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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 langua

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).
- dave5104 6y ago
  Maybe I missed it, but did they say they're requiring Mac apps to start standardizing design? If not, then I see no reason why the default OS apps that come pre-installed shouldn't look and feel the same.
  - wtallis 6y ago
    > then I see no reason why the default OS apps that come pre-installed shouldn't look and feel the same. The same as each other, or the same as their mobile touchscreen counterparts?
    - dave5104 6y ago
      I'd say both. If I'm a user who's all in on the Apple ecosystem, it seems like a nice plus that the out of the box apps can be expected to look similar and work similarly, whether I'm on my phone or my laptop. There's certainly ways to screw that up, I won't deny that. But I think it's an inherently good direction to aim for. In my mind, that means (1) making sure that functionality is synced whenever possible (the lack of iMessage functionality on macOS after it was enhanced on iOS has bugged me for years), and (2) matching the look and feel to make the macOS version (or iOS version) feel familiar the first time you use the app if you've previously used the alternate platform's equivalent.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      I mean I think they should look the same. If you look at iOS and macOS apps side they should look like they belong to the same family of products and use the same design language. But they should behave different to take advantage of different devices strengths and limitations. Spotify does a pretty okay job at this.
riazrizvi 6y ago
I especially liked the extension of complications in Apple Watch. The ability for developers to define the 'home screen' appearance of the watch is an important advancement that enables users to control their own technological identity. The Watch is the most important place for consumers to define their own 'GUI brand'.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Sadly the only major change there is the ability to use SwiftUI for complications.
- 1propionyl 6y ago
  When you put it that way, I want to throw my Apple Watch in a river. Technological identity? Consumer defined 'GUI brand'? Yikes.
  - zapzupnz 6y ago
    You'd throw your watch in the river because someone used a few buzzwords? Apple harps on every year about how their Apple Watch is the most personal device they sell. Personal. Intimate. Love. Magical. Yet, we still buy the things because we find our own sense of value in it. Clearly, we don't pay much attention to buzzwords in the marketing. I don't know why you'd start now with some random comment on HN.
impalallama 6y ago
Never underestimate the Internet's ability to see the worse in any Apple announcement. Apple announces something you don't want? They are ignoring the vital issues and focusing only on dumb superficial things which just proves they are going down hill. Apple announces something you do want? Should have happened years ago, and the fact that they've only gotten to it now just proves they are going down hill.
- wespiser_2018 6y ago
  Apple unfairly gets a lot of hate, but please don't discount that the developer experience on MacOS has been pretty bad lately, and the lack of enterprise support means some folks are stuck on Apples slightly out of their use case, and with their fair share of problems.
  - auggierose 6y ago
    I don't know, just Catalyst and Swift/UI alone are making my life as a developer much easier and nicer.
  - movedx 6y ago
    > ... the developer experience on MacOS has been pretty bad lately ... Has it, though? I've never understood how people had a bad time on macOS when it came to development. I'm developing Python, Go, Terraform, Ansible, and more, on macOS just fine. I've used Vim, gVim, VSCode, GoLand, and more without any issues. iTerm2 helps too. What issues are you facing?
- the-pigeon 6y ago
  I think you misunderstand. Changes for changes sake are negative for users. The last thing you want to do is change something that was working for users without giving them anything for it. However a lot of actively developed software today changes because they want it to be "fresh and exciting". Basically because of desire to use changes to market it. But changing anything for that reason hurts usability. Any change means the user will have to adapt to that change. You want to minimize the user having to adapt to anything. When you do make them adapt you need to give them clear value for that adapting.
Raymonf 6y ago
I completely agree. Previous versions had newer Apple UI design elements (e.g. the App Store) and also the elements of older macOS versions (e.g. the Dock, comparing it to the one on the iPad). It was just a big jumble, and they're finally unifying it.
wwweston 6y ago
> using a consistent design language across platforms Which means that design conventions that happened to be well-optimized for the platform on which they arose are going to suffer. But don't worry! All the lost productivity will surely be worth the sacrifice if it only provides the one thing that matters above everything when it comes to product and UX decisions: whether it can be used as a positive bullet point on resumes while they're managing up.
bengale 6y ago
Finding the negatives is basically a hobby for a lot of the hot takers.
_bxg1 6y ago
Yeah, the UI refresh they did a few years ago (Yosemite I think?) always felt like a halfway-done, superficial coat of paint to try and eke out some brand unity. Big Sur (I'll never be able to say that with a straight face) seems to be a genuine re-think. It says to me, "Apple isn't just doing the minimum effort to drag the Mac along, they actually care about it long-term". And while lots of things were clearly taken straight from iOS, I didn't see anything that felt like a real downgrade in terms of power user features or information density. I'm actually kind of excited about the control panel drop-down.
satysin 6y ago
