Tuomas Hämäläinen 🇺🇦Jun 12, 2025

Apple love to preach "the UI gets out of the way of your content" with each new redesign, but how true is that in practice? Let's compare the total height of the Safari UI with a toolbar, favourites bar and tab bar visible, across the three latest Mac OS design languages – Yosemite, Big Sur and now Tahoe. I've added a red line for emphasis.

It sure looks to me like the UI is eating more into my content with each redesign.

Show threadRhys MorganJun 12, 2025
@tuomas_h @stroughtonsmith I suspect one of the reasons _everything_ seems to have gotten bigger with Tahoe is potential touchscreen Macs, and minimum touch targets.
Show threadTuomas Hämäläinen 🇺🇦Jun 12, 2025
@rhysmorgan @stroughtonsmith People were making this exact argument also when the last redesign was fresh. I'll believe it when I see it.
Show threadKristoffer LawsonJun 12, 2025

@tuomas_h @rhysmorgan @stroughtonsmith also: why would this be a good thing anyway? I don’t get the fascination with touchscreen laptops. We have a mouse pointer and trackpad which means I don’t have to move my arms to select things and interact. Reaching out is inaccurate and tiring and smudges the screen.

There are ways to do direct + indirect control well (we did that with Solu). Apple just never figured it out (Touch Bar as example).

Show threadRhys Morgan
@Setok @tuomas_h @stroughtonsmith I’m not saying it would especially be a good thing, but I think Apple would be fairly likely to do it as a convertible device anyway. I can’t pretend that I don’t occasionally reach out to touch my iPad screen when in the Magic Keyboard 😅
Jun 12, 2025 at 8:53pmIvory for iOS
Show threadKristoffer LawsonJun 12, 2025
@rhysmorgan @tuomas_h @stroughtonsmith I admit to never having. Used an iPad in that exact setup. I did for a while use an old iPad with just a plain keyboard stand (but no mouse / pointer back then). Constantly reaching out was a bloody nuisance! Was so happy to finally get my MacBook back :)