Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

macOS Monterey Release Candidate Undoes Safari Changes, Reintroduces Old Tab Design

-BigMac- said:
Are you really breaking your back to lift an additional 100grams (which was the norm only a few years back?)

do you get many people staring at your macbook from the side assessing the appearance of the hinge?

storage has always been expensive at apple - this is nothing new.

If you are after a thinner and lighter macbook - its called the Air.
Pro models are meant to be for exactly that.

last I checked no pro gives a sh*t about the thickness of their pro workstation.
Click to expand...
well, check again — as a portable machine a lot op people care about that. and i don't give a s—t at how many people will be staring at my macbook — i don't like the way it looks.

part of the reason i use apple products is design, so when i think an updated design looks like ass — i mention it.

and thanks so much for your advice — i'm well aware of the air, in fact i own one and was hoping to upgrade to a mbp this year. i'm still thinking about it, but far less excited about it.

i'm sharing my personal opinion here — treat it as such please.
 
Bummer. I actually quite liked the new tab design with the seperate address bar and tabs. Both the rounded look and the coloured tabs. Forced to use compact if I want those two design elements now.

Gonna give compact a go and see how I fare. Hadn't tried it so far as I was happy with the other changes up until they got rolled back for this build.
 
alexandr said:
well, check again — as a portable machine a lot op people care about that. and i don't give a s—t at how many people will be staring at my macbook — i don't like the way it looks.

part of the reason i use apple products is design, so when i think an updated design looks like ass — i mention it.

and thanks so much for your advice — i'm well aware of the air, in fact i own one and was hoping to upgrade to a mbp this year. i'm still thinking about it, but far less excited about it.

i'm sharing my personal opinion here — treat it as such please.
Click to expand...
I understand a lot of people care about portability - and so does Apple.. which is why they have far more portable options for those who prefer even more portability. 16 > 14 > Air > iPad Pro > iPad > iPad Air > iPad Mini.

Design is your opinion, and I respect that. Not everyone will LOVE every design.


For your reference and consideration, below are the weights of the equivalent previous Macbook Pros, with their respective geekbench scores:
Macbook Pro 15 2010: 5.6 pounds - Multicore score of 878
Macbook Pro 15 2015: 4.5 pounds - Multicore score of 5,197
Macbook pro 16 2019: 4.4 pounds - Multicore score of 6,823
Macbook Pro 16 2021: 4.7 pounds - Multicore score of 11,542

Now I'm no expert, but given the ridiculous performance boost, that 0.3 pounds extra weight is more than acceptable for the pro customers it's aimed at, don't you agree?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ErikGrim
-BigMac- said:
I understand a lot of people care about portability - and so does Apple.. which is why they have far more portable options for those who prefer even more portability. 16 > 14 > Air > iPad Pro > iPad > iPad Air > iPad Mini.

Design is your opinion, and I respect that. Not everyone will LOVE every design.


For your reference and consideration, below are the weights of the equivalent previous Macbook Pros, with their respective geekbench scores:
Macbook Pro 15 2010: 5.6 pounds - Multicore score of 878
Macbook Pro 15 2015: 4.5 pounds - Multicore score of 5,197
Macbook pro 16 2019: 4.4 pounds - Multicore score of 6,823
Macbook Pro 16 2021: 4.7 pounds - Multicore score of 11,542

Now I'm no expert, but given the ridiculous performance boost, that 0.3 pounds extra weight is more than acceptable for the pro customers it's aimed at, don't you agree?
Click to expand...
yes and no. i would agree with you completely, if these were comparisons of two current models. but we're talking about a model that was released in 2016(if i'm not mistaken) and 2021.

now while apple surely made a mistake by getting rid of all the ports back then, but by now i feel like people have learned to live with it and everyone who needed got whatever dongles they pleased. just saying.

this just doesn't feel like innovation, somewhat of a step backwards rather. of course it's the fastest most powerful bla bla bla macbook ever, well it would really blow if a new release lacked when compared to last 5 years, wouldn't you agree? :)

and some people hate that the touch bar is gone, and while i can't stand the thing, i can respect that pov from someone who got used to it, loves it and now it gets taken away.

anyway, rant rant rant. i just expected to like the new macbooks soooo much more. i've been giving my 2015 air cpr for the last year :)
 
alexandr said:
yes and no. i would agree with you completely, if these were comparisons of two current models. but we're talking about a model that was released in 2016(if i'm not mistaken) and 2021.

now while apple surely made a mistake by getting rid of all the ports back then, but by now i feel like people have learned to live with it and everyone who needed got whatever dongles they pleased. just saying.

this just doesn't feel like innovation, somewhat of a step backwards rather. of course it's the fastest most powerful bla bla bla macbook ever, well it would really blow if a new release lacked when compared to last 5 years, wouldn't you agree? :)

and some people hate that the touch bar is gone, and while i can't stand the thing, i can respect that pov from someone who got used to it, loves it and now it gets taken away.

anyway, rant rant rant. i just expected to like the new macbooks soooo much more. i've been giving my 2015 air cpr for the last year :)
Click to expand...
While i agree progression throughout the years is a factor - these were the weights and scores of the highest end Macbook Pros (the 2019 is the maxed i9 edition). So people paid absolute top dollar for this, and as noted, some Macbook Pros weighed more - and people found them very, very appealing - and didn't suffer from back pain etc.

