20 ms·

macOS Big Sur Preview

277 points by 0xedb 6y ago

zakk 6y ago
I cannot see any difference besides the icons in the Dock looking like those of iPhone apps.
- gjsman-1000 6y ago
  Except that the Dock icons are significantly more 3D in their appearance than iPadOS/iOS 14 are. This is actually an interesting change of priority. Last time there was a major redesign, iOS got it first and Mac OS X got it later. This time, MacOS gets it first and iOS gets it next year in 2021.
switz 6y ago
I still remember the Snow Leopard 'No New Features' launch. Mac OS has been as buggy as ever lately, I'd welcome another 'no new features' release with open arms.
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 6y ago
  An entirely new widget toolkit and an entirely new architecture is essentially the anti-Snow Leopard. :D
- GordonS 6y ago
  I was going to say something similar - I really wish they'd just slow.the.hell.down with the new releases, rather than continually changing things for what feels like the sake of it (and breaking more and more stuff along the way).
  - ideals 6y ago
    This is a side-effect of employment and raises being dependent on launching new features instead of improving existing features. Something certainly not exclusive to Apple.
- sys_64738 6y ago
  Except they did introduce new features like the stacks view.
- lasagnaphil 6y ago
  Precisely - this is the perfect opportunity for Apple to do a "no new shiny things" release, given that they are going through quite fundamental changes in their Mac architecture.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Perhaps they just undeleted Widgets from Mojave, it’s not like it’s a new idea
mmastrac 6y ago
I've been considering going back a version from Catalina. I'm not really holding out hope on this OSX release but we'll see.
pcr910303 6y ago
I hate that they’re moving to a design where buttons don’t have borders and textures, don’t provide any visual guidances on what’s a button and what’s not. But I absolutely despise them for making iOS apps installable on macOS. That’s... just terrible. This WWDC just felt like that Apple decided that macOS should get merged with iOS and converged them. The Mac doesn’t have a future...
- ljm 6y ago
  It looks like it's more tailored for lifestyle use. No big deal for a lot of people but Windows/WSL or Linux by itself feel like they will have more developer appeal if this direction continues.
- kjakm 6y ago
  >> But I absolutely despise them for making iOS apps installable on macOS. That’s... just terrible. Don't use them then? Seems like a useful feature to me for certain utility apps that don't require a proper Mac app/can't afford to develop one.
  - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    The Mac that I originally grew to love did not represent that lame compromise you're describing. It's strength and beauty was in the apps tailored entirely to the platform, not cheap tacky ports because the developer couldn't be bothered.
  - hollandheese 6y ago
    Might not have a choice. When OS/2 added Windows app support it killed actual OS/2 apps. Why bother supporting the Mac when you could just make an iPad app and get both markets at once.
    - ryandrake 6y ago
      > Why bother supporting the Mac when you could just make an iPad app and get both markets at once. Yea, this is what I'm afraid of. Instead of continued investing in their high quality Mac app, companies will just drop it on the ground and spend all their time working on their toy iPad/iPhone apps, expecting people to switch.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I'm mixed on the design. I really, really dislike the way macOS has looked since Yosemite, and compared to that, I think this one is an improvement overall. The icons have more depth, and there's far more use of color across the UI. But, it also looks extremely mobile-inspired—I suspect Apple's primary goal was to make iOS ports and apps look less out of place. That's a fine objective, but it also means they weren't designing for desktop and laptops specifically, and it shows. For instance, most of the apps lack title bars, and I'm not sure where I'd click to drag windows as a result.
- flareback 6y ago
  I think the lack of title bars is an issue now. I've found it annoys me most on my web browser, when I have lots of tabs open there is one small section between the 3 dots to minimize/close and the first tab that I can use to move the window. My guess is that they expect most people to use the application full screen and not to be moving it around. I've got a large monitor and I don't keep my windows full screened so this annoys me.
  - MR4D 6y ago
    If done well, then contrast will replace color for many things (e.g. menu bars) as a separating function. If done poorly, then it will look horrible because they got the contrast wrong. High contrast should be used where you want someone to pay attention (like an "exit only" market on a US freeway exit). Low contrast where you want something to fade into the background (like a mile marker). The problem with "flat" designs is that it seems hard to get it done well. Just think how long it took the industry to get the "ok" & "cancel" buttons to highlight in a consistent way for users.
  - makecheck 6y ago
    I’d say at least several times per month I either accidentally nuke a background window tab when a close button "X" materialized at the last second where it looked like I could just move the thing, and the rest of the time I simply catch myself a fraction of a second before doing it. Just-in-time UI combined with a complete lack of borders and affordances is the stupidest trend and it needs to end.
kratom_sandwich 6y ago
So the "About this Mac" screen says "Version 11.0" ... A silent farewell to OS X?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ben174 6y ago
  Wow, nice catch.
- rahkiin 6y ago
  Probably as they already dropped the X before. It is macOS
- toyg 6y ago
  What was "silent" about it? They made a big song & dance of dropping the X last year. This just makes it even more official.
  - sigjuice 6y ago
    The X was dropped in 2016, with macOS Sierra. Maybe because they needed the X next year for the iPhone.
    - toyg 6y ago
      Man, after turning 35 and having kids, all years just blend into one ;)
  - mwfunk 6y ago
    That was dropping the X from the name, not changing the major version number from 10 to 11. It's had a major version number of 10 ever since the first release of OS X. Most people assumed the actual version number would stay at 10.x.x forever, regardless of any changes to the marketing name of the OS itself.
- chadlavi 6y ago
Kkoala 6y ago
Haven't even upgraded to Catalina yet, because of the bugs...
- msie 6y ago
  I waited too and the latest Catalina fixes the ImageCapture bugs I was concerned about.
neximo64 6y ago
Is the beta of this coming out today?
- zachberger 6y ago
  Typically it is a developer preview, later on a public beta is released.
xrisk 6y ago
Oh god that new Mail app looks disgusting. Reminds me of a shitty Electron app, that kind of design.
- DanCarvajal 6y ago
  All of this looked like a sub par Behance or Dribbble portfolio.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  Catalina's Mail is terrible too. No more column view with clickable headers, plus data loss issues. I don't care much for Thunderbird but it seems like the only halfway-decent IMAP client for MacOS any more.
  - mnm1 6y ago
    Mailspring is nice but they do require a login and probably scrape data. I use it for work only though so I don't care if they spy.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago
  Anyone who uses Exchange servers or Office 365 should switch to Outlook. It's like the grown-up, adult brother of Apple's mail client.
  - andrekandre 6y ago
    sort of... the fact it doesnt use the native notification system is super annoying because outlook brings itself (and all its windows) front and center whenever a reminder happens, disturbing my work...
  - adarioble 6y ago
    It’s better, but still drives me crazy. Microsoft has come long way but still got heaps of work to do (I.e. no way to customise ribbon in Outlook)
potta_coffee 6y ago
I'm not excited about this update. I don't want a "bold new experience".
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lisper 6y ago
IMHO Apple's design jumped the shark a long time ago. Even apart from the aesthetics of the "flat" look, which I like about as much as fingernails on a chalkboard, Apple has completely abandoned the principles that made the original Mac great: ease of use and discoverability. Once upon a time it was easy to tell where the affordances were, what you could click on, editable vs non-editable text. Nowadays everything looks the same. The only way to tell whether something is clickable is to try to click on it. The only way you can tell whether something is editable is to try to edit it. And the UI is lousy with hidden features that only show up when you hover over them, with absolutely no indication of where they are until you happen to get lucky and move the mouse over one of them. Easter eggs lose their charm when you have to find one in order to accomplish an actual task.
- ljm 6y ago
  Based on how rough the Jira app is on Catalina, if MacOS is going to see more of that then I think I've had my day with Apple.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    To be fair to Apple, the JIRA app is the single worst Mac app I've ever used, by quite a long shot. And their web app also has atrocious performance (so much so that it was the deciding factor in a recent decision to move away from JIRA at $DAYJOB). The Mac App Store is probably a fairer comparison.
    - skrtskrt 6y ago
      Jira truly takes the cake for world's most over engineered website. I wonder how much of the world's coal and gas has been consumed by browsers struggling under the load of Jira.
      - ljm 6y ago
        I still laugh about how it takes over 10 seconds to render a dropdown box so I can move a ticket from 'in progress' to 'done'. It's often one of the last things to become functional on the page.
read_if_gay_ 6y ago
I know it's just the look-and-feel, but to me it appears dumbed down in every single way. The uniform app shape, top bar icons, Control Center??? This does not look like a serious OS at all.
css 6y ago
Scrolling this site with a mouse is comically bad, this is clearly designed to be used only with a trackpad. I cant read most of the content without very carefully scrolling unnaturally. You also have to pause for the animations to play, but if you scroll one pixel too far they don't play, so its a guessing game of whether you're in the right place or whether you missed some content.
- ryanisnan 6y ago
  I thought it might have been just me.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  Basically all of macOS is comically bad with a mouse and clearly designed for trackpads. You need to install a third-party tool to even disable mouse acceleration.
  - ptr 6y ago
    I thought the third party tool was a kext and was made non-functional. Is there a new way?
    - millimeterman 6y ago
      I use SteerMouse. It lets you customize mouse speed/acceleration, remap all your buttons, and set up mouse chords. It's admittedly paid and it's stupid that you should need to pay for functionality like this, but it's useful enough for other stuff (e.g. setting up buttons/chords to manage spaces to replace the trackpad gestures) that I live with it.
- swagonomixxx 6y ago
  Came here to say this. I don't get this kind of web page design. It absolutely sucks if you actually want content. I have to scroll a specific amount on my mouse in order to get content for that particular scroll distance. Just comically bad.
- makecheck 6y ago
draw_down 6y ago
I usually end up turning off the motion and turning on increased contrast, reduced transparency etc. These things demo nicely but I didn't like windows with transparency effects when Windows Vista did it and I feel the same way today. I care about what's in the window not under it. I do think the Safari updates look great, though. Webkit may have its governance issues and so forth, but Safari is really a wonderful app to use imo.
quantummkv 6y ago
I just love the changes they did to the menubar. Adaptive background and extra padding on the menu items are both great changes I don't like the new dock design. Maybe they'll change it back to the old dock if the feedback is vocal?
- hollandheese 6y ago
  They made it illegible with lots of backgrounds. I thought they had already learned their lesson with a fully transparent menu bar.
  - dewey 6y ago
    Luckily they are always pretty big on accessibility so there's always an option to turn all these things off.
- mmcconnell1618 6y ago
  Lots of extra padding everywhere which makes me think a touchscreen Mac is coming out soon. The extra padding is out of character for Apple designs unless they need the space for your fingers to not mash more than one item at a time.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    That could actually be pretty great. Especially if it's essentially a dockable iPad running macOS.
