I've been running it since the RC and am currently in the process of uninstalling it. The new UI is so incredibly ugly I honestly cannot understand how they thought it was acceptable to even released as a beta let alone an RC and now release.
There's SO much padding and wasted screen real estate, disjointed looking floating inner panels, window corners that are so rounded you see gaps in full screen apps, inconsistencies everywhere and - well, I could go on.
Basically the vibe I get from it is that they think their users are dumb - they won't care about things like this and that they want everything to look like a preschoolers tablet.
I count four different corner radius sizes currently on my screen, which is maddening.
Apple has a thing against people with OCD. Or taste.
The thing is horribly wasteful of screen real estate, and as someone who’s been writing a Mac blog for over two decades, I am so happy I started using Fedora two years ago—GNOME has its flaws, but it looks nicer than Tahoe.
Fedora Silverblue is the closest feeling to the macOS experience I fell in love with that I’ve had on Linux in, well, ever. Very happy with it on my desktop and laptop. It’s not perfect but it is less imperfect than modern macOS has become.
Finding a laptop that works well is annoying, however.
Yes, the installer automatically (and reliably) resizes partitions for you. A minimum of about 70 GB for macOS is needed (anything lower is still possible but unsupported).
> You pick it at boot?
There's a default choice that will boot.
> And how “install and just use” it is?
Probably one of the smoothest Linux installs I've had in 10 years or so, since you just run the installer from macOS instead of flashing ISO files to an USB drive.
Just one more question: is my mac hardware (and encrypted data) still protected the way it is protected before installing Asahi on it? Like device/theft protection etc.
My limited exploration/search on this topic kinda says in some way Asahi Linux lives inside the bounds of macOS (even all the data is available/readable in macOS which is fine by me). Is that so?
> Just one more question: is my mac hardware (and encrypted data) still protected the way it is protected before installing Asahi on it? Like device/theft protection etc.
Apple devices probably have the strongest security model offered by any otherwise open consumer device these days, so yeah: Installing Asahi won't degrade security of the macOS installation.
Note that the Linux install itself will have weaker protection, since e.g. the fingerprint sensor is not yet supported. I also think disk encryption would be much harder to set up due to Apple's boot process (if it's even feasible at all currently).
I learned that my option, for a well tested and functioning distro is pretty much Fedora Remix. So I guess I won't be able to use Elementary OS sadly. I hope Fedora is or can be made to look and behave like Elementary.
Asahi Linux doesn't support the M3 or M4. That said, I'd be curious why OP doesn't consider Asahi on M2 to be a good option. AFAIK the only thing missing at this point is Thunderbolt and USB-C display output (HDMI out works fine).
There are a few draw backs. dnf for arm linux doesn't support Tor Browser yet!! Power saving was quite bad when I tried a few month back. When on sleep mode, it drains more battery than on MacOS sleep mode.
There are a few other compile/transpile bugs here and there.... but I'm rooting for the it!!! Hopefully they can get sorted out soon.
IIRC, there bunch of random things that still don't work -- no USB-C output, webcam, audio and if I've to guess suspend/resume is probably not rock solid either. The only benefit is that you get to use Linux, but then you may lose on actually getting work done without worrying about these issues. The new UI is inferior, but can still get things done.
This information is very dated. Webcam/audio work fine nowadays, and suspend/resume have never had issues that I recall. IME the feature support page is very accurate (no hidden gotchas like "technically it works but it breaks after sleep").
USB-C output is indeed not working but actively making progress (so actively that some of the related patches have been sent to the kernel mailing list and merged this very week).
Webcam and audio both work now. I can't speak to how solid suspend/resume is because I haven't actually used it--I just follow the project--but I wouldn't necessarily assume it's flaky.
There's a bit of a pain in that I could only get Brave to run Netflix, but all that meant was that I switched to using Brave for all of my browsing.
There's no official Tor build for it, but there is an unofficial one (that I do not use)
The only real pain I have with it is that Facebook's javascript for its reels chews up RAM something horrible, which freezes the OS whilst being processed, and often causes me to reboot it
I wanted to post this myself because I swear by my Framework 13 and it's my workhorse. However, it doesn't hold a candle to my wife's M3 Pro on a number of metrics mentioned here such as: Battery life, screen quality, and overall performance.
The Framework (Intel 12th Gen) also has the added benefit of heating the house, particularly with graphics "heavy" workloads (lots of windows open in GNOME Mutter, VMs, etc).
Based on my framework 13 and macbook m1, I think the only downgrade are the speakers and the trackpad. The keyboard is actually an upgrade, the 2.8k screen has a better size ratio but the contrast is not as good, I'd say it's decent. The trackpad performs well but it's the old hinged design and not haptic. Being able to service my own laptop, replace parts and max out the storage for less money than a mid-spec macbook is just unbelievable.
I wonder if providing a unibody aluminium "premium" option might help Framework capture the "build-quality" crowd. That combined with the improved keyboard may turn out to be a compelling offering. I think the main remaining challenge will be the display and trackpad.
this is a psychotic question but have you actually tried doing that? like using a macbook as a vessel for running linux under parallels as a primary use?
I guess if you autostart the linux VM upon booting this should work. I am doing actually the same with BeOS but using a Linux as the hardware compatibility layer. Linux distro is configured to autologin to sway which starts a VM and run it fullscreen. The guest VM is configured to use all the laptop ram leaving only 1GB for the host. In the second virtual desktop the pulseaudio volume control, wifi and bluetooth management tools are automatically open so I can easily plug a BT headphone, switch network.
The linux distro automatically shutdown if I shutdown the VM. I am using swaylock to lock the screen when I am away.
I went down this rabbit hole but with UTM, didn't get far though. Anything GPU-accelerated will struggle, or straight up not work. That includes GPU-accelerated terminals and code editors. You will also have conflicts with touchpad gestures, hot corners, and keybindings. It's not a good way to go imo.
I haven't done Linux (I have servers and such and "got used" to macOS enough for my needs) but I did in ages past do something very similar with Windows on Parallels on Intel Macs.
Do you happen to know any laptop that has a) equivalent screen quality (retina resolution), b) keyboard, c) trackpad but with full Linux support where all hardware pheripherals just work?
The ThinkPad X1 series usually have great linux support and you can option them with 2.8k@120Hz OLED panels, which at 14" lands between the Air and the 14" Pro in terms of PPI. I have a couple generations old X1 Yoga and all of the hardware worked out of the box with Manjaro and Debian, including the touchscreen and active stylus.
People usually buy them for the keyboards and trackpoint, but imo the touchpad is still pretty solid. It is a bit small on account of the trackpoint buttons taking up vertical real estate but its pretty responsive and multi-touch gestures work perfectly in my experience. I believe newer ones have larger trackpads than mine, though still not as large as a similarly sized mac.
Well, the highest resolution MacBook has less than 4K resolution and there's plenty of 4K laptops out there...
Most "business" centric laptops work great with Linux, as long as you use a well supported distro (Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, openSuse). YMMV if you use other distros...
I'm typing this post on the 395+ 128gb RAM model. IMO, the keyboard is better than the one in the newest Macbook Pro. Just enough travel, and quiet enough so I don't disturb co-workers when I type.
I use it for development running Fedora Workstation. My job involves spinning up lots of containers and K8S KIND clusters.
I often reach for it instead of my 14" M4 Macbook. However, I will choose the Macbook Pro when I know I'll be away from a charger for a while. The HP, as great as it is, still has bad battery life.
The only downside is that the webcam _does not work_ unless you use Ubuntu 20.04 w/ the OEM kernel package.
The ISP driver which will enable the camera to work is in the process of being up-streamed, though. I believe they're targeting early 2025 for mainline Linux support.
Do you feel a difference between Strix Halo and other x86 machines you could lay your hands on to date? I want one, but with an M2 Max macbook pro and Zen2 desktop it feels very hard to justify.
I have this laptop with this display configuration and it looks amazing. However on Arch with Gnome/Wayland I cannot get color management to work, which is a problem since this display has such a wide gamut. Opening HN on it for the first time I was blinded by the deepest orange nav bar I could imagine.
The HP zbook g1a ultra is as close as you can get with Strix Halo. There are two screen options and the OLED one is high resolution. It's Ubuntu certified as well and can run LLMs nicely. The keyboard, trackpad, etc are all to notch. It's somewhere in between a mac pro and max.
I have one and love it but it's not close to my wife's mac on battery life.
I've yet to understand the point of OLED, if it sits at 400nits. All Apple's devices from iPhone to Studio Display are brighter, some of them are much much brighter even with OLED :/
The 2.8k panels are overall inferior to Apple's across a number of metrics, but they have a higher pixel density than the Air 13, (and has the S-tier aspect ratio of 3:2).
The FW13 keyboard is objectively pretty decent but not perfect, and is much much better than any keyboard Apple has made in the last decade, could be personal preference but apple has been making some pretty bad keyboards for a while now.
Trackpad on FW13 is OK, no one even comes close to Apple, but it's pretty decent, nothing upsetting if you're comparing it to any non-apple trackpads.
Framework has excellent linux suppport, all hardware bells and whistles generally work out of the box on every Linux distro, but Fedora, Ubuntu, and Bazzite are officially supported by Framework they QA against all three and work with maintainers to resolve issues and you can be totally confident that everything will just work. (At least work as well as it would on Windows!)
The other two downsides relative to a macbook are build quality and support. Although the FW13 is pretty solid in practice, I have dropped mine dozens of times and throw it in my bag and treat it overall rough and it has take on some dings and scratches but everything still works. But the frame is not very rigid, it flexes in lots of places, and it just does not feel as nice and solid as a macbook. And support can be hit-or-miss, like with any small manufacturer.
I think you’re talking about Apple’s butterfly keyboards which were only around for 3-4 years of the last decade you’re talking about. Apple’s keyboards have been great for 5+ years now.
Agreed. Only issue is that they wear down really fast. Your fingers sand them down at a mindblowing pace, and soon enough all of them are smooth, with most used keys having shiny blemishes on them
Unfortunately it also means a software stack that can properly scale everything for such a display. Windows and Linux both have... issues around UI scaling that make this kind of a pain.
Same. Just give me my M4 Macbook Pro, but Linux compatible.
I'm sure people will chime in and say framework, or other Linux-first vendors but they still make too many compromises.
Speakers suck, or the display sucks, or the microphones suck, or they get too hot, or they are too loud, or battery life sucks in comparison, or the chassis feels like cheap plastic and cracks and breaks easily.
There is no other laptop on the market that beats the Apple silicon macbooks right now.
I continue to tolerate macOS just for this hardware, and the rest of the OEMs seem to have zero intention at all to trying to catch up.
I'm hoping maybe the Qualcomm laptops make some progress on battery life. I had an LG gram that had honestly surprisingly good battery life on Linux, and maybe the ThinkPads are good too.
Well the Qualcomm SnapDragon chips literally compete on operations-per-watt. But it depends on what you need -- raw horsepower with a mostly tethered laptop or on-the-go freedom.
I found that I’m missing the netbook era. I need some 11inch laptop when I’m on the go for email, writing, and coding. For more focused task, I’m not giving up my 2 monitors setup and my mechanical keyboard so the computer form factor matters less.
Have only owned the starbook mkvi (1 gen previous to current) since it came out 3years or so. Exhaustive research happily led me to discover it is the most Linux compatible laptop, even firmware updates can be performed natively from LVFS/fwudmgr. Knew it was the one when I learned in addition they are basically the only Linux laptop company that also produces their own hardware.
Screen I wish was brighter, and while I don't care, it doesn't have as many pixels as retina. The fan is not bad, but louder than a macbook. Battery I have not tested well, it is far away from battery life of a macbook. But the coreboot firmware allows me to set the charging speed (slower is better for battery) and the max charge level (which I keep at 60% when plugged in) Trackpad is great though, and keyboard is fantastic.
And all the parts are replaceable, as much as the Framework laptops. I don't know why they are not more popular.
The G14 definitely matches in build or exceeds in build quality, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, and display. Battery life is shorter though. But it has a better GPU and supports Linux, which is way more important to me than an hour or two extra battery.
The Framework is also excellent, but with different compromises: that sweet display aspect ratio for instance, but no OLED.
> I would pay 2x the price of a macbook for a linux laptop with the same hardware quality.
How about half the price?
Huawei are probably banned in the USA these days, however, the hardware quality is top notch and everything Linux works just fine out of the box. Not everything is perfect though, it all depends on what you want to do. If you are okay with integrated graphics (so no Blender or other 3D applications) but do need genuine Intel floating point single-thread performance, then give Huawei a go.
I have had plenty of Dell XPS, Lenovo things and much else over the years and all of them have poor thermal management and tend to creak if you use less than four hands to pick them up. The Huawei machines are in a different league.
As for battery life, I think you are right, but I am inanely loyal to genuine Intel and that means plugging in. I don't have problems with that.
People do get triggered by Huawei though, because the dreaded communists will steal your soul and brainwash you into hating the American way of life. So you might want to just cover up the badging lest anyone be offended. Ironically, a Huawei Matebook X Pro running linux is the laptop that is least likely to spy on you because the camera folds down into the keyboard.
If you haven’t tried openSUSE Aeon, I’ve been really impressed with it.
BTRFS I find is a more elegant solution than OSTree for this use case, and it’s got a very minimal and polished happy path.
Silverblue covers way more use cases (not least multiple users), but the setup and secure boot encryption setup is very slick and macOS-esque philosophically.
Silverblue is very under-rated currently. I see it as a slightly more pragmatic immutable os.
NixOS i keep wanting to throw in the bin randomly but i have to admit that when it all works, it's kinda beautiful to own - you can harness a lot of power for comparatively little spent in mental tax
Good to know... at that price it almost is. I just want a half way decent Linux laptop that isn't FHD or 5 years old. Carbons are more than I want to pay for something 'for fun'.
That's less expensive than the ASRock NUC BOX-225H I bought... and that was without RAM/NVMe.
I’ve tried Silverblue but it’s far from Mac experience, on my PC it feels sluggish and bloated. Perhaps I’m too simple but I only need a vanilla Linux just like now dead Intel Clearlinux with linux brew and Flatpak
I was using Pop!_OS and really loved it. Feature wise it would be an excellent replacement and I love the idea of running Linux.
However, one day when I tried to update the Nvidia driver it failed and when I tried to revert back I got a bunch of errors. My computer is foremost a tool to me and I don't particularly enjoy nor have time for stuff like fixing drivers.
Despite apple's flaws it gives me something that just works everyday.
Nvidia has always been a PITA on Linux, whether you're using the open source or proprietary drivers. Decent drivers, documentation, and support for their Linux community has always been somewhere between actively hostile against to barely an afterthought.
Go to any Linux distro subreddit right now and browse for people experiencing stability issues, random hanging, or no video on boot. Sometimes they don't mention it upfront but it almost always turns out they have an Nvidia card.
AMD and Intel GPUs have much better native open source support and (usually!) work out of the box without any effort.
Sometimes I wonder how the Linux distro landscape would have looked if there hadn't been a new distro for a new use case or design choice or disagreement among lead devs? Could we have allocated the resources better at battling with Wi-Fi not working, USB creaking on the turns? Or those would have stayed the way they are, because these mostly come or should come from the OEMs/vendors? Would this be better for them if the onus was not to make it work on hundreds (or is it thousands?) of flavours?
That was my hope, between Slackware 2.0 and around 2010, eventually I got Windows 7 and a laptop that supported virtualization, installed VMWare Workstation, and that was it, my zealot years were gone.
Still got an ASUS netbook though, a market killed by tablets and chrombooks.
Silverblue is great but regular Fedora is worth a look too if you don't want to deal with the teething issues of managing all your dev-tools with Silverblue's immutable setup, granted that was 2 years ago when i tried so thing's might be better now.
Infuriatingly; I have a macbook because a couple years ago I wanted a laptop that just worked while keeping my familiar tools but it really feels like Linux is trending up in polish and macOS on the down with an intersect possibly happening in a couple years.
That Apple would allow this development to happen without any reversal is astounding. If allowed to continue it could seriously damage their MacBook market share.
Then again, they may not care that much as long as they have the iPhone customer base.
If it supported M4 I would be using it on my MacBook, but I am using a ThinkPad P14s gen 6 (AMD) right now. Some issues with suspend that I worked around with a kernel parameter but other than that, everything else worked out of the box
Gnome still does things way better than MacOS. Multiple desktops can be used with no animations. Built-in hot keys for applications without a 3rd party tool. Gnome extensions, a search that works for finding things (I know this is hard for Mac users to understand)
Do you mean corner radiuses on the edge of windows? Because corner radiuses within windows should be different from the edge ones because the same corner radius stacked within itself creates ugly corners.
I always thought that Gnome developers are imitating macOS. Not copying blindly, but following the ideas and intents.
Finally I hear from real users that the Gnome team has not just reached parity, but has actually exceeded their source of inspiration. (Partly due to the degradation of the latter, but still.)
When it takes me 5 clicks and two open windows to pick a bluetooth speaker in Gnome, I remember how far behind it is from MacOS's 2 clicks and zero windows.
It's pretty much the same. Click the speaker icon the menubar, bluetooth is one of the options, third click to choose a connection.
There are plenty of excellent extensions if you want something different. I use dash-to-panel to combine the system tray in my dock and not have a pointless menu bar.
> zero windows
Are you not calling the MacOS sound-panel a window? It's the same type of panel you use in Gnome!
I use both everyday and it's MacOS that's buggy, inconsistent and hobbled:
- my speaker doesn't appear in the MacOS sound panel but does appear in the bluetooth section of settings so I have to go there to connect and it works as a speaker. MacOS is literally worse than Gnome at this specific task!
- I also can't use my Mac as a bluetooth speaker but I can use Linux as one. Pretty lame.
> Are you not calling the MacOS sound-panel a window?
When I click on the bluetooth icon in the top bar of MacOS it pops out a little list, and each bluetooth option has a toggle next to it where I can click to toggle.
In my version of Gnome, I click at the top bar to open a menu, then click Bluetooth On (or the name of the currently connected device). That pops out a sub-menu, in which I click Bluetooth Settings. That opens a window that lists the paired Bluetooth devices. I can click on one, which opens another window over the top, where I can click a toggle to connect it. I stare at it waiting for it to connect (it's slightly less reliable at this than the Mac[0], so it's worth watching it) and then I click again to close that window, and finally click again to close the window underneath. Actually 7 clicks!
[0] It could be the Mac is no better at this, but the UI interruption is basically zero to check and re-click, so it at least feels better, and I can do other stuff between checking.
Recent vanilla gnome has the same type of pop-up as MacOS but it does it does have one more click to expand possible connections if changing connection not just toggling.
You could use no clicks and truly no windows with "bluetoothctl connect ..." :)
GNOME does look quite nice and I use it on my desktop everyday. Unfortunately, once I go beyond programming/general productivity (e.g. photography, music recording) there is nothing that comes to MacOS+MacBook combo. Windows usually have ports of these apps, so I'm hoping maybe one day Linux can run those (we are already there with games).
That's not possible. I saw a video yesterday where Greg Joswiak (SVP worldwide marketing at Apple) assured me that Apple has the best design team in the world.
> I count four different corner radius sizes currently on my screen, which is maddening.
I don’t see the mere fact of having multiple radiuses alone is a good criticism of the UI. If seeing multiple corner radiuses infuriates you, how do you survive in the real world? (https://www.folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html)
Or do you think it would look or work better with more consistency in corner radiuses? I would think radiuses look best when (somewhat) scaled to the dimensions of their rectangle (and that’s where, IMO, they may not be doing things the best way. For thin, long rectangles, I think the radius they chose is a tad too large, leaving barely any vertical straight lines)
I have been running the beta from the beginning and they have improved quite a bit, but I am actually shocked they didn't delay Mac OS 26, because the design is so rough around the edges. Some of the larger aesthetic changes, such as the menu bar and the dock look good, but there is so much more that looks objectively awful.
1. the way window UI elements float in bubbles on the top over a white background is horrible. It looks amateurish.
2. Icons look low detail and blurry. At first I thought they were using low resolution placeholder icons, but no, the layered diffused glass effect just kind of translates to blurriness on many app icons.
3. The side bar, such as on Finder, just kind of floats there. That is fine and looks kind of neat on the Maps app as you can see some of the maps behind it, but on the Finder it is just a white bubble over top of a white background, which... is a choice.
4. The app launcher is gone, and replaced by Spotlight, which is worse.
I could go on. The point is it is bad and Apple should be embarrassed. I say that as someone who likes Apple products alot.
I cannot believe the current state of affairs where me doing a Spotlight search for "drivers license" when I'm looking for a photograph of my drivers license to upload, that instead of finding it I'm now presented with a list of links to listen to, watch, or find out about the song Drivers License by Olivia Rodrigo. Why? Why!? Who is this helping? I'm fine with telling my computer that I am 42 years old and male and curmudgeonly and have been using a Mac for a good 25 years now and know how to find songs by Olivia Rodrigo online if I really need them.
And okay spotlight can help fill in the blanks on dictionary searches and wikipedia info I GET IT... but my time and my mind are precious to me – if you're forcing me to use Spotlight or making it the way of searching my computer, please PLEASE do not fill my eyes and head with this time-wasting garbage.
And I have a MacBook Pro M3 – it has a camera notch hidden in the black menu bar, the text of which now disappears if my mouse isn't up there, thus giving the appearance that my screen shrinks rather than giving me extra viewing real estate. The text is not some kind of distraction when it's above a tab bar filled with a multitude of jumbled icons and an address bar with text on it. But OH! sweeping left now reveals the camera notch in the middle of a WHITE menu bar.
Just... Apple... for f*cks sake. I'm paying you. Please employ some people with aesthetic taste and judgement rather than the current cohort of yes-people and logistics wizards. Time for Tim Cook to go. The problem is at the top.
You just spent far more time ranting about what Spotlight can index, than it would have taken to open the configuration and turn off the sources you do not want.
Cue "discovery" rant.
Defaults are chosen carefully, but they cannot meet every user's preferences. So, periodically spend a few minutes exploring the enormous software package that is your OS, and be happier for it.
I find this vastly more rewarding than complaining on the Interwebs. YMMV.
The original, updated version of the Finder icon alone should have been enough of a warning that the UX designers at Apple have lost their minds and any aesthetic sense, let alone an ability to design interfaces that are functional, efficient, and well thought-out.
I don't get it either. I open the Finder app, and the sidebar is randomly turquoise, over a white background.
It looks ugly, and I have no reason why that sidebar (unlike all other sidebars) is that specific colour. It just makes no sense.
Edit: Oh My God. I just tested installing my own app on Tahoe, and the DMG looks absolutely broken with what used to be solid edges confined inside a window, now being stretched to the window-edges, blurred by the glass-effect making the header on top unreadable.
The biggest surprise to me from this whole beta period is that a significant number of people used Launchpad. I have absolutely zero idea why when Spotlight has existed for more than 20 years. Why would you ever want to click and page through a giant iPhone screen on a desktop/laptop computer?
You don't have to click: Launchpad is available via an unmodified F4, so it's a single button press to bring up instantly, no matter what you're doing.
You don't have to "page through a giant iPhone screen", you can type and select. I used to use it all the time, without ever reaching for the mouse to do so.
Launchpad also let you change the order of app icons and group them into pages and folders; I don't think the new system lets you do any of these things.
Launchpad was focussed on a single task: launching an app. If I need to launch an app, I know I need to 99.9% of the time (I'm hedging; it's probably 100%), so there's no benefit showing me documents, web pages, and god-knows-what-else at the same time.
I nearly forgot: while I was testing Tahoe, I had a situation in which some apps just did not show up when I typed. They were in the list, they just got filtered out incorrectly. I've no idea if this was a bug or not; I'll see when I upgrade to the final release.
F4 on my Macbook Pro brings up Spotlight, not Launchpad.
But, bringing up Spotlight, clicking backspace, then clicking on the Applications icon brings you basically Launchpad.
They've mushed them together, but there seem to be three states: Spotlight with typing pre-filled, Spotlight bare with some additional icon options, and then Launchpad, which is more Spotlight than I remember it being.
> F4 on my Macbook Pro brings up Spotlight, not Launchpad.
