What fascinates me the most is not how bad the most recent one is, but how it now relies on you knowing the prior forms of that icon to know what the current one is conveying. Apple fans actually point this out as an artful homage, but to anyone not already steeped in Apple products, it's just a shitty icon made of basic shapes. I wonder if Apple has reached the point where they don't need the affordances of the past since people are familiar enough with their past, good designs. People point out that liquid glass will be amazing in Vision OS, and that's probably the thinking from Apple. It's just a shame that we have to unify a design language to the worst possible case: a transparent screen taped to your face. In my mind, that's an objectively stupid design decision, but the Apple fanboys will say, "Look at those little colored squares on the address book icon, what a brilliant reference!" And will be able to recognize from memory how the thing should work, all while the entire UI gets more and more melted.
And you know what pisses me off the most about that icon? All three of the colored dividers can be seen through the transparent cover. They're all at the same layer, it doesn't even make sense!
But is it though? My nearly 90 year old mother wouldn’t necessarily make that connection on her iPhone or iPad. I’d reckon that for many folks over 50 it would not necessarily be obvious without seeing @ used beyond email.
I agree the latest rev does require familiarity with the old one more than it should, but a weeble, to me, is a better universal iconographic symbol to denote a contact than an @ (just in general)
What fascinates me the most is not how bad the most recent one is, but how it now relies on you knowing the prior forms of that icon to know what the current one is conveying. Apple fans actually point this out as an artful homage, but to anyone not already steeped in Apple products, it's just a shitty icon made of basic shapes. I wonder if Apple has reached the point where they don't need the affordances of the past since people are familiar enough with their past, good designs. People point out that liquid glass will be amazing in Vision OS, and that's probably the thinking from Apple. It's just a shame that we have to unify a design language to the worst possible case: a transparent screen taped to your face. In my mind, that's an objectively stupid design decision, but the Apple fanboys will say, "Look at those little colored squares on the address book icon, what a brilliant reference!" And will be able to recognize from memory how the thing should work, all while the entire UI gets more and more melted.