It is unprofessional and looks like a toy OS, and not a real OS.. Even Snow Leopard was more professional than Big Sur.
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Why is Big Sur so ugly?
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It is unprofessional and looks like a toy OS, and not a real OS.. Even Snow Leopard was more professional than Big Sur.
Snow Leopard was definitely beautiful (I ran it on a VM a couple years ago, sadly it wouldn't scale properly on my MBP 2012 version, it had bars) but 'toy OS' is distinctively a thing starting in Yosemite and up until Catalina. Big Sur is (hopefully) the start of returning back. I still wish they used cat names though. I can't get used to not referring to it as 'Mac OS X' or using cat names.
...have you seen Catalina lately?
I just don't understand why Big Sur is what's triggering these complaints. There is a Mac OS design that I'd say fits the description of "Toy OS", and it's not Big Sur—it's all the versions in between Big Sur and Mavericks.
Did everyone else just forget how bad current macOS looks because they got used to it?
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I think many who 'love' the so-called 'modern' (to me it is from the 80s) flat design look or those who adjusted easier to it weren't around before Skeuomorphism had its run. They are mostly twenty-somethings and skeuo is what their grandparents use or something, so skeuo to them equates to still using Yahoo! for email or AOL for internet.
Just a theory, of course. I doubt many remember flat design's early run back in the DOS days or the early System 6 days. Or Windows 1.0 for that matter. Flat is never going to be modern. I never got used to it. I can't get used to something I hate. That's just how it is. I actually thought the leather bound calendar was fun to use, and looked excellent on a retina display. I loved using multi-touch to rotate knobs and sliders, and I really REALLY miss coverflow!!!
Those were the things that made me an Apple fan to begin with! Because no one else was doing it! Now that job has mostly been Samsung's up until more recently.
Just a theory, of course. I doubt many remember flat design's early run back in the DOS days or the early System 6 days. Or Windows 1.0 for that matter. Flat is never going to be modern. I never got used to it. I can't get used to something I hate. That's just how it is. I actually thought the leather bound calendar was fun to use, and looked excellent on a retina display. I loved using multi-touch to rotate knobs and sliders, and I really REALLY miss coverflow!!!
Those were the things that made me an Apple fan to begin with! Because no one else was doing it! Now that job has mostly been Samsung's up until more recently.
Skeuomorphism was a design fad that most people moved on from fairly quickly. Your attempt to discredit those who like the new look as "mostly twenty-somethings" is just an attempt to downplay those views which differs from yours. Flatter designs are becoming more and more common across all areas of design, including operating systems, websites, and applications. Look at Google's Material Design guidelines, and you'll see that there are numerous similarities between their approach and what we are seeing in Big Sur.
Old macOS was barely skeuomorphic.
Here is what my Dock looks like right now, in Mavericks.
What real-world object is this supposed to resemble? I guess a shelf, maybe? How many frosted glass shelves do you have? Do you keep folders on the shelf? Do you keep them next to your trash can?
I bring up the Dock because I think it's the most skeumorphic element there is, if we're talking about the OS itself and not bundled applications. If we do include applications—which, fair!—there was a two-year period during Lion and Mountain Lion when Apple added faux leather to Calendar, Contacts, etc, but it really wasn't a thing outside of those releases.
Here's the dictionary app in Mavericks. Notice how it looks nothing like a book:
And here's Calendar:
Skeumorphic design imitates the appearance of real-world objects. The Mac never really did that. It borrows textures from the real world—frosted glass for the Dock, smooth metal for the tops of windows—but it applies them in unique ways that befit a digital object.
What old Mac OS did have, however, was texture and depth. The reason I'm using Mavericks right now is because, day to day, I just find the added contrast between windows, icons, and other parts of the OS to be much easier to process. Each window looks distinct and I can parse the screen more easily, even when it's full of junk from ten different apps I haven't gotten around to closing yet.
And this is also why I like Big Sur. It's still much flatter than I would like, but the stronger drop shadows go a long way towards making each window and menu stand out.
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I remember when I got my first Apple product ever, the amazing iPhone 4. Apart from the hardware and software design I loved how fun it was. I still remember vividly when I deleted my first picture in the camera roll. The trash can opened and sucked the picture in. Now it just goes away without any fun. This and many many other little things made me an Apple fan too. I miss those days. I miss Scott Forstall and Steve of course.
Big Sur is moving away from flat style actually. It’s embracing what they call ”Neumorphism“ (neo-skeumorphism). I think it’s a great and refreshing take on UI.
Skeomorprism was the main design style of OS X for a while. Just look at Aqua. There is a reason why people refer to Skeumorphism as “old Apple style”. It’s the flat interface that was fairly short lived on Apple, with them going over to Neumorphic designs.
Put simply, I think they're wrong, for all the reasons I gave in my post. They're conflating "Skeomorprism" with "3D". But Skeumorphism has traditionally meant design that resembles a real-world object.
