Why is Big Sur so ugly?

[nickdalzell1]

From the screencaps I'm seeing, there doesn't appear to be much you can do to customize Big Sur. I can't even notice the differences from stock to what you have, NSklaus. Even with my very high sense of awareness and ability to notice any little change, it still looks like Big Sur to me.

Doesn't appear you can do much to bring back the Mavericks or Mountain Lion UI. I'm still having issues with permissions on my MBP. It refuses any change I make. I'm still on Beta 4 so maybe it isn't compatible? I mean, it doesn't give an error; it acts like it makes the change, then immediately reverts back. For example: the Finder icon. It makes the change, you see the classic Finder icon for a second, then it reverts back to the crappy flat Finder icon. It's like there's some sort of SFC ala Windows XP going on here.

Another example: removing the system apps such as Mail, Reminders, Safari, etc. You can drag the icons to the trash, but they don't actually move. Sometimes you see the 'paper in trash bin' icon, but then it won't empty (again, no error, nothing happens). So I can't even replace them with Montain Lion alternatives. I have the .app files but they won't work. I can't remove the Big Sur versions and copying over them does nothing.

Traffic light assets appear to replace, but I'm still seeing the flat versions only now without colors. They're just flat grey. Like in an inactive window state.

I wonder what would happen if I tried sideloading in or installing Mac OS X Montain Lion on this thing? It's an Intel Mac, it should work, right? Or maybe attempt it in Parallels? I'd have to find the OS purchasable online, because the only one I could find for free is Snow Leopard, which will work in Parallels, but it won't scale to widescreen (predates that era) so it's pillar-boxed. I will let you all know when I get a copy or .ISO of Mountain Lion.

I mean I love this MBP but I want skeuo back so much that I'd much rather just find an older 2012 era or earlier MBP online and use that! I don't like Ebay with their scams and overpricing (and shipping horrors) but the oldest Mac on Amazon used is from 2015. When I get back to work (we're off for the season) and collect some $$$ I'm open to trade this 2019 MBP for a 2010 one if anyone is willing to part with one!

 

[nsklaus]

@nickdalzell1

i have no idea about replacing icons, or deleting stock apps. i haven't tried doing that kind of things yet.
what i am doing is trying to revert the bigsur new theme to make it look like previous macos, regarding colours, widgets, and fat bars.

for example: default bigsur light theme is too white. there is almost no difference between titlebar, toolbar and window content background. they are all white. i liked it better before when titlebar and toolbar had a grayish gradient and window content background was white.

another example: on previous macos, buttons on the toolbar had a square white background around them. i liked that. it matched well with the grayish background.

last example: bigsur introduced fusion of titlebars with toolbars, and in addition it made them fat looking.
i liked how previous macos titlebar and toolbar were distinct from each other, and i liked that everything looked tight and minimalist. no fat looking bars.

those three changes bigsur made on the default light theme applies everywhere in the system. what i do is trying to revert that. to me even catalina is still ok. i don't mind them mojave, catalina or any previous macos are fine with me. what i dislike is bigsur new theme. now i have almost completely got rid of those 3 problems. macos looks nice again at least in my eyes.

technically, with themeengine and some tweaking around, you can make macos looks however you want.
but, for me, the less tweaks i need to do the better. restoring macos to a much older look should take much more efforts. the last screenshot i posted is nice enough for my needs, if i can solve the last final few little problems i have with it and make that play fine 100% i'd be satisfied. for example currently the little problems i still have are that safari address bar doesn't show editing or selecting text (although it does accept input, it's just i'm inputing in a blind kind of mode) and there are 1 or 2 widgets that doesn't display correctly too (in the finder the widget to switch between 3 display modes). i also would like to have blue color for selection in menus and coloured traffic light buttons. but beside these little problems the system works 99,9% fine.
if i could at least get safari address bar working correctly again i could even call it a day and get over with this new design fiasco and not think about it anymore.

if you have problem using themeengine, or doing the things i mentionned so far, i could help. for the rest i have no idea and will personaly not attempt to go that far. as i was saying, even catalina is ok enough for me. only bigsur is an abomination to my eyes

 

