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macOS Big Sur Preview

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91–100 of 391 posts

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#92
Pretty sure that in the near future, macOS, iPadOS and iOS will be one and the same. They'll just call it...Apple OS. This is readily apparent by Catalyst, ability to have native iOS and iPadOS apps, ARM architecture, and the changing of macOS' UI to slowly be closer to iOS/iPadOS.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#93
post #54

So the "About this Mac" screen says "Version 11.0" ... A silent farewell to OS X?

What was "silent" about it? They made a big song & dance of dropping the X last year. This just makes it even more official.

The X was dropped in 2016, with macOS Sierra. Maybe because they needed the X next year for the iPhone.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#94

Is there a reason why Apple updates their Mac apps with each OS release, instead of individually through the app store? I would imagine the changes to Safari could've been made without having to upgrade the OS.

They usually release new versions of their apps, including Safari for older OS versions too.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#95

I'm mixed on the design. I really, really dislike the way macOS has looked since Yosemite, and compared to that, I think this one is an improvement overall. The icons have more depth, and there's far more use of color across the UI. But, it also looks extremely mobile-inspired—I suspect Apple's primary goal was to make iOS ports and apps look less out of place. That's a fine objective, but it also means they weren't…

I think the lack of title bars is an issue now. I've found it annoys me most on my web browser, when I have lots of tabs open there is one small section between the 3 dots to minimize/close and the first tab that I can use to move the window. My guess is that they expect most people to use the application full screen and not to be moving it around. I've got a large monitor and I don't keep my windows full screened so…

If done well, then contrast will replace color for many things (e.g. menu bars) as a separating function.

If done poorly, then it will look horrible because they got the contrast wrong.

High contrast should be used where you want someone to pay attention (like an "exit only" market on a US freeway exit). Low contrast where you want something to fade into the background (like a mile marker).

The problem with "flat" designs is that it seems hard to get it done well. Just think how long it took the industry to get the "ok" & "cancel" buttons to highlight in a consistent way for users.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#96
post #25

I'm wondering if this is the release where OpenGL goes from deprecated to fully removed. Presumably Apple didn't want to write OpenGL drivers (full, not ES) for their in-house GPUs.

I wonder how this will affect java minecraft on the mac. Does LWJGL have a Metal backend?

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#98

I'm not sure why I continue to look forward to new Mac OS announcements every year when Apple continues to focus on consumer apps/features and not pro/developer features. Literally nothing in that preview page excites me as someone that uses Mac OS mainly for developing software. I wish they would use WWDC to announce developer and pro features and not consumer OS features. I don't really care for the UI changes, but…

> I'm not sure why I continue to look forward to new Mac OS announcements every year when Apple continues to focus on consumer apps/features and not pro/developer features.

The only session the press cares about is the keynote, so geeky stuff hasn't been keynote fodder for several years. Everything but the WWDC keynote will be for a developer audience.

Re: macOS Big Sur Preview

#100
post #34

The UI and UX seem to be getting worse on macOS with the “iOSification” of the OS. I thought Jony Ive’s exit would stop that trend. It’ll be interesting to read perspectives from John Gruber, M J Tsai, Marco Arment, etc. I still haven’t upgraded from Mojave to Catalina because of serious bugs reported by other people (including data loss issues in Mail). I’ll see if Big Sur shows improvements (reported by others) and…

Personally I’ve had zero issues upgrading to Catalina, it seems to perform better than Mojave for me, and more stable too.

I’ve a major 10.15 issue on two Macs where doing any kind of calculation in Spotlight maxes out all cores on the CPU for 10-15 minutes.
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