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macOS 26 Tahoe's Dead Canary Utility App Icons

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405 points Bogdanp | 3 comments | 26 Aug 25 00:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.766s | source
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wk_end ◴[26 Aug 25 00:45 UTC] No.45020948[source]▶
I don't follow him closely, but I'd always thought that John Gruber - while often a very good writer - got a little too much exposure to the Reality Distortion Field. So I'm a little surprised to see him come down so hard on this.

Was I wrong about Gruber or is this a proverbial canary in the coal mine?

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ghqst ◴[26 Aug 25 00:55 UTC] No.45021018[source]▶
Gruber seemed like an Apple sycophant for a while because his values and tastes aligned very closely with Apple's (though he still criticized them from time to time). Now, Apple is drifting away from those values and tastes and so Gruber and others in that sphere of Apple blogs are coming down harder on Apple, especially after Alan Dye made such a mess with "Liquid Glass".
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1. nozzlegear ◴[26 Aug 25 02:01 UTC] No.45021436[source]▶
> especially after Alan Dye made such a mess with "Liquid Glass".

Your comment makes it seem like Gruber is a big critic of Liquid Glass like many commenters on HN are, but that's not the case. He's certainly critical of some of the execution details like icons or translucency that can hinder reading, but his stance on it is pretty nuanced leaning toward cautiously optimistic.

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/09/apple-intro-liq...

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2. jdelman ◴[26 Aug 25 02:10 UTC] No.45021510[source]▶
Listen to the episode of The Talk Show with Louie Mantia. They really rip on Alan Dye and Liquid Glass. Not so much the _idea_ of Liquid Glass, which I think they appreciate, but its execution, which is shoddy, inconsistent, and reveals a dearth of holistic thinking about UI design.
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3. TheOtherHobbes ◴[26 Aug 25 10:01 UTC] No.45024451[source]▶
This is revealingly cringe and shows an almost complete absence of self awareness.

https://www.printmag.com/podcasts/2025/design-matters-craig-...

I suppose life is very different inside the citadel. You get curated and triaged feedback from users, Tim Cook doesn't really have opinions about usability and design choices, so there's no one in charge of the classroom.

The reality is in spite of nice touches like call filtering, software quality and usability are both clearly going down.

And Apple's moat, which is a combination of ecosystem lock-in and graphic design, is threatened from one side by AI and from the other by whatever Liquid Glass is supposed to be.