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

developer.apple.com

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

#111

Post by MR4D »

dimmke wrote: post #18

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 chan…

My huge beef (yeah, I'm nitpicking, but it bugs me) is the camera icon.

The new one looks like a broken stop/play button (the play is backwards).

I know the old one was "skeuomorphic", but it was useful. This one burns brain calories just trying to figure out if it's a stop/play button or not.

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

#113

Post by Koshkin »

ByteJockey wrote: post #76
mxcrossb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that and the fact that tech website users basically complain about every UI change. Hacker News is full of people who think XFCE is the height of desktop experience. This is fundamentally different than apple’s core fan base who seem to like any change just for the sake of change.

What's wrong with xfce?

Nothing. It’s just not “the height of desktop experience,” is all.

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

#114

Post by pier25 »

hyperpape wrote: post #41
loughnane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple knows that a large percentage of the people who buy its computers are software engineers I suspect a large percentage of software engineers buy their computers, but I'm skeptical at the assertion that a large percentage of people who buy their computers are software engineers.

Looks like they've been selling around 18 million macs a year ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-ma... ). If you ignore individuals having multiple computers, and assume the average lifetime of a machine is 5 years, you get 90 million people with a Mac. I don't know how many developers there are, but saw 20-25 million in some estimates.

IIRC Tim said in today's keynote there are 23M Apple developers. Very roughly, 20% of macOS users are developers.

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

#115

Post by pcr910303 »

dimmke wrote: post #18

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 chan…

Well, I'm usually the person to quickly point out that HN is very conservative, and advocate the modern UI/tech stack that HN thinks is too flat or too bloated, etc... But as a long time macOS user, I can't say that the UI is good.

If I can fix one thing from the new UI, I think it should have borders or at least a different background color, like pre-iOS 13 with button shapes. The current iOS buttons (and the new macOS design) doesn't give any visual cue for the user to know whether this is an icon label or a button. That's a problem, and one that macOS has solved elegantly by having different textures (like the toolbar).

It's now... more like Windows 10 where everything is on a flat surface without any differences.

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

#116

Post by ceocoder »

SllX wrote: post #106
ceocoder wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hacker News is full of people who think XFCE is the height of desktop experience. This is fundamentally different than apple’s core fan base who seem to like any change just for the sake of change. that statement seems perhaps too harsh to both HN crowd and Apple's core fan base, I spend more time on HN than I care to admit and I can assure you that I do not like XFCE desktop experience at all , my desktop is runni…

Nah, I watch most of the WM-related threads because it's more interesting to me than I am willing to admit in public life. XFCE gets trotted out generally any time GNOME, KDE, MATE or Cinnamon does, but especially in the case of the former two. There's usually a cadre of MATE and Cinnamon reps as well, of which you might as well consider yourself at least an honorary member at this point. StumpWM, i3 and dwm are also…

I was perhaps a bit unclear in my post - I use Cinnamon and am thankful to those who made it, however I don't think that or XFCE or MATE or KDE are the "height of desktop experience", they get the job done.

In my opinion height of desktop experience was Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - I still miss workspaces, and TotalSpaces2 is a valiant effort but less likely to work with each new update.

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

#117

Post by RivieraKid »

saagarjha wrote: post #108
RivieraKid wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I agree. Hacker News is a very conservative place (in terms of technology and UI changes). I think in general Apple does a phenomenal job at UI design. That said, the user experience of Mac OS still has plenty of low hanging fruit: - Window management and app switching could be much better. The "app switching system" I liked the most was in Gnome 2 / MATE - I could just quickly move the cursor to the bottom task…

> When I download an app (.dmg) and click it, it shows up as a new disk. How do you think it should show up?

As an installer program, like on Windows. Or as an installable package (Mac OS should have an integrated package management system like Homebrew).

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

#118

Post by SllX »

zeristor wrote: post #2

Wait macOS 11, not 10.16. I assume this is a breaking change then?

Less breaking than going from 10.14 to 10.15, but they did drop support for my laptop (although I think the usual pattern is another year or two of security updates, so I guess I'll see when I'm replacing it).

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

#120

Post by _bxg1 »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #67
jacurtis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. The only real gripe I feel is that excessive padding. It is sort of like scrolling through Dribbble app mockups. The layouts look amazing as a mockup, but when you actually go to make or use the app it isn't as practical as you want. On a desktop, with a mouse, I have near-perfect precision. I don't need overly-padded icons and windows because I have the precision of a mouse. The extra padding jus…

Might be good for laptops with a touchpad though. I don't know the sales split, but I assume Apple sells many more laptops than desktops.

I actually feel like I have even more precision on a touchpad because I'm not sliding around a weighted object
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