Yes, but color is such a helpful distinguishing feature that contrast can never make up for it disappearing. I can squint until I can’t distinguish any of the symbols and still tell which is which when they are colored.
Command/Ctrl + F for: "align different subsets of toolbar items"
The pictures above the paragraph that phrase appears in exemplify the problem perfectly. One certainly looks nicer, being all uniform and monochrome, but the other provides visual feedback that is far quicker to parse than text or hieroglyphics.
I have to explain to my 70 year old aunt why I won't be updating her Macbook to Big Sur, because she'll never be able to cope with this change. Yeah, she's 70 and not that great at all this, but that's exactly who this interface should be for. We can bitch and moan but we'll deal, because we have to. At 70 years old you just want your fucking email to work and you want to know what buttons to click on.
Apple decided to add depth to the glyphs on the Dock, but no where else apparently. I'm so fucking tired of this flat monochrome bullshit.
It's sad that this doesn't look like it's a priority to Apple.
My only hope is that I'm wrong, that the affordances are actually more than OK once you use it, and that they've done loads of usage testing and found that it works better for the majority of people, as well as those with greater needs.