Apple announces macOS 11, “Big Sur,“ with an emphasis on design

[Karlston]

Apple announces macOS 11, “Big Sur,“ with an emphasis on design

The next big version of macOS has been announced at WWDC.

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It's WWDC, and today Apple is announcing the next big version of macOS "Big Sur," which, after 15 versions of "OS 10.x," is actually version 11! Big Sur, like the previous versions, is named after a region in California.

 

Apple says Big Sur comes with an "entirely new interface" with "refinements in buttons and controls" and a new unified icon yet. Finder and most other apps feature a more transparent, top-to-bottom sidebar with an all-white (or all-dark) main section to the right. Toolbars have been redesigned, with the big gray window topper of previous versions getting the boot.

 

Control Center has arrived on the Mac, too. Clicking on the toolbar by the time will bring it up, just like the notification panel. Inside, you'll find sliders for the volume and display brightness, along with other power controls and media playback. You can drag controls into the status bar for quick access. Widgets have been reworked with a gallery display view, and you can easily drag them into the side widget bar.

 

Lots of apps get a sprinkling of new features, along with a new coat of paint. Messages on the Mac now has a search feature and a redesigned photo picker, and you can create memoji right on your computer. Maps has been redesigned with quick access to favorites like "Home" and "Work." The desktop gets feature parity with the iOS app, with access to indoor maps and ETA locations from friends.

 

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Safari is getting the "biggest update since it was introduced." Apple says it loads pages 50 percent faster than Chrome. A new "Privacy report" button on the toolbar will provide info on website tracking. Extensions get permissions for each website, and the browser now features native translations. There's a new safari home screen with a pickable wallpaper and customizable content sections. Tabs now get favicons and will show thumbnails when you hover over them.

 

The biggest Mac news of the day is Apple's transition from Intel X86 chips to its own ARM silicon. Big Sur plays a major role in this transition with native ARM support for all first-party apps, a "Rosetta 2" emulator that will let x86 apps run on ARM, a new version of Xcode with ARM support, and support for the new "Universal 2" binary, which lets an app support both x86 and ARM. You can read more in our standalone article.

 

Apple didn't announce any new huge macOS features—the update appears to focus on interface updates and modernizing macOS' visual design elements. The developer preview for macOS Big Sur is out today, with a public beta starting next month.

 

 

Apple announces macOS 11, “Big Sur,“ with an emphasis on design

 

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[BimBamSmash]

Based on what I saw from the keynote only:

 

Likes:

• The glorious return of Resetta app, now with the ability to emulate apps for i-devices! Hope it sticks around longer than its predecessor.
• Privacy Report in Safari that lets users know which trackers Safari is blockin
• Built-in translator for Safari
• Chrome and Firefox extensions can now be easily ported to Safari
• Photos app's new Retouch tool

Confused:

• Buttons and controls for apps now appear when needed and disappear when not (how will the OS know that exactly? Machine Learning?)
• How many more years of support for Intel-based devices out there?

Dislikes:

• Bleach-white UI (me eyes! me eyes! Not Windows 8/Office 2013 again!)
• Notification Center turning into iOS-style widgets.
• The "Bubble" design of icons, and adding silly backgrounds to icons that previously didn't have one. (e.g. QuickTime, key-chain, colorsync util, etc)
• Way too much translucent effects - often in areas that don't even need one.

[zanderthunder]

21 minutes ago, BimBamSmash said:

Bleach-white UI (me eyes! me eyes! Not Windows 8/Office 2013 again!)

I thought there was a dark mode since macOS Mojave?

[BimBamSmash]

30 minutes ago, zanderthunder said:

I thought there was a dark mode since macOS Mojave?

 

Perhaps I should have used the term "Bleach-White Light Mode" instead.

[zanderthunder]

macOS Big Sur is version 11, ending 20 years of macOS 10

 

 

For decades now, Apple has been using the version 10 on its operating system. First it was called Mac OS X, then it was simply OS X, and then the Cupertino firm moved on to macOS. But when it started calling it macOS, it really stopped making the version numbers so public. They were there, but no one said them out loud. macOS 10.15 Catalina was simply macOS Catalina.

 

Yesterday at WWDC 2020, Apple introduced this year's macOS update, called Big Sur. Some savvy viewers noticed that this time around, it's actually version 11, even though Apple never explicitly said it. While it might have been possible that the company was using some internal version with a different number, after installing the beta, it's clear that Big Sur is macOS 11.

 

 

It's unclear how Apple is going to do its versioning going forward. Next year's version could very well be macOS 11.1, although it seems more likely that it will be macOS 12. There doesn't seem to be anything specific about this release that would indicate such a major change that it's a whole new generation. Apple probably just wanted to change up the way it numbers releases.

 

It does have ARM64 support for the first time, as the company is moving to its own ARM processors for the Mac, ending its partnership with Intel over the next two years. But still, Mac OS X, in its time, originally supported PowerPC and survived the shift to Intel.

 

Source: macOS Big Sur is version 11, ending 20 years of macOS 10 (via Neowin)