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macOS Big Sur Preview

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Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#111

Post by Chazprime »

AnonC wrote: post #34

The UI and UX seem to be getting worse on macOS with the “iOSification” of the OS. I thought Jony Ive’s exit would stop that trend. It’ll be interesting to read perspectives from John Gruber, M J Tsai, Marco Arment, etc. I still haven’t upgraded from Mojave to Catalina because of serious bugs reported by other people (including data loss issues in Mail). I’ll see if Big Sur shows improvements (reported by others) and…

Hopefully they'll have an option to reduce the corner radius of windows & views... it looks a bit too bubbly for my taste. Brings back memories of the "candy" widgets of the first OSX release.

Otherwise, it actually looks okay to me.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#112

Post by addicted »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #36

One of my favorite small things about OS X has been the dock icons and their variety in shapes. Like how TextEdit has the pencil sticking out or Logic looks like a DJ turntable. It feels like that’s gone now.

The XCode icon seems to have the hammer sticking out a bit. So maybe there is still room for custom shapes.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#113

Post by christoph »

darth_avocado wrote: post #23

Of all the new shiny things, the only useful one is the fact that the airpods can now switch between devices better.

I'm pretty excited to see how well the new spatial audio feature works on Airpods Pro. It sounds like it will come in a firmware and/or iOS update, but they didn't seem to give an ETA on it. Could certainly be a great new feature if implemented well (they claimed support for 5.1, 7.1 & Atmos), added to hardware that's already out there.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#114

Post by riazrizvi »

SenHeng wrote: post #84

I’m surprised at all the negative takes. I thought it was refreshing, they’re reintroducing colours and icons, cleaning up and using a consistent design language across platforms, and introducing new, well tested convenience features.

I especially liked the extension of complications in Apple Watch. The ability for developers to define the 'home screen' appearance of the watch is an important advancement that enables users to control their own technological identity. The Watch is the most important place for consumers to define their own 'GUI brand'.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#115

Post by jmchuster »

gkoberger wrote: post #63
cytzol wrote: post #52

I was really hoping they'd take some time to address Catalina's glaring issues — its slowness, bugginess, just general sloppiness — and instead they did the opposite. Honestly, every time Apple has done anything with the Mac the past couple of years, they've screwed it up. The infamous keyboards that they doubled-down and then tripled-down upon (I have personally had five keyboard replacements). The way Catalina send…

It’s possible they will do both. Fixing bugs isn’t really keynote worthy, so hopefully there’s a ton of stability fixes behind the scenes.

It was keynote-worthy for Snow Leopard, with the infamous "0 new features" slide.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#116

Post by slig »

milkytron wrote: post #71

Is there a reason why Apple updates their Mac apps with each OS release, instead of individually through the app store? I would imagine the changes to Safari could've been made without having to upgrade the OS.

Things like "new emojis only in the new OS version" are used as an incentive for people to update, I believe.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#117

Post by Klonoar »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #36

One of my favorite small things about OS X has been the dock icons and their variety in shapes. Like how TextEdit has the pencil sticking out or Logic looks like a DJ turntable. It feels like that’s gone now.

Yeah, Mac icon design felt like it was hanging on by a thread, and now feels like it's being killed.

A significant piece of character that's just... gone. I think this is what bothers me more than any iOS-ification of the OS, on a UI/UX level at least.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#118

Post by cytzol »

gkoberger wrote: post #63
cytzol wrote: post #52

I was really hoping they'd take some time to address Catalina's glaring issues — its slowness, bugginess, just general sloppiness — and instead they did the opposite. Honestly, every time Apple has done anything with the Mac the past couple of years, they've screwed it up. The infamous keyboards that they doubled-down and then tripled-down upon (I have personally had five keyboard replacements). The way Catalina send…

It’s possible they will do both. Fixing bugs isn’t really keynote worthy, so hopefully there’s a ton of stability fixes behind the scenes.

It's possible they will do both, and I hope they do! I should add the disclaimer that I didn't actually expect them to talk about stability or Catalina's woes, for general corporate "avoid talking about things that make us look bad" reasons. Mentioning bug fixes inadvertently draws attention to the fact you added bugs; claiming increased stability highlights that the OS was once unstable. This is why Snow Leopard's "no new features" tagline was so memorable — it's so rare for a company to outright claim something like that.

But I have to ask myself: why this release? Why fix bugs in Big Sur, but not Catalina or Mojave? For example, the annoying bug where Mail randomly becomes the active application[1] has been floating around for years and still isn't fixed, and there are only two reasons for this: Apple is stretched too thin and can't spare the developers to work on bug fixes, or Apple doesn't care, and is simply willing to let the Mac languish, taking the reputation hit in favour of increased iPhone sales. The fact that they've overhauled the entire interface means it's not the first one — they do have enough resources to make large, sweeping changes to the OS. So I will be absolutely unsurprised if, ten months from now, I decide to upgrade to Big Sur on a whim, and a couple of minutes in, Mail pops up once more.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23359820

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#119

Post by iNerdier »

CharlesW wrote: post #102
knolan wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve a major 10.15 issue on two Macs where doing any kind of calculation in Spotlight maxes out all cores on the CPU for 10-15 minutes.

Friend, it's time for a clean install. You should never have to do one, but macOS isn't yet iPadOS, and cruft happens.

Sorry but that’s absolutely rubbish. You shouldn’t have to wipe everything from a computer to have it usable, ever.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#120

Post by Chazprime »

CharlesW wrote: post #102
knolan wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve a major 10.15 issue on two Macs where doing any kind of calculation in Spotlight maxes out all cores on the CPU for 10-15 minutes.

Friend, it's time for a clean install. You should never have to do one, but macOS isn't yet iPadOS, and cruft happens.

+1

The Catalina beta was a sh!tshow on my MacBook Pro, as was the first (upgraded) release. A fresh install made most of the issues go away.

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