[pavlov]

If I look at the Notion and Linear desktop apps, they’re essentially identical in styling and design. They’re often considered the best of today’s web/Electron productivity apps, and they have converged on a style that’s basically what Apple had five years ago.

IMO that’s a fairly strong argument that the branding was always unnecessary, and apps would have been better off built from a common set of UI components following uniform human interface guidelines.

[lelandfe]

I do notice those things occupying your "essentially," and your "basically." The success of worse designed stuff is a hard thing to argue against, though.