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macOS Monterey Preview

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I’m curious if Microsoft is regretting not pursuing the Windows phone and universal apps strategy with more pathos, seeing now how successfully is Apple executing incremental changes to get to a homogenous cross device experience. At this point there is no other company that even comes close in terms of replicating this kind of experience, natively across 3 classes of devices (phone, tablet, computer). I’m really wondering what is Google and Microsoft strategizing when they see Apple’s progress.

Microsoft always relied on external partners to deliver physical products for Microsoft software. That's why Zune was 10 years late. That's why they still don't do much beyond Surface. As the saying goes, "it's in their DNA".

Additionally, Microsoft doesn't have a good tradition of clean breaks (they are rightly anal about backwards compatibility and decades-long support windows). And they've never had to cannibalize their own products with new, better products.

As for Google, Google never understood why it would ever need hardware. Their livelihood is online ads and tracking people behaviour across devices. Custom Google-only hardware is a colossal money sink with negative-to-zero ROI compared to their software that is currently anywhere and everywhere thanks to Android and Chrome.

What about Xbox?

I was thinking about Xbox, but that never translated into whatever I wrote :D

Xbox has always been a weird one for Microsoft, it seems: they never made money on the actual hardware, and it originally existed only to compete with Sony as the media box for the living room.

I'd say Microsoft still doesn't really know what to do with it because it's so far removed from everything else Microsoft does.

Hardware doesn’t matter that much to what Apple is doing with software. You can do almost all of these things with off the shelf hardware. I mostly see „but they control the hardware“ as an excuse (as supported by macOS also being great on my Hackintosh laptop).

> You can do almost all of these things with off the shelf hardware.

At what cost though. When you control every single aspect, and know exactly what hardware you have, this simplifies things enormously.

Also, this evergreen article from Ars Technica on owning the stack (it's more about the politics and money of controlling everything): https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/owning-the-stack...

It isn’t necessarily critical, but it does get them a few things:

- Because their processors are so overpowered, their phones last a long time. This adds to the premium experience (e.g. put a 3 year old galaxy and a 3 year old iPhone side by side).

- Fast hardware lets them innovate on the edges; e.g. folks here don’t take AR seriously because they use androids and AR sucks on Android; the power just isn’t there to make it work well. 3 year old iPhone runs AR experience at 60fps no problems. Not many people use it daily, but if you need it, it is nice to have.

- Being able to sell 3 year old devices as new allows Apple to target multiple market segments without having to develop separate low end hardware. They don’t need iOS Go because all recent hardware can run iOS with a flagship like experience, even the low end SE. They also don’t take the reputation hit of selling a $400 device that doesn’t work well or runs ads on the Lock Screen to get a subsidy.

- By ensuring all components in their devices work to a minimum standard, they make the rest of the system look good. Example: compasses in android devices, even flagships, are of variable quality. No one ever writes reviews about the compass, so it goes unnoticed, but trying to get a mapping application working well on Android is an absolute nightmare by comparison. Similar situation applies to: GNSS receivers in phones, gyro/accelerometers, trackpads in laptops, haptics in phones and watches, screens on all devices, among others. They also benefit from being able to assume every recent device has a secure element and a UWB radio, among other features.

- They’re able to innovate through connection to other hardware in the ecosystem. Spatial audio seemed like a gimmic, but I’ve recently come around. It is amazing to have an almost theater-like experience watching Hulu on my iPad in the gym. Microsoft and Google can’t really do that because they don’t ship high-quality earbuds at anything like Apple’s scale/reach. Microsoft and Google can’t use my Watch to log in or authorize purchases because they don’t have a watch business (I mean google’s been trying, they might get somewhere with it someday). Microsoft can’t use their smart speaker as surround sound for the Xbox because they don’t sell a smart speaker. I count the integrations and broad business as part of Apple’s hardware advantage.

I get your point, but in terms of “vision of personal computing” I like Apple’s vision the most and it’s sad to see there are no other companies that even try to go in that direction. Microsoft gave up on it and Google is too beholden to its “everything is a browser” strategy. So only Apple is left with a truly native ecosystem of apps with tight integrations across devices. And Apple knows this, hence why they hold us hostage in their ecosystem and want to extract as much value as possible… because they can.

