
macOS Big Sur Preview - theBashShell
https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur-preview/
======
cytzol
I was really hoping they'd take some time to address Catalina's glaring issues
— its slowness, bugginess, just general sloppiness — and instead they did the
opposite.

Honestly, every time Apple has done _anything_ with the Mac the past couple of
years, they've screwed it up. The infamous keyboards that they doubled-down
and then tripled-down upon (I have personally had five keyboard replacements).
The way Catalina sends the hash of every binary you run to Apple. The built-in
Catalyst apps that look ugly and feel out-of-place. The Touch Bar which I
still, years later, inadvertently activate several times a day (I've had to
remove all the buttons on the right), which they addressed by making
_mandatory_. The recurring bugs and kernel panics that have been lying around
for years, unfixed.

I have the least confidence in Apple I've ever had. I'm afraid to run Big Sur,
not because it changes things, but because it's _Apple_ who are behind it.

~~~
GeekyBear
>Honestly, every time Apple has done anything with the Mac the past couple of
years, they've screwed it up.

Compared to what OS?

The latest Windows 10 update buggers up Storage Spaces and printing, hard on
the heels of another Windows 10 Update that deleted the user's files.

~~~
fareesh
Is it uncommon for folks to use a Linux desktop as their primary OS? I've been
doing so for about 10 years and I've had no complaints. Whenever I need some
specific software I boot to Windows or use Virtualbox. I also have a Macbook
Pro 2015

~~~
jki275
Uncommon? Yes. Very few people run Linux as a their primary OS.

~~~
ironmagma
Not sure why this is downvoted, it’s objective truth. I’ll go one farther
though and say that Linux sucks, and in fact we must admit that if we want it
to ever be good. It requires constant investment by the community to remain
competitive with the other big players, who are constantly reshaping and
making advances we need to keep up with. This is spoken as a desktop Linux
user.

~~~
bitcharmer
Out of curiosity; if Linux sucks, why do you still choose it over other
systems?

~~~
ironmagma
Open source software is great when it works, much better than proprietary
software. I have a strong preference for open source; but I can't use Linux
for anything serious because of how so many things are broken (not the kernel
per se, so not "technically" Linux itself but the surrounding ecosystem). So,
I use it as my hobby machine for whatever I can, because of dogfooding. The
only way I will know what to fix, or even want to fix it, is by having to deal
with it day after day.

~~~
bitcharmer
Been using Linux for work and as my daily driver for 10+ years. Never had any
problem that would make me consider jumping ships.

Professionally, I work with ultra-low latency systems for high frequency/algo
trading and it would be impossible to achieve the level of tuning and
performance that Linux offers on other OSes.

I'm interested in the types of issues that made the experience bad for you.

~~~
ironmagma
Here's a few...

* Even though there is tons of extra swap space, running too many apps at once causes the entire system to become unresponsive for ~20s at a time. Granted, I am using older hardware, but there should be some minimal amount of responsiveness allocated to indicate the system isn't just totally dead.

* Wifi GUI Gnome utility often ceases working and requires wifi to be turned off and on again. I got so fed up with this I just wrote a command to set Wifi to my credentials, and even then, I have to unplug/replug the wifi dongle frequently to get it to re-register with the system. On Arch Linux, this GUI utility doesn't even work at all. This has happened with multiple different makes of dongles.

* When I was using Ubuntu for work purposes (and Python / node / Docker stack), it would frequently run out of file descriptors. There was no solution other than to restart.

* Last night I started to encounter an issue where Ctrl-X would cut text successfully, but when I go to paste it, it will not be there. Possibly a bug with VSCode, not sure yet, but I haven't encountered it running VSCode on Mac at all.

* Something about programs being interrupted by context switches to other programs that are using large slices of CPU time leads to input being misinterpreted. If I am running a Rust compilation in one window, typing `hello` into an adjacent terminal window might show up as `hellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllo`. This happens in a wide variety of applications. I suspect the problem has to do with input library routines not receiving real time priority, or something like that. Weirdly enough, I saw the same issue on FreeBSD.

~~~
swiley
>re: WiFi gui

Don’t use gnome and in particular don’t use their network configuration tools.
I’ve never seen those reliably work.

>re repeat under load

I’ve had this happen on OSX but I don’t think I’ve ever had it happen on
Linux. Then again I almost exclusively type anything long in vim so maybe it’s
a bug with the widget toolkit the app is using?

~~~
ironmagma
> Don’t use gnome

This kind of response, though, gets to the core of why desktop Linux isn't a
super popular choice. The defaults should _work_. Most popular Linux
distributions use GNOME by default. We should fix GNOME rather than say people
should know they need to not use it. If using KDE is the obvious solution to
the plurality of problems someone might encounter, why isn't KDE the default
for most distros? I'm sure there are political reasons too, but those are
reasons that matter to the end user just as much as technical ones. They are,
in fact, indistinguishable from that perspective.