Unless there's some weird setting, that's only in Tahoe. At the very least, it's only enforced in Tahoe; I was using F4 to bring up Launchpad in Sequoia, as I have in every version of MacOS for a long time.
Interesting. I've never had any issues using Spotlight to search/open apps. For your use case unmodified F4 will bring up Spotlight now where you can type. If you want more precision unmodified F4 followed by CMD+1 will allow you to search only apps.
> For your use case unmodified F4 will bring up Spotlight now where you can type.
Yes, this is what I've been doing during the beta, and it's far less useful than Launchpad IME so far.
> If you want more precision unmodified F4 followed by CMD+1 will allow you to search only apps.
It looks like I had previously done so, and now the setting is 'stuck'. I.e. it's the default view — I can still go 'up' to search across stuff, but F4 takes me to an app launcher by default, so that's one drawback eliminated (thanks).
As an aside, I've learnt just now while testing this that F4 has an awkward asymmetrical input buffer. You can open+close instantly with two quick presses, but the same does not work to close+open. I'm not really complaining so much about this, just mentioning it!
If you have multiple ways to do something on a computer/phone, some relatively large percentage of people will fumble around until they figure out a way to do it - and then do it that way forever.
So if someone accidentally triggered Launchpad and realized they could see their apps, they might use that forever (not knowing you can put your Applications folder in your Dock and use it as a start menu lol).
they've had a launch-pad-ey thing forever, I remember when our school lab had Mac IIs and Performas, and there was some simplified UI on top of finder which basically was all your apps in giant rectangular icons. I forget what it was called though.
I remember seeing my work colleague drag the applications folder to the dock for quick access, this was before the modern launchpad, and before I even started using macs.
I don't use Launchpad but I can say, for me, Spotlight sucks! It decides at random times not to complete. I have it set to show apps only. I don't want it to find other things. But quite often I'll press Cmd-Space and type something and it won't find it. For example I just tried "pho" and it did not show Photoshop (which is on my system) but did show stuff completely unrelated to apps and I double checked, I only have apps selected in the Spotlight Search Results section in settings.
This is a uniquely new-macOS issue. Spotlight has never worked well since the big redesign in 10.10. In the snow leopard days it was predictable and seemed to be ordered by frequency of use. (There were occasional issues where the entire launchservices DB got messed up, but this can be fixed with an lsregister reset without reindexing all of the files).
Because I vaguely remember that one icon I use every other month, but can't recall the name. The icons are also ordered by installation time, so it's easy to jump to the most recent ones.
I use it rarely, but sometimes I'm happy it's there.
> The icons are also ordered by installation time, so it's easy to jump to the most recent ones.
If I had this need, it wouldn’t even occur to me to solve it with Launchpad; I would just go to /Applications in Finder and sort by “Date Added”. (Which is a non-default column, but a very helpful one, so the series of gestures to enable it for a given folder is almost reflexive to me now.)
1. Launchpad filters based on what you type. You don't have to page through things
2. As soon as you type anything, the first hit is selected and the return key launches it
3. Launchpad shows nothing but apps. As an app launcher, it's fantastic.
Launchpad is not actually gone: it's now a sub-unit of Spotlight.
I still have an M1 Macbook Pro with touch strip, and my Launchpad touch strip button still works, bringing up Spotlight but with a predicate that makes it search only ./Applications and ~/Applications.
I always forget that Launchpad even exists. I guess it doesn't now. I suppose it might be helpful if you just know "I need that app that looks like X" and don't actually recall the first two letters of the app's name.
Lol same. Wasn't there something like it in System 7 that also got deprecated. I think back then it was called "Launcher" ... https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Launcher
Launching seems easy enough from Finder but you never know about innovation.
Launchpad is an easy gesture with the trackpad (pinch with thumb and three fingers), then type to filter and return to launch. I got used to it for stuff I don't keep in the dock (which is a lot, since I have the dock on the side and only a few things in it).
I suppose Spotlight is OK as a substitute: COMMAND-SPACE, then type to filter and return to launch. It's a little more clunky (as the search results take a few milliseconds to be assembled) but it'll work.
What feels breaking there is when you pinch to open launchpad you are not on home row, so typing to filter is inferior to swiping and clicking large targets.
Cmd+space to open spotlight already worked and typing was the best option for that use case.
I do like the new spotlight experience but this feels like losing a gesture, and it does not spark joy scrolling through the app list.
Spotlight indexing (mediaanalysisd, mds_stores) has a bad habit of running so aggressively when I'm not using the computer (I have an M1 mini and an M4 MBP) that it noticeably heats up the case. I've had to shut it off out of concern for wasted power and SSD life. Naturally, Apple has no response to this problem, and you can't really diagnose or fix anything on your own without turning off SIP, so I've had to disable Spotlight. Launchpad isn't as convenient, but it doesn't require indexing.
Because Spotlight seems to fall over regularly and not find files. Earlier this year it stopped finding applications and I had to run some shell command to delete it's cache and recreate it.
What if you rely on groupings to remember what you have installed for a given activity?
What if you want a quick visual overview of what is available to you?
What if you like or even prefer launchpad?
What if you install tons of tiny little apps that have a specific, if infrequently used, purpose?
What if you enjoy a little app gardening?
What if you don't like command-prompt style interactions?
What if you see value in having more than one way to do something?
What if you have 20+ years of muscle memory established?
What if the only thing you know prior is how to use your iphone?
And on another note, what is it with tech people lacking the ability to see how other types of people may want to use the hardware they paid for with their hard earned dollars? I am so sick of this awful perspective of, "everybody in the world must be exactly like me"
You wouldn't if you are a software engineer or some other power user. The sad fact is Apple knows that the majority of macOS users are accustomed to an iPhone-like workflow, which is swipe-centric, not keyboard-centric.
It's not the mode so much as the comparative efficiency. In a handful of keystrokes you can launch a commonly used app in under a second. Any type of visual browsing mode is going to take an order of magnitude more time/effort.
For people who never work with things like terminals, sure. For fellow devs, it's an unusual choice unless they routinely cycle through irregularly used apps w/ hard to remember names.
I click one icon, then another. It takes say 2s. Typing two letters and pressing enter would take 10x faster, so 0.2s. Given that I delegated work to AI agents, that’s 1.8s less of waiting :))
As a fellow dev, command line shit is a pain in the ass sometimes. I grew up as a Windows kid, visual browsing for stuff is sometimes the only way to fly. I absolutely loathe the amount of brute-force memorization that is required to operate a command-line efficiently. It took YEARS to memorize simple linux shit
Everyone talks about how CLI is supposedly way more efficient. It is way more efficient to THEM. And now we are stuck in a hell where a good deal of functionality is only accessible if you want and are able to memorize the arcane nonsense that are command names, or the design-by-committee naming choices of moronic PMs who can't stop lapping up whatever bullshit marketing tells them to
> I absolutely loathe the amount of brute-force memorization that is required to operate a command-line efficiently. It took YEARS to memorize simple linux shit
Not to invalidate your experience, but you shouldn’t need to memorize too much to use the common command line tools (although it does always help to have more experience using them).
I recommend always keeping a second terminal session open, purely for referencing man pages. You should be able to see most options easily, or be able to grep for the instructions you need.
The tight integration between documentation within the CLI, coupled to the exact software version you have installed, helps immensely when invoking CLI tools.
For the common linux tooling, found in most distros (e.g. coreutils or common busybox ops) the documentation in man pages is quite excellent.
While I think man pages are perfectly fine as documentation, the terminal interface for accessing them is awful (more mysterious keypresses or incantations to memorize if you want to do anything more than scroll), and visually I have always found them very difficult to scan visually, particularly if I wasn't sure of the exact wording for the task I needed, or if I am thinking in a different vocabulary. Plus theres the whole wall-of-text thing that makes me kind of instinctively bounce out.
A lot of them also lack sufficient (or any) examples, which are the things I need to see to learn. Making sense of the their sometimes (and seemingly intentionally) obtuse wording when I'm trying to do something I'm not already familiar with makes them a lot harder to parse than they need to be.
And many of the commands are extremely arbitrary. `cd` (change directory) very well could have been `mf` (move folder). `del` in DOS is `rm` in Linux. `move` vs `mv`, `copy` vs `cp`, etc etc. There's no common orthodoxy. If you are not well versed in the history of this stuff its all gobbledygook.
LLMs have been great in this regard, as they can supply those missing examples and then explain to me exactly what it is doing, oftentimes worded more clearly than the original documentation. And they can help me string together whole sequences.
So a TL;DR of your comment is that you just have to learn / memorize to use things. That applies to everything, not just what you are discussing here.
If you only use 'cd', 'mv', 'rm', and 'ln', then really, there is not much to learn. Perhaps the '-rf' option to 'rm', which is how you delete directories (that are not empty). You complained about the naming, but 'mv' requires fewer keystrokes than 'move', and once you know that 'mv' = move, 'rm' = remove, and so on, then what is the issue? It makes sense. DOS had just as "arbitrary" names: 'del' instead of 'rm', for example. The UNIX versions are deliberately short for efficiency, and once you learn them, they are universal.
Man pages are fine. Just press '/' to search by string or regex, and 'n' for next match. They are also consistent: if you want a particular section, you search for it. But it is important to remember that man pages are reference material, not tutorials. If you want quick examples, try https://tldr.sh, https://cheat.sh, or another alternative.
If this is difficult, or you simply do not want to learn it, that is fine: use what works for you. But if you are a programmer, you are going to be learning tools constantly, and the core UNIX utilities are among the simplest. Once learned, they do not change. Personally, I have not had to learn anything new about them since I was 13. I am 31 now. You learn once, and you use forever.
That said, there are real examples of arcane tools. 'ffmpeg' and 'rsync' have some of the most obscure command-line options I have ever seen, which is why I keep bash aliases and functions for the things I do often. That is how you make your life easier as a programmer: learn the fundamentals, then abstract the complexity where it makes sense.
TL;DR: Learning is not optional. Whether it is GNU/POSIX utilities, GUIs, wizards, or even LLMs, you still have to learn them. Man pages are reference material, not tutorials. Learn the basics once, and you are set for life.
> Man pages are fine. Just press '/' to search by string or regex, and 'n' for next match. They are also consistent: if you want a particular section, you search for it. But it is important to remember that man pages are reference material, not tutorials.
You need to step outside your own shoes and approach these from the perspective of someone who is new. Yes you have to learn things, that is obvious.
But not everyone gets the chance to do that before they are dropped in a situation where the knowledge is needed. Up until a few years ago (before LLMs) if that was your case and you didnt know how to articulate what you wanted to google (or a teammate), you were fucked.
Like with VI or with emacs. It's sooooooo easy to screw things up in a big way. Better hope you remembered to type shift-colon-Q-exclamation instead of shift-colon-W-Q!
Please, tell me how that makes any sense to anyone without a background in *nix stuff.
I did not grow up in the environment where the above incantations had any context. It was literally a bunch of gobbledygook that made no sense. Why "write" instead of "save"? Why 'quit' instead of 'exit'? In fact I had VI dropped on me quite suddenly for a job, that was a real trial by fire, and I remember this well. (And yes I can operate VI quite fine now, thank you)
Yeah but for example if you are new to yet(tm) another JavaScript framework, you will have the same issues at any workplace. I mention this because these days there are millions of new ones.
I have not worked with many things they require of me either. Before I apply, I either have to learn the very basics, or I will have a hard time, unless they do not mind me not knowing but learning fast.
> ffmpeg' and 'rsync' have some of the most obscure command-line options I have ever seen,
These are power tools, meanings they set out to solve one problem quite extensively. They’re not really meant to use as is (just like git), best is to write some alias or functions as a wrapper (or memorize the set of flags you use most).
> The side bar, such as on Finder, just kind of floats there. That is fine and looks kind of neat on the Maps app as you can see some of the maps behind it, but on the Finder it is just a white bubble over top of a white background, which... is a choice.
Agreed. All of the transparency and liquid glass effects look terrible when they're displayed over a solid color, especially white. That said, they look good over top of something colorful and really AMAZING when displayed over something that's moving (video, whatever).
I imagine that the effect REALLY takes off on a display where EVERYTHING is moving, like on top of the real world on a VisionOS display. It's just out of place on MacOS when uses as a dev workstation.
My big issue with the icons-in-menus is that they don't align properly. Each 'row' in a menu is an optional icon with some text to the right of it. But when an icon isn't displayed, the text shifts left into its position, meaning that menu text no longer aligns nicely on the left.
Usually I just go with the flow, because what else I could do :)?
But somehow the missing App Laucher made me bit sad (well, to the extent software can make one sad :)) - even though I can always switch to Finder to browse apps, App Launcher has some nice visual quality to it that makes it more pleasant to use for me..
I agree with a lot of what you said but the app launcher was dumb. It was just the iPhone’s Home Screen ported to Mac.
Spotlight is way faster than that when you’re at a keyboard. I barely even use the dock, just command space and type in the first few letters of the program I want. Clicking is for people with too much time on their hands.
It is for finding a program or quickly browsing what apps are installed when I don’t know the name. I find it useful in an unfamiliar machine. Yes, like most people, I launch apps primarily with Spotlight.
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. After trying out the preview for a month, the writing was on the wall, and I began the process of switching to a Thinkpad with Linux. I am now fully off macOS for the first time in 20 years of being an Apple die hard. I could use a lot of emotionally loaded words to describe how I feel about this release, but the long and short of it is that I am no longer the target audience for Apple.
Similar story here. Loong time Apple fan, but as they say.. "trust arrives walking, but leaves on a horse". I'm real mad!
I installed tahoe in a virtualbuddy VM to see how it was before running on my main system... and.... I will be definitely be keeping Sequoia for a while (at least a year, probably).
If the situation does not improve in the meantime, I will probably switch to a framework laptop running cosmic desktop or something like that.
> Do you see anyone that looks like you, doing anything that looks like what you do? I don't and I can't remember the last time I did.
You mean you are not an ethnically interesting person with a head full of colored hair wearing ethically sourced pre-aged linen sipping responsibly grown coffee with a serene smile facetiming even more interesting people without any worry about any real problems in the world?!
In the same boat. After like 15 years I had enough. I've started de-Apple'ing my life in 2024. Still run M1 Pro Mac from work, which is great. 2 days ago I've finally ordered all the parts for a Linux PC, high spec. Not for gaming or so, just for compute. I'm soooo looking forward to the freedom that this will bring. The stuff that I already run on Linux, the distros are all great. I love Gnome for how it looks and KDE for how seamless it works. The new PC will let me tinker and try and hop and swap like I could never dream of for so many years.
Similar story here, but going from Windows to Linux. It seems like Linux is gaining some market share with the OS disasters from both Apple and Microsoft.
I have no where to go. I want to move away from iPhone, but Pixel is not available in my place, and Google doesn't seems to care about distribution. Nor does it do enough with its SoC development. There aren't anything come close on Laptop. And Windows or Linux aren't exactly in good shape either. I have no where to run. And I have wished for a third option for a very very long time.
You just move away from them on your computer. Just keep the iphone. It's a minor device. That's what I plan on doing. If I get fed up with my iphone, I also have nowhere to go. so will reduce usage. Sideloading gets more and more difficult everywhere.
I try not to indulge in negativity and scorn, but I agree with these sentiments. This is resoundly a regression. Text overlapping on text, searchboxes that are broken and now just function as text boxes, increased latency throughout the operating system.
It's so bad that it's kind of fascinating. Unfortunately, even "Reduce Transparency" doesn't fix the LG update.
I couldn’t watch the WWDC and when I saw the screenshots I thought it was a joke. Giant buttons with weird padding and extreme transparency effects.
This is going to sound harsh but it looks like when “working” from home, Apple engineers outsourced their work to amateurs online.
I simply cannot believe that Apple is shipping an OS this out of touch with elegance.
Steve Jobs said in his inauguration speech that he slept on the floor to take typography classes and later obsessed over having great typefaces on Macs. Steve would’ve burn the place down instead of shipping a crap like this.
Yeah similar situation here. I've been running it since basically the day after WWDC, and I've just had this sinking feeling that its so bad, they wouldn't be able to fix it before release. Or, they don't even view it as something that needs fixing.
I'll begrudgingly get a couple more years out of this personal M2 Air, but my engineering team is prepping to do upgrades on some older M1 Pros we've had since launch, and after seeing Tahoe, the CTO and I formed a plan to give devs the option of getting either an M4 Pro or a Framework. We haven't launched yet, but I think a solid number of our engineers are going to opt for the Framework, hopefully as high as half.
The whole "Liquid Glass" UI is by far their worst ever take on a design language. It feels like stepping backwards to web 2.0 but with even bigger accessibility issues.
It doesn't look or feel modern, its ugly, inconsistent and just all around crap. God knows what they were thinking with this.
Also who on earth green lit these low resolution looking blurry icons everywhere?!
I don't mind it on iOS I need to say, I was expecting to hate it and it's... okay. I like that I can make all icons just black.
It's really atrocious on macOS though. The new Finder looks so stupid. Preview now has artificially rounded corners in PDFs! What are we even doing here.
There are also under-the-hood changes that I found truly upsetting: among other things, all the Emacs versions I've tried (stock GNU Emacs or Mac Port, downloaded binary blobs and compiled on my machine) are either immediately unusable or become so slow after a day that they are almost unusable. Tracing things on Instruments suggests a culprit (the culprit?) is NSAutofillHeuristicController. This is not a new feature, but I'm guessing with them pushing Apple Intelligence it was rewritten. AFAIK no obvious way to disable this "feature". (Turning off Apple Intelligence doesn't seem to do it.)
The developer of ghostty had this exact same issue with his terminal. Ironically apple's iCloud password autofill extension on firefox also practically halves my firefox performance. Seems like they haven't figured out autofill yet. https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/commit/b58a761aba75fa...
> among other things, all the Emacs versions I've tried (stock GNU Emacs or Mac Port, downloaded binary blobs and compiled on my machine) are either immediately unusable or become so slow after a day that they are almost unusable.
So basically my #1 work tool will no longer work.
That’s a hard deal-breaker right there.
As a longer-term means of escape, what’s the best way to run a «full» Linux desktop on a otherwise managed Mac?
Parallel or Vmware (the former is paid and the latter is tortuous to download). Then you can go with debian (for minimal installation) or fedora (for ready to work desktop installation). Works quite great.
There's SO much padding and wasted screen real estate
That seems to be a growing trend ever since "UX designers" started taking over (early 2010s?), to the point that I wonder if they're trying to see how far they can take it.
I was on RC too, for a few days, and also uninstalled. I'm glad I did, the fresh Sequoia install feels much nicher. Even with reduce transparency on, the design was too ugly and the drab gray icon jails for non-squircle icons were downright offensive. First macOS version I'm gonna skip and I've been a day one updater since mountain lion, very sad.
I made the mistake of updating my phone, and immediately regretted it. We tried Liquid Glass already, it was called mid-aughts Windows. It sucked then, and it sucks now.
Quite an insult to Windows Vista and Windows 7, where Microsoft actually took care to make things consistent and text readable. Here they didn't even put shadows behind all labels!
It would be one thing if they excessively rounded and padded the windows, but they shipped with a bunch of different padding and border radii. So far I’ve counted 4 different borders, and I’m sure there’s more.
I just counted 5 different radii in Apple’s apps alone. I also discovered they space the window control buttons in all sorts of different spots to, so it’s even more insane than just multiple radii.
> The new UI is so incredibly ugly I honestly cannot understand how they thought it was acceptable to even released as a beta let alone an RC and now release.
I feel like if you replaced all of the paper in a company's printers with transparency sheets you'd be fired because that's obviously a stupid idea that would never work. But then I guess that's why I'm not a software UI designer.
Waiting an extra year to jump on new macOS releases has been the norm for sane people for quite some time now.
It sucks if you buy a new mac which isn't supported by older macOS releases though, so maybe don't do that for a year or so. I guess you sometimes just have to put your new Apple device in storage for a year until there's functional software.
For me I simply don't upgrade ever until I'm forced to, usually by an app that I want to use.
As someone without an iPhone and who doesn't really use included desktop apps, there are simply never any improvements in the OS for me, only regressions.
I have a Mac M1 that's been on MacOS 14 Sonoma for a couple years at this point - I've not seen anything even remotely interesting in later releases that could incentivize me to roll the dice and upgrade.
My Mac is also on Sonoma. I'm sure there are some incremental features that I would appreciate, but I'm always worried about what's going to break or be worse with the next OS update.
I'll update my phone because iOS jumps are bigger in terms of functionality. But 14 years in, OSX just doesn't have a lot of new bells and whistles that I care about. The last time I updated, I was only excited about getting Sidecar functionality so I could dual-screen onto my iPad. When a minor feature like this is the most memorable, that's saying something.
I think the only thing that would get me to update would be notable AI improvements. But seeing what I've seen of AI on iOS, I'm in no rush.
No idea on macOS, but turn on Reduce Transparency on iOS and there’s tons of padding most of the time, but then sometimes zero padding. And I mean zero. The edges of buttons and text are at the edge of the underlying background. It’s…embarrassing.
I noticed that in iOS Safari. Reduce Transparency brings back the bottom toolbar containing the search/URL field and buttons, but there’s zero padding between the buttons and the edge. Makes it fairly obvious that nobody tested it.
Enabling Reduce Transparency is a sure-fire way to find a dozen bugs within a few hours. It is always quite apparent no one who is empowered tests it at Apple. At least the padding issue is the one Feedback report I sent that got the “more than 10 similar issues” label so it may actual get fixed.
Ugh I upgraded excitedly and can't stand the UI - there is no upside to any of it. Also for some reason things are also beachballing and VSCode keeps crashing - new M4 MBP. All the system log errors are present exactly as they were and my USB-C dock with Ethernet port still doesn't work.
1. Apple photos redesign from last year sucks and I’m already frustrated with iCloud abstraction and lack of cross platform friendliness
2. Switch to an alternate cloud photos provider
3. Find out about Liquid Glass, looks like shit, impulse sell my MacBook Pro in favor of a Framework
4. Surprise surprise, it’s actually the year of the Linux desktop. My gaming situation is way better on Linux and it does everything my Mac did. The only compromise is my need to carry a big extra battery around.
> There's SO much padding and wasted screen real estate, disjointed looking floating inner panels, window corners that are so rounded you see gaps in full screen apps, inconsistencies everywhere and - well, I could go on.
Remember in the beforetimes when we decoupled themes from OS updates? Wouldn't it be nice if once again we discovered this lost technology that let different users have different UIs?
Either Tim Cook does not use a Mac computer or he does not notice/care. I am not saying he should helicopter-parent all the design process but the "finished" product?
> Basically the vibe I get from it is that they think their users are dumb
Your point would have been much more convincing had you refrained from this sort of pejorative assigning of motives. It wasn't necessary.
I've been running the betas to the final release and there are a number of basic affordances and system improvements that are definitely worthwhile. I will not be going back.
Having said that, while I know they had good intentions with this whole design, and probably really thought they were pursing a winner, what a massive, massive miss. This is such an aesthetic disaster that I'm just in awe. I feel like they had a huge push to do some seemingly substantial change, particularly on the mobile side, given the stumbles in the AI space, so they changed a lot of things maybe without quite enough thought.
Ugly as hell. More dead space. On the mobile side they released an update to iOS just today from the RC a few days ago that removes some of the particularly stupid animations (the app tray did some dumb thing where it expanded and shrank, and that and a few similar things are gone).
Yeah, agree the UI is not great, but after using it for a week I feel it's actually... fine. Probably because I use a lot of third-party apps who don't use the new design.
The Finder looks like shit. The sidebar is like badly retrofited from another program, perhaps from some crappy Gnome theme.
The Control Center (or however they call the drop down window with quick controls for volume, wifi, brigthness, etc) has floating isolated icons like crap.
Bring back Scott Forstall. Give him a big bonus. Let him fix this shit.
Otherwise, the code changes and actual features are probably fine.
I still have a few devices running iOS 5.x and power them up every now and then just to appreciate how incredible the interface was. Even on modest hardware, stuff felt interactive and was beautiful.
Well, hasn’t this been the single biggest reason for their sustained stellar returns year after year where often (or maybe most of the time) the biggest change their devices (like iPhones) used to see was the version number change e.g. iPhone 13 -> 14.
