I work for Apple. I’ve definitely used a Mac. I’ve also used Elementary. Of course there are differences but overall the design is extremely derivative.
I thought so until I gave the thing a mini-review recently.
Sure, it has a dock at the bottom and a panel at the top, but so do dozens of desktops now. It's the default layout of XFCE. That tells us nothing useful.
It doesn't have a menu bar. It doesn't have a repositionable dock. It doesn't have Miller columns. It doesn't have a folder structure anything even vaguely like macOS'. It doesn't have app folder bundles, or drag-and-drop installation. There are no desktop icons, not even as an option.
Apps don't have menus at all except a hamburger in some. Windows don't have title bars, they have something like CSD.
It's a Linux. It's a slightly weird Linux but it's way less Mac-like than, say, GoboLinux is under the hood.
Just because the desktop is quite clean and minimal, and there's a GNOME-like panel at the top, it has a passing cosmetic resemblance, no more.
You could make Budgie, LXDE or LXQt, or MATE look much more like the macOS desktop than Pantheon is or could be.
If anything it's more like iOS with overlapping windows than anything Mac-like.
- The folders inside your Home folder, which absolutely resembles macOS
Is everything a pixel for pixel rip? No. Does it use the same technology? No. But the UI/UX is more than just “inspired by” Apple. “Cosmetic resemblance” seems to suggest these things are coincidence, but when it’s clearly not.
Also used by default in XFCE, Unity, GNOME 3, Budgie; optional in LXDE, LXQT, KDE, MATE. Also used in Windows 10 and 11. Rejected.
> Files aka Finder
Not significantly more Mac-like than Nautilus, Nemo, etc. Rejected.
- Code aka Xcode
XCode is an IDE. Elementary Code is a text editor. Every desktop GUI has a text editor. Rejected.
- Global status bar icons
As also used in XFCE, GNOME, MATE, Unity, LXDE, LXQt, & every version of Windows since 1995. Can't be customised; ordinary Linux apps can't add new ones. Rejected.
> PiP
> DND
> Screen Time
Since I am not sure what you mean by them, no comment.
If "DND" means Do Not Disturb, GNOME 3 has this too.
> App Store
As used in every modern distro/OS. GNOME has one, Ubuntu has one, Windows has had one since 2012. Rejected.
> Mail
Again, every GUI OS has this. Rejected.
> Calendar
Again, every modern OS has one. Click the clock in XFCE, for instance. Rejected.
- Camera
Ever seen "Cheese"? Rejected.
- System Settings
Every OS has this, and most call them Settings because Microsoft uses "Control Panel". macOS calls them "System Preferences". Rejected.
> The folders inside your Home folder, which absolutely resembles macOS
100% standard Linux layout, and share the same names as the defaults in Windows as well. I remove the Linux ones and symlink the ones on my Windows partition so they stay in sync, and even the icons automatically reappear because the names are 100% identical.
It is not only unreasonable to claim that a list of features that basically _every modern OS_ has mean that one OS in particular is a copy of OS X, it is laughably ridiculous.
On this basis, I could also list a set of features that OS X copied from Windows which were missing in Classic MacOS and NeXTstep (Alt-tab app switching, keyboard dialog box navigation, Safe Boot Mode, Fast User Switching, etc. etc.) to claim that OS X is a copy of Windows.
Ok I’m not going to go point by point as it seems you’ve completely missed mine. I’m not suggesting a Mail client coming with the OS is unique to macOS. I’m suggesting the UI/UX is, or in this one case, actually comes from NeXT which became macOS. If you can’t look at these and understand where it comes from, regardless if it’s in other Linux DEs (look at its history evolution), or tell the difference between a taskbar and a Dock (and know their history), then I don’t know what else to say.
Lastly, telling me that my argument is weak and bogus makes me want to engage negative percent. It’s not a nice way to interact, and is frustrating when you don’t even get my point when I clearly said “ But the UI/UX is more than just “inspired by” Apple”
I am very sorry. I did not want to come across as being nothing but negative.
I will have to try Elementary's new email client – it replaced Geary with its own home-grown one in recent releases. I did not give it more than a cursory look. I have used Mail.app in several OS X releases, but these days, I use Thunderbird instead. I am know the GNUstep Mail client a little bit.
For me, the menu tree is a big part of an app's UI. I favour older versions of MS Office that still have menus rather than the horrible Ribbon UI of Office since the 2007 release.
Since Elementary and its apps have no menu bar and no menus, I don't really feel that their UI can be like macOS apps' since a core element of the UI is missing.
Regarding the difference between a taskbar and a dock – well, ISTM a lot of Linux distros don't, frankly. I think there's a big difference. But saying that, the Windows taskbar (that is, the original of the species) has been getting increasingly Dock-like in recent releases. Windows 8 even dropped the Start button and Start menu. 8.1 put it back starting a full-screen app launcher not unlike Launchpad in recent macOS releases; Win10 and 11 have made it more and more Mac-like, so that in Win11 it's centred by default and can no longer even be arranged vertically at the side of the screen.
(Personally, I hate the new version.)
So I'd say that the company that invented the taskbar is trying very hard to make it more like a dock. And of course imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
I had a quick play with an older version of Elementary 3-4 releases ago. I didn't like it much. Last week I spent a few days getting to know it better. It's a very "opinionated" distro. I like macOS a lot – I'm typing on it now – and if Elementary was more Mac-like, I would like it more. As it was, I was impressed with the clean, integrated design, but actually using it, no, I don't find it Mac-like at all. Not really in any way.
It is clean, it works well, its programmers have *views* on how to do stuff and they've found a model that pays and they're working on it. Good for them. I do not think I will be using it myself.