Even if the solution is KDE (or something else), a person who switched will
find that KDE itself has issues as well, and when someone encounters them,
they will complain and be told to not use KDE, use GNOME because it doesn't
have that issue. We can't continuously flip flop stacks just because we
encounter particular bugs.

> maybe it’s a bug with the widget toolkit the app is using?

I assume that's GTK, and it's possible. I see the bug in Firefox, Chrome, and
GNOME's terminal, although strangely not VSCode.

------
AnonC
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 decide when to upgrade. I
don’t even run beta versions of macOS point updates, which is in stark
contrast to iOS betas, which have been of better quality (comparatively).

Edit: Apple seems to be ignoring long term Mac users (even the vocal ones) for
quite sometime. It was poorer hardware quality and lack of hardware updates
for several years. Now it’s software, where it’s been going about removing
what makes native macOS experiences great. The Catalyst apps are not “native
Mac apps” by any stretch of imagination.

~~~
heavyset_go
Catalina was the primary motivator to move back to Linux for myself, and I
don't regret it. If you care about things like this, you can configure Plasma
Desktop with macOS features and shortcuts and end up feeling right at home.

~~~
dijksterhuis
I've been umm-ing and ahh-ing about making the switch to a linux laptop full
time.

Currently have my work desktop (linux + windows for gaming :D) at home for
lockdown and a file share/media server (linux) hooked up to the tele. All
seems to work. Even my firewire audio interface is more stable on my linux
work desktop (it's not supported on Windows 10 > 1903 / OSX > 10.13).

The one thing that is keeping me switching is Apple Music w/ the iCloud Music
Library syncing. Legit the only reason I haven't ditched my 10 year old
macbook pro yet.

~~~
heavyset_go
I was stuck with Google Music for a while until I ran a Jellyfin instance
along with some Subsonic fork. I just VPN in and use the Android client or
DSub when I want to listen to music, or use the web interface from my
computer. This was another choice that I don't regret.

------
SenHeng
I’m surprised at all the negative takes. I thought it was refreshing, they’re
reintroducing colours and icons, cleaning up and using a consistent design
language across platforms, and introducing new, well tested convenience
features.

~~~
AlexandrB
> cleaning up and using a consistent design language across platforms

This is not a positive. A laptop is not a big iPhone and shouldn't use the
same design language. One of the worst thing about Windows 10 is its use of
huge, touch-friendly interfaces in an OS most commonly used with a keyboard
and mouse. MacOS appears to be headed the same way (and it doesn't even
support touch screens).

~~~
WorldMaker
Per Fitz's Law, touch-friendly _is_ mouse friendly. The larger the click
target the faster and easier it is to click, especially as the distance
between the current mouse position and the target increases. It's a huge mouse
accessibility win to design touch-first target sizes, and there's decades of
UX research on that topic. Just because the mouse is precise enough to do it
doesn't mean that users should have to "360 no-scope" all of their apps every
day.

~~~
wtallis
> Per Fitz's Law, touch-friendly is mouse friendly.

