I've been using Safari 15 on macOS and iOS since they released the betas and while I could get used to, and enjoyed some of the changes, some I don't think I'll be able to live with.
From good to bad :
- The tab grouping feature. I'm not sure I understand the complaining, as this is a purely optional feature that you don't have to use. Each new window you open will have it's own "group" that isn't shared anywhere, but you can, optionally, save tab groups that get synced across OSes. I find that to be very useful to make thematic groups and being able to switch from one to another easily on iPad, and having those groups opened on separate windows on mac.
- The sidebar is a bit clunky on iOS, for example if you want to browse your bookmarks through it, you'll have to go back to the root state of that tab (pressing back a few times) in order to be able to close it. Thankfully, that's not an issue on macOS ! Having multiple back buttons on screen though, I'm not certain that's a great design for novices, but you can argue it's more of a "power user" feature.
- Hiding the close button on a mouseover on the favicon on mac. Quite frankly this one was infuriating the first couple of days, but I did get over it. I do think it will be very jarring for most users though, and a very bad experience for not much reason. Even more puzzling is the fact that on iPad, since you can't mouseover, the close box is visible for the main tab, but not for the others, so closing a non selected tab is a two click process that brings back (or maybe reload) the tab, and that doesn't feel good.
- Hiding the reload button. As someone who don't always have my hands on the keyboard, I used that button fairly often on macOS. The touch target to the ... is also fairly small on iOS and I can't say I'm hitting it all the time. The menu that pops also has a peculiar design with some buttons being extra high, and a whole, massively scrollable list of features that are not in an order that particularly make sense to my usage. It's one of this case where you'd wish for some usage based learning as Microsoft tried to do years ago with Office.
- The Chrome tinting is something that kinda looks good sometimes, but gets visually jarring quickly. HN is a good example. I do like Orange, but that's just too much to my taste (that feature doesn't seem to be there on iPad). It can be disabled though in Preferences which is good.
- Moving around the location bar. That's the change I don't think I can get over, this has been terrible to use for me in practice. The fact that the bar changes width and location, I find visually and mentally jarring on mac. On iPad it's not much better, though at least you understand the premise there, it's about saving vertical space. Conceptually I can't get behind that one : they have voluntarily constrained their design to their smallest screen size, and did it mostly for cross OS consistency.
From good to bad :
- The tab grouping feature. I'm not sure I understand the complaining, as this is a purely optional feature that you don't have to use. Each new window you open will have it's own "group" that isn't shared anywhere, but you can, optionally, save tab groups that get synced across OSes. I find that to be very useful to make thematic groups and being able to switch from one to another easily on iPad, and having those groups opened on separate windows on mac.
- The sidebar is a bit clunky on iOS, for example if you want to browse your bookmarks through it, you'll have to go back to the root state of that tab (pressing back a few times) in order to be able to close it. Thankfully, that's not an issue on macOS ! Having multiple back buttons on screen though, I'm not certain that's a great design for novices, but you can argue it's more of a "power user" feature.
- Hiding the close button on a mouseover on the favicon on mac. Quite frankly this one was infuriating the first couple of days, but I did get over it. I do think it will be very jarring for most users though, and a very bad experience for not much reason. Even more puzzling is the fact that on iPad, since you can't mouseover, the close box is visible for the main tab, but not for the others, so closing a non selected tab is a two click process that brings back (or maybe reload) the tab, and that doesn't feel good.
- Hiding the reload button. As someone who don't always have my hands on the keyboard, I used that button fairly often on macOS. The touch target to the ... is also fairly small on iOS and I can't say I'm hitting it all the time. The menu that pops also has a peculiar design with some buttons being extra high, and a whole, massively scrollable list of features that are not in an order that particularly make sense to my usage. It's one of this case where you'd wish for some usage based learning as Microsoft tried to do years ago with Office.
- The Chrome tinting is something that kinda looks good sometimes, but gets visually jarring quickly. HN is a good example. I do like Orange, but that's just too much to my taste (that feature doesn't seem to be there on iPad). It can be disabled though in Preferences which is good.
- Moving around the location bar. That's the change I don't think I can get over, this has been terrible to use for me in practice. The fact that the bar changes width and location, I find visually and mentally jarring on mac. On iPad it's not much better, though at least you understand the premise there, it's about saving vertical space. Conceptually I can't get behind that one : they have voluntarily constrained their design to their smallest screen size, and did it mostly for cross OS consistency.
Right now you can revert the top bar using this gist on mac, and I thoroughly hope that Apple will consider making this optional, if only, under the guise of an accessibility preference : https://gist.github.com/zhuowei/8ad1dd478df0efeb67baf2088e5c...