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Comment by lxgr | Hacker News Reader

> Part of the Mac’s soul was in its expressive, varied app icons

Hasn't that been a thing of the past for a while now?

I just had to double-check my dock to even find a non-squircle icon, and there's exactly one in mine: Spotify. (Two if we count "Disk Utility", which has a disk icon overlaid at the bottom right but is otherwise a squircle; three if we count "Activity Monitor", which shows a CPU histogram.)

I agree that it's not a great change. In my view, it makes app icons much harder to distinguish by shape alone, and increases reliance on color (which, at least on iOS, I don't have displayed anymore on most of my home screen themes).

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I left macOS a few years ago but I had many apps that had such icons. Like cyberduck, little snitch etc.

But I left macOS because of the ever worsening lockdown, Apple constantly messing with the design without a way back and the move towards iOSisms. I'm glad I left when I see the sorry state it is in now.

I use KDE now which gives me a world of customisation options. I don't even have to use the themes or plugins to make it work the way I want to, which is quite different from the default.

Me too. And KDE connect really does an awesome job of creating an integrated multi device experience.

Really? I'll check it out.

One of the reasons I'm still in the Apple world is how well my phone works with my computer. It's little things like being able to turn my phone into a scanner from my desktop, and synchronised DnD. All these little things add up to an experience where I can ignore the tech and get on with what I'm trying to do.

If KDE connect can give me something like that then I'm jumping, even if it means switching to Android (actually, that'd be a bonus because the iPhone cameras _suck_ in comparison).

Until Apple decides that things are different now, in any case.

> I had many apps that had such icons. Like cyberduck, little snitch etc.

Same here, but almost all of them have apparently proactively given in to Apple’s design “guidelines”. (It’s unclear whether Spotify is actively resisting or if this is just their regular glacial software development speed.)

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