I find the squircle jail just creates a lot of confusion for me, having distinct shapes helps a lot at a glance.

I don't know if it's a real screenshot at the bottom of OP (the blue on black icons), but that' hilarious if it is.

Someone posted an old MacOS screenshot on Reddit and it was immediately obvious that the icons without a silhouette were the worst out of all of them.

Like iTunes / Books / App Store. And that's basically what they went with eventually...

Dashboard and Launcher are fine, but they have a reason to be a circle. (Well Launcher less so maybe)

Chrome is terrible, it represents nothing. But I guess it's just a brand.

I wish we could go back to this instead of squircles...

https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/s/9MZsGioCG6

I am sad that I will not have both Rosetta 2 and a tolerable UI for the remainder of my life.

It is always great to see more people be vocal about the poison of flat design

I never understood this sick decision. I used to use the shapes to identify apps.

Most cartoon characters have very distinctive silhouettes and I don't think it's a coincidence. Remember "Who's that Pokemon?"

The only reason to run MacOS over Linux is the hardware. Arm MacBooks are unreasonably good but don’t support Linux (Asahi is still a bit WIP).

They sell hardware, not software, so the state of things makes sense. It is so disappointing though.

Tangential related, but i find Icons should have a animated tooltip- when hovered over prolonged, they should tell what the program should do in a cyclical svg-animation.

"A unique, memorable icon expresses your app’s or game’s purpose and personality and helps people recognize it at a glance."

"In iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, icons are square, and the system applies masking to produce rounded corners that precisely match the curvature of other rounded interface elements throughout the system and the bezel of the physical device itself."

Source: Apple https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

lol

I was originally excited by the flat design revolution because it appealed to my affinity with uniformity and consistency. But I believe now that I was ignorant and lazy. Bad design still exists within flat style rules, and it has an even worse and cheap feel to it. Meanwhile we've lost whole dimensions of expression.