Rumored iOS 19 & macOS 16 design changes will be polarizing, as always

Apple is rumored to be overhauling the design of iOS 19 and macOS 16, and based on what's happened before, the changes will polarize users before ultimately becoming accepted.

This rumored redesign could even be enormous, and may follow previous claims that Apple will bring visionOS design touches to all of its platforms. Whether or not Apple Vision Pro actually has any impact on iOS and macOS, though, Apple's two main operating systems have seen radical resigns in the past.

Redesigning macOS

In the case of the Mac, it's not all that far in the past. Back in 2020, the then-new macOS Big Sur was such a departure that it was named macOS 11 — after 20 years of it being macOS X.

It was still recognizably the Mac, but macOS Big Sur introduced rounded corners, a new look for the Dock and menu bar. It also brought over Control Center from iOS, and along the way introduced the idea of Catalyst apps, which were iPhone ones that could run on the Mac.

Still, critics saw this new macOS as being Apple foisting the iOS and iPadOS look and feel onto the Mac. "[However, rather] than being disgruntled that some things on the Mac are changing and — horrors! — reflecting the work Apple's already done for iPadOS," wrote AppleInsider's Daniel Eran Dilger at the time, "it's useful to look at things from the other direction... for years, the Mac has received less of Apple's attention and resources simply because the market opportunities afforded by iPhones and iPad were vastly larger."

Any one of the macOS Big Sur changes might be described as small. There was the introduction of a Control Center to the menu bar, but otherwise it was chiefly that app icons were now more rounded, and macOS used a lot of translucency.

A lot of translucency. Even the Mac's menu bar was translucent, which sometimes made it hard to read, depending on a user's wallpaper.

But Apple was not bashful about introducing changes with macOS Big Sur. Instead, it came out swinging with both that new macOS 11 name, and a vividly vibrant new wallpaper that to some people screamed cartoonish.

"There are definitely some aggressive, challenging changes in the macOS Big Sur design that will throw long-time Mac users for a loop," wrote Jason Snell in his blog Six Colors. "And I expect that some of them will end up getting re-thought by Apple's designers over the next couple of releases."

True enough, the wallpaper got toned down, and Control Center became more customizable. But still, the current macOS Sequoia is clearly a closer descendant of Big Sur than it is to the older Mac OS X.

It's also a more recent descendant, too. For Mac OS X was only replaced by macOS Big Sur in 2020. Compare that to iOS, which had its own much, much greater redesign as long ago as 2013.

Redesigning iOS

From its first release in 2007, Apple's iPhone had a design that has broadly continued to this day, and was broadly borrowed by every single other smartphone that followed it. But in 2013, the detail of that design changed dramatically, and it was for a reason.

The original iOS lead Scott Forstall had been fired in 2012, chiefly over his refusing to co-sign Apple's apology about how bad Apple Maps was at launch. Changing something as significant as the iPhone's whole look and feel is perhaps not something that could happen very quickly, so possibly the changes were underway before Forstall's exit.

Nonetheless, Forstall was replaced by Jony Ive and Craig Federighi, and the former, at least, was already known for his preference for a more minimalist design for everything. Then head of design, Ive had worked on the original iPhone, the iMac, the iPad, and so many more devices, seemingly always making them thinner.

So when iOS 7 was released in 2013 and it featured a startlingly more minimalist design, it was not a surprise.

From the start to iOS 6, the idea had been to make the iPhone feel familiar by showing people app icons that resembled real life objects. So the Calendar app had a faux leather look, and a torn piece of paper at the top.

It was skeuomorphism, the idea of digitally representing familar objects to make it easier for users to understand how things worked. Whether it was Ive's passion for minimalism, or just a recognition that after six years, people got the idea, iOS 7 changed it all.

Every trace of skeuomorphism was gone and instead iOS and all of Apple's stock apps adopted a flat look. Users' reactions weren't what you'd call mixed, as they were very definitely either for or against the whole thing.

"iOS (like Windows Phone) is now a type orgy that appeals to print designers not human beings," tweeted designer Andrew Borovsky, from a Twitter account that has since been deleted.

"If you don't think iOS 7 is beautiful, I don't know what to say to you," tweeted John Gruber at the time.

Speaking to the issue of this change being because of firing of Scott Forstall, former New York Times design director Khoi Vinh wasn't impressed. "If iOS 7 is revenge on Forstall, Forstall's revenge may be that it's kind of not that great," he wrote, in another tweet that can no longer be accessed.

Users don't care

"If there's one thing to learn from new versions of Apple's mobile software, iOS, it might be that everyday people don't care about what so-called tech influencers have to say," opined the New York Times in June 2013. "The latest operating system has a far different design than earlier versions, but consumers appear to be reacting mostly positively to the change."

That was based on Twitter analytics company Topsy's examination of 7 million tweets. The tweets were split with 1.2 million positive, 1.1 negative, and the rest just neutral.

But Topsy also noted that the majority of the negative tweets were complaints about how it took to download the new iOS 7.

Despite that now forgotten slow download time, reportedly users adopted iOS 7 faster than they did iOS 6. Specifically, online advertising network Chitka estimated that 18% of all iOS devices were running iOS 7 within 24 hours of its release — compared to 14.8% for iOS 6's first day.

Redesign that's more than skin deep

If it's a little unfair to say that macOS Big Sur's major redesign was visual, it's ridiculous to say it of iOS 7. Despite the visual changes being the most immediate and very striking difference, iOS 7 introduced a whole range of new features that are now favorites.

It was iOS 7 that introduced Control Center, for instance. Back then, users had to swipe up from the bottom of the screen and what they saw was on a translucent background, but it was Control Center.

AirDrop came to the iPhone with iOS 7, too, although it had already been available on Macs. And instead of app folders limiting users to 16 apps, they could now have multiple pages within the folder.

Then quite quickly after the launch of iOS 7, third-party apps adopted its new, flat design. Some of that was imposed by iOS, but developers also worked to embrace it — and arguably to address some issues.

With iOS 7, for instance, a line of text on screen could be just a line of text, or it could be a button. It wasn't always very clear, and over time both developers and Apple made subtle changes to make it more obvious.

They definitely did do that, but also we got used to the flatter design. So after 12 years, we are perhaps as trained to use this design as skeuomorphism tried to teach us back at the start.

What remains of the redesigns

Apart from the slightly more muted wallpaper, the versions of macOS since Big Sur have not lost anything that was introduced with 2020's redesign. Then iOS hasn't lost much since 2013, but it has lost some things.

And they're probably all down to the iPhone X and iOS 11 in 2017. By getting rid of the Home button, Apple had to introduce us all to new gestures for getting around the iPhone, and the closest thing to a casualty of this was the Control Center.

It's tempting to say that it didn't go anywhere, since we still have Control Center and it's even recently been expanded. But it has gone somewhere, it's gone from the bottom of the screen to the top right.

That still means users are as likely to find it by accident as they are deliberately. But once they have found it, they can see — and customize it — more clearly because the translucent background is gone.

If that sounds like a small progression since 2013, it is. For all of the changes that have come to the iPhone in the past dozen years, Apple's massive redesign in iOS 7 got it right.

Or at least, if it didn't, we got used to it. And doubtlessly will again if it's true that iOS 19 and macOS 16 get another radical redesign.