If anyone hasn’t tried using System Settings yet on macOS Ventura, overall it’s…pretty bad. On iOS the canonical way to display a bunch of settings is a table view, because there really aren’t that many controls available to be used on a touch-first device. In Ventura they brought this over to macOS, trying to cram all the old settings into lists of options (which used to be nice little checkboxes, but are now tiny little switches that look pretty bad). In many cases the thoughtful, if somewhat dated, layout of some preference panes are completely lost and bulldozed over with the list of switches. In other places it’s clear that the team was forced to do the redesign and keep all the old options available somewhere, but couldn’t really figure out where to put the stuff, so there’s little push button on the bottom that will show a sheet with the UI that didn’t fit in the list. Of course, any settings that don’t really make sense to share with iOS are now lumped together and hidden from sight-in this case, under the “General” tab.
If you remember how everyone moaned about iTunes and begged Apple to rewrite it, then got Music in macOS Catalina, you can kind of see how the new System Settings app is.
My 2014 MacBook is no longer getting major updates. Apple is still popping up ads for the latest MacOS, even though I can’t install it. I considered buying a new Mac with Apple silicon but the last three MacOS releases have been enormous regressions. At this point a Framework seems to make a lot more sense.
I hated everything about the UX on Big Sur and they seem to have doubled down on their poor decisions. This news destroys the final bit of hope I had that they’d correct the MacOS path the way they did with MacBook hardware.
The idea that someone would switch to the Windows (or linux) ecosystem because of some visual tweaks to MacOS settings is very amusing to me.
For example, have you ever used the system settings panel in Windows? It’s the most confusing, horrible, and neglected part of the OS. For like 15 years they had mashed together settings panels from different versions of Windows without even bothering to make them visually consistent. Ditto for a lot of Linux distros.
I think you’re overthinking it. MacOS has barely changed at all in last 20 years from a UI perspective compared to Windows. Upgrading from an 8 year old intel model to an M1/M2 model is going to feel like strapping on a jetpack.
Enormous regressions? I could agree on “not great” but that was strong words. Haven’t really had a lot of trouble with the updates. I would say that macos 2014 and 2022 have a lot more in common than 2014 macos and current linux.
> Apple is still popping up ads for the latest MacOS, even though I can’t install it.
I have this on my 11 inch Air from whenever it was - maybe I can get them for false advertising - because they are saying I can have some great new features if I click the button ...
> Apple is still popping up ads for the latest MacOS, even though I can’t install it.
This seems like a bug they might actually fix? As opposed to the "bug" of showing you those at all, which is pretty annoying but unlikely to get looked at.
I actually just upgraded my late 2012 MBP to Monterey last week using OpenCore Legacy Patcher [1]. Everything works great so far. Your 2014 MBP should be supported as well.
Made me wonder how part-time hobbyist with minimal resources can continue supporting old hardwares while a trillion dollar company cannot.
I was trying to figure out how to do a factory reset, which they call "erase all content and settings". It's available through settings, but not in settings. You have to open the settings app, then in the menu bar click the app name, and click the erase all content and settings button. Searching for "erase", "reset", "clear", "empty", etc in settings returns no results.
Of course, I couldn't tell if it was indeed a factory reset or not - what even is content? Does it include non-user scoped files and folders? Why not just use normal language people are accustomed to?!
There’s a read-only partition that contains system files and default applications, and a read-write partition that contains files and apps you’ve added. The second gets erased, keeping the first.
Would “factory reset” mean reverting to the version of the OS installed at the factory? That is no longer a viable option. “Erase all content and settings” is clumsier language but more accurate.
That's really annoying, because the settings in iOS is terrible enough on the phone. Tons of stuff doesn't make sense, naming is bad, many settings are, in my opinion, placed under the wrong menu item.
Also: it used to be ok-ish to have all settings in one place when apps were rather simple and few. Now it's super annoying to be in an app, want to change something, go to settings, scroll forever to find the app settings and make the change.
