macOS Ventura System Settings is bad | Hacker News Reader

macOS Ventura System Settings is bad

lapcatsoftware.com

> I assume if I filed a Feedback asking for the old System Preferences design back, Apple would close my request with the reason "works as designed".

I think any person reviewing feedback that is simply I don't like it and I want the old thing would dismiss it. The author makes compelling arguments which I agree with. So, they should open Feedback Assistant and make several tickets for each one of the issues identified. I know I will be doing the same. Hopefully Apple has reasonable people reviewing it.

This is just the first few days of Ventura so there is time for improvements.

My personal opinion is that this change to Settings seems like change for no good reason. I see some reviewers making the connection that it looks more like iPad OS. But I really think that is a stupid reason for this change.

I think Apple should of been more focused on the UX of the existing design. For example, say you launch Microsoft Teams for the first time. It asks you to go to System Preferences and enable Accessibility. You may go to System Preferences and click on the Accessibility icon. However that is the wrong icon. What you are actually looking for is in Security & Privacy, then click on the Privacy tab to then click Accessibility from the list.

I’m baffled by how Balkanized and weird the macOS interface has become of late. The control center menubar replacements from Monterey are completely inoperable with keyboard controls, and it looks like that backward slide into inaccessibility continues in Ventura.

What happened? Apple still has an HIG page - are teams just totally siloed and allowed to deviate from those existing standards whenever?

Another Apple UI designer justifying their existence by making unnecessary changes that break long-established conventions, frustrate users’ muscle memory, and harm consistency.

Apple desperately needs an anal-retentive UI demagogue who demands better of its designers. Steve Jobs would have ripped a new asshole in whoever made these latest UI changes.

The accessibility points are strong, and those need to be fixed. But a lot of the rest is just grousing and personal preference. I cannot take an argument that switches are harder to use than checkboxes, for example, in good faith. If anything the click target is bigger for a switch?

> I cannot take an argument that switches are harder to use than checkboxes, for example, in good faith.

In good faith, what does that even mean?

As explained in the article, using switches rather than checkboxes is actually against Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines: "Avoid using a switch to control a single detail or a minor setting." "In general, don't replace a checkbox with a switch." "Use a checkbox instead of a switch if you need to present a hierarchy of settings."

In general, the switch control is unintuitive. With a physical switch, you would need to move the knob horizontally. But the GUI switch behaves like a checkbox, in that one click/touch will toggle it. You can "grab" the graphical knob and move it horizontally, but that's slower than a single click, and I've found sliding on those controls to be somewhat unreliable on touch screens (if done rapidly in a swiping motion). So the appearance of the switch gives you the opposite impression of how it is most efficiently used.

You have to "know the trick" that the switch behaves like a checkbox to think that the switch offers a bigger click target. However, this thinking is incorrect, because the trick to a checkbox, if you know it, is that you can also click the checkbox text, so that's a larger click target than the switch. I wouldn't expect non-pro users to know this, but I also wouldn't expect non-pro users to know that you don't have to slide a switch horizontally.

Maybe if a lot of people filed feedback that told them that this sucks...

Surely people have been wrestling with the 'extensive' iPhone settings for years, and similarly struggling to find things hidden, misnamed or just tucked away in dark corners.

I let my iPhone sleep the display too quickly for ages, before I finally went digging for some option to fix it.

I guess it's clear where Apple are going with macOS, but we don't have to like it.

I stopped using macOS when my recently-purchased M1 MacBook Pro became irreparable following a latte spill (capillary action pulled liquid into the display, and Apple refused to supply Rossmann Repair Group with the replacement part).

I’m switching to Haiku on non-Apple hardware. I am sick of being ripped off with unrepairable shiny junk, then peppered with notifications, which are nothing more than ads for Apple services.

If you add up the cost of all of Apple’s scamming every year, how many years would it take to buy a really nice CNC rig that lets you make your own stuff?

This is a respectable opinion, we all know about the non-repairability of Apple devices, but I don't understand what this has to do with the article that’s talking about the macOS GUI.

The real advantage of Apple is the integration of hardware-software-environment.

Apple’s closed-source system leaves users with zero recourse when the settings app gets worse. With Haiku, at least there is the possibility of a fork. (And it seems quite doubtful that they’d ever put ads for services into Haiku, given that there are no shareholders to appease!)

Sorry to see you downvoted. True you are slightly off topic, but you make a good point.

I am going off topic also: I would enjoy branching out and leaving the Apple ecosystem but I feel stuck. I am absolutely addicted to my Apple Watch and love that I can leave home and even take short travel trips with that being my only device. Unfortunately the rest of the Apple ecosystem sort of tags along for the ride since everything else works with the watch when I am at home.

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