If the original Mac had used icons in menus from the start, nobody in their right mind would be calling for their removal today.

That's how you know that argument doesn't reflect reality. All major platforms now have icons in menus; you can't wind back the clock on that one, you're just obstinately refusing to follow the system standards and user expectation.

So much ink and many podcast hours have been wasted discussing the wrong parts of the issues with Liquid Glass on the Mac

@stroughtonsmith It's one of the *many* issues with the design trends.

Icons become pure visual noise. And they are wildly inconsistent between apps even in the same app suite by the same company. And you can't always find a good icon metaphor to fit into a 16x16 box.

It's not just an Apple issue. It's the industry issue

@dmitriid @stroughtonsmith not to mention when different developers use different icons for similarly/same menu items across apps. Or how you can’t even make out what they are on non-retina displays.

(Almost all offices don’t offer their employees Studio Displays).

@marioguzman @dmitriid none of this is an excuse not to do them, though — all of these things are bugs that they've chosen to ship, not an existential flaw. We need more highly-specific icons. We need more standardized icons. We need better lowdpi support.

The answer as to why now? Because iOS already does it, and macOS is aligning with iOS, as it has been for decades. macOS is aligning with iOS because users expect it, developers are building for it, and it ties into touchscreen support

@stroughtonsmith @dmitriid ah so it’s about uniformity/consistency across platforms.

I hate to say but that’s still not a good enough reason to me. This consistency is what got us into this lowest common denominator mess in the first place and why some Mac apps just feel like iPad apps.

@marioguzman @dmitriid of course; there are two paths ahead: one where macOS isn't consistent with iOS, and doesn't benefit from the vast majority of Apple's engineering effort, or the other where macOS and iOS move forwards together. Every step Apple has taken since 2019 has been along that second path; we had several years of the first path before that, and I think we're forgetting how dire it was