There are a lot of pref panes owned by a lot of different teams/owners. I suspect the rough edges will get ironed out in future updates as other teams have time to come in and do a re-think/re-write.
I have to say though, iOS does not seem like the best model of Settings that I would emulate. Rather than the years-long, pile-on model that iOS Settings seems to be the result of, someone needs to step back and reevaluate where every setting ought to belong — how best to organize them.
Also, speaking of iOS Settings — Mail setting should be in the Mail app, Safari settings in the Safari app. I have always loathed that iOS 1.0 idea that you had to go to a different place to find the settings for the apps.
I don't think it's too bad, it just needs a bit more discoverability.
I use KDE now as main driver which has a ton of options compared to macOS and they use the same format. What I do find myself using a lot more is the search. Part of the reason I didn't have to do this with the old macOS preferences was just my muscle memory (only slightly thwarted by Apple's changing of the icons). And the other part was that there's simply less to find there.
But essentially I think the scrolling left and right panes are not a bad idea. The old format consisted of a non-scrolling and non-resizable(!) window that would be replaced, and this caused some issues on really low-res screens in the past, at 800x600 pixels (or even 800x480 like the eeePC) it was impossible to reach all the settings on the old preferences.
At least this is now fixed to a format where more controls don't need to be crammed into the same space, it can simply expand. And the number of "menu" options is now also dynamic and no longer constrained by screen space.
But it's going to mess up decades of muscle memory which is not fun :)
> I use KDE now as main driver which has a ton of options compared to macOS and they use the same format.
Those of us who remember the old tree-based layout from before Kirigami took over were about as happy about the change as macOS users are about the new Preferences layout in Ventura. It used to look like this a long time ago: https://fedoranews.org/krishnan/review/kde3.2/fullsize/contr... -- it was a lot more space-efficient and going into one sub-section didn't automatically hide all other sections, so it was a lot easier to look for things.
I don't recall if the window in Plasma-era releases was resizable but it certainly replaced one that was both scrolling and resizable. Early 5.x releases still supported the tree-based layout IIRC but it hadn't been the default since the 4.x days, which used that awkward icon-based layout, eek!
> But essentially I think the scrolling left and right panes are not a bad idea.
Until touch/mouse inputs have a widespread support for horizontal scrolling by default, like they do for vertical scrolling (scroll wheels or two-finger drags), I think they are going to remain a bad idea: you have to move your pointer from the thing you are looking at to the scrollbar and then back.
One could say it's a chicken and an egg problem, but displays are already much wider than they are taller, and if you do need them even wider, you are failing miserably IMO.
Sounds comparable to the Windows metro rewrite of control panel— an attempt to modernize and make it tablet friendly, but only 80% of the way there, so the old UI had to still be maintained behind the scenes.
From what I've seen, there's not much to re-learn. Everything is in the same place as it was before, it's just that the layout is clunky and does not look that good.
How often are you in system preferences? Literally I am in there maybe once/twice a month. I guess I don’t see the outrage over minor UI tweaks for a feature I rarely use
They massively iterated on Safari after receiving bad feedback.
I really like the version that shipped: I love the much more reachable address bar and use the quick tab switching by swiping (and also the quick tab creation) all the time.
I also like it much more visually – but even if you don’t, it‘s clear that the design is different for functional reasons, not visual appeal. There is a clear purpose behind the changes (moving the address bar to the bottom is the obvious change, making the address bar look draggable and providing the hint of the other tabs to the left or right is also quite important and very much function first.
I didn’t care for the first iteration. I do like the final design. The only thing that‘s weird is that they kept the old variant around as an option. Maybe because the discussion turned toxic and people became unable to evaluate the design based on its merits?
Craig says in John Gruber’s “The Talk Show” chat that the developer beta for this is early and they have a much better touchpad experience in the works already but wasn’t ready yet and hopefully the rest will get improved also
I don't know about you - but the "shelves" UI that current System Preferences uses is - hard to navigate. There's no real rhyme or reason for the shelf location.
