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
> macOS is aligning with iOS because users expect it,
They... don't
> developers are building for it,
Because Apple fully prioritizes iOS only, tells devs to ship shitty half-assed ports on MacOS, and ships half-assed apps itself, and generally deprioritizes MacOS
> and it ties into touchscreen support
There's no way of making proper touch screen support for an OS running on large screens and using high-precision pointing devices without killing it
BTW here are some criticisms for the existing OS https://blog.apotenza.com/the-neo-cannot-scale-with-macos-behind-on-the-basics
They will never matter for modern Apple because they view everything as one big iPhone.
Steve Troughton-Smith
dmitriid
Mario Guzmán