That's only true to an extent. It stops being true when the low-density UI re-
design forces the user to take more actions to accomplish the same task. If I
have to dig through a deeper menu structure, or flip back an forth between
pages instead of having the information all on-screen at once, that change is
touch-friendly but hostile to desktop and many laptop users.

~~~
WorldMaker
First of all, if a UI is badly structured and needs a lot of flipping back and
forth that isn't touch-friendly either. Good UX design should be about putting
everything the user needs at the user's fingertip (literally so in touch-
friendly, but figuratively so for mouse and keyboard).

Particularly on that subject, density is mostly orthogonal to touch-friendly
outside of touch target size, and that's something that Microsoft has been
very honest about as a series of lessons learned between Windows 8 and Windows
10.

Keep in mind a _lot_ of the density changes in Windows 8 weren't about touch-
friendliness, they were about _good typography_ and reading friendly white
space. They tried to optimize the basic app templates for comfortable reading
patterns as if every app needed to be a well typeset newspaper with good
strong margins between columns/articles. On the surface it was a lot of good
ideas individually, but the criticisms were valid that it led to some very
sparse designs by default and that they made overriding the defaults a little
too hard, the defaults a little too hand-holding.

For reading-only "information" the density of an app can be the same, touch-
friendly or not. It's the control targets that should be adjusted just that
little bit bigger. The difference in size between a past mouse-only target and
touch-friendly is a lot smaller than people think, people are fairly
comfortable at touching some very small targets (have you seen how dense most
smartphone apps are today?). Even there too, Microsoft found out and admitted
that user comfort for touch-friendly allows for far more density of touch
targets than they at first recommended in Windows 8. (There's some interesting
debate if those changes in UX Research Study results over the lifetime of
Windows 8 and early Windows 10 testing were due to increased user familiarity
with touch surfaces over those intervening years or some interesting
unanticipated bias in the earlier studies.)

The density of the UI should be a factor of the user's ability to focus on
said UI more than a "touch-friendly" concern. Even after Microsoft greatly
adjusted their design guidelines on density in Windows 10 they keep a lot of
their own apps UI at low density not because they "have to" for touch-
friendly, but for various concerns like user friendliness, good typography,
and analysis paralysis when the user is confronted with too many choices at
once.

------
bonestormii_
I appreciate aesthetic beauty of rooms, buildings, and interfaces, but to me
what has jumped the shark is the entire conversation about icons, fonts, and
toolbars.

No one can explain why the icons, fonts, and toolbars from 3 years ago aren't
good enough anymore. No one can explain why we need constant "refreshers".

Let's say you have a new microwave. Every microwave's controls are a little
different, but you know generally the conventions of their limited interfaces.
There are presets; separate non-microwave functions like timers; maybe a light
and a fan control.

The first few times you use it, it's a little weird. But you use the same one
for like 5-10 years at a time. It becomes effortless, second nature. Food in,
door shoot, beep-boop-beep by muscle-memory. Your food is ready.

Imagine someone snuck into your home and rearranged the buttons, and changed
some underlying functions. Now, when the timer is done, you don't hit the
timer button to clear the display--you hold the cancel/stop button that also
turns off the microwave. They think it's more logical that way.

It doesn't matter, but it's frustrating. "Why was that necessary?", you might
ask yourself. Neither way is fundamentally more or less logical. It's just
different.

It's not that changes are bad, but semi-annual changes for utilitarian things
seem excessive. You accept a certain amount of change when you replace your
microwave, or your car, or your computer. But not when you take your car to be
tuned up. They don't replace the break pads, and then change the location of
the stereo's volume knob.

I think he philosophy of heavy handed redesign was useful in bringing computer
interfaces to up to new hardware specs early on in tech, but we're reaching a
point where they should be slowed down in favor of utility. The claim that it
is design in the name of usability is no longer true. Call it what it is. It
is merely seasonal fashion and nothing more. Some fashions are timeless. We
should find them and stick with them as defaults that we are very hesitant to
change.

Consistency can facilitate clean design, allowing you to conceal and expose
complexity by strongly established conventions, helping to achieve balance on
the beauty-utility continuum.

~~~
zepto
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic–usability_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic–usability_effect)

------
lisper
IMHO Apple's design jumped the shark a long time ago. Even apart from the
aesthetics of the "flat" look, which I like about as much as fingernails on a
chalkboard, Apple has completely abandoned the principles that made the
original Mac great: ease of use and discoverability. Once upon a time it was
easy to tell where the affordances were, what you could click on, editable vs
non-editable text. Nowadays everything looks the same. The only way to tell
whether something is clickable is to try to click on it. The only way you can
tell whether something is editable is to try to edit it. And the UI is lousy
with hidden features that only show up when you hover over them, with
absolutely no indication of where they are until you happen to get lucky and
move the mouse over one of them. Easter eggs lose their charm when you have to
find one in order to accomplish an actual task.

~~~
Nition
Unfortunately you can replace Apple with Microsoft here and say the exact same
thing.

~~~
lisper
Indeed. :-(

No one makes a computer that Just Works any more. It's a real problem.

------
Wowfunhappy
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 designing _for_ desktop and laptops
specifically, and it shows. For instance, most of the apps lack title bars,
and I'm not sure where I'd click to drag windows as a result.

~~~
flareback
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 this annoys me.

~~~
MR4D
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.

------
dcchambers
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 spend such little time in the UI
that I guess it doesn't matter much. The iOS-ification of Mac OS is an
unfortunate change. I don't use any of the built-in apps with the exception of
terminal.app and finder. Meh.

Most interesting: This appears to be the end of "OS X" as version was listed
as "11.0" in the keynote.

Will Big Sur and Mac OS (beyond OS X) continue to be certified UNIX?

~~~
zimpenfish
> Most interesting: This appears to be the end of "OS X" as version was listed
> as "11.0" in the keynote.

"Mac OS X" was dropped for macOS in 2016.

[https://fortune.com/2016/06/13/apple-mac-os-
sierra/](https://fortune.com/2016/06/13/apple-mac-os-sierra/)

~~~
dcchambers
Right, but the version number on the last few releases was still "10.x"

------
css
Scrolling this site with a mouse is comically bad, this is clearly designed to
be used only with a trackpad. I cant read most of the content without very
carefully scrolling unnaturally. You also have to pause for the animations to
play, but if you scroll one pixel too far they don't play, so its a guessing
game of whether you're in the right place or whether you missed some content.

~~~
read_if_gay_
Basically all of macOS is comically bad with a mouse and clearly designed for
trackpads. You need to install a third-party tool to even disable mouse
acceleration.

~~~
ptr
I thought the third party tool was a kext and was made non-functional. Is
there a new way?

~~~
millimeterman
I use SteerMouse. It lets you customize mouse speed/acceleration, remap all
your buttons, and set up mouse chords.

It's admittedly paid and it's stupid that you should need to pay for
functionality like this, but it's useful enough for other stuff (e.g. setting
up buttons/chords to manage spaces to replace the trackpad gestures) that I
live with it.

------
switz
I still remember the Snow Leopard 'No New Features' launch. Mac OS has been as
buggy as ever lately, I'd welcome another 'no new features' release with open
arms.

