The unprecedented success of the iPhone is mostly to blame for all of this madness. Too much success can lead to missteps. When you’re selling gazillions of hammers, everything starts to look like nails.
Hiding most of the UI was genius for such a tiny screen with a simple and very limited OS. People loved it. It’s was tremendously empowering, they could finally own a computing device they can understand or at least not screw up.
But a computer has a much larger display and does a lot more. It’s OK for it to show more UI because there are simply more features.
macOS these days is full of tiny things that only appear on hover that would have brought Mr Fitts or even the original Apple Human Interface Guidelines team to tears.
An airplane dashboard doesn’t need to look clean, it should be useful to trained professionals.
Hiding most of the UI was genius for such a tiny screen with a simple and very limited OS. People loved it. It’s was tremendously empowering, they could finally own a computing device they can understand or at least not screw up.
But a computer has a much larger display and does a lot more. It’s OK for it to show more UI because there are simply more features.
macOS these days is full of tiny things that only appear on hover that would have brought Mr Fitts or even the original Apple Human Interface Guidelines team to tears.
An airplane dashboard doesn’t need to look clean, it should be useful to trained professionals.
We need to swing the pendulum back.