Kyle Halevi

I'm excited to introduce Gist, a new app that makes it easy to shorten articles with AI. gist-app.com

Some of my favourite icon design work. Atmo 4 is beautiful, thoughtful, and designed with a level of taste uncommon in the 2020s (looking at you, Google)

@neilcybart All of those goals, “better transitions”, “more efficient”, “more global” have nothing to do with what made keynotes valuable or spectacular in the first place. We want a genuine, human story, not TLC.

As someone who experienced years of in-person Apple presentations and now the prerecorded presentations at Steve Jobs Theater, the prerecorded presentations are better. Better transitions, more efficient, more entertaining to watch. Also, prerecorded presentations perform better with global audiences.

@phenom_XT And a lot of the gloss and contour depends on what's underneath the glass, instead of intrinsic styling

For a modern interface, liquid glass is actually pretty "lickable". I think all the hate around it is centred on the loss of Apple's software excellence as a whole. There's far more bugs here than any of us are used to, bugs which should have been quashed in QA or Alphas.

Apple selling cheap laptops means it’s giving up on being an aspirational brand. Means it’s run out of ideas - which has been obvious for a while with the goggles and the thicker phones and iPads. It’s like if Mercedes entered the compact truck market.

First Apple event since 2019

Steve was an incredible leader, innovator, and friend whose world-changing ideas moved all of us forward. Celebrating his remarkable life and legacy today, on his birthday.

@usagimaruma Photos too

このアニメーションが初期iOSのメモの削除時に使われていたことを思い出したけど、動画が見つからない。確かiOS 6が動く3GSもどっかにしまい込んでしまった。

@niko_hatbot @heliographe_ Wrong

@heliographe_ hot take maybe but the icon on the right would not work at all today. its too detailed and at small sizes like a phone screen would lose all meaning

If you put the Apple icons in reverse it looks like the portfolio of someone getting really really good at icon design

@realMichalNNN @heliographe_ I often struggle to discern objects in the real world too since they are not, as you know, orange smears on black backgrounds. It’s a true injustice.

@heliographe_ silhouette of pen is obscured by the ink bottle ink bottle takes up the whole icon pen and ink bottle are both black/gray less and less current users ever used ink bottle, they still use pens from accessibility and legibility perspective the current one is best

@rnmp Oh you know just a rich 26 year tradition of beautiful, well crafted Mac app icons.

I don’t get the outrage. They’re different styles of illustration. One is more photorealistic and the other more abstract and neon-like. That’s about it 🤷

Old iWork vs new Apple Creator Studio icons.

@HMailing63835 @Ayeris_23 @nitzukai @avstorm Wrong and ahistorical. Third party apps had great icons for 20 years of Mac OS X.

@Ayeris_23 @nitzukai @avstorm This completely falls apart the moment you start adding third party apps, that's what i meant by "ecosystem". A lot of third party app developers won't follow Apple's design guidelines. Also, when you account for modern user sensibilities like icon tinting.

Apple's new Creator Studio app icons

@nitzukai @Squiddy_____ They’re also less distinguishable than before. They blend together with every other glyph-over-background icon.

@Squiddy_____ oh yeah lets kill all the fun in icons just to make it faster to read by 0.62 seconds!

how do you go from THESE LEGENDS to those??? they don't want anything to have whimsy and fun anymore every app icon will be a symbol with a gradient and you will be happy.

This is the true motivation behind the DMA

@titanas @neilcybart Molly Anderson is VP of Industrial Design, equivalent level.

@neilcybart Sure, technically Apple doesn’t have a head of design but Dye was the highest software design authority. No? VP of HID

Generally speaking, the Mac community tends to think about and view things very differently than say iPhone-only Apple users. Something to keep in mind when it comes to the Alan Dye reactions (which are all over the place).

Ternus ‘26

@ryolu_ Why is Cursor flat?

consistency ≠ uniformity: for those who haven't lived through this era – we used to have beautiful, precision interfaces. now they're replaced by a design language that originated from the Apple Watch, with icons that only fit in squircles. but that's not even the point. the point is we used to design the whole stack – the technology, the concepts, the interfaces. when designers only care about superficial consistency, platforms lose their uniqueness. apple used to design systems. skeuomorphism wasn't just about leather textures – it was about teaching people new mental models. the trash can empties because you understand what a trash can does. aqua's lickable buttons and sheets had depth because the OS had layers you could understand. the old apple designed the whole stack – from metal to pixels to concepts. teams weren't just shipping features in the same box, they were building coherent platforms each with opinions about what computing should feel like for the medium. liquid glass is fine on a phone. but on macOS it's unusable – lack of precision, visual noise everywhere. this is what happens when UI language designed for fingers bleed into macOS. we went from interfaces designed for a 27" cinema display with a precise cursor to interfaces designed for a 1.5" screen you tap with one finger. the Mac is for creation and precision work. it needs information density. it needs chrome you can grab. it needs UI that gets out of your way but gives you power when you need it. instead we got padding and whitespace and translucent blurs optimized for touch targets nobody's touching. the squircle icon mandate is a symptom. when you force every icon into the same shape, you're saying "brand consistency" matters more than "each app icon needs to communicate its function instantly." we traded clarity for uniformity. we traded precise design for cross-platform sameness. consistency means your system has coherent rules within itself. uniformity means everything looks the same regardless of context. the hardware team still gets it – that macbook pro + M-series chips, chef's kiss. but software design feels like it's chasing fat fingers instead of remembering what people do on a Mac.

@ParkerOrtolani And, even more importantly I’d say, is his role in Aqua

Stephen Lemay is listed on Apple patents going all the way back to 2003. He's on some of the most important ones in Apple history alongside some of the biggest names. Have a feeling all is in very good, very safe hands. I mean just look at some of these, there are countless from the original iPhone alone.

@heyyoudvd @markgurman He’s been at Apple since 1999. This is fantastic—he’s who you’d hope for.

@markgurman What has Stephen Lemay done? Is he from the same school of thought as Dye (hide functionality for the sake of aesthetic beauty) or is he more of a Greg Christie type designer? I think Apple needs another Greg Christie at the helm.

Apple is naming Stephen Lemay, a longtime company designer, as Dye’s replacement. This marks yet another monumental departure from Apple amid a larger shake-up of its executive ranks.

@DylanMcD8 I think they have a big roll of stickers they’re working through. The model number is set in SF.

I would so so love to know the story behind how this happens. This font was phased out over 20 years ago!