![]() The Mac universe of available applications is nowhere near as big and diverse as the one that circles the iOS. And a new control centre makes essential adjustments easier while on-screen ‘widgets’ offer bite-sized windows into favourite apps. ‘Buttons and controls appear when you need them and disappear when you don’t.’ Full-height sidebars and integrated tool bars positions controls more handily. The smart use of translucency and shading helps create a kind of fluid hierarchy of controls. ![]() A key part of this is making the right and relevant controls most visible and available at the right time. As Dye says, what is most obvious about Big Sur is a ‘reduced visual complexity’. The redesign though is more rigour than razzmatazz. Easing that slide across is something of a trick though when you have to protect the ‘Pro’ hardware’s reputation as a serious and powerful piece of kit for creative professionals. ‘We know that so many people who are coming to the Mac already have an iPhone,’ Dye says. The Mac line-up represents only 10 per cent of Apple’s business so you can see the commercial sense in making the experiential shift from an iPhone or iPad to a Mac as seamless as possible. We know people are moving between these products more so now than ever, and throughout every day of their lives.’ I actually think we focused on the design of the system across all of our products and brought more consistency. ‘I don't think of it so much as making the Mac more like iOS. And of course, what makes the Mac the Mac, the ease of use and the experience.’Īnd, says Dye, the re-design is less about Macs looking and behaving more like iPhones than pan-device cohesion. We really want to keep the spirit of what we love so much about Mac icons. But we just didn't feel like that was the right thing to do. ‘It would have been really easy for us just to use the same exact icons from iOS and probably saved us a fair amount of time. (It’s also a culmination of a long process of paring back and simplifying the design of the original OS X, at launch a little too literal, fussy and in love with the potential for creating depth, texture and shadow).Īlan Dye, Apple’s VP of human interface, says that this is more than a simple design merge of the Mac OS and iOS and that Big Sur retains something essentially Mac. They now align, sharing the carefully rounded-off box icons, or chiclets, on the iPhone and iPad. ![]() Big Sur, as the new OS has been tagged, pretty much closes that gap, most obviously in the ranks of app icons in the Mac’s dock. Up until, now Apple has maintained a significant – if narrowing – design distance between the forms and furniture of the Mac OS and the iOS of its touch screen smart devices. The new OS update, turning it up to 11, feels less like a radical shift than a closer alignment of the design language across that eco-system. Apple’s family of devices now stretches from Apple Watch through phones, pads, laptops and desktops and it has developed a fabled eco-system of apps and services. That design overhaul caused some consternation amongst Apple’s long-term loyalists who loved the raw pixel power of the original OS, the mother of all screen-as-desktop OS designs.Īpple was then still transitioning from a cult niche player to industry titan with the pivotal iPhone launch still six years off. Last month Apple announced the biggest design update of the Mac operating system since the launch of Mac OS X 20 years ago.
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