ADAM ENGST 6 January 2026

After 34 years, should we still pay attention to Apple’s Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines from 1992? Software engineer and UI designer Nikita Prokopov argues that:

the principles—as long as they are good principles—still apply, because they are based on how humans work, not how computers work.

Humans don’t get a new release every year. Our memory doesn’t double. Our eyesight doesn’t become sharper. Attention works the same way it always has. Visual recognition, motor skills—all of this is exactly as it was in 1992.

In his post, Prokopov references Apple’s 1992 advice and uses numerous screenshots to illustrate how the menu icons in macOS 26 Tahoe negatively impact usability.

• Icons should help users find what they’re looking for
• Icons should be consistent within and between apps
• Icons should represent a single, specific action
• Icons should be clearly distinguishable from each other
• Icons should be easily recognizable from a distance
• Icons should employ appropriate metaphors
• Icons should avoid using text whenever possible
• Icons should not reuse standard system elements

When these principles are violated, as they are regularly in Tahoe, users spend more time scanning menus and make more mistakes.

While browsing through the HIG, I came across an even more pointed piece of advice, which states bluntly:

Don’t use any nonstandard marks or arbitrary graphic symbols in menus. They only add visual clutter to the menu and people won’t necessarily understand the significance of the nonstandard marks—for example, they won’t know what a circle, addition sign, or tilde in a menu means.

I’m not personally all that perturbed by Tahoe’s icons because I barely see them. I’m extremely text-focused, so I can’t help but read every word in my field of view, but small monochrome icons are merely background noise. Many of them mean nothing to me, so when I’m forced to use them, I just map a cluster of pixels to some action. That’s why I have trouble with toolbar- and palette-intensive interfaces in apps like Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop. When all the icons look basically the same to me, I have to rely on tooltips and relative placement to accomplish much of anything.

For many users—especially those with low vision—Tahoe’s menu icons increase visual search time and hurt recognition, directly undermining the HIG’s guidance. Read through Prokopov’s examples while thinking about accessibility and then glance at your own menus: do the icons help or hinder?

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