~~~
GordonS
I was going to say something similar - I really wish they'd just
slow.the.hell.down with the new releases, rather than continually changing
things for what feels like the sake of it (and breaking more and more stuff
along the way).

~~~
ideals
This is a side-effect of employment and raises being dependent on launching
new features instead of improving existing features. Something certainly not
exclusive to Apple.

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

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

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

~~~
toyg
Man, after turning 35 and having kids, all years just blend into one ;)

------
PascLeRasc
One of my favorite small things about OS X has been the dock icons and their
variety in shapes. Like how TextEdit has the pencil sticking out or Logic
looks like a DJ turntable. It feels like that’s gone now.

~~~
addicted
The XCode icon seems to have the hammer sticking out a bit. So maybe there is
still room for custom shapes.

~~~
AlanYx
They address that in the new macOS 11 HIG [1], indicating that protrusions
from the square look "to combine depictions of the physical objects that best
convey the app’s core purpose" are acceptable. TextEdit, Preview and Xcode all
have elements sticking out a bit.

[1]: [https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
guideline...](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
guidelines/macos/overview/whats-new-in-macos/)

That said, I still think overall it's a loss in terms of usability. (I find
that without shape to distinguish icons on iOS, I often confuse icons that are
broadly similar in color when I'm not paying attention, even though the images
inside the roundrects are different. I can't be the only one.)

~~~
ptx
Perhaps they were inspired by qBittorrent, where the toolbar icons are all
indistinguishable aqua blobs:
[https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/qbittorrent/screenshots/2416...](https://a.fsdn.com/con/app/proj/qbittorrent/screenshots/241606.jpg/max/max/1)

------
csomar
I made the switch to Linux as my main OS for software development in the last
month (archlinux with AMD Ryzen on a custom built box) and I'm not regretting
it.

For a comparison, here is the Press Release for Snow Leopard
([https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2009/06/08Apple-Unveils-
Ma...](https://www.apple.com/ca/newsroom/2009/06/08Apple-Unveils-Mac-OS-X-
Snow-Leopard/\);) here is an excerpt from the text

> For the first time, system applications including Finder, Mail, iCal®,
> iChat® and Safari are 64-bit and Snow Leopard’s support for 64-bit
> processors makes use of large amounts of RAM, increases performance, and
> improves security while remaining compatible with 32-bit applications. Grand
> Central Dispatch (GCD) provides a revolutionary new way for software to take
> advantage of multicore processors. GCD is integrated throughout Snow
> Leopard, from new system-wide APIs to high-level frameworks and programming
> language extensions, improving responsiveness across the system. OpenCL, a
> C-based open standard, allows developers to tap the incredible power of the
> graphics processing unit for tasks that go beyond graphics.

Simple, useful information. Information and features that matters to software
developers.

Instead in this new macOS we got: Safari, Messages and Maps. Apps that are not
that much relevant (since people are too hooked in Firefox/Chrome, Fb/Ig, and
Google Maps). If Apple wants to gain marketshare in these areas, that's fine.
But they are pushing them to their base as a macOS upgrade. Huh.

The only thing related to developers is XCode "improvements". I guess the
message is pretty clear now: The macOS is now only good to develop iOS apps
and maybe do graphics/audio/video. If you are a web/sys developer it might be
a good idea to start looking for something else.

~~~
zimpenfish
> Apps that are not that much relevant (since people are too hooked in
> Firefox/Chrome, Fb/Ig, and Google Maps).

Anecdata: My family uses Safari, Messages, and Maps extensively (and Fb/Ig
don't replace Messages, they're something else that gets used.) Don't confuse
"tech people" with "real people", there's a world of difference.

~~~
mplanchard
True, but this announcement/keynote was delivered at a developers’ conference,
so it’s not unreasonable to want content more relevant to that audience.

~~~
zimpenfish
I think the keynote has always been aimed at the users (via journalists, I
suppose) - in the ones I've watched, it's always been "surface level"; never
much below "we have these spanky new technologies!" on a slide. The rest of
WWDC is for the developers with the workshops and whatnot, really.

------
adambware
They've added padding to the design nearly everywhere - "menu bar is now
taller", "Dock is lifted from the bottom", and the extra padding on the
Sidebars is obvious.

As a power user of a Macbook Pro, this is cutting into my screen real estate
and not very appealing to me.

~~~
chadlavi
If you're a power user, you probably know that you can hide the dock and the
menubar

~~~
adambware
My dock is tiny and pinned to the right so I can use as much vertical space as
possible. This might push me to adopt hiding the menubar.

It's more about the compounding effect when other apps adopt this more
spacious UI pattern for their title bar, sidebar, etc.

------
frou_dh
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.

~~~
WA9ACE
I wonder how this will affect java minecraft on the mac. Does LWJGL have a
Metal backend?