For the rest of their users — they make a noise (which is not even feeble in comparison), bicker around, lament the fact that the other alternative is Google (Windows and the Wild Linux West), and they stay. Rinse, repeat.
That was my experience with liquid glass on mobile. I’d heard it was bad, thought it couldn’t possible be that bad then tried it and was flabbergasted. Really unfortunate.
People need to stop idolizing Steve Jobs like Apple only produced consistent UI when he was there.
Apple have never respected its own guidelines, for example in the early days of MacOSX there were "brushed metal" apps that were supposed to be (according to the guidelines) for small non-resizable windows. Still, there most popular app, iTunes, broke that by being brushed metal despite being a big, resizable window.
I see grossly rounded corners in some apps, but I don't see the other stuff like gaps in window corners for full screen apps. I may have some config bit flipped that has disabled those.
Yeah, the new corner radius is ugly but by and large, it's not much different than before, from what I see so far.
This is like back when a lot of major devs like Adobe just straight up started faking window borders instead of updating their apps to the newer framework and it all looked and felt inconsistent or just obviously way off.
If this were April 1st, it might make sense. But this is a major OS release by a brand that's famous for its design aesthetic. What the actual fuck Apple? Does nobody test anything anymore? How did this get out of the lab? Who exactly is steering this ship? Tim Cook's days at the helm might be winding down.
Honestly feels like QA and release qualification are non-existent in so many organisations these days. This can't possibly be the case though, right? Right?
Brome Chrome and/or WhatsApp using their own window borders, and their stuck to the previous macOS look. They'll update them, but I wish they used the native chrome (no pun intended)
It took a day of getting used to it, but I have had no issues either. Some of the commentary on this thread seems overly critical to me, but you tend to see that on any Apple thread on HN. There’s stuff I like, some stuff I don’t, but in the end I’ll adapt.
I think sime people just hate change. I am convinced that some folks complaining here will be complaining when MacOS 28 comes out and changes some OS 26 feature they have grown to like.
I just installed it (had to; if I am using the Mac, I'd rather be on the latest OS for security and compatibility reasons), and it is just disgusting. It is more disgusting than the iOS 26 monstrosity.
I mean, how do you even provide constructive feedback to such a pathetic design choice? Not that this company ever deals in feedback (unless it's a strong feedback directly to its wallet).
I do believe they are just exhibiting sheer incompetence and intellectual bankruptcy as a corporation. Is it beginning of an end? I don't know. Do giga corps even die anymore?
I am lucky to read this after before deciding to update. Unforunately did update to the new ios and it's incredibly ugly. Wish there would have been an easy way to roll back on iphone
> The new UI is so incredibly ugly I honestly cannot understand how they thought it was acceptable to even released as a beta let alone an RC and now release.
I just tried it and maybe I've just been primed by the internet, but by god, I did not like it.
The side-bar design is terrible and lots of application (Maps, Music, etc) always look like they have a window overlapping the current application. So even with a single window open, my desktop already looks messy.
For people like me, with a slight OCD about certain details (don't talk to me about notification-bubbles), this is absolutely infuriating.
I'll disable auto-updates on all iDevices and Macs, and just keep on security-updates for previous gen OS as long as I can.
Every new version of MacOS exhibits four phenomena:
1. Old bugs are not fixed.
2. New bugs are introduced, and I have to spend hours online figuring out workarounds.
3. Old features I depended on are removed, and I have to spend hours online figuring out how to replace them.
4. New features I don't need are added and they get in my way, and I have to spend hours online figuring out how to disable them.
My workflow productivity takes a months-long hit every time Apple upgrades MacOS. As a result I rarely upgrade MacOS until it's around 3 years old and I have no choice.
It appears that Tahoe is going to be the worst example of this in a long time.
Which is why I'm moving as much of my daily workflow as possible to Linux.
I used Mac for 10 years and started feeling the same irritation around 2017. In 2020 I finally bit the bullet and switched to Linux. The initial investment into getting a usable Arch desktop was horrible. It took several days just to get to the point of something that I could boot into and be productive. It takes me a long time to get things working the way I want, but I kind of enjoy that aspect of total customization. The best part is, though, nothing ever changes. I get things working the way I want, and it just stays that way year after year. No UI language updates, no replacing my default shell, nothing. It just keeps working the way I like.
Now if they could just produce a touchpad as good as a MacBook's, give me 8-10 hours of battery life, and make the construction feel slim and solid, and not like it's going to get crushed in my backpack, and I'd be satisfied.
I fully get that macOS is not perfect, but checking out "modern" Linux (like a customized Arch) is a bit underwhelming. It still looks to me like Linux 20 years ago. And I started with Linux in the mid 90s. Not much has changed or improved on the pure fundamentals. I guess it's fine if all you do is sit doing CLI or spending your day in web browsers.
Day to day macOS driving to me is an absolute joy (granted, I'm still on Sonoma).
I do a lot of work in terminals but I also enjoy other apps, where that uniformity of Cocoa comes into play. And if you go deeper into Mach/Darwin, it's extremely powerful. On the userland .. from the launcher to dtrace and dynamic linker tricks and low level hooks. A lot of cool macOS APIs to experiment with, public or private. AppleScript/Automater, private frameworks like SkyLight (nifty!)
Oh and don't get me started on MLX...
To me, as a developer and as a power user, macOS delivers everything - and more.
Sometimes it does change and when that happens is for the worse.
Some developers suddenly realize that X system is old, and then they try to redo it from zero.
And when they do that, they throw decades of feature development down the drain:
- Xorg: Was Wayland worth the 10+ years of manpower needed to catch up?
- Synaptics: Now we have libinput, less configurable and with way fewer features
- Gnome: Something that happens when the devs think "If Apple can, then we can too" but without the money to invest in good UX (Gnome2 had actual UX research done by Sun)
- Systemd: I'll concede that nobody liked SystemV. But we also had OpenRC and strangely got ignored.
Sometimes "developercracy" is terrible, and we spend years arguing if Rust or Not, instead of trying to make good software
I agree with every point made except there’s two caveats;
1) I am a bonafide systemd hater, and I am bent out of shape about the fact other init systems (more akin to SMF) were (and are) routinely ignored when discussing what was available. But: I feel like Linux desktops are better now for systemd. Even if I can’t tolerate how it spiders into everything personally.
2) Wayland was a “We have pushed X as far as it will go, and now we’re going to have to pay down our tech debt” by the X11 developers themselves.
I know it was “baby with the bathwater”, but in theory we don’t need to do that again for the next 50 years because we have a significantly better baseline for how computers are actually used. The performance ceiling has been lifted because of Wayland; consistent support for multiple monitors and fractional scaling are things we have today because of Wayland.
I won’t argue about security, because honestly most people seem to want as little security as possible if it infringes on software that used to work a certain way, but it should be mentioned at some point that a lack of security posture leads to a pretty terrible experience eventually.
So, yes, Wayland was worth the 10y cost, because the debt was due and with interest. Kicking the can down the road would most likely kill desktop Linux eventually.
this "device-agnosticism" is also the source of many of X11's modern problems. Because the X server has to handle all rendering and input, it acts as a middleman. For every frame, an application has to send rendering commands to the X server, which then composites the scene and sends it to the display. This extra step introduces latency and makes it difficult to implement modern features like smooth animations, variable refresh rates, and HDR.
In contrast, Wayland's design is based on the idea of direct rendering. The application renders a frame directly to a buffer in memory, and then the Wayland compositor takes this finished buffer and displays it. This approach is highly efficient for modern GPUs and display technology. The trade-off is that it ties the display protocol more closely to the graphics hardware, but this is a necessary step to achieve the high performance and low latency that modern users expect.
"Wayland makes some assumptions which will be wrong in 10 years."
This is a fair and common criticism. Yes, Wayland assumes a graphics stack that is based on OpenGL/Vulkan and a kernel with a Direct Rendering Manager (DRM). This works well today because modern Linux graphics drivers are built around this model.
However, an X11 advocate might argue that this tight coupling could be a problem if a new, fundamentally different type of display technology or graphics hardware emerges. With its modular design, X11 could theoretically adapt by adding new extensions.
Wayland developers have addressed this by keeping the core protocol simple and extensible. New features, like HDR or adaptive sync, are implemented as extensions to the base protocol. The hope is that this design allows Wayland to evolve without the bloat and complexity that burdened X11. While it's impossible to predict the future, Wayland's developers believe that its modular design is flexible enough to handle future changes in display technology.
I know this seems like a down side to you but the person you are replying to notes this as something they love about the platform. It not changing over time "just to change" is the point.
I backed up and upgraded to Tahoe earlier today so I could fully immerse myself in the disaster of a release that is being reported here today. After a half day with Tahoe I simply cannot understand all the drama.
It's fine. Maybe a bit more of a departure UI wise and not as polished as the previous release but whatever, I don't see how this would cause anyone to throw in the towel on Apple and move to Linux. I've used both for years and would never chose to use Linux exclusively or even primarily.
I love(d) Linux and I've used it a lot over the years, but I finally got fed up and bought a Macbook Pro a few weeks ago. I find myself fiddling with my Linux machine way more than I'd like. I'm sure whatever distro I was using (Ubuntu) will seem like the problem to someone who likes another distro, but that's just more fiddling to me. It took me a while to get to where Zoom video calls with screen sharing worked properly. The last straw was that my wifi card stopped working one day. Debugging OS issues with no internet is really hard.
I've got my dev environment set up on my new Macbook Pro and everything is working perfectly and I'm very happy.
> It still looks to me like Linux 20 years ago. And I started with Linux in the mid 90s. Not much has changed or improved on the pure fundamentals.
Point taken, but that is exactly the quality I said I liked about it. I hope that 20 years from now my desktop will be exactly the same. The disjoint UI bothers me to an extent. I mostly use KDE apps or things built with Qt, but you're right that nothing is uniform. That said, I'd take disunity if it means stability. I don't care if the buttons in different apps look different, but don't take them away. Just look at what they did to Mail.app--in 2010 it was beautiful. Last I used it in 2020 it seemed like all the power user features of it were gone or hidden and everything was under a dot dot dot menu instead of out on the toolbar.
That's a bigger discussion, I guess. But all of them seem to just be gradual improvements and more eye candy, if anything. Fewer crashes, yet incompatibilities because of the ecosystem. You'll never see things like secure terminal input, handover of apps/data to other devices, and a dozen other things that Just Works™ on Mac. I don't want to make it seem like I am anti Linux though; I am a Linux user as well, but just not on my primary desktop.
Like visually? I personally don't care much for animations, transitions, rounded corners (this one I actually hate, because you can't even disable them on mac). I'm not a florist, I am programmer. I want efficiency not the looks, bells and whistles. Although I recently started using Hyprland, and oh my, those window animations and transitions are super nice, not to mention that you can completely control every aspect of them.
If you're into LLM's you need to consider using Apple Silicon so you can continue developing on your own machine with MLX. MLX isn't just a replacemnet for CUDA, no way - it's made for the Apple arch. The new M5 chip will likely have serious ANE and ability to use the unified memory. Then we're talking powerhouse. Current Mac Studios are already more cost effective than say RTX 6000.
That's just a unified memory architecture. Strix Halo has this, too. It's not only Apple. Memory bandwidth is lower than the ultra series but faster or on par for every other M series processor.
And it's great they are pushing each other. Strix Halo is based on Ryzen AI if I recall. My AI machine is currently Linux but I'd like to get a Mac Studio with an Ultra (or perhaps the M5 when it comes out) purely for the insane memory bandwidth.
> The initial investment into getting a usable Arch desktop was horrible.
It is my conviction that very few should go down the Arch route. If you want to sysadmin Linux or learn how to do so, fine. But if you want to do something else with your computer I'd strongly recommend looking into one of the https://universal-blue.org images (I use https://getaurora.dev btw).
These are based on atomic Fedora and my experience is that they offer extreme stability while still staying on the edge of development. Could we call it NixOS for mere mortals? Probably not if you ask the Nix peeps. :)
> It is my conviction that very few should go down the Arch route. If you want to sysadmin Linux or learn how to do so, fine.
I don't think sysadmin is fair, but certainly it's true that a lot of 'how do I do the equivalent of Windows/macOS built-in foobar' questions will have the answer 'well this is a non-exhaustive list of possible things you could install to do that'.
Which is to say that first time around it's almost inevitably going to be a lot of setup. But then it won't change, or when it does it will just be whichever puzzle piece changed - not 'Arch reimagined everything with Liquid Glass'.
>These are based on atomic Fedora and my experience is that they offer extreme stability
These were my hopes. Up until a new update introduced something that broke my nvidia drivers "integration".
After a few days I decided to try to update the system once more (which killed the oldest snapshot) and I was left with the system that can only be run in 1024 mode. I've tried every suggestion from the web to no avail.
It's been working well with my NVIDIA equipped laptop and desktop machine with a Radeon GPU. I would never buy NVIDIA for Linux use again though. GPU support needs to be in the kernel, So Arc or Radeon it is.
Wasn’t true when they switched to systemd, or when KDE 4 came out, or when the new Gnome came out, or when the kernel renamed Ethernet interfaces to enps-whatever.
Or when they switched from applications requesting exclusive access to ALSA audio devices to using sound servers for mixing, or when Xorg autoconfiguration was introduced (obviating manual Xorg.conf creation), or when the modesetting DDX replaced vendor specific DDX packages, or when Wayland was introduced with full backward compatibility with Xorg via XWayland. I suppose that last one is more of a lack of change.
Those things are changes that are announced years before they happens and you would some distributions where they’re still using the old stuff. It’s not that unavoidable changes we you only have three years of holding on to the old stuff before being abandoned.
My biggest gripe with macOS vs. Linux is that the former allows IT departments to completely control them. They overload these otherwise very capable machines with so much crap that things start to crawl; they enable FileVault and install antivirus and NGFW clients; forcefully diminish the admin role to be a regular user, forcing users to use Admin-by-Request whenever they need to fart out anything sudo in the terminal.
I tried so hard to find reasons to like macOS, but frankly, if workspaces didn't force Macs, I would've totally chosen to use Linux. The only thing I miss in Linux is JXA/Applescript automation engine and Hammerspoon, nothing else - I don't use their web browser, or their mail app, GarageBand, and other crap like iTunes because frankly, they never felt to me like good solutions to solve specific problems, more like freeware before transitioning to better alternatives. Even the built-in terminal I use only to bootstrap Homebrew. Another good thing I should mention is that macOS really does set a good standard for accessibility features, even though I'm lucky not to have to rely on them, I'm sure many people do.
I honestly don't know how Apple has been getting away with so much crap for years - software developers are probably one of the biggest demographics of Mac users, and Apple keeps screwing them over, yet they stay loyal - partly because businesses force them to use Macs, partly because the alternatives suck even more - Linux ain't perfect and Windows is outright evil (really, I can't even rebind Win+L key on my computer? Fuck you MSFT!).
>The best part is, though, nothing ever changes. I get things working the way I want, and it just stays that way year after year. No UI language updates, no replacing my default shell, nothing. It just keeps working the way I like.
While Arch might make you safer by virtue of choice, some of the more "beginner friendly" distros aren't immune to changing things seemingly overnight. Ubuntu for instance dropped GNOME for Unity which I still have bad memories of to this day.
Yeah, I didn't mean to write a "Linux is better" polemic, just that building my own Linux desktop works better for me. I also haven't used Gnome since ~2009 except briefly to discover that Gnome 3 was trash. Unity was a travesty and I also hated it when Ubuntu force fed me that.
You're right. Locking yourself into a distro, especially the more user-friendly ones, can get you into just as much of a dictatorship as macOS.
I use i3 on X11 like a neanderthal and mostly Qt/KDE apps. I'll switch to Sway and Wayland when things stop working.
I'd switch if I were you - well, I did, after holding out for what I thought was a long time. A lot of minor nuisances I hadn't gotten around to investigating with X just disappeared, I think you'd find that by comparison you were/are actually nearer 'not working' than you realise, my sway experience has been much smoother.
I work on computer vision stuff. Most of my time is in the browser, or on the terminal (Alacritty, tmux, neovim). I've actually become more of a GUI user since switching from macOS to Linux. I used to be way more die-hard about CLI-everything, but I love using `git gui` now. I think Dolphin is the superior file manager experience available to mankind. Okular is an excellent PDF reader, but leaves a tiny bit to be missed about Preview.
I'm fairly serious about photography and spend a lot of time editing and post-processing photos. This is a major shortcoming of my desktop and I may end up getting a MacBook just for this purpose. digiKam is just okay for organizing photos, and RawTherapee is barely okay. I don't mind it's ugly UI, but I'm discovering that even aside from UI considerations it just can't produce the results that Adobe can. Things like noise reduction are just not there.
I exclusively used macOS for about 8 years and now I'm on Bluefin, work generic web development stacks... The last bit of software I'm missing on Linux is the Serif apps... gaming (in my particular case) is sorted, I was shocked to install Steam on Blufin and have almost my entire library available.
Some workflows not possible on Windows. I avoid using Windows thus I don't care about the pain of having to depend on it - have zero interest in what's not possible somewhere else. What's your point?
The only thing from macOS I truly miss when in Linux is JXA/Applescript automation engine. That's the only thing I miss.
If Apple would open source some of its OS apps, this would probably be a non-issue, I could see people putting in bugfix PRs the second Apple chooses to open source their core apps.
I don't see them doing this any time soon sadly, but it would make macOS much more stable, and probably secure.
The more I have thought about my views on Open Source vs Commercial software, I strongly feel that infrastructure code (an OS) should be more open source, I dont see Microsoft or Apple open sourcing any time soon, but it would make a world of a difference, imagine a world where Windows XP had been open sourced, and the community took it fully over and maintained its security, you'd have a drastically better version of Windows without all the fluff, or heck even Windows 7, which some argue was the last good version of Windows as well.
Of the two, there's a lot clearer line to Apple open sourcing some of its core desktop apps, given market share (~16%?) and lack of internal resource prioritization (iOSiOSiOS).
The best time to do so would have been ~2010, after iTunes revenue provided a clear monetizable carve-out.
The second best time would be today.
The number of people saying 'I love the hardware you sell me, but am switching platforms because your software is trash' should be a flare that even Tim Cook can notice.
And anything that moves MacOS closer to OSS should be welcomed by Apple -- it's their easiest (and most affordable) path to competing with Microsoft (Azure) on desktop.
Or if they would just embrace Asahi! Have a team work full-time on parity, have asahi-linux feature complete on Mac launch day; mainlined soon thereafter.
Mail.app alone had enough issues and missing features to sustain an entire cottage industry, and would be one app I would certainly like to contribute to. But it shall never come to pass.
I worked for a defense contractor that used an encryption mechanism for email that was primarily supported by Outlook, Thunderbird had a paid plugin, but Apple just opened all my emails just fine.
Mail.app makes me sad, because it is neglected. Outside of Thunderbird, it's sort of this last bastion of desktop-first mail clients when everything else, even "New" Outlook, has become a web app or some electron monster.
I use mail.app daily across phone, iPad and Mac - it's "fine" but I'd really love it to get some investment.
the same for me (e.g. yabai didn't work anylonger properly with latest update). But for the past 2 months (or so), I couldn't be happier with Omarchy. It's a Linux build that comes with all the Mac specifications out of the box and is set up as a tiling window manager, which is what I used on macOS. But no more bugs, and it just works. Plus I can tweak my own OS, if I need to change something. In case of interest, I wrote a little here: https://www.ssp.sh/blog/macbook-to-arch-linux-omarchy/ (It was also on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44955923)
As someone coming from mac, i didn't know about basic things. So one thing I found, don't put your none-mac on a desk mat, it's very bad for thermal throttling. So that helped a ton. I also found that when plugged in in powermode, the lenovo was always on high power, therefore fan on. By switching to balanced, that turned of as well.
But also, as I stuck with Omarchy, I wanted a more beefier machine, as I work all day on the laptop. So with the new machine, Tuxedo latest version, I don't have any fans anymore too, just because it's much faster and better thermal. I will eventually write these up in a second part of the article.
I was able to fix the fan always running issue by changing the fan mode for both my Asus laptop and old macbook pro; I am using silent mode or equivalent and that seems to be fine. there are policy files for throttle_thermal_policy/fan_boost_mode, and you can use a systemd service to set to whatever is your preferred mode.
Sounds sensational. If it takes you a month to ignore stuff, I have doubts that your workflow is even productive. I use every OS, you gotta roll with the punches, and they all punch back. There is no silver bullet OS. They all have issues and many of them fit your exact description. Good luck out there!
I used to love Apple Mail but it was precisely this bug that made me move permanently to Thunderbird. It's hard for me to fathom a bug so severe that it caused data loss on an IMAP server, but Apple created said bug and put it into production.
Thunderbird has the nice advantage of working on both MacOS and Linux with the same UI. It's not quite as nice as Apple Mail's classic UI (which is no longer available -- see (3) above) but it's good enough.
Your screenshot looks nice. I hope you succeed with this, and I'd be happy to try it. From what little I know, building a fully-compliant IMAP client is hard work.
I can imagine that some race condition slips into production, but what's hard for me to process is why it’s 5 or 6 years later and it’s still not fully fixed.
I mean, even if you have no idea what's the cause, you e.g. stuff counters everywhere and when they don't match you send the telemetry with the details. Privacy is preserved and over time you get an idea what to look for.
I admit I have no idea how mail client works, but clearly there must be some way they could pinpoint it, with such large userbase..
> but what's hard for me to process is why it’s 5 or 6 years later and it’s still not fully fixed
Because Apple's (the company's, as a whole) bug -> triage -> engineering -> deployment process is fundamentally broken, and obviously has been for decades at this point.
Say what you want about MS, but at least critical issues that actual customers are experiencing tend to get fixed.
Apple seems to have some weird 'maybe someone will look at it, if they have time, after they get done implementing new features for the next release' process. (Glaring example: daisy chaining DisplayPort support)
When I was young I loved getting the latest of everything but that was partly because I didn't have to carry certain workflows or older tech along with me. It's the baggage that we accumulate is the problem.
Now I understand why plenty of old timers just leave the OS version on the MacBook that it came with. All you ever really need is the security patches.
Unless there is some specific new feature that you absolutely must need or some push factor, don't upgrade.
For me its every time I reinstalled my OS and didn't backup any of my chat convo logs. My wife still has them on all her old Macs, and her first Windows computer we met online through has some (not all) of our MSN convos still on it. I never thought about that unfortunately.
I can relate, but generally if I avoid updating in the first quarter of the release, I don't find it is too difficult to get my Mac back to a happy state. I did try to move to Linux a couple of years ago, but just couldn't. The keyboard, mouse, window system, and app ecosystem were far and away less usable for me and there was nothing I could find to do that would make the machine work as well for me as Mac, despite what Apple is throwing at us.
Yep. Contacts.app still has the same bugs where it doesn’t sync to Google unless you create a “note” in your Google account… yet it’s got the full new UI refresh. Truly feels like lipstick on a pig.
1) and 2) are common to all major software releases (whether it's an OS like macOS a DE like Gnome or some complicated program like Photoshop or Blender or something). Inevitable to a degree as you can't fix everything, and you can't ship 100s of thousands of new lines of code without some bugs.
These are only a big problem if those bugs bugs are major, and/or widely applicable to different user setups, and/or very annoying.
3) is the worse though, especially when it happens for no good reason, or for novelty value.
Definitely the worst era of Mac laptop hardware that I lived through. I still have a work-provided 2019 MBP and the keyboard is shot (even though I never use it because it's docked to a monitor + keyboard 99.9% of the time), while the Touch Bar flickers with random white rectangles regularly while the machine is asleep. I personally kept using a 2015 MBP until last year for just this reason.
I am a vim user. I map caps lock to super for a dead simple app shortcut system. I prefer being able to switch applications perfectly over a more convenient escape key. macOS app switching is broken by default.
Wow I already forgot about the touch bar. And imagine being so stubborn to keep the touch bar but introduce a physical ESC key, they lost their minds during that time.
I just switched to ^C for Escape (which usually works) and ^[ for the rare time I needed actual escape mode.
The Touch Bar was awful - except I was able to get a great deal on my former employer’s Touch Bar era laptops they were decommissioning, since nobody wanted them. One of them (2018, fully loaded) is still in active use, although it mostly runs T2Linux now.
