design.

 

[bluespark]

I *love* this article and agree completely. No one expects slavish adherence to the original Apple Human Interface Guidelines, even though they remain the definitive source for interface guidance. But the article makes pretty clear why the HIG mattered, and why the recent complete break from the HIG made the user experience worse.

 

[TumbleDryer]

View attachment 2593981
wow this is great honestly, i'd much rather have that on the right

as for this icon, the "select all", I think it means command+A View attachment 2593982

While I agree you do still fall into the same problem as you will then be scrambling for colours that contrast with all others being used if attempting to use them for all. Just adding icons to a few items begs the question why this ones and not the others. The best solution is to simply use text - ie, what we've had for years! The icons are completely redundant in drop down menus. They are mainly for use when space is constrained and a small image can convey the same message or at least hint at what the message is. Icons in isolation are good for multilingual usage saving you from typing out the same thing in loads of different languages. MacOS doesn't have that problem as you set your language on startup. We simply need text in the menus. Anything else is pointless.

 

[hristob]

It might be off topic, but I LOVE the UI of the blog you shared. It has such a unique aesthetic.

 

[_apple_apple_]

I agree with the criticisms. I make basic web-apps and I usually use Apple's UI as guidance. Tahoe is a big step backwards in design principles.

Although that blog focused on inconsistency in icons, I've scoured macOS Sequoia and the native apps; there are tons of general UI inconsistencies. The worst offender is probably Maps, where each pane was clearly developed by a different person as there's no consistency at all. The UX of Maps is shockingly bad. Newer apps like Freeform also deviate strongly from prior guidelines (particularly the move towards 'files are app-db records now').

Tangent — People complain about the low quality web camera; i always thought Apple should just ship a dual web-camera set up, you could fuse the two images to produce a higher res single image, and also have depth information via stereo to drive things like the fake parallax effect from iOS (instead of responding to device movement, it responds to user's POV movement). Apple is likely planning to replace the web-camera with a FaceID system, which does use LiDAR for depth information. Point being, Apple might introduce a fake depth effect to macOS once the tech to derive user's POV is standard, and Tahoe's '3D' UI might make more sense then.

 

[bluespark]

It might be off topic, but I LOVE the UI of the blog you shared. It has such a unique aesthetic.

Also check out his logos. They are really good. The ones for Squint and Tongue are positively brilliant.

 

[spunkystrawberries]

It almost felt as like the designers said 'hey look, SF Symbols has a LOT of UI icons like we show throughout iOS. Let's put them on the Mac.' and then.... 'well let's not just stop with one, let's make sure *every* menu option has an icon' and that's where it starts to get fuzzy with some working better than others.

As a designer, I can personally attest that icons are

1. very tricky to get right
2. should actually be 'iconic' of what they're representing... and sometimes it can be *very* difficult to find or even design the right icon to convey certain actions (thus why 'save' is still a floppy disk in many cases even though we haven't used floppy disks in years)
   
   
   
3. should help reinforce actions and over time, teach the user what to expect (which is why all the different 'new' icons are concerning, to the author's point, reposted above). Personally for me, I don't have a problem with there being a few different variants, especially if they're being used alongside each other and you need differentiation (like 'new file' and 'new folder'). But these should be designed in a way that they work as a system (eg. if 'new' is going to be an encircled plus glyph, then every time we have 'new [object]' the icon should be object + the encircled plus glyph), or something like that.
4. but not always consistent just for the sake of being consistent. (This is what I meant by 'very tricky to get right'). For example, the "New from Clipboard" icon above is simply the same icon as the"Paste from Clipboard" on iPad. They both *basically* do the same thing... output the contents of the clipboard. But if you're *just* looking at the icons, you'd potentially see them in the same experience and it creates more confusion.

I think overall, Apple really needs to give more attention to this level of detail and look at it across their entire ecosystem. It requires intentional time and commitment to sweating these details, and some would argue that's not what Apple's been about lately. I'd say the design team definitely didn't give this the time/intention/attention to detail for sure.

Personally, I think many of these icons are unnecessary and I wish I could turn them off. I find much more value in seeing the keyboard shortcuts for menu options, and it seems they've done the same approach where *every* menu item displays that. (Almost every, anyway.) The designer in me feels like there's a much better way to solve for that, maybe by giving the user the ability to see none, the most frequently used (ideally by the user), or all for those who prefer it.

