Why is Big Sur so ugly?

[tomtad]

Anyone know what drives the menu bar color with fullscreen apps? My main wallpaper is an early-morning Beach (pulled one photo from the dynamic wallpaper) with mostly purple-ish hues, but the menu bar on all my full-screen apps is a very bright minty green. Where is it getting that color from?

As for Big Sur overall, a lot of things are more consistent with Apple's other devices, but it is on the verge of being too minimal and rounded. As much as I don't like Windows 10, it's appearance (once it has been de-crapified) is quite professional looking (bold colors, sharp lines, everything squared up), yet iOS/MacOS continue to become more cartoonified (I guess following Android?). I'd almost roll back to Catalina, but there are definitely some functional improvements that I don't want to give up. Icons just kinda float in the middle with no buttons to anchor them, and everything is so spread out that I almost just want to load MacOS on my iPad and be done with it.

As for iOS, I still miss how professional iOS 9 looked, but the best was the iPad's skeuomorphic glass dock.

Seems to be an oversight but this annoys me so much. Basically when you full screen an app it preserves whatever state your wallpaper was in at the time in the background.

So let’s say you full screen an app in the daytime and you have a dynamic wallpaper, by the evening your wallpaper will be dark but the wallpaper behind the full screen app will still be light, frozen from the time you full screened it. This is where the title bar takes its tint from of course. You also see this frozen wallpaper when you invoke Launchpad.

It can’t take long to add a few lines of code to keep the wallpapers consistent. Please fix Apple.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Android 4.x (including 4.4 KitKat) the dark mode you're talking about was the default look, and dated back to the really early days (to Cupcake, or 1.x). It only became white on the Verizon variant of the Galaxy S4 and S5 when they updated to KitKat (S4, the S5 shipped with 4.4 KitKat) and only on the settings menu or certain OEM apps. It became standard across the board after 5.0 Lollipop, either on a new device (such as the Galaxy S6, Note 4, Nexus 6, etc) or via an update to the OS.

The dark look was known as Holo UX, which was done by Matias Duarte, which should be a familiar name to anyone who followed the WebOS era (he was the UI designer behind it). It started on tablets with version 3.0 Honeycomb, and bled to phones via 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwhich through early KitKat. It was a sorta flat UI design, but kept relevant skeuomorphic cues, such as button textures and shapes, the darker theme, many icons still keeping skeuo looks such as the holo Google apps, and many third party apps. It changed the icons in the notification area from the green hue of Gingerbread to an electric blue. Samsung devices, thankfully since my eyes were a bit sensitive to neon blue, kept the Gingerbread greens.

Holo UX was when apps started getting hamburger menus, redundant settings icons (three dots, gear icons, and ellipsis in the same app) and gesture controls that took getting used to (YouTube, for example, when you'd hit the back key would always leave the playing video and go back to the search, whereas the Holo version would minimize the video which kept playing and display the search behind it, which I found very annoying).

But what came after in 5.0 Lollipop was Material Design, which was when colored text replaced buttons, when white became default background colors, and when icons became cartoons. It was Android's iOS 7 and came a year after iOS 7, in 2014.

Now they call it Material Design 2.x and it's even worse than the first time. It adds in rounded corners and a lot of other Apple-inspired change which makes Android look more and more like iOS to the untrained. All this talk of 'skeuomorphism coming back' is just referring to Material Design, which is still quite flat. Windows 10 is trending a tad towards skeuo but it's still in transition thus far. I'm hopeful that MSN Premium is a sign of things to come. Not sure how that will pan out. I guess whenever apps stop looking like line-art and text with retina-searing white everywhere, I'll be even more hopeful. I'd love to see us at least go back to Holo design, which was at least consistent, and combined flat UI design with relevant skeuo design. It was more, balanced, to say the least. Also, Google didn't change the guidelines for Holo every few hours like they do with Material Design.

