First Impressions?

[tornado99]

Here's a test.

Find someone new to OS X and tell them to: 1) Change the Finder view from list to icons 2) Create a new tab in Safari. No prizes for guessing which of the above two screenshots makes that easiest do to.

 

[SirAnthonyHopkins]

Those screenshots really show how much wasted space there is in Big Sur.


As predicted I'm actually growing to not mind the overall design aesthetic; in a month I think I won't notice it all. But I'm never going to not notice the massive head on Safari/Finder/Activity Monitor. It's ugly and pointless. Stands out as much as the iMac's chin does in 2020.

 

[deevey]

And I would mind my own business if I were you! I happen to have excellent vision thank you very much.

Posting a problem you are having in a public internet forum makes it everyones business

 

[timelessbeing]

@JonBOY26 , I think your screenshot sums up the two major problems with Big Sur regardless of whether you like the design 1) Loss of information density - you simply can't fit the same amount of things on the screen as before 2) Smaller font size even where it doesn't need to be

Some might argue this same debate happens with every new Mac OS version, but I simply don't remember the same problems with Catalina vs Mojave, Mojave vs High Sierra etc.

I agree. In fact I'll go as far as to say that this is the worst MacOS "upgrade" I have ever undergone.

In Finder, my window header is even taller than yours because I have a tab bar. How did you get rid of that?

 

[timelessbeing]

Posting a problem you are having in a public internet forum makes it everyones business

I made no mention of my personal health, but since you're so interested in it, I have this really nasty hemorrhoid I need you to pop for me.

 

[deevey]

I made no mention of my personal health, but since you're so interested in it, I have this really nasty hemorrhoid I need you to pop for me.

You said you could not make out the buttons / text , yet in the screenshots you posted they look perfectly fine and quite legible.

 

[5883662]

I agree. In fact I'll go as far as to say that this is the worst MacOS "upgrade" I have ever undergone.

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In Finder, my window header is even taller than yours because I have a tab bar. How did you get rid of that?

All of this pisses me off to no end. How did they possibly think it benefits the user?

 

[Merode]

You said you could not make out the buttons / text , yet in the screenshots you posted they look perfectly fine and quite legible.

Can you imagine taking issue with somebody's opinion.. It's just an opinion, not an absolute truth.

 

[DinkThifferent]

First impressions so far (from a mid-2014 13" MBP that didn't get bricked ) :

- love the white ! For me middle grey UI elements have always looked like an heritage of the 90s. The combination of white everywhere and increased spacing visually de-clutter the UI for me and makes everything more legible. That being said there are plenty of areas where it seems that the UI team didn't seem quite sure which way to go and reverted to light grey gradients to provide UI separation (example : preference panes various "areas") instead of sticking to being unapologetically white and thoroughly change the UI to conform to that principle. Besides there are still way too many legacy design aspects IMO (again, for example the sharing preferences pane, which looks completely off next to the control centre preferences pane).
- I really like the new menu bar control centre menus overall. As an example they provide a faster access to controlling my AirPods. But there are also plenty of small niggles to work out.
- I love Apple's newer B&W menu icons language, but some can sometimes be confused between each others.
- I'm one of those who would have much, much preferred if Apple simply had copy / pasted iOS icons instead of redesigning ones with very questionable embossing. Frankly I find the coloured apps and preferences panes icons over-thought and over-designed compared to the rest of the UI.
- Maybe stable, but very buggy. There are plenty of small UI bugs everywhere (such as the improperly centered accentuation box below). The worst bug for me so far is that my AirPods Pro just won't ever auto-switch from my iPhone to my Mac (but is that because it's an older model ?) and when selecting them manually, only the audio output gets switched (I have to manually switch the input as well).

Let's just say that I think that Apple's teams will be busy in the next few months to address these bugs and continue to coalesce the leftover UI elements towards this new language.

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Glad you like the new interface, so do i! But it is weird that I don't have that UI bug you showed.

 

[Z3man]

These pictures of side by side comparisons you guys are posting are really helpful, please could you do one of the mail app.

 

[MayaTlab]

Glad you like the new interface, so do i! But it is weird that I don't have that UI bug you showed.

It's possibly machine specific or related to some settings I've set. It's probably going to get fixed at some point.

 

[tornado99]

You said you could not make out the buttons / text , yet in the screenshots you posted they look perfectly fine and quite legible.

Obviously, the buttons / text are discernable - any of us can make them out. I think the point was that the contrast is far poorer than in Catalina, which seems to be a regression in terms of ease of use.

 

[vddobrev]

Mail action icons don't make sense - how can "Get new messages" and "Compose a new message" be above the subject of the selected/viewed message.

 

[ZestyOne]

These pictures of side by side comparisons you guys are posting are really helpful, please could you do one of the mail app.

agreed

 

[vddobrev]

Found it strange that the Dock is not flush with the edge of the screen, which leaves some space unused...

 

[timelessbeing]

You said you could not make out the buttons / text , yet in the screenshots you posted they look perfectly fine and quite legible.

Well I disagree. I think that it's really far from "perfectly fine" and clearly I'm not the only one who thinks it looks washed out. I'm happy for your xray vision.

I suggest you state your opinions without being a complete douche by making health judgments on people. You're not my doctor.

 

[timelessbeing]

Found it strange that the Dock is not flush with the edge of the screen, which leaves some space unused...

I don't understand. You could always adjust the size of the dock.

 

[timelessbeing]

These pictures of side by side comparisons you guys are posting are really helpful, please could you do one of the mail app.

Ask and ye shall receive!

Catalina

BS

 

[timelessbeing]

Light mode


Catalina

BS

By the way the message titles are light yellow because it's the junkmail folder. Normal mail is dark grey (but not black) on white so it's fine.

 

[timelessbeing]

I think I just discovered a bug as I was editing those images. Look how garbled the graphics are.

(screenshot of editing a screenshot in Preview)

 

[Z3man]

Thanks for that, it is very helpful.

When you customise the toolbar in mail, is there an option to have text and icon like in Catalina, or is it icon only.

 

[timelessbeing]

Yup. Image rendering gets garbled when I click the "Show Markup Toolbar" button in Preview

 

[timelessbeing]

Thanks for that, it is very helpful.

When you customise the toolbar in mail, is there an option to have text and icon like in Catalina, or is it icon only.

Yes there is.

 

[vddobrev]

I don't understand. You could always adjust the size of the dock.

Yes, I am well aware of this... was talking about the long edge of the Dock, i.e. it makes the Dock float... I found out it is a feature "Floating Dock", and I hate it: https://www.apple.com/macos/big-sur/features/

 

[CTHarrryH]

As I have said - I'm sure I'll get more used to it but somehow creating something that seems to many to be harder to see details is a step in the wrong direction. Also, there are things such as some of the mail options that came from IOS where IOS could have used some from MacOS

At least no one can say there are no changes in this OS.

I have found several apps that work more slowly or took several tries to get to work. For instance Malwarebytes - first time I ran I got error has occurred - try restarting or uninstall and re-install. So I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling - first run did basically nothing 10 minutes 1 file. Second run did the files but never ended. The third run and from then on it seems to work fine. May have something to do with some new security but strange.