Free the Icons

While I wholeheartedly agree, I suspect the required backgrounds are to create a uniform format between system, where VisionOS requires round icons for more reliable eye tracking.

It seems like every OS got a little harder to use in order to better vibe with VisionOS, the least popular platform they have.

While I applaud the commitment to building a new platform, I don’t like that’s is coming at the expense of the others.

> This time, however, the changes are genuine improvements. Here’s the refined Automator icon, for example

Uh, maybe. It's certainly sharper. I'm not sure that it's any better. And if that Automator icon is the exemplar, any improvement is extremely marginal. My god it's just such a bad icon. Whoever is managing icon design should be extremely ashamed of themselves.

Show anyone the pre-Tahoe Automator icon and ask them what it depicts and why that fits and they'll be able to tell you that it looks like a robot and robots are used in automation and therefore every time they see the little robot they'll think Automator. Ask them what the post-Tahoe icon depicts and why that fits and they'll be able to tell you fuck all because what the fuck even is that supposed to be if you don't already know.

They've gone too far on enforcing uniformity of icons and abusing liquid glass, but I disagree that arbitrary shapes were better. All the random icon shapes looked cool in isolation, but were harder to scan at a glance. The uniform squircle is a useful constraint.

I wouldn't mind if they allowed something similar to that audio hijack icon, where you require the rounded rect as the guiding frame but are allowed to have some elements protruding out of it. But completely arbitrary shapes are too jarring imo.

Hard agree! Not only is it less fun and less visually appealing to me, I think forcing the uniform squircle everywhere makes it harder (than it used to be) to distinguish one app from another by icon alone.

Tahoe was such a huge mess, but I'm hopeful that the new CEO will turn things around and bring things back to normal.

If they do, I'll consider upgrading both OS and laptop, but right now I'm holding on to Sequoia

The great thing about the new multi-layer icon format in Golden Gate is that it finally separates an icon's foreground from the background.

So in theory, it opens the door to returning shape-differentiated icons to MacOS if a future display theme (a successor to the poorly-conceived Clear and Tinted themes) allows the background to be minimized while the foreground is emphasized.

What I would love to see, and should now be possible, is a revision of the Clear theme where the squircle is transparent/refractive and the foreground retains its native color.

I was originally excited by the flat design revolution because it appealed to my affinity with uniformity and consistency. But I believe now that I was ignorant and lazy. Bad design still exists within flat style rules, and it has an even worse and cheap feel to it. Meanwhile we've lost whole dimensions of expression.

I honestly disagree with the author when they say that the Golden Gate icons are better than Tahoes. There are more lines, which is literally removing the point of LIQUID glass. It is supposed to be BLURRY, like LIQUID. I get that it is more readable, but are icons meant to be read? There is no text in them, other than Apple TV which is very distinctive. It seems like they just boosted the sharpness of the icons and pushed to production (or I guess it is technically production-beta?) However I do agree with the point of the article. Icons having things outside of the squircle were unique, fun, and interesting.

I think this is a battle they won't win, though I applaud the effort.

It might be better to make Linux have these gorgeous icons now that Apple locked them up.

Make the icons be Free on Free OSes like Linux.

I agree, but I'm surprised there was no mention of contrast or proposal to restrict colors.

Their first good example bumped up the color contrast. The orange examples in their set of "gorgeous app icons" are just as bad as the slack vs photos example.

I would love if the OS had an option to automatically convert every app icon to greyscale and required a minimum color contrast ratio for the original. Then, the user can pick their own overlay colors (similar to the color tags in finder).