As a Vim user, and a 65% keyboard user with my ESC key mapped to `~`, I found out early on that using ESC in Vim is better relegated to CTRL+[ or `jk` (when in insert mode). Fortunately, that stupid touchbar didn't slow me down as much as others have mentioned. The volume control (that would get stuck) on the other hand...
In Vim, I've used ^[ instead of ESC since forever so the ESC thing didn't bother me either. Still, the Touch Bar is such a pain in the ass when I have to interact with it. It's also bad if I touch it by accident when carrying the laptop.
Just curious, what yype of featureres where removed?
To be honest Im new to macos, but after spending years suffering with gnome, that did removed a lot of features, Macos seens like it dosent suffer of this that much.
My mouse and keyboard are connected via the USB dock function of my monitor.
After the update, I can't even login. Great.
Not that it was working well before. To get the second monitor to even turn on, I had to first power off and then subsequently turn on again the primary monitor.
And that ritual was unique to my M2 Pro Mac mini.
On Windows, or a M1 Pro Macbook, everything just works.
And I'm not the only one with this super annoying external monitor issue. Apple apparently never fixed it. It just sucks.
> Every new version of MacOS exhibits four phenomena:
This is specific to almost every new software.
As jwz said "But that's what happens when there is no incentive for people to do the parts of programming that aren't fun. Fixing bugs isn't fun; going through the bug list isn't fun; but rewriting everything from scratch is fun (because "this time it will be done right", ha ha) and so that's what happens, over and over again. "
I swear I don't usually complain about UI styling updates, because it's usually not a big deal - but this looks really, really bad [1]. It's less functional with bizarre transparency choices destroying legibility, and big rounded corners taking up more dead space. And stylistically, the layouts just look unbalanced and amateurish (It reminds me of what happens when I attempt to do CSS layouts). Most Linux desktops unironically look better than this.
It's ironic that Apple makes screen size incredibly expensive for every millimeter - and then designs UI which proceeds to waste that pricey real-estate as well as user time by burying options (or worse, simply removing many advanced user options "because they don't fit").
As a rule almost any UI redesign of just about any product in the last decade will increase padding and reduce information density. I don't know if it's because the average designer/user is getting older or large screens are more common so it seems like there's lots of room available thus it can be wasted.
Sadly, this often applies to Linux as well, so there's no escape. I guess Xfce is still around at least.
It’s funny how different people saw things. UAC was hated back then but I was a Linux user primarily and when I bought my laptop I kept the Windows Vista while dual booting. UAC mostly made sense and worked like gksudo.
I remember saying so once and got flamed by people online because of course Microsoft didn’t copy this from Linux and of course gksudo was much better.
But the subjective experience I had was the same. IMHO the greatest victory with Electron has been that the OS wars have practically ended.
I see people making this comparison but as someone who used vista back in the day and someone who has been using all flavors of 26 for over a month now, it really bears no resemblance in UI or UX to vista at all.
I kind of think the people making this comparison are doing it off screenshots and not actual experience with the two operating systems.
These are machines with SSDs with multiple GB/s of throughput and memory throughput of over 200GB/s. How it is even possible to load this slowly these icons ?
At some point "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" morphed into "optimization is evil". Your PR will always get shot down if it tries to improve perf by making code less clean. Imagine applying this handbrake to every single layer of every single thing running on your computer https://www.computerenhance.com/p/clean-code-horrible-perfor...
Aero didn't have absurd padding. It made good use of texture, colour and shade. It actually looked quite appealing. We've been steadily downhill since.
Have the tabs in Finder always been slow to appear? Right now there is a noticeable delay from when I press cmd+tab to when tab animates itself into existence, reminds me of lag in windows 11.
I do dislike how toy-like the user interface looks, but I really hate how illegible notifications are on iPadOS. I had to turn on the reduce transparency setting so I could read the notification text against my lock screen wallpaper.
The reason Liquid Glass on macOS specifically is getting so much blowback is that it isn't just updating the translucency effect with the new glass refraction effect - they've also increased the border radius of most windows, increased paddings in toolbars, sidebars, etc. and overall made the UI much less information-dense, which is wild for a desktop OS. If they had just changed the translucency effect, I think this would be much better received.
Personally, I'm sticking with macOS Sequoia for now, and if macOS 27 goes even more in the less-information-density direction, I'll probably fully move off of macOS, which is a shame as a 20-year Apple user.
The only thing that really bothers me with the macOS 26 design update is the complete lack of contrast. Everything is white-on-white with super subtle shadows. You can't see what tab is selected in Safari, you can't see what is a button, etc. And it doesn't even look good - it just looks like something is broken, like a texture failed to load.
Tab styling across the board is terrible. I'm struggling to read inactive tab labels in Terminal.
I've used and loved macs for decades. This is the first time (maybe the second, if you count early Apple Music) that I've thought they've lost their way.
Agreed. I've been a Mac fan even through the dark ages of buying Performas at Sears... but Tahoe is a bridge too far for me.
I doubt I'll switch away from iOS for my phone/watch as I'm reliant on some iOS-specific features. But the Mac has excellent competition, so sadly I'll be a non-Mac user for the first time since the 1990s.
7 used rather small border radius and on was done through the added window border/non client area, not chopped out of the window like today's UX. It was also trivially easy to adjust that to make it as tight as XP's 2-3px so if you really didn't care for it they would go away. For buttons in dialogs the radius was the same size as the embossed effect in earlier windows version.
Vista and 7 rounded things out but they sacrificed very little usable area in the application and could be adjusted to taste. Both Apple and MSFT took the stance that this was too much user control.
I feel like every macOS update has been worse than the last, since like 2015-2018 or so. Still, their only real competition is Windows 11, which isn’t well received either.
I'm still on Sonoma on my Mac, but I've recently been splitting my time between macOS and Linux and I'm starting to be pretty happy with Linux.
The main problem I had with living in a Gnome desktop environment, is with the keyboard. I'm not willing to abandon my use of Emacs control+meta sequences for cursor and editing movements everywhere in the GUI. On macOS, this works because the command (super/Win on Linux/Windows) key is used for common shortcuts and the control key is free for editing shortcuts.
I spent a day or so hacking around with kanata[0], which is a kernel level keyboard remapping tool, that lets you define keyboard mapping layers in a similar way you might with QMK firmware. When I press the 'super/win/cmd' it activates a layer which maps certain sequences to their control equivalents, so I can create tabs, close windows, copy and paste (and many more) like my macOS muscle memory wants to do. Other super key sequences (like Super-L for lock desktop or Super-Tab for window cycling) are unchanged. Furthermore, when I hit the control or meta/alt/option key, it activates a layer where Emacs editing keys are emulated using the Gnome equivalents. For example, C-a and C-e are mapped to home/end, etc.
After doing this, and tweaking my Gnome setup for another day or so, I am just as comfortable on my Linux machine as I am on my Mac.
Depends on what you're using it for. Windows 11 is the only main stream competition, but for work I've used Pop OS for a few years and was amazed by how stable and usable it is for work.
Back to Mac OS now due to a change of workplace, and while I'm absolutely blown away by the M3 performance and battery life the OS is something I'm still struggling with a bit.
Not that OS9 was better - there are thing that I miss, such as drag and drop control panels and system extensions. My point is that people have been complaining about the newer versions of Mac operating systems since there were numbered upgrades.
I’m using one of the Lenovo Aura editions. It doesn’t match the MacBook, but I also don’t worry about battery at all any more and perf is just fine for my needs. I don’t miss Apple at all. Now, if only there was a Linux phone…
You'd jump ship because of the .0 release of Tahoe? Really? People get a little hysterical about things like this.
You know you don't have to upgrade to it, right? They'll support Sequoia for years, and you could even be running Sonoma if you wanted.
The response to this design is likely to be so overwhelmingly negative that we'll see a lot of subtle retreats in the point releases going forward, and when the macOS 7 version replaces TahoeVista, you can upgrade then.
It's not really hysterical to want to jump a ship that feels like is turning into a clown cruise. I can use Windows, Linux, and OSX equally well for work, even if I deploy to AWS in the end. However, I love the osx aesthetic and MacBook hardware, since around Snow Leopard, which is when I switched from Linux to OSX. Since then, OSX osx gotten worse with every release, and Tahoe is a very low, new low. At some point, it becomes not worth it. Just like it's not worth staying on the previous release of OSX while random apps and extensions lose compatibility. It's not hysteria, it's just the straw that breaks the camels back. The only thing is, I really like the M4 speed. There is nothing that runs as fast, and as cool, that I am aware of. If I wasn't doing a bunch of processing right now, I would probably switch. Non-hysterically.
Sequoia is absolutely, undeniably better than Sonoma. Sonoma is undeniably better than Ventura. And so on. This notion that it's all downhill is just noisy nonsense as people wave their hands and have a tantrum that they don't like some change. And to be clear, every single macOS release yields this. It's incredibly boring.
Like, it's fun to whine about the imperfection of macOS...versus Windows or Linux? LOL, come on. And just like you and probably everyone else on here, I use macOS, Windows and Linux every single day. Pretending that a couple of aesthetic changes are the big "straw that broke the camel's back" is just so lame.
It is hysterical. It's noisy nonsense. This "fine this is it" tantrum that people pull is such a tired gimmick.
And personally I think the aesthetics of macOS/iOS/iPadOS 26 are terrible. They're inevitably going to start easing down the heinous translucency and will claw back on the stupid round corners. Aside from that the system has a lot of fundamental improvements that will benefit everyone.
But no, no one on Sequoia is going to suddenly be without apps or extensions. When apps start abandoning versions it's usually a couple of versions out.
In some sense, some releases are always better than the previous version. Of course, Apple developers do some valuable work. However, there are changes that are not "undeniably better". I don't think every Sonoma feature was better. I don't want widgets, I don't want notifications, I don't want pretty much anything they've added in Tahoe. Not a single thing, that I'm aware of. And, now it's ugly as heck, to me.
I don't know what you're picturing, but I promise you, I am not being hysterical, I'm just annoyed. I feel like, when you "its hysterical", you think my mouth is foaming, my face is red, my heart rate is above average... It's definitely not. I'm just looking at CPU benchmarks and Windows ARM compatibility discussions. Honestly, it's kind of fun to have a reason to switch. I used to run hackintoshes, because Apple hardware was overpriced. But now, unfortunately, it is the other way around, and running Windows on M4 seems impossible.
Anyway, I don't think it's a huge deal, but it is definitely a straw that can break many peoples backs in terms of their preferred development environment. I know many people who have switched to Linux from the previous releases too. Un-hysterically, also.
Is cropping PDFs to rounded corners (without a way to disable it) enough to get someone to switch to another OS? Probably not, but it's still IMO a UI regression regardless.
The huge amount of padding is one of the reasons I hate the official reddit app compared to redreader. There's just such a huge amount of padding between every UI element that it means half the screen is just empty space
its insane to me that apple could feature "liquid glass"... the amount of devs that must of worked on this is probably not insignificant and could have been used on better things...
This is incompetence on display. Hundreds of people were involved in this from concept, to implementation, to testing. And they all thought this was okay.
I decided to install this and the updated iOS today to see how I felt about it.
My very initial impressions on MacOS:
(1) I like the look of Safari better and the Mail app compared to the prior designs. They both look really nice to me and the Mail app especially looks like a huge improvement in terms of design unification with some of the features like summaries and unsubscribe options that looked bolted on in the past now blending in seamlessly.
(2) I really, really don't like the new icons! Especially so on iOS.
(3) On iOS the app group/folders look terrible to me with the way they distort my wallpaper. Not a fan.
(4) A lot of people are complaining about transparent icons. It's not a valid complaint and is strong evidence whoever is saying that hasn't used the new OS as that is a choice you can make if you want. The default is not transparent.
(5) The increased radii in some places doesn't seem to have any meaningful impact to my information density. A simple comparison of Chrome (old styling) and Safari (with the liquid glass design) shows that Safari has a few pixels fewer in height search + tab bar as a concrete example.
(6) Messages app in MacOS looks like shit. I hate almost everything about it.
(7) Spotlight search has marked improvements! UI is nicer and functionality has expanded greatly (eg clipboard search).
I have to believe that Apple had anonymized telemetry that told them how many people used Launchpad and acted as justification to nix it. I remember when it came out, and I probably used it more in the first month when it was novel and new than I have since then. I'm sorry a feature that you liked is gone, but I'm sure it wasn't done blindly.
Your “Imagine…” hypothetical is literally how I run my iPhone. I don’t need piles of icons cluttering up my screen. I can pull down and type 1-2 characters and get any app on my phone, easily.
More room for glanceable, informational widgets that way.
> Imagine you no longer have pages with icons on your phone and instead only have a search bar
I haven’t had pages of icons on my phone since the App Library was added. Generally the app I want is right there and if not a couple of letters in the search bar and there it is
In a phone writing text is not as simple, but I also find looking for the right icon there tedious, so I hope there was a better solution. In contrast, imo it is easier to get muscle memory with a keyboard (cmd+space > "first 3 characters of app name") than with searching for the app icon around. I cannot imagine the case where looking around in the launchpad is better except with some app you use so rarely you do not know the name (but somehow you have muscle memory for where it is there?).
I use CMD+SPACE 95% of the times I want to open an app. The rest 4% I do it with `open -a` on a terminal with autocomplete (or `/path/to/apps/binary &` for some specific stuff), and 1% going through the `/Applications` directory. I never use launchpad.
Spotlight improvements are one of the only things I actually like about it so far, it's unbelievable how bad messages app looks... we're certainly losing some space in cases where they're doing this weird sidebar container
The poof animation was such a lovely touch. Removing it feels like a crime honestly.
Most of the friendly computer interactions are being removed. I presume someone thinks it takes too much effort to replicate. They’re making the computer soulless, just like Windows, they might as well remove the Mac name as well.
I've been trying this now too based on your comment. I think I like it too but I also think it only works for me because I know where everything is on my phone. If I ever reorganized or expand my regular app usage to new things, I think it will be much harder as differentiating the apps is much harder.
As a KDE Plasma dev, I always counted on us getting better, but I didn't expect the competition to get so much worse. We'd be flamed to high and heaven for shipping broken notification popups and rendering glitches like that in a prod release.
After years with Xfce and GNOME, I recently switched to distro that by default prefers KDE, and I'm overall satisfied - Qogir theme, little customization and I'm as good as I was with Win7. Plasma 6.4.5 feels way more stable than line 5 that would crash during stupidest things.
As for what happen at Cupertino: it seems that they replaced people who knew theory and practice, principles of interface design with designers who were told to make a product that looks "fresh" and will diverge attention from Apple's AI failure.
Because why this Liquid Glass now if not as "rattling keys" effect? It's not a technological breakthrough - we've seen translucent plastic/glass/acrylic elements and fancy animations in operating systems before. Hell, even Plasma had that glass stuff in initial line 4 of release. And OSX had Aqua interface, window animations long before Microsoft wasted years for Longhorn finally releasing it as Vista with Aero. Not mention Compiz on Linux around same time.
My partner is already baffled with lack of polish and consistency across the system in this release. In some places it's just a transitional animation added on top of flat style for "wow" effect because hardware nowadays doesn't tax much for that. Tahoe feels like it tries to follow GNOME/Adwaita big interface elements that should stay exclusively on mobile devices, and it does this quite late and also really bad.
The rumor mill speculates that Apple needed to ship something big and flashy to distract people from calling them out on their failure to deliver on the AI features promised (and previewed!) more than a year ago.
I've heard another take that is interesting and a clear departure from that never ending moaning: Like the ultra slim new iPhone that could be a step to validate the technical challenges to a foldable device, this change in UI is to prepare the user base for a complete change in the form factor, be it a glass slab or a greater focus on wearable (ala glasses).
There’s no way this was developed by Apple. I keep thinking that they outsourced the macOS development to some amateurs online and took a year off traveling the world.
Looking at the screenshots and review videos, I cannot believe how ugly and out of proportion it is. Normally, there would be a consistent design and some people like it while others don’t. But this is simply ugly.
My guess is that it’s all product managers and “designers” now, a whole religion of procedures and terminology, and unfortunately very little engineering of the kinds that some of the early Ux pioneers applied.
Have you seen Windows 11? It's like they copied random ideas out of KDE 4 and bolted them on top of Windows, badly.
My theory is that big companies like to compress salaries. To compress salaries, you hire young and fire old, which means losing historical knowledge.
The other theory is that people who grew up with Kde-look.org are now running the asylum, without ever going through the sort of formal training that the previous generations of UI designers had to experience.
That’s the important question. Someone else on the thread suggested it was to divert attention from one failure (AI) and now they have two. I wonder how Steve Jobs would react to this mess. Maybe he’d say he would not have been in such a mess in the first place. :)
At this point, I have Plasma configured as a better macOS shell. Not a clone, those always look bad, but layouts close enough that my macOS muscle memory can't tell the difference.
I feel like we’ve gone full circle. For decades Apple hardware sucked and was badly overpriced, but you paid the price to enjoy running Mac OS X. Now Apple makes amazing hardware (especially laptops) but the drawback is that you have to run macOS on them.
I really wish Asahi Linux had more support, I would have bought a couple M4 Minis.
If you don't need the battery life of a MacBook and you're happy getting a desktop device, there's plenty of machines running new AMD chips that are just as fast as an M series mac, if not faster. And they'll run Linux with no compromises. Check out Bee-Link (https://www.bee-link.com/) for some mac-inspired hardware.
>I really wish Asahi Linux had more support, I would have bought a couple M4 Minis.
Me too. Just wonder instead of reverse engineer to SOC to get Linux running? Why can we just use the Darwin Kernel (which is suppose to be Open Sourced right? ) and build something like FreeBSD desktop for the M3/M4? Would that be more long term viable than reverse engineering SOC? Is there any project in that direction?
Actually, save power efficiency, Apple is still behind the curve and has been for decades. Nvidia has reigned uninterrupted for longer than I can remember and regularly beats Apple in raw performance on available hardware, and AMD has regularly topped benchmarks for years.
In fact, AMD and Nvidia have been the de facto high-performance combination for so long, that I can't remember when it was any different. But prior to that, it was Intel and Nvidia. Apple was never a real high quality hardware competitor. The only thing they ever had to offer were products produced by a production process almost no one replicates.
Razer started used CNC unibodies for their laptops 14 years ago, but they're maybe the only company I can think of that does so other than Apple.
And MSI has shipped high performance laptops for so long that even Apple used their laptops for comparison during the M-series chip releases in the MacBook Pro.
Awful cheap UX, cartoonish style with huge padding, lack of structure and hierarchy. The spacing is inconsistent, everything is rounded. The app launcher stutters, the icons load one by one, it flickers each time I do the 4 finger gesture. Why does the volume bubble have tick marks but the one in the menu doesn't? The trash icon looks like the windows recycle bin or gnome theme from 20 years ago, not sure why it's flattened like that.
You explained the design inconsistencies the best. Though I’m worried that instead of fixing the underlying problems, they’re just going to make a bullet list of what people mention here and change those only. Then we’re going to have an OS where no two screens have the same paddings etc.
What the hell happened to the Apple design guides. Did all the engineers who read them retire.
Oh boy, I opened the settings app to change the wallpaper, the scrollbar gets cut off by the right bottom rounded corner. The wallpapers can be scrolled horizontally and they show up under the side rail (blurred), looks like a glitch, and I still can't resize this window to see more of the wallpapers. They may have fixed the custom color bug though.
It really does look like ass on the laptop. Maybe it works on mobile, idk, but terrible on laptop. Also not a good sign since apple is not known for rolling back releases.
Realistically speaking, they’re not going to rollback anything. They even kept and even double downed on that’s stupid photos app redesign on iOS.
At least the review sites are making some noise this time instead of parroting Apple’s announcements. They all sold us that awful photos app as the great new thing.
I always considered the butterfly keyboard[1] the point at which Apple's design system jumped the shark as it focused on it's own aesthetics vs. building quality and reliable products.
Funny enough, it's the only time period since 1999 that I was apple free for a while. My MBP broke. I've previously had a butterfly keyboard on my work mac, and it got replaced on a regular bases. While unfortunate for a work computer, this was not acceptable as my personal one with no spares)
Thankfully Apple returned to making great products that work, and I bought the next MBP.
Seeing that Apple's returning to it's "design roots"[2], I really hope they do not loose sight of building great products that work well for their customers.
> Funny enough, it's the only time period since 1999 that I was apple free for a while.
Same here. After the butterfly keyboard era, I spent about 5 years with Windows 10/11 and powershell, then WSL. There's still a lot of annoyance in the Windows space (NTFS is slow due to all the filesystem filters), but Linux package managers are much better than homebrew and WSL does make Windows a pretty reasonable developer system. I'm back on the MacOS now but I wouldn't hate a nice Windows machine.
Yes, WSL2 is quite good. WSL1 was even a step up, but WSL2 gives me an environment that I can use quite well and be productive with.
The NTFS speed thing is kinda amazing. I use cursor on MacOS. My friend has a windows laptop which is likely 2-3x more powerful than my Macbook Air. I can install a new cursor in 2-3s tops, on the Windows machine it takes minutes. Wow. It's all file copying speed.
> I always considered the butterfly keyboard[1] the point at which Apple's design system jumped the shark as it focused on it's own aesthetics vs. building quality and reliable products.
This statement describes pretty much every mouse Apple ever made, from the circular ones to the horrendous magic mouse with charging port underneath.
This is true, but Apple mice have always been consistently bad. A laptop where getting a single grain of dirt under the keyboard meant you couldn't type was a very new thing in 2015.
Ooh, the mouse myth! Love it when this one gets dragged out. Turns out it’s not really a problem - the battery life is measured in months, you’ll get several hours from plugging it in for thirty seconds, and days if you plug it in for a few minutes while getting coffee.
People love to hate it, but it’s never been a real problem. The ergonomics are bad. The charging isn’t.
So the ergonomics are bad and the charging port is in inconvenient location. What's good about it? Anything? Most Logitech mice go for months on a set of batteries too.
>Most Logitech mice go for months on a set of batteries too.
Definitely not true for the two MX Masters I have owned - they need charging every couple of weeks. But also I often just leave them plugged in, because, get this, they put the charging port at the back.
I own and like apple products, android, Google, Microsoft, razr, keychron, Logitech.
The apple mouse is one of the worst mainstream products I've ever had to use. It has no advantages that can even begin to scratch away at the terrible TERRIBLE ergonomics alone.
I hated that feature SOOO much. It was so difficult to grab the mouse without accidentally doing some additional gesture. I'm really glad that feature never caught on.
It did catch on, in that you can still do it with a brand new Magic Mouse on today's macOS.
I use a Magic Trackpad day to day, but back when I worked in an office I would occasionally use a Magic Mouse, and I liked the gestures. (Hated the charging port location, of course.)
I should know better, but I'm still surprised they're shipping this version of Liquid Glass. Performance is stable but there are so many UI bugs and inconsistencies that haven't been fixed from early betas, including low-hanging fruit that a second year design student would notice. I don't mind change or interface elements moving around but keynote-level UI overhauls should be fully implemented at launch, otherwise people are stuck using a broken OS for a year.
At this point I'm doubtful that these will be addressed in the 26.X updates, so the wait begins for 27.0...
This is always how it goes. The big change happens, and it’s refined over time.
For what it’s worth, there where threads here on HN where people complained at length about the bugs and inconsistencies in the previous version of the Apple operating systems.
Yeah I shouldn't be surprised this was allowed to launch today, but yet I am.
I ran the whole beta on all my devices. Every new beta I'd ask myself "Surely they fixed 'x' by now, right?" and we advanced, beta after beta, with the same bugs and performance regressions all the way up to launch.
The icons still need to redraw in the settings app and app library. It's overall sluggish. The drop shadows are huge in the finder and other apps top bar. If you turn on always show scrollbars they get cut off at a weird angle due to the excessive corner radius.
My iPhone 16 PM runs hot all the time, even on release now, vs. iOS 18.
I don't mind the transparency or glass effects. I actually like it in some areas. But man does it need some serious polish and bug fixing, and a lot of time and effort spent on consistency.
This should never have went live in this state. I consider .0 just another beta, really. Actual release will probably be .2 or .3
(This about iOS, not Mac, but obviously a lot is similar.)
