macOS Big Sur: improving our productivity, or feeding us frills and eye candy?

[jchap]

I'm currently on macOS Catalina, and have been reviewing the new features that Apple touts for macOS Big Sur. I'm seriously wondering: does Big Sur offer any significant improvements to productivity? Any noteworthy and truly helpful improvements to the user experience? Is the UI really that much easier to use—any easier to use at all?

I spend most of my workdays immersed in apps like Calendar, Mail and of course Finder (and also use third-party apps like Fantastical, Mailmate and Path Finder to shore up the areas where macOS is weak), along with a slew of third-party apps.

For me, third-party apps like Alfred, Default Folder X, Vitamin-R and PopClip to name a few have really enhanced the macOS user experience, and combined they remain a solid reason for me to keep doing my daily work on this platform, and do it well. AppleScript has also helped me to extend and expand the things I can do on the Mac, further raising the bar and drawing a sharp line between macOS and Windows.

That said, I really can't see any significant and ground-breaking improvements that Apple has made this time to any of the core macOS apps or functionality... at least by reading the descriptions on their website, the beta reviews and checking out the UI images that beta testers have posted. It almost seems like they've given the OS a paint job and thrown in a few new toys to play with... but the major frameworks remain untouched. (I realize that they've likely done a lot of work under the hood in support of Apple Silicon with this new release, but I can't see any major enhancements to the way we use the Mac this time.)

Did I miss something, or is Big Sur basically just a facelift that touts as a major upgrade by name alone?

 

[MacLawyer]

OK, I'm a dinosaur and I admit it. The move from the "flat" look in MacOS has been taken to the "ultra flat" IOS look and I hate it. Boring and depressing. YMMV. In the meantime Catalina is going to stay on my 2020 iMac and MacBook Pro for a long time.

 

[ArPe]

There are improvements to graphics and video performance along with better support for HDR and 4K streaming.

Support for AirPods is better and they automatically connect and disconnect based on which device you are playing content from.

On Apple Silicon the new OS will be more impactful as developers and customers will find it easy to run the same app across iOS, iPadOS and macOS. That means if you really like a game or app on iPadOS it will run faster with additional options on an Apple Silicon based Mac.

 

[leman]

From what I’ve seen, Big Sur is mostly about two things:

1. A new UI design language

2. Some under-the-hood changes to driver stability and security (user space drivers)

So you are not wrong, the “paint job” is a substantial part of it. But it’s not just a visual change. There are also a lot of semantic changes (sidebar, new types of windows etc.) that in principle should give developers more options in conveying I formation to the user in a suitable way.

 

[leman]

OK, I'm a dinosaur and I admit it. The move from the "flat" look in MacOS has been taken to the "ultra flat" IOS look and I hate it. Boring and depressing. YMMV. In the meantime Catalina is going to stay on my 2020 iMac and MacBook Pro for a long time.

Big Sur is certainly less flat than its predecessors. Apple is integrating depth effects, albeit heavily stylized and abstracted, back into the UI. Read up on Neumorphism.

 

[jchap]

There are improvements to graphics and video performance along with better support for HDR and 4K streaming.

Support for AirPods is better and they automatically connect and disconnect based on which device you are playing content from.

I wonder if the improvements to graphics and video performance are more for graphics-intensive apps like gaming or video production, then? Hopefully that translates into better display performance even for the older Macs.

 

[jchap]

2. Some under-the-hood changes to driver stability and security (user space drivers)

So you are not wrong, the “paint job” is a substantial part of it. But it’s not just a visual change. There are also a lot of semantic changes (sidebar, new types of windows etc.) that in principle should give developers more options in conveying I formation to the user in a suitable way.

I like the notion of driver stability and security, although I haven't seen much about that. What would that add up to in terms of the end user, I wonder?

I guess I also missed the "new types of windows" part—is that information on the Apple website, or is it more of something that only developers need to be concerned with?

 

[ArPe]

I wonder if the improvements to graphics and video performance are more for graphics-intensive apps like gaming or video production, then? Hopefully that translates into better display performance even for the older Macs.

For the Radeon graphics there are some video and rendering speed tweaks. The rest we will find out when Big Sur is running Apple Silicon GPU and dedicated encoding/decoding chips.

Already Apple Arcade games have extra detail options when they are running on macOS so we will see more of those options like ray tracing becoming available if you have a GPU that supports them.

 

[leman]

I like the notion of driver stability and security, although I haven't seen much about that. What would that add up to in terms of the end user, I wonder?

Mostly no more dealing with kernel extensions and less crashes should a driver go buggy But there are caveats too. On one side driver writers should be able to update their code more frequently and will less tension, on the other side there might be performance implications.

I guess I also missed the "new types of windows" part—is that information on the Apple website, or is it more of something that only developers need to be concerned with?

Its more relevant to developers but it's certainly worth having a look if you are interested in the topic. Apple summarizes all the changes to mcOS 11 UI here: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/overview/whats-new-in-macos/

Also, this video goes a bit in-depth and I think one can also watch it skipping all the dev-related stuff (it's easily digestible): https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10104/

 

[Ritsuka]

Here's a partial list of the new public API in macOS 11: http://codeworkshop.net/objc-diff/sdkdiffs/macos/11.0/
Some notable improvements: macOS guest in a VM can access the GPU. Octane can use the new Metal API to improve ray tracing performances. Hardware VP9 decoding acceleration. Catalyst has a new "Optimised for Mac" mode, that will improve performance and fix the blurriness (Catalyst apps were downscaled to 0.77 by default on 10.14 and 10.15).

