sam

I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but it does feel AI-related. Unlike PM and eng, which started growing in 2024 (two years post-ChatGPT), design didn’t. If I had to venture a theory, I’d say that because AI is allowing engineers to move so quickly, there’s less opportunity—and less desire—to involve the traditional design process. That said, you’d think design would become a differentiator as more products compete for attention. Something to think about for your company! We’ll keep watching this trend and AI’s impact on org design more generally. One interesting observation we made when we went a level deeper: the ratio of demand for PMs vs. designers has flipped. In mid-2023, we went from more open designer roles to more open PM roles. And ever since, PM demand has been pulling away (currently 1.27x). This will be another trend to monitor, in terms of how AI is reshaping org design.

consistency ≠ uniformity: for those who haven't lived through this era – we used to have beautiful, precision interfaces. now they're replaced by a design language that originated from the Apple Watch, with icons that only fit in squircles. but that's not even the point. the point is we used to design the whole stack – the technology, the concepts, the interfaces. when designers only care about superficial consistency, platforms lose their uniqueness. apple used to design systems. skeuomorphism wasn't just about leather textures – it was about teaching people new mental models. the trash can empties because you understand what a trash can does. aqua's lickable buttons and sheets had depth because the OS had layers you could understand. the old apple designed the whole stack – from metal to pixels to concepts. teams weren't just shipping features in the same box, they were building coherent platforms each with opinions about what computing should feel like for the medium. liquid glass is fine on a phone. but on macOS it's unusable – lack of precision, visual noise everywhere. this is what happens when UI language designed for fingers bleed into macOS. we went from interfaces designed for a 27" cinema display with a precise cursor to interfaces designed for a 1.5" screen you tap with one finger. the Mac is for creation and precision work. it needs information density. it needs chrome you can grab. it needs UI that gets out of your way but gives you power when you need it. instead we got padding and whitespace and translucent blurs optimized for touch targets nobody's touching. the squircle icon mandate is a symptom. when you force every icon into the same shape, you're saying "brand consistency" matters more than "each app icon needs to communicate its function instantly." we traded clarity for uniformity. we traded precise design for cross-platform sameness. consistency means your system has coherent rules within itself. uniformity means everything looks the same regardless of context. the hardware team still gets it – that macbook pro + M-series chips, chef's kiss. but software design feels like it's chasing fat fingers instead of remembering what people do on a Mac.

there is simply no industry that can even fathom of coming close to the amount of marketing/rebrand psyops as crypto in no industry ever has so much money been funneled through only words and 0 substance crypto's marketing problem is that it's almost entirely marketing lol

If I hit this dictation button after sending a text and it beeps and stops my music one more time, I’m gonna find everyone at apple and put them in a rear naked choke hold Even if I turn off dictation I somehow hit the voice note thing The send button should not have multiple functions in the same spot