I might be in the minority on hn, but I’m using iOS 26 for the first time today and am pretty happy with the new design. For one, it’s a lot snappier and faster. I’m glad they finally did something about the slow-ass animations iOS had in a lot of places. Secondly, it has a lot more personality. I enjoy that. Thirdly, they finally moved more basic UI stuff close to the thumbs instead of literally 6 inches away at the top of the screen. Love that. Knowing app designers, my apps are about to get easier to use just by migrating to the new UX concepts Apple is pushing.
The glass look is mostly fine. iOS had contrast issues before, and I don’t think it’s any worse. If anything, it’s more adaptive to different types of backgrounds now.
There are some visual glitches and weird things, but they’re pretty minor and will be resolved with time. The glass panes for, say, folders look nice, and I like it more than the previous blur.
I don’t mind the visual appearance of iOS 26. My main gripe is that this update introduces some pointless additional taps for common interactions.
Here’s some of the UX regressions:
- Apple Music: the “next track” button is only visible if the tab bar is expanded. So now we have to scroll or tap, wait for an animation and then click next.
- Web views search web for selected text: previously we could highlight, swipe the action menu and then tap the button. Now we have to highlight, tap the small arrow, wait for the horizontal list to animate into a vertical list, tap the button. They removed the ability to swipe the action menu.
- Tab bars: since 2007, you could change tabs with one tap. Now it’s one or two taps, depending on whether it’s collapsed or expanded.
Personally, I like the vertical list in the web view for highlighted text. The action menu was so annoying. The items were always in a different order and I always had to highlight, tap, tap, tap… on small targets to get to what I wanted.
Agreed! Accidentally dismissing the old menu and needing to scroll again drove me up the wall. My phone has over 3 million pixels and I did not gain anything by having a small, horizontally scrolling menu specific to highlighted text.
I’ve settled on swiping up on the (…) button. But yeah, either way I’m bummed that usability had been traded for shiny/trendy aesthetics here. Worst part is that they know and have provided options to have “classic view”/“try new ui” rather than iterating and polishing it to the point it’s substantially improved and there’s no choice but to release it.
Design is a series of decisions. Those decisions should be rooted in a strong, thoughtful, point of view. It’s a problem when the final product embodies multiple points of view; view options should be the extreme exception, not the norm we now see in phone, mail, safari, etc.
The keyboard on iOS 26 is all messed up. Letters on the keys are no longer vertically centred and are shifted up slightly, while the shift and delete glyph are still in the middle. It looks like a mistake replicated 26 times.
Edit: Also, information density is down across the board. Of course.
They went way too far with the corner radii and pill shapes imo, looks like a Fisher Price toy. Some inner buttons retained the old radii and don't match the outer window radii anymore.
It's truly hideous to look at. I really can't believe they went for these massively rounded corners. They're too stubborn to allow you to select an option for right angled corners again. They just tinker as there's no other real UI enhancements.
I think it was in the Steve Jobs biography (or maybe I read it somewhere else), that Jobs made them do rounded corners on the windows back on the first Macintosh after noticing the rounded corners on a table they had. The engineers complained about how much extra memory that would take on such a limited system, but they figured it out.
Literally never. System 1 has corners that are superficially pointy looking, but if you look close they have a sort of smoothing instead of being a hard right angle. On a screen with 340 lines of resolution.
"modern and fancy" isn't how I'd describe these bizarre rounded corners in Tahoe. They remind me more of a Buck Rogers TV episode from the 1970s or Speak & Spell from the 1980s. They are ghastly to look at.
It’s a trend that’s visible in other designs too, like Material 3 Expressive.
I’m not a fan of Windows but I believe that probably the best modern UI design system for desktops right now is probably the flavor of Fluent used in Windows 11. It still retains somewhat desktop-like information density, doesn’t go overboard on radii, and has a touch of depth. I’d like to see more design languages exploring in its general direction.
I don't think "defaults to windows-like" is a bad choice for newcomers.
I don't customize it heavily either. Move tray, clock and menus to the top, a-la GNOME2, leave taskbar at the bottom, both auto-hidden and narrower than screen.
Add four desktops as a 2x2 grid, re-enable old CTRL+ALT+$ARROW keyboard shortcuts, add a couple of usability effects with custom key combinations and two active corners, and I'm done.
Some applications (Konsole, KATE) get custom fonts and themes, but everything else is bog standard. Setting it up takes 30-ish minutes, and it's the same config for decades now. Probably because of sharpening the same tool and optimizing without knowing.
Then, I can just concentrate and fly on that environment.
Also, they have improved a lot in the small areas where it was lacking. You can use your system without a terminal if you want, plus Baloo works really well.
I would argue that it actually doesn’t go far enough in windows-like-ness to be viable for a lot of people, and for those who prefer a mac-like setup the possible customization doesn’t take it far enough in that direction, either. It’s not Windows or macOS, it’s KDE, and that’s fine but I think there need to be environments more specifically aimed at people who are happy with their current commercial OS setups.
I'm a bit time-restrained while writing this reply, but I can argue that KDE is 95% there with macOS emulation, if you really want to go that far.
The only missing piece is "global menu bar" and full-screen applications.
Since I don't use KDE on a mobile system, I don't know how well multi-touch trackpad works, but the rest is almost there.
As I said that I neither need or desire to go that far (my custom layout works like a charm for me more than ~15 years now), but it's not off the left field for KDE.
I don’t really agree. The global menubar is a central pillar of the Mac desktop, so it being missing (or only present sometimes) is a big problem, and there’s lots of smaller things like differing conventions and design approaches. By my estimation, the furthest KDE can be made Mac-like is 55-60%. Anything further is going to take forking and wading through code.
The funny thing is, KDE 3.5.x had the global menu bar as a feature. It didn't get ported to >4.x since there was not much interest.
I guess it still can be done.
How mouse/keys/scrolling behaves, what pointing devices do in what cases are easy cases for KDE. Notification system is also pretty powerful.
The reality is, everything is cross-pollinating from each other. Even if making pixel-perfect copies is not possible, both are pretty interchangeable.
I use both Macs and KDE for more than 15 years now, and can switch from one to other instantly. Both are in front of me during a normal workday, and I just switch without thinking.
Transparent UI, with controls sitting on top of arbitrary and changing content can NEVER be legible/discernible. Apple knows this, but fashion was more important than function and they decided, "who cares about disabled people, anyway."
Microsoft learned this lesson back in the Vista era but Apple's charging ahead with this terrible set of changes that will literally disable millions of users, people who will need to visit the accessibility settings to reduce the transparency.
It's a sad day when a company that has often lead in accessibility ships the least accessible OS in modern history. I guess it was a nice run having a Big Tech company to point to as a good example of doing various accessibility things well. Damn.
Apple's accessibility features enabled my mother to enjoy what little independence she had due to a rare debilitating illness [Multiple System Atrophy].
She could read eBooks & emails, listen to audio books, view photos and call her family by herself (iPhone use extends to many uncles/aunties/cousins).
Every few months I would help her recalibrate her iPad as it was a vital life line.
I've been submitting endless feedback about how Liquid Arse breaks dark mode during the beta. I keep seeing dark text on dark backgrounds all over the place in both Tahoe and iOS 26, for example: https://imgur.com/a/R3DTcSd
I've pretty much given up with submitting feedback though.
CarPlay has dark text on dark backgrounds in the latest version of iOS. And I’m talking about stock apps like Messages, not some obscure text buried somewhere deep in the operating system.
I'm sorry, but that's not a logical stance. If this were the method that anyone in the industry used (which absolutely nobody does) all interfaces would be high contrast 150pt font, no transparency, two color, because that's what my grandma needs.
This is what happens when designers are treated as royalty and are told that their new "clothes" are "awesome" all the time.
It's also a symptom of consumption addiction where there is demand/motivation for drastic, superficial changes that don't really offer any value except to those who are consumed by the need for constant change for change's sake.
Apple used to care more about disabled people because of how the Accessibility APIs worked and were required for most apps.
It's also a lack of real competition. If a car company ships an ugly car, you can easily avoid buying it and go with a competitor. With tech products you're often locked into, at best, a duopoly. Worse, the products have become increasingly integrated such that it's impossible to pick and choose components from multiple vendors.
If you want Apple's hardware you're stuck on their software. If you want access to some professional software, you're stuck on Windows. Etc, etc. This all means that bad ideas or user-hostile behavior are rarely punished in the market. The biggest competitor to Windows is older versions of Windows. The biggest competitor to macOS is older versions of macOS.
Changing toolbars to text-only is pretty bad. The button hotboxes are tiny
Generally I think the toolbar settings needed more testing, they can be wonky (e.g. in Automator for text+icon it causes the traffic lights to misalign, in Safari toggling the sidebar on and off is janky).
You can turn off the transparency in the accessibility settings. Sure products could be 100% accessible out of the box but unless you had some sort of limit on that it would likely make the experience worse for the majority of users. I can’t imagine Helvetica Neue Extra Light was particularly accessible as the system font a decade ago - but there were accessibility settings.
I am the only one to think that these days, GNOME and KDE are more usable than anything made by Microsoft or Apple? I think part of the reason is that devs working on these projects don't have an incentive to make arbitrary changes like people who need to justify their paychecks.
Been using Fedora + KDE since ~March on my main dev machine (hp laptop), basically without any issues and it hasn't broken itself yet. Works amazing. KDE has cured my last bit of distrohopping I had left and I moved on from Gnome too. Things that irritate me on my last macos machine is literally 3 config toggles away in KDE.
In the coming month will install Fedora+KDE on 5 more machines for family members due to Windows 10 hitting end of life.
With KDE Plasma being so great, and Tahoe desktop UI being so awful, I am being nudged more and more towards using linux as my desktop instead of just using it headless.
Even Mate is more usable, and to do decent work on a Mac I need a Lenovo Thinkpad external keyboard, which is much better than anything Apple has to offer and it even has a trackpoint and two mouse buttons.
Can anyone speak to whether the performance of the Settings app has been improved? In Seq and every version since they redid it in presumably SwiftUI, if you select one of the navigation panes and then hold either the up or down arrow keys to quickly navigate between them, something like a memory leak occurs due to (seemingly) launching all of the nested panes as separate apps (this is what appears to be the case in activity monitor) and the Settings app will start lagging until you fully quit and reopen.
Whoa, you can now search clipboard history. Go to Spotlight Search, Command+4. You'll get a list of entries, each with a copy button, and is searchable. Even shows the app it was copied in.
Either way, I think it is better to not copy passwords to the clipboard or the selection, but store and transfer them via password-manager/browser/etc APIs.
And seriously, managers like 1Password clear the clipboard after some time. I would guess that there’s some clipboard API that allows managers to exclude copied passwords from being permanently added to the history.
Still, there are pieces of data that one might not want to store in such unobvious place as clipboard history so it’s good to know about it.
I use KeePassXC which does empty the keyboard after a few seconds. But keeping history seems like a breaking change to the social (if not technical) contract of the OS' clipboard API.
I'm normally on about 1 year delay on upgrading macOS for a multitude of reasons. I might not wait the full year but something else will have to force me to upgrade within the first few months.
I'd heard from people who were running the betas that it's not ready and they are surprised Tahoe wasn't delayed.
No way I'm upgrading any time soon to Apple's least cared for OS with a change this big (and this untested).
I'll be honest, I hear this every single time. But I've never delayed upgrading, and I've never regretted it. That's not to say every upgrade has been a strict improvement, but going back to my first Mac at 10.4 (Tiger) I've never wished I had stayed on an older version. We'll see how I feel after going to Tahoe, maybe this will be the one that breaks the trend.
You always have to be moving forward and I'll never say "I'll just stay on Sequoia for forever" but delaying a bit does make life easier. I know I'll eventually upgrade but being there day 1 or even month 1 is not something I'm interested in. There are never new features that outweigh sending my development workflows into disarray or dealing with broken apps.
There aren't always huge issues or huge time sinks but I'm happy to let other people be on the bleeding edge and I'll upgrade once the Github issues, blog posts, etc have been created/fixed so that when I upgrade I can easily find solutions to any remaining issues I might run into. Especially with Tahoe, I've heard that some apps are just broken, period, unless the developer makes (sometimes significant) changes to get the same functionality working again (that was working fine in Sequoia).
> But I've never delayed upgrading, and I've never regretted it.
I was the same way for until one of the upgrades, I forget which, broke resume from suspend about 10-20% of the time for my combination of laptop and monitor. Every morning I’d get a sense of dread when I tried to open the laptop to see if today was a day where I’d get to pick up where I left off or if I was in for a crash and reboot as soon as I tried to use the laptop.
I thought for sure it would be fixed with one of the point updates, but it went on for the better part of a year.
Any actual interesting changes under the hood other than UI changes? I cant remember the last time macOS release that actually brings any useful feature I use.
It's been so long since Apple has released anything in either iOS or macOS that excited me as a user. I don't seem to be their target customer anymore.
The only reason I even have to "upgrade" to a higher version number is how quickly app developers (including Apple themselves) drop support for older OS's. My iPhone which is stuck on iOS 15 runs just as well as the day I bought it, but every other app I download tells me (in essence) "LOL your phone is too old and our developers are too lazy to keep our software running on it. Upgrade your OS or get lost loser".
That's literally the only thing motivating me to upgrade anymore: The treadmill of software compatibility. Apple doesn't have to innovate--they just need to make sure the ecosystem is broken after ~5-10 years or so.
Isn't that true for pretty much every OS? The feature set we need to be able to do our jobs and computing hobbies have been available for two decades.
Operating systems like Debian is sufficiently boring that I can just upgrade and continue computing. macOS upgrades have become a small gamble, the stuff that I depend on may not continue to work, or at least it will take a good deal of work. There are however no reason to upgrade, so the risk isn't really worth the hassle of upgrading and breaking Java or Python.
You can still get software that installs and works perfectly on Windows 7 (released 16 years ago). Good luck finding software that even installs on Snow Leopard (released 16 years ago), let alone works well.
The flip side of this is that every attempt at advancing the Windows UI framework story beyond win32/MFC and WPF has failed and the platform itself is steeped neck deep in technical debt.
You can't blame this all on backwards compatibility. Microsoft can't just stick to one successor technology and keeps obsoleting every attempt after a few years. With that approach, of course no one is going to move over.
That’s one issue, but another is that they don’t make into successors full replacements. They’ve stuck to WinAppSDK aka WinUI for a while now, but it’s missing such basic elements as a datagrid/tableview which makes it difficult to take seriously as a desktop UI framework.
Also, they didn't even migrate their own internal dialogs with each replacement. You can still uncover dialog styles all the way back to Windows 95-style if you poke around Windows 11 long enough. Whenever they came out with yet another successor, they haphazardly migrated a handful of P1 components and then called it a day.
I mean OS updates are necessary, from security updates to support for new hardware. Stuff like init scripts were a suboptimal solution to begin with, it is not like that old stuff was a good solution. Xorg also doesn't fit how modern computers work, and is merely a collection of bandaids that is inherently unable to reach sane security by todays standards. So its not like progress is entirely superficial. And also with Flatpak there has emerged a way of shipping stuff such that used libraries can be shared but do not have to be, and every app can move at its own pace without conflicting with other apps or the OS. So at least in Linux land, especially in the last couple years, there has been great advances from a technical point of view. And those tackle also the problems arising when a huge number of indipendent parts come together, which were naturally very pronounced for Linux in the past.
Sometimes it’s Apple and Google that are forcing developers. The system is perfectly capable of running the app (you’re not using any new API) but store policies force you to add the restriction anyway.
Yeah we are in this situation right now with an App, we literally can't update it unless we target a more modern version of the SDK, which introduces breaking changes
Does it mean that you potentially have multiple version of the same software released if you are choosing to support devices that have been dropped from the latest SDK?
This problem could be mitigated by Apple making older versions of software available. Then you could continue to release updates, and users on older devices could continue to use earlier versions of your app on their devices.
Apple actually partially solves this: as a user, if I have EVER downloaded Older Version X of an app, and then go to download it again, they let me. However, if I have never downloaded the old version and go to download it, they just say “this app is not compatible with your device.” and don't give me the chance to get the older, compatible version. I don’t know why they make this distinction.
Worse are the third party apps where the old version still actually runs, but the developer deliberately blocks you with a full-screen “go away” dialog (I’m looking at you, FlightAware).
I got my first MacBook at Catalina, and still miss it. For a while, I downgraded my Intel Mac to Catalina again; I love the aesthetic compared to the newer releases, and it’s fast and snappy.
But the situation now is: No recent apps work on Catalina since it’s considered obsolete (except open-source apps you compile yourself). But Big Sur and higher are ridiculously slow on Intel hardware, to the point where it’s unusable. I now have an otherwise perfectly good 2019 Intel MacBook that has been gathering dust for the past years.
I’ve got a MacBook and Mac Mini stuck on Monterey (12), and an iMac stuck on Big Sur (11). I’m pretty much dead in the water when it comes to software compatibility, unless I want to put Linux on them. Even homebrew gives me a warning that they’ve stopped support and to expect everything to break. It’s a sad state of affairs.
This[1] worked well to upgrade old Macs that were stuck on old versions of macOS for me, if you're not choosing to stay on older versions for other reasons.
Support rapidly being dropped happens mostly with smaller devs, because when resources are limited in the Apple platform world you can either adopt newer APIs and language features or you can support old OSes 3+ versions back. Trying to do both lands you in feature check conditional hell and requires a large matrix of test devices to ensure that nothing is being broken.
It’s less of a burden for corporate giants which is why you see much longer support timelines from e.g. Google.
The immutable and atomic movement in Linuxland is very exciting. Cloud native distro building with docker/podman in CI pipelines is just insane: Building+testing+deployment with ci/cd can now not only be done with some python package, but a whole distribution. Also Wayland, Pipewire, Flatpak and Btrfs are great stuff. Of course they don't get developed in one release cycle, but in recent years they made large leaps and became default on many distros.
Not Linux, but I still look forward to window managers and Neovim releases. The Cosmic desktop also looks promising, though I’m not using it until it has a scrolling window manager available for it.
Spotlight got a major upgrade. It’s notably faster and deeply integrates with Shortcuts (letting you specify input variables, for example) among other things.
I’ve got Spotlight configured to index nothing but my applications (which is surprisingly difficult to configure and breaks with every major OS upgrade). Disabling all its default indexing has alleviated 95% of unexplainable CPU spikes and autocomplete pollution, so now I can finally use it for what it’s meant to be: the most overengineered fuzzy finder application launcher.
I actually preferred the pre-tahoe spotlight. The information density was higher and while it did not always give me the most relevant result atleast it was consistent and I could scroll down to find it. New spotlight is less dense and jumbles everything together.
Anyone using Raycast has had these features forever. Nice to see some attention on Spotlight but it's still nowhere close to the functionality you get from Raycast.
I've been using Raycast for a couple months but I'm hoping I can uninstall it if Spotlight is responsive enough in Tahoe. What bothers me about Raycast is the monthly subscription for certain features. I don't mind paying for Mac software – I'm quite happy to do that – but I do mind paying monthly subscriptions for Mac software with seemingly no justification for it (i.e. what monthly resources does running a "window command" use on Raycast that justifies locking it behind a monthly subscription?)
I thought Pro was only for AI features as well (that's what it said when I installed Raycast), but this dialog is saying Pro is required for custom window layouts as well. I only discovered this today when I was trying to create a new command to paste the screenshot from my clipboard into Preview for OCR.
Raycast is interesting but I’m not going to touch it so long as VC funding is involved. Alfred has been doing the job well enough, only requires me to buy a new version a couple times per decade, and isn’t going to become enshittified because there’s no VCs to come knocking looking for a profit.
+1 for Alfred. I'm a proud Power Pack / lifetime-license holder from the beginning. Very few outfits anymore have the chops to both offer and make good on a single-payment, long-lasting product with frequent and excellent substantive updates.
It’s insanely tiny and efficient for what it does, too. One of the only apps that’s so small that updates are done downloading within a second or two of clicking “Download”, even on a mediocre connection!
I'm the solo user of my device & have rarely if ever launched Photos or Photo Booth, but I launch Photoshop a handful of times everytime I work.
For the last few years, it is a total gamble of what Spotlight's first suggestion will be when I trigger it and type "Pho"
Often, Photos.app
Weirdly, about once a week, Photo Booth.app
80% of the time, it correctly guesses Photoshop.app
So I can't just trigger spotlight, type "pho", and hit return. I have to wait for Spotlight's guess, sometimes arrow to Photoshop, or sometimes just hit enter when it guesses correctly.
So many macOS microFrustrations like this, and now Tahoe looks like it does.
The fact that so much of the page is devoted to this liquid glass feature pretty much tells you the answer is no. Plus the fact that the "And so much more" section lists 10 different updates in the same space as their poster with a link to a PDF instead of building out a larger webpage speaks volumes.
I have 5000+ git repos locally that I grep through regularly and I have to admit my hopes for ASIF being faster were busted. It is faster than sparsebundle, but nowhere near native, unfortunately.
TextEdit has a styling toolbar now which I appreciate. The new spotlight has more functionality and seems faster (and less likely to pull up a website instead of the app I'm trying to launch)
Apple had a chance to bring back taste when they got rid of Ive, but missed it entirely. The overly rounded windows, the weird amount of blank space, the lack of clarity in general — the only thing that makes sense is that middle managers brought this about.
edit: Things are even worse — they already made newer apps much more difficult to read, likely because they have been brought from mobile to desktop. Now fonts are even smaller in System Settings, for example. What are they even thinking?
> Now fonts are even smaller in System Settings, for example. What are they even thinking?
It's worse on the iPad. They apparently think an iPad is now also a mouse and cursor device because they made touch targets so small, and the fonts in menus shrunk down making them more difficult touch targets as well.
Read most of the comment, was hesitated. Then thought "it can't be that bad". Ok, it is that bad. I absolutely hate extra round corners and extra margin in the windows. Sigh.
I usually agree (and enjoy reading angry threads years later), but wasting screen real estate and getting measurably worse in terms of accessibility is simply not a good design decision.
Apple released its new operating system today, macOS Tahoe. This is a full version upgrade (26.0) with a new look, feel, and many changes. At this time, I recommend NOT updating to Tahoe for the following reasons:
Stability: Version 26.0 is the first release and, like most “.0” versions, contains glitches that will take time to fix. Later versions (26.1, 26.2, etc.) are expected to address these issues.
Release Cycle: Apple now releases a new macOS every year instead of every two years. These initial yearly releases are often closer to “beta” products, and Apple typically patches problems over the first 6–8 weeks.
There is no real advantage to upgrading right now. It’s best to wait 6–8 weeks until the system stabilizes and then reevaluate.
How to Skip the Upgrade
When prompted, simply do not click “Upgrade Now.” This upgrade may pop up on your machine over the course of the next few days.
Close the upgrade window, or scroll down to select other updates.
For reference, macOS Sequoia (15.x) is now at version 15.7, which means it’s very stable and well-patched.
First rule of MacOS upgrade: don't.
Second rule: wait for x.1 or x.2 releases, so it's more stable and most importantly, the dependencies you need get updated.
Had such a bad experience with Sonoma, multiple micro-glitches that stole time and focus, that I dropped back to Ventura and have been avoiding updates ever since. The weird thing is that despite numerous bugs being logged all over the place, the 'new features' updates from Apple OS didn't seem to address any of them. They were mostly weird gimmicky new add-ons that don't mean anything to a power-user.
I might be interested in trying Tahoe if they'd undone whatever the awful policy is that puts a tonne of unwanted apps and desktop pics etc into your desktop that cannot be removed. I don't want Apple News, the clock in the menu bar and even Airplay - I purchased the computer, why can't I have what I want on it without compulsory apps from Apple?
Maybe it's new and controversial, but I like it. Honestly, I think there is something more about it. Like another Apple product that we're going to see in the future, like Apple glasses would work perfectly with this UI.
I've been using it for ~6 weeks, and I'm also a bit confused by the hate since it's barely changed. I'm a fan of the improved UX harmonization across form factors. My intuition is that the minor and gradual "Duploization" of macOS in Sequoia and now Tahoe foreshadows touchscreen MacBooks.
> I'm a fan of the improved UX harmonization across form factors.