The Samsung Galaxy S Captivate was a variant of the Samsung Galaxy SII. It was the first to introduce TouchWiz as a UI, but it was the Galaxy SIII, the successor to the SII, which introduced the Nature UX variant of TouchWiz, which still remains my ultimate favorite phone and UI. I got a SIII still active as a backup mobile line, as well. Nature UX combined skeuomorphism with elements of nature, such as wallpapers, colors, app UI design (such as the weather widget, alarm widget on the S4, lockscreen animations such as the water effect on the SIII) and sound effects (alarm tone "Walk through the Forest", locking and unlocking water sounds, touch droplet sound, charging sounds, and various other tones). It was combining two things I adore to this day. Whatever Samsung has become recently, sadly, is so different from the 'eco-centric' approach of 2012-2014, and doesn't interest me at all. It's too different, too far from what I find comfortable, and yes, they got beautiful hardware, and yes, it's lovely until the screen turns on. I still cling to the belief that voice controlled things like Bixby and Google Assistant are intended to be mere workarounds to the ugly UI design of "One UI" (what a boring name too).

 

[me22]

To be honest, I was never addicted to the Windows start menu like everyone else. I was used to Windows 3.1 for many years so the start menu felt well, nested and time-consuming making what was once one step, double clicking an icon in Program Manager, into up to five or more, example:

Start-->Programs-->Games-->Microsoft Games-->Microsoft Flight Simulator-->FSX.exe

This was always one of my biggest pet peeves with Windows, or rather the apps themselves. Even more so when the app was the only item in the submenu. And even more more so when it was just to have an Uninstall.exe in the menu, as if there wasn't some better place to uninstall apps (Add/Remove Programs).

I always rearranged my Start Menu to just have the apps themselves at the top level.

And heaven forbid your mouse didn't hover outside of it or it'd disappear and you'd begin again, and again, and again.

Fun side fact. Windows has a simple delay on the submenus before they disappear. You can change that delay in the registry. On a Mac, it's a little more complex. There's a triangular region to the right of where you start the drag to the submenu, and it assumes that if you are dragging in that region you are going for a submenu, so as long as the cursor is within it, it doesn't go away (outside that region, there is a delay).

What the solution ended up being was eventually a desktop splattered with icons.

Ugh. Such a mess. The desktop is functionally the worst place to put app launch shortcuts. It's literally behind everything, the layout is always changing, and you end up looking at icons for apps all the time for apps you may almost never use or have to launch from the shortcut. The desktop should belong to the user (and if the user wants to put often-used apps there along with recent or often used files, it should be up to them). It does make sense that developers chose to use it, as I imagine many Windows have never even opened their start menu, but it's such an inelegant solution.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Whenever I still see a Windows desktop splattered with icons, I know it's because someone who uses the machine (likely the owner) probably used Windows 3.1 prior to Windows 9x when the Start Menu became standard. People really hated using the start menu for a long time, and either resorted to pinning apps in quick launch (later taskbar) or splattering their shortcuts all over the desktop. It's especially annoying to have to use the work computer--it's got what appears to be hundreds of various app, document, excel, website shortcuts that just finding the Firefox or Edge icon is painful. Also doesn't help to see the icons as there's a really old potato-quality photo of the boss's family from like 2009 as the wallpaper that doesn't scale properly to widescreen.

That's why I never quite understood the prime complaint about Windows 8: "they took my start menu!"

It was really minor compared to all the other major annoyances of Windows 8, like always full-screen apps, the goofy gesture controls, the charms bar, etc.

Whenever I use Windows 10, or 7 (still got one machine running 7), I always have the taskbar set to auto-hide, pin all my most-used apps to the taskbar, and the wallpaper is all that shows when the machine is left idle. It's kinda a habit I had in Windows 3.1, which was minimizing the Program Manager to its icon on the lower left, with the wallpaper otherwise being the only thing visible.

There's yet another annoyance at work. The tabbed browsing 'feature'. I hate tabbed browsing. Yes, I still do. I'm used to having a separate browser for each website that way if a browser crashes, the other sites in various other browsers don't go with it (and I don't lose my place). At work, she's got literally 20 tabs open in Chrome. It's very laggy as a result, and heaven forbid Chrome stops working and she loses her precious 20 tabs.