If Microsoft had incredible hip credibility and some more luck, the Zune could’ve been a success in line with a solid distant but respected number two. It wasn’t that late. The advanced iPod video and colors etc were closer to Zune time frame. The public perception of it and likely any product would’ve killed it. Google Wave, Google Glasses, many other products that are otherwise not bad, never got close to a fair shot. Maybe Apple’s Newton was similar? That’s out of my time frame and knowledge.

Anecdotally, all my friends mocked the Windows Phone. This is after they didn’t care about webOS too but didn’t actively mock it.

The few people I knew who did have a WP, three others, all loved their phones. We all gave up on it as the public and Microsoft gave up on it too.

I do think Microsoft should’ve kept on with the Windows Phone. But If they were never going to be able to have even a 3rd of the top couple hundred apps, how would they ever survive? Common rhetoric is to say most people don’t use many apps. Core basic apps are enough. That isn’t the same thing as the general zeitgeist and perception of the device though. Windows Phone was looked down on. They didn’t ever have a majority of the top used social media and other core apps. But I bet even if they did. The PR battle would’ve been a bigger hurdle. Other major hurdles would’ve been Google being in my opinion anti competitive as hell. How they treated Google Maps, YouTube, etc, on Windows Phone. Two apps you need to have on your mobile platform.

My fantasy is for Microsoft to have consumed webOS much earlier on. Fast tracked development of that and merge their code bases to that more than change webOS to their code base. If webOS stayed at 7.5% worldwide penetration in the west and 10% in other countries (cheap phones, deals, etc), I’d still be on that and likely never would’ve left it.

> If Microsoft had incredible hip credibility and some more luck, the Zune could’ve been a success in line with a solid distant but respected number two.

True. I only used it briefly and I really liked it.

There was some anti-monopoly trial around that time, and some of the unsealed documents (which are now impossible to Google for) where emails from Bill Gates where he raged "why can't Creative make something similar to iPod? Bring them here, give them money, get them early API access". In the end they had to do everything themselves :) And they didn't do a bad job of it!

> I do think Microsoft should’ve kept on with the Windows Phone.

True. And it was the only one daring to explore something new with phone UI/UX. As with Zune, it wasn't half bad. I'd even say WIndows Phone was good, and onto something new.

> The PR battle would’ve been a bigger hurdle. Other major hurdles would’ve been Google being in my opinion anti competitive as hell.

Sadly, also true.

> If webOS stayed at 7.5% worldwide penetration in the west and 10% in other countries (cheap phones, deals, etc), I’d still be on that and likely never would’ve left it.

Ah, the lost opportunities that never came to be :(

Don’t forget Apple Watch.

The screen is so small you can hardly see any shared elements with the other OSs. They might share some components underneath, but from a user perspective only the apps’ icons are somewhat similar.

True, but the integrations with Apple Watch are very well done, even if the functionality is not strictly overlapping across platforms. The improvements in user experience caused by this tight ecosystem integration feed into each other, vastly outpacing what competitors without this kind of ecosystem ownership. It’s sad in a way because there is no incentive to build open standards, especially for Apple.

well we're talking about "cross device experience," yes? Messages and WhatsApp and FaceTime Audio "just work" in exactly the way I would expect with no configuration, health features synchronize seamlessly with Health.app on the iPhone (again with no setup), ApplePay… what are you asking for here, Safari or Finder on the Watch?

It’s like psychedelics, if you haven’t experienced it, it’s hard to understand it.

Microsoft got too good at killing their own mobile paradigms with rewrites to care. And yes, Elop in retrospect looks like the perfect mole.

And even that is stretching it, all they had to do to get started was to throw a gsm modem into a zune and ship it in the first place.

Inept, is more like it.

They … kinda did throw a modem in the Zune?

Microsoft Kin Discontinued After 48 Days https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/technology/01phone.html

Oh, I didn't know about that one, but I understand why it got discontinued, looks like something out of Nokia's year 2000 playbook. I was thinking more along the lines of Zune HD.

You'd think the point of having billions of dollars is that you don't need to give up when you fail, just keep going and gain market share by throwing money at it, like with Bing...

