Mac OS X and Windows had their best design language from 2007 to 2011. Windows Aero and Mac OS X Aqua during these days were truly beautiful graphical shells. Everything since has been a barren wasteland of boring, overly white flat GUIs. The squircle-ifying (and on Android, circle-ifying) going on is just another step in this path towards the eternal uniformity of the heat death of fun, intuitive UIs.
The icons for Leopard-era programs were outstanding. Look at that dark indigo ink jar for Pages, or that wormhole graphic for Time Machine. The comforting smooth grey gradient of window title bars, contrasted with the large, globular traffic light buttons. A typeface that worked well with the lower-resolution displays of the time, and unique icons for everything at every single size. Apple actually had a massive human interface guidelines document, which was promptly binned with Yosemite.
On Windows, that dark blue Start orb and the cool dark task bar, signalling a whole new OS experience. The new Welcome Centre. Freshly rewritten programs and new ones like Windows Media Player and Windows Photo Viewer, and the absolute beauty that was the Windows Media Centre. Flip 3D, customising the glass window borders, and the huge, high-resolution 512 × 512 icons of the high-quality, no-ads games shipped with Windows Vista and 7, which still stand up to this day.
Happy to die on this hill defending this opinion.
dijit · 4m ago
I'll die right there with you on that hill.
For all it's flaws: Vista was a truly breathtakingly beautiful operating system. I still remember fondly the matte frosted dark tinted hue from the start menu and the strong deep red of the shutdown button. Everything shimmered and refracted, with almost a tactile feel. My first iPhone felt like I was interacting beyond the current dimension, the retina display with the skeumorphic design made it feel like I wasn't just interacting with software, I was interacting with another digital world... and my first Macbook was similar; every application was gorgeously rendered natively: something even Windows couldn't manage despite having the lions share of developers.
All this, on LCD panels that were comically abysmal compared to the colour accuracy of the displays we take for granted today, and with less than a quarter of the pixels.
The thing is: I think the same issue plagues software also, that when it becomes a place where good money can be made, you attract people who want to make money and, by necessity, push out all the people who were there for the passion. Diminishing quality of art and engineering sort of go hand-in-hand of MBAs need to make room for themselves and set up fiefdoms.
postalcoder · 1h ago
One thing about the AppleScript icon that you don’t notice until you pay attention is that that the paper curls to form an “S”. The rotation and the reduced emphasis on the paper's edge in the update breaks that imagery.
It's not a nit that has to be picked, but it does dim Apple's "whoa, they thought that through?" aura.
Edit: So, upon doing some more inspection, it looks like Apple's Script Editor already does use this fallen-over paper. So that should challenge our assumptions about what the rotation may or may not mean as a portent for Apple's design competency.
https://help.apple.com/assets/65DFB44F6D920677C90E20C9/65DFB...
wk_end · 1h ago
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?
rgovostes · 1h ago
Apple enthusiasts like John Gruber believe in an ideal Apple. (See his reference to the Founder's "backs of the cabinets" quote.) The real company is distinct from this ideal. Believers support the company's actions so long as they can be plausibly squared with the ideal. But when the company strays—by phoning in design, or being stingy (iCloud's 5 GB free tier)—they respond with equally vocal criticism.
keepamovin · 56m ago
Serious question - this is a very clear and insightful answer - can you bring any of this clarity to a description of the current US political market segments? If you have that insight I’d love for you to help me understand it.
My impression is that Gruber is critical of Apple primarily when one of the following is true:
• a negative consensus already exists and has been voiced (on social media or blogs) among his circle of Apple-enthusiast friends
• Apple, or an Apple exec, already has conceded that something Apple did is negative
• the negative feature is something obscure or inconsequential
ghqst · 1h ago
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".
nozzlegear · 37m ago
> 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.
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.
thomassmith65 · 16m ago
My theory is that Apple has been distancing themselves a little from Gruber, and this - since he, from his pov, has done nothing wrong - is making him less concerned with staying in Apple's good books.