 

[me22]

Whenever I still see a Windows desktop splattered with icons, I know it's because someone who uses the machine (likely the owner) probably used Windows 3.1 prior to Windows 9x when the Start Menu became standard.

Except that many installers still put icons there.

I find desktops like that very common with gamers, who tend to install a lot of things. Less so for business users, as they often only have a handful of apps installed. Of course, everyone has an Adobe Reader icon on their desktop, as if anyone ever launches it from there rather than just double clicking on a PDF.

Then there are the people who need their "safety blanket" and feel uncomfortable not seeing their apps on their desktop even though there are better ways to get to them now, but this goes for some Mac users as well, who still feel the need to have Macintosh HD on their desktop. 😁

 

[nickdalzell1]

I'm a gamer myself but my taskbar is pretty blank. I would much rather see the nice MSI wallpaper image when the system is idle vs. tons of icons for games or game-related info. Since most of my games run from Steam the only icon pinned to the gaming PC's start menu (or taskbar in Linux since it runs two OSs) is the Steam icon. If I need access to games not available in Steam (Curse you, EA!!!) It's in the top level of the start menu (Arc menu in Linux).

I don't think I've used Acrobat Reader (sorry, I refuse to call it anything but!) since Windows 10 supports loading PDF files natively via Edge. My phones and tablets open them via Polaris Office, a pre-installed Samsung app.

As for arrangement on my phones, my Galaxy S4 Mini (protest against the 'mini' iPhone that's anything but!) and Galaxy S5, I have them arranged near relevant widgets on various home screens. No more than four icons above the four-icon 'dock.' Everything else are widgets. Main home screen has weather widget, Google search widget, and icons for Camera, Settings, Google folder, Email. Second has Samsung Music, Slacker Radio widget, and icons for Samsung Music (full player), Amazon Music, Slacker Radio, and Google Play Music (still works locally-I've blocked updates).

Goes from there. Tablets have a special arrangement. My Samsung tablets are old tablets that had 'tablet-UI' where the notification and navigation bar (with home, back, recents) are on the bottom in one place, and the widgets are in a four-square quadrant with one row of icons below that. To me, tablets will always work best as media consumption devices so that one row of icons usually ends up being home base for the YouTube app, Samsung Internet, Settings, Video player, Music player, Book reader, and so on. The four widgets being weather, music widget, Samsung Hub (still works if you know what to do!), and Video player window. I got two other home screens dedicated to games and Google apps and other preinstalled items, and that's it.

I kinda like arranging things to be organized and still being one or two clicks (or taps) away. It's how I've always been, and how I'll always be. Ain't nobody gonna stop me!

 

[Since1987]

If Playskool made an OS, it would be Big Sur.

Add Jon Ive's "all features must be removed" for streamlining ethos, and Craig Ferengi's complete and total Jihad against Skeuomorphism and this is what you get. Readability be damned, usability be damned. Just run Word and Excel in full screen mode and shut the hell up.

If you are of a certain age (ie. using Macs since before Jobs got fired) , Big Sur looks like it was designed for 5 year olds. The fact that SO MANY people think it looks like a toy shouldn't be ignored ( but will be )

This just reinforces my opinion that Apple makes computers under protest, as soon as then can have universal IOS the happier they will be. Some of us still need "trucks" to use Jobs' parlance. The people at Apple USED TO BE ABLE TO DO THIS. Easy enough for kids, capable enough for any power user all in the same OS.

Help us Obi Wan Forstall, you're our only hope!

 

[nickdalzell1]

I'd love to blame all of this on Jony Ive, but not only is he no longer at Apple (at least, not involved in UI design today) the real blame is Microsoft--they started the whole flat design thing with Windows 8, back in 2012. Apple merely took inspiration, and, since everybody from Samsung to Google to even Pioneer in-dash infotainment systems looks to Apple as the barometer of 'perfection' this is what we get--there is zero escape unless you know how to either theme Windows 10 (and pray Microsoft doesn't break it in one of their mandatory 'updates'), or find some older phones that are incapable of updating to the latest flat UI garbage (one of the reasons I actually prefer Android phones not getting updates long-term myself) and pop your SIM into that. Or find some older Windows 7 laptop on ebay.

