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First Look: macOS Big Sur With Redesign, Safari Updates, New Messages App and More
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So more rounded window corners, some added transparency, and redesigned icons are all it takes to make you jump ship? I don't get it.
Mac users are their own worst enemy. When I think of what Windows users have had to choke down over the past 3 decades and yet they remain steadfastly loyal. Most don't jump ship to the Mac without an awfully good reason - usually Music and Video production or perhaps Photography. So, this guy's going to go to what, Linux? Pray sir, and do what? Use Libre Office and hope it doesn't crash or a bunch of "almost as good as Fusion" but it isn't type apps? Or perhaps to kludgy Windows 10 where he gets what they give him, albeit with upfront and transparent bug reports and fixes that Apple has admittedly, never trusted Mac users with. Good luck.
Well, that's true IF we have lost the ability to understand things in context. One of the fears people have had the last few years, especially in the Tim Cook era, is that Apple would continue to dumb down the interface to align with iOS's subscription model and casual use of the operating system for social media. This certainly sends up some warning signs.
You could also look at this as the straw that broke the camel's back. It's not just this.
But the new interface isn’t “dumbed down.” It looks different cosmetically, but it’s still clearly macos, and functions the same way.
It looks like a trend toward the Gnome 3 desktop, and I'm not the only one you will see saying this. And that is a horrible trend. Also since Apple has made it virtually impossible to make even the slightest personal adjustments to the presentation layer, it's becoming too much of a "you will take this and you will like it" approach. I know how to manage my system. If it gets to the point where the cons outweigh the pros, then what would you do?
Mac has never let you do much “personal adjusting.”
And, again, you are focused on cosmetics. “Looks like gnome 3”. So what?
True, but they also didn't always have this obsession with making damn sure you don't ever change anything, including additional hardware like RAM, even if Apple-approved.
Does the way you access application features, and the way in which you interact with the tools you use constantly, have no impact at all on your preference?
Also you're kinda making the argument that trends don't mean anything, which I disagree with for multiple reasons. If the current interface is subjectively less aesthetic than the previous, and the upcoming is less aesthetic than the current... And just because the features haven't been stripped down (or made less accessible) in one iteration doesn't mean they won't start deprecating them in future iterations because "no one was using that feature anymore" or some stupid **** like that.
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Go take a look at Gnome's file manager. That is the future I will not tolerate.
Of course it matters. But ”the way” hasn’t changed. The appearance of things has changed - the colors, spacing, curvature, etc. But it’s the same UX.
You're worried about it looking like Linux/Gnome and then threatening to do what, move to Linux/Gnome? Windows 10 where you get no choice whatsoever? It's a tired argument and statement and we hear it every single upgrade. "Why didn't they work on the interface instead of giving us more Emoji?" Big Sur is beautiful and it is MacOS inside and out. The aesthetics are more than pleasing and I'm grateful we're moving back to icons-as-works-of-art instead of that flat Jonny Ive crapola. Your what-if statements have no value because I've never seen any of you naysayers and critics ever predict Mac's future correctly. Ever. Not even once.
Just the Gnome part. I use Linux daily for work, and sometimes for pleasure; but I never use Gnome.
Nope. It's the worst choice possible, and I don't use it for anything.
I've never clamored for moar emoji's, and I'd be grateful at this point if they just never changed the interface again. Every change is a negative one over the last 5 years.
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Nope. The sky is falling
Exactly! Now, folks, this guy gets it.
You must not use Excel 2016. Mine nibbles on itself over time and I have to restart to get rid of the nibbles.
It's buggy in any case. Sorry I "upgraded from 2014 which was stable and just as good.
Give it some time to mature
This is just the first iteration of Big Sur
I do feel a bit uncomfortable myself. I dislike the roundrect menubar selection. But reducing transparency in the Accessibility section of System Preferences has made the experience 10000X better for me.
Hoping they never change the interface is a pipe dream. It's a Macintosh. The difference between Apple changing Mac's interface and MS changing Windows' interface is that when MS is finished, everything is in a different location and it's a steep learning curve to figure it all out again. When the Mac's interface changes, nearly everything is in the same place or very close. You're complaining about absolutely nothing. If you don't like the Mac, why not just leave the platform and be done with it? I've been waiting for this kind of gorgeous Mac visual experience for years and Apple finally delivered. The Mac is fun again instead of that boring, utilitarian Johnny Ive dreck. Good riddance!
The other difference is that when windows changes the interface, they stop before the job is done.
