[kenward]

> The only real justification here is that it probably makes lives easier for Apple developers since they can now manage a single codebase for settings vs. separate ones.

While this is probably a large factor in their decision to do this, I wouldn't say that "no one expects a computer to work exactly the same way as a phone or tablet". My parents would definitely say otherwise. In fact, there's been some discussion on HN before about today's kids & teens not knowing how computer file systems work [0].

Obviously the majority of folks on this orange site have a strong understanding of how computers and filesystems work. However, there are more and more people that will grow up fully on tablet and mobile devices that will have a completely different mental model of what a "computer" is.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30253526

[quitit]

It's probably a bit counter-intuitive for the "if its not broke don't fix it" crowd. But lifting the rug and revisiting ideas is pretty central to how they operate over there.

The logic probably follows that if they were developing these settings panels anew, would they be different from one another, or should they be the same. Somewhere along the line they've realised keeping things consistent inside their ecosystem is simpler for their users, and the reasons for keeping them different are outweighed by the advantages of having them operated similarly.

This might be hard to believe, but I find some people are confused merely by the iOS app being called "Settings" and the macOS app being called "System Preferences". One is a hang over from earlier mac days and the other is a simple one word title that describes the app succinctly. It's not a surprise that they're both named Settings now, similar to how macOS and iOS apps have been slowly getting renamed for consistency (e.g. Address Book becoming Contacts.)

I think people also forget that it takes quite a bit of work to rejig apps, especially ones this central to the OS - so it's not exactly something I would describe as a lazy effort, even if it does produce more manageable code in the long term, which of course has invisible user benefits such as less bugs and faster deployment of security fixes.

[matheusmoreira]

> there's been some discussion on HN before about today's kids & teens not knowing how computer file systems work

I don't think normal people ever cared about file systems. Windows users from previous generations apparently only know three locations: Documents, Downloads and the Desktop. Save a file in any other location and it might as well be gone.

[newaccount74]

File systems have become ridiculously complex:

Some examples from my Mac:

- Backups are stored in file system snapshots, that look like folders in Finder, but are invisible when using ls on the command line.

- Applications that come with macOS in /Applications are stored in a separate partition than user installed applications.

- iCloud Drive looks like single folder in the Finder, but it's the contents of several directories merged together, with some magic to automatically download files when you try to open them. On the command line, remote files are invisible until you download them.

So I think the problem is that modern UIs try to hide where data is stored, and therefore people have a hard time learning how the file systems look under the hood.

[10729287]

... so they can sell them cloud.

[johannes1234321]

The difference is that Windows to some degree were "file first" you go to "My Files" and from there pick a file, double click and the correct application opens. Especially Win95 pushed the "file as entry point"

That was the difference to DOS, where you'd start the program and load a file from within.

Nowadays we have circled back to phone and apps, where often you don't really deal with files anymore, but data stored in some service remote and there isn't even a save button anymore (and where it remains it is a legacy thing with a floppy icon, with the file as archaic as the floppy)