First Impressions?

[timelessbeing]

That is in fact a change of resolution, whatever the wording.

Mac OS doesn't have a preference for larger UI text.

The resolution of an LCD panel doesn't change. It physically can't.

When you change the scaling option to "Larger Text" or "More Space", all it's doing is changing how big it renders the UI elements. All the windows, headers, borders, scroll bars, buttons, icons and yes ... even text. It's in the name! The little preview graphic even shows you this. Graphical content of your applications like images, videos etc don't change and you still see them at the native resolution of your panel. There is no "resolution". The amount of detail stays the same. Just scaling of different things changes.

So I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[trash eighty]

Well i installed last night on my 2018 Mac mini, first impressions are... ok. Apart from the UI change not much else (that is relevant to me) seems new which is a disappointment. I like the interface changes on the whole. Its just all a bit meh.

 

[Royksöpp]

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

Here are some more.

a-visual-comparison-of-macos-catalina-and-big-sur.html

 

[GlenK]

^^Well done! Best comparison I've seen by far!!

 

[Ritsuka]

The resolution of an LCD panel doesn't change. It physically can't.

When you change the scaling option to "Larger Text" or "More Space", all it's doing is changing how big it renders the UI elements. All the windows, headers, borders, scroll bars, buttons, icons and yes ... even text. It's in the name! The little preview graphic even shows you this. Graphical content of your applications like images, videos etc don't change and you still see them at the native resolution of your panel. There is no "resolution". The amount of detail stays the same. Just scaling of different things changes.

So I have no idea what you're talking about.

No, that's not how it works.
Scaled resolutions ("Larger Text" or "More Space") renders at a different resolution, and then scale it back to the display resolution.

 

[iFan86]

The very first thoughts I had of the new UI and Icons after install were.. it looks like it was designed by Fisher Price and the Finder now looks bald. After that I read someone else also say the Finder looked bald and had to laugh. I assume I am no longer Apple's target audience though.

 

[macdos]

The very first thoughts I had of the new UI and Icons after install were.. it looks like it was designed by Fisher Price and the Finder now looks bald. After that I read someone else also say the Finder looked bald and had to laugh. I assume I am no longer Apple's target audience though.

Mr. Finder is having a mid-life crisis, nearing his 40s, some intermittent problems performing, and so on.

 

[Lankyman]

I don't know if it's my imagination but the menu bar icons now look tiny on my 5K iMac display using default. I know I can use scaled but with that option the next size up looks to big. There doesn't appear to be a goldilocks setting. Has the icon size changed or do I need to book an appointment at the opticians?

 

[Geoff777]

I don't know if it's my imagination but the menu bar icons now look tiny on my 5K iMac display using default. I know I can use scaled but with that option the next size up looks to big. There doesn't appear to be a goldilocks setting. Has the icon size changed or do I need to book an appointment at the opticians?

Not only do they seem smaller (as does much of the text) if you use a desktop picture with a dark background, good luck seeing many of them at all!
There are some lovely desktop pictures and I chose one with a dark blue theme.... then I couldn't for the life of me find WiFi, Bluetooth or any of the other black icons. So had to switch to something lighter to see what I was doing.

 

[retta283]

The UI is horrid. The amount of wasted space is incredible, totally abandons any idea of compact UI. Information density is very important, especially on laptops, and Big Sur fails. It's especially bad in Light mode, just so much white and no color other than the traffic lights and horrible folder icons. Dark mode isn't so bad, but still many flaws. I struggle to see controls. Speed wise it's about the same as Catalina on my 2020 iMac.

Not very impressed. Not much reason to upgrade other than being on the newest update, at least to me.

 

[colourfastt]

The very first thoughts I had of the new UI and Icons after install were.. it looks like it was designed by Fisher Price and the Finder now looks bald. After that I read someone else also say the Finder looked bald and had to laugh. I assume I am no longer Apple's target audience though.