I used every version of windows from the original tiled version that came with excel, to XP. Then i switched back to mac. For my work I used Unix varieties.
When i started my current job, they were on windows 7 or 8 or something, and now windows 10. There are like three different places to edit settings. And each looks different. It’s madness. The whole OS is like that. Random bits of 30 year old interface mixed in with 10 year old interface and new interface.
My spreadsheet use is thankfully light and only for personal stuff so I can just use Numbers (which I love and which runs beautifully on Mac and iOS) but I know Numbers doesn't cut it for power users and corporate, Office-centric environments.
My only use of Office is generally PowerPoint when I have to design a deck for a client. I have to say the UI and quality of effects has gotten much better to work with in recent iterations -- but cross-platform compatibility is still a wild card. After an insane font problem last year, I actually considered installing Parallels or Boot Camp to use PPT on Windows so I could make sure the PC version looked OK. Not fun.
Yeah, like 2 completely different control panels. The Windows-style and the "metro" style, for lack of a better description.
Yes, I know. But I was making the point that given the current trajectory, no news is good news.
I have hated Windows as long as I can remember; at least as far back as I started using operating systems to develop software or solve complex problems. UNIX is the only system I'll ever really love for that type of thing. It would be a dream come true if BSD could support modern hardware a little better, because I find it to be the only true UNIX left for personal use. I don't know how to put it, other than "using UNIX is literally fun." I've never loved Macs for the Apple hype. It was back when, in my view, the UNIX lineage still shined through. It had the best of all worlds - good software/hardware support AND the UNIX utilities, with (mostly) the UNIX hierarchy. Even Linux has drifted away from UNIX in major ways; in fact it never was a direct descendant, but that's another topic.
Well, yeah. I may walk away at some point. This may be that point. I'll continue to use Mojave as long as it's practical, and get the most use I can out of the hardware I've already invested in. Put it this way, I was thinking maybe 2021 was my upgrade year, and now I have serious doubts. Tim Cook is a toll collector, not an innovator.
And good luck guess what goes where.
I noticed when I was typing that the cursor doesn’t jump between letters - it just sort of animatedly slides. And it lagged far behind my actual typing, which confused the hell out of me. So I tried to figure out if there was a way to make that **** stop. Looked in three different control panels/settings windows/preference panes, whatever. No luck. Called I.T. No luck. Two days later they told me the solution - don’t recall, but think I had to go into some “accessibility” setting or something.
Same deal with the color scheme, which had light gray text on slightly lighter gray backgrounds. Took me forever to figure out how to solve it, because different settings are in different places and there is no logic to it. It’s like they started to renovate the UI, and got distracted by a Brady Bunch marathon.
Probably something you had to change in registry settings @ HKEY/LOCALMACHINE/SYSTEM/HARDWARE/DRIVERS/SYSTEM/etc/{01AD441}/SYSTEM/CONFIG/SYSTEM/CURSORANIM
Windows sucks, bro. No debate needed.
Edit: Oh, wait! Those should be backslashes. Not forward.
Exactly. This just underscores how consistent the Mac UI is. We've gone from 3D to flat and thankfully, back to 3D again for the icons. I don't know what these people are complaining about - the Windows and Window close/minimize/full(tile) buttons are still the same flat design. I'm loving how the frames are finally going away and all the rigamarole designers have had to contend with through the history of the Mac UI to come up with some new cool frame design (I will always have a special place in my heart for the Win 7 Aero window frames, resource hog that they were) are now better spent giving us functional tools where the frame border used to be.
True enough, Apple should decide if I put stuff in Control Center, I should at least have the option to remove it from the Menu Bar for the sake of consistency. Small po-tay-toes...
We've been waiting for something new and exciting for ages and now that we have it, the nay-sayers can only complain. Big Sur has made my Mac shiny and fun again and unlike last Summer (!), this is going to be a fun beta cycle. All the developers will be releasing new versions to conform to the UI changes with fancy new icons. I'm honestly hoping MS Edge and Office adopts the new UI. It's like Christmas, man!
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I found a new bug to report. Google Drive and Dropbox, which use kernel extensions, why you no work? Minor inconvenience and I won't get on here and complain about the loss of functionality since I'm the one who installed a Beta OS. They'll get to it...the fact that this Beta 1 just smokes the abomination that was Catalina Beta 1 truly makes me smile... EDIT: I'm told OneDrive works ok.
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Huh. I haven't imported photos from my iPhone since iCloud Photos came along.
Is Image Capture still in existence in Big Sur? It's quite a great little utility for this kind of thing.