Just because an Operating System is no longer 'officially supported' doesn't mean you're gonna get tons of malware. That FUD has to stop. Go ahead and use Windows XP for crying out loud. If you're smart, ain't nothing bad gonna happen.

One day I'll find an older Mac that is stuck on Snow Leopard and be happy.

I still think it would have been a perfect thing had Scott Forstall gone to Android once fired from Apple, developed a ton of great skeuomorphic apps and showed Apple what for, but heck, it's merely a dream.

 

[ErikGrim]

Here's a nice retrospective look at comparing Snow Leopard to Big Sur. I don't agree with everything he says, but he brings up a lot of good points on UX detail and affordances that have been lost:

A retrospective look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Yes, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is as good as I remembered.

morrick.me

 

[darngooddesign]

If you are of a certain age (ie. using Macs since before Jobs got fired) , Big Sur looks like it was designed for 5 year olds. The fact that SO MANY people think it looks like a toy shouldn't be ignored ( but will be )

I've been using Macs since my first SE30. Contrary to your assertion I think its fine. Not the best, not the worst, but nice enough. Some of the main icons need help, but that's been true for most MacOS releases.

I guess my brain is still flexible enough to not reject change so that's great for me.

 

[darngooddesign]

Here's a nice retrospective look at comparing Snow Leopard to Big Sur. I don't agree with everything he says, but he brings up a lot of good points on UX detail and affordances that have been lost:

A retrospective look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Yes, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is as good as I remembered.

morrick.me

It's a good comparison but he draws some strange conclusions. For example...
For instance, why does the mini-calendar appear on the right in Day view, but on the left in Week view? It’s as if Calendar isn’t sure whether to have a right sidebar or a left sidebar. And when, in Week view, you click on the ‘Mini calendar’ icon on the top left, the whole sidebar goes away:

Its missing because he specifically hid the sidebar by clicking on the currently selected button a second time. That Sidebar mechanism works in every view. The two sidebars are visually distinct to me because the right-side one doesn't break the title bar. A greater issue with the Calendar app is that its button tool-tips don't seem to be working.

An obvious difference between the two OSes is that in SL Apple prioritized the title bar, but in a BS Apple prioritized the sidebar. But then Apple doesn't have a consistent button or keyboard-shortcut to toggle sidebar visibility. There is also a lack of consistency when it comes to Side and Title bars which you can see in Calendar and Preview.

Beyond that Apple is skirting the ADA contrast requirements by relying on the Increase Contrast accessibility toggle.

BS is the first OS using the new style so I expect that the next version to clean up a lot of BS' visual issues.

 

[pizzabox]

Funny timing on this Snow Leopard talk, as I was just clicking around on some SL materials and designs the other day.

For a long while, I was a member of the Snow Leopard is the Best OS Club. I held onto it for years, skipping over both of the Lions before finally (grouchily) moving to Mavericks (which I also liked, though I still resented the monochrome Finder sidebar from Lion). I was managing a small company's fleet of Macs so I had plenty of exposure to (Mountain) Lion, and I was immediately put off by the iOSification of Mac OS that began in 10.7. Like, gut-level red-flag put off. As everyone with eyes has pointed out, that long and disturbing trend is currently reaching its height in Big Sur.

But looking back at SL now, I don't long for the aesthetic. It looks dated in many, many ways. I like fresh and appealing design—I really do. I don't want all the fake glass, the gradients, the chunkiness, and the reflections to come roaring back. Rather, what's most unappealing about Big Sur visually is the general childishness of it, the floating and dumbed-down dialog boxes, the awkward and unnecessary "standards" as imported from iOS (e.g. icons) in some places, the lack of standards (e.g. Sys Pref icons) in other places, and the collapsing or reduction of useful UI items (e.g. Finder title bars and view options), some of which Riccardo notes.

