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> The only real justification here is that it probably makes lives easier for Apple developers since they can now manage a single codebase for settings vs. separate ones.

While this is probably a large factor in their decision to do this, I wouldn't say that "no one expects a computer to work exactly the same way as a phone or tablet". My parents would definitely say otherwise. In fact, there's been some discussion on HN before about today's kids & teens not knowing how computer file systems work [0].

Obviously the majority of folks on this orange site have a strong understanding of how computers and filesystems work. However, there are more and more people that will grow up fully on tablet and mobile devices that will have a completely different mental model of what a "computer" is.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526

It's probably a bit counter-intuitive for the "if its not broke don't fix it" crowd. But lifting the rug and revisiting ideas is pretty central to how they operate over there.

The logic probably follows that if they were developing these settings panels anew, would they be different from one another, or should they be the same. Somewhere along the line they've realised keeping things consistent inside their ecosystem is simpler for their users, and the reasons for keeping them different are outweighed by the advantages of having them operated similarly.

This might be hard to believe, but I find some people are confused merely by the iOS app being called "Settings" and the macOS app being called "System Preferences". One is a hang over from earlier mac days and the other is a simple one word title that describes the app succinctly. It's not a surprise that they're both named Settings now, similar to how macOS and iOS apps have been slowly getting renamed for consistency (e.g. Address Book becoming Contacts.)

I think people also forget that it takes quite a bit of work to rejig apps, especially ones this central to the OS - so it's not exactly something I would describe as a lazy effort, even if it does produce more manageable code in the long term, which of course has invisible user benefits such as less bugs and faster deployment of security fixes.

> there's been some discussion on HN before about today's kids & teens not knowing how computer file systems work

I don't think normal people ever cared about file systems. Windows users from previous generations apparently only know three locations: Documents, Downloads and the Desktop. Save a file in any other location and it might as well be gone.

File systems have become ridiculously complex:

Some examples from my Mac:

- Backups are stored in file system snapshots, that look like folders in Finder, but are invisible when using ls on the command line.

- Applications that come with macOS in /Applications are stored in a separate partition than user installed applications.

- iCloud Drive looks like single folder in the Finder, but it's the contents of several directories merged together, with some magic to automatically download files when you try to open them. On the command line, remote files are invisible until you download them.

So I think the problem is that modern UIs try to hide where data is stored, and therefore people have a hard time learning how the file systems look under the hood.

... so they can sell them cloud.

The difference is that Windows to some degree were "file first" you go to "My Files" and from there pick a file, double click and the correct application opens. Especially Win95 pushed the "file as entry point"

That was the difference to DOS, where you'd start the program and load a file from within.

Nowadays we have circled back to phone and apps, where often you don't really deal with files anymore, but data stored in some service remote and there isn't even a save button anymore (and where it remains it is a legacy thing with a floppy icon, with the file as archaic as the floppy)

It's not companies putting ease of use for their engineers above others. It's their engineers putting ease of use for themselves above others. Blame the industry itself. Nowadays engineers are wannabes after money, not great designers or architects with deep expertise or a sense of art.

> It's their engineers putting ease of use for themselves above others.

This isn't so bad. That's the system I want. A system by programmers for programmers. I guess Linux has been filling that niche for a while now.

Personally I quite like the settings change, perhaps I didn't spend enough time with the old one but it felt rather clunky/disorganised to me. Whereas now they're roughly approximate between devices there's less for me to remember. I'd agree no one expects a computer to work the same as a phone/tablet, however when it comes to such basic things as settings having the same interface and syncing things where it makes sense is a positive for me

Also, if you can distance yourself from the visual changes, you'll notice there are far more customization than there have ever been.

The fact that I can remap caps lock more easily than on a Linux machine, for example, blows my mind. Window tiling also works out of the box with 3rd party apps. Meanwhile, Ubuntu switching to GNOME broke Compiz settings that many used for those features.

Poster won't know how good he has it until he switches to something else.

Also, if macOS and iOS converge into appleOS, won't that mean we finally get a MacBook we can touch and hack?

I've been waiting for that since 2009.

> Window tiling also works out of the box with 3rd party apps.

That's literally an oxymoron.

Depending on your view of things, everything on Linux is a "third party app" ;)

On macOS there's a crude one: hover over the green stoplight, and you get first party tiling (via fullscreen), press alt and you get snapping. I do wish the latter would get default shortcuts though (which you can set up yourself in the keyboard shortcut settings). The only reason I install Moom is that it supports mouse snapping, because the 1st party one + MC covers 98% of my tiling use cases.

To each his own, and I do use i3 on Linux, but I found that attempting to set up such "true tiling" ways results in much kludginess on macOS, the same way that attempting to make Linux mimic macOS largely fails. It's a bit like importing vim keybindings in various apps: you could only pry vim from my cold dead hands but for me the approximation of vim is worse than no vim in apps that are not vim, it just constantly trips me up. Therefore, I choose to use each tool for its strengths, and accept its failings.

It's a 3rd party app on Ubuntu too.

My point is that "out of the box" and "with a third-party app" are at odds with each other. OOTB means OOTB, nothing else - i.e. in this scenario that phrase can be left out because it's incorrect.

>This is the only logical explanation for a lot of Apple’s decisions lately.

I dont think it is "simply" about simplification either. It is just very Tim Cook's way of operation. Cost cutting.

By unifying these platform, you reduce the cost of development. iPad, iPhone, and in the future, Mac, aren't all that different.

And reducing cost of development is something Tim Cook loves. It would have been much much better to leave iOS, iPadOS and macOS as three thing. Like in Steve's era. It would be more expensive, sure but it will be better.

Because what is more maintainable is less buggy. The consolidation of effort means that the effort can be spent elsewhere and we will be pleased with how they prioritized.

> No one expects a computer to work exactly the same way as a phone or tablet.

I don't expect there to be any difference soon. There no point for a laptop when it is just a screen plus a keyboard, which you can do with a pad.

There are clearly planning for convergence.

Not sure what people dislike about the macOS 13 System preferences. Today is the first time i see them and it looks like an improvement to me.

Here’s a good article that describes some of the reasons: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/SystemSettings.html