[nsklaus]

for those wanting to try the graphite theme, there was an important point i missed.
it also require to import SystemAppearance.car from catalina.
simply remove the one that exists in big sur (SystemAppearance.bundle/Contents/Resources/SystemAppearance.car)
and put the one from catalina instead. they are easy to differentiate,
the one in big sur is small: 160K SystemAppearance.car
the one from catalina is : 3.5M SystemAppearance.car

so the whole operation is,
- remove Aqua.car
- copy Graphite into Aqua.car
- remove VibrantLight.car
- copy VibrantLightGraphite into VibrantLight.car
- remove SystemAppearance.car
- copy SystemAppearance.car from catalina over.
- do the bless thing, reboot.

and marvel, you have a good looking macos with a half-functional safari address bar

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I'm still getting my head around why some windows are easier to 'grab' (click-drag) than others. It's very inconsistent, which is somewhat ironic given Apple touts Big Sur as a more cohesive experience.

It's especially bad in Safari because there's no visual clue as to where the boundaries are between extensions and areas you can grab, which leaves you with very little room to manoeuvre. Furthermore, the visual 'button' that appears when you hover over an item isn't an indication that that is the boundary box - there's still a lot of area surrounding them that can't be grabbed. And the area around the bookmarks is different again!

I really do miss Aqua, it was more consistent than this nonsense.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

I’d agree, especially after Jobs gushed about what he leanred in a typography class and the importance of how much effort went in to polishing the UI, Big Sur looks like Saturday morning cartoons, & makes a Mac look like a children’s toy. But I don’t care anymore, bc after dropping 32bit support, and now dropping intel chipsets, theres nothing left for design/engineering users to do but ride out the last macs of the intel era by just running Windows on em, prolonging the inevitable return to, I guess it will be MS Surface machines... ugh. Hopefully the longer we wait, maybe MS will get their act together and make a truly professional slate tablet system, catching everyone up to what Motion Computing had in 2003. It’s been a fun 35 years making apple work for us, but there’s no pretending anymore, that it hasn’t moved on to the easier money & dumped the fewer & more demanding pro set.

 

[nsklaus]

I’d agree, especially after Jobs gushed about what he leanred in a typography class and the importance of how much effort went in to polishing the UI, Big Sur looks like Saturday morning cartoons, & makes a Mac look like a children’s toy. But I don’t care anymore, bc after dropping 32bit support, and now dropping intel chipsets, theres nothing left for design/engineering users to do but ride out the last macs of the intel era by just running Windows on em, prolonging the inevitable return to, I guess it will be MS Surface machines... ugh. Hopefully the longer we wait, maybe MS will get their act together and make a truly professional slate tablet system, catching everyone up to what Motion Computing had in 2003. It’s been a fun 35 years making apple work for us, but there’s no pretending anymore, that it hasn’t moved on to the easier money & dumped the fewer & more demanding pro set.

i find the new mac m1 very nice. all is not black in apple world lately.

however, i find some of the other recent choices made by apple .. not that great.
dropping 32bit support for one, especially considering windows and linux did found solution to be able to run 32bits apps from a 64bits systems, makes macos looks like the least capable OS. it was also a huge hole on the compatibility list of apps that could be made to run on recent macs. a puzzling move from apple there. like shooting a bullet on its own foot.

the new bigsur theme is also quite a step down compared to previous macos. there again very damaging to the brand identity and history of beautiful looking systems. suddenly they release something ugly and they seem happy about it. dear apple .. what on earth are you doing here ? automutilation ? what's the goal here ?

there's also the decision made by apple to forbid any kind of theme tweaking is also discutable.
they could have allowed something that lives in the user home, that would overrides the system default theme, without harming any default or actual system's files... or again, allowing 3rd party apps like flavours2 to run well, it would have been only a positive move for apple with no side effects. but they did choose the rigid, lockdown approach, without giving us access to any alternatives. that makes me wonder how do they consider their user base.

anyway, personally, i would not consider going to microsoft "products" a solution in any shape or form. it would be illogical to go from bad to worse.

 

[colourfastt]

i find the new mac m1 very nice. all is not black in apple world lately.

however, i find some of the other recent choices made by apple .. not that great.
dropping 32bit support for one, especially considering windows and linux did found solution to be able to run 32bits apps from a 64bits systems, makes macos looks like the least capable OS. it was also a huge hole on the compatibility list of apps that could be made to run on recent macs. a puzzling move from apple there. like shooting a bullet on its own foot.