At least the Ventura/iOS multiple menus has a hierarchy. Ultimately I use "search" for such large settings to find stuff like 90% the time.
I don't think that would actually make sense. I'm sure the backend/business logic/functionality of settings has extremely little in common with iOS, so that cannot be reused with catalyst. And the UI is tweaked and "improved" for macOS (compared to iPad UI). So you don't actually gain anything from using the iPad settings app on macOS through catalyst.
What industry standard? There's no industry standard for this stuff, it's just each OS doing what it wants.
As it stands System Settings now looks different from every other preference panel on the system. I helped ship a sidebar+search design in IINA and we do a far better job that System Settings does. Go take a peek if you'd like to see how this could've been done. (Personally, I think most apps should stick with top tabs, but we–and Apple–are constrained by how many preferences we can show on screen at once.)
There is no industry norm. KDE, for example, follows the approach described in the article. In fact even Windows has some control panels designed that way too (though Microsoft still cocked it up be creating multiple different settings applications each with overlapping utility yet somehow differing support for configurability thus leaving left to Google how to make even some of the simplest of changes).
To me, the iOS Settings app just feels like a structure-less list where I have to use "search" to find anything anyway. (Perhaps my problem is that I have a strong desktop background and I don't use mobile phones much). To me, making the MacOS settings more like a phone would be a big step backwards.
To back up this argument: the redesigned settings app looks a lot like the one in Windows 10 and that one is a nightmare, specifically because it uses a phone-inspired design.
A valid complaint about the System Preferences app is that it is hesitant to introduce new top-level subdivisions (the tabs). They should roughly double the amount of tabs, and introduce new categories in order to group them together better.
I’ll note that I quite like the settings app in Windows 11. Far better than any previous windows iteration. Everything I’ve need since I got my PC a year ago is in there, it looks good, it’s searchable, and I haven’t needed to open control panel a single time.
Totally agree. Every time I open System Preference, I spend several seconds trying to find what I'm looking for. I'm sure that the icons are in _some_ order, but it's certainly not obvious to me what it is.
I very much agree. I recall around the era of iPhone 4 or 5 (?) that I could easily navigate the Settings app without ferreting around looking for the right page.
Now I have found that I can almost never find what I’m looking for without searching.
The macOS System Prefs is also not ideal but I prefer it to the iOS Settings.
This looks a bit like a macOS clone of Windows 11's Settings app.
I was going to say Apple has been moving away from the "every app has a sidebar" UI, but it seems the sidebar has made a comeback now that I think about it. I think this is a good thing in most cases.
It's a decent concept. Although I'm not a fan of the wallpaper settings. The only option shown is to drag and drop an image into the Settings window. So a person would need to open Settings and either Finder or Photos. Finder and Photos both have options to set the desktop image directly, so if a user is already in there, opening Setting is a needless step. If someone heads to Settings to change the desktop image only to be cryptically told they need to open a picture from somewhere else to drag it in, that's a bad and confusing user experience. It also seemingly eliminates the concept of built-in wallpaper options from Apple, unless they throw a folder in the users Pictures folder, which seems tacky.
I think the main way I change the desktop image is to open the Desktop prefs pane and drag a picture in there. Mostly from the Finder. Or from Preview.
I've found in general over the years, it's pretty difficult to find what you're looking for in System Preferences. Anytime I go to look for "Security and Privacy", it takes me a good few seconds. The icon isn't exactly recognizable. Maybe something as simple as alphabetizing the categories would help. I feel like this has gotten worse over the years but I can't say how.
We got more settings. A lot of categories did not exist before, so we had to cram more options in or chose what's less used and hide it.
For an extreme case think of today vs XP. No bluetooth. No privacy. No location. No login or users. No speech recognition. Sharing was there but hidden. There was no colour tuning, font smoothing was hidden, and half the other graphics options didn't exist.