Nevertheless, I'd be much more comfortable with hopping on the train and embracing the future—the present—and watching BS refine itself before our eyes if Apple hadn't completely written off non-retina Macs and put out a new OS that objectively looks like crap on the machine I'd run it on: my otherwise perfectly capable 2015 MBA. Mojave and Catalina were compromised but at least tolerable on that computer; BS is simply not. It's blurry and way too soft, like the whole thing has an extra layer of frosted glass put on top of it. It makes a nice (non-retina) display somehow appear to be lower quality, lower resolution. It's as if Apple asked themselves how they could top the elimination of subpixel antialiasing that was "introduced" in Mojave.

I realize (I believe) this is part of Apple's plan to make us buy new machines. Get with the program and give us your money. But it's nevertheless a big middle finger to lots of users, many of whom have now, unsuspectingly, installed an ugly operating system on a fine piece of hardware—and as a result, are reasonably concluding that Apple's design know-how is actually regressing, which in certain ways and especially in these users' experience, it is. What favors does that do the company?

I'll also never get over how, when Big Sur shipped, they hadn't even bothered to debug the alignment of some menus with their menu titles. You can see it in Riccardo's screenshot of the View menu in Preview. I noticed this within about two minutes of using the OS.

 

[decafjava]

Well after being on Big Sur for nearly a month I can say I find it not only much better than Catalina in terms of functions but also prefer the aesthetics. It works with fewer bugs and hiccups for me. I like the convergence with iOS personally (though hope it doesn't completely blur).

 

[nickdalzell1]

I'm still on Beta 4 of Big Sur (literally the last time it had any skeuo baked in before later betas took it out, although it was severely gimped from the uber-skeuomorphism from the dev betas) and I still got the final official release installer sitting in my dock and I'm not inclined to open it given a few reasons:

1. the final is flat design 2.0. About as flat as iOS 14. (nope, I never updated past iOS 13 on my iPhone 6S or iPad 6th gen) I'm a fan of skeuomorphism (a reason I use older Samsung Galaxy phones ~ 2012-14)

2. Beta 4 already results in my battery life going from 8 hours of use in Catalina to 4 hours with the fans maxed out doing nothing more than browsing YouTube or Bitchute. I'm afraid the final will be even worse--my experiences are similar to running Sierra and High Sierra on my 2012 MBP which the latter finally EOL'd the hard disk. I don't want to EOL my newer MBP.

 

[pizzabox]

2. Beta 4 already results in my battery life going from 8 hours of use in Catalina to 4 hours with the fans maxed out doing nothing more than browsing YouTube or Bitchute. I'm afraid the final will be even worse--my experiences are similar to running Sierra and High Sierra on my 2012 MBP which the latter finally EOL'd the hard disk. I don't want to EOL my newer MBP.

Taking this tangent. What was up with HS? Was your experience a common one? I'm a very deliberate OS updater and I'm considering inching toward HS (from Sierra) on my main machine, but only, like, just because.

 

[phrehdd]

Apple's OS design has not been enjoyable or fun for a long while. I think "mid cat" is when things started becoming a bit hack. I recall when iTunes was easy and fun to use. I recall when make your own DVD/movies was nicely designed for beginners and those more experienced also could get good mileage. If time is going to make those items antiquated, then find something else inviting. So far, Big Sur is "eh" and for some, annoying. I sure hope Apple decides to bring the joy back given the new push of their M1 lineup.

 

[k27]

A retrospective look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Yes, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is as good as I remembered.

morrick.me

From an ergonomic point of view Snow Leopard was clearly better. It's a pity that Apple no longer attaches importance to good contrasts, etc. You can see comparison pictures in the linked article.

 

[me22]

If you are of a certain age (ie. using Macs since before Jobs got fired) , Big Sur looks like it was designed for 5 year olds. The fact that SO MANY people think it looks like a toy shouldn't be ignored ( but will be )

I've also been using Macs since 1990, and IMO, the Jobs era was definitely the most toy-like period in the Mac's history. Pin-striped plastic and lickable aqua buttons and apps that looked like cartoon versions of real-world objects were all VERY distracting to me.

