Do you dress with a hat and shirt like someone in the 50s?

I see many angry comments because it's a change without a practical reason, and it's meant to make things more "new" or "fresh" at the cost of CPU and GPU resources. That's a valid complaint since making old devices obsolete is a design choice.

However, it's good to see it from a humane perspective. Fashion trends change because they are associated with identity, novelty, status, self-expression, etc. Companies make fashion changes to appeal to those things. For example, nobody complains if Nike changes a model just for fashion; however, everybody uses the same phone every day, just as they do with a pair of shoes. For us, working on programming or software design, the phone is just a tool, but for most people, the phone is a form of self-expression (like using single or double quotes in code, or tabs vs spaces). And every few years, tech companies undergo a fashion refresh.

So, even if Apple fires all the visual designers and keeps the same design for many years, people will likely grow bored with their UIs, which will push them toward competitors offering more stylish options.

>Do you dress with a hat and shirt like someone in the 50s?

I don't want my OS to have bell-bottoms and afro one year, a mohawk and ripped jeans the next, and a raver neon top with tracksuits and glow sticks the next.

A basic tee and jeans haven't went out of style since Marlon Brando and James Dean. Or a good shirt and a jacket. Or, if that's your thing, a Perfecto/Bomber/Motorcycle leather jacket. Or a sundress for women.

> For example, nobody complains if Nike changes a model just for fashion;

That's because shoes are part of clothes fashion. And even so, if established, long available models are changed or removed altogether (e.g. Doc Martens 1460, Converse Chuck Taylors, Timberland classic boot, Levis 501, etc.), these companies would get an earful from customers too.

Besides my OS is not the place for fashion to begin with. Especially when it messes with utility. It can look stylish or even "lickable".

But it absolutely doesn't need to change for fashion's sake.

The problem is this mindset that constant UI churn chasing "fashion" could ever be purely superficial and harmless. You say people would grow bored with a UI that never changes, but on the other hand, people learn to use a UI that doesn't constantly change.

Changing UI layout obviously breaks muscle memory, but even just reskinning the same layout with a new color scheme that changes the relative visual prominence of different UI elements brings usability penalties. It's rare that any UI change is purely beneficial or has no effect on usability. Unless proven otherwise, any UI change should be assumed to impose some usability harm on existing users, and the potential usability benefits of the change need to be weighed against that harm.

Don't pretend that the downsides of messing with an existing UI aren't real.

> Don't pretend that the downsides of messing with an existing UI aren't real.

Wow, you are barking at the wrong tree.

In my comment, I didn't say that the UI style changes were good or bad for usability. The comment thread had two postures: either these design changes have a business reason, or they are there to justify the designer's salary.

I wanted to highlight a third plausible reason: people crave experiencing something new, which is why businesses reflect that. For example, I love the classic Mac OS B&W style, but if Apple maintains the same style from 1984 to the present, many people will perceive it as outdated. (In fact, I remember reading MacOS 9 reviews pre-Aqua, that many comments highlighted how MacOS looked legacy compared to Windows 95.)

I'm not defending poor style changes or implying that they don't affect usability.

You seem to be saying that chasing fashion could be a sufficient justification for UI churn, instead of acknowledging that it will only ever be a very weak factor at best in favor of redesign, and never enough on its own to overcome the usability downsides of changing an established UI. UI overhauls need a more substantial justification than mere fashion.

What I'm saying is that "mere fashion" is not something minor.

If you consider the model proposed by Donald Norman in Emotional Design, the experience occurs on three levels: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.

The behavioral level is crucial. I'm not minimizing its importance. But all three levels contribute to the user experience.

Companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft redesign their UI because they want to maintain the perception that their products are modern, which justifies their UI updates.

> UI overhauls need a more substantial justification than mere fashion.

In the evolution of most UIs, many of the UI changes were driven by "fashion".

Most differences in behavior between Windows 3.1 and Windows 11 could have been achieved using the same visual elements of Windows 3.1. For example, Windows 95 moved the "Close" button outside the window control menu to make it easier to click; however, the same change could have been made while keeping the style of Windows 3.1. The switch from the "Program Manager" to the "Start" menu and taskbar could have been implemented with the Windows 3.1 style, without modifying its behavior.

When Apple launched OSX, its core was based on NeXT Step, and the goal was to replace Mac OS 9. They could have chosen to keep the Mac OS 9 style (which they initially did in the beta versions) to avoid disrupting the experience for existing users. The shift to Aqua was a fashion statement, conveying not only that Apple was modern but also highlighting the integration of their hardware and software, as the Aqua style matched the design of the iMac at the time.

I agree with you that disrupting the behavior and usability is not good. Many "fashion" changes could be incremental, allowing users to choose whether to retain their old version. But, you like it or not, the "visceral" perception in the user experience plays an important role.

The downsides are enormous for older people.

We are increasingly making everything digital, and it's leaving the older generations that cannot constantly adapt and relearn as their memory gets worse, in trouble.

I agree! The problem is that in software users don't have to option of retaining the old UI while updating the rest of the product, so there's always a fuss when some people prefer the old UI but are unwillingly forced to use the new one.

> Do you dress with a hat and shirt like someone in the 50s?

I wish it were like that, then I could be merely unfashionable, without someone coming into my house at night and replacing the clothing I bought and am used to with whatever is in style next.

It's a management failure. Either management is directly approving gratuitous UI redesigns, or they're making the mistake of giving designers unrestrained freedom to decide what UI changes ship.

Or they needed some kind of glossy faux-development to headline the marketing year when Apple AI tanked, and this was the best they could cobble together at relatively short notice.

Meanwhile I get regular connection issues on Facetime on my iPhone 15 Pro Max, even though bandwidth isn't a problem here.