~~~
Fej
It does not appear to have a Metal backend - just OpenGL and Vulkan.

From what I can tell, commercial game devs treat Mac gaming as an edge case
and mostly only the large engine devs care about Metal support (with
exceptions, of course).

~~~
tamarok
It looks like Minecraft is already using Metal. LWJGL makes use of other low
level APIs by means of BGFX, since version 3.1.0 (per release notes) and Metal
is one of the current targets.

Looking at a running 1.15 Minecraft instance I see it is using lwjgl 3.2.1 and
there a link to "net.java.openjdk.cmd/com.apple.metal", when I do an lsof.

Any further insight would be appreciated.

------
interestica
I mean, 'beautiful new design' is subjective here. I know it's the headline -
but it's a press release. This is an ad.

~~~
dang
We've changed the URL from [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-
introduces-maco...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-introduces-
macos-big-sur-with-a-beautiful-new-design/), which is the press release.

If there's a better URL for discussing this, we can change it again.

Edit: it looks like [https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
guideline...](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
guidelines/macos/overview/whats-new-in-macos/) is probably a better URL for
discussing this, so we'll change to that from
[https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur-
preview/](https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur-preview/).

Edit 2: since
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23606052](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23606052)
posted that and is now on the front page, maybe it's better to just let the
discussion pick up there. This thread is pretty generic. Perhaps an article
with more detailed information will lead to a more interesting discussion.

------
Mobius01
The move away from a standard window bar/window chrome is a usability disaster
in the making. I haven’t time to unpack what was shown yet but it did not
leave me with a good impression.

------
wespiser_2018
I'm seriously afraid of this. I have to keep my Mac updated for work, and
Catalina was both a major frustration getting my toolchain up and working, and
a constant time waste due to the daily kernel panics that are caused by a
persistent, yet unknown, issue.

------
milkytron
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.

~~~
mwfunk
Because the apps that are considered part of the OS are tightly coupled to the
OS itself, and often those app updates are intended to showcase new features
of the OS that they want developers to take advantage of. Things that are
considered standalone apps like Logic, etc. get updates through the App Store
like other apps.

------
arduinomancer
I'm getting the impression that Apple wants to merge the desktop/iOS/iPad
platforms long term if you look at all the recent updates together.

~~~
floatingatoll
They've said in the past couple years in interviews that this is a bad idea -
a bad direction to follow - and they don't intend to do it.

~~~
read_if_gay_
Then why are they doing:

* ARM macbooks

* iOS Apps on macOS

* iOS look-and-feel on macOS

* iOS features like Control Center, Widgets on macOS

Each one of these might be justifiable in isolation, but viewed as a whole it
paints another picture.

~~~
DCKing
> * ARM macbooks

Superior performance characteristics and vertical integration.

> * iOS Apps on macOS

> * iOS look-and-feel on macOS

> * iOS features like Control Center, Widgets on macOS

Because there's changes in how people want their computers to look and be
used. New (and old!) users expect their Macs to work in a familiar way.
Developers want to share their app infrastructure.

There's absolutely zero reason for Apple to "merge" iOS and macOS together. I
don't understand what people think Apple's endgame would be there, what
nefarious advantage they would possibly get out of it.

------
pcr910303
I hate that they’re moving to a design where buttons don’t have borders and
textures, don’t provide any visual guidances on what’s a button and what’s
not.

But I absolutely despise them for making iOS apps installable on macOS.
That’s... just terrible.

This WWDC just felt like that Apple decided that macOS should get merged with
iOS and converged them. The Mac doesn’t have a future...

~~~
kjakm
>> But I absolutely despise them for making iOS apps installable on macOS.
That’s... just terrible.

Don't use them then? Seems like a useful feature to me for certain utility
apps that don't require a proper Mac app/can't afford to develop one.

~~~
hollandheese
Might not have a choice. When OS/2 added Windows app support it killed actual
OS/2 apps. Why bother supporting the Mac when you could just make an iPad app
and get both markets at once.

~~~
ryandrake
> Why bother supporting the Mac when you could just make an iPad app and get
> both markets at once.

Yea, this is what I'm afraid of. Instead of continued investing in their high
quality Mac app, companies will just drop it on the ground and spend all their
time working on their toy iPad/iPhone apps, expecting people to switch.

------
potta_coffee
I'm not excited about this update. I don't want a "bold new experience".

------
dguo
As a developer, one thing I am excited about is that they are adding support
for the WebExtensions API to Safari. This should make it feasible to port many
Chrome/Firefox extensions to Safari.

------
cercatrova
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.

------
sandstrom
I wonder if they have added support for Display Port MST? (daisy chaining two
monitors over one USB-C/thunderbolt cable)

Windows via Boot Camp support it, so it’s only a software limit.

It was my single biggest wish for this years macOS update.

[https://medium.com/@sebvance/everything-you-need-to-know-
abo...](https://medium.com/@sebvance/everything-you-need-to-know-about-
macbook-pros-and-their-lack-of-displayport-mst-multi-stream-98ce33d64af4)

------
KenanSulayman
Apple wants members of their $500 Universal App Quick Start program to send
back their Developer Transition Kit (DTK) units after the program
automatically expires (!) after one year. [1]

Citing directly from this document:

> You agree to promptly return the Developer Transition Kit to the Apple
> address designated by Apple no later than thirty (30) days after the end of
> the Term, or as otherwise earlier requested by Apple (including via email or
> announcement by Apple on developer.apple.com).

> At the end of the Term, You agree to immediately cease all use of the
> Developer Transition Kit and the Universal App Quick Start Program.

> Failure to return the Developer Transition Kit may result in the suspension
> of Your Developer account or termination of Your Developer Agreement.

Admission to the program costs $500. What??? ...

Why did they not mention this anywhere but the terms of service?

[1] [https://developer.apple.com/terms/universal-app-quick-
start-...](https://developer.apple.com/terms/universal-app-quick-start-
program/Developer-Universal-App-Quick-Start-Program.pdf)

