Tahoe's Terrible Icons

[turbineseaplane]

Paul Kafasis with a wonderful breakdown, icon by icon.

Some of my favorites:

The left-side tabs on the old Contacts icon were odd, but this new icon is even odder.
Is the cover of that book made of glass?

Hey, look, it’s Contacts, but far worse! This no longer looks like a book at all.
It’s just a gray “a” blob.

Look at the beautiful photorealistic glass on the loupe in the old Preview icon.
They sucked the soul out of it, and ironically, the new Liquid Glass version barely looks like a loupe at all.

 

[whatnot]

I think you're just stunned by this 'stunning new design'. it might not pass.

 

[turbineseaplane]

The Loupe example up above is sort of hilarious.

They had an icon element about as "glassy" looking as it could be, and for the Liquid Glass update made it look less like glass.

 

[galad]

The previous icons were not a work of art either. They have been quite horrible since OS X 10.10. The new ones are an improvement in many cases.

 

[turbineseaplane]

The previous icons were not a work of art either. They have been quite horrible since OS X 10.10. The new ones are an improvement in many cases.

Which ones are improvements in your view?
I'd love to have a look.

 

[galad]

Books, Podcasts, Home, QuickTime Player, Terminal, System Settings.

Those gray gradients and border introduced in Yosemite were so horrible.

 

[Boppi]

It's rare I read an article and don't have at least something to disagree with. The whole thing is spot on.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Books, Podcasts, Home, QuickTime Player, Terminal, System Settings.

Those gray gradients and border introduced in Yosemite were so horrible.

I'll have to check those out.
Dan Moren is more in the camp with Paul (and myself)

 

[fisherking]

change does not mean moving backwards, it means something is now different. and sometimes different takes time to adapt to. i see nothing wrong with the new icons, they're (for me, anyway) not profoundly better, and certainly not worse...

 

[tkermit]

change does not mean moving backwards, it means something is now different. and sometimes different takes time to adapt to. i see nothing wrong with the new icons, they're (for me, anyway) not profoundly better, and certainly not worse...

The Preview icon is the only one I've had trouble adjusting to in practice, because it's difficult to spot at a glance when the Dock is small.

 

[iLuddite]

change does not mean moving backwards, it means something is now different. and sometimes different takes time to adapt to. i see nothing wrong with the new icons, they're (for me, anyway) not profoundly better, and certainly not worse...

It's just neumorphism. Better than the hyper-flatness heralded by the iOS 7 era, but not as soulful as iOS 6 and before. Ultimately, in my humble opinion, it's a natural progression of/successor to Big Sur's preliminary neumorphic design overhaul, while uniting much more cohesively with iOS, iPadOS, visionOS, and tvOS.

 

[Pandyone]

The big issue with most of the new icons is the ”glow”. It only makes the icons seems blurry, It’s annoying that other devs are following the trend.

 

[canadianpj]

They look fine, I can tell what they are, I can click on them and applications start. Good enough for me.

 

[canadianpj]

The Loupe example up above is sort of hilarious.

They had an icon element about as "glassy" looking as it could be, and for the Liquid Glass update made it look less like glass.

The loupe one is one of my favourites of the new ones, clean, very clear what it is (and yes I use one).

 

[MBAir2010]

lazy..... lazy
Cupertino has become very
lazy...... lazy!

 

[chabig]

I'm glad the Contacts icon was finally updated to match iOS and iPadOS. It has been different for a few years.