My wife asked me what I thought of the new macOS look and my reply was "well I don't hate it" which I think is the best kind of response I can give based on a few screenshots and a short pre-made demo. There is a lot I liked the look of and a few things I didn't like so much but might look better on a real system. Just have to wait and see what it is like to actually use. From what we saw I don't hate it though. I think it looks quite clean, good spacing (possible touch Macs in the pipeline?), consistent, new icons look good, etc. I think this really was a historic day as Tim said. After almost twenty years OS X is over. I do kind of wish they had jumped to macOS 14 to align version numbers with iOS and its children.
ravedave5 6y ago
I don't consider design language across platforms a positive nessisarly. I want my laptop to be a laptop and tablet to be a tablet. They don't need to share UI. That's why windows 8 was such a disaster.
- davidivadavid 6y ago
  Nope. People on HN seem not to understand that a "consistent design language" is something more complex than "do exactly the same thing on every platform." The reason Windows 8 was a disaster was because Microsoft suffered from the same misconception.
- zapzupnz 6y ago
  "Consistent design language" doesn't mean "behave exactly the same". That's exactly what Catalyst is for — to take iPad apps and make them good macOS citizens. Is that not exactly what you want? A consistent design language makes it easier for iPadOS apps to come to macOS via Catalyst without having to be almost completely restyled whilst also preserving everything makes the Mac a Mac. Your laptop remains a laptop. Your desktop remains a desktop. Ported apps respect the form factor, not force it to become a tablet.
aylmao 6y ago
In general I think all these are positives, but these two worry me: > "using a consistent design language across platforms" Apple famously refrained from doing this at first, because for platforms with fundamentally different form factors, use cases and input methods it doesn't make much sense. I do appreciate some parts of the redesign, but others like reducing the information density make things look nicer but make them less functional. We get it, whitespace is good to let things "breathe". Nontheless: - I use those buttons that seem to be MIA in the screenshots of the new Finder though (to switch between views, the sort menu, the cog icon with extra actions). Will I have to change my workflow? - I use a lot of items in the macOS sidebar. In the current Finder, my sidebar can show 12.5 items without scrolling. In the screenshots, it's showing 9. Am I going to have alter my workflow here too? All of these seem like minor things, but they add up. There's a reason some people still download and learn Vim— the 5 seconds it can save you from each time you reach out to a mouse adds up. It might just be 5 seconds, but you do it _all the time_. Like vim, this doesn't matter for many people, but for people who use an OS mostly for work, not for excitement or leisure, it can be worrying and annoying. > "introducing new, well tested convenience features." My worry here is that they might be popular in iOS, but that doesn't mean they are well-tested per se. Launchpad was a "well-tested" iOS feature (the home screen), but when it first arrived in Lion, it was terrible: 1. It was very buggy, as new software tends to be. 2. It was poorly thought out for the Mac. - It didn't have a search bar, which makes sense in iOS but not in macOS. - The only way to edit it was with click and hold, which makes sense on touch devices but is unseen in pointer devices. - It uses the whole screen, which makes sense in single-app environments but not really on large screens with multiple apps are used. Coincidentally, Apple has realized full-screen experiences are dreadful when attempting to multi-task and changed some of these (Siri, calls on iPad) on the latest iOS. 3. It was in general unnecessary. macOS already has a bunch of ways to open apps: the Finder, Spotlight, the Dock, for some users, the Desktop. This is subjective though. There's a lot of power-user tidbits on the way some of macOS feature's are implemented right now. You can option-click the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Sound task bar items to bring up extra options or information. People like me who constantly need to read the IP address or access the Bluetooth debug menu rely on these little power features for our workflows. I sure hope Apple hasn't gotten rid of these with the introduction of the Control Center. [1]: https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/36343-67506-000-lead-macOS-11-or-1016-xl.jpg https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/36343-67506-000-lea...
saiojd 6y ago
People on this site always comment negatively on literally anything related to UI except if it looks like it was made in the 90s. Absolutely zero sense of perspective or open-mindedness.
- IncRnd 6y ago
  That's an indication that change for change's sake is neither needed nor desired.
- rurp 6y ago
  I don't think this is a very charitable take. Many people, myself included, consider change for the sake of change a cost, not a benefit. The less I think about my keyboard layout or system UI widgets the better. I can see why someone might like the novelty of those changing but for me they are just a means to an end. Any time I spend hunting around menus that have changed or fiddling with a novel keyboard means less time for things that I actually care about.
  - saiojd 6y ago
    I'll concede that it's not charitable but if anything I think UI needs to change more, and in ways which aren't superficial like switching icons. Compare this to Mac OS 9, is it really that different? Have we really not figured out anything better? For instance, we should not have to search through menus to find what we want. Every app should support something like Blender's operator search (like the Help > Search feature but generalized to every command, not just the menu bar). Instead of discussing stuff that matter people complain about the appearance of things.
zapzupnz 6y ago
Just for once, for one time in my life, I'd like to come to an HN article about Apple and not have the first few hundred comments be "sigh time to buy a Thinkpad. Let's all argue our favourite version of Linux". Just once.

