One Size Does Not Fit All
If you’re someone who’s only using email, a web browser, and some messaging apps to get stuff done, changes to your desktop appearance aren’t going to be disruptive. It’s also likely that you’ll appreciate changes that make it look like your phone.
If you’re doing anything more complex than that, your response to change will be much different.
[…]
Professionals on the Mac are like truck drivers. Drivers have a cockpit filled with specialized dials, knobs, switches, microwave ovens, refrigerators, and pillows that are absolutely necessary for hauling goods across country. Those of us who are making movies, producing hit songs, building apps, or doing scientific research have our own highly specialized cockpits.
And along comes Alan Dye with his standard cockpit, that is beautiful to look at and fun to use on curvy roads. But also completely wrong for the jobs we’re doing. There’s no air ride seat, microwave oven, or air brake release. His response will be to hide these things that we use all the time behind a hidden menu.
John Gruber (2010):
It’s the heaviness of the Mac that allows iOS to remain light.
After mocking the Toaster-Fridge, it turns out that’s kind of where Apple’s taking us. I think they’ve done OK at keeping iOS and iPadOS light, but a lot of the Mac changes seem aimed at achieving a foolish consistency.
The iPhone has utterly changed Apple’s priorities as a company. It generates, directly or indirectly, most of Apple’s revenue and profit. But it’s also had knock-on effects: The popularity of the iPhone has driven more people to the Mac. The proportion of Mac users who are “using email, a web browser, and some messaging apps” has risen, probably markedly.
[…]
In many ways, it makes good financial sense for Apple to steer the Mac in a direction that feels familiar to iPhone users and pleases those casual Mac users. They’re probably the majority of Mac users! But what about the Mac as a platform for professional users, who use the Mac as a truck, not a car?
Dye’s “consistency” poorly attempts to solve a problem no Mac users had, by radically redesigning the Mac to be utterly unlike itself, carelessly discarding decades of thoughtful design, function, and delight without bothering to understand any of it, and lacking adequate resources to replace it with anywhere near the quality and consideration that it once had.
It’s the sad conclusion of macOS’ takeover, under Tim Cook, by people who seem to kinda hate the Mac.
I seriously dislike the experience of using a Mac with Liquid Glass. The UI has become the star, but the drunken star, blurry, illegible, and physically unstable. It makes making things way more of a struggle than it used to be.
We had pretty good Mac UI, but Apple took the bad parts of it — the translucency and blurriness already there — and dialed it way up and called it content-centric. But it seems to me the opposite. Liquid Glass is Liquid-Glass-centric.
Why menu icons are a terrible idea on macOS?
Here’s a photo showing them side by side on an iPhone and on a MacBook Pro screen.
On iOS, menu icons can work quite well to communicate the meaning of menu items. They’re reasonably sized, displayed on screens with very high pixel density (around 460 ppi), and typically viewed from a fairly close distance.
But this doesn’t translate to macOS at all. On macOS 26 Tahoe, the icons are ridiculously small (about one-quarter of the physical area), displayed on screens with much lower pixel density (e.g. 254 ppi on the latest MacBook Pro), and usually viewed from about twice as far away.
If you already think Liquid Glass looks bad on macOS, try running apps fullscreen and take a look at the botch job they’ve done to shoehorn it in and get it over the line. You get a mostly-opaque toolbar that intersects the sidebar that no app is designed for, bleed-through of shadows and other chunks of off-white areas, and a miserable bleached sidebar that removes any sense of Liquid Glass and just looks pale and awful.
With iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS 26, icons are now, for the first time, shared between platforms. Liquid Glass is attempting a unification of the design language across all of these platforms (but curiously not VisionOS).
This also means that the Macintosh now shares the constraints of these other platforms.
[…]
With Liquid Glass, iOS gains personality and macOS loses some of its soul.
While I mourn the loss of transparency and unique app icon shapes on the desktop, I also fear that applying a single visual effect consistently across a big system is problematic.
My two theses of the summer beta period remain:
- iPadOS 26 has crossed the rubicon on the way to becoming a ‘real’ desktop OS
- Classic/traditional Mac apps no longer feel fully native on macOS
It’s actually macOS itself that no longer feels fully native on the Mac.
