What’s New in macOS Big Sur: Human Interface Guidelines

It seems like these new Macs might as well be phone with a keyboard in the way they treat their software and "pro" consumers taking away options when screen real-estate exists to empower the mouse user.

Wake me up when they use less glue to hold their computers together : (

Yes, but color is such a helpful distinguishing feature that contrast can never make up for it disappearing. I can squint until I can’t distinguish any of the symbols and still tell which is which when they are colored.

The title is misleading as it implies everything new in macOS, when the linked page is limited to human interface guidelines. Perhaps this should be retitled something like "What's new in MacOS Big Sur (UX|HIG|Human Interace Guidelines)"?

I have to be honest and go completely against the crowd here - but I think the UI updates are very good. They make the two OSes look cohesive but in a tasteful way. The extra padding in all of the UI is the only thing that I chafe at a little bit, it feels unnecessary. I really don't think they're going to put out touch screen Macs.

So I'm not sure what there is to get upset about. I don't see any big functional changes in the OS aside from reworking the notification center UI a little- and I like this new version more. It's already been confirmed that they aren't locking down apps to the app store or anything like that.

It seems like people think that because they're taking design cues from iOS they intend to lock it down like iOS and they're transferring that fear into dislike of the new UI itself.

Apple knows that a large percentage of the people who buy its computers are software engineers and if they ever do fully lock their computers down in that way they'd be ceding that marketshare entirely, along with catching quite a bit of heat for it in the press. Maybe eventually that calculus is worth it to them but I don't think that's what this is a step towards. I think they just want users who are fully plugged into their ecosystem to feel like it's a cohesive experience across platforms and this achieves that.