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Comment by jonpalmisc | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I’m just being pedantic, but when an OS uses 4+ different design languages across all the system software, While it has little to no effect on my ability to get work done, I simply prefer looking at a pretty, consistent UI.

To be fair, macOS isn’t perfect either, especially with some of the system apps that have become the iOS equivalent running on macOS in the past years. Although I do find macOS to have greater consistency overall than Windows.

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Apple's UI design peaked several versions ago, and now it is a slow descent into random design changes for the sake of maintaining the salaries of their designers.

I disagree. I was skeptical about Big Sur. I loved the look of the Mountain Lion days, through Sierra, up to Catalina. Big Sur felt like a big difference that I wouldn't like. But, I switched over and have found that Big Sur is actually a nice upgrade visually from Catalina.

One thing I really love is the visual indicators in the menu bar. For example, I like the icons when I'm connecting to a Bluetooth device. I also find that Finder is pretty clean and nice to use, among other things.

Obviously it's all subjective but I think Big Sur is probably the nicest looking/feeling version of macOS yet. It seems like the "Mountain Lion was the best" way of thinking is mostly just nostalgia.

I would not call "Mountain Lion was the best" just nostalgia. The UI was more concise and polished in general. Consider the Big Sur sidebar, on some Apps it acts a shortcut list, on other as a tab bar and on others its used to host hierarchical views. It not only does not improve the UX in a functionality, it also breaks the reading flow as we need to look in the toolbar (left to right) and then on sidebar (top-bottom) as Apple is pushing developers to use it. It's not to say that skeuomorphic design was perfect too.

Using Mountain Lion in 2021 is going to feel less aesthetic than Big Sur just as using System 8 in 2011 felt. Overall consistency and sizing of Mountain Lion is superior to Big Sur if you consider a keyboard and mouse based OS just as Big Sur is superior if you're used to touch input and modern iOS UI.

Agree. A desktop OS has different needs than a mobile OS, and Apple is trying to foist iOS onto its desktop users under the guise of progress, but really nothing has fundamentally changed about using a keyboard and mouse to interact with the computer in decades. And that experience is very different, if you are skilled, than using fingers.

Of note, macOS has always been very good at having consistent keyboard shortcuts across apps, something Linux is still trying to learn.

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