In today's era people don't dare to change from the default configuration if they don't have to. We all know that if some settings feel like Apple doesn't want it, it will be hell (incompatibility with other settings, subtle hints that things won't work because of that, the option will get back to default magically in some occasions, and so on). Heck lots of people don't even change their Desktop picture anymore.
I just tried to firewall out Apple's app notarization, using Apple's provided IP addresses, macOS's included firewall (pf), configured from macOS's System Settings plus a configuration file in /etc.
Not only my configuration file will be burned down at each update (and rapid security response will probably make it even more deceptive), not only I cannot receive even the courtesy of having my conf file in some "Relocated Items" directory as macOS used to do, but also I notice clearly that app notarization still works in apparently random moments
I just tried that, it works, but weirdest thing to me was always that it doesn't alphabetize within the two groupings, but i guess the top and bottom are just seperations, not really groupings? Can you make the categories more explicit?. The first four I guess are related to UI (General, Desktop & Screen Saver, Dock * Menu Bar, Siri) but then why not make that it's own category? Siri and Spotlight I guess are both 'Search' but same question again, these were all in the first grouping.
There's a "Customize" but I guess that just lets you hide stuff.
There's a striking similarity between the author's mockups from Feb 15 and the redesigned System Settings announced in the beta of macOS Ventura and last week's WWDC [0]. I guess they got their wish!
Just out of curiosity I'd love to see screenshots if they exist. On the ones I've been able to find, I'm seeing related settings grouped with a horizontal button stack.
> System Preferences has gone decades without a redesign, appearing noticeably unchanged as macOS has evolved around it.
The old one allowed you to have a favorites bar and actually ordered the contents alphabetically. I can't find anything on the new one without searching.
Someone reimagine Ventura with title bars added back in. Tired of playing this game of where's the dead-space I can use to drag my window just so I can have an added 30px or so of useable height in a window.
It's this and the lack of draggable (or command-clickable) icons that first made me wonder if I've reached an age (in my 30s) where I'm just not going be as "good at computers" as I was in my 20s. Upon reflection I'm not worried about it, but the NSDocument model (while a bit obtuse at first glance) offered good end usability. The little animation delays and inconsistencies are unfortunate in the light of what used to be readily available.
The issue isn’t people being “good at computers”, but computers getting worse at people. Minimalist design clowns and lazy developers have taken over, and user interfaces have become far less intuitive than they were 10-20 years ago. Couple that with added complexity, and you have a recipe for disaster. Apple is the worst example because they used to be a company that took pride in its user interface design.
I'm 44 and I feel like an old person now on the iPhone. I am constantly tricked into hitting "x" on a search bar instead of sending the action. I find myself typing phone numbers and things into the wrong app like a chat app. I am often staring with a befuddled expression at the screen because I don't know where to go immediately to do what I need to do. (Contacts is particularly bad for this).
On the iPad I always end up with the stupid files overlay thing that is hard for me to get rid of. Usually I was just trying to scroll or drag.
I thought iOS was supposed to be grandparent friendly!
I can't tell how much of this is related to getting old and how much is just saved-up expectations from a more civilized time.
It's particularly unnecessary when you can easily get 30px of useable height back just by using widgets of sane sizes. Like, computers have trackpads and mice, no need to make everything bulky fingers-friendly.
Just to be 'trendy' and 'fresh look' some software takes this to the extreme, even inside the same app sometimes the top invisible band is for dragging the whole window, sometimes (large! with lots of emty space) list items run edge to edge putting active area there, playing a guessing game with you. This is just [stong adjective here]!
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If you remember how everyone moaned about iTunes and begged Apple to rewrite it, then got Music in macOS Catalina, you can kind of see how the new System Settings app is.
I hated everything about the UX on Big Sur and they seem to have doubled down on their poor decisions. This news destroys the final bit of hope I had that they’d correct the MacOS path the way they did with MacBook hardware.