What is the real-world analog of OS X's Dock, or it's Dictionary app, or Mail? You might answer "A shelf, a book, and a stationary desk", but the elements in question don't resemble those things at all! Contrast this to early iOS and you'll see the difference.
Now, certain individual icons were certainly skeumorphic—the Safari icon was basically a photo of a compass. But I don't think this tells us much about the OS, and the change here was ultimately pretty minimal—all of the icons were made flatter, but in many cases this just amounted to removing lighting/shading (the Safari icon is not one of those cases).
Also, unlike OS X, early iOS was absolutely skeumorphic. Nearly all of the apps were made to look almost exactly like their real-world counterparts.
It depends on your definition of what skeuomorphic means. I think if you limit it to designs that literally depict real-world objects, the definition will end up being rather narrow. For example, camera shutter sounds and swipe to change pages are also widely regarded as skeuomorphisms.
In the commonly accepted definition skeuomorphisms involve a literal transfer of some real world properties to the design. Under this definition, the brushed metal and gel-filled buttons of Aqua are all skeuomorphisms. “Flat” design removes this component entirely, relying on abstract symbolic resemblance and visual contrasts (such as colors, transparency etc.) to define semantic elements instead. What we have now is a return to skeuomorphic elements (real-world depth, object depictions), but heavily stylized and abstracted. It’s a bit like moving from realism to more abstract art forms. Hence Neo-Skeumorphism or Neumorphism.
I understand that tastes different, but certain progression is only natural to art. Designers are creative people and they can’t sit there doing same thing over and over again. Reinterpretations and recombinations of elements give raise to new styles, some of which become quite popular. Neumorogic design is the new fashion in UI, and Apple as usual is on its forefront.
The icons have really grown on me.
As for the dock and menu bar, they look great in reduced transparency (except for the gap between menu bar and menu). I hate the default menu bar (with reduced transparency off), though.
I caught the bit about being sarcastic, but I like the screenshot. Apple has gone through various cycles in their UI design, mostly from flat to shaded. System 6 was very flat, owing to being black and white. System 7 had some shading effects and I thought was nice. Mac OS 8 went with some very elaborate shading and I thought went too far in that while not being attractive. Mac OS X went mostly white, with some textures that weren't subtle enough. After that, the textures got more subtle until they tried to integrate brushed metal into the default look and ended up with something with more elaborate shading. It looks like we've been moving back to almost white, but we're now getting some subtle shading and lighting effects going on. Except for the menu bar, this is my favorite basic look. Though it definitely needs more work in places, I think the core idea here is finally a good one.
Well, there's a spectrum for sure. The primary reason I'm nitpicking the definition is I think it draws a meaningful contrast between old Mac OS and old iOS. iOS absolutely tried to mimick the design and behavior of real world-objects, and while it may have helped newcomers feel comfortable, it was also detrimental to long-term usability. No one wants to read their notes with the Marker Felt font.
Oh, but the shutter sound is absolutely skeumorphic! Your digital phone camera is emulating the noisy shutter of a traditional camera! By contrast, if the iPhone played a "plunk" sound when you took a photo, that would not be skeumorphic.
Worth reading:
Skeuomorph - Wikipedia
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Are you implying that looks like a toy? Because I think it looks far less toy-like than anything we have today.
See, I could go all in on Flat Design if it were more like this:
Or this:
Or this:
Instead we just regress to something resembling this:
Sorry, but the 1980s ended decades ago! If you want modern Flat Design at least look at some Science Fiction shows for a proper idea of futuristic UI design, not regressing back to something more fitting to a 640KB RAM system with an 4.75 MHz 8088 CPU.
Or this:
Or this:
Instead we just regress to something resembling this:
Sorry, but the 1980s ended decades ago! If you want modern Flat Design at least look at some Science Fiction shows for a proper idea of futuristic UI design, not regressing back to something more fitting to a 640KB RAM system with an 4.75 MHz 8088 CPU.
...wait, you like that first screenshot? That looks terrible. They're just big colored shapes with nothing too them at all. That would drive me nuts.
Spoken like someone who never watched Trek or heard of LCARS. LCARS was quite a neat design language IMO.
Personally I prefer the idea Sony tried known as a transparent LCD display, which is a perfect template for modern flat UI, and far more fitting.
Anything would be better than revisiting Amiga WorkBench 1.5 or Tandy DeskMate again.
Personally I prefer the idea Sony tried known as a transparent LCD display, which is a perfect template for modern flat UI, and far more fitting.
Anything would be better than revisiting Amiga WorkBench 1.5 or Tandy DeskMate again.
Well, it's true, I have not watched Startrek. 
I still think the design language in those screenshots would get incredibly tiring after a day of use.
I still think the design language in those screenshots would get incredibly tiring after a day of use.