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I feel these are preferences, that you don’t like - which is perfectly valid. Except “Save As…”, it’s not intuitive. The wording implies renaming the existing file. The actual action is more accurately worded “Save a copy as…”, or more succinctly “Duplicate”.

How is any of that “dumbing down”?

Well, apparently those changes are made to appease iOS users so they don't feel lost on Macs. I just can assume that Apple thinks this user group is too dumb to adapt to a different user interface philosophy? Don't know :)

So you assume these changes are made to "appease" a group of people you've decided is stupid, or that Apple thinks they're stupid?

I am a long-time Unix user, hardly an iOS user at risk of feeling lost on Macs, and while I have immediately turned back on my scroll bars, I was delighted by "natural scrolling," and I love that "Duplicate" makes it more clear that my documents are being auto-saved, as they should be.

These things aren't "dumbing down," they're just changes from the way things used to be. Some are better, some are worse, and both of those are opinions. I think labeling them as "dumbing down" and sneering dismissively at people who use iOS is unseemly, speaking of opinions.

OK, so none of those things are dumbing down, they're just decisions you don't agree with.

unless we formally define 'dumbing down', I think that's just opinion.

Just to take one example, scroll bars were turned optional with default off -- a simpler UX that's in favor of less visible user interactions for the sake of reducing user complexity is usually considered dumbing down.

Now, in Apple Land, far behind the Reality Distortion Field, they may refer to the reduction of user interaction options as 'beautification' -- but everyone else usually just calls it 'simplification', which is often (diminutively, perhaps) referred to as 'dumbing down'.

(in reply to "scrollbars only disappear without a mouse" , so what? That's still a reduction in user-visible information -- do touch users somehow not need to be told that an active view can be scrolled by anything other than visual gestures and cues? It's a nice pipe-dream, indicative design, but there isn't any design standard that suggests that may be or even could be the case.)

tl;dr : when a user loses visible indications, and loses possible interactions, it's not uncommon to phrase the state as being 'dumbed down'.

Maybe everything went wrong when they put a GUI on top of Unix. Maybe that's where the dumbing down started.

But seriously: What you call "dumbing down" I'd mostly rather call "making peoples' lives easier".

OP said the changes didn't make sense on a landscape notebook/desktop.

"Save As..." action has been replaced with "Duplicate" (at least in Apple tools), no idea what's the reasoning behind this is

If I had to guess, it's because Apple wants to remind you they already have your data in their cloud, so saving anything locally is creating a duplicate.

Scroll bars only disappear if you don't have a mouse plugged in (or connected over BT).

But yeah the waste of more vertical space in Big Sur was really surprising to me, considering Apple also tries to minimise it in other apps like Safari. Weird.

Relatively new macOS user here.

> scroll bars have been removed

Awesome! Less clutter. I only care about my position in a list or its length when I actually scroll.

> Ok/Cancel style dialog boxes are vertically stacked

Looks sightly weird, but it enlarges click targets and makes a crucial dialog easier to see and use. I guess that makes sense.

> more vertical space wasted for window chrome

I generally like the new style, but yeah, they went over board here 1/3 or 1/4 less height would be about optimal.

> Natural Scrolling

Why would you move your finger against the direction in which you're scrolling?

I do have it disabled on my mouse, so I can more easily flick it to navigate down pages.

> Awesome! Less clutter. I only care about my position in a list or its length when I actually scroll.

Sort of. When the the scroll bar (thumb) is the thing that you want to grab in order to scroll though — where is it?

> Why would you move your finger against the direction in which you're scrolling?

Because I'm scrolling *down* to reveal new content towards the bottom of the screen. Why should I move my finger "up" if I want to scroll "down" ;)

For touch screens it makes sense, no doubt, but for touchpad and mouse it's debatable. It's clearly a personal preference though, I just hope they never remove the settings option.

> Awesome! Less clutter. I only care about my position in a list or its length when I actually scroll.

Except when you don't realize there is more content to be scrolled in any direction including left and right because there is zero indication.

> Why would you move your finger against the direction in which you're scrolling?

It makes absolutely no sense with a scroll wheel and yet, by default it's on for them.

Hidden scrollbars and the Duplicate option are ten years old.