Big Sur is not perfect, but I am overall a fan of simplifying things to the bare essentials. I do wish for a *slightly* darker light mode and a bit tighter spacing on some things, but I am happy with the flatter and more consistent look with each new version.

 

[LunarFalcon]

A retrospective look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Yes, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is as good as I remembered.

morrick.me

From an ergonomic point of view Snow Leopard was clearly better. It's a pity that Apple no longer attaches importance to good contrasts, etc. You can see comparison pictures in the linked article.

Absolutely, the lack of contrast between active/inactive windows now kills me. As well as the lack go contrast between window chrome and the content of the window.

 

[Apple_Robert]

Now that I have changed the login screen so that I no longer have to look at the hideous original login screen, I don't mind Big Sur. It is much better than Catalina.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Taking this tangent. What was up with HS? Was your experience a common one? I'm a very deliberate OS updater and I'm considering inching toward HS (from Sierra) on my main machine, but only, like, just because.

First I'll just say that after iOS 7 soured my experience with iOS, updating is something I no longer believe in unless I can undo the update if I hate the results (which on iOS is a big fat nope). I don't update apps either, since not only are the older versions far nicer looking to me, but muscle memory remains intact. Today, many 'updates' change the entire app UI (changelog saying 'redesigned interface' or 'reimagined app') and it's like when Walmart rearranges the entire store and I spend hours instead of minutes doing grocery shopping because I'm trying to relocate everything in the store. I HATE that. I also despise flat UI design.

I should have stayed on Mavericks on the 2012 MBP. I really don't think High Sierra really should have been officially supported. It churned the spinner HDD so much the system tended to lock up and end with the beach ball of doom, and forcing me to hold the power button down to force-off the machine, then reboot. Eventually it just got worse and worse, and then I heard the distinctive 'click click click! Whirrr! click click click! Whirr' and the machine sitting at the spinning icon below a grey Apple logo. It refused to go any farther than that.

I don't blame HS per se, but the demands it placed on the system. Mavericks was already quite slow (must have been those so-called 200 new features I never found!) and it performed best on Mountain Lion. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have never updated a darned thing on it. Also, High Sierra didn't offer any noticeable benefit nor added feature over Sierra, and I think it was intended more for Retina Macs. Just more examples of me being burned by updates. I no longer update anything (I let Windows 10 do its usual security patches, but I disabled feature updates and use Update Assistant, which can undo a bad update, to do any feature updates--it's currently the only exception to my rule, given they're slowly adding back skeuomorphism previously missing from the earlier releases.)

But I don't update jack these days. I don't update any iOS, Mac, or Android apps or OSs. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[fisherking]

But I don't update jack these days. I don't update any iOS, Mac, or Android apps or OSs. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

can't figure out why you need to keep at this, writing reaaallllly long posts about the same thing, but am hoping you're at least enjoying yourself.

meanwhile, if we all thought like that, we'd be running 10.2 (or something), watching picture-tube tvs, using dial phones...

progress isn't always perfect, but the idea is a good thing. don't be afraid of it.

 

[nexu]

First I'll just say that after iOS 7 soured my experience with iOS, updating is something I no longer believe in unless I can undo the update if I hate the results (which on iOS is a big fat nope). I don't update apps either, since not only are the older versions far nicer looking to me, but muscle memory remains intact. Today, many 'updates' change the entire app UI (changelog saying 'redesigned interface' or 'reimagined app') and it's like when Walmart rearranges the entire store and I spend hours instead of minutes doing grocery shopping because I'm trying to relocate everything in the store. I HATE that. I also despise flat UI design.

I should have stayed on Mavericks on the 2012 MBP. I really don't think High Sierra really should have been officially supported. It churned the spinner HDD so much the system tended to lock up and end with the beach ball of doom, and forcing me to hold the power button down to force-off the machine, then reboot. Eventually it just got worse and worse, and then I heard the distinctive 'click click click! Whirrr! click click click! Whirr' and the machine sitting at the spinning icon below a grey Apple logo. It refused to go any farther than that.