You need to have some kind of vision and conviction. When it comes to personal computing vision, MS lost it, so they’re more reactionary to what’s happening on the market.

They've spent the last 10 years focused on Azure and O364, which is working out well, just not consumer facing at all.

I really wish Google would just come out with its own fully fledge desktop linux OS, rather than ChromeOS. They're probably the only company out there that could feasibily get linux on the desktop, as it could use its large resources to really polish user experience on the same scale as macos/windows (drivers, UI, centralised app store, encourage 3rd parties to develop for the platform, etc)

Isn't ChromeOS already largely there? Installing a full version of Debian is a couple clicks away from within ChromeOS (no developer mode or re-flashing needed). You can run more or less whatever you'd like inside it, including GUI apps like GIMP or Firefox.

Why would they want to? It looks like they're trying to replace Linux with Fuschia on their own platforms, and they have their own libc and such rather than using the standard ones.

No company can be strong in all markets. Apple is entirely focused on the end user while Microsoft is focused on the enterprise market and corporate developpers. Both are very successful in their respective ways.

For Microsoft to replicated Apple's success with their ecosystem experience, they would need an entirely new OS built from the ground up for that. Essentialy breaking free of Windows legacy and possibly their partners-driven strategy to have tight control over hardware and software.

But past a certain point, the investment and risk would be massive and success uncertain. Microsoft made the call to focus on what they do best wich is enterprise and "productivity" and they're doing really well.

The hell is Apple doing with their supported machines?

* iMac Late 2014 - Haswell 4th gen CPU with AMD GCN 1.0 or 1.2 GPU - not supported

* Mac Mini Late 2014 - Haswell 4th gen CPU and GPU - supported (this came out the same day as aforementioned iMac)

* Mac Pro Late 2013 - Ivy Bridge 3rd gen CPU with AMD GCN 1.0 GPU - supported

* Macbook Late 2015 - Broadwell 5th gen CPU and GPU - not supported

* Macbook Air Early 2015 - Broadwell 5th gen CPU and GPU - supported

I was thinking I could get consistent, somewhat predictable 10 year support out of Apple when buying a new machine - counting 2 years of security updates after the last supported major release. Usually Apple lets go old stuff for specific architecture features in the CPU or GPU, meaning there's some technical reason albeit unstated. But this looks like a random crapshoot? This doesn't inspire confidence for my intended new purchase this year - because the 10 years on my previous purchase is running out.

It's rough especially for people that spent thousands of dollars on the 27" 5K iMac in 2014 to be cut off in this release - really at the earliest end for Apple. That was a halo product on release and is still a damn fine computer, and will still be a damn fine computer two years from now. If you had instead bought a cheap Mac Mini the same day you'd have one more year of support at least...

There's always people who work out what's needed to get the older OS running via things like https://github.com/barrykn/big-sur-micropatcher - and that 2014 iMac will still be supported on Big Sur for awhile before updates for that stop.

Sometimes it works relatively well, other times there are major performance issues (often if the graphics card is missing support for a feature needed).

This announcement puts the expiry date for software updates on the 2014 iMac in late 2023, which is 9 years of support on a potentially 3000 dollar machine at the time. I'm aware of patching projects that will likely give it a longer lease on life, and you can run Windows or Linux on it at that point, but should that really be necessary for a machine of that calibre?

Usually Apple cut off machines along the lines of "doesn't support these CPU instructions" or "doesn't support GPU features for Metal". This list isn't that. On the face of it, this list is random. If there is some weird thing like wifi chips that's still on Apple to make work, that's not even on the spec sheet (certainly not theirs).

Apple may be intending to support Big Sur for three years instead of two though, so I'll hold my breath for a sec. That doesn't take away that Apple seems to be axing things randomly now.

I think that’s only seems, as I can’t think of any reason why they would axe things randomly. It seems way more likely to me they know something about that hardware selection we haven’t thought of yet.

It could be as simple as a missing wireless or Bluetooth feature needed to support this display sharing stuff. So they say “not supported” but may not try that hard to prevent it from running.

We’ll have to wait to get our hands on it to see.

