This is a low-effort article that completely fails to understand why a couple of the nits even happened, which would have been actually interesting.
* On confirming changes with ok/cancel:
Online and collaborative apps have trained many users to expect that all changes are automatically saved. Where Google Docs used to have a "save" button that did nothing, we may have now entered a new era where some users don't know what the state of things is if you don't hit one of the ok/cancel buttons. That's interesting, and maybe there's a more clear way of doing things because of this expectation change.
Not to mention that the OK button has hopefully deservedly died because it wasn't clear. The affirm button should have a custom label that describes the action that will happen if you click it.
* On apps (more specifically browsers) not being identifiable: This is good mostly? Browsers are presumably responding to users who care more about having maximum screen real estate dedicated to the content they're reading that the browser which hosts the content. An app that realizes that I often don't really _want_ to interact with the app itself is good. The removal of excessive toolbars and separate URL and search boxes is a all great. I want a browser that's almost full-screen content but still usable for navigation and window management.
* On gray selection: A code/text highlight example, really? Yes, I personally don't want a bright blue background for my selected code. It would be too distracting. But you can change this with your theme! Choose a theme you like. If other users like it too it'll be popular.
Or is he complaining about the selected tab? That has bold text and a color highlight line above it. I have no idea why the selected gray is so similar to unselected in his screen shot when the Dark and Dark Modern themes in VS Code for me have more contrast. Again, bright colors would be distracting and you change change the theme.
The interesting question here would be how you balance obviousness of UI state with not being distracting, especially for editing apps.
These are tough design challenges and this article kind of flippantly dismisses the current state as "aesthetics" rather than considering that there are competing usability concerns and the author simply doesn't like where the tradeoff has landed, and completely ignores the market leading apps and OSes to similar design decisions.
* On confirming changes with ok/cancel:
Online and collaborative apps have trained many users to expect that all changes are automatically saved. Where Google Docs used to have a "save" button that did nothing, we may have now entered a new era where some users don't know what the state of things is if you don't hit one of the ok/cancel buttons. That's interesting, and maybe there's a more clear way of doing things because of this expectation change.
Not to mention that the OK button has hopefully deservedly died because it wasn't clear. The affirm button should have a custom label that describes the action that will happen if you click it.
* On apps (more specifically browsers) not being identifiable: This is good mostly? Browsers are presumably responding to users who care more about having maximum screen real estate dedicated to the content they're reading that the browser which hosts the content. An app that realizes that I often don't really _want_ to interact with the app itself is good. The removal of excessive toolbars and separate URL and search boxes is a all great. I want a browser that's almost full-screen content but still usable for navigation and window management.
* On gray selection: A code/text highlight example, really? Yes, I personally don't want a bright blue background for my selected code. It would be too distracting. But you can change this with your theme! Choose a theme you like. If other users like it too it'll be popular.
Or is he complaining about the selected tab? That has bold text and a color highlight line above it. I have no idea why the selected gray is so similar to unselected in his screen shot when the Dark and Dark Modern themes in VS Code for me have more contrast. Again, bright colors would be distracting and you change change the theme.
The interesting question here would be how you balance obviousness of UI state with not being distracting, especially for editing apps.
These are tough design challenges and this article kind of flippantly dismisses the current state as "aesthetics" rather than considering that there are competing usability concerns and the author simply doesn't like where the tradeoff has landed, and completely ignores the market leading apps and OSes to similar design decisions.