For example, have you ever used the system settings panel in Windows? It’s the most confusing, horrible, and neglected part of the OS. For like 15 years they had mashed together settings panels from different versions of Windows without even bothering to make them visually consistent. Ditto for a lot of Linux distros.
I think you’re overthinking it. MacOS has barely changed at all in last 20 years from a UI perspective compared to Windows. Upgrading from an 8 year old intel model to an M1/M2 model is going to feel like strapping on a jetpack.
I have this on my 11 inch Air from whenever it was - maybe I can get them for false advertising - because they are saying I can have some great new features if I click the button ...
This seems like a bug they might actually fix? As opposed to the "bug" of showing you those at all, which is pretty annoying but unlikely to get looked at.
The OS is perfectly fine.
Made me wonder how part-time hobbyist with minimal resources can continue supporting old hardwares while a trillion dollar company cannot.
[1] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/START.htm...
Of course, I couldn't tell if it was indeed a factory reset or not - what even is content? Does it include non-user scoped files and folders? Why not just use normal language people are accustomed to?!
There’s a read-only partition that contains system files and default applications, and a read-write partition that contains files and apps you’ve added. The second gets erased, keeping the first.
I have to say though, iOS does not seem like the best model of Settings that I would emulate. Rather than the years-long, pile-on model that iOS Settings seems to be the result of, someone needs to step back and reevaluate where every setting ought to belong — how best to organize them.
Also, speaking of iOS Settings — Mail setting should be in the Mail app, Safari settings in the Safari app. I have always loathed that iOS 1.0 idea that you had to go to a different place to find the settings for the apps.
You are not alone, it drives me nuts to have to scroll through the settings for every dumb joke app I have when I'm looking for something.
I use KDE now as main driver which has a ton of options compared to macOS and they use the same format. What I do find myself using a lot more is the search. Part of the reason I didn't have to do this with the old macOS preferences was just my muscle memory (only slightly thwarted by Apple's changing of the icons). And the other part was that there's simply less to find there.
But essentially I think the scrolling left and right panes are not a bad idea. The old format consisted of a non-scrolling and non-resizable(!) window that would be replaced, and this caused some issues on really low-res screens in the past, at 800x600 pixels (or even 800x480 like the eeePC) it was impossible to reach all the settings on the old preferences.
At least this is now fixed to a format where more controls don't need to be crammed into the same space, it can simply expand. And the number of "menu" options is now also dynamic and no longer constrained by screen space.
But it's going to mess up decades of muscle memory which is not fun :)
Those of us who remember the old tree-based layout from before Kirigami took over were about as happy about the change as macOS users are about the new Preferences layout in Ventura. It used to look like this a long time ago: https://fedoranews.org/krishnan/review/kde3.2/fullsize/contr... -- it was a lot more space-efficient and going into one sub-section didn't automatically hide all other sections, so it was a lot easier to look for things.
I don't recall if the window in Plasma-era releases was resizable but it certainly replaced one that was both scrolling and resizable. Early 5.x releases still supported the tree-based layout IIRC but it hadn't been the default since the 4.x days, which used that awkward icon-based layout, eek!
Until touch/mouse inputs have a widespread support for horizontal scrolling by default, like they do for vertical scrolling (scroll wheels or two-finger drags), I think they are going to remain a bad idea: you have to move your pointer from the thing you are looking at to the scrollbar and then back.
One could say it's a chicken and an egg problem, but displays are already much wider than they are taller, and if you do need them even wider, you are failing miserably IMO.
Didn't expect a mess like that from Apple.
I want something that make life easier, not harder!!
: ((
Seems to me like your reaction is rather out of proportion.
I really like the version that shipped: I love the much more reachable address bar and use the quick tab switching by swiping (and also the quick tab creation) all the time.