I've been saying that since Apple adopted the "modern" "flat" look in (I believe) Mojave. I've taken to calling each OS release since 10.9 "kindergartenerOS" or "OS Crayon".

 

[Heat_Fan89]

I've been saying that since Apple adopted the "modern" "flat" look in (I believe) Mojave. I've taken to calling each OS release since 10.9 "kindergartenerOS" or "OS Crayon".

The flat look occurred with Yosemite. I've been a big fan of it since day 1.

 

[colourfastt]

The flat look occurred with Yosemite. I've been a big fan of it since day 1.

This is a DayTimer. I've been using one since I started in management in 1990 (and still do to this day). I prefer my tools to look like my tools.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

This View attachment 1672351 is a DayTimer. I've been using one since I started in management in 1990 (and still do to this day). I prefer my tools to look like my tools.

It really doesn't matter, just go with what makes you happy. I don't stress like some do on this thread about whether Apple placed a + sign in the wrong place in a particular window or if the menu bar is too big or bland or the fonts are too big or too small. It doesn't matter whether macOS 11 has a flat look or 3D look. I'm enjoying Big Sur and the refreshed aesthetics and I also like and use Windows 10 and Linux.

 

[svenmany]

"The industry" has done no such thing, just Apple. Everyone else there is still mostly a standardised place at the top of the window which is the place where relevant information about the identity of the app you're using is conveyed.

However it's not like that on the iPad, and Apple has decided that laptops are just iPads with keyboards.

My apologies for not being clearer. Also, thanks for the counterpoint since it pushed me into a slight investigation to back up and refine my claim (always a good thing). I was wrong to say the industry has moved away from title bars. I should have said that there is strong evidence that the industry is moving away from title bars.

One thing, I guess there's a difference between a "title bar" and a "title area". The old fashioned title bar was colored differently than the stuff just below it. It was reserved for window controls and the title of the current document. I see that BBEdit still has such a bar. A title area (no one calls it that) is just a title bar without coloring so that it just blends into the area just below it. People just call that thing a title bar.

Consider this page from the Gnome project, Header bars. The project strongly advocates combining the title bar with the menu bar and tool bar (the "strongly" part I gleaned from their forums).

Consider this page, Add or Remove Title Bar in Firefox. The default in Firefox is to display no title bar. Happily, you can choose to display it; there's a setting in the customizations.

Consider this forum post, Title bar?. The OP is bemoaning the loss of the title bar. Another poster on that thread claims "I don't see Opera or any major browser getting back a title bar anytime soon."

Now, what I see on Mac:

I don't have a title bar in Chrome. I've read posts on how to get the title bar back when running it on Linux, but the setting they mention is not available on Mac.

Rattling off a few others: 1Password (a program dear to my heart) has no title bar. Microsoft Teams has no title bar. OmniFocus has no title bar.

I think sometimes programs don't bother with a title bar if they're not document centric. That is, if there's no document having a title, then it foregoes the title bar. PCalc is an exception; it has a title bar without a title. Catalina's Mail treats the selected mailbox as the document and shows its name in the title bar.

I do understand the desire to save space. Heck, this thread is filled with complaints about Apples exorbitant waste of space in Big Sur. But, I think a small, consistently placed drag area is warranted. Consider Catalina's Dictionary versus Big Sur's Dictionary. The vertical space at the top is the same, but only Catalina's Dictionary has a drag area. This was not just an artistic decision by Apple, it was a removal of functionality and will be a constant source of friction.

 

[svenmany]

What Apple has in mind is in fact to make your computer just another phone. You are supposed to use full screen "scaled" "retina" mode, in which title bars have no meaning. Apple engineers don't use mice, they use "gestures" on their laptops. They don't know that you and I exist, and either way they don't give an f.

That last sentence is pretty harsh, but I understand you're upset with the current situation.

I've never met a front-end developer who doesn't care deeply about their users' experiences with their work. However, they sometimes get it horribly wrong.

