"Distracting, illegible, messy": This must-read takedown explains a major Apple mistake

It's always a bit of a gamble when Apple releases new versions of its main operating systems, whether that's iOS, iPadOS or MacOS. Major revisions like the arrival of "liquid glass" on iPhone can potentially upend how you're used to your device working.

Still, I'd say that we were all able to enjoy roughly a decade of pretty clear improvements to most of those software systems overall, especially since Apple's slowly but surely made some of them more open and customisable over time. That makes the arrival of macOS Tahoe quite interesting.

I won't lie, it wasn't a software release that I paid a deep amount of attention to, back when it happened in September 2025 – while OS updates feel more obvious when they make major design changes, I'm not fanatical about updating my MacBook Pro in a timely fashion.

Still, I did eventually get the update, and while I hadn't explicitly talked about it to anyone, I got a deep sense of relief and affirmation when I recently read an excellent and extremely detailed breakdown of the weird work Apple did on menu icons in Tahoe.

From software engineer Nikita Prokopov, it's a well-laid-out webpage full of pictured examples of how Tahoe's designers appear to have had the mandate to find little font icons to go with as many menu items as they could in the update, and the mess that this has left Apple with now that the software is live.

The best part of the whole setup is that it repeatedly cites Apple's own design guidelines from back in 1997, when it was still extremely forceful in its institutional devotion to consistent design language. While those guidelines aren't gospel, it's fascinating to see how Apple has abandoned some of them.

Principally, the issue is now that menus are littered with icons that are extremely similar to each other, often in ways that mean they're not really adding any clarity to the situation at all (and might be doing the opposite).

Some of these are mind-boggling in their attempts at drawing distinctions in icons that are only microscopically different from each other, and really appear to fly in the face of common-sense design principles. For that sentence to apply to Apple of all companies should be a bigger shock than it is, frankly.

The blog post is a fantastic read for anyone who cares about how the devices they use are actually made and designed, but crucially, it keeps its own language and explanations refreshingly simple. That makes it extremely readable, and I really can't recommend it enough – check it out here.