> * Mac Mini Late 2014 - Haswell 4th gen CPU and GPU - supported (this came out the same day as aforementioned iMac)

Apple's support policies have historically been tied to the notions of vintage/obsolete hardware, see https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201624. Notably, the timer starts on the last day the product was available for sale, not the first day the product was available for sale.

Ah TIL. The "obselescence" notion seems to apply somewhat cleanly to their previous deprecation waves.

But it still doesn't seem to explain this deprecation list though? For Apple's "obsolete" counter of seven years to run out for the 2014 iMac this year, they would have to have stopped selling it immediately after launch, but I'm assuming they sold it well into 2015 until their refresh a year later. One could have dropped three grand on a high end iMac in mid 2015, only for it to stop getting major updates just six years later (and updates of any sort in eight).

The 2015 Macbook won't even get into their obsolescence window until next year at the earliest.

I have Big Sur running flawlessly on my MacBook Pro 2012, although it’s not officially supported. The same story thee, with regards to support, since it’s a Haswell computer with a metal GPU everything works. Should be similar story for you. Check out bigsurpatcher on Reddit.

I don't have any of the machines in this list. I'm commenting on Apple's sudden random deprecation strategy without a direct stake in the game.

It's always been random. They've never made a promise. Sometimes you get 10 years support like the Mac Plus, sometimes you get 5 years like an iMac G4. Heck Tiger "required" a built-in Firewire port.

Former Genius here. Apple's approach is to support hardware models up to 5 years old and anything past that is gravy but not guaranteed.

You'll find that in most places (except where the law says otherwise) Apple stops stocking replacement parts for models more than 5 years old.

Planned obsolescence. My company has a fleet of 2013 MacBook Pros which are about to become useless for dev work because xcode is tied to macOS. Not being able to upgrade macOS means not being able to get the latest version of xcode which means we can't build against the latest SDK. I doubt there is a solid technical reason why these machines can't run the next version of xcode.

It's a better scenario for regular consumers. Based on past release schedules there will be security updates for a couple more years for those stuck on macOS Big Sur.

Have you tried http://dosdude1.com/software.html? It allows to upgrade old macs to newer releases, macOS Catalina can be installed on macs as old as Early-2008 MacBook Pro without particular issues IIRC.

The new focus feature is great and something I've been looking forward to for ages — so much so that I built a hacky version of it myself a while ago. Essentially, I used to put on do not disturb for deep work but forget to turn it off later, missing out on important notifications. I really enjoy turning things off for an hour or two and then get back to being social. Having the feature baked into the OS instead of my hacky workaround app is great.

Well, with Big Sur you can already set Do Not Disturb "for one hour". It's what I usually choose, for the same reason.

Thanks for the heads up, I haven't jumped to Big Sur yet because it simply does not play well with some virtualization tools.

Focus, to me, looks like the first move to an actual focus mode, one where you actually have a personal and work workspace, where some apps hide, and some apps hide certain windows. This is a key thing for my productivity..

It’s cool to see the “move your mouse between computers” concept become more widely available. I worked as an intern at TideBreak in 2007. Their product PointRight was based on work the founder did at Stanford in 2000. It let you move your mouse from one computer to another:

http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/pointright/

Ages ago, when I had a small Hackintosh netbook and a Mac mini, I used a great little app called Teleport to do this, and it was great.

Apple's UI for establishing the connection — the little squish and pop thing that happens on the first attempt — is really brilliant. I think it's likely to cause some consternation when it doesn't work perfectly (as is their bias), but if it works well it'll be a great boon for those of us who like to use multiple computers at once.

I wonder how they detect device orientation. That part is utterly magical to me.

Probably UHF, but could also be some sonic thing.

There was a program called CosmoSynergy in 1996 that lets you share a mouse between computers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synergy_(software)

There is a fork of it called "barrier". Using it every day.

https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

I used x2x as well for X11 a very long time ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X2x

I worked at Symless, which sells a commercial version of Synergy, for a couple of years.

Barrier (a FOSS fork of Synergy) and Synergy are the only solutions that work across all 3 major platforms (macOS, Windows and Linux/X11)

Unfortunately they're buggy as hell, feature incomplete (no drag and drop), and ipadOS and anything Wayland based is unsupported. You also can't control macOS input unless the user manually grants permission (after installation) and on Windows there are still issues with privileged screens by default.

