What’s New in macOS Big Sur: Human Interface Guidelines • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by lloeki » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:51 AM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #213

PostThisTooFast wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it as a sign of "doom," but rather more regression. It took YEARS for Apple to admit that their keyboards were shit, and they still haven't admitted that the emoji bar on their so-called "pro" computers is an embarrassing and failed gimmick. In fact, they've doubled down on it and now don't offer ANY proper laptop keyboard. But that's off-topic to some extent; I scanned through this page looking for some…

> But that's off-topic to some extent; I scanned through this page looking for some good news for developers. Topping my list is support for SVG assets. NOPE. WTF? Android has had this how long? Apple's "@2x", "@3X" bitmaps were amateur-hour to begin with, but a decade later? No vector support? Not that I don't think they should support it (they should), but this is almost certainly due to perfectionism and bias, not…

They tried non integer scaling, and it just didn’t work out. You could enable it with some “default write” on 10.4-10.6 IIRC and you could witness the various iterations, but basically the result proved that pragmatically integer scaling gave much more consistent and predictable results.

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

#252

Post by tomduncalf » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:52 AM UTC

jumelles wrote: post #239

jayd16 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I really don't think they're going to put out touch screen Macs. Why not? I think its a distinct possibility.

From the article: "Beginning in macOS 11, the track of a slider with tick marks aligns with the center of the thumb."

Ha, very good spot! Seems like another fairly strong hint (along with the padding and the iOS app support) that touch screen Macs are coming

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

#253

Post by maigret » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 6:53 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #219

dane-pgp wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cory Doctorow talked about these worries quite eloquently back in his 2011 keynote to the Chaos Computer Congress, titled "The Coming War on General Purpose Computation". https://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-...

I mean, that was nearly a decade ago and we're still doing just fine for general purpose computation. At what point do we stop saying "he was so prescient, look we're almost there," and just admit things haven't turned out as badly as people feared? DRM has turned out be more of a nuisance than an apocalypse, and general purpose computing is at least as available today as it was in 2011. In some ways it is even easie…

Exact! Or build your own Kubernetes cluster at home on Raspberry Pi for less than the price of a phone or TV.

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

#254

Post by saagarjha » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:02 AM UTC

chrisweekly wrote: post #191

doot wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Topping my list is support for SVG assets. NOPE. WTF? From the Xcode 12 Beta Release Notes: > Added support for Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) image assets. These preserve their vector representation with deployment targets of macOS 10.15 or later, iOS 13 or later, and iPadOS 13 or later. (18389814) > Android has had this how long? Apple's "@2x", "@3X" bitmaps were amateur-hour to begin with, but a decade later? No…

PDF !!!= SVG

But it is vector.

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

#255

Post by int_19h » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:07 AM UTC

lloeki wrote: post #251

eyelidlessness wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's off-topic to some extent; I scanned through this page looking for some good news for developers. Topping my list is support for SVG assets. NOPE. WTF? Android has had this how long? Apple's "@2x", "@3X" bitmaps were amateur-hour to begin with, but a decade later? No vector support? Not that I don't think they should support it (they should), but this is almost certainly due to perfectionism and bias, not…

They tried non integer scaling, and it just didn’t work out. You could enable it with some “default write” on 10.4-10.6 IIRC and you could witness the various iterations, but basically the result proved that pragmatically integer scaling gave much more consistent and predictable results.

And yet it works pretty well on Win10, judging by my devices (that have scale settings ranging from 150% to 225%).

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

#256

Post by int_19h » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:13 AM UTC

ziftface wrote: post #188

_fzslm wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

strong disagree. MacOS and iPadOS will take cues from each other, but they will remain fundamentally different. MacOS for the old-timey folks who want root access and to be able to browse the file system, iPadOS for people who like having all for that abstracted away from them a-la iOS. neither is right or wrong, just caters to different kinds of people who prefer different ways of working.

There's also the fact that macOS's UI isn't touch-based, which is a distinction that apple follows religiously. As long as they keep that distinction, there will always be a need for both UIs.

Judging by all the whitespace in the new guidelines, they are in fact preparing for a touch-based macOS.

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

#257

Post by phs318u » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:13 AM UTC

Too late, don't care. I no longer trust Apple with my work. Ask me how many times I've re-installed macOS Catalina on my mid-2013 MBA since it came out? Ask me how many times I've had to restore my MBA to an earlier TimeMachine snapshot (local thank god) because the Apple Mail app shat itself unrecoverably while copying several thousand emails from one mailbox to another. Ask me how many more stories like that I've got. And to think, I'm an IT professional with 35 years in the industry and been an Apple user since 2004, having had a deep knowledge of many an operating system (including flirting with Linux in between Windows 2K and iMac (I'm aware one's an OS and the other's HW).

The marriage is over Apple. We're headed for divorce and no promises you make now will convince me to stay. I'm leaving. In reality, it's been over for awhile, but of course, having invested so many years in this relationship, it's been hard to make the mental leap needed to let go. Well - now I'm there. While I'm sure your new hardware will indeed be magical with industry leading battery life and performance, that performance is only as good as the OS that runs on it. Who cares if you get an extra 6 hours battery life, when I have to restore from TM yet again and walk away overnight while 200+GB of storage gets re-installed? I loved you, and will think of you fondly from a distance. All the best.

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

#258

Post by raxxorrax » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:15 AM UTC

breakfastduck wrote: post #29

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…

I agree, I think the new UI looks great. People are taking the UI / ARM change as apple taking away more control, but macOS is THE development platform of the entire apple ecosystem. So yeah, the ecosystem may be tighter knitted, but they sure as hell will not lock down macOS like they do iOS, they have so many mac users who are developers and apple are absolutely aware of that. People complain about features in cata…

Easy to bypass was also an argument for locked down mobile OS. Software on these platforms is mostly useless aside from 2-3 social apps if you like that. I think locking down features is a mistake and does only draw in certain developers. The reason the pushback might not be as large is that competitors for desktop seem to be sleeping, or worse, try to do the same.

I still don't believe Apple on the privacy front. Yes, they are better than competitors. Anyway, I would like freedom and privacy and don't see them as contradictory. And you won't get more privacy if a manufacturer locks down environments.

We had OS without any privacy intrusion without any form of lock down. MS drops the ball constantly, agreed, but that isn't a metric anyone should look for.

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

#259

Post by bigpeopleareold » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:17 AM UTC

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #141

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #136

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. .... 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.

I don't think for some it is about plasticity, but really to embrace change on one's own schedule. That's my preference and it's a little piece of freedom. I did this recently moving from GNOME to XFCE, to experiment with what XFCE offers specifically with memory consumption, usability, etc. and after some bumps, I am rather happy.

Optimizing things where the primary focus of attention is what I am looking at mostly is more relevant to me than a shifting design languages. But, I know others will have different views on this and this is based on what people are actually happy with.

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

#260

Post by raxxorrax » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 7:18 AM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #149

72deluxe wrote: post #121

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.

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…

> I'm genuinely curious: why do you want to create new directories at the root level?

Why would Apple want to restrict access to certain memory locations?