  - chadlavi 6y ago
    touchscreen mac already exists, it's just still called an iPad and still runs beefed-up phone software. The merge is coming in the next couple years. Tim Cook said the ARM transition would be 2 years, so I'm guessing that means 2022 or '23 has an apple tablet device running the same OS as apple laptop/desktop devices.
china 6y ago
OS 11!
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Nah, despite what they said in the keynote this is a smaller visual change than Yosemite.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    I mean, it is literally macOS 11. That's what it said in the About This Mac screen on the presentation.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      Whoa, I missed that! Thanks.
darth_avocado 6y ago
Of all the new shiny things, the only useful one is the fact that the airpods can now switch between devices better.
- christoph 6y ago
  I'm pretty excited to see how well the new spatial audio feature works on Airpods Pro. It sounds like it will come in a firmware and/or iOS update, but they didn't seem to give an ETA on it. Could certainly be a great new feature if implemented well (they claimed support for 5.1, 7.1 & Atmos), added to hardware that's already out there.
frou_dh 6y ago
I'm wondering if this is the release where OpenGL goes from deprecated to fully removed. Presumably Apple didn't want to write OpenGL drivers (full, not ES) for their in-house GPUs.
- AnonC 6y ago
  Apple has been pushing Metal for a few years. I don’t think any additional effort will be spent on OpenGL.
- schaefer 6y ago
  Anyone know How this would impact webgl content running in safari? Presumably it's translated to metal calls from within Safari?
  - lasagnaphil 6y ago
    Probably. WebGL is only a small subset of OpenGL, so I think it wouldn't be that hard to create a Metal translation layer for it. MoltenGL was already doing this (https://moltengl.com/moltengl/ https://moltengl.com/moltengl/)
  - frou_dh 6y ago
    It's been known for a while that Safari/WebKit are integrating the same ANGLE abstraction layer that Chrome uses. That will bring WebGL 2.0 support also. But the progress on that getting anywhere near shipping has been extremely slow. Several years have passed.
- WA9ACE 6y ago
  I wonder how this will affect java minecraft on the mac. Does LWJGL have a Metal backend?
  - Fej 6y ago
    It does not appear to have a Metal backend - just OpenGL and Vulkan. From what I can tell, commercial game devs treat Mac gaming as an edge case and mostly only the large engine devs care about Metal support (with exceptions, of course).
Mobius01 6y ago
The move away from a standard window bar/window chrome is a usability disaster in the making. I haven’t time to unpack what was shown yet but it did not leave me with a good impression.
ksec 6y ago
The biggest question I had when I was watching, Why did they not take the chance to rename is as macOS 11? OSX has been through two transition. The NeXT team must be very proud of their foundation they built 2x years ago.
- kasperni 6y ago
  That is just what they did [1]. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/22/macos-big-sur-is-version-11-0/ https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/22/macos-big-sur-is-versio...
- WA9ACE 6y ago
  They did. In the demo in the About This Mac window it said macOS 11.
- adamfeldman 6y ago
  Apple did bump the version to 11. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/apple-announces-macos-10-16-big-sur-with-entirely-new-interface/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/apple-announces-maco...
  - ksec 6y ago
    OH thank you. I completely miss that.
- gjsman-1000 6y ago
  I wish it was MacOS 16. Just drop the 10. part.
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    MacOS 0xA
  - racl101 6y ago
    > Just drop the 10. part. It's cleaner.
gjsman-1000 6y ago
The word is out that this is macOS 11. Personally, I can't figure out why they didn't just drop the `10.` part and call it MacOS 16.
- hollandheese 6y ago
  They're signaling the death of Mac OS X.
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    I mean, it was renamed to macOS in 2016, I think "the death of Mac OS X" already happened. https://fortune.com/2016/06/13/apple-mac-os-sierra/ https://fortune.com/2016/06/13/apple-mac-os-sierra/
- toyg 6y ago
  > why they didn't just drop the `10.` Because they know their chickens - or rather their frogs. Mac users are their loudest and most conservative customer sector, and have feared for years that OSX was going to be effectively taken over by iOS. Any big move would have had to face a wave of negative comments and would risk going down in flames. So instead they take things one step at a time - tweak here, tweak there, common icons, common services, Catalyst, we drop an X this year and major rev next year... The jump you mention will inevitably happen, because in practice it has already happened internally with the yearly matched-release cycle. I predict sometime in the next few years you will have iOS NN + ipadOS NN + macOS NN released at the same time. It makes sense. It just couldn't be done right now because the priority is to keep existing Mac users on board. Frogs must be boiled slowly.
AnonC 6y ago
The UI and UX seem to be getting worse on macOS with the “iOSification” of the OS. I thought Jony Ive’s exit would stop that trend. It’ll be interesting to read perspectives from John Gruber, M J Tsai, Marco Arment, etc. I still haven’t upgraded from Mojave to Catalina because of serious bugs reported by other people (including data loss issues in Mail). I’ll see if Big Sur shows improvements (reported by others) and decide when to upgrade. I don’t even run beta versions of macOS point updates, which is in stark contrast to iOS betas, which have been of better quality (comparatively). Edit: Apple seems to be ignoring long term Mac users (even the vocal ones) for quite sometime. It was poorer hardware quality and lack of hardware updates for several years. Now it’s software, where it’s been going about removing what makes native macOS experiences great. The Catalyst apps are not “native Mac apps” by any stretch of imagination.
- Synaesthesia 6y ago
  Personally I’ve had zero issues upgrading to Catalina, it seems to perform better than Mojave for me, and more stable too.
  - knolan 6y ago
    I’ve a major 10.15 issue on two Macs where doing any kind of calculation in Spotlight maxes out all cores on the CPU for 10-15 minutes.
    - CharlesW 6y ago
      Friend, it's time for a clean install. You should never have to do one, but macOS isn't yet iPadOS, and cruft happens.
      - iNerdier 6y ago
        Sorry but that’s absolutely rubbish. You shouldn’t have to wipe everything from a computer to have it usable, ever.
PascLeRasc 6y ago
One of my favorite small things about OS X has been the dock icons and their variety in shapes. Like how TextEdit has the pencil sticking out or Logic looks like a DJ turntable. It feels like that’s gone now.
- addicted 6y ago
  The XCode icon seems to have the hammer sticking out a bit. So maybe there is still room for custom shapes.
  - AlanYx 6y ago
    They address that in the new macOS 11 HIG [1], indicating that protrusions from the square look "to combine depictions of the physical objects that best convey the app’s core purpose" are acceptable. TextEdit, Preview and Xcode all have elements sticking out a bit. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/overview/whats-new-in-macos/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... That said, I still think overall it's a loss in terms of usability. (I find that without shape to distinguish icons on iOS, I often confuse icons that are broadly similar in color when I'm not paying attention, even though the images inside the roundrects are different. I can't be the only one.)
    - ptx 6y ago
      Perhaps they were inspired by qBittorrent, where the toolbar icons are all indistinguishable aqua blobs: https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/qbittorrent/screenshots/241606.jpg/max/max/1 https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/qbittorrent/screenshots/2416...
- Klonoar 6y ago
  Yeah, Mac icon design felt like it was hanging on by a thread, and now feels like it's being killed. A significant piece of character that's just... gone. I think this is what bothers me more than any iOS-ification of the OS, on a UI/UX level at least.
- aylmao 6y ago
interestica 6y ago
I mean, 'beautiful new design' is subjective here. I know it's the headline - but it's a press release. This is an ad.
- dang 6y ago
  We've changed the URL from https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-introduces-macos-big-sur-with-a-beautiful-new-design/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-introduces-maco..., which is the press release. If there's a better URL for discussing this, we can change it again. Edit: it looks like https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/overview/whats-new-in-macos/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... is probably a better URL for discussing this, so we'll change to that from https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur-preview/ https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur-preview/. Edit 2: since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23606052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23606052 posted that and is now on the front page, maybe it's better to just let the discussion pick up there. This thread is pretty generic. Perhaps an article with more detailed information will lead to a more interesting discussion.
Rebelgecko 6y ago
This website makes me slightly nauseous when viewed on my macbook pro. I had to look at it with my phone to get rid of the jerky animations
cytzol 6y ago
I was really hoping they'd take some time to address Catalina's glaring issues — its slowness, bugginess, just general sloppiness — and instead they did the opposite. Honestly, every time Apple has done anything with the Mac the past couple of years, they've screwed it up. The infamous keyboards that they doubled-down and then tripled-down upon (I have personally had five keyboard replacements). The way Catalina sends the hash of every binary you run to Apple. The built-in Catalyst apps that look ugly and feel out-of-place. The Touch Bar which I still, years later, inadvertently activate several times a day (I've had to remove all the buttons on the right), which they addressed by making mandatory. The recurring bugs and kernel panics that have been lying around for years, unfixed. I have the least confidence in Apple I've ever had. I'm afraid to run Big Sur, not because it changes things, but because it's Apple who are behind it.
- gkoberger 6y ago
  It’s possible they will do both. Fixing bugs isn’t really keynote worthy, so hopefully there’s a ton of stability fixes behind the scenes.
  - jmchuster 6y ago
    It was keynote-worthy for Snow Leopard, with the infamous "0 new features" slide.
    - snowwrestler 6y ago
      Sure but Snow Leopard had serious bugs when it launched too. It was only in later dot releases that it got its reputation for stability.
      - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        I didn't switch to Mac until about halfway through Snow Leopard's lifespan. I'm aware of the big data loss bug—and that's serious for sure—but if you weren't one of the very unlucky few (relatively) to run into it, was 10.6.0 buggy in other ways?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
arduinomancer 6y ago
I'm getting the impression that Apple wants to merge the desktop/iOS/iPad platforms long term if you look at all the recent updates together.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  They've said in the past couple years in interviews that this is a bad idea - a bad direction to follow - and they don't intend to do it.
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    Then why are they doing: * ARM macbooks * iOS Apps on macOS * iOS look-and-feel on macOS * iOS features like Control Center, Widgets on macOS Each one of these might be justifiable in isolation, but viewed as a whole it paints another picture.
    - DCKing 6y ago
      > * ARM macbooks Superior performance characteristics and vertical integration. > * iOS Apps on macOS > * iOS look-and-feel on macOS > * iOS features like Control Center, Widgets on macOS Because there's changes in how people want their computers to look and be used. New (and old!) users expect their Macs to work in a familiar way. Developers want to share their app infrastructure. There's absolutely zero reason for Apple to "merge" iOS and macOS together. I don't understand what people think Apple's endgame would be there, what nefarious advantage they would possibly get out of it.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      * ARM notebooks provide higher performance with less power usage and substantial cost savings. * This enables easily running iOS apps on MacOS, so why not allow it? * Control and Widgets are useful UI concepts and Widgets have been around forever.