Don't understand why. A ~6" phone screen and a 3x1440p setup have little in common regarding what "effective" UX looks like. Unifying them for the sake of consistency risks making both worse.
Absolutely, scalable UX is a hard problem, and it's taken Apple nearly two decades to get to this point. But to be able to learn a "Control Center pattern" (for example) and apply that across desktop, tablet, phone, HMDs and TV UXs has real benefits for ordinary users.
I don't see it. What I see is a crippled Control Centre in macOS because Apple couldn't be bothered to adapt it for a desktop environment. For example, there's no equivalent to "long tap" on macOS Control Centre, nor does right click do anything. So what you have left is the lowest common denominator of behaviours that could be supported with single-left-click only.
This isn't unifying anything, but providing the laziest solution possible for MacOS by copy/pasting the visual design of iOS.
Sidenote: Does macOS Control Center even support any shortcut keys? I've honestly never tried, but a cursory search suggests there's no way to map a shortcut key to a Control Center action though you can open it with Fn-C. Again, lazy copy/paste of the iOS UI without adding any of the functionality a desktop power user might expect.
> For example, there's no equivalent to "long tap" on macOS Control Centre, nor does right click do anything.
Long-press isn't a macOS convention, which I assume is why there's an "Edit Controls" button at the bottom of Control Center for macOS. Right-clicking controls does show contextual menus as you'd expect.
> …a cursory search suggests there's no way to map a shortcut key to a Control Center action…
Desktop power users can (1) Fn-C and tab through them (as you said), (2) navigate Control Center using macOS's usual keyboard accessibility features, (3) create keyboard-activated Shortcuts, (4) use third-party utilities like Keyboard Maestro and Karabiner-Elements, etc.
I understand that Linux has solved this problem, but it's interesting to see Apple's progress on harmonizing their OS/device experiences over the last decade. I expect that there will always be shitty individual UI details you can pick on if that's your thing, like this detail from macOS 26.0's Calendar: https://imgur.com/a/BYalaa1
I agree with you. It really hasn't changed all that much. It's a bit more cartooney, but as long as it doesn't get in the way of my work, I don't care.
It looks like a lot of the hate flowing on HN is just people looking at worst-case screenshots on blogs and piling on. They haven't even used it.
There are a few things I'm not wild about, but for the most part it's a bunch of shoulder-shrugs. This isn't the end-of-the-world scenario that people are making it out to be.
I have a regular non-techie person in the family with a Mac who I think will like the changes. Those are the people who Apple is targeting. Not the tech bros and the wannabe posers who are desperately clutching their 10-year-old iPhones out of some kind of righteous indignation.
Same. I like it so far. After the upgrade I spent a lot of time looking around, trying things out, and generally exploring. I haven’t haven’t felt that sense of exploration and discovery since the first iPhone.
The latest macOS updates have me pining for macOS Mojave. I really liked that release - first-class dark mode support that felt reasonably polished, it still had a "normal" Mac OS X style UI, 32-bit support if you wanted it, it was snappy even on my 3 year old 2015 MBPr, and I think it wouldn't look out of place on a modern M4 Mac even though it's a seven year old release.
I’ve been using Omarchy (Arch+Hyprland) as my daily driver for over a month. It is faster, prettier and more efficient than macOS in my opinion. I have a Framework 16” on order. I can’t wait to get it.
Thanks for the suggestion but that's just for Chrome/Chromium isn't it?
It's a nice start but really I'm looking for something that works for the entire screen desktop. I did have a plugin for Gnome that sort of worked (Meta+scroll) but it's very clunky compared to the macOS equivalent.
it is, but as Omarchy is heavily based on web apps, which include Figma, Notion, Google Photos, etc. it works there too.
And in the native apps, such as Terminal, Obsidian, etc., you can just use ctrl++ or ctrl+-. At least that is how i use it. Or what specific apps you need that?
If there are enough OGs, they should recall Windows XP with all those bells and whistles AND those life-saving switch to "Windows Classic" that survived next three generations of Windows.
I personally pray for that "MacOS classic" switch... It's sad to enter that decay era for Apple where every next software upgrade for the device feels effectively as a hardware downgrade.
Curious what your life is like that you can 'just' switch to Linux. For me changing desktop OSes at this point would be like moving to a different country.
A small but important detail of Aqua was that the assumed light source was pointing straight down, whereas everybody else was usually using a 45 degrees angle. I wish Apple took a lesson from the old masters.
Also these colors make my eyes bleed. And the border radius is ridiculous.
Am I one of few people that doesn't have a big negative sentiment torwards Tahoe? I suspect that if it is this bad they will start making a point release to address liquid glass. I do agree though that there is a jarring look to the slabs of glass on glass for the layouts in the system. Another thing that sort of weirds me out is that the system preferences has the icons being loaded after the window is present and I have liked using spotlight for a much longer time. I have also been using Siri by typing in queries and the integration of the dynamic island into the menu bar is pretty great.
It's not bad, I barely noticed the change. Most of the comments are just trolls by people who don't own a Macbook, as you can see from their posts suggesting their Framework laptops and Arch linux.
I've run every version of macOS since Mac OS X Public Beta. I'm pretty sure I'm going to skip Tahoe. macOS 15 Sequoia is great; why would I switch to something profoundly ugly and unpolished if everything will keep running on my current OS and Apple's liable to make macOS 27 look tolerable?
More ways to express yourself with images.
Mix emoji and descriptions to make something brand-new. In Image Playground, discover additional ChatGPT styles. And have even more control when making images inspired by family and friends using Genmoji and Image Playground.
I have to say, is AI image generation really the job of an operating system? I've also seen this sort of stuff on Pixel Android, it's now built into mspaint on Windows 11 and there's also copilot everywhere. Does anyone even use this stuff? It requires constant updates and maintenance to support newer models, in my experience it gets stale and outdated much more quickly. I think it would be better served by the user just opening their web browser to go to ChatGPT (or other service) which receives latest model upgrades first. Am I going crazy or is this just a horrible idea?
It always seemed quite cringe to me. A use it once and "Ehh I guess it works and is cool, sure" and then never touch it again sort of feature.
Other than old people that always send gifs on Facebook and children who this is probably one of the only AI art things they have access too, idk who else uses this.
If one tech giant has it then they need to too for feature parity. Not a whole lot of use cases for generative AI for the masses, so if someone comes up with one, gotta copy!
I've been using Tahoe since yesterday and so far I find the glass changes fine. I don't have any sort of accessibility requirements and I can understand how loss-of-contrast may impact folks but to me it feels fresh.
What an ugly UI update. I usually don't mind too much about the changes in MacOS UI and visuals, but opening up Finder leaves me shocked that this actually got the green light. Who in their right mind looked at this and thought: "yep that's the future, it looks fantastic!".
For Finder I discovered that changing the Toolbar to Icon Only significantly improved it. Then I set the sidebar icons to small in the Appearance system setting. That helped a lot.
Most of the new UI is designed almost exclusively for icon only toolbars.
I posted this before but again, this new OS from Apple is the deal breaker for me to buy any new devices from Apple again. And I’ll hold on the existing OS until Apple won’t provide any security updates anymore.
MacOS updates are probably the best I know of for any unix-like OS.
It was one of the main benefits of switching from ubuntu. I just did the update this morning and I'm carrying on with my work like nothing happened. I'm a software developer and run everything from docker to ios/android simulators and vscode. All seems fine.
Writing this comment from my FrameWork laptop with AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 96GB Ram, 4TB Storage, that I got for $4k. Running Fedora with KDE. How much would I need to pay Apple to get a laptop with this much ram?
The day I got my only Apple device, an ipad, only to know they will kill my browser download as soon as I switch to a different app, it became my last. I don't want to pay a company only to be subject to their decision of what I can and cannot run on my machine.
You could buy a Lenovo with the same spec for a good grand less. And people buy Macbooks so that they don't have to deal with the abomination that is called Linux/GNU and GPL, not for the hardware.
I'm not quite sure what to make of Liquid Glass, I developed an allergy of sorts to the term while listening to the keynote.
Any 'relevant' new features for power users / cmd line geeks that you know of?
The changes to Spotlight are fairly power-user focused. There's a lot of enhancements to make it quicker to set up shortcuts within it, and they've added a clipboard manager feature to it.
Apple Notes now supports Markdown import and export.
Spotlight now supports actions, so you can do things directly from Spotlight (kind of like Quicksilver back in the day, or Raycast more currently). Your custom made Shortcuts can also be triggered. It’s also context aware, so you can do things for the app/document you’re in.
Spotlight also integrates clipboard history.
The Terminal gets Powerline glyphs, new themes, and new fonts.
Not a direct response to your question but (I guess like you) I often find with these releases that the changes I actually care about aren’t flashy enough to even warrant a mention in the presentations or on the main web page.
There seems to be some expansion of screen time, finally, but I haven’t been able to figure out what it is yet based on the only *os 26 update I’ve done so far is the public beta on a single Apple TV.
I don't like things getting more and more round (quite often having custom css with `* { border-radius: 0px !important; }`) and they are going even worse with it.
I don't like transparency - it's flashy but in overwhelming majority of cases is just a gimmick distraction (like transparent terminals on linux)
Among all macOS apps and their weird choices, finder is the most enigmatic one.
The Recents tab sorts by Last Opened by default where I would expect to see the rencently added files first.
Sorting by another column will not add said column to the view.
Files from the Downloads folders seems to be excluded from Recents, or they take hours to be taken into account.
It does not show the current path, no button to go up the file tree, the only text input is behind this search button and it does not understand relative or full paths.
Well, thank god I have a terminal and an IDE at hand.
Meanwhile in iOSland I am hesitant to update an iPhone SE 2nd gen from 16 to 18 due to the apparant lack of option to customize the charging limit. To anyone with an engineer mind, this seems like a non-implementation that would have an excuse behind it if it were ever exposed. I also wonder if the Personal Hotspot wifi bug ever will get fixed for old hardware, or will the speculation remain of another service changing its mode to promiscuous momentarily for the sake of more data collection.
And also AD-Hoc wifi which was quietly taken away. Many many developer rely on it. Yes there are some apps that the added latency via wifi hub vs ad-hoc wifi makes the difference!!!!
To be honest I just installed last night and the only significant change I notice are the round corners. And now the email app have a progress indicator.
Other than that is just windows vista visuals, but not as shit as windows vista.
But it's bad, because the new rounded style with floating buttons doesn't match the traditional UI toolkit and it shows. They've messed up the whole layout where windows have a title bar and then a sidebar, etc. Now the side rail is on top, and all the toolbar buttons float, but you're still supposed to know you can drag on the title bar, but there are no visual signifiers (affordances). It's harder to visually parse the mess, there is no visual hierarchy and everything is floating and has a drop shadow now. And then there is the double border on the left side, where for some reason the sider rail also needs to be floating, which just takes up more space. And it's just for visuals, some apps show content under it (like the wallpaper), while finder for example doesn't, so it's really inconsistent and means nothing.
I took screen shots of a few inconsistencies that bother me, things getting cut off or looking visually messy. The most egregious is the music app showing a dinky progress bar that's almost impossible to mouse over and when you do it blurs everything so you don't see the song name. There was real estate for that whole currently playing section to be bigger so you can start dragging that slider immediately without hovering over it first.
If Apple stopped at the over-saturated/rounded-corners, it would have been a decent iteration on something established (and very much not broken). I realise the transparent icons are optional - but it now looks like a budget Android theme.
A reminder, if you dislike the liquid glass look, that going into System settings / Accessibility / Display and toggling “Increase contrast” gets you a properly nice design with actual borders and solid backgrounds. 100% recommended.
I initially tried that and thought it improved some things, but it increased contrast across the OS, such that some webpages, including stock HN became too blinding. I instead switched to "Reduce Transparency," but that has its own issues.
Overall not pleased. I really did not want to care about the UI changes at all. But having experienced it now, I'm so annoyed I upgraded to iOS 26 and I'm having trouble focusing on the screen. I want WebGPU support, but I'm very hesitant to upgrade to macOS 26 (which is required for WebGPU in Safari).
If you use the societal modal of disability as your lens on liquid glass you can see that it’s not you with a disability, it’s Apple disabling your ability to use the system with their design choices.
The part that I am so tired of is the ‘we are the best at this and this is amazing’ pitch that comes with every release. Never mind that this release’s design ‘language’ DIRECTLY conflicts with things they used to say ‘never do that’.
So what changed exactly? Change is understandable but this is a full 180.
- floating anything was verboten
- accessibility was paramount
- clarity was prioritized
It’s butt-ugly, but I find the usability better. Previously everything was so white that I found it difficult on occasion to distinguish between windows above and below. The heavier drop shadows and rounded corners are actually quite helpful
Open up the Calendar app on macOS Tahoe. Look in the upper right at the time zone selector. It is left justified to a fault, leaving a very awkward amount of space between it and the expand arrow/flyout arrows.
At least he was consistent and the UI design made sense, textures aside. And UI gossip aside, all the accounts from every engineer who worked under him consistently praised him.
Safari with its KHTML underpinnings was also created under his watch, apparently.
Webkit (along with Safari) was started under Avie Tevanian's watch. Scott Forstall worked under him and Bertrand Serlet, along with Lisa Melton, who lead the development team for Webkit. Forstall was responsible for the development and release of Apple Maps.
And for Apple Maps, I remember reading somewhere that one reason Forstall refused to sign the infamous apology letter was that the initial release was from a team not directly under his supervision, but I can't find the old reference to that...granted, whatever went down was probably a joint failure of everyone involved
Who is macOS designed for? I assume a non negligible customer base are software professionals and this iOSification of the desktop is borderline hostile. I don’t get it.
I'm a software developer as well and I avoid programming on the Mac whenever possible (i.e. developing on Linux and just go to the Mac to build and test). Since the last OS version, you cannot even download and run precompiled open source software without being an expert, and we can expect that Apple will even close the present work-arounds for "security reasons" (what a good justification for all kinds of monopolistic and patronizing business decisions).
If anyone here feel aggravated by both Liquid Glass and whatever Windows 11 calls their UI, give KDE a try (Fedora is pretty stable with it). After tweaking a few things (display dpi, theme, wallpaper) - its a very coherent experience & information dense. You can do 95% of your computing in this environment. After getting used to KDE, it will be hard to go back to windows or macos.
They openly fucked DP 1.4 to make the ProDisplay XDR work.
Catalina, sure, you can drive a DP 1.4 monitor at 144Hz in HDR10. Big Sur, coinciding with the ProDisplay...? No, that will get you 60Hz HDR10 or 95Hz SDR.
So stupidly that downgrading my monitor (mine would allow you to select advertised support) to DP 1.2 would increase your refresh and HDR options.
And it was never fixed, not in Big Sur, Monterey or Ventura, when I had switched monitors.
People were wondering how Apple made the math work. Simple, by "Fuck you if your monitor isn't our $6,000 flagship".
Eh, it has always looked horrible. Non fractional scaling is just too much to ask at this point...but hey look at this tiny toggle element doing this cool liquidy effect wohoo
Only since OS X Yosemite. Then they decided to mess with the font smoothing and it went downhill from there. And no, it wasn't because of Retina, as OS X Mavericks had Retina support and still worked fine on low DPI screens.
update: my god how did they release it in this state. The inconsistencies in the UI.. my dark mode widgets are now white.. different border radiuses by app.. I've found 2 UI bugs in under an hour
A lot of the focus here is on the design (obviously). It took me a while to get used to it. But there are a lot of really great improvements in this release that make it worth it. Spotlight gets big updates. Live activities and notifications syncing from your phone. Journal. Music app has been massively updated and redesigned. Phone app. And surprisingly it doesn’t feel like a launch release - definitely less buggy than previous efforts.
> Music app has been massively updated and redesigned.
How is this good design? I have to precisely hover over the puny slider and then it blurs everything? There is enough space to show proper controls for playback. And why are the controls at the bottom.
That doesn't take away from the fact it had a major update and redesign. There are definitely still issues but it seems much snappier than the previous iteration where it felt like using embedded web views. Pins are great too.
I still need to use the Scroll Reverser because the scroll direction (aka natural scrolling) can only be turned on or off globally, not per pointing device. I love natural scrolling on the trackpad, but it doesn't make sense on the mouse scroll wheel.
I use a Shortcut for this because it cuts down on the unnecessary apps. Hammerspoon.app would work too though.
tell application "System Settings"
activate
end tell
delay 0.1
tell application "System Events"
tell process "System Settings"
click menu item "Trackpad" of menu "View" of menu bar 1
delay 0.25
click radio button 2 of tab group 1 of group 1 of group 2 of splitter group 1 of group 1 of window 1
click checkbox "Natural scrolling" of group 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1 of group 2 of splitter group 1 of group 1 of window 1
tell application "System Settings" to quit
end tell
end tell
For me the main thing is that search is now more prominent for a lot of apps (this is even more true on iOS). It used to be that we had to go to the top on iOS to get search but now it's always at the bottom near the fingers.
Two of the latest Intel MacBooks, and the last Intel iMac, so technically, yes, there’s still some Intel support in there. My 2019 iMac is one version too old.
Apple have always seemed to drop support for hardware after 5-7 years, and then it's just a question of the last supported OS becoming itself unsupported too. My early 2015 Macbook Pro (new in April 2015) got as far as macOS Monterey (released October 2021) - and they stopped updating that in October 2024.
(I'm not digging through Wikipedia to double check but my previous 2 Macbooks Pro felt like they lasted about as long.)
It'll be interesting to see if they change this with the (presumably cleaner slate) Apple Silicon-based hardware.
The main selling point of a macbook is not a UI with transparency. It's hardware stuff (like ARM processors, battery life, aluminum frames, etc..) and a decent, stable, unix-ish software environment. No one is using macOS for the visual effects, so it is annoying that Apple is revamping the UI everyone is used to in order to add more visual effects.
Seems nuts to me, but I'll be curious to see how this all pans out.
Just upgraded my wife’s laptop and my iPhone. It’s fine. I think her use (she lives in the browser) and my iPhone use (calls, camera, browser) don’t really reveal anything terrible. It’s kind of a dumb gimmick, but it’s mostly fine so far. It would annoy me if a UI that I frequently used “upgraded” to this, though.
i really wish they didn't give up on stage manager. every beta i would look if they fixed the opening behavior to open a new application in the same stage :/ but stage manager seems like it would have potential to fix window management on the mac without needing rectangle, yabai, alt tab etc
Not a fan of the new Safari design. I used to like it for its compact and minimalist look, but now the address bar and tab bar feel like they take up more space than they should.
This is the first time I've ever seen a macOS update and not seen a single feature worth bothering to upgrade over. Is there anything developer-facing? I don't use any Apple ecosystem stuff and this is all that AFAICT
Anytime a UI redesign comes with bullshit abstract designer justifications ("a translucent new material that reflects and refracts its surroundings", etc) you know it's bad.
are they giving any hints that in high vis/accessibility modes this will be fully disabled? I've been largely insulated from changes like this for a while by that, if that were to change however, more drastic measures may be needed
I'd like to see the presentation they used internally to sell the liquid glass aeshetic. I bet it is sillier than the famous Pepsi logo redesign document.
Widget appearance is tied to *icon appearance. Grumble grumble. I want clear for my widgets but default for my dock and other icons. Too bad so sad me I guess.
edit: replaced dock with icon, because it affects much more than just dock
I've grown so used to Apple shipping buggy software that I wait a year or more before upgrading my mac to a major version. I do all the minor releases and security patches, of course.
Is that call screening example a new feature or something I can do now that I didn't know about? That's something I've missed since switching from a Pixel to an iPhone last year.
That’s the goal of all their products, the hardware as well. Get out of your way, and effectively disappear, so you can focus on what you’re actually working on.
I take it as a sign of typical increasing corporate dysfunction. Obvious problems, some even easy and uncontroversial, don't get fixed. Why?
The people who can fix them are not in control. The org must be very top-down. But Steve Jobs had a top down style, so what's the difference? Its: Using and caring about the product.
It's top down direction with the people at the top not using/caring about the product. Presumably they're concerned with other things like efficiency, stocks, clout.
Also if you had a majorly obvious bug, you could email steve@apple.com, which he would forward to a VP, who would be fired if it wasn't fixed ASAP. Knew a guy who lost his job that way, so it's not just a myth. Steve really was like that.
The wrath of Steve was a real thing that people feared.
On the one hand, this kind of thing seems like a mercurial, dictatorial management style. On the other hand, you do need a way to cut through the levels of hierarchy in a large company so that fixes like this don't always get bogged down in process and stakeholder meetings.
It seemed to work for Apple/Steve Jobs, but I'm not convinced it would work for everyone.
Menu extras were never intended to be treated like Windows tray items. For the earlier portion of OS X’s life, there wasn’t even a public API to create them and required a hack and a private API, and the current API is intended for ephemeral menu extras that disappear when their host app isn’t running. In short, the menubar isn’t designed for users to collect menu extras like Pokémon.
It used to be a checkbox, now there's only this command.
Eventually that will be gone too, and none will be the wiser except the old who remember the good old days.
I'm starting to think these settings are left there by rogue engineers who fight against the oppression while staying under the radar. It's like a secret cabal that works to maintain sanity while the plebs are left to suffer at the mercy of their own ignorance.
macOS applies something called "font smoothing" (image) which is adding a layer of pixels to your text. The effect is that text is made a little more bold—not "bad" but it isn't exactly as the typeface designers intended.
Here's a good example:
The thing about 4K on macOS is that its sharpest setting will be when you make it "look like 1080p" which means its sized like a 1080p monitor but its 2x sharper. If you make it "look like 1440p" which is what you're used to, macOS will draw a 5K image and scale it down to "look like 1440p" but it doesn't fit the pixels on your display 1:1, so there is a slight blur or its not as sharp as native "looks like 1080p"—but it will still be sharper than your 32-inch 1440p display, so I still recommend you move forward if sharp viewing is a priority. The only sharper alternative is to buy Apple's 27-inch 5K display at $1600 (although $1300 refurb) or a 32-inch 6K display (Dell and Apple make them).
BetterDisplay has an option to "disable" the notch i.e push the menubar down, essentially making the screen the same as before there were a notch. Lose a little bit of real estate, but regain sanity.
There are some dedicated apps for that like Say No To Notch.
If you really want to use such a thing, switch to Ice. It’s an open source thing similar to Bartender, before BT was bought by a shifty outfit. It still requires those permissions, but at least you can look at the code. I have a paid Bartender license. I liked it enough to pay for it, but don’t like the road it went down and stopped using it.
Tahoe lets you selectively remove app icons from the menu bar. I’m going to try that for a while and see if I can tolerate not using Ice anymore.
I think they kinda did? I'm not sure where to look for a link to this info, but I remember watching a YouTube video showing the ability to group and hide menu bar icons in Tahoe so they take up less space (and therefore encroach less toward the notch).
Maybe I'm misremembering the video though.
(edit) The linked page seems to hint at it:
> Personalized controls and menu bar. Your display feels even larger with the transparent menu bar. And you have more ways to customize the controls and layout in the menu bar and Control Center, even those from third parties
Notice how on the menu bar, when you click File and then the dropdown appears, you can move the mouse arrow to the right (without clicking) over Edit and now the Edit menu shows up. But the same doesn't work on the status menu icons, if I click on the volume icon and move the mouse, nothing happens, the volume menu stays open, even if hover over the battery indicator. So many little things like this that never worked consistently.
I'm trying to give it a chance but it's kind of rough.
- File save dialog has a massively reduced width sidebar. It has a resize handle. But the resize handle does nothing. This is the most infuriating thing for me because all of my sidebar locations are cut off.
- M4 Pro Macbook Pro and I'm now experiencing stuttering when scrolling.
- Why is everything in Spotlight enormous?! Was it always like this and I just seemingly never noticed?
Otherwise, if you 'reduce transparency' and turn off 'tint window background with wallpaper color' (both of which I had done already anyway), things are decidedly nicer visually.
I'm so bummed that the workarounds to keep a 5k iMac in commission all seem to be really likely to piss off your corporate IT department.
Patching the bootloader in memory seems like a big op-sec no-no.
Last time this came up on Hacker News, someone pointed out that there are new display boards you can buy from China to reuse a 5K's panel as an external display.