I support all the Mac developers out there who are resisting this bulldozing of decades of carefully built software environments, by buying their products and software subscriptions. And I refuse to support “Mac” developers who drink Apple’s tasteless Kool-Aid and keep embracing this relentless destruction of real Mac software, version after version. Nothing makes up for it.
Into the squircle jail it goes.
The Tahoe squircle jail is in the crApp Store too!
Previously:
- macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 9
- The Tim Cook Era
- macOS Tahoe 26 Developer Beta 8
- “No” Part 2
- Assorted Notes on Liquid Glass
- Gemmell Is Back to Mac
- Rediscovering the Mac
- iOS Apps on macOS 11
- Catalyst and Cohesion
Update (2025-10-16): Matt Birchler:
I’ve written different versions of this over the last couple of years, but it really has been academically interesting to watch Apple overtly merge their operating systems to the point where their stated goal is to deliver the same experience across all of their devices. iPhone and iPad apps have long acted basically the same, just on different screen sizes. The SwiftUI era brought that mentality to include Mac apps as well. And at this point, I could show you a zoomed-in portion of an app made by Apple, and you’d be hard-pressed to tell me if it’s for the iPhone, iPad, or Mac. These UIs now differ at the edges rather than at any fundamental level.
[…]
More and more, the company that professed unique experiences across their platforms has become the company laser-focused on making those platforms run the same apps, look the same, and behave the same. It feels to me like any differences you could point to that prove that statement wrong are actually just todo items Apple just hasn’t gotten to yet.
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The menu icons would be great - if they used color! Then you could actually get discernible iconography instead of tiny grey blotches.
Squircle jail is probably the standout dumbest decision about this whole thing.
There is not one single reason for them to do this and many, many against. OK I guess their one single reason is to force all icons to be the same so they can...tint them...and make them transparent. In other words, to further ruin them.
In a way this seems to be the monkey's paw wish we all had for more of Android's customization. Not like this...not like this...
After having used macOS and iOS for my entire adult life, I'm looking for the off ramps.
If I could use iMessage on Windows or Linux, I'd have switch away from macOS.
If I could use iMessage on Android, I would have tried to switch by now.
If I can convince my friend and family group to ditch iMessage, I'm gone.
I never understood why Americans love iMessage so much and are attached to it by the hip. It’s really a mediocre messaging app that isn’t even fit for SMS messaging, let alone modern. WhatsApp is far superior, but also Signal, Telegram, etc.
@Léo I guess it’s a network effect because iMessage really is terrible. All these years later, I’m still frequently having messages that never arrive, or arrive several days late, or that don’t sync between my devices.
@Léo: Partially momentum. You try to get 100+ people to switch platforms when you are the only person pushing it.
@Michael Tsai: 50% network effects and 50% parental controls options for my friend/family group. We have children in some of the group threads and it is literally impossible (at least as of a few months ago) for a parent to restrict who their children can be messaging on anything other than iMessage. At least on WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and everything else I've looked at. Maybe you can do it with Facebook Messenger, but never looked into it as giving all the children Facebook accounts is a non-starter.
@Hammer: I'd love to, see the above comments. Difficult to impossible to get everyone to switch over for lots of reasons.
My eyes always had problems with low contrast. I find Liquid Glass to be unusable. The menu icons are pretty useless without color because they are to tiny.
Why is Find My in Dark Mode when the computer is in Light Mode? I hate Dark Mode. Even for testing I use it just for a couple of seconds because it makes my eyes hurt.
@Michael Tsai: you have the weirdest problems.
I'm taking the Linux off-ramp. What Apple has been doing to macOS over the past few versions has ruined it for me. It's days as the best choice for a professional tool are over. I'm sad, but I've also accepted reality.
Fortunately a phone is no more than an appliance to me; it's unimportant in the grand scheme of things. I'll keep this 13 mini until it dies or is no longer supported, and reply to my iMessage contacts using it until then.
Cross-platform consistency makes good usability sense for the influx of mobile-first users (which is or will be the majority) in the same way that skeuomorphism was great for analog-first users.
Finances-wise, it’s also best to focus on attracting soon-to-be users (gotta be ≥ 80% mobile-first) and deprioritize existing users whose churn will be minimal.
> Cross-platform consistency makes good usability sense for the influx of mobile-first users (which is or will be the majority) in the same way that skeuomorphism was great for analog-first users.