 

[w0lf]

Tech in general has peaked.

If security isn't important to you, there has been almost nothing useful added in OS updates for years. At their core Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, etc have all been feature complete for some time now.

 

[MacLawyer]

Big Sur is certainly less flat than its predecessors. Apple is integrating depth effects, albeit heavily stylized and abstracted, back into the UI. Read up on Neumorphism.

I don't need to read up on anything to look at something and not like it. Besides, dinosaurs can't read. YMMV.

 

[leman]

I don't need to read up on anything to look at something and not like it. Besides, dinosaurs can't read. YMMV.

Tastes differ, nothing weird about that I was only pointing out that Big Sur is moving away from the flat UI.

 

[tkermit]

Big Sur is moving away from the flat UI.

Are we looking at the same OS?!

For better or worse, your typical app UI in Big Sur looks nothing like Neuomorphism:

 

[honestone33]

For myself, I am not seeing anything "earth shattering" in Big Sur for rushing to it. As it is, not all the critical third party applications I use are compatible with Big Sur yet. Also, as is typical, the first 2 or 3 releases of a new mac OS always contain bugs. I'll just stick with Catalina (it's rock solid) until the last of my critical applications, Tech Tool Pro, has a compatible version, which will most likely be in January.

One thing I am concerned about is the issues for both SuperDuper! (I use it) and Carbon Copy Cloner. From what I have seen and read, both from Shirt Pocket Software and on another Mac discussion site I just recently started visiting, there are definitely issues.

 

[leman]

Are we looking at the same OS?!

I understand what you mean, its definitely flatter than some other designs. And since Apple practically eliminated visually delimited window toolbars in Big Sur, using more minimalist SF Symbols, the window structure is certainly more "flat". Buy look at buttons, sliders, shadows, gradients, colors — there is more "depth" in Big Sur compared to it's predecessors. I see more Aqua in it (heavily stylized of course) than in Catalina or El Capitan. This is what I mean whenI say that Apple is moving away from "flat". Compare Big Sur to Windows 10 and I hope you will see what I mean. But I understand that the overall statement about Big Sur flatness is debatable.

I also have to admit that while I do like the direction in which the UI is going, I am not the biggest fan of some elements. It kind of seems all over the place. Apple is known for it's minimalist focus, but Big Sur is very complex. And I would have certainly preferred more consistent icons.

 

[oldsuttree]

For me, the new paint job is more than enough to be excited for Big Sur, but not because of eye candy. I think the new UI (for the most part) is more logical and hierarchical. The older UIs were a mess of cognitive overhead.

 

[Feyl]

Big Sur is definitely not moving away from the flat UI. While I absolutely hated iOS 7 redesign I was kinda OK with OS X Yosemite. They actually didn't go overboard too much with excessive use of white spaces and preserved most of the 3D/skeuomorphic elements. Now they went full iOS. It's horrible and it's not fixing or improving anything. This horrible design even removes simple things like telling the differenece between active and inactive windows.

 

[navaira]

If this particular screenshot of the Save window above is representative for the Big Sur visual interface, I can only hope Mojave continues getting security updates for a while longer

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

From an Apple Silicon perspective, Bug Sur will allow me to run many iPad apps that simply aren’t available on macOS - which will save me time and headaches.

 

[ArPe]

Big Sur is definitely not moving away from the flat UI. While I absolutely hated iOS 7 redesign I was kinda OK with OS X Yosemite. They actually didn't go overboard too much with excessive use of white spaces and preserved most of the 3D/skeuomorphic elements. Now they went full iOS. It's horrible and it's not fixing or improving anything. This horrible design even removes simple things like telling the differenece between active and inactive windows. View attachment 976636

Regardless, a user knows which window is active. It’s the window they are interacting with in the moment. Visual cues that began in the 80s will gradually disappear and every object on the screen will become a live object.

Interacting with document and app windows should be no different from interacting with different pieces of paper on your desk.

 

[-BigMac-]

Regardless, a user knows which window is active. It’s the window they are interacting with in the moment. Visual cues that began in the 80s will gradually disappear and every object on the screen will become a live object.

Interacting with document and app windows should be no different from interacting with different pieces of paper on your desk.

I don't interact with every piece of paper at once, just the one I'm working with. Unless its a cluster f**k and I don't know what I'm doing haha

 

[oldsuttree]

Big Sur is definitely not moving away from the flat UI. While I absolutely hated iOS 7 redesign I was kinda OK with OS X Yosemite. They actually didn't go overboard too much with excessive use of white spaces and preserved most of the 3D/skeuomorphic elements. Now they went full iOS. It's horrible and it's not fixing or improving anything. This horrible design even removes simple things like telling the differenece between active and inactive windows. View attachment 976636

Wow, that's a major improvement in Aqua. So much cleaner and calmer while retaining the essential controls.

 

[ArPe]

I don't interact with every piece of paper at once, just the one I'm working with. Unless its a cluster f**k and I don't know what I'm doing haha

lol 😂 but anyway let’s take a moment to enjoy a blast from the past circa 2006

 

[jchap]

This horrible design even removes simple things like telling the differenece between active and inactive windows.

It's no longer possible to tell the difference between active/inactive windows on Big Sur? No subtle color changes on the text, window borders or anything? That would seem to be a major problem...