OS X (now macOS) has been 64 bit since OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)—quote: "A 64-bit kernel was introduced in 10.6, and the 32-bit kernel was removed in 10.8." [Mountain Lion]

Removing the support for 32-bit applications removes the biggest problem Windows has—legacy apps not running in the operating space properly. Yes, I put off installing Catalina because I used a 32-bit legacy app that I had purchased in 2011 and still used—Office 2011—but eventually realised that it didn't really offer anything I couldn't get with Pages, etc., so it went into the dustbin of history and I updated to Catalina.

As an aside, I do wish that Apple would reissue Pages 9; it was a fully-featured word processing app that was, in my opinion, better than Word. In doing so, of course, Apple would have to drop its "goal" of making macOS apps identical to IOS apps.

 

[nsklaus]

OS X (now macOS) has been 64 bit since OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)—quote: "A 64-bit kernel was introduced in 10.6, and the 32-bit kernel was removed in 10.8." [Mountain Lion]

Removing the support for 32-bit applications removes the biggest problem Windows has—legacy apps not running in the operating space properly. Yes, I put off installing Catalina because I used a 32-bit legacy app that I had purchased in 2011 and still used—Office 2011—but eventually realised that it didn't really offer anything I couldn't get with Pages, etc., so it went into the dustbin of history and I updated to Catalina.

As an aside, I do wish that Apple would reissue Pages 9; it was a fully-featured word processing app that was, in my opinion, better than Word. In doing so, of course, Apple would have to drop its "goal" of making macOS apps identical to IOS apps.

your thinking is a bit too narrow and constrained, it is focused only in one way of implementing 32bits support. but there are many different ways of retaining backward compatibility. some are cleaner than others. in the past, apple offered "carbon" if i remember correctly. a sandbox capable of running classic apps from inside osx. sandbox approach is one way. there also are other ways. look around, see what the competitors did. there are also things like 'rosetta' in case you missed it, i'd encourage you to look at what it is. apple actually did a good job with that.

 

[colourfastt]

your thinking is a bit too narrow and constrained, it is focused only in one way of implementing 32bits support. but there are many different ways of retaining backward compatibility. some are cleaner than others. in the past, apple offered "carbon" if i remember correctly. a sandbox capable of running classic apps from inside osx. sandbox approach is one way. there also are other ways. look around, see what the competitors did. there are also things like 'rosetta' in case you missed it, i'd encourage you to look at what it is. apple actually did a good job with that.

1) Cocoa replaced Carbon (Carbon was deprecated in 10.8—Mountain Lion). Carbon was designed to be backwards-compatible with OS 8 & 9, hence it was 32-bit. Since 32-bit has been deprecated since 10.15, Carbon is not an effective solution. The solution is for developers to update their apps using Cocoa.

2) I remember Rosetta. I bought my first Mac in 2008—an iMac running 10.5. At that time about half my apps were using universal binaries. When I upgraded to 10.7 I had to do a bit of replacement for some of my apps since Rosetta and universal binaries were deprecated. Now with the transition from Intel to AS processors, we have Rosetta 2. It's the same thing BUT in 64-bit. I expect Rosetta 2 to have the same life-cycle as Rosetta—11.0 to 11.2 and deprecated in 11.3 (Rosetta went from 10.4 to 10.6 and was deprecated in 10.7).

 

[nsklaus]

1) Cocoa replaced Carbon (Carbon was deprecated in 10.8—Mountain Lion). Carbon was designed to be backwards-compatible with OS 8 & 9, hence it was 32-bit. Since 32-bit has been deprecated since 10.15, Carbon is not an effective solution. The solution is for developers to update their apps using Cocoa.

2) I remember Rosetta. I bought my first Mac in 2008—an iMac running 10.5. At that time about half my apps were using universal binaries. When I upgraded to 10.7 I had to do a bit of replacement for some of my apps since Rosetta and universal binaries were deprecated. Now with the transition from Intel to AS processors, we have Rosetta 2. It's the same thing BUT in 64-bit. I expect Rosetta 2 to have the same life-cycle as Rosetta—11.0 to 11.2 and deprecated in 11.3 (Rosetta went from 10.4 to 10.6 and was deprecated in 10.7).

well, it seems you haven't understood a thing i said and the point that was being discussed too.
and it shows on your replies. even your first post was off target.

you were replying to me, but,
i haven't asked _why_ there is no 32bit support anymore.
nor _since when_ 32bit support was dropped.
and neither when carbon was removed, or what carbon actually was.
in fact i haven't asked about any of all the points you brought forth.

if this is going to be another "dialogue of the deafs" where you reply and argue about points that weren't even raised at all and we would both talk while not being on the same page, i'm telling you right now i'm not interested.

