Breaking News: Preferences Are Now Settings

Well I for one think it is a slap in the face of all of the loyal Mac users (I have been one since 2009) to tell us that in order to make it easier for iPhone (IOS) users they are going to make the Mac, that I have gotten used to over the years, look more like an IOS device!!

Mac community we need to let Apple know that we liked things just the way they were. We all had to become accustomed ourselves to the apple universe when we converted from Microsoft. One of the big reasons I converted was because Microsoft dictated to us many of the features and didn't want to hear any complaints. Is this where apple is headed? Sure seems that way to me.

I don't know if it's still worth it to pay the extra money for an Apple computer if the environment is going to be identical to MS. I will have to give it some serious thought though. It would be one thing if the designers offered us a way to customize these settings and allow new users to use the new stuff if they want. If I wanted my expensive MacBook Air/iMac to be just like an iPhone I wouldn't have purchased a Mac. Somehow I don't think that many users of iPhones REALLY want or use a Mac and if they do they don't want the 2 devices to look and act the same. Just one mans opinion

etresoft wrote:

Maybe Apple reasoned that people liked the "Settings" design much more than the classic macOS System Preferences layout. So they are giving all customers a new set of UI layouts that have proven to be 10 times more popular with users.

I'm not sure throwing logic into the thread is apropos. 😎

ddravis99 wrote:

We all had to become accustomed ourselves to the apple universe when we converted from Microsoft.

Some of us never had to convert.

Microsoft Windows set the computing world back about twenty years.

One tiny advantage of the old way was that I fairly often saw questions posted about Preferences in iPhone forums or about Settings in Mac forums and it was a good clue that the poster was reading and trying to follow instructions somewhere for the wrong type of device. But I'll get over it!

ddravis99 wrote:

Well I for one think it is a slap in the face of all of the loyal Mac users (I have been one since 2009) to tell us that in order to make it easier for iPhone (IOS) users they are going to make the Mac, that I have gotten used to over the years, look more like an IOS device!!

2009, eh? So a couple of years after Apple introduced the iPhone?

Maybe Apple reasoned that people liked the "Settings" design much more than the classic macOS System Preferences layout. So they are giving all customers a new set of UI layouts that have proven to be 10 times more popular with users.

Only, it is very difficult to search for items using the search field, if we do not know what they are called in the new system version. It is much easier to explore the Settings, if all branches of the search tree are visible and we have not to track down hidden items.

Some essential System Preferences are gone. I am missing the the pane, where we could format the date and time for short, medium, long formats. Now I can no longer force the Photos.app to display the timezone with the capture date (essential in Photos to fix wrong time zones, when importing photos), and historical dates can no longer be entered or displayed in Photos or the Calendar with the era, for example BC.

The other thing about the search field, if your index is bad on spotlight, it will not operate.

Did they keep evertything in System -> Library -> PreferencePanes or are those also moved?

I noticed this. It reminded me of when Trash was renamed Bin or when Favourites became Bookmarks (or vice versa), profoundly mystifying change of unknown import (to the layman).