I'm confused what you mean? I know you posted screenshots and they look fine, but there is inherent imperfections with non-native scaling, it's just math. The iMac 5K panel is 5120 x 2880, which renders as 2560x1440 by default. That means for each 1 "point" there is an even 4 pixels. The next resolution is 2048x1152 which works out to be something like 1 "point" = 6.25 pixels. That means it isn't an even split and the system extrapolates. With displays this high it's likely not noticeable for most tasks, but does cause very slight fuzziness with fine text.
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First Impressions?
- Thread starter ZestyOne
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- big sur
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@Traverse
But I showed you two about finder windows side by side with different scaling and they look exactly the same.
I doesn't matter if the letter 'A' is 40 pixels tall or 36 pixels. Just like in Microsoft Word, you can pick 8pt font or 42pt font and they both look sharp.
MacOS UI elements are vector objects that scale smoothly.
But I showed you two about finder windows side by side with different scaling and they look exactly the same.
I doesn't matter if the letter 'A' is 40 pixels tall or 36 pixels. Just like in Microsoft Word, you can pick 8pt font or 42pt font and they both look sharp.
MacOS UI elements are vector objects that scale smoothly.
Well, first the failures.
Microsoft OneDrive - I just couldn't get it to behave. It kept saying it was up to date then it would resume syncing. When I tried to work with it, response was very sluggish. I managed to go into the preferences to deselect some folder that I didn't want sync'd; OneDrive just reported some error when I clicked OK.
Discord - Initially it worked. After waking from sleep I only got a blank screen. That persisted even after restarting Discord.
Everything else I tried worked. All programs were at their latest versions as of today, except for Arq (I'm still on version 5) and MoneyDance (I have version 2017 installed). I just ran basic tests, at most 30 seconds each program. Without further ado, here are the winners: (all worked flawlessly)
DevonThink, DevonAgent, OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, OmniOutlier, Arq, 1Password, BBEdit, Dropbox, Firefox, ForkLift, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, MS Remote Desktop, Microsoft Teams, MoneyDance, PCalc, Scrivener, Skype, SmartGit, Viscosity, WiFi Explorer, WireShark, Murus Firewall, Luna (using a Mac as a second display), LaunchBar, iTerm, iStatMenus.
I don't have the development environments I use installed on this machine. I'll have to do that and test thoroughly before I upgrade my main machine. Other programs that are just on my main machine would not cause me too much grief if they didn't work.
As I write up this post on my 15" laptop screen, I'm dazzled by the aesthetics. Then my world shatters. I try to drag Safari around to move it out of the way of my notes and I repeatedly fail to grab a spot that works; I almost clicked the back arrow when I was halfway through my writeup (yikes). Safari could never be my main browser because of this. It would be tolerable to use with a real mouse, but with just the trackpad it's terrible.
For crying out loud… where do you get all this from?
Open any Mac app or resource, choose "Show package contents", and voilá: .icns resources with rasterized PNG icons in various sizes for different resolutions.
You can also open Control panel / Accessibility / Zoom and enable scroll gestures. Zoom any part of the OS and you'll see it's all raster, it doesn't rescale. There is no such thing as a Postscript Mac OS.
I've found turning off the menu bar transparency increases my enjoyment of Big Sur by about 178%
True. I'll give you icons. And they're resampled at various sizes so you're unlikely to ever see them pixelate.
that's like using the digital zoom on your camera and saying 'hey look the world is made of pixels" lol. The zoom tool is raster, not the UI
Have you found a way to do that only to the menu bar? Or just the system-wide Reduce Transparency?
I really like it. So far I have had no issues, other than VMWare Fusion no longer working (I will use VirtualBox in the future).
I like the redesign and I notice my 2019 MacBook Pro booting up a little faster too.
Overall - very happy!
I like the redesign and I notice my 2019 MacBook Pro booting up a little faster too.
Overall - very happy!
Same here. The menu bar issues was the first bug reports I filed when I was in the beta testing program.
Reduce motion and Large menu bar are two other great options.
Reduce motion will make silly icons stop dancing and save a nuclear power plant.