~~~
kemayo
It's what they did back in the Intel transition, also. They then sent everyone
who'd had one a new Intel iMac, so it's plausible that they might do something
like that again this time. (But don't count on it -- it wasn't promised last
time either.)

~~~
ValentineC
Apple is now able to remotely brick any of their devices (something they
couldn't do in 2006), so there's a chance they'll be less likely to offer an
incentive to return the devices.

------
gorgoiler
One thing they’ve really nailed in recent years is _SF Mono_. macOS system
type is very good.

------
WesleyLivesay
I'm not entirely sold on the design, but at least it will make macOS look a
bit more consistent, up until now there have been little pockets of "old UX"
like Finder, Mail, etc. and "new UX" with the Notification Center, News, etc.

------
flareback
This might be what pushes me to look into a linux laptop for work.

------
Kkoala
Haven't even upgraded to Catalina yet, because of the bugs...

~~~
msie
I waited too and the latest Catalina fixes the ImageCapture bugs I was
concerned about.

------
henriquez
This site and its scroll-hijacking are unusably choppy on my 2018 Macbook Air.
It seems like a total departure from Apple's attention to detail, but maybe
that's a gentle reminder that Apple considers this computer to be EOL
hardware.

~~~
zimpenfish
On this 2017 Macbook Pro 13", it's perfectly smooth in Safari. I don't think
it's necessarily the web page that's at fault here?

------
zamalek
> Safari is the best way to surf the web on all your Apple devices.

It's also the only way to do that, other browser engines are deemed too impure
to run on Apple hardware.

> improves on industry-leading performance

According to these benchmarks[1], the only performance category where has a
large "lead" is using about 50% more memory than the next competitor.

Why do Apple even bother writing fiction about Safari. It's not like Apple
users have any other choice.

[1]: [https://www.pcmag.com/news/chrome-edge-firefox-opera-or-
safa...](https://www.pcmag.com/news/chrome-edge-firefox-opera-or-safari-which-
browser-is-best)

------
quantummkv
I just love the changes they did to the menubar. Adaptive background and extra
padding on the menu items are both great changes

I don't like the new dock design. Maybe they'll change it back to the old dock
if the feedback is vocal?

~~~
mmcconnell1618
Lots of extra padding everywhere which makes me think a touchscreen Mac is
coming out soon. The extra padding is out of character for Apple designs
unless they need the space for your fingers to not mash more than one item at
a time.

~~~
chadlavi
touchscreen mac already exists, it's just still called an iPad and still runs
beefed-up phone software. The merge is coming in the next couple years. Tim
Cook said the ARM transition would be 2 years, so I'm guessing that means 2022
or '23 has an apple tablet device running the same OS as apple laptop/desktop
devices.

------
read_if_gay_
I know it's just the look-and-feel, but to me it appears dumbed down in every
single way. The uniform app shape, top bar icons, Control Center??? This does
not look like a serious OS at all.

------
MattyMc
Everything I don't use on my Mac, improved.

~~~
lolsal
What would it take for you to start using these things? I use almost all of
the native apps (messages, notes, safari, FaceTime, maps, etc) so I like
seeing improvements and appreciate that they aren't rotting.

------
AJRF
I'm glad I finally no longer need macOS to have a nice developer experience.
Docker & WSL2 are all I really need to do development these days. Back when I
started using macOS, Windows seemed pretty dire for developers unless you were
in the .NET and back then web-dev.

Around the time ruby on rails was becoming super-popular I noticed a lot of
developers getting MacBooks through their workplace and that kind of caught on
as it was easy to install all the cool new dev tools that came out after that
like Node etc. Apple built up a nice cache with developers and from 2007-2018
the circles I ran in you would be hard pressed to find a developer using
Windows.

All this time Microsoft were in the background diligently putting together a
grand strategy for getting back developer mind-share, and they have done a
spectacular job. VSCode + Visual Studio Community Edition, WSL & WSL2, The new
terminal experience, supporting Docker, buying GitHub, open sourcing .NET,
improving Azure and just constantly tightening up Windows 10.