One thing nobody can take away from him is that he explains his opinions very thoroughly.
For that reason, even if one thought he agreed with Apple too often at least one always knew why.
bluedino · 1h ago
I find his takes all over the place, but I agree that the new icons are terrible and he makes some very good points.
I'll add that the blue one doesn't even look like a wrench. I know that the old icons are dated and need to go, but the new ones are just bad.
happytoexplain · 1h ago
I think it's more the case that Apple is just one of those companies where people tend to leap to the "sycophant" accusation to describe anybody who likes Apple more than a little, because of the (perhaps historical) visibility of their super-fans.
To be frank, Apple earns (earned?) the majority of its applause.
judge123 · 9m ago
I find it fascinating that the flashpoint is utility app icons. Not the OS architecture, not some major new feature... just icons. Are we just in an era of polishing spoons because there's nothing new to build?
PlunderBunny · 56m ago
Decades ago when we made a version of our Win32 desktop app for the USA, we changed the icon on our settings button from a wrench to something else (I can't remember what) because we were told that - for Americans - a wrench signified that something was broken and needed to be fixed. I guess it was about as good as all the other advice we got!
doesnt_know · 18m ago
I feel like when I'm presented with most modern criticism of Apple devices/software I tend to agree, but despite all the mostly valid criticisms I see batted about, who is doing consumer tech better?
I've recently (finally) managed to purge the last instance of Windows from my life when I replaced Windows on my gaming desktop with Linux. So I've got Linux on the (gaming) desktop, a Steam Deck and Debian stable on a server, which is great.
But I mean, that covers my home office? I still need a phone (iPhone), a smart watch (Apple Watch) and while not critical, certainly adds a lot of value for me. The things that connects to the TV (AppleTV) is the best of all I've tried when compared to any other type of solution (Firestick, Chrome Cast, Home Media Server, Built-in TV Smarts). I've also got an M4 MacBook for dev, which is frankly fantastic when compared to whatever other hardware I could get here in NZ and would involve going back to Windows anyway?
So I mean, what are the actual valid options really? Apple still offer great devices and the integrations between them are the best on the market imo.
Perhaps in a perfect world Pine64 devices would be rock solid and I could run Linux everywhere, but failing that, what else ya gunna do?
LoganDark · 13m ago
The fear is that Apple is losing the expertise and attention to detail that resulted in that best-in-class consumer tech.
_fzslm · 1h ago
OK, a couple bad icons here. But am I the only one who thinks the wrench metaphor actually looks good?
masswerk · 2m ago
I'd call them "non-icons": they don't communicate in any way, they don't add significance or separate one application from the other at first glance, they don't really mean anything without the file name, they are really not much better than default icons. And this is probably what they are: default icons for a group of applications with a bit of variation sprinkled on top. (At this point, does it need that residual variation or is this just adding noise?)
postalcoder · 1h ago
The metaphor is fine for me, but the arbitrary inversions of lightness are not acceptable. They make the icons look like the same icon that have been inverted for light/dark mode.
dkga · 53m ago
I actually agree with all of the comments. I strongly disliked those new icons. In a way, to my sense of aesthetics, they are worse then when I saw the icons in Windows XP compared to previous Windows versions.
refactor_master · 1h ago
Well, I’ve been stethoscoped more than I’ve fixed any computer with a wrench of all tools, so not really.
b_e_n_t_o_n · 36m ago
Yeah I liked it overall. Guess you can't please everyone :)
LeoPanthera · 1h ago
Yeah they look fine to me. They're not icons you're going to put on your dock and look at every day.
xattt · 1h ago
Also forms a U for utility.
bapak · 1h ago
To me it's insane to pick on these 4 icons when it's obvious that they were just bolted on together in the previous version as well. Now suddenly a whole Mac Pro laid on top of 2 tools is supposed to be a "great icon by Apple"? Get outta here.
lapcat · 54m ago
> Now suddenly a whole Mac Pro laid on top of 2 tools is supposed to be a "great icon by Apple"?
