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

Post by lwhi » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:47 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #107

lwhi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every new release of OS X has been an increasing disappointment for years now. Security issues, bugs, incompatibilities. It's almost as if they've been actively devesting in OS X. At least we now understand why. Mac's are no longer machines fit for professional development. It's a damn shame, but it's true in my mind.

They just switched Macs to an entirely new architecture. I think they probably put more effort into macOS than iOS this year.

Post by saagarjha » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:49 AM UTC

pcr910303 wrote: post #115

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 ma…

Post by 72deluxe » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:50 AM UTC

Xylakant wrote: post #293

72deluxe wrote: post #290

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That doesn't make sense. What is in / that is dangerous? Finder hides all of /etc and /bin and /usr for the "protection" of normal users, just like the default view for Windows Explorer under C:\Windows\System. But you can still change the contents on Windows, or see the directories in Terminal on macOS. Should they hide those directories when you use Terminal too? After all, /etc is important. Your reasoning would a…

> That doesn't make sense. What is in / that is dangerous? There have been examples of (un)installer scripts removing substantial parts of your system, steam for example. Linux in this case https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671 , but not generally unthinkable on MacOS. It's generally good if the system puts up barriers to prevent such occurrences. You're entirely welcome to disable these protec…

Post by michaelmrose » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:56 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #219

dane-pgp wrote: post #151

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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…

Post by saagarjha » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:58 AM UTC

mayoff wrote: post #265

72deluxe wrote: post #121

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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.

man synthetic.conf: > synthetic.conf describes virtual symbolic links and empty directories to be created at the root mount point.