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).

dave5104 6y ago
Maybe I missed it, but did they say they're requiring Mac apps to start standardizing design? If not, then I see no reason why the default OS apps that come pre-installed shouldn't look and feel the same.
- wtallis 6y ago
  > then I see no reason why the default OS apps that come pre-installed shouldn't look and feel the same. The same as each other, or the same as their mobile touchscreen counterparts?
  - dave5104 6y ago
    I'd say both. If I'm a user who's all in on the Apple ecosystem, it seems like a nice plus that the out of the box apps can be expected to look similar and work similarly, whether I'm on my phone or my laptop. There's certainly ways to screw that up, I won't deny that. But I think it's an inherently good direction to aim for. In my mind, that means (1) making sure that functionality is synced whenever possible (the lack of iMessage functionality on macOS after it was enhanced on iOS has bugged me for years), and (2) matching the look and feel to make the macOS version (or iOS version) feel familiar the first time you use the app if you've previously used the alternate platform's equivalent.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    I mean I think they should look the same. If you look at iOS and macOS apps side they should look like they belong to the same family of products and use the same design language. But they should behave different to take advantage of different devices strengths and limitations. Spotify does a pretty okay job at this.

riazrizvi 6y ago

I especially liked the extension of complications in Apple Watch. The ability for developers to define the 'home screen' appearance of the watch is an important advancement that enables users to control their own technological identity. The Watch is the most important place for consumers to define their own 'GUI brand'.

saagarjha 6y ago
Sadly the only major change there is the ability to use SwiftUI for complications.
1propionyl 6y ago
When you put it that way, I want to throw my Apple Watch in a river. Technological identity? Consumer defined 'GUI brand'? Yikes.
- zapzupnz 6y ago
  You'd throw your watch in the river because someone used a few buzzwords? Apple harps on every year about how their Apple Watch is the most personal device they sell. Personal. Intimate. Love. Magical. Yet, we still buy the things because we find our own sense of value in it. Clearly, we don't pay much attention to buzzwords in the marketing. I don't know why you'd start now with some random comment on HN.