No, Gruber said, "I don’t think the old icons for these apps from MacOS 15 were particularly good"
bapak · 29m ago
Correct, then why suddenly the replacements are "dead canary"? The post doesn't make sense. To me they're an improvement, even if a bit flat (flatness we've seen 12 years ago in iOS 7 already)
To me this post sounds like a typical "Steve Jobs wouldn't do this" nonsense.
keepamovin · 59m ago
I cried a little inside seeing this. Apple without its icons look cool game isn’t Apple
lh7777 · 1h ago
Personally, I'm more dismayed by this change:
> Apps that haven’t been updated with Tahoe-compliant everything-fits-in-a-squircle icons are put in “squircle jail” — their non-Tahoe-compliant icons are shrunk and placed atop a drab gray Tahoe squircle background, to force them into squircle compliance.
I've been replacing some app icons with their older, non-square versions for years (Firefox is probably my favorite). Will be disappointing to lose that option -- I've never understood why Apple feels the need to standardize app icons like this.
PlunderBunny · 6m ago
I'd like someone running macOS 26 to weigh in here, but I'm not sure it's true that - if you replace an app icon (presumably by pasting in the Finder Get Info window) - the replacement is also confined to squircle jail?
LoganDark · 10m ago
I am in general quite dismayed with macOS becoming more and more iOS-like. There is a reason the two operating systems were different, and it was quite nice, to be honest. Not to say that I don't like sharing the liquid glass design language, but stuff like this this forced squircle is really sad to me, too.
pasquinelli · 1h ago
that is unfortunate. icons having a variety of silhouettes makes it easier to identify them and gives things a little personality.
steve_adams_86 · 1h ago
> The problem isn’t that one little bird has died. The problem is that the bird might be dead because the whole mine is filling with deadly carbon monoxide or highly flammable methane gas
This is where I'm at with Apple at the moment.
I know this sounds crazy or stupid, and people on reddit made sure to tell me as much, but the recent iOS, macOS, and watchOS betas have actually caused me to abandon the Apple ecosystem. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't one bird dead, but a whole bunch of birds. I suppose I'm a little more sensitive than Gruber. I find the design language (or lack thereof?) in Apple's recent work to be largely void of life, inspiration, purpose, craft, or anything else I'd come to expect over the last 25 years of using their platform. The quality in terms of performance, efficiency, bugs, intuitive user interfaces, and so on has been dropping for years now. The last OS revision is exemplary of this decline in a deeply concerning way.
I've been so disheartened by things like this, and I'm confident it represents the end of an era so to speak, that I've already come to terms with it and started moving off of Apple's ecosystem.
For me, the move is a matter of pursuing systems which allow me a bit more freedom. Apple has restricted me in ways that I permitted for decades now, but I permitted it because the compromise was worth it. I don't see it being worth it in 5 or 10 years, so I'm starting the transition now. I sold my watch, gave away my iPhone, and started shopping for a ThinkPad.
It's hard to give up macOS and Apple hardware (the value prop has become kind of insane, really), but seeing their recent OS work takes the sting away. I'd love to see them recognize their mistakes and correct course, but... I don't think I'm their target customer anymore, frankly. The people who think I'm an idiot on reddit are their target market, I suppose. That's fine. I'll learn to love Linux and Windows for different reasons and regain some privacy and control over my machines.
My family will certainly stay on Apple's ecosystem.
chrisweekly · 37m ago
As someone whose job required using Windows for the last 3 years, I can say without any doubt or reservations, Windows is (much, much) worse. I like Linux and can imagine reasonable price:performance can be found w/ recent high-end hardware... but IME nothing comes close to my m4 macbook air.
strange_quark · 1h ago
I agree that a lot of Apple stuff has gotten worse recently, both in terms of objective quality in the number of bugs, incomplete features that don't work properly when shipped, and in terms of the company trying to coerce even more control over its platforms and simultaneously enshittifiying them. It's ridiculous that they region lock OS-level stuff like 3rd party app stores and alternative browser engines.
