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

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.