    - floatingatoll 6y ago
      iOS gets some things right where macOS gets them wrong. That doesn’t mean that they’ll merge the operating systems, when they literally just split up iOS and iPadOS to allow more depth of differences between those platforms.
WesleyLivesay 6y ago
I'm not entirely sold on the design, but at least it will make macOS look a bit more consistent, up until now there have been little pockets of "old UX" like Finder, Mail, etc. and "new UX" with the Notification Center, News, etc.
whoisjuan 6y ago
Did they fix Catalina yet? I’m still running Mojave just because all the terrible reviews Catalina gets.
dtroit101 6y ago
Its clear the design direction is making mac a touch screen experience. they are totally taking the path microsoft took a decade ago. copycat designing
- flareback 6y ago
  I don't want a touchscreen desktop. Touchscreen is fine for my phone/tablet but I want a keyboard and mouse for my desktop.
schaefer 6y ago
interesting. I'd love to give the new macOS a try, but I don't have any apple hardware. Does anyone know the process for downloading the macOS .iso so I can bring it up under VMWare?
- aspenmayer 6y ago
  You would need to get the Install macOS [version name].app, and then convert the InstallESD.dmg inside that to an .iso to mount to your VM for the install. There are more steps involving bootloaders which I have included in the second link. https://github.com/rmc-team/macos-downloader/ https://github.com/rmc-team/macos-downloader/ https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/VirtualBox/Setting_up_a_Virtual_Machine/Mac_OS_X https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/VirtualBox/Setting_up_a_Virtua... https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  It is unlikely that the custom kernel extensions and other processes used to support the "in violation of terms of service, exposing you to risk of relation by Apple up to and including termination of iCloud/iTunes services and/or legal action seeking recompense and damages" macOS installation process for non-Apple hardware that you seek will be ready today for the macOS 11.0 beta released an hour ago.
milkytron 6y ago
Is there a reason why Apple updates their Mac apps with each OS release, instead of individually through the app store? I would imagine the changes to Safari could've been made without having to upgrade the OS.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Synaesthesia 6y ago
  They usually release new versions of their apps, including Safari for older OS versions too.
- slig 6y ago
  Things like "new emojis only in the new OS version" are used as an incentive for people to update, I believe.
- mwfunk 6y ago
  Because the apps that are considered part of the OS are tightly coupled to the OS itself, and often those app updates are intended to showcase new features of the OS that they want developers to take advantage of. Things that are considered standalone apps like Logic, etc. get updates through the App Store like other apps.
- makecheck 6y ago
  Previously I would have thought they could be separate but as of Catalina it’s entirely possible that all their stock apps are part of their protected volume (and therefore not updated in any normal way). The Applications “folder” is a virtual view merging multiple directories on disk.
disposekinetics 6y ago
Most of these look like apps, not OS enhancements.
dcchambers 6y ago
I'm not sure why I continue to look forward to new Mac OS announcements every year when Apple continues to focus on consumer apps/features and not pro/developer features. Literally nothing in that preview page excites me as someone that uses Mac OS mainly for developing software. I wish they would use WWDC to announce developer and pro features and not consumer OS features. I don't really care for the UI changes, but I spend such little time in the UI that I guess it doesn't matter much. The iOS-ification of Mac OS is an unfortunate change. I don't use any of the built-in apps with the exception of terminal.app and finder. Meh. Most interesting: This appears to be the end of "OS X" as version was listed as "11.0" in the keynote. Will Big Sur and Mac OS (beyond OS X) continue to be certified UNIX?
- CharlesW 6y ago
  > I'm not sure why I continue to look forward to new Mac OS announcements every year when Apple continues to focus on consumer apps/features and not pro/developer features. The only session the press cares about is the keynote, so geeky stuff hasn't been keynote fodder for several years. Everything but the WWDC keynote will be for a developer audience.
- MR4D 6y ago
  I think developers should always start on this page instead of the keynote: https://developer.apple.com/macos/ https://developer.apple.com/macos/ EDIT: Also meant to point out that every year they have a theme - this year is apparently all interface (as they've probably spent all there time getting ARM working smoothly, and want to minimize the plumbing issues).
  - dcchambers 6y ago
    Thanks for the link.
    - MR4D 6y ago
      You're welcome. I learned this a couple years ago. WWDC keynote is a high level overview of new features for everyone, and you have to dig deeper for the stuff we're really interested in. I think this is a sign that their ecosystem has matured, and the developer aspects aren't as headline worthy as Swift, Metal, Carbon, etc. I personally think the Platforms State of the Union should be quite interesting today (starts in about 20 minutes) and will be much more insightful.
henriquez 6y ago
This site and its scroll-hijacking are unusably choppy on my 2018 Macbook Air. It seems like a total departure from Apple's attention to detail, but maybe that's a gentle reminder that Apple considers this computer to be EOL hardware.
- Synaesthesia 6y ago
  Using Safari?
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  On this 2017 Macbook Pro 13", it's perfectly smooth in Safari. I don't think it's necessarily the web page that's at fault here?
dguo 6y ago
As a developer, one thing I am excited about is that they are adding support for the WebExtensions API to Safari. This should make it feasible to port many Chrome/Firefox extensions to Safari.
SenHeng 6y ago
I’m surprised at all the negative takes. I thought it was refreshing, they’re reintroducing colours and icons, cleaning up and using a consistent design language across platforms, and introducing new, well tested convenience features.
- Synaesthesia 6y ago
  No! You’re supposed to grumble about how bad everything is and how Apple is losing it’s touch. Don’t you know the WWDC spiel?
- addicted 6y ago
  Consistent design language across platforms is not a good thing if the design language is chosen based on the lowest common denominator. Macs usually have large screens, and are driven by a pixel perfect input mechanism. Yet they will now be required to live with a design scheme that is largely designed for devices that would fit in a MacBook touchpad and the primary input for which is a fat finger. Also, the icons seem to be completely stripped off colors, so I’m not sure where the reintroduction of colors is coming from. Unless you’re talking about the Vista Aero translucent sidebars that are only gonna make things harder to see.
  - zapzupnz 6y ago
    > Macs usually have large screens, and are driven by a pixel perfect input mechanism Good thing nothing about that is changing. macOS apps continue to be macOS apps. > Also, the icons seem to be completely stripped off colors, so I'm not sure where the reintroduction of colors is coming from Sidebar icons in macOS Catalina and a few releases prior don't have any colours. At all. Those got stripped out a long time ago, maybe as far back as Yosemite but don't quote me. Now, sidebar icons can inherit an app's accent colour with edge cases designated by the developer or use the system-wide accent colour if the user has selected one.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  > cleaning up and using a consistent design language across platforms This is not a positive. A laptop is not a big iPhone and shouldn't use the same design language. One of the worst thing about Windows 10 is its use of huge, touch-friendly interfaces in an OS most commonly used with a keyboard and mouse. MacOS appears to be headed the same way (and it doesn't even support touch screens).
gorgoiler 6y ago
One thing they’ve really nailed in recent years is SF Mono. macOS system type is very good.
MattyMc 6y ago
Everything I don't use on my Mac, improved.
- lolsal 6y ago
  What would it take for you to start using these things? I use almost all of the native apps (messages, notes, safari, FaceTime, maps, etc) so I like seeing improvements and appreciate that they aren't rotting.
cercatrova 6y ago
Pretty sure that in the near future, macOS, iPadOS and iOS will be one and the same. They'll just call it...Apple OS. This is readily apparent by Catalyst, ability to have native iOS and iPadOS apps, ARM architecture, and the changing of macOS' UI to slowly be closer to iOS/iPadOS.
paulchap 6y ago
The new Siri design reminds me of War of the Worlds... let's welcome our alien overlord orbs!
Lio 6y ago
I hope they add keyboard based window management. It seems daft to me that you still can't move windows around using keyboard shortcuts without third party software.
- sandstrom 6y ago
  This one is awesome (and free): https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/
flareback 6y ago
This might be what pushes me to look into a linux laptop for work.
Hamuko 6y ago
Are there any screenshots with reduced transparency? I've always disabled that on all of my systems since I don't want to see stuff that's behind my current window.
ithrow 6y ago
Wow my 2013 macbook air is supported, nice.
csomar 6y ago
I made the switch to Linux as my main OS for software development in the last month (archlinux with AMD Ryzen on a custom built box) and I'm not regretting it. For a comparison, here is the Press Release for Snow Leopard (https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2009/06/08Apple-Unveils-Mac-OS-X-Snow-Leopard/); https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2009/06/08Apple-Unveils-Ma... here is an excerpt from the text > For the first time, system applications including Finder, Mail, iCal®, iChat® and Safari are 64-bit and Snow Leopard’s support for 64-bit processors makes use of large amounts of RAM, increases performance, and improves security while remaining compatible with 32-bit applications. Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) provides a revolutionary new way for software to take advantage of multicore processors. GCD is integrated throughout Snow Leopard, from new system-wide APIs to high-level frameworks and programming language extensions, improving responsiveness across the system. OpenCL, a C-based open standard, allows developers to tap the incredible power of the graphics processing unit for tasks that go beyond graphics. Simple, useful information. Information and features that matters to software developers. Instead in this new macOS we got: Safari, Messages and Maps. Apps that are not that much relevant (since people are too hooked in Firefox/Chrome, Fb/Ig, and Google Maps). If Apple wants to gain marketshare in these areas, that's fine. But they are pushing them to their base as a macOS upgrade. Huh. The only thing related to developers is XCode "improvements". I guess the message is pretty clear now: The macOS is now only good to develop iOS apps and maybe do graphics/audio/video. If you are a web/sys developer it might be a good idea to start looking for something else.
- goalieca 6y ago
  Apple has introduced all of these APIs and SDKs in previous OS releases. Now their software is starting to take advantage of them all with user features. This includes their machine learning kit, metal, .. The Xcode release is actually pretty big deal for developers. The tooling is updated for this brave new world of ARM cores.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > Apps that are not that much relevant (since people are too hooked in Firefox/Chrome, Fb/Ig, and Google Maps). Anecdata: My family uses Safari, Messages, and Maps extensively (and Fb/Ig don't replace Messages, they're something else that gets used.) Don't confuse "tech people" with "real people", there's a world of difference.
Yhippa 6y ago
I was pretty pleased about the WWDC keynote except for when it came to macOS. My experience with updates and new features hasn't been pleasant the past four or so years. I'm frightened to see what things this feature update will bring.
achairapart 6y ago
Requirements: Mac Mini 2014 and later. So, no upgrade for my Mac Mini late 2012. F*ck you, Apple. Why on earth I need a less powerful machine to run your latest OS?
- psychometry 6y ago
  Um, your computer was designed EIGHT years ago. Upgrade if you care about getting all of the new toys.
  - achairapart 6y ago
