{"id":30069,"date":"2020-09-10T16:24:24","date_gmt":"2020-09-10T20:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=30069"},"modified":"2020-09-14T14:50:04","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T18:50:04","slug":"a-step-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/10\/a-step-back\/","title":{"rendered":"A Step Back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/blog\/a-step-back\/\">Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/blog\/a-step-back\/\">\n<p>I see these back buttons as a sort of cop-out &mdash; an easy way of covering for a lack of deeper consideration. You can see this most clearly in iTunes running on Mojave, in which there are two very different implementations of every view: the Apple Music way, and the local library way. If you open an album from the Recently Added view, it expands to reveal the track list below. If you open an album from Apple Music, you get sent to a new page, presumably because it is not possible to implement the local library style in a way that is performative or works across different platforms. It reveals the web-based underpinnings of Apple Music, it is slow, and it necessitates a back button.<\/p>\n\n<p>In Catalina&rsquo;s Music app, the two different implementations of an album view were dropped in favour of the Apple Music style. Now, it always opens an album in a separate view. As in every one of the apps I listed above, this decision makes Music feel like a semi-native wrapper around a collection of webpages, even when many parts of the app are still entirely native.<\/p>\n\n<p>I do not think it is always wrong for an app to have a back button; it is a mechanism that works just fine in a web browser and in file managers. But I think that this new breed of apps that try to bridge the gap between MacOS and iOS use this specific implementation of the back button as a crutch. It is an inelegant way of dealing with inelegant and unique design problems. Its pervasion is a big flashing <b>CAUTION<\/b> sign that Apple&rsquo;s Mac apps are not being lavished with the design attention they once were and still deserve. What bothers me more than what the button <em>is<\/em> is what it <em>represents<\/em>: it is, uncharacteristically for Apple, lazy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/12\/is-there-hope-for-the-mac-app-store\/\">Is There Hope for the Mac App Store?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"a-step-back-update-2020-09-14\">Update (2020-09-14): <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nickheer\/status\/1305534232760967174\">Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nickheer\/status\/1305534232760967174\">\n<p>Are there any guidelines on when a search field should be in an app&rsquo;s sidebar in MacOS instead of the toolbar? I don&rsquo;t see anything in the HIG and it seems to be the case primarily in Catalyst or Catalyst-adjacent apps (e.g. Music). I don&rsquo;t like it!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nick Heer: I see these back buttons as a sort of cop-out &mdash; an easy way of covering for a lack of deeper consideration. You can see this most clearly in iTunes running on Mojave, in which there are two very different implementations of every view: the Apple Music way, and the local library way. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2020-09-10T20:24:27Z","apple_news_api_id":"29a6369e-d0fc-455a-a54d-7a455774db4f","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-09-14T18:50:08Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AKaY2ntD8RVqlTXpFV3TbTw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1223,648,77,30,32,39,1666,1816,927,1683,1590],"class_list":["post-30069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple-news","tag-apple-podcasts","tag-design","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-macappstore","tag-macos-10-15","tag-music-app","tag-photos-app","tag-stocks","tag-tv-app"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30069"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30114,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30069\/revisions\/30114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}