441: ‘Serious Opinionators’, With Adam Engst

Adam Angst, welcome back. TidBITS turning thirty-six as Apple hits fifty blows my mind, and I’m thrilled David Pogue has an Apple-at-fifty book coming; I can’t think of a better person for it.

That tracks; we’re closing in on thirty-six, and some days the news feels like familiar speed bumps I’ve hit for decades.

Let’s set the stage, then dive into macOS Tahoe’s UI misfires—like Norbert Heger’s ‘widow corner’ find where the resize hot zone lives mostly outside the rounded corner, so you’re effectively clicking in dead space.

Right, and it’s the pile-up of little paper cuts that creates the bigger problem, not just one glitch.

Jobs introduced Aqua by talking like a human‑factors pro about clarity and the key window, while Liquid Glass arrived as word salad and now even adds icons to menus the old HIG warned against; subjective ‘lickable’ is fine, but objective usability matters.

Jobs had taste and a counterweight in Ive; after he left, the science and discipline behind the design slid, and it shows.

We lost the ‘default to the HIG, break it with intent’ ethos and got more shoot‑from‑the‑hip choices, plus far less visible usability testing.

I used to hear about Apple’s testing labs and university studies; that chatter’s vanished.

On the positive side, the Phone app now lets you switch between classic and unified right inside the app with a clear little filter menu, instead of burying it in Settings, though it oddly appears only in Recents even though unified blends Recents and Voicemail.

I wrote my review on a flight, fully ready to grumble, then flipped through both views and realized unified actually solves more than it breaks, with smarter tabs and favorites in context.

The big behavioral shift is perfect: in classic, tapping a row dials immediately; in unified, tapping opens the contact sheet and the small phone button places the call—far more consistent with every other list in iOS and way less prone to accidental calls.

Yes, the giant tap target in classic triggered too many misdials; unified treats each call as an item you can act on, with swipe, press‑and‑hold, and a precise call button.

I missed that all summer because it looked like a layout tweak, but the behavior change is the win—and it’s subtle enough to overlook.

One head‑scratcher: the ‘Tap Recents to Call’ toggle only appears in Settings if you’re in unified, and bouncing between views can even crash Settings; just keep it visible or allow it in both views.

Gray it out in classic with a note, or offer separate toggles for classic and unified; TipKit does a nice job nudging you to try unified and promises you can flip back in place.

Do you think classic will stick? Telemetry will drive it, but ripping it out will hurt a lot of people’s muscle memory.

‘Classic’ sounds temporary, yet my bet is both survive for years because habits are stubborn.

Messages mirrors the Phone changes with that same filter icon and new buckets for unknown senders and spam, though my spam list is usually empty.

Most of my junk lives under Promotions—especially political blasts—and plenty of two‑factor codes land there too; continuity’s code autofill on Mac is still one of Apple’s best tricks.

Best part of Tahoe for me is that code fill now works outside Safari as well.

Friends love Arc, but Safari fits me like a broken‑in mitt, so I stay put.

As an Arc user, I’m… let’s say ‘philosophically challenged’ by their recent pivots.

Favorites show posters in Phone but plain avatars in Messages; hardly anyone sets posters up because the flow is clumsy, so Apple Intelligence should just pick great photos, rotate them, and build posters for us.

Posters look fantastic on incoming calls once you have them, and lock‑screen photo shuffle might be my favorite feature ever.

I love the ML magic too, though using the same image for my lock screen and a contact poster can be confusing when a call comes in.

The Manage Filtering shortcut is great, but it should show an ellipsis when it’s about to toss you into Settings.

Agreed; Settings search is weak, so deep‑linking is gold—just signal the jump with an ellipsis.

I’m also not a fan of the big top‑left Edit and the blue checkmark that replaces Done; the iconography is vague and fussy.

Words beat icons, modes should be explicit, and Tahoe’s menu icons prove how unreadable UI gets when you chase pictures over labels.

So many icons are ambiguous that you practically need a legend without text.

Even the Finder’s menus would be unusable if you stripped the words; Liquid Glass leans too hard on icons and kid‑safe rounding.

If you assume people can read, a lot of these choices don’t add up—especially as LLMs pull us back to a text‑first world.

We’ll save Siri for another day; are you running Tahoe on your main Mac yet?

It’s on my Air, not my main Pro, and the steady drumbeat of UI regressions has kept me from upgrading.

I tried Rob Griffiths’s trick that uses a management profile to block the jump to Tahoe and clear the upgrade badge, but I’m wary of linking it because it’s fiddly and easy to mess up. My bigger gripe is the updater UI that makes a full upgrade too easy to trigger when all you want is the latest Sequoia point release.

No matter which info button you tap, the dialog defaults to Tahoe, and I’ve heard from readers who landed on the new OS by accident.

We see the same song every year with signing and updates, and I do not expect Apple to change that stance.

Apple does listen, even if they talk less, and last WWDC they quietly admitted it by reworking Photos after the backlash. The simple Library view is back for straight thumbnails, and Collections holds the smart stuff.

Liquid glass across the 26 OSs is what really bugs me, and with Alan Dye gone I think they can adjust it without ripping it out. San Francisco is solid; the fixes should be about readability, contrast, and calmer translucency.

Do not park critical visual options as de facto accessibility for half of users; make tinted and clear behave sensibly so fewer people feel forced to flip those switches.

I kill extra transparency on new machines, and in Tahoe the always-on scroll bars look like a punishment with those chunky black tracks.

Always-visible scroll bars are crucial context on a Mac, yet Apple hid them, removed the little nudge arrows, and even broke Finder’s column resizing under the bar. It feels spiteful and it strips away where-you-are cues you should never have to hunt for.

Bring back scroll bars that look good and inform you at a glance, and turn them on by default; you can do that and still keep liquid glass.

They could use on-device models or at least automated checks to flag unreadable contrast in real time because contrast is measurable.

I also want less forced sameness across platforms; the original iPhone succeeded by not copying the Mac, and now too many iOS habits are being crammed onto the desktop where they do not belong.

This WWDC has me more excited than usual: show a clear correction on the biggest human interface missteps across the 27 updates and present Apple Intelligence that is actually ready to ship. Nail those two and the rest can just be polish.

All right, Adam, great having you back. Thanks again, and everyone should follow the RSS and read tidbits.com because it is as sharp as ever.