    Wait, are you telling me that is ok that a capable machine (much more capable than a 2014 Mac Mini, anyway) expires by date? I have more recent Apple hardware (Mac Mini 2018, TB Macbook Pro) and I can tell you this: this Mac Mini is my favorite device, fast, user-upgradable, never had a single problem. It's a pity I have to replace it just because it's expired. By date.
    - psychometry 6y ago
      Clearly I never said your machine expires. You can continue using the most recent OS supported by your hardware. Your Mac Mini will not cease to function just because Apple releases an OS it doesn't support.
      - achairapart 6y ago
        What I can't see is why the 2014 Mac Mini is supported and the 2012 one is not. This is technically nonsense and really this age thing is just a poor excuse.
    - mcphage 6y ago
      > It's a pity I have to replace it just because it's expired. By date. How is it expired? Why would you have to replace it? Did it stop working?
  - bilegeek 6y ago
floatingatoll 6y ago
I'm recording here that I think Finder as shown in Big Sur is actually a Catalyst port of Files.app, and that the next release of macOS will rename Finder to Files.
quijoteuniv 6y ago
As many others I have been having a bad taste in my mouth with everything Apple related. I think I finally can point it out: Apple is only for rich users. There is terrible inequality in the earth and they build computers and developed OS for the rich. Not cool. Actually is exactly the opposite if why/how they started with the Apple 1.
wespiser_2018 6y ago
I'm seriously afraid of this. I have to keep my Mac updated for work, and Catalina was both a major frustration getting my toolchain up and working, and a constant time waste due to the daily kernel panics that are caused by a persistent, yet unknown, issue.
emidln 6y ago
This new theme looks like the Crystal from KDE 3.x.
petarb 6y ago
The only thing that really stood out to me and that I’m excited about is, “AirPods automatic device switching”. Which IMO they should have had from day one when launching the AirPods.
_bxg1 6y ago
I swear they're just trying to see how far they can go with these names until people are unable to say them with a straight face
bonestormii_ 6y ago
I appreciate aesthetic beauty of rooms, buildings, and interfaces, but to me what has jumped the shark is the entire conversation about icons, fonts, and toolbars. No one can explain why the icons, fonts, and toolbars from 3 years ago aren't good enough anymore. No one can explain why we need constant "refreshers". Let's say you have a new microwave. Every microwave's controls are a little different, but you know generally the conventions of their limited interfaces. There are presets; separate non-microwave functions like timers; maybe a light and a fan control. The first few times you use it, it's a little weird. But you use the same one for like 5-10 years at a time. It becomes effortless, second nature. Food in, door shoot, beep-boop-beep by muscle-memory. Your food is ready. Imagine someone snuck into your home and rearranged the buttons, and changed some underlying functions. Now, when the timer is done, you don't hit the timer button to clear the display--you hold the cancel/stop button that also turns off the microwave. They think it's more logical that way. It doesn't matter, but it's frustrating. "Why was that necessary?", you might ask yourself. Neither way is fundamentally more or less logical. It's just different. It's not that changes are bad, but semi-annual changes for utilitarian things seem excessive. You accept a certain amount of change when you replace your microwave, or your car, or your computer. But not when you take your car to be tuned up. They don't replace the break pads, and then change the location of the stereo's volume knob. I think he philosophy of heavy handed redesign was useful in bringing computer interfaces to up to new hardware specs early on in tech, but we're reaching a point where they should be slowed down in favor of utility. The claim that it is design in the name of usability is no longer true. Call it what it is. It is merely seasonal fashion and nothing more. Some fashions are timeless. We should find them and stick with them as defaults that we are very hesitant to change. Consistency can facilitate clean design, allowing you to conceal and expose complexity by strongly established conventions, helping to achieve balance on the beauty-utility continuum.
- zepto 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic–usability_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic–usability_effect
- pfranz 6y ago
  I think a lot of UI changes are for the sake of change. The arguments I've heard for the recent font changes and some of the UI changes are a critical mass of retina screens. They've also added other screen/monitor tech like night-shift and true tone and have changed font smoothing. They're also slowing experimenting and merging macOS and iOS UI tooling, which necessitates a change on both parts. Personally, I also wish they would slow down or stop UI changes.
adambware 6y ago
They've added padding to the design nearly everywhere - "menu bar is now taller", "Dock is lifted from the bottom", and the extra padding on the Sidebars is obvious. As a power user of a Macbook Pro, this is cutting into my screen real estate and not very appealing to me.
- chadlavi 6y ago
  If you're a power user, you probably know that you can hide the dock and the menubar
  - adambware 6y ago
    My dock is tiny and pinned to the right so I can use as much vertical space as possible. This might push me to adopt hiding the menubar. It's more about the compounding effect when other apps adopt this more spacious UI pattern for their title bar, sidebar, etc.
- haroldp 6y ago
  But think of all the space saved by turning every web browser's title bar into tabs or location bars. So what if you're left with 8 pixels to grab a window with your mouse and move it!
sandstrom 6y ago
I wonder if they have added support for Display Port MST? (daisy chaining two monitors over one USB-C/thunderbolt cable) Windows via Boot Camp support it, so it’s only a software limit. It was my single biggest wish for this years macOS update. https://medium.com/@sebvance/everything-you-need-to-know-about-macbook-pros-and-their-lack-of-displayport-mst-multi-stream-98ce33d64af4 https://medium.com/@sebvance/everything-you-need-to-know-abo...
dmix 6y ago
Happy to see them getting rid of the useless 'notification center' drawer on the right side that I've never used and for some reason 'Do Not Disturb' is hidden within it, assuming you know the right key+click combo. Notifications are a huge part of any OS, they need to be treated as a first-class experience, not tucked away into a hidden section you never see unless you click on it.
RocketSyntax 6y ago
brightness slider! nice! was downloading menu tray plugins for that
twalla 6y ago
I upgraded to Catalina for work and have had an abysmal time with basically anything that is external to the macbook (monitors/webcams/hedphones) - if I had to estimate, I'd say I lose anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour a day just trying to get the goddamn machine to do things laptops have been perfectly capable of doing without issue for the past decade.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
KenanSulayman 6y ago
Apple wants members of their $500 Universal App Quick Start program to send back their Developer Transition Kit (DTK) units after the program automatically expires (!) after one year. [1] Citing directly from this document: > You agree to promptly return the Developer Transition Kit to the Apple address designated by Apple no later than thirty (30) days after the end of the Term, or as otherwise earlier requested by Apple (including via email or announcement by Apple on developer.apple.com). > At the end of the Term, You agree to immediately cease all use of the Developer Transition Kit and the Universal App Quick Start Program. > Failure to return the Developer Transition Kit may result in the suspension of Your Developer account or termination of Your Developer Agreement. Admission to the program costs $500. What??? ... Why did they not mention this anywhere but the terms of service? [1] https://developer.apple.com/terms/universal-app-quick-start-program/Developer-Universal-App-Quick-Start-Program.pdf https://developer.apple.com/terms/universal-app-quick-start-...
- jbverschoor 6y ago
  Well, I’m still enjoying my $1 appletv
- asutekku 6y ago
  $500 to get an early access to an unreleased tech does not sound bad at all.
- kemayo 6y ago
  It's what they did back in the Intel transition, also. They then sent everyone who'd had one a new Intel iMac, so it's plausible that they might do something like that again this time. (But don't count on it -- it wasn't promised last time either.)
  - ValentineC 6y ago
    Apple is now able to remotely brick any of their devices (something they couldn't do in 2006), so there's a chance they'll be less likely to offer an incentive to return the devices.
- 6y ago
throw03172019 6y ago
I’m happy to see they didn’t have a huge slide of “1000s of new features”. I’d be happy with a better Catalina. I just switched after buying a new MacBook...
beyondcompute 6y ago
I hope, they’ll fix the annoying problem in Safari that when pausing/unpausing a Youtube video it skips half a second or so of audio.
- beyondcompute 6y ago
  Why was this downvoted? I’ve been using Safari for a long time because of its relative resource efficiency and nicer design. But lack of good ad blocking and this annoying glitch in Youtube are the two problems that really make me consider switching to Chromium.
seumars 6y ago
The amount of padding throughout the whole UI is worrying. For years I've used macOS on high contrast mode and invert colors for dark mode — very curious of how that will look.
AJRF 6y ago
I'm glad I finally no longer need macOS to have a nice developer experience. Docker & WSL2 are all I really need to do development these days. Back when I started using macOS, Windows seemed pretty dire for developers unless you were in the .NET and back then web-dev. Around the time ruby on rails was becoming super-popular I noticed a lot of developers getting MacBooks through their workplace and that kind of caught on as it was easy to install all the cool new dev tools that came out after that like Node etc. Apple built up a nice cache with developers and from 2007-2018 the circles I ran in you would be hard pressed to find a developer using Windows. All this time Microsoft were in the background diligently putting together a grand strategy for getting back developer mind-share, and they have done a spectacular job. VSCode + Visual Studio Community Edition, WSL & WSL2, The new terminal experience, supporting Docker, buying GitHub, open sourcing .NET, improving Azure and just constantly tightening up Windows 10. They've put their best foot forward going into the future and I am so glad because during the time all the cache Apple have built up has eroded. The keyboards, the kernel panics in Catalina, the MacBooks have been unspectacular, they just won't fix bugs, Swift is unused outside of iOS dev, Catalinas false promise of "just click a button to make your iOS app work on macOS", iOS has stagnated feature wise, Xcode is a malignant tumour that rears its ugly face when you try and use git for the first time, and they keep railroading down this road towards iOS-ification of all their platforms. Developers wanted the iPad to become more like macOS - and with Big Sur it looks like they've pulled a reverse Uno card.
Macha 6y ago
The integration of tall title bars with toolbars is really reminding me of Gnome 3 here.
zamalek 6y ago
> Safari is the best way to surf the web on all your Apple devices. It's also the only way to do that, other browser engines are deemed too impure to run on Apple hardware. > improves on industry-leading performance According to these benchmarks[1], the only performance category where has a large "lead" is using about 50% more memory than the next competitor. Why do Apple even bother writing fiction about Safari. It's not like Apple users have any other choice. [1]: https://www.pcmag.com/news/chrome-edge-firefox-opera-or-safari-which-browser-is-best https://www.pcmag.com/news/chrome-edge-firefox-opera-or-safa...
dvtrn 6y ago
Cycling directions on Apple Maps has me more excited than it probably should. I like a LOT of what they’ve done to improve Maps since they entered the space and this was sorely missing for me
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
I am a very happy user of Mojave, and Apple needs to make a a much bigger effort to convince me to upgrade.
somewhereoutth 6y ago
During the Bad Times, when I was assigned to a MBP (2015 model - still the best apparently), all I ever wanted was the window buttons to be on the right, and a hash key.
72deluxe 6y ago
Why are new features in apps mentioned in an OS update? It is a recent trend but I recall being able to upgrade to Office 2003 from 2000 without requiring an entire new OS. These days, they talk about tiny features in one of the apps (eg. Messages) as if it’s a giant new feature of the OS. Application software is not system software!