impalallama 6y ago

Never underestimate the Internet's ability to see the worse in any Apple announcement. Apple announces something you don't want? They are ignoring the vital issues and focusing only on dumb superficial things which just proves they are going down hill. Apple announces something you do want? Should have happened years ago, and the fact that they've only gotten to it now just proves they are going down hill.

wespiser_2018 6y ago
Apple unfairly gets a lot of hate, but please don't discount that the developer experience on MacOS has been pretty bad lately, and the lack of enterprise support means some folks are stuck on Apples slightly out of their use case, and with their fair share of problems.
- auggierose 6y ago
  I don't know, just Catalyst and Swift/UI alone are making my life as a developer much easier and nicer.
- movedx 6y ago
  > ... the developer experience on MacOS has been pretty bad lately ... Has it, though? I've never understood how people had a bad time on macOS when it came to development. I'm developing Python, Go, Terraform, Ansible, and more, on macOS just fine. I've used Vim, gVim, VSCode, GoLand, and more without any issues. iTerm2 helps too. What issues are you facing?
the-pigeon 6y ago
I think you misunderstand. Changes for changes sake are negative for users. The last thing you want to do is change something that was working for users without giving them anything for it. However a lot of actively developed software today changes because they want it to be "fresh and exciting". Basically because of desire to use changes to market it. But changing anything for that reason hurts usability. Any change means the user will have to adapt to that change. You want to minimize the user having to adapt to anything. When you do make them adapt you need to give them clear value for that adapting.

Raymonf 6y ago

I completely agree. Previous versions had newer Apple UI design elements (e.g. the App Store) and also the elements of older macOS versions (e.g. the Dock, comparing it to the one on the iPad). It was just a big jumble, and they're finally unifying it.

wwweston 6y ago

> using a consistent design language across platforms Which means that design conventions that happened to be well-optimized for the platform on which they arose are going to suffer. But don't worry! All the lost productivity will surely be worth the sacrifice if it only provides the one thing that matters above everything when it comes to product and UX decisions: whether it can be used as a positive bullet point on resumes while they're managing up.

bengale 6y ago

Finding the negatives is basically a hobby for a lot of the hot takers.

_bxg1 6y ago

Yeah, the UI refresh they did a few years ago (Yosemite I think?) always felt like a halfway-done, superficial coat of paint to try and eke out some brand unity. Big Sur (I'll never be able to say that with a straight face) seems to be a genuine re-think. It says to me, "Apple isn't just doing the minimum effort to drag the Mac along, they actually care about it long-term". And while lots of things were clearly taken straight from iOS, I didn't see anything that felt like a real downgrade in terms of power user features or information density. I'm actually kind of excited about the control panel drop-down.

satysin 6y ago

My wife asked me what I thought of the new macOS look and my reply was "well I don't hate it" which I think is the best kind of response I can give based on a few screenshots and a short pre-made demo. There is a lot I liked the look of and a few things I didn't like so much but might look better on a real system. Just have to wait and see what it is like to actually use. From what we saw I don't hate it though. I think it looks quite clean, good spacing (possible touch Macs in the pipeline?), consistent, new icons look good, etc. I think this really was a historic day as Tim said. After almost twenty years OS X is over. I do kind of wish they had jumped to macOS 14 to align version numbers with iOS and its children.

ravedave5 6y ago

I don't consider design language across platforms a positive nessisarly. I want my laptop to be a laptop and tablet to be a tablet. They don't need to share UI. That's why windows 8 was such a disaster.

davidivadavid 6y ago
Nope. People on HN seem not to understand that a "consistent design language" is something more complex than "do exactly the same thing on every platform." The reason Windows 8 was a disaster was because Microsoft suffered from the same misconception.
zapzupnz 6y ago
"Consistent design language" doesn't mean "behave exactly the same". That's exactly what Catalyst is for — to take iPad apps and make them good macOS citizens. Is that not exactly what you want? A consistent design language makes it easier for iPadOS apps to come to macOS via Catalyst without having to be almost completely restyled whilst also preserving everything makes the Mac a Mac. Your laptop remains a laptop. Your desktop remains a desktop. Ported apps respect the form factor, not force it to become a tablet.