This is a really important point you made:
"this just doesn't feel like innovation, somewhat of a step backwards rather. of course it's the fastest most powerful bla bla bla macbook ever, well it would really blow if a new release lacked when compared to last 5 years, wouldn't you agree? :)"

The newest iPhone 13 Pro is heavier and thicker than the 12 Pro. And unlike with the Macbook pro which you can have in your lap, or more likely - desk.. the iPhone is almost exclusively "felt" in the hand.

Do you consider the newest iPhone 13 Pro non-innovative, simply because it is heavier and thicker? :)
 
-BigMac- said:
While i agree progression throughout the years is a factor - these were the weights and scores of the highest end Macbook Pros (the 2019 is the maxed i9 edition). So people paid absolute top dollar for this, and as noted, some Macbook Pros weighed more - and people found them very, very appealing - and didn't suffer from back pain etc.

This is a really important point you made:
"this just doesn't feel like innovation, somewhat of a step backwards rather. of course it's the fastest most powerful bla bla bla macbook ever, well it would really blow if a new release lacked when compared to last 5 years, wouldn't you agree? :)"

The newest iPhone 13 Pro is heavier and thicker than the 12 Pro. And unlike with the Macbook pro which you can have in your lap, or more likely - desk.. the iPhone is almost exclusively "felt" in the hand.

Do you consider the newest iPhone 13 Pro non-innovative, simply because it is heavier and thicker? :)
Click to expand...
i have the 16" mbp for work and it's heavy af. i used to own the 17" mbp and it kinda reminds of that(i know it's actually much lighter). so the idea of having a heavier yet mbp doesn't do anything for me. luckily i'm considering the 14" model, but still. listen, it could be my initial shock — i'm sure i'll get over it :)

no offense, but do you consider iphone 13 innovative?.. i'm getting one, because i'm on a xs currently. if i had the 12 and possible the 11 i wouldn't even look at it.
 
As someone that has tested this design in daily use since day one of its availability, I never got used to the new design. Handling many tabs was a pain. Dragging and dropping links was a pain. Making bookmarks a pain. The design looked inconsistent and ugly. It made the toolbar vastly less customizable and made it harder to arrange extensions. Making the tabs look like random buttons totally destroyed continuity with macOS and iPadOS, by using UI elements that exist nowhere else. It was harder to use. Inconvenient. And not thought out. The old design was superior in every way.
 
  • Like
Reactions: elptdbi3lYI
alexandr said:
i have the 16" mbp for work and it's heavy af. i used to own the 17" mbp and it kinda reminds of that(i know it's actually much lighter). so the idea of having a heavier yet mbp doesn't do anything for me. luckily i'm considering the 14" model, but still. listen, it could be my initial shock — i'm sure i'll get over it :)

no offense, but do you consider iphone 13 innovative?.. i'm getting one, because i'm on a xs currently. if i had the 12 and possible the 11 i wouldn't even look at it.
Click to expand...
Mmmmm thats fair enough. I used to own the 17" back in the day too, and my god that thing was massive :D

The 14" sounds like a good comprimise. the performance boost will be immense.

As a whole, the iPhone 13 is very impressive and in some instances innovative, but I wouldn't make the assesment on innovation on physical size alone. I was one of the people saying Apple should increase the thickness, to improve the battery/features so I'm very happy with the new size.

I had the 12 Pro max, and now own the 13 Pro (long story, needed a smaller one to fit into my car glove box). :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: ErikGrim
Philip_S said:
They look pretty, and I haven’t had any difficulty identifying the active tab in foreground or background windows, but they do waste space compared to the old style

I only had one that was ghastly (yellow, #FF0 background) and one that was hard to read (dull grey, just slightly too pale for safari to decide it was a dark colour).
Click to expand...
It's the same number of tabs in the same space so I don't see any waste of space. The big huge search bar across most of the top of the old design is a huge waste of space.

Yeah I don't have too many sites that bug with color on.

The Verge, Yahoo Finance, Tomshardware.com, ... these sites are obnoxious with color on. It's too much for the eyeballs. And harder to read the tabs.
 
One of several reasons why the new design was unintuitive was that the use of a 'darker' button for the focused page was at odds with the previous design, but more importantly, was at odds with Apple's other tabbed applications such as Mail, Preview, Pages, Numbers, etc. In all of these it is the lightest tab that is in focus.

I would prefer to see improvements to the display and management of bookmarks, including a 'separator' feature. Hotkey-triggered overlay for bookmarks or history would be very helpful and would save the space taken up by the bookmarks bar.
 
  • Like
Reactions: GTDaveMac
Pixol said:
Making the tabs look like random buttons totally destroyed continuity with macOS and iPadOS, by using UI elements that exist nowhere else. It was harder to use. Inconvenient. And not thought out. The old design was superior in every way.
Click to expand...
The button tab design is the same design language they use on the Start Page and is used a lot in IOS/IPad OS. And all it is is an abstraction/minimalization/morphing of the the current tab look/positioning. IT's not random at all.