I think we're only allowed to run Linux at work on blessed devices. Last I looked, the 5K panel in the iMac was actually presented to the firmware as two smaller displays, which were glued back together in software. Apple does that magic to support its own hardware, but it sounded like Linux doesn't.
Thank you so much. I only need a Mac to compile/debug with Xcode (still can't get USB pass through with quickemu working) but Apple has been killing old versions such that projects wont build and home brew has no bottles and whatnot.
I'm ok with most of it but let us get rid of the stupid rounded corners. Apple clearly does great HW and it does great systems. OTOH, its UI is faddish.
I don't think so, apple supposedly cares about aesthetics and design. If I didn't care about little details I would use windows. Like Steve Jobs said, it comes down to taste. Why would I use a flawed unpolished product, it doesn't reassure me that the technical side was even done well.
This UI refresh seems better than Jony Ive’s attempt. The first version he was in control of was probably the worst UI they’ve had. Poor contrast, ultra-thin fonts, strange color pallet, and the buttons were gone. Need a back button, here: <. Liquid Glass seems much better than that, and they will continue to refine it, just like they did Ive’s design.
This is a really rough UI update to ship out of Apple.
I don't want to use "the worst UI thing they've ever done" lightly, but it is hard to think of something that feels this unfinished and hard to use. Why are none of the corner radii consistent? This is literally the sort of thing Apple's entire reputation is built on getting right! It's like an amateur hour Linux skin.
Which is a bit sad. There were some choices that didn’t pan out in the last Intel era (butterfly, touchbar), but part of me loved those changes (the keyboard and the touchbar felt super premium, until you tried to work with them for any amount of time).
If you're up for a project, you can swap the guts of those 5K iMacs for an aftermarket controller board which turns it into a regular monitor. It's a bit janky but a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a new 5K monitor.
I hate to say it, but Windows is much more productive than MacOS for the usually tasks you perform on an OS (with GUI, both have CLIs, but I'm not talking about them). I'm using both at work all day long switching between them. When reflecting why, I think it comes down to windows management and the file explorer (vs finder).
That’s an entirely subjective thing, though. I’ve used Macs more than PCs and I can’t stand what feels to me like Windows’s abysmal window management.
I don’t say that to argue that macOS is better at it, just that I strongly prefer the Mac way as much as you prefer the way Windows does things, and that’s perfectly fine.
I’ve used both interchangeably for decades and can swap between them without slowing.
So much of this comes down to knowledge of and experiences with the quick/er ways for getting around.
For quite sometime using search tools is vastly more efficient for navigation and file movement than Explorer or Finder anyway.
Is there anywhere to find a comprehensive list of updates made "Under the hood"? Sure the new UI is cool and all, but what are they doing to make the OS better? In a previous life I was a mac administrator and every update, apple would remove some binary and suddenly we couldn't natively make calls to LDAP or something.
I hope they'll acknowledge what they've done and fix most of this nonsense. I like macOS how it is right now, and I switched from Linux partly for this. I always wonder why don't they just add new stuff based on user feedback?
Looking at this webpage I realise I am absolutely no longer part of Apple’s demographic for MacOS. I couldn’t care less about any of these new features. I was hoping the UI would be improved but it’s just a diabolical clusterfuck.
The poor application scripting story on macOS has made me grumpy for the last few releases of macOS.
AppleScript was never good, but the tooling has been left to rot and other language bindings steadily deprecated. And it seems it has not improved in Tahoe. I know the product manager of scripting for macOS ran it into the ground before being let go, but I've seen no discernible improvements.
For a platform touted as the first choice for technical users, this is a really poor showing.
I hate it. Everything has become larger and weirder and uglier? When I reboot the machine the time on the lock screen is in liquid glass but the date isn't?
I suppose I'm in the minority, but I do like the new changes. It's refreshing, and looks good. Most issues can be tweaked away if you desire that. (disabling transparency or removing tint window with background wallpaper)
What I want is my single row Safari address+tabbar back - why did they take it out? And where the hell is the newly refreshed Terminal.app?
I mean it’s gotten bad already, but I think people’s hope is that they fixed it that if I type in a file name I work with all the time it’ll be the first result. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.
that and some kind of weighted memory for search history. i use photoshop almost daily, photos once a month or so, and photo booth once a year, but they appear in reverse order based on alphabetization.
Disappointed with the background image. I was expecting a similar treatment like with Sequoia and previous versions with a beautiful and inspiring scene in nature. Instead it is vaguely inspired by water?
Things I like: reintroducing a little bit of 3D/skeumorphism. I'm sick of flat. Also the Music and Podcasts app changes aren't bad. Haven't tried the iPhone/desktop tighter integration but it looks interesting. Not UI, but it seems like my wifi is faster, but I could also be nuts. Maybe a driver update?
Things that are "meh": the "apps" thing that replaces the previous launch pad, the translucency, the "dark" icon theme.
Things I don't like: stop wasting my f'ing screen real estate. Stop it with the unnecessary whitespace and the f'ing thicc menu bar. This is a desktop/laptop and it's for real work. It's also ugly. Speaking of ugly, I count several different window corner radii. Why do Windows need gigantically rounded corners?
Now imagine it being said by someone presenting and doing the same hand pyramid stance that they make every Apple employee in WWDC videos do.
All kidding aside, it’s weird to read. Ever since I was a kid, I was taught that beginning a sentence with “And” or “But” is not “correct”. Times change and all that, I get it - it’s just weird though.
All of the major commercial OS vendors are trying to do that. Apple started it with iOS. Google have gradually been tightening the net. Microsoft are furthest away but they have the longest legacy of freedom so they the furthest to go.
Obviously they aren't going to publicly say that's their intent, but you don't have to be a genius to read between the lines.
As for why... money and power are pretty big motivators.
What evidence have you got that they aren't? I don't see why you're expecting some quote from Tim Cook saying "yes we're going to lock down macos in the next 10 years". Obviously not going to happen.
The evidence is their actions with gatekeeper, app signing, removing the right-click workaround, etc.
I remember when there was option to run any application. With Sequoia there are only 2 options: App Store; App store + Known developers. Third option was removed. You can still run other apps but you need to manually approve them with ~3 popups where first option is "move to Bin". You need to do this after every OS or App update. I wonder when this option will be removed as well.
This is tiresome. You cannot lock down development machines. If you pay attention you'll see that OSes made for development work will be the only ones not locked down. Android was a holdout but Google is now tightening the screws. MacOS, Linux, BSD, and Windows are the only OSes that can't be locked down. Microsoft tried but they abandoned that.
Good point, but it is entirely possible for Apple/Microsoft to lock down "consumer" versions of their operating systems, effectively turning the common man's computer into a glorified phone and a new cash cow. Add to that a requirement for an online account, age verification, and other malware.
I've been running it since the RC and am currently in the process of uninstalling it. The new UI is so incredibly ugly I honestly cannot understand how they thought it was acceptable to even released as a beta let alone an RC and now release.
There's SO much padding and wasted screen real estate, disjointed looking floating inner panels, window corners that are so rounded you see gaps in full screen apps, inconsistencies everywhere and - well, I could go on.
Basically the vibe I get from it is that they think their users are dumb - they won't care about things like this and that they want everything to look like a preschoolers tablet.
I count four different corner radius sizes currently on my screen, which is maddening.
Apple has a thing against people with OCD. Or taste.
The thing is horribly wasteful of screen real estate, and as someone who’s been writing a Mac blog for over two decades, I am so happy I started using Fedora two years ago—GNOME has its flaws, but it looks nicer than Tahoe.
Fedora Silverblue is the closest feeling to the macOS experience I fell in love with that I’ve had on Linux in, well, ever. Very happy with it on my desktop and laptop. It’s not perfect but it is less imperfect than modern macOS has become.
Finding a laptop that works well is annoying, however.
> Finding a laptop that works well is annoying, however.
It doesn't exist at the moment. :\
I would pay 2x the price of a macbook for a linux laptop with the same hardware quality.
The battery life and power/efficiency of my m4 pro is insane. It's so good that it's really hard to justify using anything else right now.
It's sad that the best Linux laptop right now arguably is a M4 Mac virtualizing Linux.
Why not run it natively with Asahi Linux?
Well limiting to specifically OP's example (M4 Mac), Asahi doesn't support it yet. :(
Is Asahi installed side by side on a mac? You pick it at boot? And how “install and just use” it is?
> Is Asahi installed side by side on a mac?
Yes, the installer automatically (and reliably) resizes partitions for you. A minimum of about 70 GB for macOS is needed (anything lower is still possible but unsupported).
> You pick it at boot?
There's a default choice that will boot.
> And how “install and just use” it is?
Probably one of the smoothest Linux installs I've had in 10 years or so, since you just run the installer from macOS instead of flashing ISO files to an USB drive.
Thank you. I will try it.
Just one more question: is my mac hardware (and encrypted data) still protected the way it is protected before installing Asahi on it? Like device/theft protection etc.
My limited exploration/search on this topic kinda says in some way Asahi Linux lives inside the bounds of macOS (even all the data is available/readable in macOS which is fine by me). Is that so?
> Just one more question: is my mac hardware (and encrypted data) still protected the way it is protected before installing Asahi on it? Like device/theft protection etc.
Apple devices probably have the strongest security model offered by any otherwise open consumer device these days, so yeah: Installing Asahi won't degrade security of the macOS installation.
Note that the Linux install itself will have weaker protection, since e.g. the fingerprint sensor is not yet supported. I also think disk encryption would be much harder to set up due to Apple's boot process (if it's even feasible at all currently).
Just, FTR, you can also tell the Mac OS to reboot to Asahi, and you can tell Asahi (via CLI) to reboot to Mac OS
https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1c2yasr/can_i_b...
When I was first getting my feet wet with Asahi I was using these methods a lot.
Thank you. This is helpful.
I learned that my option, for a well tested and functioning distro is pretty much Fedora Remix. So I guess I won't be able to use Elementary OS sadly. I hope Fedora is or can be made to look and behave like Elementary.
Asahi Linux doesn't support the M3 or M4. That said, I'd be curious why OP doesn't consider Asahi on M2 to be a good option. AFAIK the only thing missing at this point is Thunderbolt and USB-C display output (HDMI out works fine).
There are a few draw backs. dnf for arm linux doesn't support Tor Browser yet!! Power saving was quite bad when I tried a few month back. When on sleep mode, it drains more battery than on MacOS sleep mode.
There are a few other compile/transpile bugs here and there.... but I'm rooting for the it!!! Hopefully they can get sorted out soon.
IIRC, there bunch of random things that still don't work -- no USB-C output, webcam, audio and if I've to guess suspend/resume is probably not rock solid either. The only benefit is that you get to use Linux, but then you may lose on actually getting work done without worrying about these issues. The new UI is inferior, but can still get things done.
This information is very dated. Webcam/audio work fine nowadays, and suspend/resume have never had issues that I recall. IME the feature support page is very accurate (no hidden gotchas like "technically it works but it breaks after sleep").
USB-C output is indeed not working but actively making progress (so actively that some of the related patches have been sent to the kernel mailing list and merged this very week).
Wouldn’t call it “very” dated. Depending on your model seems like they were ready to cross off this March.
https://liliputing.com/asahi-linux-adds-microphone-support-f...
That’s exciting! USBC was definitely a dealbreaker for me but it’s great to see it’s no longer the case.
Webcam and audio both work now. I can't speak to how solid suspend/resume is because I haven't actually used it--I just follow the project--but I wouldn't necessarily assume it's flaky.
Asahi is only supporting M1, and partly M2 I believe. M3 was enough of a change that there are no drivers for it.
I run asahi on my M2 mini as the primary OS.
There's a bit of a pain in that I could only get Brave to run Netflix, but all that meant was that I switched to using Brave for all of my browsing.
There's no official Tor build for it, but there is an unofficial one (that I do not use)
The only real pain I have with it is that Facebook's javascript for its reels chews up RAM something horrible, which freezes the OS whilst being processed, and often causes me to reboot it
Framework?
I wanted to post this myself because I swear by my Framework 13 and it's my workhorse. However, it doesn't hold a candle to my wife's M3 Pro on a number of metrics mentioned here such as: Battery life, screen quality, and overall performance.
The Framework (Intel 12th Gen) also has the added benefit of heating the house, particularly with graphics "heavy" workloads (lots of windows open in GNOME Mutter, VMs, etc).
Framework is nice but it's far from Apple's laptop hardware quality. The biggest draw of the Framework is its modularity.
Based on my framework 13 and macbook m1, I think the only downgrade are the speakers and the trackpad. The keyboard is actually an upgrade, the 2.8k screen has a better size ratio but the contrast is not as good, I'd say it's decent. The trackpad performs well but it's the old hinged design and not haptic. Being able to service my own laptop, replace parts and max out the storage for less money than a mid-spec macbook is just unbelievable.
I wonder if providing a unibody aluminium "premium" option might help Framework capture the "build-quality" crowd. That combined with the improved keyboard may turn out to be a compelling offering. I think the main remaining challenge will be the display and trackpad.
this is a psychotic question but have you actually tried doing that? like using a macbook as a vessel for running linux under parallels as a primary use?
I have, and found the linux software ecosystem for arm lagged that of amd64.
I guess if you autostart the linux VM upon booting this should work. I am doing actually the same with BeOS but using a Linux as the hardware compatibility layer. Linux distro is configured to autologin to sway which starts a VM and run it fullscreen. The guest VM is configured to use all the laptop ram leaving only 1GB for the host. In the second virtual desktop the pulseaudio volume control, wifi and bluetooth management tools are automatically open so I can easily plug a BT headphone, switch network.
The linux distro automatically shutdown if I shutdown the VM. I am using swaylock to lock the screen when I am away.
I went down this rabbit hole but with UTM, didn't get far though. Anything GPU-accelerated will struggle, or straight up not work. That includes GPU-accelerated terminals and code editors. You will also have conflicts with touchpad gestures, hot corners, and keybindings. It's not a good way to go imo.
I haven't done Linux (I have servers and such and "got used" to macOS enough for my needs) but I did in ages past do something very similar with Windows on Parallels on Intel Macs.
> The battery life and power/efficiency of my m4 pro is insane.
They're coming. Look for AMD Strix Halo chips. They're in the comparably comfortable efficiency range.
> AMD Strix Halo chips
Do you happen to know any laptop that has a) equivalent screen quality (retina resolution), b) keyboard, c) trackpad but with full Linux support where all hardware pheripherals just work?
The ThinkPad X1 series usually have great linux support and you can option them with 2.8k@120Hz OLED panels, which at 14" lands between the Air and the 14" Pro in terms of PPI. I have a couple generations old X1 Yoga and all of the hardware worked out of the box with Manjaro and Debian, including the touchscreen and active stylus.
People usually buy them for the keyboards and trackpoint, but imo the touchpad is still pretty solid. It is a bit small on account of the trackpoint buttons taking up vertical real estate but its pretty responsive and multi-touch gestures work perfectly in my experience. I believe newer ones have larger trackpads than mine, though still not as large as a similarly sized mac.
I have a Gen 12 X1 and I'm very happy with it; huge step up over my previous Dell XPS, and all the hardware works great on the latest kernel.
Reminder that Thinkpad's makers, Lenovo, has shipped a laptop preloaded with the Superfish malware (https://easytechsolver.com/what-is-the-lenovo-controversy/)
This is true. However, Superfish hasn’t been relevant in years and Lenovo walked back on including such malware going forward as far as I can tell.
And furthermore, Superfish didn’t affect ThinkPads. Only lower end Lenovo models.
And surely didn't affect Linux installed on it, which is the topic of the thread.
Well, the highest resolution MacBook has less than 4K resolution and there's plenty of 4K laptops out there...
Most "business" centric laptops work great with Linux, as long as you use a well supported distro (Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, openSuse). YMMV if you use other distros...
I think it’s debatable whether full 4K makes any sense on a 14” or 15” screen.
Regardless, the parent asked and it's a thing...
HP ZBook Ultra G1a? It has Strix Halo, 14" 2880x1800 (242 ppi) 120 Hz VRR OLED, and Ubuntu 24.04 options.
Can't speak for the keyboard, but HP ZBooks/EliteBooks tend to be decent.
I'm typing this post on the 395+ 128gb RAM model. IMO, the keyboard is better than the one in the newest Macbook Pro. Just enough travel, and quiet enough so I don't disturb co-workers when I type.
I use it for development running Fedora Workstation. My job involves spinning up lots of containers and K8S KIND clusters.
I often reach for it instead of my 14" M4 Macbook. However, I will choose the Macbook Pro when I know I'll be away from a charger for a while. The HP, as great as it is, still has bad battery life.
The only downside is that the webcam _does not work_ unless you use Ubuntu 20.04 w/ the OEM kernel package.
The ISP driver which will enable the camera to work is in the process of being up-streamed, though. I believe they're targeting early 2025 for mainline Linux support.
> early 2025
Is that a typo?
There’s barely 4 months left in 2025.
Do you feel a difference between Strix Halo and other x86 machines you could lay your hands on to date? I want one, but with an M2 Max macbook pro and Zen2 desktop it feels very hard to justify.
I have this laptop with this display configuration and it looks amazing. However on Arch with Gnome/Wayland I cannot get color management to work, which is a problem since this display has such a wide gamut. Opening HN on it for the first time I was blinded by the deepest orange nav bar I could imagine.
The HP zbook g1a ultra is as close as you can get with Strix Halo. There are two screen options and the OLED one is high resolution. It's Ubuntu certified as well and can run LLMs nicely. The keyboard, trackpad, etc are all to notch. It's somewhere in between a mac pro and max.
I have one and love it but it's not close to my wife's mac on battery life.
I've yet to understand the point of OLED, if it sits at 400nits. All Apple's devices from iPhone to Studio Display are brighter, some of them are much much brighter even with OLED :/
Contrast and pixel response time. OLED PC monitors still look amazing even with low all-screen brightness.
Your best option is framework IMO.
The 2.8k panels are overall inferior to Apple's across a number of metrics, but they have a higher pixel density than the Air 13, (and has the S-tier aspect ratio of 3:2).
The FW13 keyboard is objectively pretty decent but not perfect, and is much much better than any keyboard Apple has made in the last decade, could be personal preference but apple has been making some pretty bad keyboards for a while now.
Trackpad on FW13 is OK, no one even comes close to Apple, but it's pretty decent, nothing upsetting if you're comparing it to any non-apple trackpads.
Framework has excellent linux suppport, all hardware bells and whistles generally work out of the box on every Linux distro, but Fedora, Ubuntu, and Bazzite are officially supported by Framework they QA against all three and work with maintainers to resolve issues and you can be totally confident that everything will just work. (At least work as well as it would on Windows!)
The other two downsides relative to a macbook are build quality and support. Although the FW13 is pretty solid in practice, I have dropped mine dozens of times and throw it in my bag and treat it overall rough and it has take on some dings and scratches but everything still works. But the frame is not very rigid, it flexes in lots of places, and it just does not feel as nice and solid as a macbook. And support can be hit-or-miss, like with any small manufacturer.
I think you’re talking about Apple’s butterfly keyboards which were only around for 3-4 years of the last decade you’re talking about. Apple’s keyboards have been great for 5+ years now.
Agreed. Only issue is that they wear down really fast. Your fingers sand them down at a mindblowing pace, and soon enough all of them are smooth, with most used keys having shiny blemishes on them
you’re smoothing your fingers wrong
Yeah, the last few machines that I've owned have been from Apple and I've noticed that too.
It's a kind of confusing choice on their part to use cheaper plastic that does this so fast.
I assumed that was grease.
... do you moisturise your hands? Because "sandpaper" shouldn't describe your fingertips
Razer Blade is my windows laptop. The hardware is great, MacBook nice, but it needs the chip efficiency.
> retina resolution
That just means 3024x1964. With other laptops you can either go up a step to 4k or down to OLED 2880xsomething.
Unfortunately it also means a software stack that can properly scale everything for such a display. Windows and Linux both have... issues around UI scaling that make this kind of a pain.
I had a 1440p 14" Lenovo Thinkbook that ran Linux fine. Ryzen 5800u, maybe $400 seconhand IIRC.
The performance seems to rival Apple's Pro / Max chips but the battery life can only do that for light workloads or videos.
I've asked this question very recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44319903
Spoiler Alert: There really isn't anything that comes close to the macbook (even at 2x price).
Same. Just give me my M4 Macbook Pro, but Linux compatible.
I'm sure people will chime in and say framework, or other Linux-first vendors but they still make too many compromises.
Speakers suck, or the display sucks, or the microphones suck, or they get too hot, or they are too loud, or battery life sucks in comparison, or the chassis feels like cheap plastic and cracks and breaks easily.
There is no other laptop on the market that beats the Apple silicon macbooks right now.
I continue to tolerate macOS just for this hardware, and the rest of the OEMs seem to have zero intention at all to trying to catch up.
I'm hoping maybe the Qualcomm laptops make some progress on battery life. I had an LG gram that had honestly surprisingly good battery life on Linux, and maybe the ThinkPads are good too.
Well the Qualcomm SnapDragon chips literally compete on operations-per-watt. But it depends on what you need -- raw horsepower with a mostly tethered laptop or on-the-go freedom.
I found that I’m missing the netbook era. I need some 11inch laptop when I’m on the go for email, writing, and coding. For more focused task, I’m not giving up my 2 monitors setup and my mechanical keyboard so the computer form factor matters less.
Try starlabs, best build quality I've ever seen after apple
what models have you used, specifically.
Have only owned the starbook mkvi (1 gen previous to current) since it came out 3years or so. Exhaustive research happily led me to discover it is the most Linux compatible laptop, even firmware updates can be performed natively from LVFS/fwudmgr. Knew it was the one when I learned in addition they are basically the only Linux laptop company that also produces their own hardware.
Screen I wish was brighter, and while I don't care, it doesn't have as many pixels as retina. The fan is not bad, but louder than a macbook. Battery I have not tested well, it is far away from battery life of a macbook. But the coreboot firmware allows me to set the charging speed (slower is better for battery) and the max charge level (which I keep at 60% when plugged in) Trackpad is great though, and keyboard is fantastic.
And all the parts are replaceable, as much as the Framework laptops. I don't know why they are not more popular.
It's messed up TBH, the only laptops competitive on battery are Qualcomm which comes with a different set of sacrifices instead!
That's ridiculous. Thinkpads, Zephyrus G14, Framework, they all have performance, build quality, screens, battery, etc, comparable to a Mac.
Do they? So far I haven’t found anything that matches battery life, build quality, or trackpad quality.
The G14 definitely matches in build or exceeds in build quality, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, and display. Battery life is shorter though. But it has a better GPU and supports Linux, which is way more important to me than an hour or two extra battery.
The Framework is also excellent, but with different compromises: that sweet display aspect ratio for instance, but no OLED.
also don't forget how quiet this thing is.
>I would pay 2x the price of a macbook for a linux laptop with the same hardware quality.
Same, and I've been wanting this for 15 years now ...
Before their arm64 CPUs you could get a thinkpad or an xps and not have really bad FOMO. But now... it's just not even close :\
> I would pay 2x the price of a macbook for a linux laptop with the same hardware quality.
How about half the price?
Huawei are probably banned in the USA these days, however, the hardware quality is top notch and everything Linux works just fine out of the box. Not everything is perfect though, it all depends on what you want to do. If you are okay with integrated graphics (so no Blender or other 3D applications) but do need genuine Intel floating point single-thread performance, then give Huawei a go.
I have had plenty of Dell XPS, Lenovo things and much else over the years and all of them have poor thermal management and tend to creak if you use less than four hands to pick them up. The Huawei machines are in a different league.
As for battery life, I think you are right, but I am inanely loyal to genuine Intel and that means plugging in. I don't have problems with that.
People do get triggered by Huawei though, because the dreaded communists will steal your soul and brainwash you into hating the American way of life. So you might want to just cover up the badging lest anyone be offended. Ironically, a Huawei Matebook X Pro running linux is the laptop that is least likely to spy on you because the camera folds down into the keyboard.
If you haven’t tried openSUSE Aeon, I’ve been really impressed with it.
BTRFS I find is a more elegant solution than OSTree for this use case, and it’s got a very minimal and polished happy path.
Silverblue covers way more use cases (not least multiple users), but the setup and secure boot encryption setup is very slick and macOS-esque philosophically.
