Except this was neither hate-filled nor superficial.
The toolbar buttons, for example are a great example of a major usability mistake: what we used to call "mystery meat navigation" back in the day, because it was difficult or even impossible to know in advance what would happen if you clicked a given button.
If anything the icons would make it more suitable for "heavy use" because once you get used to them they are an improvement to the old text, defeating the point of this superficial article even more.
It's not only that they have changed texts to icons, but also that the icons are really ugly, they do not communicate well the purpose of the buttons and that they are all grey blobs that are hardly distinguishable, I actually find it hard to get used to them for this reason. Also, as a general point, you can get used to almost anything interface-wise by using something for a very long time, but does this mean we should tolerate bad design?
Except, you know, that goes against basic principles of usability.
Forcing a user to stop and think about "what does this icon do" -- and yes, even your "heavy" users are going to run into this -- just to make something look pretty is basically always a bad idea.
> If anything the icons would make it more suitable
No, this is incorrect. I'm a heavy user of Gmail, and I still can't find the damn new refresh button. How many weeks should it take for me to get used to this so-called "improvement". I preferred it when it was text. I just don't see the new spiral icon thingie as "refresh".
Another way to look at it is if you make an improvement to something I don't care about, it's not an improvement. Especially, if it makes my job harder.
You need to actually measure what users do, not generalize from unsupported assertions.
I'm exactly opposite. I had no problem finding the refresh button since the icon used is basically the same exact icon used for refresh in multiple apps that I use everyday, including every browser that I use (Chrome, Firefox, Safari). It looks to me like a lot of the icons that have been used seem to be a standard in a lot of apps that use icons without text.
Internationalization issues could explain the change from a word based navigational to an icon based one. Long words from languages other than English might not fit well in the new layout.
People have been doing l10n for user interfaces for decades. There's always a way to make things fit and still convey meaning, even with languages that tend to have crazy-long words.
The toolbar buttons, for example are a great example of a major usability mistake: what we used to call "mystery meat navigation" back in the day, because it was difficult or even impossible to know in advance what would happen if you clicked a given button.