There was definitely a whimsicality in Mac OS going far back, both first- and third-party, that has receded lately. I miss Time Machine's wormhole animation, the iOS 6 pull-to-refresh "booger", and the Shift-key slow-motion modifier.
The new iPhone Mirroring app exemplifies this. A few years ago, Apple would have given it a fun name like Magic Mirror or Teleport. Instead we got an unimaginative name and an icon with a grey background and a centered image of an iPhone. Clever.
> A few years ago, Apple would have given it a fun name like Magic Mirror or Teleport.
A few years ago, Apple would have never shipped such a feature because the conventional design wisdom within the company would be that the user problems that this solution aims to solve can be better solved in other ways (that’s why we got features like handoff, continuity, etc).
A feature like this shipping is indicative of a greater mindset shift - perhaps a greater willingness to interpret user requests more literally (not too dissimilar from the MacBook Pro redesign going back to having all the ports).
People want faster horses? Well let’s breed faster horses for them, we’ve got the best horse breeding program in the world!
I feel like Time Machine is still too whimsical, especially how it blacks out every monitor except your primary one whenever you try to restore files. And restoring files takes a while as it tries to load your backups from some spinning rust.
The new iPhone Mirroring app exemplifies this. A few years ago, Apple would have given it a fun name like Magic Mirror or Teleport. Instead we got an unimaginative name and an icon with a grey background and a centered image of an iPhone. Clever.