I wrote this in 2021. Things have changed a bit, but fundamentally not that much, and I think my point still stands:
"What I’ll never tire of pointing out is that the mere fact of altering Mac OS’s interface to make it more similar to iOS and iPadOS’s works against its very usability. If the idea behind this insistence on homogenising these interfaces is to bring new users to the Mac — that is, people who only know and use Apple’s mobile devices — and welcome them with a familiar interface, then Apple is not really doing them a favour.
"By having a Mac OS release (Big Sur) with an interface that superficially *resembles* iOS’s interface and sometimes behaves in a similar way, is less user-friendly than it seems. Because when behaviours *do differ* — due to the fact that a traditional computer with an interface that revolves around the desktop metaphor and mouse+keyboard as input devices, is different from a phone or tablet with a Multi-touch interface — then you actually add an amount of that cognitive load you originally wanted to remove by making the two UIs (of Mac OS and iOS) more uniform. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, but then it barks, then things may get a bit confusing.
"With this premise, it’s easy to think that making Mac OS *also behave* more like iOS is the necessary next step. This is likely what Apple has in mind for the future of the (Apple Silicon) Macs. But if you think about it, a design method that starts from the visuals and then has the visuals influence the workings of a system is a method that works backwards with respect to what’s typically considered good design. The interface of a Mac, an iPhone, and an iPad should be focused on being the best for each specific device."
I'll also add that the iPhone has been around since 2007 and the iPad since 2010. The visual iOS-ification process of Mac OS started more or less with Big Sur (2020). During the time iOS and Mac OS were visually distinct, I hardly ever read or heard someone complain about Mac OS being difficult to grasp or use, apart from some iOS-first pundits desperately trying to prove that they made a good decision in going iPad-only.
Sorry for the verbiage, but I'm tired of the argument that making Mac OS more like iOS or iPadOS is good for usability, when it actually is something that opens up its very own can of worms, usability-wise.
People have no problems learning new interfaces.
Compare TikTok to Facebook to CapCut to Gmail to Switch to Sony MX3000whateverdumbname gesture controls to resurgence of point and shoots to Figma to etc
People aren't half as dumb as UX designers make them out to be.
Riccardo: You’re overestimating the problems caused by the impedance mismatch and underestimating MacOS’s complexity — mainly due to legacy quirks — for non-technical users.
When I got and tried a Mac a bit with 10.10 or 10.11 I took notes of the experience and was surprised how the complexity was closer to Windows than iPad’s OS.
Two examples:
1. How is one supposed to find out that you have to click twice to open a file?
2. The problem with hiding items behind an hamburger menu on mobile is well documented. The Mac menu bar is many times that, filled with miscellaneous built-in features added over twenty years. And it’s at the top of the screen while one’s eyes are fixed on the window. It’s pathetic. Mac connoisseurs complain when it’s missing and talk about Fitts’s law like it’s the be-all and end-all.
> I'm tired of the argument that making Mac OS more like iOS or iPadOS is good for usability, when it actually is something that opens up its very own can of worms, usability-wise.
Are those arguments coming from people who are somewhat knowledgeable about usability and balancing it with the trade-offs, or are you referring to the cacophony of social media? If it’s the former I’d love if you shared some of them, because it indeed sounds dubious. I thought I was being original!
@Alexandre Dieulot
"Cross-platform consistency makes good usability sense for the influx of mobile-first users (which is or will be the majority) in the same way that skeuomorphism was great for analog-first users.
Finances-wise, it’s also best to focus on attracting soon-to-be users (gotta be ≥ 80% mobile-first) and deprioritize existing users whose churn will be minimal."
Who cares whether this is or isn't good usability sense or wise from a financing point of view when Liquid Glass is as bad on iOS and iPadOS as on macOS.
Being consistent with a terrible UI/UX is a moronic goal.
> "1. How is one supposed to find out that you have to click twice to open a file?"
That's a really bad argument considering that nobody could find out that to zoom out on Apple Maps on iOS/iPadOS, you had to double tap with 2 fingers.
pundit gotta pundit about something. As always iOS gets more attention from the designers initially, it's impossible to nail everything at launch, it'll get there, it's a colossal job.
“It’s the heaviness of the Mac that allows iOS to remain light.“ Gruber got this 100% right and that too so presciently. Sadly some of the morons in Apple C-suite only want to deal with yes-men and not face genuine critiques. They are ruining what makes the Mac “heavy” in their never ending chase of the marginal dollar.