277 points by 0xedb 6y ago

zakk 6y ago

I cannot see any difference besides the icons in the Dock looking like those of iPhone apps.

gjsman-1000 6y ago
Except that the Dock icons are significantly more 3D in their appearance than iPadOS/iOS 14 are. This is actually an interesting change of priority. Last time there was a major redesign, iOS got it first and Mac OS X got it later. This time, MacOS gets it first and iOS gets it next year in 2021.

switz 6y ago

I still remember the Snow Leopard 'No New Features' launch. Mac OS has been as buggy as ever lately, I'd welcome another 'no new features' release with open arms.

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 6y ago
An entirely new widget toolkit and an entirely new architecture is essentially the anti-Snow Leopard. :D
GordonS 6y ago
I was going to say something similar - I really wish they'd just slow.the.hell.down with the new releases, rather than continually changing things for what feels like the sake of it (and breaking more and more stuff along the way).
- ideals 6y ago
  This is a side-effect of employment and raises being dependent on launching new features instead of improving existing features. Something certainly not exclusive to Apple.
sys_64738 6y ago
Except they did introduce new features like the stacks view.
lasagnaphil 6y ago
Precisely - this is the perfect opportunity for Apple to do a "no new shiny things" release, given that they are going through quite fundamental changes in their Mac architecture.
tinus_hn 6y ago
Perhaps they just undeleted Widgets from Mojave, it’s not like it’s a new idea

mmastrac 6y ago

I've been considering going back a version from Catalina. I'm not really holding out hope on this OSX release but we'll see.

pcr910303 6y ago

I hate that they’re moving to a design where buttons don’t have borders and textures, don’t provide any visual guidances on what’s a button and what’s not. But I absolutely despise them for making iOS apps installable on macOS. That’s... just terrible. This WWDC just felt like that Apple decided that macOS should get merged with iOS and converged them. The Mac doesn’t have a future...

ljm 6y ago
It looks like it's more tailored for lifestyle use. No big deal for a lot of people but Windows/WSL or Linux by itself feel like they will have more developer appeal if this direction continues.
kjakm 6y ago
>> But I absolutely despise them for making iOS apps installable on macOS. That’s... just terrible. Don't use them then? Seems like a useful feature to me for certain utility apps that don't require a proper Mac app/can't afford to develop one.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  The Mac that I originally grew to love did not represent that lame compromise you're describing. It's strength and beauty was in the apps tailored entirely to the platform, not cheap tacky ports because the developer couldn't be bothered.
- hollandheese 6y ago
  Might not have a choice. When OS/2 added Windows app support it killed actual OS/2 apps. Why bother supporting the Mac when you could just make an iPad app and get both markets at once.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    > Why bother supporting the Mac when you could just make an iPad app and get both markets at once. Yea, this is what I'm afraid of. Instead of continued investing in their high quality Mac app, companies will just drop it on the ground and spend all their time working on their toy iPad/iPhone apps, expecting people to switch.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

I'm mixed on the design. I really, really dislike the way macOS has looked since Yosemite, and compared to that, I think this one is an improvement overall. The icons have more depth, and there's far more use of color across the UI. But, it also looks extremely mobile-inspired—I suspect Apple's primary goal was to make iOS ports and apps look less out of place. That's a fine objective, but it also means they weren't designing for desktop and laptops specifically, and it shows. For instance, most of the apps lack title bars, and I'm not sure where I'd click to drag windows as a result.

flareback 6y ago
I think the lack of title bars is an issue now. I've found it annoys me most on my web browser, when I have lots of tabs open there is one small section between the 3 dots to minimize/close and the first tab that I can use to move the window. My guess is that they expect most people to use the application full screen and not to be moving it around. I've got a large monitor and I don't keep my windows full screened so this annoys me.
- MR4D 6y ago
  If done well, then contrast will replace color for many things (e.g. menu bars) as a separating function. If done poorly, then it will look horrible because they got the contrast wrong. High contrast should be used where you want someone to pay attention (like an "exit only" market on a US freeway exit). Low contrast where you want something to fade into the background (like a mile marker). The problem with "flat" designs is that it seems hard to get it done well. Just think how long it took the industry to get the "ok" & "cancel" buttons to highlight in a consistent way for users.
- makecheck 6y ago
  I’d say at least several times per month I either accidentally nuke a background window tab when a close button "X" materialized at the last second where it looked like I could just move the thing, and the rest of the time I simply catch myself a fraction of a second before doing it. Just-in-time UI combined with a complete lack of borders and affordances is the stupidest trend and it needs to end.

kratom_sandwich 6y ago

So the "About this Mac" screen says "Version 11.0" ... A silent farewell to OS X?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ben174 6y ago
Wow, nice catch.
rahkiin 6y ago
Probably as they already dropped the X before. It is macOS
toyg 6y ago
What was "silent" about it? They made a big song & dance of dropping the X last year. This just makes it even more official.
- sigjuice 6y ago
  The X was dropped in 2016, with macOS Sierra. Maybe because they needed the X next year for the iPhone.
  - toyg 6y ago
    Man, after turning 35 and having kids, all years just blend into one ;)
- mwfunk 6y ago
  That was dropping the X from the name, not changing the major version number from 10 to 11. It's had a major version number of 10 ever since the first release of OS X. Most people assumed the actual version number would stay at 10.x.x forever, regardless of any changes to the marketing name of the OS itself.
chadlavi 6y ago

Kkoala 6y ago

Haven't even upgraded to Catalina yet, because of the bugs...

msie 6y ago
I waited too and the latest Catalina fixes the ImageCapture bugs I was concerned about.

neximo64 6y ago

Is the beta of this coming out today?

zachberger 6y ago
Typically it is a developer preview, later on a public beta is released.

xrisk 6y ago

Oh god that new Mail app looks disgusting. Reminds me of a shitty Electron app, that kind of design.

DanCarvajal 6y ago
All of this looked like a sub par Behance or Dribbble portfolio.
dreamcompiler 6y ago
Catalina's Mail is terrible too. No more column view with clickable headers, plus data loss issues. I don't care much for Thunderbird but it seems like the only halfway-decent IMAP client for MacOS any more.
- mnm1 6y ago
  Mailspring is nice but they do require a login and probably scrape data. I use it for work only though so I don't care if they spy.
kspacewalk2 6y ago
Anyone who uses Exchange servers or Office 365 should switch to Outlook. It's like the grown-up, adult brother of Apple's mail client.
- andrekandre 6y ago
  sort of... the fact it doesnt use the native notification system is super annoying because outlook brings itself (and all its windows) front and center whenever a reminder happens, disturbing my work...
- adarioble 6y ago
  It’s better, but still drives me crazy. Microsoft has come long way but still got heaps of work to do (I.e. no way to customise ribbon in Outlook)

potta_coffee 6y ago

I'm not excited about this update. I don't want a "bold new experience".

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

lisper 6y ago

IMHO Apple's design jumped the shark a long time ago. Even apart from the aesthetics of the "flat" look, which I like about as much as fingernails on a chalkboard, Apple has completely abandoned the principles that made the original Mac great: ease of use and discoverability. Once upon a time it was easy to tell where the affordances were, what you could click on, editable vs non-editable text. Nowadays everything looks the same. The only way to tell whether something is clickable is to try to click on it. The only way you can tell whether something is editable is to try to edit it. And the UI is lousy with hidden features that only show up when you hover over them, with absolutely no indication of where they are until you happen to get lucky and move the mouse over one of them. Easter eggs lose their charm when you have to find one in order to accomplish an actual task.

ljm 6y ago
Based on how rough the Jira app is on Catalina, if MacOS is going to see more of that then I think I've had my day with Apple.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  To be fair to Apple, the JIRA app is the single worst Mac app I've ever used, by quite a long shot. And their web app also has atrocious performance (so much so that it was the deciding factor in a recent decision to move away from JIRA at $DAYJOB). The Mac App Store is probably a fairer comparison.
  - skrtskrt 6y ago
    Jira truly takes the cake for world's most over engineered website. I wonder how much of the world's coal and gas has been consumed by browsers struggling under the load of Jira.
    - ljm 6y ago
      I still laugh about how it takes over 10 seconds to render a dropdown box so I can move a ticket from 'in progress' to 'done'. It's often one of the last things to become functional on the page.

read_if_gay_ 6y ago

I know it's just the look-and-feel, but to me it appears dumbed down in every single way. The uniform app shape, top bar icons, Control Center??? This does not look like a serious OS at all.

css 6y ago

Scrolling this site with a mouse is comically bad, this is clearly designed to be used only with a trackpad. I cant read most of the content without very carefully scrolling unnaturally. You also have to pause for the animations to play, but if you scroll one pixel too far they don't play, so its a guessing game of whether you're in the right place or whether you missed some content.

ryanisnan 6y ago
I thought it might have been just me.
read_if_gay_ 6y ago
Basically all of macOS is comically bad with a mouse and clearly designed for trackpads. You need to install a third-party tool to even disable mouse acceleration.
- ptr 6y ago
  I thought the third party tool was a kext and was made non-functional. Is there a new way?
  - millimeterman 6y ago
    I use SteerMouse. It lets you customize mouse speed/acceleration, remap all your buttons, and set up mouse chords. It's admittedly paid and it's stupid that you should need to pay for functionality like this, but it's useful enough for other stuff (e.g. setting up buttons/chords to manage spaces to replace the trackpad gestures) that I live with it.
swagonomixxx 6y ago
Came here to say this. I don't get this kind of web page design. It absolutely sucks if you actually want content. I have to scroll a specific amount on my mouse in order to get content for that particular scroll distance. Just comically bad.
makecheck 6y ago

draw_down 6y ago

I usually end up turning off the motion and turning on increased contrast, reduced transparency etc. These things demo nicely but I didn't like windows with transparency effects when Windows Vista did it and I feel the same way today. I care about what's in the window not under it. I do think the Safari updates look great, though. Webkit may have its governance issues and so forth, but Safari is really a wonderful app to use imo.

quantummkv 6y ago

I just love the changes they did to the menubar. Adaptive background and extra padding on the menu items are both great changes I don't like the new dock design. Maybe they'll change it back to the old dock if the feedback is vocal?

hollandheese 6y ago
They made it illegible with lots of backgrounds. I thought they had already learned their lesson with a fully transparent menu bar.
- dewey 6y ago
  Luckily they are always pretty big on accessibility so there's always an option to turn all these things off.
mmcconnell1618 6y ago
Lots of extra padding everywhere which makes me think a touchscreen Mac is coming out soon. The extra padding is out of character for Apple designs unless they need the space for your fingers to not mash more than one item at a time.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  That could actually be pretty great. Especially if it's essentially a dockable iPad running macOS.
- chadlavi 6y ago
  touchscreen mac already exists, it's just still called an iPad and still runs beefed-up phone software. The merge is coming in the next couple years. Tim Cook said the ARM transition would be 2 years, so I'm guessing that means 2022 or '23 has an apple tablet device running the same OS as apple laptop/desktop devices.

china 6y ago

OS 11!

