[josalhor]

Interesting.

The article starts with this: > Sequoia → Tahoe It’s bad

And I look at the image... And I like it? I agree with the author that it could be better, but most of the icons (new, open recent, close, save, duplicate, print, share etc), do make it easier, faster and more pleasant for my brain to parse the menu vs no icons.

Again, I don't disagree that you could do it better, I just disagree with the premise that the 1992 manual is "the authority". Display density has increased dramatically; people use their computers more and have been accustomed to those interfaces, which makes the relationship of the people with the interfaces different. Quoting a 1992 guideline on interfaces in 2026 feels like quoting the greeks on philosophy while ignoring our understandings of the world since then.

[christophilus]

If you haven’t done so, I’d suggest reading that HIG. It is clear thinking, expressed well, and it stands the test of time.

[afandian]

I wouldn't take too much into a book about optimising database storage written for 90s-era hard disks and CPUs.

But a file menu is still a file menu, and save is still save. In fact it's remarkable how little that has changed since 1983.

[vehemenz]

The author addresses this. Humans are the same in 2026 as 1992.

Besides, that interface designers or even the average computer user understands more than in 1992 is highly implausible on its face.

[mxfh]

Humans are definitely not the same as in 1992 when it comes to their everyday knowledge of computer interactions.

And even if human cognition itself were unchanged, our understanding of HCI has evolved significantly since then, well beyond what merely “feels right.”

Most UX researchers today can back up their claims with empirical data.

The article goes on at great length about consistency, yet then insists that text transformations require special treatment, with the HIG example looking outright unreadable.

Menu text should remain stable and not mirror or preview what’s happening to the selected text IMHO.

Also, some redundancy is not necessarily a bad thing in UI design, and not all users, for various reasons, can read with a vocabulary that covers the full breadth of what a system provides.

[paulcole]

Why is it highly implausible on its face other than the fact it makes arguing against him harder?

[jaffa2]

most of your points are refuted in the article. but I'll pick this one : "Display density has increased dramatically" Yes, it has, and Tahoe does not take advantage of this, infact the icons are smaller, and harder to read, using fewer pixels than windows icons of 25 years ago.

[josalhor]

> most of your points are refuted in the article

Sure, we can debate about the general points.

Yet, we can't refute that my subjective opinion evaluation of the opening image looks better (for me) , reads better (for me) and is easier (for me) to parse. Either I don't fit the general guidelines, or the general guidelines need a revision, that's my point overall.