I also like it much more visually – but even if you don’t, it‘s clear that the design is different for functional reasons, not visual appeal. There is a clear purpose behind the changes (moving the address bar to the bottom is the obvious change, making the address bar look draggable and providing the hint of the other tabs to the left or right is also quite important and very much function first.
I didn’t care for the first iteration. I do like the final design. The only thing that‘s weird is that they kept the old variant around as an option. Maybe because the discussion turned toxic and people became unable to evaluate the design based on its merits?
https://youtu.be/WfnvsepVJC0
https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/48776-95249-001-Sys...
At least the Ventura/iOS multiple menus has a hierarchy. Ultimately I use "search" for such large settings to find stuff like 90% the time.
Deleted Comment
Trying to step people through this convoluted app over the phone or text is really going to be a chore. I had the old System Panes memorized.
As it stands System Settings now looks different from every other preference panel on the system. I helped ship a sidebar+search design in IINA and we do a far better job that System Settings does. Go take a peek if you'd like to see how this could've been done. (Personally, I think most apps should stick with top tabs, but we–and Apple–are constrained by how many preferences we can show on screen at once.)
A valid complaint about the System Preferences app is that it is hesitant to introduce new top-level subdivisions (the tabs). They should roughly double the amount of tabs, and introduce new categories in order to group them together better.
The macOS System Prefs is also not ideal but I prefer it to the iOS Settings.
I was going to say Apple has been moving away from the "every app has a sidebar" UI, but it seems the sidebar has made a comeback now that I think about it. I think this is a good thing in most cases.
It's a decent concept. Although I'm not a fan of the wallpaper settings. The only option shown is to drag and drop an image into the Settings window. So a person would need to open Settings and either Finder or Photos. Finder and Photos both have options to set the desktop image directly, so if a user is already in there, opening Setting is a needless step. If someone heads to Settings to change the desktop image only to be cryptically told they need to open a picture from somewhere else to drag it in, that's a bad and confusing user experience. It also seemingly eliminates the concept of built-in wallpaper options from Apple, unless they throw a folder in the users Pictures folder, which seems tacky.
For an extreme case think of today vs XP. No bluetooth. No privacy. No location. No login or users. No speech recognition. Sharing was there but hidden. There was no colour tuning, font smoothing was hidden, and half the other graphics options didn't exist.
In today's era people don't dare to change from the default configuration if they don't have to. We all know that if some settings feel like Apple doesn't want it, it will be hell (incompatibility with other settings, subtle hints that things won't work because of that, the option will get back to default magically in some occasions, and so on). Heck lots of people don't even change their Desktop picture anymore.
I just tried to firewall out Apple's app notarization, using Apple's provided IP addresses, macOS's included firewall (pf), configured from macOS's System Settings plus a configuration file in /etc.
Not only my configuration file will be burned down at each update (and rapid security response will probably make it even more deceptive), not only I cannot receive even the courtesy of having my conf file in some "Relocated Items" directory as macOS used to do, but also I notice clearly that app notarization still works in apparently random moments
There's a "Customize" but I guess that just lets you hide stuff.
[0]: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/06/macos-ventura-system-se...
https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/System_4.1?file=System_4.1
So if we are playing a game of who copied who then I think Apple wins.
http://www.dcn.org/go/dwnelson/images/figure2.jpg
The old one allowed you to have a favorites bar and actually ordered the contents alphabetically. I can't find anything on the new one without searching.
On the iPad I always end up with the stupid files overlay thing that is hard for me to get rid of. Usually I was just trying to scroll or drag.
I thought iOS was supposed to be grandparent friendly!
I can't tell how much of this is related to getting old and how much is just saved-up expectations from a more civilized time.
Just to be 'trendy' and 'fresh look' some software takes this to the extreme, even inside the same app sometimes the top invisible band is for dragging the whole window, sometimes (large! with lots of emty space) list items run edge to edge putting active area there, playing a guessing game with you. This is just [stong adjective here]!