 

[ErikGrim]

discutable.

"dialogue of the deafs"

Are you by any chance Norwegian?

 

[KoolAid-Drink]

I expect Rosetta 2 to have the same life-cycle as Rosetta—11.0 to 11.2 and deprecated in 11.3 (Rosetta went from 10.4 to 10.6 and was deprecated in 10.7).

I respectfully disagree—we're already at 11.1, and I expect 11.2, 11.3, etc. before macOS 12 comes this fall. Apple seems to have discontinued the previous practice of doing 10.x.0, 10.x.1, etc. and now moved to the x.1, x.2 cycle, similar to iOS.

I'd realistically expect Intel/Rosetta to be completely discontinued in macOS 16 or so, which is about 5-6 years from now. That'd give a reasonable timeframe of support for new Intel Macs since 2020, including any unforeseen, unreleased Intel Macs coming this year, and give Apple time to complete the transition to 100% Silicon, while providing a decent timeframe of support for existing Intel Macs.

 

[ErikGrim]

I respectfully disagree—we're already at 11.1, and I expect 11.2, 11.3, etc. before macOS 12 comes this fall. Apple seems to have discontinued the previous practice of doing 10.x.0, 10.x.1, etc. and now moved to the x.1, x.2 cycle, similar to iOS.

I'd realistically expect Intel/Rosetta to be completely discontinued in macOS 16 or so, which is about 5-6 years from now. That'd give a reasonable timeframe of support for new Intel Macs since 2020, including any unforeseen, unreleased Intel Macs coming this year, and give Apple time to complete the transition to 100% Silicon, while providing a decent timeframe of support for existing Intel Macs.

He probably means macOS 13

 

[nsklaus]

for those following this topic for finding solutions to the new theme, someone i was discussing with discovered an easier solution than my 'graphite switch', so i'm sharing the word here too:
replace just one file: vibrantlight.car with systemappearance.car from catalina.

- delete vibrantlight.car from bigsur theme
- copy over systemappearance.car from catalina and rename it as vibrantlight.car.
- do the bless thing, reboot and that's it.

the bonus is that safari address bar will still work. although some toolbar buttons will look a tiny bit squeezed it is still acceptable and will look 98% like the 'graphite switch' i was talking about in earlier posts. easier tweak, with less side effects.

 

[colourfastt]

I respectfully disagree—we're already at 11.1, and I expect 11.2, 11.3, etc. before macOS 12 comes this fall. Apple seems to have discontinued the previous practice of doing 10.x.0, 10.x.1, etc. and now moved to the x.1, x.2 cycle, similar to iOS.

I was corrected on this issue in another thread. It's my fault for assuming that Apple would continue to use the numbering system that had been used for 35+ years (going all the way back to the original Mac). Apparently now each autumn will see the release of a "new" macOS (macOS 12 in 2021, macOS 13 in 2022, macOS 14 in 2023, etc.).

 

[yurc]

@cfdlab
you're welcome, i'm glad if i could help. this finding isn't my own by the way, i've found it on the net. i'm just sharing the word.

@jennyp
it's correct you can change finder's colours, but it doesn't just apply to finder. it's system wide. every window will have the colour background you defined. changing background colour and apply a fixed one or even a gradient is easy. after that, the rest, is more complex. for example restoring white background around toolbar buttons or things like that will require more fiddling with themeengine. it can be done though. but it will need more tricky tweaking. (it's in the zzzzpackedassets1 and 2 i believe.. it's less simple to edit those.)

see this screenshot i've highlighted in red the sections for changing window background colours.
the element are just bitmaps. i recommend browsing everywhere in the aqua.car elements, find a colour or a gradient you like, then copy it, go back to the element i've highlighted, select one on the right panel and paste. save your modification, in term do the bless thing (for me it is: sudo bless --mount /Users/klaus/livemount --bootefi --create-snapshot) then reboot and you should have your new colour applied for every window.

View attachment 1702249


my current setting makes it look like that:

View attachment 1702253

it's not as nice as previous macos, but at least it's more bearable that way.

Much better, somehow I find light mode on big sur are way tooo white, previous OSX still have rather more towards gray shade.

