With 320x480 iPhone screens, we had to be economical for navigation, tools, and the content view. (BTW, the content view is UI. The entire app is UI.)

Screens got wider and taller, which gave us more space for the content view, without having to sacrifice navigation and tools.

But look what happened. In many cases, it actually got much worse, with vertical space eaten up by things that were never even visible before.

So why are we now sacrificing navigation and tools?

https://mastodon.macstories.net/@viticci/114829148037318202

This is a core system app interrupting you, promoting a sale by a movie-ticketing company, to push you to go see the platform vendor’s new movie.

Why not just pop up random ads all the time, always creating new channels that everyone’s opted-into by default so you can never keep up with opting out of them all?

Oh wait, that’s already what happens.

Apple’s as bad as everyone else. They don’t respect their customers — we’re fodder.

They truly have no standards anymore.
https://mastodon.social/@caseyliss/114738626109660386

Beta or not, when Apple shows before and afters on their own website, it’s totally fair to knock on them for legibility.

I have to wonder: Who at Apple really thinks this example is the best representation? And whoever knows it isn’t the best, why isn’t it addressed *before* the reveal?

Mockup time! What could be a reasonable "middle ground" between the Mac OS design that we have today and the radical Liquid Glass design we saw this week from #WWDC25?

Disclaimer: this does not attempt to solve all the issues of modern Mac OS design, such as cramped toolbars caused by full-height sidebars and combining the toolbar with the title bar. I feel like the Apple of today is too far gone to do anything about those.

Read on to see what I actually tried to address.

I deeply believe the most opportune time to file bugs and concerns is the earliest possible date.

I also deeply believe it is not our responsibility to offer that labor for free to the richest company on the planet.

Tough beat, that.

Ever since iOS 7 I can't watch Apple's design videos without thinking they are built from a completely incorrect starting premise and goals.

"UI gets out of the way of your content"
"hides when not needed"
"only appears when the user needs them"

The details hardly matter when listening it feels like all of this has completely the wrong goals from the start.

I didn't expect anything remotely resembling an apology for any part of developer relations or Apple Intelligence.

I expected a cheerful demo of the new design, and a bunch of really cool new features, most of which were unrelated to what's going on in AI elsewhere.

And that's exactly what we got!
https://hachyderm.io/@billgraefe/114654852937457929