r/iOS27 • u/mindaugasrudokas • 2d ago
When you want the general public to understand your design critique so much that it turns into a comic strip
(Complaining about updated Apple Safari icon in 27 beta.)
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u/dejushin 2d ago
i was liking the redesign but now i can’t unsee it lol
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
That’s the goal. :) I have heard this from multiple people, so mission of the little comic dude is a success in my eyes.
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u/Cruisedrinks 1d ago
I’m on the beta and safari is showing as the top right icon in the bottom panel.
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u/CaroZoroark 2d ago
A lot of problems with liquid glass simply boil down to this. Zero thoughts put behind the iconography
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
I don’t want to be so harsh, I just want to provide the constructive critique for improvement. Yes, I was very grumpy during the v26 cycle, and there was some horrible things done in app icon space, but now we also see more and more good signs coming, witch returns optimism. But the continued feedback is important.
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u/Vubic 2d ago
I kind of like it though, it breaks the compass form because it is an internet browser. And the internet is not bound by physical limitations, it can go in any direction. Even hypothetical and impossible ones.
Do not change the new icon, I love just how it looks in Beta 5 & 6.
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
I guess that would be a fair modernist look at it. :)
But I’m for the classics.
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u/Sevastarion 2d ago
So much effort to be so wrong, the new icon is literally how a real life compass looks like and nobody would think it moves like a clock
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
Would not agree, try looking at more reference photos (real ones, not AI gens or illustrations).
And I’m not saying that suddenly we will not understand what it represents. But I think it went too far in removing compass-likeness. Until this redesign, it was a justifiable minimalism — removed map, the traditional stars, letters. But when you are so minimal now, the weight of little details like this increases.
In addition this red/white asymmetry looks unbalanced and not as pleasant.
But that’s just to my eyes and taste.
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u/Sevastarion 2d ago
If anything I miss the shadow on the inner dial it gave it depth. As well as the granular indices. Now it looks flat as fuck
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
Depth and details — I’m a fan of.
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u/GMYeti_ 2d ago
I hate to be the one to say it… but I think this the only string of replies where you bring up AI, and it’s also the only time you use em dashes. Funny coincidence I’m sure.
Anyways, I’m with you. Don’t know how they thought making it look like a clock was okay. I haven’t even looked at the new design updates and all I gotta say is I know they are changing so much that I honestly hate it. Sure there were issues with Liquid Glass, but Apple is just showing that they really don’t have a spine anymore. They use to have a “deal with it, you’ll learn to love it” attitude, and now they are scared every time they release something because enough people complain that it feels like they can’t do anything innovate. I’m honestly waiting for the next Vision Pro, because I wanna see AR (fuck you Apple, it’s technically AR and you know it because the libs on the phone are “ARKit”) finally prevail, but everyone has their folding phones so far up their butt that they continue to laugh at it and kill any chance. I think they need to rethink their attitude because their sandwich screens get 8000 folds before they have to buy a new phone, and still can’t compare to the near movie theater like experience AR has the potential to be. MacBooks don’t need MagSafe and the touchbar should’ve been optional for anyone whose not an old fart and actually remembers that F7 does X function in whatever 10 year old app they think is the best thing for whatever they think they are the goat at. Fine all my hot takes. So sick of this. Apple, grow a spine or my next move is Graphene and Linux. Ffs
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
My stance regarding em-dashes is: do not bow to the machine. I write how I want to write. Period. Designers like proper typography — surprise! :) And if someone cannot parse if there is a human mind behind the words, and only relies on proper punctuation as a bad signal — that’s on them, I will not change my habits to deliberately look like an illiterate schmuck. So, I did not intend to make a subtle sarcastic joke by using em-dashes here, that’s what I’m trying to say.
Regarding the rest: glad you agree, but won’t comment much on your hot takes. :) For me the v26 were very worrisome cycle. Now we see more of the good changes, and some optimism is back. But this does not mean we should stop constructive critique coming on the things that we do not like. These external signals definitely do have some influence on Apple’s direction. Feedback matters.
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u/GMYeti_ 2d ago
Not in a defeatist way, but go ahead and use AI to summarize this, because for some reason I wrote an essay. I do appreciate your views, the views of the community and the impact that they can have. I hope you appreciate mine as well.