 

[jennyp]

for those following this topic for finding solutions to the new theme, someone i was discussing with discovered an easier solution than my 'graphite switch', so i'm sharing the word here too:
replace just one file: vibrantlight.car with systemappearance.car from catalina.

- delete vibrantlight.car from bigsur theme
- copy over systemappearance.car from catalina and rename it as vibrantlight.car.
- do the bless thing, reboot and that's it.

the bonus is that safari address bar will still work. although some toolbar buttons will look a tiny bit squeezed it is still acceptable and will look 98% like the 'graphite switch' i was talking about in earlier posts. easier tweak, with less side effects.
View attachment 1707170

That works OK-ish, except if you want the graphite accent colour, it doesn't work - it sticks as blue ..

 

[nsklaus]

also, for preserving ability to auto switch dark/light theme, it is possible to replace bigsur's VibrantDark.car with DarkAquaAppearance.car from catalina.

@jennyp
there's always the possibility to go the long road and actually modify element by element Aqua.car and VibranLight.car, you should be able to do whatever you want. these file switches are for those who would like a quick and easy solution .. it's not perfect, but work relatively nicely.
for myself i have that too at the moment. because manually tweaking car files is a pain really.
rebooting after each modification to test the changes and all takes too long.
i find that replacing bigsur's vibrantLight.car with catalina's SystemAppearance.car
and also VibrantDark.car with DarkAquaAppearance.car produce the best results so far.

 

[Brian1230]

Personally I really like Big Sur, course the last Mac I used had El Capitan as the newest version of macOS available on it, and was forced into using windows 10 due to cost, and fortunately I located my early 2015 MacBook Air on craigslist the other day listed by someone who needed rent money, and got it for a really good price, and it is so awesome, running Big Sur and runs circles around any of the windows laptops I used, and is so nice to integrate with my iPhone XR running iOS 14.3 as of last night.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I don't have a problem with Big Sur outside of the login screen (which I find hideous).

 

[lupinglade]

I'm still getting my head around why some windows are easier to 'grab' (click-drag) than others. It's very inconsistent, which is somewhat ironic given Apple touts Big Sur as a more cohesive experience.

It's especially bad in Safari because there's no visual clue as to where the boundaries are between extensions and areas you can grab, which leaves you with very little room to manoeuvre. Furthermore, the visual 'button' that appears when you hover over an item isn't an indication that that is the boundary box - there's still a lot of area surrounding them that can't be grabbed. And the area around the bookmarks is different again!

I really do miss Aqua, it was more consistent than this nonsense.

Send feedback to Apple.

 

[tomtad]

I'm still getting my head around why some windows are easier to 'grab' (click-drag) than others. It's very inconsistent, which is somewhat ironic given Apple touts Big Sur as a more cohesive experience.

It's especially bad in Safari because there's no visual clue as to where the boundaries are between extensions and areas you can grab, which leaves you with very little room to manoeuvre. Furthermore, the visual 'button' that appears when you hover over an item isn't an indication that that is the boundary box - there's still a lot of area surrounding them that can't be grabbed. And the area around the bookmarks is different again!

View attachment 1705433

I really do miss Aqua, it was more consistent than this nonsense.

This, and I always run into this problem in Preview. Go grab the top bar and a button overlay will appear preventing you from moving the window.

The solution I see if to make buttons draggable, so whether you are on a button or not you are able to click and drag the window.

 

[EdwardC]

For what ever reason I don't mind the Big Sur aesthetics on my MacBook but I'm not really digging it as a desktop OS. I have both Win 10 machines as well as a pair of Minis (M1 and i3) and I find myself wanting to work on the Win 10 machine. I agree with one of the above posts that stated it looked "cartoonish". I 100% agree.

 

[lupinglade]

Another disaster in Big Sur -- the "Dock & Menu Bar" preference pane is the worst UI Apple has ever designed, I think? I loathe having to dig through it or make sense of it, especially because it also seems to control all sorts of stuff that is randomly scattered. Starting to look like Windows 10's Control Panel.

 

[fisherking]

Another disaster in Big Sur -- the "Dock & Menu Bar" preference pane is the worst UI Apple has ever designed, I think? I loathe having to dig through it or make sense of it, especially because it also seems to control all sorts of stuff that is randomly scattered. Starting to look like Windows 10's Control Panel.

View attachment 1712515

disaster? first, how much time will you be spending there? second... having options, grouped together is... a bad thing? people on this forum can find fault with anything, & have too much time on their hands.

(that includes me, too)