Imho the best commercial cross-platform (Windows and macOS only) tool for the job is Sharemouse, which has a bunch of value add features like multi-machine lock and unlock.

I currently use Barrier to control three computers (Mac, Windows 10, and Raspberry Pi) from my Mac laptop.

https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

Also Teleport - it’s been around for years. Very handy for multi-Mac workflows. No drag and drop though.

https://github.com/johndbritton/teleport

I've used x2x[0] (released 1996) in the past. One neat thing about x2x was that it only needed to be installed on of the machines and controlled the pointer and keyboard through the X11 XTEST protocol. It was magical how well it worked.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X2x

Microsoft have a semi-official Windows only solution called "Mouse without Borders"

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=354...

Sharing mouse and keyboard isn't so exciting, but D&D demo is exciting. I wonder what type of object supported.

Many of the Facetime features would have been great for the pandemic. Too bad that would have resulted in an insane schedule for the engineers.

I love the idea of the different Focus modes. Hopefully they have some good profiles out-of-the-box. I imagine without a good set of profiles, most people will never end up touching it. Hopefully shortcuts can interact with the current focus mode.

The Safari changes are quite aggressive. I'll have to try it before judging it. I don't really use the tab bar that much. I tend to find tab expose works better for me. If that still works, this change will make little difference for me. The tab groups seems neat. I know that is a thing people are always asking for.

What is interesting is the contrast it has Firefox changes announced recently. Those changes got a lot of flack on HN for decreasing the vertical space available for the webpage. These Safari changes go in the opposite direction. The color changing feature further indications that the focus is on the webpage and not the browser.

Overall, I predict this version of Safari will be pretty unpopular on Hacker News.

Loving the changes in Safari already. The tab groups are amazing.

I’m nervous about the changes to Finder. How much collateral damage will be done to existing workflows?

Lots of changes to notifications again. Will they reintroduce coherent gestures (swipe to dismiss, default action on click) or reinvent the wheel yet again?

I’m still not used to Big Sur’s changes and Apple is yanking the rug out from under me again.

Look at those new "tabs" in Safari. Firefox probably knew...

They do look similar, but are fundamentally different in that they are also URL fields. If thought under that light, the shape makes sense.

I honestly don’t know what made Firefox entirely ditch the “tab” style.

Universal control + airplay for mac is enough to bring back target display mode?!!

The universal control example talks about shared keyboards but does drag a PSD layer from ipad to mac which is pretty cool. and the airplay says mirror or extend monitor, cross platform is pretty cool imho.

> Focus helps you stay in the moment when you need to concentrate or step away. Choose a Focus that only allows the notifications you want — you can get work done while you’re in the zone, or enjoy a distraction-free dinner. Pick from a list of suggested Focus options or create your own.

distraction-free dinner? Why would people use their computer while eating dinner? I find such a weird thing to say in a feature highlight(ps: i am not american)

I use my phone during dinner since I reach and watch content during dinner.

You don't need to be using your computer for the notification to be distracting. Your computer can be in the other room but if you hear 'ping' every time an iMessage comes in, it is still going to be distracting.

Really happy to see the updates to FaceTime making it a more fully-fledged video conferencing tool, no longer limited to users on the Apple ecosystem. It's rivalled only by Zoom in terms of call and video quality on low-bandwidth connections so I really hope that continues with this update!

Personally, I have found FaceTime to struggle with sketchy connections; WhatsApp video calls do much better there. Video quality of FaceTime (when you have a sufficiently good connection) blows everything else out of the water, though.

Moving north I see.I guess the next one will be called Santa Cruz macOs, or SCO.

What kind of operation would they be running if they did that?

So I guess eGPUs on ARM are pretty much a dead thing by now aren't they?

My understanding (from the work of marcan et al) is that the hardware's there, macOS just doesn't have the drivers. Is there something in the announcement that made you think this will never happen, or just a "if they were planning on doing it any time soon, they'd have announced it by now" situation?

> My understanding (from the work of marcan et al) is that the hardware's there, macOS just doesn't have the drivers.