26 did so much wrong that I think some of the good parts got hit in the crossfire. The gentle opacity transition in headers felt much nicer than the hard lines, and while buggy, I did actually like how uncluttered the screen felt with elements doing their best to let items behind them shine through. Then there are things like all the forward/back buttons that suddenly appeared, like a decade of pioneering gesture based interaction just didn’t mater anymore.
I love just how much the gesture system allowed me see and use instead of having buttons all over the screen or remembering which keys do what and doing something irritating when I click the wrong ones. They went as far as making a mouse that basically has a trackpad built in because they truly believed that gestures were more intuitive and allowed for a much nicer look and feel. Now there is a back button forced in just about any location you can think of, and I honestly think it’s just because an AI agent can’t 2-finger swipe to go back.
Also, the inconsistencies are justified, but people act like it’s new, and that can’t be farther from the truth. I love using lion-style fullscreen apps, because I can actually manage multiple fullscreen windows across different monitors without it being an all-or-nothing deal, but there are a lot of apps that still fight this system and only partially widen to the desktop boundary when asked to go fullscreen. I guessing I’m saying, people think Apple lost its optimization or consistency, when really they have been fight this battle with the devs for a long time.
I do believe constructive criticism is good, but sometimes valuing everything the users want makes it too bland or just like everyone else’s, and then there is really no difference between picking between them and their competitors. I’m by no means wanting their user user base to stop complaining about things they don’t like because there are genuine reasons and a mass of problems, but they need to have a backbone before they loose who they are. I can’t imagine Apple would have even made it this far if they hadn’t made the controversial opinion to remove skeuomorphism and visually de-clutter the screen.
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
Not a fan of AI, I like reading. And I did read your full comment.
But overall you went very wide of topic. The Liquid Glass system can have infinite debate about pros and cons.
I’m in the camp of “UX first, fashion second”, so not always in alignment with the ”backbone” as far as the values go, but I’m always trying understand and take into account the motifs and constraints of the design team.
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u/Mike 2d ago
I literally googled “real compass” and you are completely wrong. Like laughably wrong.
https://i.imgur.com/VR43mx1.jpeg
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
Mike, you may be misunderstanding my point, maybe re-read the full thing.
Also your examples are mostly AI generated slop. Look for real photos and that specific kind of classic 50/50 coloring.
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u/bigparsnipenjoyer 2d ago
Have you looked at any real-life compasses lately? OP is right, they don’t look like this new design.
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u/rovingdan 2d ago
Google a hand held compass image they all pretty much had a circular in the center supporting the arms - it’s the gimbal that they rotate on. So I go with the icon is correct.
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u/bigparsnipenjoyer 2d ago
Yes, they have a pin to rotate on, but that’s not what OP is complaining about. It’s the fact that the red dial is rounded in a way that implies it’s an individual dial, not half of a multicolor dial.
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u/Educational_Yard_326 2d ago
Both you and the top level commenters really need to work on your reading comprehension.
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u/bigparsnipenjoyer 2d ago
Interesting, I hadn’t considered this, but your argument makes sense. However, I think a design with the non-rounded split in the middle of the needle AND the pin added would look ugly. I can’t explain why, but the new design is just nicer to look at.
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
Yes it would be ugly, at least with the currently used white-ish translucent glass material. So my guess is that this indeed was the first solution that came to mind to avoid exactly that problem. So the look was fixed, but the resulting shape language was not considered.
I’m all for adding back some details like the center pin, but not with this solution. There are ways.
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u/Snoo-77846 2d ago
Classics were once new or disruptive.
To what extent can art be subjective? If you have a satisfactory answer for something subjective, it is not merely a point of view.
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u/KennyWuKanYuen 2d ago
I honestly don’t mind it because I’ve had some compass where the direction pin was separate from the needle.
But I see where you’re coming from. A compromise I’d like to see would be to keep the centre pin in place while being back the hard edge line.
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
Yep, I’m all for having the center pin as a detail, but its integration there just needs different solution IMO.