The problem with Apple of today is that they are stupidly and unnecessarily obsessed with money or rather money that can be made by upselling.
For example, Apple claims that they love music. If this was true, then they would have modernised iTunes for people who like owning music and made a separate music app for those who prefer streaming. The latter could also easily have been a website with all the benefits that the web offers like syncing between devices and all.
But there is less money in the former while the latter is essentially an infinite money glitch, so iTunes got ditched completely. There don’t even offer lyrics with the music you buy from them, that is a streaming only feature.
Gruber also likes to say that the way they think is Apple first, users second and developers last. However, with the way things are going lately, it seems to me they are thinking about only about Apple and everyone else can piss off.
@Alexandre Dieulot
"How is one supposed to find out that you have to click twice to open a file?"
Some things have to be learned. Learning a couple of simple things - 1 click to select, two rapid clicks to action is no different to tapping with a finger (do you tap once, do you double tap, do you tap and hold, how long do you tap and hold?). Why would you use a keyboard, rather than writing on the screen with a pen?
The greatest disservice done to users of modern computers, is the idea that they can use *any* device without having to learn how to use it. In fact, one could very reasonably argue that the overall trend in modern culture of diminishing the necessity of *learning* how to do things, is a root cause of many problems.
Thngs have now progressed from "no need to learn" to unlearnable black boxes, to "AI will know it for you, and do it for you if you subscribe to it".
"2. The problem with hiding items behind an hamburger menu on mobile is well documented. The Mac menu bar is many times that, filled with miscellaneous built-in features added over twenty years. And it’s at the top of the screen while one’s eyes are fixed on the window. It’s pathetic. Mac connoisseurs complain when it’s missing and talk about Fitts’s law like it’s the be-all and end-all."
That is possibly as wrong a take as it's possible to make.
The universal hierarchical menubar is the single most important usability invention in the history of computing. To even question its value, is to betray a "hasn't earned a place at the table for discussion" level of ignorance over what it does, and why it's so important.
But to provide the benefit of the doubt... Every computer, every function of every computer and smart device is basically like Vi. Without a universal hierarchical menubar, gestures, distributed commands placed under UI widgets, all of that is basically requiring rote learning of every function and its location, and is only learnable and explorable when it's the active context, and then sometimes only learnable by actually effecting it.
A universal hierarchical menubar requires only the knowledge to go to the menubar, and then surfaces *every single thing* the application can do, matrixed out for the user, in a functionally structured (no, menus are not miscellaneous commands, unless you're in a bad opensource / linux app) and consistent fashion, to explore without actually applying any of those functions. Read the menubar, you can understand the app.
I'm about to push an app update out...and noticed this:
> The Tahoe squircle jail is in the crApp Store too!
This is infuriating. It's fucking vandalism. Not even requiring a build against the Tahoe SDK... just spray paint "DO NOT BUY" on the icons. Assholes.
I feel like I should replace the icon with this update to avoid having another quick update when Tahoe is initially released but I guess that's unavoidable because I can't use an Icon composer icon file in the current version of Xcode and I can't submit to the App Store using a Beta Xcode...
more busy work bullshit from Apple. Running in place thanks to their "innovation."
@gildarts I'm looking for the off-ramp too. And I can happily leave iMessage behind. But there is nothing other than Linux, and I'm worried that it's going to be too shitty in a wholly different way.
>I guess you could bake the .icon file into a .icns file and use that with Xcode 16?
I guess I could export pngs from icon composer and use it in the asset catalog or maybe the icon composer file "compiles" an icns for backward compatibility and I could snatch it out of a build in Derived data...but..I'm still pretty grumpy about this b/c this would force pre-Tahoe users to get the Tahoe icon which I don't want.
My Tahoe style icon isn't really ready... it's just something a threw together quickly because it's better than the squircle jail shit Apple is giving me on the Mac App Store. I'm going to have to get a designer to modify the icon properly
So I'm just going to send my update out and get to the Tahoe icon later.
@ObjC4Life Sounds like a reasonable plan. FYI, snatching it out of DerivedData is not good because Xcode only generates it up to 256px.
@Bri: have you looked at dhh’s Omarchy project? It is a highly opinionated Linux setup that is really nice. Not sure it is for me, it uses a tiling window manager, but it worth checking out.
