Tell HN: Apple Broke Fitts' Law in Tahoe

In every MacOS version - all the way back to the Lisa, even - items on the menu bar could be reached by clicking on the very first row of pixels on the screen. ("Rule of the infinite edges". - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law )

In Tahoe, they broke that for 3rd party menu bar icons (and some Apple ones) See video: https://shot.3e.org/ss-20250918_074040.mp4

This worked fine until Tahoe.

It gets stranger, though - this is only broken if the menu bar is light-colored. That means it's broken if Reduce Transparency is turned on - OR if it's off, but you're using a very light (white or light gray) colored desktop background.

This isn't just the canary in a coal mine. The miners are dead. The mine has collapsed.

20 points | by dmd 2 hours ago

4 comments

  • hedora 1 hour ago
    Not sure what the name pf the law is, but OS X and later broke the UI for anyone with a working spatial memory.

    I’m not surprised they’ve also broken the pointer for anyone using a trackpad or mouse.

  • wpm 1 hour ago
    I don't believe that a lot of the people designing Liquid Glass even know what Fitt's Law is, or why it matters, or why it should be respected.
  • hu3 2 hours ago
    About infinite edges, on Windows I can mindlessly drag cursor to the top-right of the screen and click to close current window. Bottom-right edge means minimize all windows. Bottom-left click opens menu if you left the Windows button there).

    This reduces cognitive load when operating the mouse. I miss that on macOS.

    [-]
    • tyleo 1 hour ago
      As a long time Windows user and part Linux user, I recently switched to Mac.

      I absolutely love the machine. It’s by far the best hardware I’ve used and it makes up for everything and then some. But I’ve got to say the OS really sucks.

      [-]
      • stouset 1 hour ago
        macOS has certainly fallen pretty far, but if we’re going to compare them, Windows is and has been a complete tire fire for well over a decade at this point.
        [-]
        • anon1395 1 hour ago
          Why do you say that?
  • PaulHoule 2 hours ago
    I switched my iPhone and iPad to iOS 26. Talk about amateur hour. They took something which was refined and industry leading and turned it into... meh.

    Of course the competition is the folks who made the logo for their OS a trash can and are oblivious to what that means. That's how they can get away with it.

    [-]
    • tyleo 2 hours ago
      > Of course the competition is the folks who made the logo for their OS a trash can

      What do you mean? I honestly have no idea.

      [-]