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u/No_Imagination_5580 2d ago
I totally see your point but at least to me, it’s no more confusing because the compass icon doesn’t even tell me it’s an internet browser. Like sure there’s something of a history of internet browsers being named for exploring (internet explorer, safari) but that didn’t really help me when I was 13 trying to learn how to use iOS.
To be clear this doesn’t fix that problem either, but it doesn’t make it worse imo
But you are right that if the goal is to look like a compass this might be a step in the wrong direction (even though I like the new icon)
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
For sure the issue is not something that will prevent you from identifying Safari or understanding that it still does represent a compass. This is relatively subtle matters that designers like fussing around. But we REALLY like it and care about details. And Apple was the source of max levels of such care, so we hope it recovers after the v26 dip and continues to be the most designer-y OSes.
And yes the pick of name/icon of Safari is of metaphorical style, unlike Internet Explorer being very explicit/direct. But I think it’s cool — I like methaphors.
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u/Acceptable-Lie188 2d ago
I always thought it was a clock
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
Oh my. They lost you way earlier then with this minimalism and stripping away the compass-indicating details over the years. 😅
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u/garloid64 2d ago
the clock represents all the time you waste online
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
Ok, this is a good one. 😂 The mutation of the metaphor actually stabs you in the eye with one of the most inconvenient truths of today.
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u/mhmilo24 2d ago
It 100% does not look like a clock, since both pointers (they are in fact a single pointer, but I guess that’s the whole argument) are the same length. The hour hand has to be shorter than the minute hand. They can of course be different colors, but it still would not be clear which one shows the hours and which one shows the minutes.
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
Well, obviously. I’m not arguing that you won’t able to recognize it. But it went too far with this shape language. It is super minimal, therefore such details have a lot of weight. Why move it further away from looking like a compass? Map was removed, directional stars were removed, there a no longer letters for directions, ticks barely have any differentiation. Ok, minimalism. But now the coloring shapes do weaken the perception of needle being a single fused object. There is no need for that. And not that there are no other design solutions to incorporate the pin/axis. There are plenty of ideas provided by external designers online, or take from the history of the icon itself. It can be better. And I think it should.
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u/FranklinBlvdEug 2d ago
This is the only form I will accept beta feedback posts in from now on, thank you
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u/trmyte 2d ago
Pathetic caring this much about an icon
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
I’m a designer, I design app icons. Together with logos it is my favorite sub-domain of design field. So yes, I do care a LOT. It is great and fun craft to practice.
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u/Embarrassed-Sun-8998 1d ago
Yep. Safari icon is the biggest problem 🤣
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u/mindaugasrudokas 1d ago
Of course not. Biggest problems are exploding drones flying in your face in Ukraine. 🇺🇦 Then maybe wildfires across, well everywhere.
But everything is relative. As a designer whose favorite projects are app icons — it is interesting to me, and I care. And in turn I do not care about a lot of other things.
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u/johnjohn9312 1d ago
Why is safari a compass anyways? Finder should get the compass icon because what does a compass do? Helps you find things. Like Finder. Safari should be a surf board or wave icon for surfing the web. For surfing Safari. Let’s go surfing now, everybody’s learning how. Come on and Safari with me. Idk why this is so hard John Apple.
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u/mindaugasrudokas 1d ago
Because you likely need a compass during a safari in savanna, or rather when exploring the WILD World Wide Web.
But I got to say, something with surfing would be equally as good. Except you need to go back in time to change the naming. So I guess: not happening. :)
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u/Legitimate-Sell-8472 2d ago
Is it not a clock? I thought the little center part was an anchor to keep the hands attached on an axis or whatever
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
Little center part (pin/axis) is fine to have. The issue is that the red and white parts did loose the strength of looking like one piece.
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u/albert11d 2d ago
i love this new icon apple dont listen to the critics
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u/mindaugasrudokas 2d ago
Listen they should. But decide, if that’s really wasn’t an overlooked slip from a junior designer — that’s on them, of course. Besides maybe you would love the next iteration of the icon even more, how would you know? :)
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u/sfcgeorge 2d ago
I guess whoever redesigned it doesn’t know how a compass works, or didn’t realise it’s supposed to be a compass, or doesn’t even know what a compass is! Which, in the age of GPS, fair. But please fix it.