But from where I'm sitting, everyone else is doing what Apple's doing times 100. The latest Windows releases are aesthetically groetesque, both Google and Microsoft are trying to jam chatbots into everything, both Windows and Android are jammed full of ads and nagging "suggestions" to try some useless feature. Now Google is cracking down on Android sideloading.
Desktop Linux I guess? I don't have time for that, and the hardware is so much worse than a MacBook.
There's simply no winning, unfortunately.
thepryz · 27m ago
These icons are just another example that Apple's lost its way.
Disk Utility, like a lot of the apps, has been progressively getting worse, IME. Even the way OS X mounts an external drive has become unreliable.
ianred · 1h ago
The wrench is proportionally and esthetically all wrong. Where do they get their designs and designers from.
micromacrofoot · 1h ago
the wrench is uncanny, weird if you regularly see wrenches in real life... they likely did this to make the bolt larger, but it ruins the concept
might have been better off simply going with the bolt metaphor, sans wrench, even though it's less apparent... though the squircle also kind of fights with other shapes as containers
the old stethoscope on a disk icon is super cheesy, but at least it means something
No comments yet
riffic · 1h ago
the 37 signal guy is building a linux distro so that might be another canary to consider.
you know what'd be rad though? an Eames Office of computing. You'd need figures like Charles and Ray though.
The icons for Leopard-era programs were outstanding. Look at that dark indigo ink jar for Pages, or that wormhole graphic for Time Machine. The comforting smooth grey gradient of window title bars, contrasted with the large, globular traffic light buttons. A typeface that worked well with the lower-resolution displays of the time, and unique icons for everything at every single size. Apple actually had a massive human interface guidelines document, which was promptly binned with Yosemite.
On Windows, that dark blue Start orb and the cool dark task bar, signalling a whole new OS experience. The new Welcome Centre. Freshly rewritten programs and new ones like Windows Media Player and Windows Photo Viewer, and the absolute beauty that was the Windows Media Centre. Flip 3D, customising the glass window borders, and the huge, high-resolution 512 × 512 icons of the high-quality, no-ads games shipped with Windows Vista and 7, which still stand up to this day.
Happy to die on this hill defending this opinion.
For all it's flaws: Vista was a truly breathtakingly beautiful operating system. I still remember fondly the matte frosted dark tinted hue from the start menu and the strong deep red of the shutdown button. Everything shimmered and refracted, with almost a tactile feel. My first iPhone felt like I was interacting beyond the current dimension, the retina display with the skeumorphic design made it feel like I wasn't just interacting with software, I was interacting with another digital world... and my first Macbook was similar; every application was gorgeously rendered natively: something even Windows couldn't manage despite having the lions share of developers.
All this, on LCD panels that were comically abysmal compared to the colour accuracy of the displays we take for granted today, and with less than a quarter of the pixels.
The thing is: I think the same issue plagues software also, that when it becomes a place where good money can be made, you attract people who want to make money and, by necessity, push out all the people who were there for the passion. Diminishing quality of art and engineering sort of go hand-in-hand of MBAs need to make room for themselves and set up fiefdoms.
It's not a nit that has to be picked, but it does dim Apple's "whoa, they thought that through?" aura.
Edit: So, upon doing some more inspection, it looks like Apple's Script Editor already does use this fallen-over paper. So that should challenge our assumptions about what the rotation may or may not mean as a portent for Apple's design competency. https://help.apple.com/assets/65DFB44F6D920677C90E20C9/65DFB...
Was I wrong about Gruber or is this a proverbial canary in the coal mine?
• a negative consensus already exists and has been voiced (on social media or blogs) among his circle of Apple-enthusiast friends
• Apple, or an Apple exec, already has conceded that something Apple did is negative
• the negative feature is something obscure or inconsequential
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...
https://macrumors.com/2025/06/18/john-gruber-reacts-to-apple...
For that reason, even if one thought he agreed with Apple too often at least one always knew why.
I'll add that the blue one doesn't even look like a wrench. I know that the old icons are dated and need to go, but the new ones are just bad.