Jeff Geerling's work on Raspberry Pi modules and extension boards found out its not possible at least on the PI4:

From https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/external-gpus-and-ras...

"... so far, the answer seems to be 'no.'

Partly it's due to lack of support for I/O BAR space on the BCM2711 ARM SoC, and partly it may be due to driver bugs or features that are only supported on X86 or certain ARM architectures."

So I wonder when people like Marcan say the hardware is there do they mean that the M1 doesn't have such I/O limitations?

I know Tallos Blackbird POWER9 boards can work with discrete GPUs. I don't know if they are making use but I imagine amdgpu kernel module should work just as fine on a different arch.

> just a "if they were planning on doing it any time soon, they'd have announced it by now" situation?

Yes that's the case.

The Raspberry Pi has a very different SoC from Apple's M1, why would it be relevant?

I was just wondering if PCI-E discrete GPUs can work on ARM platforms at all.

Sure, of course they can, there's nothing about the ISA that's relevant there.

Apple confirmed they won’t be supported during M1 announce week.

Maybe they discovered some practical problems we don’t know about yet. Will be interesting to follow further dissection. That the hardware is there points towards planned support for me.

I suspect that the M1 GPU performs so well that it invalidates the need for GPUs for anyone who doesn’t really need a future Mac Pro with M1 blades. More power efficient, compact, etc. I imagine they pointedly don’t care to enable the crypto mining market, so cutting off eGPU is a great way to invalidate their platform as a cost-efficient target for miners, while also ending their silicon driver/support contracts cleanly for non-Apple silicon.

Thats a shame. I suspect the M1 would blow heavy machines out of the water and become the only machine you've ever need if it could use an external egpu.

What workloads are you referring to when you say "heavy machines"?

They seem to mainly feature minor things like the ability to run FaceApp with other apps - that's very good, I hope they take time to stabilize the system instead of adding new features.

They did this last year.

Hey Apple, can we have native OS/kernel-level containerization yet?

edit: what I mean by this is support for cgroups and network namespaces within xnu:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25447835

The menubar looks oddly off-centered vertically. Is this a new style?

uf, this page definitly says that I'm not the target audience anymore. the 2019 16" model was probably my last one (the build quality, etc. is so much worse), besides that i loved the 2013 15" late model.

I have a late 2013 15" that's still going strong. This machine is plenty powerful for my needs, I'm pretty disappointed that it won't support the latest OS version, especially since, from what I read, Linux support is sketchy on this model...

yeah on my machine the battery blew up, we fixed it in the end, but we still ordered the 2019, because if a self repair would've gone wrong, I could've gone into holidays ;-) (another factor was, that I was running out of storage) we actually lent it (to another company) during covid for home office purposes and it still works fine.

I changed the battery in mine around april 2018 with a kit from iFixit. The procedure was surprisingly easy, given the horror stories I had heard about having to fully take everything apart and use solvents. I just opened up the case, unplugged the battery and went at it with one of the tools. It came off in like 10 minutes. Sure, it would've been better for it to not be glued, but oh well...

In my case it started swelling, so I figured I'd better change it before it burns down my house or something.

I rarely use it on battery, so the battery life itself wasn't an issue. It was still able to run some 2-3 hours. The replaced one gets me around 4-5 hours, similar to my work provided 2018 HP ProBook 13" with an 8th gen i5u, which is also noticeably slower.

> In my case it started swelling, so I figured I'd better change it before it burns down my house or something. > I rarely use it on battery

my problem aswell, sadly we didn't fix it and let it swell, so it killed the touchpad, but I did not use that as much anyways.

Wonder if this airplay will finally allow me to airplay fitness+ to my macbook

All I can see these days is purple-magenta gradients and babyfication of UI with rounded corners. Designers follow this recipe without independent thought or opinion about graphic design. I'd love to see UI based on the International style (aka Swiss typographic style) typified by the designers of the bygone era of 1970's and 80's. Ultra functional and less about aesthetics.

Rounded corners have been a hallmark of OS X design for more than 20 years. https://www.howtogeek.com/689489/20-years-later-how-the-mac-...

