What feels plausible to me is changing the underlying 19x19 px control would break layout of many existing apps, and the design team was hell bent that window corners had to be that round. I’d say it’s simply form over function, and that likely a meta-level argument about user empowerment or whatnot won.
That's like asking, "if the title bar can have different sizes, should we make the hot area for moving the window also of different sizes?" The answer to both questions is "obviously yes!" The shape of the thing and how it responds to user input do not match by coincidence.
Do you recall what podcast? I know hearing him say this was intentional is only gonna make me frustrated, but I’m dying to hear the justification for such a bad decision.
Exactly my point. It was too hard to make the grab box different. It was not too hard to pretend that the hyper-rounded corners would also make some layouts look and maybe act problematic. It was not too hard to splurge time and effort on liquid-glassing the entire UI toolkit.
In a word, it's hubris. It's not care about the user, it's not even care about market domination or setting a fashion trend; both have been flunked. It looks like somebody's ego needed an affirmation, or someone's grip on corporate power needed a demonstration. It's a bad, bad sign of a deadly corporate disease.
I get a sense that this is ultimately a matter caused by the board. It would have been briefed on and likely been the ultimate leader on the overall product and services strategy and pipeline. All this frivolous Tahoe Liquid Glass smoke and mirrors redesign, and even the unified OS release numbering gives me the impression that they’re either out of ideas or there’s a blank spot in the pipeline/timeline. I think there’s a case to be made that the helm lacks some direction now that Steve Jobs’ pipeline seems exhausted and momentum needs to be generated without him.
Considering how Vision Pro rollout and the AI development went, I’m having doubts about Apple adapt to an AI world, e.g., fundamentally rethinking what hardware means if you no longer need to interact with a screen or hardware in a similar fashion anymore, i.e., keyboard and GUI manipulation.
There's also the problem that not every window in Tahoe has the same corner radius. Some people thought this was laziness/lack of polish or a bug, but Alan Dye confirmed on a podcast that it was intentional.
So then they're left with a conundrum: do they adjust the 19x19 region on a per-window basis, depending on the per-window corner radius, or do they stick with one standard drag region? Probably it should be the former, but that comes with its own set of issues.