 

[tornado99]

That last sentence is pretty harsh, but I understand you're upset with the current situation.

I've never met a front-end developer who doesn't care deeply about their users' experiences with their work. However, they sometimes get it horribly wrong.

The problem is that just because previous teams of Apple Developers managed to churn out decent new versions of Mac OS every couple of years, it doesn't mean that it will always hold true. It's entirely possible that many of the previous front-end developers have retired/moved on/changed division within Apple, and the team that was responsible for Big Sur have an entirely different vision of what an OS should look like.

In my opinion that's quite a likely explanation for the current UI mess. Perhaps the whole thing was designed on a bunch of 27 inch iMacs so they didn't even notice they were wasting a lot of space.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

OMG! I just noticed that my Firefox and Microsoft Edge icons in my Dock are both round and the rest of my Apple Dock icons are squares with rounded corners. That's the final straw, I'm going back to Catalina.

 

[Martyimac]

OMG! I just noticed that my Firefox and Microsoft Edge icons in my Dock are both round and the rest of my Apple Dock icons are squares with rounded corners. That's the final straw, I'm going back to Catalina.

Also Collectorz dot comm app and Thunderbird. That's it, I'm going back to Windows 7. /s

 

[macdos]

The problem is that just because previous teams of Apple Developers managed to churn out decent new versions of Mac OS every couple of years, it doesn't mean that it will always hold true. It's entirely possible that many of the previous front-end developers have retired/moved on/changed division within Apple, and the team that was responsible for Big Sur have an entirely different vision of what an OS should look like.

In my opinion that's quite a likely explanation for the current UI mess. Perhaps the whole thing was designed on a bunch of 27 inch iMacs so they didn't even notice they were wasting a lot of space.

Yeah, they hired this guy:

 

[svenmany]

OMG! I just noticed that my Firefox and Microsoft Edge icons in my Dock are both round and the rest of my Apple Dock icons are squares with rounded corners. That's the final straw, I'm going back to Catalina.

I'm afraid that train has left the station. I'm still running Catalina on my main computer and the new 1Password (Big Sur ready) icon has rounded corners. It's interesting that Firefox does not show that way on Catalina. Maybe it's up to the app developer to decide whether to provide more than one icon depending on OS version.

 

[svenmany]

Are all of the third party ones you use compatible with Big Sur?

I'll do a semi-careful review after work and report in.

 

[Traverse]

I don't understand the debating here on the scaled resolutions. The fact pattern is very simple:

1. Big Sur has objectively decreased the font size on several text-based U.I. elements for a minimalist look. This isn't inherently good or bad, but it is more difficult for some to use. While it's mostly usable, the one travesty that makes me laugh (it must be a mistake) is the Reminder's Widget on a 27" iMac (see screenshot).
2. Using the "Scaled" settings in System Preferences scales the entire display to simulate a lower resolution on your display size. Therefore text will indeed be larger, but so will everything else displayed meaning you lose vertical "space" and see less content. Also, most Retina Displays use an exact 2x2 scaling so anything other than default will objectively result in a loss of quality due to imperfect scaling, but this will likely be unnoticeable for many.
3. At least in macOS Big Sur, there is no font size accessibility options like on iOS.

I was surprised to see so many subsequent posts on it.

 

[timelessbeing]

I was surprised to see so many subsequent posts on it.

You shouldn't be, because you're wrong about scaling. as I clearly demonstrated.

But yes, text is definitely smaller.

 

[Frozen Meat]

When I upgraded my Catalina installation it was very bad. Fans spinning all the time, very hot, slow etc., I had to install from scratch and that one is very smooth, no fan noise normal temperature. I'm pretty sure feels Little bit more responsive compared to Catalina. Maybe it was some software incompatibility I did not waste time trying to find out. Mac I used is rMBP early 2015 13" 8GB RAM i5 256 GB SSD.