Apple Human Interface Guidelines: Why Icons Work.

Icons work effectively in the Macintosh interface as representations of computer entities for several reasons. People often recognize pictures of things and understand them more quickly than they do verbal representations of the same things. For example, studies have shown that traffic signs that have symbols are more recognizable from a distance than signs that have only words.

Symbols cross cultural and language barriers better than words do.

I would also add that icons are by their very nature best when they are iconic, not photorealistic. But you decide: Sample

It's the Default Folder icon vs. the Safari icon. One is more iconic while the other is more photographic. Which turns to absolute mush at 16x16? Even at larger sizes I find it's easy to mistake at a glance the Safari icon for other circular ones such as the Path Finder icon. And the point of these little doohickeys in the first place? Are they supposed to be like some sort of family album in the Dock reminding you of all your loved ones or are they supposed to be easily-recognizable symbols that aid in launching and switching between programs?

I am going to say that this isn't an OSX problem, it is an icon designer's problem, for which Apple can be held accountable in their own icon design. I say have the great photorealistic icon at large sizes, but at small sizes make the icon more, well, iconic. Lazy designers just take their icon and reduce it in size. Shoot, there are five different sizes for an icon that I can see in Iconographer. The bottom two at least, small and mini, can be made differently than the larger three to be better visualized. I like the larger icon sizes myself. I can use particular imagery to encode information as to what people should expect inside a folder; imagery that wouldn't do well at small sizes. I stay at large sizes because screen real estate is not at a premium for me and my eyes are served better in the long run. And I like glitzy clutter. I have always felt that the X-critics were barking up the wrong tree here. OSX does an excellent job of providing the various size options. It is the designers who do the poor job. Hammer away at the icon designers, not the OS.

I like the larger icon sizes myself.

Yes, Dr. Proteinstein. I remember you telling us about some of the uses you put them to and it made sense to me. I think anti-aliasing icons is now a necessity, both for aesthetic reasons (yes, those count) and for practical reasons. With so many different resolutions available in displays we need to be able to scale the whole interface, including icons, in more than just one, two or three set sizes. This still introduces "fuzzy" problems, but once we get 300 dpi displays that won't be a problem. But that has nothing at all to do with the idea of icons, which Apple has perverted and which developers are following – at least some of them. I'm actually very surprised how the developers so unflinchingly dived off the eye-candy cliff with Apple. Heck, even Microsoft did it. But as mother used to say: "If your friend banged his head against the wall would you do that too?" Apparently so, in far too many cases.

Aqua Human Interface Guidelines: Icons.

Icon design in Mac OS X is significantly different from previous versions of the Mac OS. In Mac OS 9 and earlier, graphic limitations constrained designers to use a highly symbolic style. Icons consisted of “jaggy” illustrations that emphasized straight lines rotated in increments of 45 degrees.

First off, that's a bunch of revisionist crap. While it's true that 72 dpi screens made adhering to the 45 degree angle advantageous, to suggest that modern higher-resolution screens have now freed us to make icons in a way that the original designers would have if they could have is just a lie. They've had the technology to put photographs on highway signs for decades now. They haven't done it – and for good reason.

This is brain rot at its very core. Once you start lying to yourself and even the public like this you can loose all bearing. If they had simply said "We think photorealistic icons are cool!" then I could only fault them on their sense of priorities and knowledge, not their honesty.

If they had simply said "We think photorealistic icons are cool!" then I could only fault them on their sense of priorities and knowledge, not their honesty.

Brad, I think that the above problem is at the heart of OS X's shortcomings. Mac OS developed through pioneering research. Its engineers produced reams of data on what makes a good interface. Now Apple is ignoring almost twenty years of compelling, nearly unassailable research and is going with "what looks cool" or "what Windows has."

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Mac OS developed through pioneering research. Its engineers produced reams of data on what makes a good interface. Now Apple is ignoring almost twenty years of compelling, nearly unassailable research and is going with "what looks cool" or "what Windows has."

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Exactly, ophion. That's not to say that icon makers of old never produced horrible icons. They did. And some OS X icons are, at least from a recognition aspect, quite good, including Internet Explorer, Acrobat Reader, Duality, QuickTime Player, iCal, Terminal and even Process Viewer. Given a choice between what works best and what looks cool though, Apple has gone far too often with "what looks cool." That's what either they want, they think their customers want, or both. If they are correct we're going to be drowning in silliness in no time at all – as if we're not already. But because Mac sales are declining while PC sales in general are increasing – economy or no economy – they might yet get the message.

But you're so right that they've ignored so much of their own hard-won knowledge. It's not so hard to understand why. If you view the buying public as a bunch of easily mesmerized and gullible simpletons you'll wave your eye-candy wand instead of your slide rule.

As the Master Baiter himself likes to say, they can do it right – just look at the View widgets in the Finder Toolbar.

Gosh, Brad, 100 posts in 2 weeks! Not even the Jerk Officer has managed that. Of course his posts WAY more than make up in length for what they lack in frequency.

They go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

...in fact, the only way to stop them is often a hard reboot, since force quitting so rarely works in OS 9...

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Gosh, Brad, 100 posts in 2 weeks! Not even the Jerk Officer has managed that. Of course his posts WAY more than make up in length for what they lack in frequency.

They go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

...in fact, the only way to stop them is often a hard reboot, since force quitting so rarely works in OS 9...

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One hundred and one, but who's counting? Oh, forgot.

If they had simply said "We think photorealistic icons are cool!" then I could only fault them on their sense of priorities and knowledge, not their honesty.

Although true that the larger icons do look cool, I think they can still serve a purpose to convey richer information. It is untapped for the most part right now as icon designers have become enamored of their own graphics (those damn graphics pros ). I look forward to the day when icon badges and the icons themselves will be used as a way to realy information, like badges in the dock. Maybe the long awaited piles will bring with it some new tricks. I know you X-critics are just waiting on piles too, especially when you haven't even been rewarded with popup folders for your due diligence.

It is untapped for the most part right now as icon designers have become enamored of their own graphics (those damn graphics pros ).

True. Never underestimate the ego of graphic pros. But I think it's more than that. True icons are much harder to design.

Here's an idea. I believe thalo has commented on the minimalist beauty of some of OS X's widgets, particularly the view widgets and some of the System Menus in the menubar. Your assignment: Create a grayscale System Menu icon for a fictitious service called iPorn. Maybe it's a special chat program. Maybe it calls up pictures from your collection. I don't know. It doesn't matter. It would take me about 10 minutes to find a suitable picture that I could crop tightly and call it my iPorn icon. But to really convey the idea in an elegant, minimalist way with a true icon that looks good and is easily recognizable will not be so easy.

Maybe the long awaited piles will bring with it some new tricks.

I thought OS X already suffered from piles? [rim shot]