Sure. I guess I am speaking about the larger trends. Firefox just recently went full rounded corners on the tab 'buttons'. Google did the same 2-3 years ago. Purple-gradients has been the trend that began with Stripe and spread around in design circles, landed at Apple sometime in 2018.

With what product, specifically, did purple gradients land at Apple? Looking at the screenshots of Monterey it seems to me that the purple you see is probably from the desktop background, which is visible through the translucent UI elements. There are purple gradient elements on the web page itself, but I don't think that's particularly relevant to the actual software.

Closer to 40 years, depending on how you look at it: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_...

> Swiss typographic style

Interesting. Do you know any OS or UI that made use of this concept?

Not op('s opinion), but it seems to me windows phone went slightly on that direction.

I feel Swiss typographic style does not convert that well to UIs (specially mouse / touch driven ones). It's all fine for direction navigation (arrow keys or a gamepad).

> I'd love to see UI based on the International style

Agreed 100%

But I almost didn't get to sentence 3 because of your hostile opinionation in sentences 1 and 2. :(

I think it needs to be said. The entire field of design has been trashed in last 20 years. The decline started in the 90’s and the final straw came in late 2000’s. By entire field, I mean the full spectrum: Industrial design (touch screens) to Graphic design, typography (see Dropbox redesign) to branding (see how Pentagram destroyed the LoC logo). I don’t think I can buy a new car anymore.

I’ll say it again, be it hostile - designers aren’t raised and educated in user centric design. MacOS is full of transitions that are over 200ms. iOS is worse. I could go on and on. It’s gotten so bad, it’s appalling really.

I also agree that a change is needed and I think you're probably right about the designers, but I was a little puzzled by the criticisms in your original comment. I would also enjoy cleaner designs possibly inspired by the Swiss (and I am nostalgic for the expressive and well-researched designs used in older versions of Windows -- though I was unimpressed at the time, everything that came afterward is really not to my taste). On iOS, I'm quite thankful for "Reduce Motion" and I recommend it (however, I have seen this setting break a few apps).

Reduce motion actually retains the animation time - just that the motion is replaced by fading animation. So you still have to wait 200ms to watch the window fade instead of morph.

Really? That's interesting to know, thanks! Guess it fooled me.

The iOS 7 UI that started what you're complaining about is based on 70s European design. Actually, the most explicit parts like the strange bright color schemes were the least well received I think.

https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-otl-aicher-ios-7-2013-...

Damn, I sure am not seeing anything that makes my solitary, works-offline self want to upgrade when this goes public. I just kinda got off the upgrade train when 10.15 killed off all 32-bit apps because Neko never got recompiled for 64-bit and I didn't wanna lose the cute desktop kitty. I'll be three versions behind when this comes out in Fall.

Sounds like Neko is more than 3 versions behind since x86-64 macOS was introduced in 2007!

This is going to be controversial... but if Apple is going to choose a Spanish word for a _very popular_ product name, they should at least pick one that is properly written.

Monterrey in Spanish is written with 2 Rs.

Yes, I know the city in California is spelled with just a single R. Its original name was actually "Puerto de Monterrey". It probably changed to a single R when Mexico sold California (and other territories) to the US in the mid 1800s.

Edit:

See, told you this would offend US sensibilities.

They didn't choose a Spanish word. They chose a city name. It is spelled correctly - in regards to the city name.

Indeed, but my point is that, considering there are more native Spanish speakers in the world than English native speakers, it would have been a good idea to pick another word.

Edit:

Imagine a super popular Mexican company had chosen "Niu York" as the name of one of the most popular software products in the world. Wouldn't that bother you?

Does your hypothetical Mexican company have an established pattern of naming its products after cities in Mexico? And, in this scenario, is there an actual city in Mexico called "Niu York"?

> Indeed, but my point is that, considering there are more native Spanish speakers in the world than English native speakers, it would have been a good idea to pick another word.

AFAIK “Monterrey”, “Monte Rey”, and “Monterey” are all alternate spellings from the Spanish-speaking world of “Monterrei”, the place name in Galicia from which many uses of the name (including the California place name) come, often (again, as in the California case) with personal titles of nobility as intermediaries.

