All the non-technical people I know loved it. It's pretty. It's neat. It looks cool. Apple is a consumer products company.
My personal feeling on it is just "meh." My productivity with my laptop hasn't changed. I'm not a huge fan but it's not a deal breaker. I still find it better than Windows 11 for the most part, and Linux has other issues as a daily driver for me.
IMHO Apple needs a "tick" release where they only polish and fix bugs and usability issues with an almost total feature freeze. I've heard they may be doing that.
Looking at popularity of similar design on iOS it would be surprising “non-technical” users like it. People HATE new iOS. Low contrast, not clear layering and focus, things being moved around for unknown reasons.
Also who uses MacOs beaides developers? Majority are creative prosumers in arts/design and they are even more annoyed by messed up designs. What you are left with are lawyers, writers, students? I guess they might like it.
I said that in the next sentence. Than again this is really true only in US. In rest of the world (including europe) Macs are seen as luxury environment.
Macs are not seens as a luxury environment in Sweden at least.
Of the people I know only old folks, gamers and some techies own PCs. A lot of people will however just use whatever wintel laptop their employer provides them with.
I'm not arguing that macs are more common than non-macs, only that "In rest of the world (including europe) Macs are seen as luxury environment." is false.
Chromebooks dominate K12 here so it kinda depends on what you mean by "students". Once people start buying their own computers however my impression is that Macs are quite common of not dominating.
Mac have been certainly picking up in usage worldwide but it's been always pretty openly premium luxury product? Especially in the past. It is even marketed like that. They might be changing their reputation since their entry Macbooks are pretty great price/performance but people simply buy cheaper.
Marketshare of MacOS is like 15% worldwide (curiously declining in US). That's a minor platform.
Also stop with Chromebooks. It might dominate schools in US (often mandatory) and it is popular in specific countries like India. But in majority of the world it's absolutely unknown with global marketshare of like 1%.
And I’m not arguing that Mac’s are the common man’s choice. All I said was that the statement about Macs being seen a luxury environment in every country except the US is plainly false as I know at least a couple of other countries where Mac’s are quite common even among the non-affluent classes.
Very few uni and high school students have MacBooks in East and Southeast Europe and it’s seen as quite a flex there. They’re also impractical for those in engineering schools due to required software that only works on Windows.
My personal feeling on it is just "meh." My productivity with my laptop hasn't changed. I'm not a huge fan but it's not a deal breaker. I still find it better than Windows 11 for the most part, and Linux has other issues as a daily driver for me.
IMHO Apple needs a "tick" release where they only polish and fix bugs and usability issues with an almost total feature freeze. I've heard they may be doing that.