Right now my dock is a soup of squircles. I have to scan multiple times to find icons even though I know roughly where they should be.
They aren’t distinct. They don’t stand out.
That was never a problem until last year. 40 years of Mac was fine. Then that.
Who thought that and lots of floating buttons was “getting out of the way of my content”.
Who thought sidebars should look like windows with mirrored content under them was smart.
Who thought long horizontal scrolling lists were easy to use.
Who never gave more than one window open at once.
Who are apparently illiterate and need icons everywhere and text nowhere.
They’ve lost the plot and I don’t care what they think. My machine is drastically harder to use than it was just two years ago all to make it “prettier“ even though personally I don’t think it is.
I genuinely find my apps harder to navigate now than I used to. Part of that is that I have far more apps installed today, but the uniform white borders also contribute. They make every icon look about 20% more similar, which adds just enough friction that scanning for the app I want takes a little longer.
Poorly executed icon shapes were distracting, but when they were done well they provided subtle visual cues that made the interface easier to navigate. I miss that more than I expected.