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I think I'm in the minority who loved all new macOS icons and this icon trend. Would love to see them on iOS/iPadOS too but they may put a difference on icons between systems as a rule, so I can understand that
 
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WOW, why did they decide to do this horrible translucent background around the document when zoomed out?

I don’t need to see anything beyond what I’m working on! 🤯🤯🤯

And this crazy ORANGE color in the menus??? My eyes constantly keep running away from my text to the menus. OMG WTH, it’s soooo distracting!!! 😱🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Strange, mine doesn't look like this at all in Big Sur. The background is a simple grey color and the highlights are blue like before. Did you do a clean install?

EDIT: I had to update the Pages app. The highlights are now indeed orange (which I don't think is particularly distracting) but the background remained normal grey (not translucent).
 
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I love the overall look of Big Sur but those icons are butt.
Agree! It's not even that they are shaped like iOS icons now (which I do not like personally) but some of them are just plain bad. The shadows on Messages and FaceTime are horrible, others like iWork are just super lazy. The worst thing is, most of them look significantly better in their iOS iterations (compare iWork icons, Logic Pro X vs Logic Remote etc.)

Other than that, amazing design!
 
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It's a shame Jony Ive is still alive. If he were dead, he'd be rolling over in his grave at the ugly marriage of the worst parts of minimalism and skeuomorphism, and the best parts of neither. Honestly, either direction would have been better.
 
And this crazy ORANGE color in the menus??? My eyes constantly keep running away from my text to the menus. OMG WTH, it’s soooo distracting!!! 😱🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️
This is caused by the new “Multicolor” option in System Prefs / General. Just pick any fix color instead.
 
They planned better icons for those apps but then dumbed it down. Probably the icons were too good for Big Sur. Also notice the Launchpad icon.
 

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have so many devolved this low that they get incensed over icons? As someone once told me when I too got overly upset at something trivial, "chill out, you'll live longer and be happier". Sound advice
 
I doubt it’s even changed, just seems to be for Apple Silicon. Of course, this DOES mean the next version that actually has new features won’t work on Catalina either.

UPDATE: I take it back. The ACTUAL release notes you link to from within the app has a good bunch of changes I’m sure anyone would love.
As Rosan, Rosannadana (oblique reference to SNL in the early days) used to say "never mind"
 
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The iWork updates work nicely on catalina but the new GarageBand can’t be installed on Catalina.. Like seriously, wtf?
These comments are totally hilarious. the snowflakes and haters have been saying how bad Catalina is (not my experience) for so long and now they refuse to upgrade to Big Sur (which is awesome), I guess they are secret Catalina lovers. who knew?
 
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I just love the posts of "Those icons suck" "They are the worst crap ever". Only because it's Apple would anyone say such crap. Those icons are beautiful. And if the icons hurt your eyes so bad then there's always Windows 10's super amazing, super beautiful and super innovative UI if you can't handle it.
I just updated, the icons look fine, they are icons (so who really cares?).
 
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These comments are totally hilarious. the snowflakes and haters have been saying how bad Catalina is (not my experience) for so long and now they refuse to upgrade to Big Sur (which is awesome), I guess they are secret Catalina lovers. who knew?
I personally love Catalina and don't plan on updating to Big Sur anytime soon, its a bummer the new garageband isn't supported on Catalina
 
Did Apple fire all the graphic designers?

These icons look like they're from Word 98 clipart. Apart from just being ugly, with their exaggerated shadows and contours, they're too busy! A good icon doesn't need both a pen and a quote mark to signal that you can write!
 
I just updated, the icons look fine, they are icons (so who really cares?).
Those with some graphic design sensibility care. You do know that it's possible for people to be bothered about different things, right? Believe it or not the universe isn't built on just your perspective.
 
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Welp it's an end of an era for flat design. I wonder if they'll bring Scott Forstall back in the age of neo-skeuomorphism...
 
These comments are totally hilarious. the snowflakes and haters have been saying how bad Catalina is (not my experience) for so long and now they refuse to upgrade to Big Sur (which is awesome), I guess they are secret Catalina lovers. who knew?
It will be more than a little distracting that my standby Catalina system (2012 vintage so it is not possible to upgrade to Big Sur at least officially) will be constantly notifying me about app updates that I will be permanently unable to install.

I would have hoped that the App Store would be intelligent enough to filter out any updates which are not available for the current OS; to my recollection its iOS counterpart has always seemed to behave that way.
 
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