​

Finally, just a personal nitpick about Tahoe and icons in general is that in Finder windows, I liked that the icons were a lighter color than the text. It helped them have more contrast and feel less overwhelming. You may not realize it or think it makes much of a difference, but for some, it definitely does.

 

[spunkystrawberries]

It almost felt as like the designers said 'hey look, SF Symbols has a LOT of UI icons like we show throughout iOS. Let's put them on the Mac.' and then.... 'well let's not just stop with one, let's make sure *every* menu option has an icon' and that's where it starts to get fuzzy with some working better than others.

As a designer, I can personally attest that icons are

1. very tricky to get right
2. should actually be 'iconic' of what they're representing... and sometimes it can be *very* difficult to find or even design the right icon to convey certain actions (thus why 'save' is still a floppy disk in many cases even though we haven't used floppy disks in years)
   
   View attachment 2594135
3. should help reinforce actions and over time, teach the user what to expect (which is why all the different 'new' icons are concerning, to the author's point, reposted above). Personally for me, I don't have a problem with there being a few different variants, especially if they're being used alongside each other and you need differentiation (like 'new file' and 'new folder'). But these should be designed in a way that they work as a system (eg. if 'new' is going to be an encircled plus glyph, then every time we have 'new [object]' the icon should be object + the encircled plus glyph), or something like that.
4. but not always consistent just for the sake of being consistent. (This is what I meant by 'very tricky to get right'). For example, the "New from Clipboard" icon above is simply the same icon as the"Paste from Clipboard" on iPad. They both *basically* do the same thing... output the contents of the clipboard. But if you're *just* looking at the icons, you'd potentially see them in the same experience and it creates more confusion.

I think overall, Apple really needs to give more attention to this level of detail and look at it across their entire ecosystem. It requires intentional time and commitment to sweating these details, and some would argue that's not what Apple's been about lately. I'd say the design team definitely didn't give this the time/intention/attention to detail for sure.

Personally, I think many of these icons are unnecessary and I wish I could turn them off. I find much more value in seeing the keyboard shortcuts for menu options, and it seems they've done the same approach where *every* menu item displays that. (Almost every, anyway.) The designer in me feels like there's a much better way to solve for that, maybe by giving the user the ability to see none, the most frequently used (ideally by the user), or all for those who prefer it.

View attachment 2594134

​

Finally, just a personal nitpick about Tahoe and icons in general is that in Finder windows, I liked that the icons were a lighter color than the text. It helped them have more contrast and feel less overwhelming. You may not realize it or think it makes much of a difference, but for some, it definitely does.

One last thought, adding a bit more color to what I said before... Apple has built this huge collection of UI icons as part of SF Symbols and it's helped save time for tons of developers and I'm sure for many teams at Apple too. But some of this reeks of individual apps or silo'd teams within Apple saying 'okay, let's add in what makes sense for our app because that's the mandate and goal' and there's a lot of potential redundancy and unclear guidance around many of the icons in their library.

It's just a lot of moving parts, and I do think they're trying their hardest. But this is an area that could use some dedicated attention to look at across the entire ecosystem.

 

[tikipaul]

ok, why not rename Tahoe to pacific palisades, at least some would agree it is truth in advertising

I don't hate Tahoe, but this is a witty and funny comment, regarless of the number of likes.

 

[mansplains]

All Apple has done is taken the multi-plane approach from visionOS on put it on a 2D surface, where there is no requirement for parallax.

Again, Apple’s excuse is that Liquid Glass was used for ‘consistency’ between platforms, yet the effect on the user is anything but consistent because they appear worse without parallax on a Mac.

The funny part is consistency meant adapting every bigger platform to match Apple’s smallest platform

 

[jjrtiger]

This part really says it all:

 

[nebojsak]

Just adding icons to a few items begs the question why this ones and not the others. The best solution is to simply use text - ie, what we've had for years! The icons are completely redundant in drop down menus.

This.

 

[spunkystrawberries]

Wow. I just realized they've also started peppering icons throughout all the context menus as well. (At least for "consistency" it matches iOS, but still... so many icons!!!) You get an icon! You get an icon! Everyone gets an icon!!!