[randusername]

Glad for the change, but a lot of the criticism overlooks that at some point we won't be the target audience of UI/UX anymore.

Flyouts, dropdowns, and other text menus make sense to me, but I could see how they might be alien and uncomfortable to someone that has only ever experienced mobile interfaces.

The reverse is true for sure, nowhere do I feel more frustrated and old-brained then trying to make sense of a new mobile app that everyone else seems to think is great.

[skydhash]

> but I could see how they might be alien and uncomfortable to someone that has only ever experienced mobile interfaces

They are different devices. Just because you can drive a sedan does not means you can drive a bulldozer. Or playing piano qualifies you to play the organ. So going from touch and a small screen to keyboard/mouse and a bigger screen, you should expect that the interactions will change.

[spinningslate]

Exactly this. The “one UI to rule them all” paradigm has been a persistent, recurring flaw for decades. It probably hit its lowest (to date) with the exhortations to “mobile first design”. The motivation for that was reasonable: conventional desktop UIs of the time didn’t render on mobile. However the ensuing “mobile first” instead became “mobile only” - and consequently wide screen displays with buttons the size of elephants.

Phones and desktops are so radically different that your sedan/bulldozer analogy seems like shades of grey. It’s more like taking a Saturn V rocket to the local shop for a pint of milk.

[_diyar]

true, but ~all new users have a stronger mental model of how their phone works vs. big-screen devices.

[preg_match]

The solutions is then them building a mental model for the desktop. Using phone strategy on larger screens is a usability issue, because it doesn’t translate well or take advantage of a mouse and keyboard. We went through this with windows 8. It’s a nice idea, but in practice it makes the desktop much more cumbersome to use. It might have a benefit for very new users, but it’s temporary in nature.

[_diyar]

i agree, but that want my point. i was trying to point out the rationale behind the root comment to my parent comment

[troupo]

> but I could see how they might be alien and uncomfortable to someone that has only ever experienced mobile interfaces.

From a review at an attempt to butcher Safari interface several years back, by Riccardo Morri https://morrick.me/archives/9368

--- start quote ---

The utter user-interface butchery happening to Safari on the Mac is once again the work of people who put iOS first. People who by now think in iOS terms. People who view the venerable Mac OS user interface as an older person whose traits must be experimented upon, plastic surgery after plastic surgery, until this person looks younger. Unfortunately the effect is more like this person ends up looking… weird.

These people look at the Mac’s UI and (that’s the impression, at least) don’t really understand it. Its foundations come from a past that almost seems inscrutable to them. Usability cues and features are all wrinkles to them. iOS and iPadOS don’t have these strange wrinkles, they muse. We must hide them. We’ll make this spectacular facelift and we’ll hide them, one by one. Mac OS will look as young (and foolish, cough) as iOS!

--- end quote ---

(power users don't use mobile devices for their work, and yet...)