My impression is that in modern UIs, both checkboxes and option buttons are being phased out: Checkboxes seems to be replaced with apple-style toggle buttons, which I guess are more intuitive for some people?
Option buttons don't have any direct replacement that I can think of, you just see them incredibly rarely. My guess is that they always were one of several possible means to have the user select from a set of choices, the other prominent ones being a plain listbox widget or a combobox/dropdown widget - or of course, just use plain buttons.
For some reason, designers seem to prefer plain buttons or a dropdown for this usecase today.
Toggles are actually not that bad as a checkbox replacement. But I feel they convey a lot of meaning through color (in iOS, sliders turn green when selected), whereas checkboxes reimain immediate even in b/w. I wonder whether people with severe colour blindness have any issue with that?
Ahh why didn't I take interface design as a career :)
Option buttons don't have any direct replacement that I can think of, you just see them incredibly rarely. My guess is that they always were one of several possible means to have the user select from a set of choices, the other prominent ones being a plain listbox widget or a combobox/dropdown widget - or of course, just use plain buttons.
For some reason, designers seem to prefer plain buttons or a dropdown for this usecase today.