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Nah, despite what they said in the keynote this is a smaller visual change than Yosemite.
- monocasa 6y ago
  I mean, it is literally macOS 11. That's what it said in the About This Mac screen on the presentation.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    Whoa, I missed that! Thanks.

darth_avocado 6y ago

Of all the new shiny things, the only useful one is the fact that the airpods can now switch between devices better.

christoph 6y ago
I'm pretty excited to see how well the new spatial audio feature works on Airpods Pro. It sounds like it will come in a firmware and/or iOS update, but they didn't seem to give an ETA on it. Could certainly be a great new feature if implemented well (they claimed support for 5.1, 7.1 & Atmos), added to hardware that's already out there.

frou_dh 6y ago

I'm wondering if this is the release where OpenGL goes from deprecated to fully removed. Presumably Apple didn't want to write OpenGL drivers (full, not ES) for their in-house GPUs.

AnonC 6y ago
Apple has been pushing Metal for a few years. I don’t think any additional effort will be spent on OpenGL.
schaefer 6y ago
Anyone know How this would impact webgl content running in safari? Presumably it's translated to metal calls from within Safari?
- lasagnaphil 6y ago
  Probably. WebGL is only a small subset of OpenGL, so I think it wouldn't be that hard to create a Metal translation layer for it. MoltenGL was already doing this (https://moltengl.com/moltengl/ https://moltengl.com/moltengl/)
- frou_dh 6y ago
  It's been known for a while that Safari/WebKit are integrating the same ANGLE abstraction layer that Chrome uses. That will bring WebGL 2.0 support also. But the progress on that getting anywhere near shipping has been extremely slow. Several years have passed.
WA9ACE 6y ago
I wonder how this will affect java minecraft on the mac. Does LWJGL have a Metal backend?
- Fej 6y ago
  It does not appear to have a Metal backend - just OpenGL and Vulkan. From what I can tell, commercial game devs treat Mac gaming as an edge case and mostly only the large engine devs care about Metal support (with exceptions, of course).

Mobius01 6y ago

The move away from a standard window bar/window chrome is a usability disaster in the making. I haven’t time to unpack what was shown yet but it did not leave me with a good impression.

ksec 6y ago

The biggest question I had when I was watching, Why did they not take the chance to rename is as macOS 11? OSX has been through two transition. The NeXT team must be very proud of their foundation they built 2x years ago.

kasperni 6y ago
That is just what they did [1]. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/22/macos-big-sur-is-version-11-0/ https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/22/macos-big-sur-is-versio...
WA9ACE 6y ago
They did. In the demo in the About This Mac window it said macOS 11.
adamfeldman 6y ago
Apple did bump the version to 11. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/apple-announces-macos-10-16-big-sur-with-entirely-new-interface/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/apple-announces-maco...
- ksec 6y ago
  OH thank you. I completely miss that.
gjsman-1000 6y ago
I wish it was MacOS 16. Just drop the 10. part.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  MacOS 0xA
- racl101 6y ago
  > Just drop the 10. part. It's cleaner.

gjsman-1000 6y ago

The word is out that this is macOS 11. Personally, I can't figure out why they didn't just drop the `10.` part and call it MacOS 16.

hollandheese 6y ago
They're signaling the death of Mac OS X.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  I mean, it was renamed to macOS in 2016, I think "the death of Mac OS X" already happened. https://fortune.com/2016/06/13/apple-mac-os-sierra/ https://fortune.com/2016/06/13/apple-mac-os-sierra/
toyg 6y ago
> why they didn't just drop the `10.` Because they know their chickens - or rather their frogs. Mac users are their loudest and most conservative customer sector, and have feared for years that OSX was going to be effectively taken over by iOS. Any big move would have had to face a wave of negative comments and would risk going down in flames. So instead they take things one step at a time - tweak here, tweak there, common icons, common services, Catalyst, we drop an X this year and major rev next year... The jump you mention will inevitably happen, because in practice it has already happened internally with the yearly matched-release cycle. I predict sometime in the next few years you will have iOS NN + ipadOS NN + macOS NN released at the same time. It makes sense. It just couldn't be done right now because the priority is to keep existing Mac users on board. Frogs must be boiled slowly.

AnonC 6y ago

The UI and UX seem to be getting worse on macOS with the “iOSification” of the OS. I thought Jony Ive’s exit would stop that trend. It’ll be interesting to read perspectives from John Gruber, M J Tsai, Marco Arment, etc. I still haven’t upgraded from Mojave to Catalina because of serious bugs reported by other people (including data loss issues in Mail). I’ll see if Big Sur shows improvements (reported by others) and decide when to upgrade. I don’t even run beta versions of macOS point updates, which is in stark contrast to iOS betas, which have been of better quality (comparatively). Edit: Apple seems to be ignoring long term Mac users (even the vocal ones) for quite sometime. It was poorer hardware quality and lack of hardware updates for several years. Now it’s software, where it’s been going about removing what makes native macOS experiences great. The Catalyst apps are not “native Mac apps” by any stretch of imagination.

Synaesthesia 6y ago
Personally I’ve had zero issues upgrading to Catalina, it seems to perform better than Mojave for me, and more stable too.
- knolan 6y ago
  I’ve a major 10.15 issue on two Macs where doing any kind of calculation in Spotlight maxes out all cores on the CPU for 10-15 minutes.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    Friend, it's time for a clean install. You should never have to do one, but macOS isn't yet iPadOS, and cruft happens.
    - iNerdier 6y ago
      Sorry but that’s absolutely rubbish. You shouldn’t have to wipe everything from a computer to have it usable, ever.

PascLeRasc 6y ago

One of my favorite small things about OS X has been the dock icons and their variety in shapes. Like how TextEdit has the pencil sticking out or Logic looks like a DJ turntable. It feels like that’s gone now.

addicted 6y ago
The XCode icon seems to have the hammer sticking out a bit. So maybe there is still room for custom shapes.
- AlanYx 6y ago
  They address that in the new macOS 11 HIG [1], indicating that protrusions from the square look "to combine depictions of the physical objects that best convey the app’s core purpose" are acceptable. TextEdit, Preview and Xcode all have elements sticking out a bit. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/overview/whats-new-in-macos/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... That said, I still think overall it's a loss in terms of usability. (I find that without shape to distinguish icons on iOS, I often confuse icons that are broadly similar in color when I'm not paying attention, even though the images inside the roundrects are different. I can't be the only one.)
  - ptx 6y ago
    Perhaps they were inspired by qBittorrent, where the toolbar icons are all indistinguishable aqua blobs: https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/qbittorrent/screenshots/241606.jpg/max/max/1 https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/qbittorrent/screenshots/2416...
Klonoar 6y ago
Yeah, Mac icon design felt like it was hanging on by a thread, and now feels like it's being killed. A significant piece of character that's just... gone. I think this is what bothers me more than any iOS-ification of the OS, on a UI/UX level at least.
aylmao 6y ago

interestica 6y ago

I mean, 'beautiful new design' is subjective here. I know it's the headline - but it's a press release. This is an ad.

dang 6y ago
We've changed the URL from https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-introduces-macos-big-sur-with-a-beautiful-new-design/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-introduces-maco..., which is the press release. If there's a better URL for discussing this, we can change it again. Edit: it looks like https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/overview/whats-new-in-macos/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... is probably a better URL for discussing this, so we'll change to that from https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur-preview/ https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur-preview/. Edit 2: since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23606052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23606052 posted that and is now on the front page, maybe it's better to just let the discussion pick up there. This thread is pretty generic. Perhaps an article with more detailed information will lead to a more interesting discussion.

Rebelgecko 6y ago

This website makes me slightly nauseous when viewed on my macbook pro. I had to look at it with my phone to get rid of the jerky animations

cytzol 6y ago

I was really hoping they'd take some time to address Catalina's glaring issues — its slowness, bugginess, just general sloppiness — and instead they did the opposite. Honestly, every time Apple has done anything with the Mac the past couple of years, they've screwed it up. The infamous keyboards that they doubled-down and then tripled-down upon (I have personally had five keyboard replacements). The way Catalina sends the hash of every binary you run to Apple. The built-in Catalyst apps that look ugly and feel out-of-place. The Touch Bar which I still, years later, inadvertently activate several times a day (I've had to remove all the buttons on the right), which they addressed by making mandatory. The recurring bugs and kernel panics that have been lying around for years, unfixed. I have the least confidence in Apple I've ever had. I'm afraid to run Big Sur, not because it changes things, but because it's Apple who are behind it.

gkoberger 6y ago
It’s possible they will do both. Fixing bugs isn’t really keynote worthy, so hopefully there’s a ton of stability fixes behind the scenes.
- jmchuster 6y ago
  It was keynote-worthy for Snow Leopard, with the infamous "0 new features" slide.
  - snowwrestler 6y ago
    Sure but Snow Leopard had serious bugs when it launched too. It was only in later dot releases that it got its reputation for stability.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      I didn't switch to Mac until about halfway through Snow Leopard's lifespan. I'm aware of the big data loss bug—and that's serious for sure—but if you weren't one of the very unlucky few (relatively) to run into it, was 10.6.0 buggy in other ways?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

arduinomancer 6y ago

I'm getting the impression that Apple wants to merge the desktop/iOS/iPad platforms long term if you look at all the recent updates together.

floatingatoll 6y ago
They've said in the past couple years in interviews that this is a bad idea - a bad direction to follow - and they don't intend to do it.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  Then why are they doing: * ARM macbooks * iOS Apps on macOS * iOS look-and-feel on macOS * iOS features like Control Center, Widgets on macOS Each one of these might be justifiable in isolation, but viewed as a whole it paints another picture.
  - DCKing 6y ago
    > * ARM macbooks Superior performance characteristics and vertical integration. > * iOS Apps on macOS > * iOS look-and-feel on macOS > * iOS features like Control Center, Widgets on macOS Because there's changes in how people want their computers to look and be used. New (and old!) users expect their Macs to work in a familiar way. Developers want to share their app infrastructure. There's absolutely zero reason for Apple to "merge" iOS and macOS together. I don't understand what people think Apple's endgame would be there, what nefarious advantage they would possibly get out of it.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    * ARM notebooks provide higher performance with less power usage and substantial cost savings. * This enables easily running iOS apps on MacOS, so why not allow it? * Control and Widgets are useful UI concepts and Widgets have been around forever.
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    iOS gets some things right where macOS gets them wrong. That doesn’t mean that they’ll merge the operating systems, when they literally just split up iOS and iPadOS to allow more depth of differences between those platforms.

