John Siracusa's passionate, long-form reviews of early macOS, when it was "OS X".
When design choices mattered.
Readit Newswatersb commented on macOS was fun: John Siracusa's OS X Reviews (2015) hypercritical.co/2015/04/... · Posted by u/watersb
watersb commented on Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025... · Posted by u/ArmageddonIt
There was a comic artist I used to follow when I was doing more front end work, who would blog about his craft. One of the things he said that really hit me was talking about silhouettes. The visual noise in certain eras of comics make them very unapproachable. If you repainted your strip by flood filling everything with black, would people have any clue what's going on?
One of the things I'm seeing in some of these examples is icons with the same silhouette doing nothing or less than nothing for scannability. This is the same problem AWS has. Their dashboard is just noise, because the icons are neither visually distinct nor descriptive of the project.
I've also seen some of this same problem with card and board games as well. You can see that some designers care about accessibility. This type has both a distinct color AND shape so colorblind people can see it, all the icons are big enough that people can make them out sitting upside down in front of the person across the table from them, even if they're over 40.
His first example, Google Sheets, does well by this metric IMO, but the next few are kinda bad.
macOS Tahoe has declared war on app icons with distinctive shapes.
No silhouettes. If your icon isn't a squircle, it will be shrunk to fit inside a default shape. The penalty box.
https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2025/6/2.html
The loss of icon silhouettes is a big step down in usability. Erases decades of design guidelines.
https://pxlnv.com/blog/roundrect-dictator/
Frankly it's senseless.
https://www.flarup.email/p/through-the-liquid-glass
Insane but still working legacy workaround:
https://simonbs.dev/posts/how-to-bring-back-oddly-shaped-app...
…
macOS isn't fun anymore.
watersb commented on Java Hello World, LLVM Edition javaadvent.com/2025/12/ja... · Posted by u/ingve
This must be different from straight up sleep deprivation.
Most moments of discovery in my experience have arrived only after a good night's sleep. Shower thoughts... Hmm. The state of waking up?
watersb commented on BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive evclinic.eu/2025/12/04/20... · Posted by u/mikelabatt
I heard that the i3 has some horror stories if you got the hybrid (basically a diesel engine that can produce electricity to charge your battery) or your battery had issues out of warranty. Not really sure though, everyone I've met who owns one really likes it still in 2025.
Some i3 models, like mine, lack the internal-combustion engine and its fuel tank, and i3 enthusiasts call it the "BEV", for Battery Electric Vehicle. The one with the gasoline engine is the "REx", for Range Extender.
The REx models use an engine design based on one of BMW's motorcycle engines; as such, I'm pretty sure that it's not a diesel. The gas tank is only about two gallons; to qualify for EV tax credits in some markets, the battery capacity needed to exceed the energy available from fossil fuel.
That battery capacity for initial models is woeful by today's standards. The design started with 17 kWh, upgraded batteries in later model years doubled that figure. Mine is a degraded original with about 12 kWh available. Freezing temperatures can cut that by half.
I drive it like grandma and get more than 4 miles per kWh. But it was less $$ than a golf cart. (I learned about EV tire expenses after purchase.)
watersb commented on BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive evclinic.eu/2025/12/04/20... · Posted by u/mikelabatt
I never considered buying a BMW before they put out an EV (the i4, not the i3). One of the reasons is maintenance, the EV still needs some, but much less than an ICE.
I'm about to change the transmission fluid in my i3.
It's at 100k miles and there's no user-facing documentation for the procedure, as the oil lasts "for the lifetime of the vehicle".
Turns out, this particular procedure is simple.
(Other common wear items, like the suspension damper boots, or the engine mount, or the AC compressor, or a set of tires every 12000 miles ... it adds up.
The i3 was a cheap acquisition. Doesn't drive like a BMW, but apparently it wears like one.)
watersb commented on CSS now has an if() conditional function caniuse.com/?search=if... · Posted by u/aanthonymax
If I had a time machine I would go back and ensure that DSSSL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Style_Semantics_and_S...) was the standard that got up.
All hail the embedded Scheme interpreter to apply Style transformations!
Although I feel like we've already explored this with XSL. The XML syntax was perhaps too much to swallow.
watersb commented on Trillions spent and big software projects are still failing spectrum.ieee.org/it-mana... · Posted by u/pseudolus
It's possible that most business projects fail.
Most advertising campaigns fail.
Today I learned this use of Hot Dog Stand was not intentional. It was just one of a limited choice of color combinations.