They've put their best foot forward going into the future and I am so glad
because during the time all the cache Apple have built up has eroded. The
keyboards, the kernel panics in Catalina, the MacBooks have been
unspectacular, they just won't fix bugs, Swift is unused outside of iOS dev,
Catalinas false promise of "just click a button to make your iOS app work on
macOS", iOS has stagnated feature wise, Xcode is a malignant tumour that rears
its ugly face when you try and use git for the first time, and they keep
railroading down this road towards iOS-ification of all their platforms.

Developers wanted the iPad to become more like macOS - and with Big Sur it
looks like they've pulled a reverse Uno card.

------
Lio
I hope they add keyboard based window management.

It seems daft to me that you still can't move windows around using keyboard
shortcuts without third party software.

~~~
sandstrom
This one is awesome (and free):

[https://rectangleapp.com/](https://rectangleapp.com/)

------
dmix
Happy to see them getting rid of the useless 'notification center' drawer on
the right side that I've never used and for some reason 'Do Not Disturb' is
hidden within it, assuming you know the right key+click combo.

Notifications are a huge part of any OS, they need to be treated as a first-
class experience, not tucked away into a hidden section you never see unless
you click on it.

------
gjsman-1000
The word is out that this is macOS 11. Personally, I can't figure out why they
didn't just drop the `10.` part and call it MacOS 16.

~~~
hollandheese
They're signaling the death of Mac OS X.

~~~
zimpenfish
I mean, it was renamed to macOS in 2016, I think "the death of Mac OS X"
already happened.

[https://fortune.com/2016/06/13/apple-mac-os-
sierra/](https://fortune.com/2016/06/13/apple-mac-os-sierra/)

------
quijoteuniv
As many others I have been having a bad taste in my mouth with everything
Apple related. I think I finally can point it out: Apple is only for rich
users. There is terrible inequality in the earth and they build computers and
developed OS for the rich. Not cool. Actually is exactly the opposite if
why/how they started with the Apple 1.

------
whoisjuan
Did they fix Catalina yet? I’m still running Mojave just because all the
terrible reviews Catalina gets.

------
Yhippa
I was pretty pleased about the WWDC keynote except for when it came to macOS.
My experience with updates and new features hasn't been pleasant the past four
or so years. I'm frightened to see what things this feature update will bring.

------
petarb
The only thing that really stood out to me and that I’m excited about is,
“AirPods automatic device switching”. Which IMO they should have had from day
one when launching the AirPods.

------
seumars
The amount of padding throughout the whole UI is worrying. For years I've used
macOS on high contrast mode and invert colors for dark mode — very curious of
how that will look.

------
Hamuko
Are there any screenshots with reduced transparency? I've always disabled that
on all of my systems since I don't want to see stuff that's behind my current
window.

------
dtroit101
Its clear the design direction is making mac a touch screen experience. they
are totally taking the path microsoft took a decade ago. copycat designing

~~~
flareback
I don't want a touchscreen desktop. Touchscreen is fine for my phone/tablet
but I want a keyboard and mouse for my desktop.

------
twalla
I upgraded to Catalina for work and have had an abysmal time with basically
anything that is external to the macbook (monitors/webcams/hedphones) - if I
had to estimate, I'd say I lose anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour a day just
trying to get the goddamn machine to do things laptops have been perfectly
capable of doing without issue for the past decade.

------
disposekinetics
Most of these look like apps, not OS enhancements.

------
_bxg1
I swear they're just trying to see how far they can go with these names until
people are unable to say them with a straight face

------
72deluxe
Why are new features in apps mentioned in an OS update? It is a recent trend
but I recall being able to upgrade to Office 2003 from 2000 without requiring
an entire new OS.

These days, they talk about tiny features in one of the apps (eg. Messages) as
if it’s a giant new feature of the OS. Application software is not system
software!

------
darth_avocado
Of all the new shiny things, the only useful one is the fact that the airpods
can now switch between devices better.

~~~
christoph
I'm pretty excited to see how well the new spatial audio feature works on
Airpods Pro. It sounds like it will come in a firmware and/or iOS update, but
they didn't seem to give an ETA on it. Could certainly be a great new feature
if implemented well (they claimed support for 5.1, 7.1 & Atmos), added to
hardware that's already out there.

------
zakk
I cannot see any difference besides the icons in the Dock looking like those
of iPhone apps.

~~~
gjsman-1000
Except that the Dock icons are significantly more 3D in their appearance than
iPadOS/iOS 14 are.

This is actually an interesting change of priority. Last time there was a
major redesign, iOS got it first and Mac OS X got it later. This time, MacOS
gets it first and iOS gets it next year in 2021.

------
ksec
The biggest question I had when I was watching, Why did they not take the
chance to rename is as macOS 11?

