Nicholas Windsor Howard shares his thoughts on what he perceives as a decline of the OS X interface. There’s a lot to process here, a reasoned, well thought out essay.

Just a taste:

In Apple’s view, an icon depicting a camera and a photo was too literal for an application that handles photos. Therefore, when iPhoto gave way to its replacement in 2015—Photos—the previous carefully-rendered icon gave way to this bland, meaningless rainbow abstraction.

Is the move from the obvious to the minimalistically abstract a step up? A step down? Read this, decide for yourself.