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

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141–150 of 379 posts

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

#141

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.

> 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. .... Yeah, that's pretty much true, and for very good reason. Every time an interface changes, it forces people to stop using the system and figure out the new interface. As such, while it is possible to make changes that are beneficial enough to…

I don't know about you, but my brain is pretty plastic. My workflow isn't so sacred that I'm not at least willing to consider that there are other designs that I may find enjoyable or even more efficient to use.

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "you can run iOS apps on your Mac now" announcement basically guaranteed touchscreen Macs. It might be possible to use many iOS apps with a trackpad, but it's not going to be a pleasant experience. Put together a touch-friendly new OS UI with the ability to run a zillion apps designed-for-touch in a context where all your competition has touch-enabled devices and it's hard to believe they'd hold out any l…

Touchscreen Macs running iOS apps... At that point, what exactly is the difference between the product lines?

Would you like to go around with a laptop in your pocket?

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

#143
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why Apple provides an accessibility panel in system settings.

Normally, yes; but sometimes the change required to help one group doesn't hinder anyone else, and also is very hard to automatically derive the "accessible" version of the UX in a way that doesn't cause more harm than help (by e.g. accidentally pushing critical buttons out of visibility into a slide menu; or breaking a menu onto two lines such that there's less viewport left than originally designed for at minimum h…

> they're designing once, assuming captioning.

At the cost of shrinking everyone's effective screen size.

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

#144
Oh my gosh I wish they'd have stopped with Rhapsody, to tell you the truth. Constantly redoing the UI while leaving basic functionality at a very bare level is really not doing it for me any more. Apple has moved against power users several times in the past in more aggressive terms but always having a fresh look in the UI is just a pointless exercise.

Consistency is much more important especially when reaching the phone- and tablet-raised crop of people who don't really know how a computer works nor do they care. Same with many people, they simply need a computer for their various duties. A more tech-oriented person will never have problems adapting to even radically different UI paradigms and degrees of chrome but less techy people will.

Add more functionality to the OS, fix the ancient packages, do SOMETHING for the more advanced users, Apple. Please?

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

#145
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit off topic but in regards to contrast, I’ve been using Apple’s Music program lately and I absolutely cannot tell the difference between shuffle/repeat on or off. It is the lowest amount of contrast I have ever seen on a toggled button. I figure it must be something with my machine but haven’t really delved too deeply and couldn’t find much when I looked. Was hoping for a bit more out of Music. It’s decen…

I don't think it's your machine, although I hadn't tested this until now because I almost never use shuffle. :) I think the problem is that they're indicating state by toggling between your chosen accent color and black. If your accent color is, say, pink, the difference is pretty obvious, but if your accent color is relatively dark, like blue or purple, it's harder to see. It seems like they could solve this by togg…

That may be a wonderful clue, thank you :-).

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

#146
post #143
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally, yes; but sometimes the change required to help one group doesn't hinder anyone else, and also is very hard to automatically derive the "accessible" version of the UX in a way that doesn't cause more harm than help (by e.g. accidentally pushing critical buttons out of visibility into a slide menu; or breaking a menu onto two lines such that there's less viewport left than originally designed for at minimum h…

> they're designing once, assuming captioning. At the cost of shrinking everyone's effective screen size.

No? They still put stuff down there. Just not critical stuff (e.g. establishing-shot location text, which instead tends to get displayed centered or center-left in modern visual design, since nobody ever sets their captions to the middle.)

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

#147

Loss of affordance, density and contrast. Why do designers hate these 3 things? It's pretty, yes.

Apple's original human interface designer says that

Apple has "razor-sharp focus on a user many of us often fail to even consider: The potential user, the buyer", ignoring the needs of people who already paid their money.

https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the non-modifiable hidden system partition? Inability to create directories under / That alone has stopped me moving my Macs to the latest OS after testing.

Turn off System Integrity Protection. Not a good idea but it will let you make unnecessary changes to /.

All they really did was make it harder to thoughtlessly do. If you can't cope with the procedure needed to make changes to the write-protected folders, maybe whatever it is you wanted to write there isn't actually that important.

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

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I don't think they're anywhere near locking down to the iOS level. Could you explain some of these incremental lock downs? I honestly can't think of any that are genuine restrictions, but that might just be because I don't encounter them with what I do.

How about the non-modifiable hidden system partition? Inability to create directories under / That alone has stopped me moving my Macs to the latest OS after testing.

I'm genuinely curious: why do you want to create new directories at the root level? Is this something you're just used to doing and it breaks your customary way of working? Is it a "general principle" thing (which I suspect is a lot of the objection the HN crowd really has at the root, no pun intended)? I've been using OS X-based Macs since 2002 and used Linux and FreeBSD for a decade before that, and I don't recall ever having an actual need to create a root-level directory.

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

#150

For the last few versions of iOS, MacOS has felt somewhat old-fashioned, lacking things I've grown to really appreciate on my phone and iPad like the Control Center. I'm glad that is now coming to MacOS. This feels like a much-needed facelift. I'm glad is isn't a polished XFCE, there are a lot of options for people who like this sort of thing already, just run Linux. In its current state, Linux on the desktop is defi…

I expect that MacOS 11.2 will be iPadOS.
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