There are millions of iOS users that now will look at macOS UI with more familiarity and confidence. And like any business goal, it is far more important for them than any usability perspective (not that they don't care, but...).
Apple Silicon will help break this barrier even further. The two OSes will also share the same apps.
This is also what Windows 8 and Chrome OS tried, even hard, and failed, more or less miserably.
Ironically, the new Finder looks a lot more like the Windows 10 file explorer to me.
I think all the groups have just kept doing what they've always done which is to incrementally improve what they're good at.
so "I have these two codebases that are drastically different, let's combine them" - toolkit folks
and "I have all this hardware that's drastically different, let's optimize and make them the same" - hardware folks
and "I collect a little data, can I have a little more?" - marketing folks
and on and on until it's all mud.
No wonder people who didn't grow up with computers (elderly grandparents) find touchscreen tablets so baffling from the plethora of bizarre swipes and gestures and not knowing that touching some undecorated piece of text is actually a button and has a side effect. It's stupid.
This kind of design has been validated on enumerable sites and app.
I think it's important to note that the visual cues that make something look clickable are based on convention, not some inherent clickableness.
Generally, I like this trend because it deemphasizes window and by contrast emphasizes content. Content is the general point of apps.
Lack of UI differentiating decoration is a problem.
Now it's just a small flat gray icon:
https://www.andrewdenty.com/blog/assets/img/macos-new-ui/not...
In Big Sur the icons are visible. You just need to understand the design language that in a bar of icons, the icons are buttons.
Has it been validated? It's certainly been adopted by innumerable sites and apps, but I seriously wonder how much A/B testing has shown that it increases or maintains usage of the features.
The fat toolbar in Safari is a good example. I care about the web content but now I have to give up part of my window real estate to the meta concern of the browser controls.
This used to bug me about Gnome 3 and it's sad to see macOS heading in the same direction.
When you have clickable elements in places where they might not be expected to be clickable, that’s when it gets confusing.
I wish people would put this common criticism in perspective though.
Maybe the buttons are a little harder to recognise in flat design but not a huge amount. And maybe it makes them look at little better.
Everything about software design is about tradeoffs and not everyone is optimising for the same thing. I don't think any commercial product is designed with 100% usability for every design choice, if that's even possible.
The actions bar redesign looks good to me. It's obvious they're buttons to me. It looks cleaner, more modern and less cluttered than before to me. Having the buttons not draw your eye too much can be good if they're rarely used because your focus is drawn to more important parts of the UI.
Not keen on the poor contrast white on mustard coloured button though.
What would you give out of the 10 for the design before and after? Is it really so bad or just a little worse for you?
I don't see the issue. It's obvious to me by looking that they're buttons and users aim to click in the middle so if they miss by a little it's likely going to work if you mean that.
Even if it was an issue, it sounds like a very small one and a tradeoff for a cleaner look. Nothing is perfect.
It's also harder to know where you can drag. Which bits of the title bar can I use to move this window around? If I try that next to the expanding search field, will it work?