WesleyLivesay 6y ago

I'm not entirely sold on the design, but at least it will make macOS look a bit more consistent, up until now there have been little pockets of "old UX" like Finder, Mail, etc. and "new UX" with the Notification Center, News, etc.

whoisjuan 6y ago

Did they fix Catalina yet? I’m still running Mojave just because all the terrible reviews Catalina gets.

dtroit101 6y ago

Its clear the design direction is making mac a touch screen experience. they are totally taking the path microsoft took a decade ago. copycat designing

flareback 6y ago
I don't want a touchscreen desktop. Touchscreen is fine for my phone/tablet but I want a keyboard and mouse for my desktop.

schaefer 6y ago

interesting. I'd love to give the new macOS a try, but I don't have any apple hardware. Does anyone know the process for downloading the macOS .iso so I can bring it up under VMWare?

aspenmayer 6y ago
You would need to get the Install macOS [version name].app, and then convert the InstallESD.dmg inside that to an .iso to mount to your VM for the install. There are more steps involving bootloaders which I have included in the second link. https://github.com/rmc-team/macos-downloader/ https://github.com/rmc-team/macos-downloader/ https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/VirtualBox/Setting_up_a_Virtual_Machine/Mac_OS_X https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/VirtualBox/Setting_up_a_Virtua... https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox
floatingatoll 6y ago
It is unlikely that the custom kernel extensions and other processes used to support the "in violation of terms of service, exposing you to risk of relation by Apple up to and including termination of iCloud/iTunes services and/or legal action seeking recompense and damages" macOS installation process for non-Apple hardware that you seek will be ready today for the macOS 11.0 beta released an hour ago.

milkytron 6y ago

Is there a reason why Apple updates their Mac apps with each OS release, instead of individually through the app store? I would imagine the changes to Safari could've been made without having to upgrade the OS.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Synaesthesia 6y ago
They usually release new versions of their apps, including Safari for older OS versions too.
slig 6y ago
Things like "new emojis only in the new OS version" are used as an incentive for people to update, I believe.
mwfunk 6y ago
Because the apps that are considered part of the OS are tightly coupled to the OS itself, and often those app updates are intended to showcase new features of the OS that they want developers to take advantage of. Things that are considered standalone apps like Logic, etc. get updates through the App Store like other apps.
makecheck 6y ago
Previously I would have thought they could be separate but as of Catalina it’s entirely possible that all their stock apps are part of their protected volume (and therefore not updated in any normal way). The Applications “folder” is a virtual view merging multiple directories on disk.

disposekinetics 6y ago

Most of these look like apps, not OS enhancements.

dcchambers 6y ago

I'm not sure why I continue to look forward to new Mac OS announcements every year when Apple continues to focus on consumer apps/features and not pro/developer features. Literally nothing in that preview page excites me as someone that uses Mac OS mainly for developing software. I wish they would use WWDC to announce developer and pro features and not consumer OS features. I don't really care for the UI changes, but I spend such little time in the UI that I guess it doesn't matter much. The iOS-ification of Mac OS is an unfortunate change. I don't use any of the built-in apps with the exception of terminal.app and finder. Meh. Most interesting: This appears to be the end of "OS X" as version was listed as "11.0" in the keynote. Will Big Sur and Mac OS (beyond OS X) continue to be certified UNIX?

CharlesW 6y ago
> I'm not sure why I continue to look forward to new Mac OS announcements every year when Apple continues to focus on consumer apps/features and not pro/developer features. The only session the press cares about is the keynote, so geeky stuff hasn't been keynote fodder for several years. Everything but the WWDC keynote will be for a developer audience.
MR4D 6y ago
I think developers should always start on this page instead of the keynote: https://developer.apple.com/macos/ https://developer.apple.com/macos/ EDIT: Also meant to point out that every year they have a theme - this year is apparently all interface (as they've probably spent all there time getting ARM working smoothly, and want to minimize the plumbing issues).
- dcchambers 6y ago
  Thanks for the link.
  - MR4D 6y ago
    You're welcome. I learned this a couple years ago. WWDC keynote is a high level overview of new features for everyone, and you have to dig deeper for the stuff we're really interested in. I think this is a sign that their ecosystem has matured, and the developer aspects aren't as headline worthy as Swift, Metal, Carbon, etc. I personally think the Platforms State of the Union should be quite interesting today (starts in about 20 minutes) and will be much more insightful.

henriquez 6y ago

This site and its scroll-hijacking are unusably choppy on my 2018 Macbook Air. It seems like a total departure from Apple's attention to detail, but maybe that's a gentle reminder that Apple considers this computer to be EOL hardware.

Synaesthesia 6y ago
Using Safari?
zimpenfish 6y ago
On this 2017 Macbook Pro 13", it's perfectly smooth in Safari. I don't think it's necessarily the web page that's at fault here?

dguo 6y ago

As a developer, one thing I am excited about is that they are adding support for the WebExtensions API to Safari. This should make it feasible to port many Chrome/Firefox extensions to Safari.

SenHeng 6y ago

I’m surprised at all the negative takes. I thought it was refreshing, they’re reintroducing colours and icons, cleaning up and using a consistent design language across platforms, and introducing new, well tested convenience features.

Synaesthesia 6y ago
No! You’re supposed to grumble about how bad everything is and how Apple is losing it’s touch. Don’t you know the WWDC spiel?
addicted 6y ago
Consistent design language across platforms is not a good thing if the design language is chosen based on the lowest common denominator. Macs usually have large screens, and are driven by a pixel perfect input mechanism. Yet they will now be required to live with a design scheme that is largely designed for devices that would fit in a MacBook touchpad and the primary input for which is a fat finger. Also, the icons seem to be completely stripped off colors, so I’m not sure where the reintroduction of colors is coming from. Unless you’re talking about the Vista Aero translucent sidebars that are only gonna make things harder to see.
- zapzupnz 6y ago
  > Macs usually have large screens, and are driven by a pixel perfect input mechanism Good thing nothing about that is changing. macOS apps continue to be macOS apps. > Also, the icons seem to be completely stripped off colors, so I'm not sure where the reintroduction of colors is coming from Sidebar icons in macOS Catalina and a few releases prior don't have any colours. At all. Those got stripped out a long time ago, maybe as far back as Yosemite but don't quote me. Now, sidebar icons can inherit an app's accent colour with edge cases designated by the developer or use the system-wide accent colour if the user has selected one.
AlexandrB 6y ago
> cleaning up and using a consistent design language across platforms This is not a positive. A laptop is not a big iPhone and shouldn't use the same design language. One of the worst thing about Windows 10 is its use of huge, touch-friendly interfaces in an OS most commonly used with a keyboard and mouse. MacOS appears to be headed the same way (and it doesn't even support touch screens).

gorgoiler 6y ago

One thing they’ve really nailed in recent years is SF Mono. macOS system type is very good.

MattyMc 6y ago

Everything I don't use on my Mac, improved.

lolsal 6y ago
What would it take for you to start using these things? I use almost all of the native apps (messages, notes, safari, FaceTime, maps, etc) so I like seeing improvements and appreciate that they aren't rotting.

cercatrova 6y ago

Pretty sure that in the near future, macOS, iPadOS and iOS will be one and the same. They'll just call it...Apple OS. This is readily apparent by Catalyst, ability to have native iOS and iPadOS apps, ARM architecture, and the changing of macOS' UI to slowly be closer to iOS/iPadOS.

paulchap 6y ago

The new Siri design reminds me of War of the Worlds... let's welcome our alien overlord orbs!

Lio 6y ago

I hope they add keyboard based window management. It seems daft to me that you still can't move windows around using keyboard shortcuts without third party software.

sandstrom 6y ago
This one is awesome (and free): https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/

flareback 6y ago

This might be what pushes me to look into a linux laptop for work.

Hamuko 6y ago

Are there any screenshots with reduced transparency? I've always disabled that on all of my systems since I don't want to see stuff that's behind my current window.

ithrow 6y ago

Wow my 2013 macbook air is supported, nice.

csomar 6y ago

I made the switch to Linux as my main OS for software development in the last month (archlinux with AMD Ryzen on a custom built box) and I'm not regretting it. For a comparison, here is the Press Release for Snow Leopard (https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2009/06/08Apple-Unveils-Mac-OS-X-Snow-Leopard/); https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2009/06/08Apple-Unveils-Ma... here is an excerpt from the text > For the first time, system applications including Finder, Mail, iCal®, iChat® and Safari are 64-bit and Snow Leopard’s support for 64-bit processors makes use of large amounts of RAM, increases performance, and improves security while remaining compatible with 32-bit applications. Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) provides a revolutionary new way for software to take advantage of multicore processors. GCD is integrated throughout Snow Leopard, from new system-wide APIs to high-level frameworks and programming language extensions, improving responsiveness across the system. OpenCL, a C-based open standard, allows developers to tap the incredible power of the graphics processing unit for tasks that go beyond graphics. Simple, useful information. Information and features that matters to software developers. Instead in this new macOS we got: Safari, Messages and Maps. Apps that are not that much relevant (since people are too hooked in Firefox/Chrome, Fb/Ig, and Google Maps). If Apple wants to gain marketshare in these areas, that's fine. But they are pushing them to their base as a macOS upgrade. Huh. The only thing related to developers is XCode "improvements". I guess the message is pretty clear now: The macOS is now only good to develop iOS apps and maybe do graphics/audio/video. If you are a web/sys developer it might be a good idea to start looking for something else.

goalieca 6y ago
Apple has introduced all of these APIs and SDKs in previous OS releases. Now their software is starting to take advantage of them all with user features. This includes their machine learning kit, metal, .. The Xcode release is actually pretty big deal for developers. The tooling is updated for this brave new world of ARM cores.
zimpenfish 6y ago
> Apps that are not that much relevant (since people are too hooked in Firefox/Chrome, Fb/Ig, and Google Maps). Anecdata: My family uses Safari, Messages, and Maps extensively (and Fb/Ig don't replace Messages, they're something else that gets used.) Don't confuse "tech people" with "real people", there's a world of difference.

