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Comment by timw4mail | Hacker News Reader

I don't see the point of the change. It looks too much like iOS.

May be that was the point… Apple trying to make MacOS a little more like iOS, and ipadOS a little more like MacOS, and then boom… transition to commonality between iPad and Mac.

Stage manager definitely gives me that vibes. Apple trying very hard to make the UX feel same in a laptop and iPad.

Rumor is macOS is coming to iPads, so makes more sense when you think of it that way

So ruin macOS for the sake of inferior hardware.

Inferior hardware? The iPad Pro has the same CPU as a Macbook...

Beg to disagree. There’s only so much computation a handheld device can support, regardless of its nominal CPU.

Keyboard and trackpad/mouse is a huge difference from only a touchscreen.

Don't iPads have that as well via the official case?

You are correct, they do, via the official keyboard/trackpad case. Or you can even just connect any other bluetooth keyboard+trackpad (including the dedicated magic keyboard+trackpad for macs). And most of the keyboard+trackpad shortcuts/gestures are already the same on both macOS and iPadOS

Windows 8 all over again.

This is far from "ruining macOS". System Settings was one of the few areas of the OS that hadn't been updated in forever. This was long overdue.

Just because it hasn't been updated in forever doesn't mean it needs to be. I get the feeling that people get bored with a design and expect a design refresh.

It hasn’t been updated and was really bad. It made sense back in 10.2 or so, but now every preference pane has tabs and buttons for modal dialogs and stuff. It needed about twice as many panes for each one to be manageable, and the icons palette does not scale that far (it’s actually quite confusing now on Monterrey, where all icons are very similar).

The new one is not perfect. For example, the on/off switches are ugly and the layout is far from great, and I like “preferences” better than “settings”, which makes more sense for an appliance than for something you adapt to your liking. But the old one was very much not “not broken”.

The previous System Settings UI was long overdue an update. While the new UI does very much resemble macOS, I don't see that as an issue, as it works very well in this context. At least, I believe it does, but I am no UI/UX expert.

Why? Did it function poorly? I'm a bit sick of the idea that something has to be changed because it hasn't for a while.

> Did it function poorly?

I've never been able to find what I needed quickly in the old UI, always felt disorganized and random. I like the one on the iPad a lot better, I find it way easier to navigate, so I'm happy for the change.

Over the years, more options were added to the system settings, and the old UI did not lend itself well to holding all those various options/configurations. It became a burden to find exactly what you were needing; not to mention it was beginning to look "out of place" with the rest of the OS.

So yes, it functioned poorly, while also looking terrible by today's standards.

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