I don't blame HS per se, but the demands it placed on the system. Mavericks was already quite slow (must have been those so-called 200 new features I never found!) and it performed best on Mountain Lion. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have never updated a darned thing on it. Also, High Sierra didn't offer any noticeable benefit nor added feature over Sierra, and I think it was intended more for Retina Macs. Just more examples of me being burned by updates. I no longer update anything (I let Windows 10 do its usual security patches, but I disabled feature updates and use Update Assistant, which can undo a bad update, to do any feature updates--it's currently the only exception to my rule, given they're slowly adding back skeuomorphism previously missing from the earlier releases.)

But I don't update jack these days. I don't update any iOS, Mac, or Android apps or OSs. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Wow. You sound so bitter.

 

[decafjava]

can't figure out why you need to keep at this, writing reaaallllly long posts about the same thing, but am hoping you're at least enjoying yourself.

meanwhile, if we all thought like that, we'd be running 10.2 (or something), watching picture-tube tvs, using dial phones...

progress isn't always perfect, but the idea is a good thing. don't be afraid of it.

Well yes but also keeping things updated is quite important for security reasons and to be fair Apple has been good with such security updates for older versions of MacOS just as they are with supporting older iPhone and iPad models with the newer iOS and iPadOS updates.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Wow. You sound so bitter.

For good reason, I must say. Updates tend to change what should be left alone, break some features or apps (like some of my favorite games that got killed with the death of 32-bit support--the only reason I even bought a Windows 10 laptop in the first place) or can brick a device.

I don't see the point of updates unless you like everything being rearranged over and over again, like someone coming into your home and replacing and rearranging your furniture because 'modern' and all that. It's not like older versions of apps will stop working--I still use the version of Kindle from Android 2.3 on my tablets which run Android--still works just fine!

This entire thread, and its other predecessor which spanned 100+ pages, Yosemite looks terrible!, are proof that updates are not for everyone, and newer isn't always better.

Look, a device I paid more than $1200+ for, is mine. MINE. It has to do what I want it to do, and not hurt my eyes looking at it, or stop working because some OEM said I must update it. It's a tool, be it a phone, tablet, TV or car. If it works 100% for my use-case, it shouldn't have to change period. Not unless I specifically allow it to, and then if it breaks my workflow, or becomes so undesirable to use where I must tolerate a bad UI or 'get used to it' I should have a perfect right to undo said update. This whole mentality of "the OEMs should dictate the demand and customers should just accept whatever the OEM says" so goes against free market ecomomics it makes me sick. I'll be happy when it ends.

Of course, when flat UI ends, if it ever does (why was skeuo 'dated' after 6 years but flat remains popular after 9?!) I will be less bitter. The only way I can hold onto a UI I enjoy using and looking at is by using very old devices which work fine today, but for how long? Until their battery dies or the wifi chip dies, I guess, and then what do I replace them with? Every modern phone for example has less features than my Galaxy S5 did in 2014. So where's the real 'upgrade'? I don't need a half dozen cameras, or a screen that is 6"+. I don't want a tablet sized phone. I desire features, such as an IR blaster, removable battery so the device isn't destined for landfill in a couple years, expandable storage, AMOLED display, fingerprint reader, notification LED, home button, a plastic body that if dropped doesn't EOL the phone, water resistance, and a UI design that fits both my love of nature and skeuo. So far, the Galaxy S5, S4 mini, and my old Galaxy tabs work for most of those boxes, while the S5 checks them all.

Let me know when a phone with more features than my Galaxy S5 is released that has more features than that phone did in 2014, while not cutting out useful features it had, and sports a UI that doesn't look like something Fisher Price designed, that actually feels like an upgrade releases, and perhaps I'll see fit to upgrade. So far I'm not seeing any such device. Nothing today has the feature set of a Galaxy S5. If anything, this whole mess of homogenized phones and devices has saved me tons of $$$ and reduced my footprint on the planet, so I could be celebrating it.