Oh come on, this is not 1990 where a current computer struggles repainting windows!
You hate it with a passion. I believe your point has been taken. May I suggest actually waiting to install the thing and see how it works in situation before burning it to the ground?
Or have you installed the developer betas to have such a firm and definitive hate of it? Do you know for a fact if it’s less stable than the previous release? Do you have a developer kit to say if it works well, or not, under the ARM architecture?
I would be interested to read your research supporting these statements.
I’m sure you’ll have the opportunity to have a blank background, and a picture won’t be forced on you. Notably, Brave does not give users that option. To date, I have suffered very little from the 5 seconds per day that their picture is in my visual field.
Apple isn’t a one-person shop; working on the UI and the OS is not a zero-sum game. They can conceivably round rectangles and fix the shortcomings of TimeMachine at the same time.
Such strident hyperbole in response to the rationalizing of some UI elements between OSes doesn’t explain, and again doesn’t persuade. It’s rather curious.
Indeed, in betas Apple typically will make changes small and large in response to developers, having done so many times with regard to window transparency, colors, three-dimensionality and other elements over the years. Aside from that Apple always ‘tinkers’ with the UI, as is so dismissively put. There’s nothing wrong with a unification of design language between OSes which will become somewhat interoperable (since iOS apps will somehow be able to run on ARM Macs); elements get tweaked over time, and opinions based on screenshots often change when actually in use.
But I find the eagerness to defend all of Apple’s designs and naming decisions to be surprising. Surely the very purpose of this community is to openly and constructively discuss Apple and their products. Even if my opinion is a minority one which it may be, given that we are a self selecting group of those who like Apple products more than the average consumer, it’s just that it’s one opinion. I was never expecting universal agreement with me but I also wasn’t expected to have to provide evidence to justify my opinion. This isn’t a court room. Yet I’m being trialled by MPU jury for not agreeing with Apple’s design choices.
Regular users love this stuff. We use Trello at work and people make sure every board has a fun background image. We got our massive performance increase; they can have something to smile at when they sit down to use the computer.
Well, “10.16 is just ugly and has terrible marketing name” is a very opinionated title. Don’t be surprised to have equally opinionated opposite answers. If you wanted to have a constructive discussion about the design choices, you could have started with a less frontal post, like this one. (Equally works with “disliking”. )
That’s a fair point. I’ve edited the controversial title but I stand by both that this is only my opinion and I’m surprised that others don’t share the same criticisms.
Apple started wth iDevices and iApps in 2001 (the same year they introduced Mac OS X) and they both had long runs - they ran their course (except for iMac) and got dropped (iBook, iPod) or renamed (iMessage, iTunes)
Some slogans and names age well, some don’t, but most have finite lives.
I liked the old title. I think you’ve created an interesting topic and am sorry it’s been one-sided in response (realizing I contributed.) My initial impression of the design was entirely positive. I think it’s going to look good on the screen sizes I typically use (15” laptops and 27” monitors.) I also like the new icons quite a bit. But, I am also concerned about information density and animation/affordance fatigue. Being macOS, I think we’ll have some control over those things, but I still understand not wanting to see them in the first place. I also have some concern about the UI and the ported iOS apps being an indicator that macOS may stray from what makes it special, but overall, I think the attention Apple is paying to the Mac is good for professional and power users.
@Timo I think you might be onto something, Big Sur is quite famous for the Bixby Canyon Bridge. Given the big transition they need and the associated bridging technology, could be a few depths to this choice.
They’ve chosen a good time to move to MacOS 11, as the Arm transition and deeper unification of the operating systems across the product range warrants the number rollover.
PS - Guess we are lucky they didn’t choose Tarzana, Rough and Ready, Forks of Salmon, Zzyzx or Death Valley.
As to the name, I don’t really care one way or the other. Marketing types would typically steer clear of anything that would map to a negative headline quickly, so I’m surprised this one made it through.
The OS itself (ignoring cosmetic changes and a few features added to a few Apple apps) is basically unchanged at this point. A far cry from going from OS 9 to OS X which was a total overhaul. You might say that considering the support for ARM CPUs this is more like the change from 10.4 Tiger to 10.5 Leopard which added support for Intel CPUs. And they didn’t rename it Mac OS 11 then.
This is simply a marketing decision, not based on the underlying design. And it looks like a last minute one as well as there are references to 10.16 they didn’t remove in time for beta release.
Design criticisms? At least in dark mode, I’m finding it very hard to see the buttons/icons in the title bars and I don’t like the fact that the folder name in Finder is buried within the title bar making it difficult to spot.
I agree that, design-wise, a continuity between OS X and OS 11 is basically there – certainly more than from OS 9 to OS X.
But on the other hand, the ability to run iOS apps natively – because of the underlying processor switch – really invites speculation on the UI of future OSs … and those changes aren’t solely advertising-driven.
Or perhaps “marketing” – marketing meant here less as of how to advertise seductively, and more in the sense of strategy: how to use the enormous size of the iOS ecosystem to draw more people to MacOS – at Apple pushed for the ecosystem change, and UI design is following suit.
The first step has been to make the feel of MacOS 11 a little more like the feel of iOS apps on iPhone or iPad; and I doubt it’s the last step.
I completely agree. I have nothing against cosmetic changes, but a design change to me means something is fundamentally different in the core of something and I don’t see that as being the case here.
(I get similarly weirded out when people talk about hardware design changes and what they mean is a change of shape/appearance (which is absolutely a kind of design change, but not what I think about when that language is used))
No it isn’t really. Big Sur is pretty famous. Like “High Sierra” it has all kinds of connotations and resonances culturally including a film I believe with Bogart. A kind of Wild Western connotation with “High Plains Drifter” and all kinds things. Which Apple ad folk would have considered. They have done an amazing PR job in my view.
California and its culture (s) and terms thereof being pretty widely understood all over the World. I think I heard of Big Sur when I was about 9 and living in rural Wales. Monterey too. It is pretty obviously “All noun” as well. If I might put it that way? In the way “Little Big Horn” is. The use of a name with a Spanish borrow is again appropriate and subtle. Easy to do in California I know, but that would have been noted by the team that did it I think?