Now maybe it is currently an inconsistent look with tabs in other apps. But that is just a matter of the other apps not having their looks updated yet.

Some of Safari 15 changes were inconsistent and not that well thought out and felt rushed. It needed some more work. The color was inconsistent. The compact bar needed more refinement. The sidebar button with its little down arrow side button needed more work.

However, something like the long search bar and empty space across most of the top of the old design seems ripe for change.
 
Last edited:
-BigMac- said:
Mmmmm thats fair enough. I used to own the 17" back in the day too, and my god that thing was massive :D

The 14" sounds like a good comprimise. the performance boost will be immense.

As a whole, the iPhone 13 is very impressive and in some instances innovative, but I wouldn't make the assesment on innovation on physical size alone. I was one of the people saying Apple should increase the thickness, to improve the battery/features so I'm very happy with the new size.

I had the 12 Pro max, and now own the 13 Pro (long story, needed a smaller one to fit into my car glove box). :)
Click to expand...
right, but as you may recall, 12's battery life was a step down from 11's, so really the 13 took it back to the 11. meh)
 
h3ysw5nkan said:
I personally feel that many websites use obnoxious colours for the Tab Bar. It’s being abused so bad.
Click to expand...
Im Mexico a department store called "Liverpool" uses a rather hot pink as it's corporate colors and their tab bar color as a result is a jarring hot pink. With this exception I do like the show colour option and don't really understand why they didn't leave it as an option with the old style tab bars.
 
  • Sad
Reactions: 0924487
alexandr said:
right, but as you may recall, 12's battery life was a step down from 11's, so really the 13 took it back to the 11. meh)
Click to expand...
Hmm I wasn’t too sure on the comparison.
So here are the numbers which compare the 11 and 13 battery life:
6DF34221-6367-4C67-8B6D-650E56830AE1.png


There is pretty significant increases :D
 
  • Like
Reactions: Stella
Smigit said:
Bummer. I actually quite liked the new tab design with the seperate address bar and tabs. Both the rounded look and the coloured tabs. Forced to use compact if I want those two design elements now.

Gonna give compact a go and see how I fare. Hadn't tried it so far as I was happy with the other changes up until they got rolled back for this build.
Click to expand...

You can make a feedback to Apple and ask them to keep all three.


I sent the following feedback to Apple's macOS Safari team.
I personally feel that many websites use obnoxious colours for the Tab Bar. It’s being abused so bad.

For example, Economist.com uses bright red, and Baidu.com uses bright indigo.

It's intended for harmonious integration with the rest of the webpage for full page themes, but it's misused as a branding tool.

It just burns my eyes. So, I disabled it altogether, which is a shame as it can be cute on many well-designed websites. I hope you guys find a mitigation to this in the mean time, and promote good practices to web designers.

Also, Safari 14's tab and header are perfect. There is no need to change anything. Make sure you guys allow an option to revert back to that layout. Tab groups, and other features are good to keep, but you don't need to completely nuke the old design.
Click to expand...
 
alexandr said:
sorry, it's not loading for me past the bar, or should i say — the notch?!))) i believe you though, i guess apple can still innovate! yeay! :)
Click to expand...
haha it's not much, but I think "innovation" will have to slow down at a point. We are very lucky to be living in a generation where CPUs etc. can double in performance, in one year. Amazing time to be alive!

Thank you for the conversation :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: alexandr
trip1ex said:
It's the same number of tabs in the same space so I don't see any waste of space
Click to expand...
The new buttons are taller, while the other elements stayed the same size. They also look like they use more horizontal space around the text, though if that’s an illusion it’s quite impressive.

unfortunately the compact layout isn’t as suitable when you have a lot of tabs open
 
pcd213 said:
HALLELUJAH!
Click to expand...
Amen !

The light one is active, right? No! It's the dark one! Er? Argh!

I also have difficulty sometimes just locating a place in the toolbar (?) to click on, to drag and move the Safari window. I'm not sure how it came about, but once I grabbed hold of the web address icon and inadvertently placed a .webloc file into some weird place in the bowels of the system:

safari-whoops.jpg
 
Last edited:
-BigMac- said:
haha it's not much, but I think "innovation" will have to slow down at a point. We are very lucky to be living in a generation where CPUs etc. can double in performance, in one year. Amazing time to be alive!

Thank you for the conversation :)
Click to expand...
you're right, it wouldn't be fair to expect a breakthrough product every year, but i still feel like the fact that we are just getting 3x zoom in 2021 is a bit sad :) as is getting a notch on a macbook pro, that doesn't even give us face id...
but i still love the products, which is the only reason i criticize them :)

you too :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: -BigMac-
Philip_S said:
The new buttons are taller, while the other elements stayed the same size. They also look like they use more horizontal space around the text, though if that’s an illusion it’s quite impressive.

unfortunately the compact layout isn’t as suitable when you have a lot of tabs open
Click to expand...
that's where tab groups and compact bar come into play.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back