The "content over chrome" trend was started by Microsoft's Metro design language. Windows 8 and Metro are one of the biggest UI/UX disasters since the dawn of computing. Why would Apple keep copying the worst ideas from Microsoft?
NNGroup has written about this trend: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/content-chrome-ratio/
Metro worked perfectly well on tablets. And every OS since W8 has actually kept some version of Metro (in the form of e.g. larger touch-targets), because having a single version of Windows UI for both touchscreen and mouse-and-keyboard computers, is what enabled the creation of the "2-in-1" or "convertible" touchscreen notebook, a design that basically every modern Windows notebook instantiates.
Liquid Glass also makes more sense on tablets. I think Apple is copying Microsoft because Apple is also moving toward full UI-level unification between their desktop mouse-and-keyboard UI and their mobile/tablet touchscreen UI. They've already done it for some apps (e.g. Notes.)
If you believe the rumor mill, Touch-enabled Macs may launch this year[1].
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/08/apple-planning-macbook-...
MacBook Neo is getting a lot of attention for good reason. It is a great laptop. The fact that it isn't "convertible touchscreen" notebook doesn't seem to bother anyone.
Apple copying Microsoft is a mistake. It used to be the other way around.
The Windows 8 equivalent server edition also included the upgrade to Metro UI. I don't know, I guess MS figured IT wanted to provision Windows services using a surface tablet?
I actually really did like Windows Phones though. I can imagine a world with a third competitor in that space today... But MS didn't seem to have any understanding or ability to develop an ecosystem that works. Even when they were literally paying people to write apps for their app store, it was just terrible.
It worked so incredibly well on the Windows Phone 7, but translated horribly to the Windows 8 desktop. Especially the weird mouse gesture to get to the neutered Settings panel, the redundancy of that panel to begin with, and the entire UWP app experience. Windows 10 was a great marriage of these two concepts, even if the Settings menu was still redundant, it was functional. Then comes along Windows 11 even it's most recent feature updates feels like a half-finished UI.
That article was written in 2014, just a few years after the trend started, and still today, over a decade later, Apple, once famous for its UX, is still failing to follow it.
What puzzles me is that information like this is out there. How did Apple get it so wrong?
I am hopeful for the new UX VP. He has his work cut out for him.
> Why would Apple keep copying the worst ideas from Microsoft?
Remember also the "Get a Mac" ads that parodied Windows Vista permission dialogs, but now macOS is a permission dialog hell.
Tim Cook was an IBMer. I'm sure that Cook was a fine hire as an operations manager, but I doubt that Steve Jobs intended for someone like Cook to be in charge of everything at Apple, including UI design. (Jobs never put Jony Ive in charge of software, by the way, whereas Cook did.) Indeed, I doubt that Jobs groomed anyone to be his successor. By the time Jobs learned he had a fatal illness, it was too late, and he had to turn over the company to someone the board of directors would accept, which was Cook. Jobs was CEO but didn't own the company; infamously, the Apple board of directors chose John Sculley over Jobs in an earlier power struggle.
You are rewriting history. Any time Jobs had to step aside from the CEO position, Cook took over immediately. He was Jobs' designated successor for a decade when he learned he was sick. They merely implemented the succession plan they already had.
When Cook took over, he was unequivocally the only choice. He steered the company in his own direction, with a focus on operational health to the detriment of other things. He kind of lost the plot somewhere in there and has been spinning his wheels for a while. That's not what I'm contesting. It's your idea that Jobs didn't want Cook. Jobs loved Cook.
> Any time Jobs had to step aside from the CEO position, Cook took over immediately.
Any time Jobs had to step aside from the CEO position temporarily, Cook took over immediately. Metaphorically speaking, Cook kept the trains running on time. Cook did not set or change the direction of the company at the time, and Jobs was still available for consultation.
Sick is not the same as dying. Jobs initially didn't think he was dying, and tried to treat his illness with some hippie-dippie "alternative" medicine, when aggressive treatment might have saved his life.
> He was Jobs' designated successor for a decade when he learned he was sick.
Citation needed.
> Jobs loved Cook.
In what way? According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs lamented that Cook was "not a product person".