Okay, so after a few days of using Big Sur I've grown to actually like it better than the Yosemite-style OS, though if I had it my way Mavericks was still my favorite.
Overall I find the new U.I. feels "lighter" and overall system responsiveness is better. Plus, I like the iOS style of widgets and notification grouping, though I which notification and widgets still had their own separate sections. I think my only complaints/feedback are the following (and I've non-preference ones to Apple).
- I really don't care for the shading/bevel on many of the icons, but I'll adapt. I would have preferred straight iOS style. The bonus of the sameness of icon shape is that I'm now using magnification on the Dock which is neat I suppose.
- Overall font/legibility is a bit reduced. I feel like they dialed back the font size in sidebars, menus, and some U.I. chrome and I find it a big hard to see on a 27" iMac. I wish we had a system option to dial these up a bit.
- I wish we had an option less drastic than "Increase Contrast" to add button shapes. I don't like the idea that a single glyph acts as a button in a white toolbar. This is more preference that use-ability though.
- I wish there were options not to hide away so much of the U.I. On iOS it makes sense due to screen size, but on a large 27" iMac I'm annoyed that I don't at least have the option to show more content. A few examples:
- Music: You have to hover the mouse to see the song time played/reamining which used to be visible all the time and I used it.
- Reminder and Calendar notification alerts are no longer single-click actionable. For example, reminder alerts used to have a "Complete" and "Later" button. Now I have to hover the mouse over them, click "Options" when it appears, and select this action. The alert is the same size, so what was the point?
Overall I'm more pleased than I thought I'd be. I think once Apple tweaks some of the element above, which I'm sure they'll do as they iterate, it'll be fine and definitely more approachable to the iOS-only crowd.
