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I was really happy when they added the pictures! Dyslexia, the icons are 100% faster for me, I don't use those menus often enough to know what is in there word wise, but I can read the icons super fast.

The problem isn't just the icons but the inconsistency. This link mentioned in the source article illustrates it well: https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/

For a company that used to pride itself on its clean and consistent UI, this is really shoddy work. It feels like Microsoft now, every app designed by a different team and nobody coordinating together.

And this would have been a really minor job to coordinate properly. It probably would have saved time in fact having predefined icons for common functions. Now theres been 8 designers working on a different icon for the same function. It seems just complete disinterest in consistency. "Just do whatever" is not the apple way.


How can you read the icons if they mean different things in different apps?

Can you provide some examples of this? In my experience, they're quite consistent.

Here's an in-depth analysis (also linked in the OP): https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/

A lot of the examples in here, I can't find? Like, I looked around for the new smart folder with the cog icon, where is it on my mac? Same with save as check, where is that? Also I'm pretty sure (although I can't find it) the save as with the up arrow is save as out to something? The ones I do find, all make perfect sense and work pretty well for me, they're not totally perfect but I'd never thought about them much before this post and I use them almost exclusively. Look at all his new for example, see new finder window? Look at the box around it, then open your window menu at the top of your screen, see how minimize has the same box around it? If you go though those icons set, most of them have: primary, secondary and sometimes tertiary visual clues. I dunno, I read that blog post and it doesn't really jive with me. I'm sure they could stand to clean it up a bit, I don't know I'm not a designer, but I'm certainly glad they are there!!! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

New Smart Folder with a cogwheel icon is in the File menu of Notes.app, while New Smart Folder with a folder+cogwheel icon is in the File menu of Finder.app.

Thanks! I don't use the notes app, cog is not the best icon for that but I suppose it's differentiated from the file system version, if I read them both the same I might be confused, but not sure why they selected cog!!!

Yeah should be an accessibility setting for the few users who need it

https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/ (second section on consistency)

The later examples are pretty wild, 3 different ‘minimize’ icons? Why? Different teams?

This guy is doing free design work/critique for Apple

A lot of those icon examples are being rather disingenuous. Some of the icon symbol changes amongst the various apps are justified because the actions being represented are different despite using the same English word. Take the "New" icon example. Adding a new reminder is not the same thing conceptually as creating a new note.

So it should be an accessibility setting. I don't mind if the default is on or off.

Yeah I agree, this would be ideal, I actually thought this post was pretty funny because I couldn't imagine anyone wanting them off, and I suppose some people think it's funny I like them. :)

In article we discuss has a link to this article: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/icons-in-menus/ Which has a good paragraph with an example:

--- start quote ---

Get a bunch of people in a room, show them menus where the textual labels are gone, and see who can get the most right.

--- end quote ---

Icons won't help you when they are inconsistent, or don't mean anything.

It's impossible to find a suitable visual metaphor for every possible action of every possible app and cram it into a tiny monochrome icon.


It shouldn’t even be just you and others with dyslexia either.

Processing images is always faster than processing text for everyone.


I would argue this is only true when the image is apt. In Tahoe I don't think this is always true. The lack of consistency in layout and presence of icons is also visually difficult to process. The signal to noise ratio of the icon gutter is very poor.

I like it in theory but the execution seems more harmful than helpful so far. If I'm wrong and it's helping some people, that's great.


It depends on the images. Processing a dozen of very similar-looking small gray blobs isn’t fast. Recognizing the text labels is faster for many people. The text labels also have visual structure within a menu by their different lengths that the icons don’t.

I won't speak for Ryan, but these last 7/8 months have been extra extra hard for me with Mikeal dying, and at least, Ryan was as close to Mikeal as I was, so I'd guess it's been a hard time for him too. Being ambitious and taking on a lot is always... a lot, and he's been at it with Oracle as well. It doesn't get any easier the older you get, to be honest. Cut him some slack eh?

> I won't speak for Ryan... Mikeal dying

For those out of loop: https://github.com/mikeal/cancer-diaries

Ryan tweeted he was "crushed" when Mikael died: https://x.com/rough__sea/status/1932667147605717130


Oracle looks to me a distraction, that isn't what is going to bring users into Deno.

For the rest, I can't comment on, all the best.


Thanks. Sure, it may have indeed become a distraction, maybe it always was... I don't know. Never the less, he is finishing what he started, and that is admirable. https://dev.ua/en/news/tvorets-nodejs-zbyraie-1758280906 - https://www.devclass.com/development/2022/09/05/nodejs-creat...

RIP Mikeal. I'm sorry for your loss.

Thanks for saying so. btw your hn plugin is really fucking good! Thanks. :)

Awesome! I'm glad you like it. Having trouble getting word out about it, so I appreciate the kind words.

Ooh that is looking good. It's a shame it's not on Firefox Add-ons yet - hopefully I'll remember to check back later.

Thanks. Honestly, just don't use firefox. There are bugs in the extension that only happen on FF and I can't figure out why because I can't figure out the devtools enough to even set a debugger statement. Really sad what that browser has turned into.

Ha, that's not an option for me, I'm all in on Firefox.

FWIW, just adding

    debugger;
to your code should work on Firefox just like it does on other browsers.

"Rule 1: Work every day. No skipping days.

Rule 2: Begin working immediately, as soon as I wake up.

Rule 3: Internet and Phone stays off for the first hour. "

You have DigitalOcean because myself and a few other folks did this consistently for 5 years straight.

They're good rules for accomplishing something.


The guy who figured out how to make a blue LED (which was world changing), also worked every single day.

Fascinating story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF8d72mA41M


Was it worth it?

Absolutely.

Methods improved the baseline, but also increased competition, keeping outcomes flat. Totally underweights systems and then blasts into methods not working. “Just do something different” is not a strategy... In fact, many great businesses look conventional early, and only later reveal their advantage.

I don't think this article is very good, at all.



This is a government literally putting their money in private companies instead of using it themselves (for idk schools or infrastructure for their people instead of giving it to nvidia and tesla). It's the most literal illustration of "private" beats "public" investment. Not sure what point you tried to make.

I thought, in given that it seems to accurately describe the human condition, it was a very human take.

"heavy partisanship" - I've seen this claim a few times and I find it a bit odd. Certainly I feel HN leans left, but I've never seen what I would consider a strong preference for any particular political party? When the American daggers do come out - it seems fairly split? Even the post about the Canadian meta data law the other day, left leaning maybe, but I see when partisan comments came out directly, it looked about even?

I think we'll be able to quantify sentiment from the data, and I look forward to doing so. There's a few other datasets that I want to look at such as whether there is evidence of participation suppression via rate limiting on a per-profile basis.

If you do an investigation, I'd be genuinely curious what you find, I obviously have a tiny sample size, I use this site a lot, for a long time, as have you, so maybe you're right! :)

I thought the same thing but updated couple weeks back and actually really really enjoy the liquid glass. I don't recall what it was about the release that made me think I'd hate it, but I've half fallen in love with it, I was just thinking yesterday I wonder what all the fuss was about.

I believe it's changed a lot since it was initially debut'd via the betas. And there was that Supabase post mocking it, where they made the whole UI glass, and that biased me a bit ha

I don’t like it on the iPhone, but it’s more a “sigh, I’ll live with it” downgrade than a catastrophic one (at least once you go into the Safari settings and turn off the huge useless address bar by putting it in compact mode). It’s on the Mac where it’s truly a shitshow.

The screech is produced by feedback in the noise canceling I think, happens if you lay on a pillow at the wrong angle also, never had it due to moisture myself.


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