The new app icons are horrific and poorly designed

[symphony]

I like the basic philosophy of the aesthetic of the OS but hate the icon direction.

However, there was a few icons in there that I think would have been a good direction and balance between unifying the iOS / MacOS icons, but still in keeping of OS X.

I like the GarageBand icon. There was a few they made that were similar; it had the iOS scquare icon as a backdrop to a 3D sort of icon in front. I think that would have been the best way to go. Its possible they just havent finished updating icons and they will be refined as more OS 11 versions roll out?

If macOS and iOS icons are supposed to be similar to each other. How is the GarageBand app icon going to look?

macOS GarageBand has a guitar hanging outside the square, meanwhile the square is a speaker array.

How can the iOS app be similar if the guitar cannot hang outside the square?

It’s not like the Photo Booth app, where they just took the iPad app and added a lens outside.

So are they just going to remove the guitar and have the speaker array only as the app icon for iOS GarageBand ?

 

[PsykX]

This is what alert/dialog boxes now look like... 🤢

While I don't particularly like some of the icons, this popup is pretty good looking IMO.
They managed to take a boring popup and make it look great.

 

[ght56]

I don't think they look bad (Finder is taking a little getting used to), but they all look more similar now. For example, I have to stop for a second to differentiate between Messages and FaceTime, and Mail, Safari, and the App Store all kind of look a bit alike too if I am not looking directly at them. The different shapes of icons help me in the differentiation...as similar shaped items are often perceived to be a unified group. This makes me rely more on the font than I previously did and I feel like this may be intentional although I am not sure why (perhaps Apple is partly doing this as they want to make it very clear what OEM apps are versus third party?) On the other hand, Text Edit, Image Capture, Migration Assistant, Chess, and Preview icons, for example, are highly differentiable for me.

 

[TETENAL]

While I don't particularly like some of the icons, this popup is pretty good looking IMO.
They managed to take a boring popup and make it look great.

The very simple dialog boxes "look great" like this.

Unfortunatley consistency went down the drain. Some dialog boxes are center aligned, the larger ones are still left aligned. Bigger dialog boxes look stupid when center aligned. Save dialog boxes change style from collapsed to expanded state. Nobody knows whether a dialog box can be dragged, and if so from where. Sheets and modal dialogs are indistinguishable.

Design is not how it looks. Design is how it works.

 

[ghboard2010]

The very simple dialog boxes "look great" like this.

Unfortunatley consistency went down the drain. Some dialog boxes are center aligned, the larger ones are still left aligned. Bigger dialog boxes look stupid when center aligned. Save dialog boxes change style from collapsed to expanded state. Nobody knows whether a dialog box can be dragged, and if so from where. Sheets and modal dialogs are indistinguishable.

Design is not how it looks. Design is how it works.

This: Design is not how it looks. Design is how it works.

Form follows function, conversely function precedes form

 

[fuchsdh]

I think my biggest grip about the icons is that, because they all take the square with rounded-corner design, they don't stand out from each other as much, which personally I find slows my work down.

I'm used the to the Finder icon having relatively straight sides, and other apps taking on the form of the graphic. I want my Stickies to actually look like sticky notes, because that is a big contrast from, say, Reminders, which it sits next to in my Dock.

Honestly, the change just feels so backwards thinking.

It's a shame because they did it right with Yosemite in terms of coming up with multiple shape styles than most every kind of application could fit in with, rather than deciding one shape fits all.

I kind of feel like if I were designing an app I'd be better off just staying the course and keeping my app differentiated rather than trying to fit a square peg in a round-rect hole.

 

[darngooddesign]

The very simple dialog boxes "look great" like this.

Unfortunatley consistency went down the drain. Some dialog boxes are center aligned, the larger ones are still left aligned. Bigger dialog boxes look stupid when center aligned. Save dialog boxes change style from collapsed to expanded state. Nobody knows whether a dialog box can be dragged, and if so from where. Sheets and modal dialogs are indistinguishable.

Design is not how it looks. Design is how it works.

I kind of wish they'd copy an old extension I had in OS6 or OS7 which placed the dialog box under the mouse pointer. That was super useful.