[anonymouse008]

A screen only has so many pixels, every pixel matters. Further, is System Settings the only window open at the time? When are you usually entering the panel? Is it to achieve a specific aim when other windows are also open? or to browse and learn features? ... list goes on ...

I attribute System Preference's failure to be not creating additional icons and groupings that were properly descriptive and respectful of user use - for example: Gatekeeper should have been its own icon, not buried inside of Privacy and Security, then under a separate tab. From my experience, it was the primary feature to access within preferences. Further, yes, many improvements should have been made to Preferences, no doubt - Settings doesn't seem it though.

Settings doesn't make sense because the sidebar assumes a 'full screen / most of screen at golden aspect ratios' paradigm for the active window - which is absolutely not true for System Settings on Mac. More clearly: the sidebar works well when your mind can 'group' the edge of the bar, with the edge of the device. This works wonderfully for iPad - your mind can 'section off' without much mental effort. It's how excel usually works too - what madman would use excel at the aspect ratio of System Settings?

You now have a vertical and horizontal visual plane to mentally track - that also doesn't align in it's own window (what is Search, AppleID Profile Pic, etc doing anchoring the layout at top left) - and now all the controls are basically outlined table cells with weird choices for the controls. Try going to Desktop & Dock and identify what exactly are the groupings for the tables for 'Dock'? now I have to figure that out, too?

[crazygringo]

System Settings only uses half of my 13" MacBook's screen width. That seems entirely reasonable. There's no shortage of pixels here...

And why would you have to mentally put the sidebar together with the left side of the screen? Do you complain about tabbed dialogs not having the tabs align with the top of your physical screen?

When you have more "tabs" than can fit horizontally (e.g. more than 5-7), the best solution is to turn them into a vertical list on the side where you can see and scroll more of them comfortably. This is better. (Whereas icon-based "table of contents" that disappears when you navigate and requires a "back button", as System Preferences was, is just terrible all around.)

You know all the way back in System 6, Control Panel used a left sidebar, and the overall window was a little more than half as wide as a Mac SE's screen. It's a pretty classic layout.

The new System Settings is totally clear on how to use, and totally reasonably sized. No unreasonable "mental effort" needed. Sure you can nitpick the precise organization of a few panels but for the many hundreds of settings, nothing will ever leave you perfectly happy.

[anonymouse008]

Right on - so I'd much prefer the focused user pane of leaving the previous "table of contents" view. This is what happens in Privacy & Security System Settings now, click any of them and leave to a focused pane about the topic you just asked about. If you're wrong, go to the back button.

Focused Panes of action to me in a desktop environment is correct for the context. Trackpad and MagicMouse environments to me are primary click/twitch, not 'tap thing under glass' based UIs. Click/twitch means back like UIs are easily accessed, while 'tap thing under glass' means vertical scrolls and the like are easier.

System Settings are made as if the cursor doesn't exist on the Mac, which is plain wrong. Just look at the iCloud pane: it has so much wasted real estate to the table cell space from title to toggle switch, why?? God forbid you actually just click the 'Contact' cell itself, nope! you must click the smaller toggle switch all the way to the right!! And this is after you just swiped down to see the rest of the page. Oh yeah, and the whole consistent paradigm of swipe-to-edge to go back -- nah, that doesn't exist either [0].

You could fit n-times the number of settings if you removed the left bar and the horrible tableview style for settings. If you're familiar, these should be collection views with as many large icon settings just like Finder's icon view, where a click on the icon or the label will toggle the preference for iCould.

I guess too I'm just looking for consistency from all of Apple's software. These interactions should all be standard subclasses to the whole organization

[0] Safari's swipe to go back should be made available to notes, settings, etc

[crazygringo]

The goal of good UX isn't to "fit n-times the number of settings". It's not about maximizing density (or not wasting pixels or real estate).

It's about clarity, affordance, organization, and not getting lost. And also, yes, consistency as you say -- this has become more consistent with iOS settings, which is a good thing.

(I also don't know what "click/twitch" means. Googling it gives me zero results that aren't for Twitch streaming. But in any case, the navigate/back paradigm has nothing whatsoever to do with which input device you use. Neither mice, trackpads, nor touchscreens have any kind of consistent "back button". Sometimes there's some side button or side swipe that works with some programs, sometimes there isn't.)

[anonymouse008]

Yeah, I'm not classically trained to speak in the right terms. The whole idea for me is, can I get what I want to do, done, in a more enjoyable way? That to me is all things - the ideas I threw out were just brainstorm novice ideas that I would find helpful. Enjoyable also becomes philosophical - which is good - but should be understood through the way it works, obviously + consistently.

Yeah, click/twitch is a made up term just now. Though I would say an affordance of the input device one uses does dictate what is 'easiest‘ or 'most natural' to use - a quick swipe once the edge of a window is reached, to signal either refresh (for pull down) or go back / forward for horizontal edges sure feels nice on a trackpad. I believe had Apple had a slide swipe via edge earlier in its life - we would have gone straight to glass only devices, no home button.