This does not have anything to do with poker chips but there are some similarities in the use case.
- An ideal operating system / software product is easy and fast to work with to enable the user reach his intended goal in the shortest possible time. (Among other things.)
- An ideal poker chip set is easy to work with as a dealer (who has to quickly identify what's in the pot) and to a lesser extent the players as well (quickly find out how much they and the other players have). (Among other things.)
Now compare the sidebar here:
with the sidebar here:
primarily the entries listed under Places/Favorites.
While in the first version you were quickly able to spot your desired sidebar item without actually having to read the label next to it (makes it faster -> efficiency!) because you could easily identify items by shape and color combined, in the second version you are severely slowed down because color was entirely cancelled out. You only have the shape left for identification, which already significantly worsens the time the eye/brain needs. You have to resort more and more to reading the label, which makes the process way slower. This is a feature I use on a daily basis when working with my machines, I have experienced the effect it has myself.
Well, this is what happens when you have a designer on crack running free with barely any restraining. (Steve Jobs - who was into design and user experience himself - worked like a gatekeeper, weeding out all the dumb ideas Jony Ive had and letting only the stellar ones pass through. Tim Cook on the other hand is a bean counter at heart and apparently has no concept at all about good design or UX and only cares about if it sells or not - which unfortunately is pretty much always the case as Apple's marketing has always done and keeps doing a stellar job at creating hype zombies.)
If you are an Apple fanboy and were offended by my slight rant: Please don't get me wrong here, I'm not a hater. I used to love their products and still use a lot of them. Mac Pro with two cinema displays, two MacBook Pros, iPod classic, Apple Keyboard on any machine I work with Mac/PC/whatever, and only recently retired an iPhone. The Macs still run 10.6 as that version really was the pinnacle of OS X. I just don't buy any new ones because they are objectively inferior for my needs, and it unfortunately looks like Apple is not going to reverse their course anytime soon. I feel like this company really has to nearly die once more to have a chance to get back to sanity, just this time they wouldn't have any Steve to beg to come back.