aylmao 6y ago

In general I think all these are positives, but these two worry me: > "using a consistent design language across platforms" Apple famously refrained from doing this at first, because for platforms with fundamentally different form factors, use cases and input methods it doesn't make much sense. I do appreciate some parts of the redesign, but others like reducing the information density make things look nicer but make them less functional. We get it, whitespace is good to let things "breathe". Nontheless: - I use those buttons that seem to be MIA in the screenshots of the new Finder though (to switch between views, the sort menu, the cog icon with extra actions). Will I have to change my workflow? - I use a lot of items in the macOS sidebar. In the current Finder, my sidebar can show 12.5 items without scrolling. In the screenshots, it's showing 9. Am I going to have alter my workflow here too? All of these seem like minor things, but they add up. There's a reason some people still download and learn Vim— the 5 seconds it can save you from each time you reach out to a mouse adds up. It might just be 5 seconds, but you do it _all the time_. Like vim, this doesn't matter for many people, but for people who use an OS mostly for work, not for excitement or leisure, it can be worrying and annoying. > "introducing new, well tested convenience features." My worry here is that they might be popular in iOS, but that doesn't mean they are well-tested per se. Launchpad was a "well-tested" iOS feature (the home screen), but when it first arrived in Lion, it was terrible: 1. It was very buggy, as new software tends to be. 2. It was poorly thought out for the Mac. - It didn't have a search bar, which makes sense in iOS but not in macOS. - The only way to edit it was with click and hold, which makes sense on touch devices but is unseen in pointer devices. - It uses the whole screen, which makes sense in single-app environments but not really on large screens with multiple apps are used. Coincidentally, Apple has realized full-screen experiences are dreadful when attempting to multi-task and changed some of these (Siri, calls on iPad) on the latest iOS. 3. It was in general unnecessary. macOS already has a bunch of ways to open apps: the Finder, Spotlight, the Dock, for some users, the Desktop. This is subjective though. There's a lot of power-user tidbits on the way some of macOS feature's are implemented right now. You can option-click the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Sound task bar items to bring up extra options or information. People like me who constantly need to read the IP address or access the Bluetooth debug menu rely on these little power features for our workflows. I sure hope Apple hasn't gotten rid of these with the introduction of the Control Center. [1]: https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/36343-67506-000-lead-macOS-11-or-1016-xl.jpg https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/36343-67506-000-lea...

saiojd 6y ago

People on this site always comment negatively on literally anything related to UI except if it looks like it was made in the 90s. Absolutely zero sense of perspective or open-mindedness.

IncRnd 6y ago
That's an indication that change for change's sake is neither needed nor desired.
rurp 6y ago
I don't think this is a very charitable take. Many people, myself included, consider change for the sake of change a cost, not a benefit. The less I think about my keyboard layout or system UI widgets the better. I can see why someone might like the novelty of those changing but for me they are just a means to an end. Any time I spend hunting around menus that have changed or fiddling with a novel keyboard means less time for things that I actually care about.
- saiojd 6y ago
  I'll concede that it's not charitable but if anything I think UI needs to change more, and in ways which aren't superficial like switching icons. Compare this to Mac OS 9, is it really that different? Have we really not figured out anything better? For instance, we should not have to search through menus to find what we want. Every app should support something like Blender's operator search (like the Help > Search feature but generalized to every command, not just the menu bar). Instead of discussing stuff that matter people complain about the appearance of things.

zapzupnz 6y ago

Just for once, for one time in my life, I'd like to come to an HN article about Apple and not have the first few hundred comments be "sigh time to buy a Thinkpad. Let's all argue our favourite version of Linux". Just once.