Habits, UI changes, and OS stagnation

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Style Pass

2021-07-20 21:30:02

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a short thread on Twitter about the undying argument Is this really bad UI, or is it just you who are averse to change? — I’m publishing these observations here simply because it will be easier to find them and reference them in the future.

What inspired that thread was a post by M.G. Siegler, In Defense of the New Safari. To be perfectly fair, in that post Siegler just says that he, perhaps going against the prevailing trend, actually loves the changes in Safari, both on iOS and Mac OS. He simply says that, while being taken aback by the changes, after a few weeks he got used to them and likes them.

It was other people who pointed me to his post, using it as a way to make their point. Their point being (you guessed it right) Is this really bad UI, or is it just you who are averse to change?

The argument “Is this really bad UI, or is it just you who are averse to change?” will never go away, huh? A change in a user interface can be disruptive, but it’s usually easy to see if it’s disruptive-beneficial or disruptive-confusing or ‑frustrating after a while.