To be frank, Apple earns (earned?) the majority of its applause.
I've recently (finally) managed to purge the last instance of Windows from my life when I replaced Windows on my gaming desktop with Linux. So I've got Linux on the (gaming) desktop, a Steam Deck and Debian stable on a server, which is great.
But I mean, that covers my home office? I still need a phone (iPhone), a smart watch (Apple Watch) and while not critical, certainly adds a lot of value for me. The things that connects to the TV (AppleTV) is the best of all I've tried when compared to any other type of solution (Firestick, Chrome Cast, Home Media Server, Built-in TV Smarts). I've also got an M4 MacBook for dev, which is frankly fantastic when compared to whatever other hardware I could get here in NZ and would involve going back to Windows anyway?
So I mean, what are the actual valid options really? Apple still offer great devices and the integrations between them are the best on the market imo.
Perhaps in a perfect world Pine64 devices would be rock solid and I could run Linux everywhere, but failing that, what else ya gunna do?
No, Gruber said, "I don’t think the old icons for these apps from MacOS 15 were particularly good"
To me this post sounds like a typical "Steve Jobs wouldn't do this" nonsense.
> Apps that haven’t been updated with Tahoe-compliant everything-fits-in-a-squircle icons are put in “squircle jail” — their non-Tahoe-compliant icons are shrunk and placed atop a drab gray Tahoe squircle background, to force them into squircle compliance.
I've been replacing some app icons with their older, non-square versions for years (Firefox is probably my favorite). Will be disappointing to lose that option -- I've never understood why Apple feels the need to standardize app icons like this.
This is where I'm at with Apple at the moment.
I know this sounds crazy or stupid, and people on reddit made sure to tell me as much, but the recent iOS, macOS, and watchOS betas have actually caused me to abandon the Apple ecosystem. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't one bird dead, but a whole bunch of birds. I suppose I'm a little more sensitive than Gruber. I find the design language (or lack thereof?) in Apple's recent work to be largely void of life, inspiration, purpose, craft, or anything else I'd come to expect over the last 25 years of using their platform. The quality in terms of performance, efficiency, bugs, intuitive user interfaces, and so on has been dropping for years now. The last OS revision is exemplary of this decline in a deeply concerning way.
I've been so disheartened by things like this, and I'm confident it represents the end of an era so to speak, that I've already come to terms with it and started moving off of Apple's ecosystem.
For me, the move is a matter of pursuing systems which allow me a bit more freedom. Apple has restricted me in ways that I permitted for decades now, but I permitted it because the compromise was worth it. I don't see it being worth it in 5 or 10 years, so I'm starting the transition now. I sold my watch, gave away my iPhone, and started shopping for a ThinkPad.
It's hard to give up macOS and Apple hardware (the value prop has become kind of insane, really), but seeing their recent OS work takes the sting away. I'd love to see them recognize their mistakes and correct course, but... I don't think I'm their target customer anymore, frankly. The people who think I'm an idiot on reddit are their target market, I suppose. That's fine. I'll learn to love Linux and Windows for different reasons and regain some privacy and control over my machines.
My family will certainly stay on Apple's ecosystem.
But from where I'm sitting, everyone else is doing what Apple's doing times 100. The latest Windows releases are aesthetically groetesque, both Google and Microsoft are trying to jam chatbots into everything, both Windows and Android are jammed full of ads and nagging "suggestions" to try some useless feature. Now Google is cracking down on Android sideloading.
Desktop Linux I guess? I don't have time for that, and the hardware is so much worse than a MacBook.
There's simply no winning, unfortunately.
Disk Utility, like a lot of the apps, has been progressively getting worse, IME. Even the way OS X mounts an external drive has become unreliable.
might have been better off simply going with the bolt metaphor, sans wrench, even though it's less apparent... though the squircle also kind of fights with other shapes as containers
the old stethoscope on a disk icon is super cheesy, but at least it means something
No comments yet
you know what'd be rad though? an Eames Office of computing. You'd need figures like Charles and Ray though.