Yhippa 6y ago

I was pretty pleased about the WWDC keynote except for when it came to macOS. My experience with updates and new features hasn't been pleasant the past four or so years. I'm frightened to see what things this feature update will bring.

achairapart 6y ago

Requirements: Mac Mini 2014 and later. So, no upgrade for my Mac Mini late 2012. F*ck you, Apple. Why on earth I need a less powerful machine to run your latest OS?

psychometry 6y ago
Um, your computer was designed EIGHT years ago. Upgrade if you care about getting all of the new toys.
- achairapart 6y ago
  Wait, are you telling me that is ok that a capable machine (much more capable than a 2014 Mac Mini, anyway) expires by date? I have more recent Apple hardware (Mac Mini 2018, TB Macbook Pro) and I can tell you this: this Mac Mini is my favorite device, fast, user-upgradable, never had a single problem. It's a pity I have to replace it just because it's expired. By date.
  - psychometry 6y ago
    Clearly I never said your machine expires. You can continue using the most recent OS supported by your hardware. Your Mac Mini will not cease to function just because Apple releases an OS it doesn't support.
    - achairapart 6y ago
      What I can't see is why the 2014 Mac Mini is supported and the 2012 one is not. This is technically nonsense and really this age thing is just a poor excuse.
  - mcphage 6y ago
    > It's a pity I have to replace it just because it's expired. By date. How is it expired? Why would you have to replace it? Did it stop working?
- bilegeek 6y ago

floatingatoll 6y ago

I'm recording here that I think Finder as shown in Big Sur is actually a Catalyst port of Files.app, and that the next release of macOS will rename Finder to Files.

quijoteuniv 6y ago

As many others I have been having a bad taste in my mouth with everything Apple related. I think I finally can point it out: Apple is only for rich users. There is terrible inequality in the earth and they build computers and developed OS for the rich. Not cool. Actually is exactly the opposite if why/how they started with the Apple 1.

wespiser_2018 6y ago

I'm seriously afraid of this. I have to keep my Mac updated for work, and Catalina was both a major frustration getting my toolchain up and working, and a constant time waste due to the daily kernel panics that are caused by a persistent, yet unknown, issue.

emidln 6y ago

This new theme looks like the Crystal from KDE 3.x.

petarb 6y ago

The only thing that really stood out to me and that I’m excited about is, “AirPods automatic device switching”. Which IMO they should have had from day one when launching the AirPods.

_bxg1 6y ago

I swear they're just trying to see how far they can go with these names until people are unable to say them with a straight face

bonestormii_ 6y ago

I appreciate aesthetic beauty of rooms, buildings, and interfaces, but to me what has jumped the shark is the entire conversation about icons, fonts, and toolbars. No one can explain why the icons, fonts, and toolbars from 3 years ago aren't good enough anymore. No one can explain why we need constant "refreshers". Let's say you have a new microwave. Every microwave's controls are a little different, but you know generally the conventions of their limited interfaces. There are presets; separate non-microwave functions like timers; maybe a light and a fan control. The first few times you use it, it's a little weird. But you use the same one for like 5-10 years at a time. It becomes effortless, second nature. Food in, door shoot, beep-boop-beep by muscle-memory. Your food is ready. Imagine someone snuck into your home and rearranged the buttons, and changed some underlying functions. Now, when the timer is done, you don't hit the timer button to clear the display--you hold the cancel/stop button that also turns off the microwave. They think it's more logical that way. It doesn't matter, but it's frustrating. "Why was that necessary?", you might ask yourself. Neither way is fundamentally more or less logical. It's just different. It's not that changes are bad, but semi-annual changes for utilitarian things seem excessive. You accept a certain amount of change when you replace your microwave, or your car, or your computer. But not when you take your car to be tuned up. They don't replace the break pads, and then change the location of the stereo's volume knob. I think he philosophy of heavy handed redesign was useful in bringing computer interfaces to up to new hardware specs early on in tech, but we're reaching a point where they should be slowed down in favor of utility. The claim that it is design in the name of usability is no longer true. Call it what it is. It is merely seasonal fashion and nothing more. Some fashions are timeless. We should find them and stick with them as defaults that we are very hesitant to change. Consistency can facilitate clean design, allowing you to conceal and expose complexity by strongly established conventions, helping to achieve balance on the beauty-utility continuum.

zepto 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic–usability_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic–usability_effect
pfranz 6y ago
I think a lot of UI changes are for the sake of change. The arguments I've heard for the recent font changes and some of the UI changes are a critical mass of retina screens. They've also added other screen/monitor tech like night-shift and true tone and have changed font smoothing. They're also slowing experimenting and merging macOS and iOS UI tooling, which necessitates a change on both parts. Personally, I also wish they would slow down or stop UI changes.

adambware 6y ago

They've added padding to the design nearly everywhere - "menu bar is now taller", "Dock is lifted from the bottom", and the extra padding on the Sidebars is obvious. As a power user of a Macbook Pro, this is cutting into my screen real estate and not very appealing to me.

chadlavi 6y ago
If you're a power user, you probably know that you can hide the dock and the menubar
- adambware 6y ago
  My dock is tiny and pinned to the right so I can use as much vertical space as possible. This might push me to adopt hiding the menubar. It's more about the compounding effect when other apps adopt this more spacious UI pattern for their title bar, sidebar, etc.
haroldp 6y ago
But think of all the space saved by turning every web browser's title bar into tabs or location bars. So what if you're left with 8 pixels to grab a window with your mouse and move it!

sandstrom 6y ago

I wonder if they have added support for Display Port MST? (daisy chaining two monitors over one USB-C/thunderbolt cable) Windows via Boot Camp support it, so it’s only a software limit. It was my single biggest wish for this years macOS update. https://medium.com/@sebvance/everything-you-need-to-know-about-macbook-pros-and-their-lack-of-displayport-mst-multi-stream-98ce33d64af4 https://medium.com/@sebvance/everything-you-need-to-know-abo...

dmix 6y ago

Happy to see them getting rid of the useless 'notification center' drawer on the right side that I've never used and for some reason 'Do Not Disturb' is hidden within it, assuming you know the right key+click combo. Notifications are a huge part of any OS, they need to be treated as a first-class experience, not tucked away into a hidden section you never see unless you click on it.

RocketSyntax 6y ago

brightness slider! nice! was downloading menu tray plugins for that

twalla 6y ago

I upgraded to Catalina for work and have had an abysmal time with basically anything that is external to the macbook (monitors/webcams/hedphones) - if I had to estimate, I'd say I lose anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour a day just trying to get the goddamn machine to do things laptops have been perfectly capable of doing without issue for the past decade.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

KenanSulayman 6y ago

Apple wants members of their $500 Universal App Quick Start program to send back their Developer Transition Kit (DTK) units after the program automatically expires (!) after one year. [1] Citing directly from this document: > You agree to promptly return the Developer Transition Kit to the Apple address designated by Apple no later than thirty (30) days after the end of the Term, or as otherwise earlier requested by Apple (including via email or announcement by Apple on developer.apple.com). > At the end of the Term, You agree to immediately cease all use of the Developer Transition Kit and the Universal App Quick Start Program. > Failure to return the Developer Transition Kit may result in the suspension of Your Developer account or termination of Your Developer Agreement. Admission to the program costs $500. What??? ... Why did they not mention this anywhere but the terms of service? [1] https://developer.apple.com/terms/universal-app-quick-start-program/Developer-Universal-App-Quick-Start-Program.pdf https://developer.apple.com/terms/universal-app-quick-start-...

jbverschoor 6y ago
Well, I’m still enjoying my $1 appletv
asutekku 6y ago
$500 to get an early access to an unreleased tech does not sound bad at all.
kemayo 6y ago
It's what they did back in the Intel transition, also. They then sent everyone who'd had one a new Intel iMac, so it's plausible that they might do something like that again this time. (But don't count on it -- it wasn't promised last time either.)
- ValentineC 6y ago
  Apple is now able to remotely brick any of their devices (something they couldn't do in 2006), so there's a chance they'll be less likely to offer an incentive to return the devices.
6y ago

throw03172019 6y ago

I’m happy to see they didn’t have a huge slide of “1000s of new features”. I’d be happy with a better Catalina. I just switched after buying a new MacBook...

beyondcompute 6y ago

I hope, they’ll fix the annoying problem in Safari that when pausing/unpausing a Youtube video it skips half a second or so of audio.

beyondcompute 6y ago
Why was this downvoted? I’ve been using Safari for a long time because of its relative resource efficiency and nicer design. But lack of good ad blocking and this annoying glitch in Youtube are the two problems that really make me consider switching to Chromium.

seumars 6y ago

The amount of padding throughout the whole UI is worrying. For years I've used macOS on high contrast mode and invert colors for dark mode — very curious of how that will look.

AJRF 6y ago

I'm glad I finally no longer need macOS to have a nice developer experience. Docker & WSL2 are all I really need to do development these days. Back when I started using macOS, Windows seemed pretty dire for developers unless you were in the .NET and back then web-dev. Around the time ruby on rails was becoming super-popular I noticed a lot of developers getting MacBooks through their workplace and that kind of caught on as it was easy to install all the cool new dev tools that came out after that like Node etc. Apple built up a nice cache with developers and from 2007-2018 the circles I ran in you would be hard pressed to find a developer using Windows. All this time Microsoft were in the background diligently putting together a grand strategy for getting back developer mind-share, and they have done a spectacular job. VSCode + Visual Studio Community Edition, WSL & WSL2, The new terminal experience, supporting Docker, buying GitHub, open sourcing .NET, improving Azure and just constantly tightening up Windows 10. They've put their best foot forward going into the future and I am so glad because during the time all the cache Apple have built up has eroded. The keyboards, the kernel panics in Catalina, the MacBooks have been unspectacular, they just won't fix bugs, Swift is unused outside of iOS dev, Catalinas false promise of "just click a button to make your iOS app work on macOS", iOS has stagnated feature wise, Xcode is a malignant tumour that rears its ugly face when you try and use git for the first time, and they keep railroading down this road towards iOS-ification of all their platforms. Developers wanted the iPad to become more like macOS - and with Big Sur it looks like they've pulled a reverse Uno card.

Macha 6y ago

The integration of tall title bars with toolbars is really reminding me of Gnome 3 here.

zamalek 6y ago

> Safari is the best way to surf the web on all your Apple devices. It's also the only way to do that, other browser engines are deemed too impure to run on Apple hardware. > improves on industry-leading performance According to these benchmarks[1], the only performance category where has a large "lead" is using about 50% more memory than the next competitor. Why do Apple even bother writing fiction about Safari. It's not like Apple users have any other choice. [1]: https://www.pcmag.com/news/chrome-edge-firefox-opera-or-safari-which-browser-is-best https://www.pcmag.com/news/chrome-edge-firefox-opera-or-safa...

dvtrn 6y ago

Cycling directions on Apple Maps has me more excited than it probably should. I like a LOT of what they’ve done to improve Maps since they entered the space and this was sorely missing for me

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

I am a very happy user of Mojave, and Apple needs to make a a much bigger effort to convince me to upgrade.

somewhereoutth 6y ago

During the Bad Times, when I was assigned to a MBP (2015 model - still the best apparently), all I ever wanted was the window buttons to be on the right, and a hash key.

72deluxe 6y ago

Why are new features in apps mentioned in an OS update? It is a recent trend but I recall being able to upgrade to Office 2003 from 2000 without requiring an entire new OS. These days, they talk about tiny features in one of the apps (eg. Messages) as if it’s a giant new feature of the OS. Application software is not system software!