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 I would. It’s not a question of “are we used to it or not”. It’s about principles: do icons help you find stuff faster? Do they help understand the meaning of the action? For most of the menu items, no. The original Mac didn’t have icons not because they couldn’t do it, but because it was impossible to do in a good and meaningful way. Still is. It’s not about computers capabilities, it’s about how human perception works. Humans are still the same
@nikitonsky are you calling for them to be removed from iOS?

@stroughtonsmith @nikitonsky

1. What does iOS have to do with it?

2. What @nikitonsky said applies to iOS as well

3. On top of that Apple keeps hiding meaningful information behind meanigless inconsitent icons across apps and utilities

@dmitriid @nikitonsky iOS is Apple's bigger, more-successful OS, and is also (on iPad) used with keyboard and mouse, which has had menu icons for several years. The point is where are all the calls to remove its menu icons?

It's all well and good saying now that you would have campaigned against icons in menus had they been here since the start, but nobody has brought up that claim against Apple's other OSes, and they've been here for years. I just don't believe it ex post facto

@stroughtonsmith @nikitonsky

iPad has for years been basically a one-window device on with a small screen, used mostly for consumption, with very limited mouse and keyboard support added as an afterthought.

Since iPad has fewer users of actual complex and desktop software, there were no calls for that. Oh, don't forget that for years, again, iPad was viewed as basically abandoned with many complaints that Apple doesn't do anything to do iPad OS a better system.

@stroughtonsmith @nikitonsky

"Other Apple OSes" are iOS which doesn't have menus, iPad OS which has been the bastard child with little non-consumption use, tvOS which is basically abandonware and doesn't have menus.

And MacOS which... you somehow assume MUST absolutely become iOS because?

@dmitriid @nikitonsky everything you longpress on spawns a menu on iOS; for years macOS was also viewed as basically abandoned (or, as pundits said at the time, 'mature') until they started investing in it again 2019 onwards. I don't know what bearing that has on icons in menus, though, on either platform. If you're venting for the sake of venting, that's fine, but you're not going to convince me
@stroughtonsmith @dmitriid @nikitonsky by "investing", do you mean ruining it with the Big Sur redesign? The one that merged the title bars and toolbars so nothing fits? The one that removed button borders in those toolbars by default? The one that made the layout of an NSAlert comically bad for no good reason? Honestly, it would've been much better off if they didn't make that "investment".