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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.

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?

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.

I'll say. It really shows what we have lost. I deeply miss old OS X.

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.)

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.

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.

Absolutely. It's totally doable. But Apple is swinging a bit too far into the minimal aesthetic right now.

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.

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.

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.

[delayed]

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.

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.

> We’re on 26.3.1

I'm still on macOS Sonoma 14 and iOS 18

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.

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.