> Imagine a super popular Mexican company had chosen "Niu York" as the name of one of the most popular software products in the world. Wouldn't that bother you?

Well, if I cared about the company or product, it might bother me a little that they failed to get the usual Spanish version of the place name (Nueva York) right, which most Spanish uses, including in product names, tend to use. But probably not even that, no. Maybe mildly amused.

I feel the name "Niu York" is OK to me, but it is only my opinion (so not a "fact"). In fact, I feel it's better than a Mexican company named one of the most popular software products in the world as "New York".

The recent Mac OS releases are all named after places in California, so the spelling seems consistent here.

But why stop there? The Spanish name is just a couple of badly spelled Latin words ("montem" + "regem"). And guess what? The Latin words are just some mispronounced Proto-Indo-European words.

Clearly Apple should have called it Men-h₃rḗǵs, right?

Because neither Latin or Indo-European are the second language in the world with most native speakers.

Maybe you should petition the city of Monterey to change its name. And while you're at it, do the same for every other city in the world with a name that has changed slightly over time.

By the way, does it bother you at all that "Mexico" isn't properly spelled? Or is that OK because there aren't enough native speakers of Nahuatl to make a case for "Mēxihco"?

You are being facetious, but there was in fact a decades-long (maybe centuries-long) debate within the Spanish Royal Academy as to whether the correct spelling for the country should be "Mejico" rather than "Mexico". In some places even today a spelling of "Mejico" is used (not in Mexico itself, of course), reflecting the previous advice given by the Academy.

It wasn't until the late 20th century that the Royal Academy finally conceded that the standard spelling of Mexico should be with an X. This accommodation, however, was made begrudgingly, as you can tell perhaps by reading between the lines of their official position on the matter:

https://www.rae.es/dpd/M%C3%A9xico

https://www.rae.es/dpd/Texas

Spanish spelling is standardized in a way that is almost unimaginable in the English-speaking world today. The driving institution behind this standardization is the Royal Academy, which has influence not only in Spain, but also throughout Latin America. It would not be unprecedented at all for a city or province to change the spelling of its name in order to conform to Spanish's universal spelling rules.

"Monterey" may look wrong to a modern Spanish speaker, but Spanish spellings were not widely standardized until after the United States invaded and seized California from Mexico.

Rather than being a corruption of the original spelling, the current spelling of Monterey, California seems to be one of the variations in use locally at the time of the invasion.

> the current spelling of Monterey, California seems to be one of the variations in use locally at the time of the invasion

Seems unlikely as the /rr/ sound and orthography comes from the Latin, before Spanish even existed.

This German map from 1850 seems to spell it "Monterey", although it's a little hard to make out.

https://history.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Radefeld...

This American map published at the time of the Mexican-American war labels it "Monterey B."

https://history.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Mitchell...

This American map published before the war also labels it "Monterey B."

https://mapgeeks.org/wp-content/uploads/1845-Map-of-Californ...

Here's a map produced by a British cartographer showing the spelling to be "Puerto de Monterey" in 1745:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California#/media/F...

This 1650 Dutch map seems to spell it "Monterey", although the handwriting is archaic and a little bit difficult to interpret:

https://www.wdl.org/en/item/2661/view/1/1/

Perhaps most convincingly, this Spanish map published in Madrid in 1802 documents a 1603 expedition, one of the first to navigate the California coast. It uses the spelling "Puerto de Monte Rey".

https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/hornbeck_spa_1_a/22/

None of which is to say that the "Monterrey" spelling wasn't used. The following English-language map from 1838 uses the "proper" Spanish spelling:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Californ...

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples using a spelling of "Monterrey" as well.

The question on everyone's mind, why didn't Apple make the spelling the way that it was when Mexico sold California in the mid 1800s?

You're missing my point.

I'm not saying should have used the original name, but rather that it should have picked a different location.

Native Spanish speaker, Latino here. I honestly couldn’t care less.

Monterey isn’t a word, it’s a name. It’s written correctly.

I'm from Europe and I don't care about US sensibilities, but I find your post petty and the idea behind it doesn't make sense.

There is basically no place on the entire planet that has never changed its name. Big Sur, Catalina, Mavericks, those places used to be called something else, too.

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