{"id":30729,"date":"2020-11-19T16:38:21","date_gmt":"2020-11-19T21:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=30729"},"modified":"2020-11-19T19:54:59","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T00:54:59","slug":"big-sur-not-preparing-for-touch-macs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/19\/big-sur-not-preparing-for-touch-macs\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Sur Not “Preparing” for Touch Macs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Craig Federighi<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I gotta tell you when we released Big Sur, and these articles started coming out saying, “Oh my God, look, Apple is preparing for touch”. I was thinking like, “Whoa, why?”<\/p>\n

We had designed and evolved the look for macOS in a way that felt most comfortable and natural to us, not remotely considering something about touch.<\/p>\n

We’re living with iPads, we’re living with phones, our own sense of the aesthetic – the sort of openness and airiness of the interface – the fact that these devices have large retina displays now. All of these things led us to the design for the Mac, that felt to us most comfortable, actually in no way related to touch.<\/p>\n

I’ve never felt more comfortable moving across our family of devices as a user, which I do hundreds of times a day than I do now, moving between iOS 14, iPadOS 14, and macOS Big Sur. They all just feel of a family – there’s just less cognitive load to the switching process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

To me, it seemed obvious that the reduced information density was to enable touch. Because why else<\/em> would you pay that cost for no benefit? Plus, the Mac App Store had started to feature artwork of a finger<\/a> touching<\/a> interface elements.<\/p>\n\n

The cognitive load that Federighi mentions just isn’t something I’ve (consciously) experienced. And one could make the argument that it’s confusing to make systems that work differently<\/em> look the same<\/em>. But I take him at his word because it certainly explains decisions like the awful iOS-style alerts. That design provides no benefits for touch; it just makes macOS look more like iOS, which he considers to be a plus. All of these changes also help to make unmodified iOS apps running on Apple Silicon Macs blend in a bit better.<\/p>\n\n

Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Big Sur offers a little more space around some elements, but not by much, so I think this speculation is quickly snuffed out if you use Big Sur for more than a couple of minutes. Most of the menus, buttons, and window controls are still tiny and clearly designed for a cursor and decidedly not a finger. It is still very much on the desktop side of the continuum<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Wojtek Pietrusiewicz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Someone PLEASE create an app to decrease the spacing of the menu icons in Big Sur!<\/p>\n

My apps now take up 50% of the width of it, instead of 25-33% previously. 😞<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Francisco Tolmasky<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

“We are willing to go through a multi-year transition on the Mac to use the same chip as the iPad, and do a design overhaul to make macOS icons look touchable, and even let iPad apps run on macOS, but we refuse to make these steps make sense by shipping a Mac with a touchscreen.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Steve Troughton-Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n

macOS would still need dramatic changes if it were ever to go touch-first. Catalyst is not in any way designed to dynamically switch between ‘Mac’ & ‘iOS’ modes — if an app has adopted Catalyst to explicitly make a Mac UI, it would be a ton<\/em> of work to support dynamic switching<\/p>

But, to be clear, the Mac doesn’t have to go touch-first to justify touch support. Apple Pencil support on macOS, on a drafting table iMac, would fit into all kinds of pro-level workflows currently dominated by Wacom, from illustration to 3D modeling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Jean-Louis Gassée<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I think the charming and articulate executive is putting us on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

I absolutely think<\/a> Apple will add at least limited touch support to future Macs, even if that wasn’t the plan when Big Sur was being designed. Federighi didn’t even deny<\/a> that.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n