Lawrence San wrote to the MacInTouch—Mountain Lion: Commentary forum—re:
"What is with this 'no colour' BS?...stop making all your text, icons, etc...in barely distinguishable shades of grey ...use contrasting colours...not slightly lighter or darker grey on grey..."
[GUIs] are created by designers, and design is a youth-oriented, fashion-focused field. Haven't you noticed all the websites in the last few years that sport columns of light gray type? Adobe is doing the same gray-on-gray routine with its interfaces now. You expect Apple's designers not to get on board the latest craze?
The fact that some older folks have trouble deciphering gray-on-gray is just an added bonus.
If challenged, designers will spout a variety of bogus logic about readability, focus, nonexistent "research studies"... but the reality is that most designers (not the best ones) mindlessly ape the latest fashions. They do it for the same reason teenagers tattoo their butts: to be trendy. You old fogey!
I responded with:
The blame goes to the design schools, which burned all the books, ignored the studies, and taught the kiddies to go with their feelings, rather than what works for people who live in a rainbow-colored world and not some drab, gray, postmodern, monochromic universe. The worse of this crapola is the idiotic light colors on black backgrounds, permeating the Internet and now TV. Hardly readable and which contradicts the many studies that have shown best is dark text on light backgrounds. Not a designer, but an eighth-generationer with 20/20 vision, who lives in a colored world, otherwise.