Agree. I hate every electron app I use, but even my longtime macOS favorites are beginning to feel only marginally better. They keep spicing up the UI, removing things that used to be reliable constants across applications and hiding more and more things behind ... menus like I'm on a mobile device, revealing or moving UI elements on mouse hover.
Little details like the title bar of of every window behaving the same were great like ten years ago. You always knew if a dot was in the red close button it meant your work wasn't saved. You could drag and drop the tiny icon just like it was an icon in Finder. It was almost always consistent.
Preview used to be a simple app for viewing documents. I welcomed the addition of annotation tools like adding a signature, but why did they axe the standard titlebar behavior? Now you have to hover over the filename of the document and wait almost a second before the title slides to the right and reveals the little icon. How is that possibly an improvement over just leaving it alone? Did they think saving 16px to show a longer filename without ellipses was more valuable?
Notes is kind of a new app in my mind so it hit the scene when macOS was already starting to feel more like an iPhone, but it's still worth talking about. They keep making it more powerful, like adding checklists and tables and such, but they hide the most basic functionality, text formatting, under a flyout menu. I really like the iOS feature to scan documents. The cropping and contrast adjustments are so good that I can usually quickly scan several pages of handwritten homework within a couple minutes. However, exporting a scanned PDF out of a document on macOS is a mess. Right click on the scan and it take seconds for a context menu to appear. At first I thought it must be my computer got hung, but it's like this consistently. How did they ship a product that make something as basic as a context menu hang for several seconds?
I could gripe with more examples, but the overarching feel I get is that macOS is being pushed more and more towards feeling like iOS, the emphasis on programs editing files is disappearing, and one day everything will be sandboxed and I'll have to click through "share" menus to transfer data from one app to another, provided those apps are kind enough to let me import or export.
> Now you have to hover over the filename of the document and wait almost a second before the title slides to the right and reveals the little icon. How is that possibly an improvement over just leaving it alone? Did they think saving 16px to show a longer filename without ellipses was more valuable?
This appears to be the standard behaviour of document windows now. It also occurs in the title bar of Finder windows, for example. It is excruciating.
Worse: if you try to rename a file by clicking the drop-down chevron, typing into the Name box, and pressing Return, there will be no effect and the name you entered will be lost. Yes: they broke rename in every standard application! The only method I've found that works is to resist my natural urge to hit Return and press Tab instead.
I agree with the sentiment that macOS UI is on a severe decline. Here’s one bit of possible comfort for you. Get the proxy icon back without having to hover over window titles:
I generally agree. MacOS appears to be stagnating in its capabilities, even if there is a constant churn of UI and features. The Human Interface Guidelines-based approach of old seems to have been blurred thanks to the iOS mashups we are now seeing, and native apps that used to feel substantially better aren't really better enough anymore.
However, for me the big issue with Electron or other web-tech apps is the performance - they all feel incredibly slow and laggy, engorge themselves on my machine's resources, and generally slow down substantially the longer they have been open.
Considering my main gripe about macOS when compared to say, Windows, has been the general performance of the UI and apps, this isn't a particularly welcome phenomenon.
Little details like the title bar of of every window behaving the same were great like ten years ago. You always knew if a dot was in the red close button it meant your work wasn't saved. You could drag and drop the tiny icon just like it was an icon in Finder. It was almost always consistent.
Preview used to be a simple app for viewing documents. I welcomed the addition of annotation tools like adding a signature, but why did they axe the standard titlebar behavior? Now you have to hover over the filename of the document and wait almost a second before the title slides to the right and reveals the little icon. How is that possibly an improvement over just leaving it alone? Did they think saving 16px to show a longer filename without ellipses was more valuable?
Notes is kind of a new app in my mind so it hit the scene when macOS was already starting to feel more like an iPhone, but it's still worth talking about. They keep making it more powerful, like adding checklists and tables and such, but they hide the most basic functionality, text formatting, under a flyout menu. I really like the iOS feature to scan documents. The cropping and contrast adjustments are so good that I can usually quickly scan several pages of handwritten homework within a couple minutes. However, exporting a scanned PDF out of a document on macOS is a mess. Right click on the scan and it take seconds for a context menu to appear. At first I thought it must be my computer got hung, but it's like this consistently. How did they ship a product that make something as basic as a context menu hang for several seconds?
I could gripe with more examples, but the overarching feel I get is that macOS is being pushed more and more towards feeling like iOS, the emphasis on programs editing files is disappearing, and one day everything will be sandboxed and I'll have to click through "share" menus to transfer data from one app to another, provided those apps are kind enough to let me import or export.