I actually don't think macOS needs a redesign. Some tweaks, yes. Just bring back the System Preferences that the Mac deserves, instead of the junk in Ventura and later! That is step one in any redesign or visual fixing on macOS.
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iOS 18 Rumored to Have Design Changes, macOS Revamp Coming Later
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I think a focus on making iOS rock solid and reliable and only adding things that are genuinely useful to a lot of people should be the focus now.
I know they want to say it's the biggest change since change, and full of new features. But how many people genuinely go out and buy a new iPhone or iPad because of this? Most consumers that are Apples target customer are just interested in buying a really well made functional and long lasting device.
The only big thing they should include at this point is aspects of AI that are useful, and a Samsung dex-like functionality for those iPads that are capable of running such an environment. They could have this as an inbetween environment for iPads thats sufficiently different from iOS on iPhone but not something that will cannibalise sales of Macs running MacOS.
That would genuinely be a Pro feature and maybe a genuine Pro feature for iPad Pros?
I know they want to say it's the biggest change since change, and full of new features. But how many people genuinely go out and buy a new iPhone or iPad because of this? Most consumers that are Apples target customer are just interested in buying a really well made functional and long lasting device.
The only big thing they should include at this point is aspects of AI that are useful, and a Samsung dex-like functionality for those iPads that are capable of running such an environment. They could have this as an inbetween environment for iPads thats sufficiently different from iOS on iPhone but not something that will cannibalise sales of Macs running MacOS.
That would genuinely be a Pro feature and maybe a genuine Pro feature for iPad Pros?
There is the weakness now that Siri becomes completely useless if you loose internet connectivity with the cloud, they could localize that to be partial stored so it could run still in a limited manner as a accessibility improvement. It could even be a simple AI based part of MacOS that uses common application usage history built into the OS. Spotlight is certainly running way faster than previous major releases of MacOS on AS Macs.
The only aspect of MacOS that is a pain out of the box is window management... when I switch between my Windows and Mac OS devices its night and day... Microsofts window management is just a light year ahead of MacOS out of the box.
and fire all UI designers because they have nothing to do?
Sorry, I meant the windows and dialogue boxes. I prefer they leave the icons alone.
Biggest feature request for me is something similar to Circle to Search, having used it on Samsung, iPhone feels behind. Currently, we need to take a screen shot, click on share button, then scroll all the way down to search with lens. Perhaps tapping on the home bar to activate it. Apple has its own Visual Lookup, hopefully they expand it.
Do you think UI design only happens when there are massive, sweeping redesigns?
Apple already breaks its own design guidelines all over the place and has tonnes of UI inconsistencies and bad practices. There’s always going to be work in refining the existing UI until it’s time for the next big change, which itself would also require UI designers.
If only there was an OS with a feature to configure your own set of icons.. if only 🤣
Imagine the flack Apple already gets for their incremental approach to hardware and software releases. Now imagine them saying "Here's iOS 18. Sorry, no new features". 😝
If you're gonna knock bugs, at least don't pick one that's highly beneficial to the world. 🤣🤣
I usually try to minimize notifications because of battery consumption, but yeah have it your way as shown in settings.
Can say that macOS Sonoma (which I switched to from Ventura then the Sonoma 14.1 update was released) has been working really well for me. No stability issues to mention really, and I use the computer every day. Nice work Apple.
That’s not really the only way AI works… the rumors are Siri gets a large language model - this basically just means she can actually understand what you’re saying.
As a consumer of audio from multiple Apps my long time wish has been for a universal "Up Next" queue that any app can add items to so I can queue up a few songs from Apple Music, then a Podcast episode, then a show from BBC Sounds, etc, etc and just hit play once and have everything play through continuously without having to manage separate Up Next queues within each app and then have to manually change apps and hit Play again after each one finishes...
Can we have some of these Apple engineers working on solving the problem of how to fit 16GB of base memory in a Mac please.
True - I appreciate there’s lots of work in the back end. I think it’s the use of the word re design. As in design means the way it looks to me and in that way it’s not changed much
A major update can be underlying not visual fluff. Most people don't want to relearn a OS anytime an annual update rolls out at each WWDC. The MacOS settings changes cause a fairly long debate on where it was good or bad. I just look at it from a point of complexity, the more functionality a OS has the more confusing it is to find what you need to tweak for your usage preferences. Both iOS 18 and MacOS 15 rumors imply a lot is coming, but that doesn't necessary need to be confusing if a lot is done underneath so increased functionality appears on many applications or apps. The way Siri is used now could be expanded, less painful to utilize as a example.
If only Apple would allow us to customize our home screens so people wouldn’t be forced to get an Android to do so.
Not everyone wants or can use an Android phone for many reasons. I have an old galaxy phone which is fully customizable, oddly has less bugs than iOS, and in some ways is faster and smoother. I have ui stutters on my 15 pro max that I never see on Android, the 120hz screen on my Android feels much smoother than the iPhone. So what is the argument here? For those that don’t care, do you think that Android forces people to customize their phones? I know people that use Android phones and they haven’t even ever changed the stock wallpaper that came out of the box lol.
On my Galaxy I have only 3 icons on my homescreen placed low and in the center so that they don’t cover up the important parts of my wallpaper. On iOS it’s hard to find a good wallpaper that isn’t covered up by rows of icons, why can’t we have this ability on iOS?
So we are lacking all sorts of customization and features, yet iOS is still slower and not as smooth as Android. So might as well open it up and let us do simple thing at the very least, like removing the God awful homebar, allow us to put icons anywhere on the grid, allow transparent widgets, transparent dock, icon customization without shortcuts, just some simple things.
But see they can add a lot of ways we can add our own visual fluff without adding any, when you jailbreak an iPhone nothing changes until you manually add themes or tweaks. So customization can be entirely up to each user, so the old curmudgeons can keep their phones looking the way they do now.