OSX has been through two transition. The NeXT team must be very proud of their
foundation they built 2x years ago.

~~~
gjsman-1000
I wish it was MacOS 16. Just drop the 10. part.

~~~
racl101
> Just drop the 10. part.

It's cleaner.

------
dvtrn
Cycling directions on Apple Maps has me more excited than it probably should.
I like a LOT of what they’ve done to improve Maps since they entered the space
and this was sorely missing for me

------
somewhereoutth
During the Bad Times, when I was assigned to a MBP (2015 model - still the
best apparently), all I ever wanted was the window buttons to be on the right,
and a hash key.

------
floatingatoll
I'm recording here that I think Finder as shown in Big Sur is actually a
Catalyst port of Files.app, and that the next release of macOS will rename
Finder to Files.

------
throw03172019
I’m happy to see they didn’t have a huge slide of “1000s of new features”. I’d
be happy with a better Catalina. I just switched after buying a new MacBook...

------
mmastrac
I've been considering going back a version from Catalina. I'm not really
holding out hope on this OSX release but we'll see.

------
emidln
This new theme looks like the Crystal from KDE 3.x.

------
achairapart
Requirements: Mac Mini 2014 and later.

So, no upgrade for my Mac Mini late 2012.

F*ck you, Apple. Why on earth I need a less powerful machine to run your
latest OS?

~~~
psychometry
Um, your computer was designed EIGHT years ago. Upgrade if you care about
getting all of the new toys.

~~~
achairapart
Wait, are you telling me that is ok that a capable machine (much more capable
than a 2014 Mac Mini, anyway) expires by date?

I have more recent Apple hardware (Mac Mini 2018, TB Macbook Pro) and I can
tell you this: this Mac Mini is my favorite device, fast, user-upgradable,
never had a single problem. It's a pity I have to replace it just because it's
expired. By date.

~~~
psychometry
Clearly I never said your machine expires. You can continue using the most
recent OS supported by your hardware. Your Mac Mini will not cease to function
just because Apple releases an OS it doesn't support.

~~~
achairapart
What I can't see is why the 2014 Mac Mini is supported and the 2012 one is
not. This is technically nonsense and really this age thing is just a poor
excuse.

------
ithrow
Wow my 2013 macbook air is supported, nice.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
I am a very happy user of Mojave, and Apple needs to make a a much bigger
effort to convince me to upgrade.

------
paulchap
The new Siri design reminds me of War of the Worlds... let's welcome our alien
overlord orbs!

------
Macha
The integration of tall title bars with toolbars is really reminding me of
Gnome 3 here.

------
schaefer
interesting. I'd love to give the new macOS a try, but I don't have any apple
hardware. Does anyone know the process for downloading the macOS .iso so I can
bring it up under VMWare?

~~~
aspenmayer
You would need to get the Install macOS [version name].app, and then convert
the InstallESD.dmg inside that to an .iso to mount to your VM for the install.
There are more steps involving bootloaders which I have included in the second
link.

[https://github.com/rmc-team/macos-downloader/](https://github.com/rmc-
team/macos-downloader/)

[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/VirtualBox/Setting_up_a_Virtua...](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/VirtualBox/Setting_up_a_Virtual_Machine/Mac_OS_X)

[https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-
virtualbox](https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox)

------
Rebelgecko
This website makes me slightly nauseous when viewed on my macbook pro. I had
to look at it with my phone to get rid of the jerky animations

------
beyondcompute
I hope, they’ll fix the annoying problem in Safari that when pausing/unpausing
a Youtube video it skips half a second or so of audio.

~~~
beyondcompute
Why was this downvoted?

I’ve been using Safari for a long time because of its relative resource
efficiency and nicer design. But lack of good ad blocking and this annoying
glitch in Youtube are the two problems that really make me consider switching
to Chromium.

------
neximo64
Is the beta of this coming out today?

~~~
zachberger
Typically it is a developer preview, later on a public beta is released.

------
RocketSyntax
brightness slider! nice! was downloading menu tray plugins for that

------
china
OS 11!

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Nah, despite what they said in the keynote this is a smaller visual change
than Yosemite.

~~~
monocasa
I mean, it is literally macOS 11. That's what it said in the About This Mac
screen on the presentation.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Whoa, I missed that! Thanks.

------
xrisk
Oh god that new Mail app looks disgusting. Reminds me of a shitty Electron
app, that kind of design.

~~~
kspacewalk2
Anyone who uses Exchange servers or Office 365 should switch to Outlook. It's
like the grown-up, adult brother of Apple's mail client.

~~~
adarioble
It’s better, but still drives me crazy. Microsoft has come long way but still
got heaps of work to do (I.e. no way to customise ribbon in Outlook)

------
draw_down
I usually end up turning off the motion and turning on increased contrast,
reduced transparency etc. These things demo nicely but I didn't like windows
with transparency effects when Windows Vista did it and I feel the same way
today. I care about what's in the window not under it.

I do think the Safari updates look great, though. Webkit may have its
governance issues and so forth, but Safari is really a wonderful app to use
imo.

