User blog comment:Rupert Giles/Layout Changes: Breakpoints and Typography/@comment-126761-20150519224135/@comment-15753613-20150519232151

"The change mostly affects the largest screen sizes, bringing them closer to what you might on a tablet device."

This is in the simplest sense, the problem.

Before it was generally agreed, from what you tell me, that desktop looked nice, smaller screens like tablets looked less nice. Then why did you choose to diminish the desktop view and make it look like the smaller screen?

"but does it not matter that users on smaller devices are given layouts that work for them? "

It doesn't work for them. Literally, because of the bugs, but also figuratively in the sense that this is not an improvement in the slightest. You said below this isn't an update for smartphones, and you also said it was smaller screens that go mostly unchanged; it is the desktops that change. Then how are you giving smaller devices layouts that "work for them"? You just said things are for the most part being changed so that everything is equal to the phone layout, but by that logic you are asserting that smaller devices already had "layouts that work for them", and that it was the desktop view that looked bad.

You claim that large content articles will have problems on smaller screens, but all you've done is make it so that larger screens also have problems. The mobile layout looks pretty much the same (that is, when it proves to work), all you've changed in practice is the desktop look to look amateur and unprofessional.