Larger menu bar seems to be a little step towards customizing UI elements. I'm a bit worried about usability at the next level up, that is 8k.
Big Sur doesn't seem to make my Tecknet keyboard light up randomly when the mac is asleep unlike Catalina. So that is a definite plus.
No i don't think so but i can't remember now how i had it set before the update. Anyway no random disco lights.
It is a purely visual effect: the buttons actually extend to the bottom of the screen, as you might expect. I happen to think it looks good, but then I normally use the disappearing dock
New and updated apps use the SF symbols system.
SF symbols sounds like the first semi-interesting feature of Big Sur. But it will take a good couple of years before most apps use them, and I've never found the GUIs of apps to be particularly fuzzy before.
The release day was a mess and I tried and failed to download. It ran for about an hour and a half and then gave me the error in downloading message. The next morning everything went well and the download and install took an hour and a half.
Like every new release there are some people who will take an instant dislike because things lok different. that is not to discount the people who genuinely do not like it. I wound up increasing the font size of my Mailboxes and Mail headers a little. The transparency is a little rough in places. Hard to see gray on gray in the boxes listing the number of unread messages in your various mail boxes.
I have also noted as of yesterday that when I delete iCloud mail it goes to the Trash. When I delete my main Mail it deletes completely even though I have the proper box checked in Mail preferences to send deleted mail to the Trash. I am hoping this is addressed in the next update.
The rest of the display (icons, etc.) looks fine to me. Took a day or two to get used to a little bit different look, but overall this is one of the more seamless updates I have installed.
Late 2015 27" desktop.
I just installed Big Sur and everything works smoothly, no issues with installing my usual developer stuff(homebrew, node, nvm, npm, xcode, android studio etc...), my most used apps are working fine. Two things i don't like so far:
1. Everything feels a bit washed out. For example in Safari i always feel like i'm not in the active window, the toolbar looks like the inactive state in Catalina
2. The notifications... previously the action buttons were visible by default, now i have to click the small options button to show the the options
1. Everything feels a bit washed out. For example in Safari i always feel like i'm not in the active window, the toolbar looks like the inactive state in Catalina
2. The notifications... previously the action buttons were visible by default, now i have to click the small options button to show the the options
Yes but using scaling the text and icons on the menu bar are just to large and using default just to small. There’s no happy medium that can be applied. This is not user friendly for more senior users or those with disabilities. I don’t mind the overall appearance of BS but to make an OS more difficult to see and use for some users is not good PR.
yep regarding the senior thing; I'm one and I struggle with my eyesight.
Because I don't have Big Sur on my main machine, I'm most often working with it using Apple Remote Desktop. Changing resolution in System Preferences just changes the size of the whole window. The menu bar text stays the same size. I hope Apple considered the effect on seniors before changing the size. It's kind of hard to believe they didn't have extensive testing with people of varying abilities.
For whatever reason, the visibility of the menu bar font has yet to bother me, but whenever I look at it I feel slightly uncomfortable (like a forgot to water the plants and they're shriveling up). I think I know why. In Catalina the menu bar font is ever so slightly bigger then the window title bar font. Also, the menu bar font is bold whereas the title bar font is not. In Big Sur the relationship between the two is reversed; I find that discomforting. Consider System Preferences in Big Sur; the title bar wording seems so much more prominent than the menu bar's.
Years of conditioning has me accustomed to broader organizational concepts being presented more prominently than narrower ones, like headings in Microsoft Word are typically larger than subheadings. The menu bar represents the entire application with the title of it clearly visible. The title bar represents a particular document or feature within the application.
I can spend hours on CSS getting the fonts and spacing just right for my own comfort. I kind of wonder whether constantly working with Big Sur will change my aesthetic and what I decide for my own apps.
At least some of the boring, poorly designed and inconsistent app icons can be changed, but it appears that the system sounds cannot be changed. I am hoping that there is a way or a 3rd party hack that will allow for this. While I don't hate all of the new sounds, some of them are terrible, cold and don't make any sense in relation to the function they are representing (in my opinion). The new 'throw in trash' sound is a muffled drum snare, opposed to the sound it replaced, which was a satisfying sound of something actually being tossed in a bin.