This change in macOS Ventura is going to take some getting used to
Earlier this month, Apple presented a preview of this Fall’s release of macOS Ventura at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). It’s not bringing major changes to the Mac’s operating system, either visually or under the hood, and that’s fine by me as a professional Mac administrator. But they are introducing one change that’s definitely going to take me some time to get used to.
The Mac’s application for adjusting key system settings has been called “System Preferences” since the very early days of Mac OS X. (I think it may have simply been called “Preferences” in the Mac OS X Public Beta.) Moreover, it’s had more or less the same interface for the last two decades, with only relatively mild changes. That’s all about to change. In macOS Ventura, the app has been renamed “System Settings,” and the interface has been changed to closely resemble that of the Settings app on iOS and iPadOS. You can see here just how dramatic this change is:
Rather than grouping system settings into broad categories represented by a single name and icon, Apple is presenting settings as distinct objects in the System Settings sidebar, arranged presumably in ways that a) Apple thinks makes sense to the user in terms of importance and b) hews closely to how these items are arranged in Settings on iOS. So for example, Wi-Fi is a distinct item in the sidebar, whereas before it was within the Network preference pane.
I have mixed feelings about this. Most importantly, I understand what Apple is doing here. They’re trying to be consistent across all of their operating systems with how users find and adjust system settings. Honestly that’s probably the right decision. On the other hand, as someone who’s been using macOS since before Mac OS X was released, I feel a bit of sadness that an aspect of macOS that has been fairly consistent for the last two decades plus is now changing.
Also, and this is a relatively minor nitpick, I prefer the term “preferences” to “settings.” Yes, both convey what their function is, but “preferences” has a stronger connotation of users making choices to me than the more anodyne “settings” does. I kind of wonder why they didn’t use the word “preferences” in iOS from the beginning, and I further wonder if it had to do with how many characters fit underneath an app icon on the iPhone’s Home Screen. Furthermore, why not just go with the name “Settings” instead of “System Settings?” Leaving the “system” in there feels like an awkward halfway step. I wonder if they’ll tweak this over time.
Perhaps one reason for keeping “system” in the name is that Apple seems to be moving to use the word “settings” within apps in lieu of “preferences.” In the past, to get to an app’s preferences, you’d click on the name of the application in the Menu Bar and then click on Preferences. When you click on the application menu in Ventura you get “Settings” instead of “Preferences.” They haven’t completed this transition though. Third-party apps still have “Preferences” as do many of Apple’s own apps.
This is in no way a major blow to macOS, but it is something that long-time macOS users like me will have to take some time to adjust to. Hopefully they’ll continue refining the fine details over the next few months before it’s released to everyone.
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