# Apple design directions, and beyond

**URL:** <https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/t/apple-design-directions-and-beyond/324>\
**Category:** Design Lounge\
**Created:** [October 17, 2017, 7:16am UTC](https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/t/apple-design-directions-and-beyond/324 "2017-10-17T07:16:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![grahamperrin](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.opensourcedesign.net/grahamperrin/32/62_2.png) [@grahamperrin](https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/u/grahamperrin)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2017, 7:16am UTC](https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/t/apple-design-directions-and-beyond/324/1 "2017-10-17T07:16:33Z")

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> [@Funding, getting paid, and designing for FLOSS](https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/t/funding-getting-paid-and-designing-for-floss/116/4):
>
> … Apple has pushed design, and SV has embraced it, but often it’s still a hard to convince open source developers that design is a necessary part of software development. Part of that legitimatization then pushes back against the idea of free work. …

> [@Funding, getting paid, and designing for FLOSS](https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/t/funding-getting-paid-and-designing-for-floss/116/9):
>
> … opinions about Apple design directions, and the ways in which some of those directions were followed by other developers. …

> [@Funding, getting paid, and designing for FLOSS](https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/t/funding-getting-paid-and-designing-for-floss/116/10):
>
> … Please make a topic! I like hearing strong opinions about design.

Opinions later 🙂

A picture might paint a thousand words so first, a handful of screenshots from Mozilla areas.

Two from May 2017:

 ![](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/opensourcedesign/original/1X/eca0731021f0bf0637c6df22d87202f6e2a5b784.png)

 ![](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/opensourcedesign/original/1X/fef91337b7b448f804006a66598366e1650e3491.png)

– and three from this month:

 ![](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/opensourcedesign/original/1X/11753d9c1ebad39f34140697727691ef9ad432c8.png)

 ![](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/opensourcedesign/original/1X/d5c22ec0edc3cf28578476c26983b5dae876f52e.png)

 ![](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/opensourcedesign/original/1X/c7913d33c8ebb2fdee67d261ac4c5e77fb40f808.png)

If you ignore the four coloured buttons in the title bars of this month’s shots, you might think that there’s **little resemblance to Mac OS X**.

## Short story

In the three years since I chose to abandon Apple products (with an adoration of software such as Finder and Safari), I have grown to use things such as **KDE and Firefox on FreeBSD** in ways that are **very** heavily influenced by **the best of the Mac user experience of the past**.

The five shots above might not remind you of macOS (or OS X or its predecessors), but there is **a design essential** that’s no longer possible with Apple’s software, and that essence was lost with 10.10 (Yosemite) …

## Longer stories

… and those design mistakes drove me, after more than two decades of using Macs, to withdraw from [AppleSeed](https://appleseed.apple.com/) projects before Yosemite was released.

(Apple is one of many open-, closed- and mixed-source backgrounds that I could re-throw into the [introductions](https://discourse.opensourcedesign.net/t/introductions-come-in-say-hi/41) area … maybe next year.)

## Human interface guidelines

One of the screenshots from May, and one from this month, show something that’s no longer possible with Apple software such as Safari.

A basic **human interface guideline that Apple trashed in the transition from Mavericks to Yosemite**.

Can you tell what it is? 🙂 …