Silverblue is very under-rated currently. I see it as a slightly more pragmatic immutable os.
NixOS i keep wanting to throw in the bin randomly but i have to admit that when it all works, it's kinda beautiful to own - you can harness a lot of power for comparatively little spent in mental tax
I have a couple that work quite well with it, including a very nice 10” one - https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230
And I run a macOS-like GNOME theme that is pretty great.
This looks great, but not for the US market!
https://store.chuwi.com/products/corebook-x-i3-1220p?#descs
Based on past experience, I wouldn't buy chuwi hardware unless you're willing to treat it as disposable
Good to know... at that price it almost is. I just want a half way decent Linux laptop that isn't FHD or 5 years old. Carbons are more than I want to pay for something 'for fun'.
That's less expensive than the ASRock NUC BOX-225H I bought... and that was without RAM/NVMe.
I’ve tried Silverblue but it’s far from Mac experience, on my PC it feels sluggish and bloated. Perhaps I’m too simple but I only need a vanilla Linux just like now dead Intel Clearlinux with linux brew and Flatpak
I was using Pop!_OS and really loved it. Feature wise it would be an excellent replacement and I love the idea of running Linux.
However, one day when I tried to update the Nvidia driver it failed and when I tried to revert back I got a bunch of errors. My computer is foremost a tool to me and I don't particularly enjoy nor have time for stuff like fixing drivers.
Despite apple's flaws it gives me something that just works everyday.
Nvidia has always been a PITA on Linux, whether you're using the open source or proprietary drivers. Decent drivers, documentation, and support for their Linux community has always been somewhere between actively hostile against to barely an afterthought.
Go to any Linux distro subreddit right now and browse for people experiencing stability issues, random hanging, or no video on boot. Sometimes they don't mention it upfront but it almost always turns out they have an Nvidia card.
AMD and Intel GPUs have much better native open source support and (usually!) work out of the box without any effort.
Sometimes I wonder how the Linux distro landscape would have looked if there hadn't been a new distro for a new use case or design choice or disagreement among lead devs? Could we have allocated the resources better at battling with Wi-Fi not working, USB creaking on the turns? Or those would have stayed the way they are, because these mostly come or should come from the OEMs/vendors? Would this be better for them if the onus was not to make it work on hundreds (or is it thousands?) of flavours?
That was my hope, between Slackware 2.0 and around 2010, eventually I got Windows 7 and a laptop that supported virtualization, installed VMWare Workstation, and that was it, my zealot years were gone.
Still got an ASUS netbook though, a market killed by tablets and chrombooks.
Silverblue is great but regular Fedora is worth a look too if you don't want to deal with the teething issues of managing all your dev-tools with Silverblue's immutable setup, granted that was 2 years ago when i tried so thing's might be better now.
Infuriatingly; I have a macbook because a couple years ago I wanted a laptop that just worked while keeping my familiar tools but it really feels like Linux is trending up in polish and macOS on the down with an intersect possibly happening in a couple years.
That Apple would allow this development to happen without any reversal is astounding. If allowed to continue it could seriously damage their MacBook market share.
Then again, they may not care that much as long as they have the iPhone customer base.
Apple was once all about creating, lately it's all about consuming.
I expect the MacBook to be replaced by the iPad any second now.
In bluefin (silverblue based) they have brew preinstalled, which helps alot. Plus now its more mac-like.
My ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 works absolutely fine. I get about 10 hours of battery life out of it. You can get it with Fedora preinstalled.
In my experience, ThinkPads generally work fine.
Are you using Fedora on the Mac (via Asahi)?
Or are you using Fedora on an Intel/AMD laptop?
If it supported M4 I would be using it on my MacBook, but I am using a ThinkPad P14s gen 6 (AMD) right now. Some issues with suspend that I worked around with a kernel parameter but other than that, everything else worked out of the box
Thanks, I wasn't sure from your initial post
Calling gnome's UI better than macOS, even with Tahoe, is wild.
Gnome still does things way better than MacOS. Multiple desktops can be used with no animations. Built-in hot keys for applications without a 3rd party tool. Gnome extensions, a search that works for finding things (I know this is hard for Mac users to understand)
Do you mean corner radiuses on the edge of windows? Because corner radiuses within windows should be different from the edge ones because the same corner radius stacked within itself creates ugly corners.
Doesn't MS still have screens rendered like Windows 3.1 or Win95 in some corners of the OS?
I'd pay (even more) for Apple to have the same backwards compatibility policy as Microsoft has.
They (sometimes) understand that UI is API.
Yeah because some enterprise customers override/extend those panels.
And I love it
So? That doesn't make what Apple is doing sound any better.
I always thought that Gnome developers are imitating macOS. Not copying blindly, but following the ideas and intents.
Finally I hear from real users that the Gnome team has not just reached parity, but has actually exceeded their source of inspiration. (Partly due to the degradation of the latter, but still.)
When it takes me 5 clicks and two open windows to pick a bluetooth speaker in Gnome, I remember how far behind it is from MacOS's 2 clicks and zero windows.
What?
It's pretty much the same. Click the speaker icon the menubar, bluetooth is one of the options, third click to choose a connection.
There are plenty of excellent extensions if you want something different. I use dash-to-panel to combine the system tray in my dock and not have a pointless menu bar.
> zero windows
Are you not calling the MacOS sound-panel a window? It's the same type of panel you use in Gnome!
I use both everyday and it's MacOS that's buggy, inconsistent and hobbled:
- my speaker doesn't appear in the MacOS sound panel but does appear in the bluetooth section of settings so I have to go there to connect and it works as a speaker. MacOS is literally worse than Gnome at this specific task!
- I also can't use my Mac as a bluetooth speaker but I can use Linux as one. Pretty lame.
> Are you not calling the MacOS sound-panel a window?
When I click on the bluetooth icon in the top bar of MacOS it pops out a little list, and each bluetooth option has a toggle next to it where I can click to toggle.
In my version of Gnome, I click at the top bar to open a menu, then click Bluetooth On (or the name of the currently connected device). That pops out a sub-menu, in which I click Bluetooth Settings. That opens a window that lists the paired Bluetooth devices. I can click on one, which opens another window over the top, where I can click a toggle to connect it. I stare at it waiting for it to connect (it's slightly less reliable at this than the Mac[0], so it's worth watching it) and then I click again to close that window, and finally click again to close the window underneath. Actually 7 clicks!
[0] It could be the Mac is no better at this, but the UI interruption is basically zero to check and re-click, so it at least feels better, and I can do other stuff between checking.
If it annoys you then do look for an extension e.g.
https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1401/bluetooth-quick-...
Recent vanilla gnome has the same type of pop-up as MacOS but it does it does have one more click to expand possible connections if changing connection not just toggling.
You could use no clicks and truly no windows with "bluetoothctl connect ..." :)
It doesn't annoy me; it's just not as good! Glad to hear that when I upgrade it'll be almost a copy of the MacOS design by the sound of it.
> You could use no clicks and truly no windows with "bluetoothctl connect ..." :)
Sadly I change connection between my phone, my work laptop, and my home Ubuntu manually. Otherwise it'd just stay connected!
It doesn't. It takes 2 clicks.
Maybe that's a new version of Gnome? I have 5 clicks (actually 7, I realised in a sibling comment).
GNOME does look quite nice and I use it on my desktop everyday. Unfortunately, once I go beyond programming/general productivity (e.g. photography, music recording) there is nothing that comes to MacOS+MacBook combo. Windows usually have ports of these apps, so I'm hoping maybe one day Linux can run those (we are already there with games).
What are we talking about here?
That's not possible. I saw a video yesterday where Greg Joswiak (SVP worldwide marketing at Apple) assured me that Apple has the best design team in the world.
Making the world a better place by rounding off all the hard edges including those edge cases…
If 12px won’t do, try 42
> Apple has a thing against people with OCD.
Their window close button with slightly off cross in the red circle was a nightmare to my OCD.
Well great, now I can never unsee that
It is only Apple can do. It needs courage and innovation.
We, as user should not be beta tester.
> It is only Apple can do.
I've come to doubt this. Literally anything Apple does gets copied (sometimes even better than Apple's version).
> I count four different corner radius sizes currently on my screen, which is maddening.
I don’t see the mere fact of having multiple radiuses alone is a good criticism of the UI. If seeing multiple corner radiuses infuriates you, how do you survive in the real world? (https://www.folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html)
Or do you think it would look or work better with more consistency in corner radiuses? I would think radiuses look best when (somewhat) scaled to the dimensions of their rectangle (and that’s where, IMO, they may not be doing things the best way. For thin, long rectangles, I think the radius they chose is a tad too large, leaving barely any vertical straight lines)
I have been running the beta from the beginning and they have improved quite a bit, but I am actually shocked they didn't delay Mac OS 26, because the design is so rough around the edges. Some of the larger aesthetic changes, such as the menu bar and the dock look good, but there is so much more that looks objectively awful.
1. the way window UI elements float in bubbles on the top over a white background is horrible. It looks amateurish.
2. Icons look low detail and blurry. At first I thought they were using low resolution placeholder icons, but no, the layered diffused glass effect just kind of translates to blurriness on many app icons.
3. The side bar, such as on Finder, just kind of floats there. That is fine and looks kind of neat on the Maps app as you can see some of the maps behind it, but on the Finder it is just a white bubble over top of a white background, which... is a choice.
4. The app launcher is gone, and replaced by Spotlight, which is worse.
I could go on. The point is it is bad and Apple should be embarrassed. I say that as someone who likes Apple products alot.
I cannot believe the current state of affairs where me doing a Spotlight search for "drivers license" when I'm looking for a photograph of my drivers license to upload, that instead of finding it I'm now presented with a list of links to listen to, watch, or find out about the song Drivers License by Olivia Rodrigo. Why? Why!? Who is this helping? I'm fine with telling my computer that I am 42 years old and male and curmudgeonly and have been using a Mac for a good 25 years now and know how to find songs by Olivia Rodrigo online if I really need them.
And okay spotlight can help fill in the blanks on dictionary searches and wikipedia info I GET IT... but my time and my mind are precious to me – if you're forcing me to use Spotlight or making it the way of searching my computer, please PLEASE do not fill my eyes and head with this time-wasting garbage.
And I have a MacBook Pro M3 – it has a camera notch hidden in the black menu bar, the text of which now disappears if my mouse isn't up there, thus giving the appearance that my screen shrinks rather than giving me extra viewing real estate. The text is not some kind of distraction when it's above a tab bar filled with a multitude of jumbled icons and an address bar with text on it. But OH! sweeping left now reveals the camera notch in the middle of a WHITE menu bar.
Just... Apple... for f*cks sake. I'm paying you. Please employ some people with aesthetic taste and judgement rather than the current cohort of yes-people and logistics wizards. Time for Tim Cook to go. The problem is at the top.
You just spent far more time ranting about what Spotlight can index, than it would have taken to open the configuration and turn off the sources you do not want.
Cue "discovery" rant.
Defaults are chosen carefully, but they cannot meet every user's preferences. So, periodically spend a few minutes exploring the enormous software package that is your OS, and be happier for it.
I find this vastly more rewarding than complaining on the Interwebs. YMMV.
Oh very cool! If you hit CMD+, with Spotlight open it even opens you right to the checklist of sources. Thanks for the tip.
On occasion…
In the actual world.
I try to hit command-space on reality in order to find my keys.
I realize I'm working too many hours when I reflexively twitch for Cmd-Z after making a mistake in the physical world.
The original, updated version of the Finder icon alone should have been enough of a warning that the UX designers at Apple have lost their minds and any aesthetic sense, let alone an ability to design interfaces that are functional, efficient, and well thought-out.
https://512pixels.net/2025/06/wwdc25-macos-tahoe-breaks-deca...
Apple changed this in Tahoe Beta 2
https://512pixels.net/2025/06/finder-icon-fixed/
They know that. They’re saying the fact that it ever shipped in the first place should’ve been a warning sign.
Exactly.
I don't get it either. I open the Finder app, and the sidebar is randomly turquoise, over a white background.
It looks ugly, and I have no reason why that sidebar (unlike all other sidebars) is that specific colour. It just makes no sense.
Edit: Oh My God. I just tested installing my own app on Tahoe, and the DMG looks absolutely broken with what used to be solid edges confined inside a window, now being stretched to the window-edges, blurred by the glass-effect making the header on top unreadable.
THANKS APPLE. Jeez.
> 4. The app launcher is gone, and replaced by Spotlight, which is worse.
Do you mean the Launchpad? (I've never used it; but always use Spotlight to launch apps.)
The biggest surprise to me from this whole beta period is that a significant number of people used Launchpad. I have absolutely zero idea why when Spotlight has existed for more than 20 years. Why would you ever want to click and page through a giant iPhone screen on a desktop/laptop computer?
You don't have to click: Launchpad is available via an unmodified F4, so it's a single button press to bring up instantly, no matter what you're doing.
You don't have to "page through a giant iPhone screen", you can type and select. I used to use it all the time, without ever reaching for the mouse to do so.
Launchpad also let you change the order of app icons and group them into pages and folders; I don't think the new system lets you do any of these things.
Launchpad was focussed on a single task: launching an app. If I need to launch an app, I know I need to 99.9% of the time (I'm hedging; it's probably 100%), so there's no benefit showing me documents, web pages, and god-knows-what-else at the same time.
I nearly forgot: while I was testing Tahoe, I had a situation in which some apps just did not show up when I typed. They were in the list, they just got filtered out incorrectly. I've no idea if this was a bug or not; I'll see when I upgrade to the final release.
> so there's no benefit showing me documents, web pages, and god-knows-what-else at the same time.
I always just disabled these from Spotlight. If I want to search for files I use the search bar in Finder.
F4 on my Macbook Pro brings up Spotlight, not Launchpad.
But, bringing up Spotlight, clicking backspace, then clicking on the Applications icon brings you basically Launchpad.
They've mushed them together, but there seem to be three states: Spotlight with typing pre-filled, Spotlight bare with some additional icon options, and then Launchpad, which is more Spotlight than I remember it being.
> F4 on my Macbook Pro brings up Spotlight, not Launchpad.
Unless there's some weird setting, that's only in Tahoe. At the very least, it's only enforced in Tahoe; I was using F4 to bring up Launchpad in Sequoia, as I have in every version of MacOS for a long time.
Interesting. I've never had any issues using Spotlight to search/open apps. For your use case unmodified F4 will bring up Spotlight now where you can type. If you want more precision unmodified F4 followed by CMD+1 will allow you to search only apps.
> For your use case unmodified F4 will bring up Spotlight now where you can type.
Yes, this is what I've been doing during the beta, and it's far less useful than Launchpad IME so far.
> If you want more precision unmodified F4 followed by CMD+1 will allow you to search only apps.
It looks like I had previously done so, and now the setting is 'stuck'. I.e. it's the default view — I can still go 'up' to search across stuff, but F4 takes me to an app launcher by default, so that's one drawback eliminated (thanks).
As an aside, I've learnt just now while testing this that F4 has an awkward asymmetrical input buffer. You can open+close instantly with two quick presses, but the same does not work to close+open. I'm not really complaining so much about this, just mentioning it!
If you have multiple ways to do something on a computer/phone, some relatively large percentage of people will fumble around until they figure out a way to do it - and then do it that way forever.
So if someone accidentally triggered Launchpad and realized they could see their apps, they might use that forever (not knowing you can put your Applications folder in your Dock and use it as a start menu lol).
> not knowing you can put your Applications folder in your Dock and use it as a start menu
Doesn't work for me (Sequoia 15.4)
I have it on the side of the bar near the trashcan, and set it to open - has worked for ages and works in Sequoia 15.6.1
they've had a launch-pad-ey thing forever, I remember when our school lab had Mac IIs and Performas, and there was some simplified UI on top of finder which basically was all your apps in giant rectangular icons. I forget what it was called though.
It was called At Ease (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease).
I’m surprised to find out it was itself an Apple product; I had always assumed it was a third-party shell, akin to Norton Desktop for Windows 3.1.
I remember seeing my work colleague drag the applications folder to the dock for quick access, this was before the modern launchpad, and before I even started using macs.
Or, equally, they might never discover the advantages of Launchpad and always use inferior alternatives :)
I don't use Launchpad but I can say, for me, Spotlight sucks! It decides at random times not to complete. I have it set to show apps only. I don't want it to find other things. But quite often I'll press Cmd-Space and type something and it won't find it. For example I just tried "pho" and it did not show Photoshop (which is on my system) but did show stuff completely unrelated to apps and I double checked, I only have apps selected in the Spotlight Search Results section in settings.
This is a uniquely new-macOS issue. Spotlight has never worked well since the big redesign in 10.10. In the snow leopard days it was predictable and seemed to be ordered by frequency of use. (There were occasional issues where the entire launchservices DB got messed up, but this can be fixed with an lsregister reset without reindexing all of the files).
This is a bug. The applications need to be reindexed. Happened to me on my work laptop and personal one
Schrödinger's Spotlight: always indexing and hogging your CPU, never quite indexing everything properly.
Because I vaguely remember that one icon I use every other month, but can't recall the name. The icons are also ordered by installation time, so it's easy to jump to the most recent ones.
I use it rarely, but sometimes I'm happy it's there.
> The icons are also ordered by installation time, so it's easy to jump to the most recent ones.
If I had this need, it wouldn’t even occur to me to solve it with Launchpad; I would just go to /Applications in Finder and sort by “Date Added”. (Which is a non-default column, but a very helpful one, so the series of gestures to enable it for a given folder is almost reflexive to me now.)
That's: 1 get the menu, 2 Finder, 3 go to applications, 4 View > Show View Options, 5 sort by popup, 6 choose date added, 7 actually look for the app.
Compared to: 1 - 4-finger pinch, 2 look for the app.
That only really works if you have a totally flat Applications hierarchy. Even by default, macOS creates a "Utilities" subfolder.
Exactly this. Most of the time I use spotlight like everyone else.
> click and page through a giant iPhone screen
1. Launchpad filters based on what you type. You don't have to page through things 2. As soon as you type anything, the first hit is selected and the return key launches it 3. Launchpad shows nothing but apps. As an app launcher, it's fantastic.
If Launchpad is gone I'm going to be sad.
Launchpad is not actually gone: it's now a sub-unit of Spotlight.
I still have an M1 Macbook Pro with touch strip, and my Launchpad touch strip button still works, bringing up Spotlight but with a predicate that makes it search only ./Applications and ~/Applications.
That's not Launchpad; it's inferior in many ways.
I always forget that Launchpad even exists. I guess it doesn't now. I suppose it might be helpful if you just know "I need that app that looks like X" and don't actually recall the first two letters of the app's name.
Lol same. Wasn't there something like it in System 7 that also got deprecated. I think back then it was called "Launcher" ... https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Launcher
Launching seems easy enough from Finder but you never know about innovation.
Launchpad is an easy gesture with the trackpad (pinch with thumb and three fingers), then type to filter and return to launch. I got used to it for stuff I don't keep in the dock (which is a lot, since I have the dock on the side and only a few things in it).
I suppose Spotlight is OK as a substitute: COMMAND-SPACE, then type to filter and return to launch. It's a little more clunky (as the search results take a few milliseconds to be assembled) but it'll work.
What feels breaking there is when you pinch to open launchpad you are not on home row, so typing to filter is inferior to swiping and clicking large targets.
Cmd+space to open spotlight already worked and typing was the best option for that use case.
I do like the new spotlight experience but this feels like losing a gesture, and it does not spark joy scrolling through the app list.
I just tried it. The gesture you mentioned now opens the spotlight application search and there is no delay.
Spotlight indexing (mediaanalysisd, mds_stores) has a bad habit of running so aggressively when I'm not using the computer (I have an M1 mini and an M4 MBP) that it noticeably heats up the case. I've had to shut it off out of concern for wasted power and SSD life. Naturally, Apple has no response to this problem, and you can't really diagnose or fix anything on your own without turning off SIP, so I've had to disable Spotlight. Launchpad isn't as convenient, but it doesn't require indexing.
Because Spotlight seems to fall over regularly and not find files. Earlier this year it stopped finding applications and I had to run some shell command to delete it's cache and recreate it.
the app doesn't appear in spotlight until it's indexed.
also spotlight hogs resources indexing stuff all the time, completely pointless when you just want a list of apps
What if you forgot the name of the app?
What if you rely on groupings to remember what you have installed for a given activity?
What if you want a quick visual overview of what is available to you?
What if you like or even prefer launchpad?
What if you install tons of tiny little apps that have a specific, if infrequently used, purpose?
What if you enjoy a little app gardening?
What if you don't like command-prompt style interactions?
What if you see value in having more than one way to do something?
What if you have 20+ years of muscle memory established?
What if the only thing you know prior is how to use your iphone?
And on another note, what is it with tech people lacking the ability to see how other types of people may want to use the hardware they paid for with their hard earned dollars? I am so sick of this awful perspective of, "everybody in the world must be exactly like me"
You wouldn't if you are a software engineer or some other power user. The sad fact is Apple knows that the majority of macOS users are accustomed to an iPhone-like workflow, which is swipe-centric, not keyboard-centric.
Then why are they removing it?
Shocking as it is, search based UIs are really despised by some people (me).
I greatly prefer visual/spatial browsing
It's not the mode so much as the comparative efficiency. In a handful of keystrokes you can launch a commonly used app in under a second. Any type of visual browsing mode is going to take an order of magnitude more time/effort.
For people who never work with things like terminals, sure. For fellow devs, it's an unusual choice unless they routinely cycle through irregularly used apps w/ hard to remember names.
I click one icon, then another. It takes say 2s. Typing two letters and pressing enter would take 10x faster, so 0.2s. Given that I delegated work to AI agents, that’s 1.8s less of waiting :))
As a fellow dev, command line shit is a pain in the ass sometimes. I grew up as a Windows kid, visual browsing for stuff is sometimes the only way to fly. I absolutely loathe the amount of brute-force memorization that is required to operate a command-line efficiently. It took YEARS to memorize simple linux shit
Everyone talks about how CLI is supposedly way more efficient. It is way more efficient to THEM. And now we are stuck in a hell where a good deal of functionality is only accessible if you want and are able to memorize the arcane nonsense that are command names, or the design-by-committee naming choices of moronic PMs who can't stop lapping up whatever bullshit marketing tells them to
> I absolutely loathe the amount of brute-force memorization that is required to operate a command-line efficiently. It took YEARS to memorize simple linux shit
Not to invalidate your experience, but you shouldn’t need to memorize too much to use the common command line tools (although it does always help to have more experience using them).
I recommend always keeping a second terminal session open, purely for referencing man pages. You should be able to see most options easily, or be able to grep for the instructions you need.
The tight integration between documentation within the CLI, coupled to the exact software version you have installed, helps immensely when invoking CLI tools.
For the common linux tooling, found in most distros (e.g. coreutils or common busybox ops) the documentation in man pages is quite excellent.
While I think man pages are perfectly fine as documentation, the terminal interface for accessing them is awful (more mysterious keypresses or incantations to memorize if you want to do anything more than scroll), and visually I have always found them very difficult to scan visually, particularly if I wasn't sure of the exact wording for the task I needed, or if I am thinking in a different vocabulary. Plus theres the whole wall-of-text thing that makes me kind of instinctively bounce out.
A lot of them also lack sufficient (or any) examples, which are the things I need to see to learn. Making sense of the their sometimes (and seemingly intentionally) obtuse wording when I'm trying to do something I'm not already familiar with makes them a lot harder to parse than they need to be.
And many of the commands are extremely arbitrary. `cd` (change directory) very well could have been `mf` (move folder). `del` in DOS is `rm` in Linux. `move` vs `mv`, `copy` vs `cp`, etc etc. There's no common orthodoxy. If you are not well versed in the history of this stuff its all gobbledygook.
LLMs have been great in this regard, as they can supply those missing examples and then explain to me exactly what it is doing, oftentimes worded more clearly than the original documentation. And they can help me string together whole sequences.
So a TL;DR of your comment is that you just have to learn / memorize to use things. That applies to everything, not just what you are discussing here.
If you only use 'cd', 'mv', 'rm', and 'ln', then really, there is not much to learn. Perhaps the '-rf' option to 'rm', which is how you delete directories (that are not empty). You complained about the naming, but 'mv' requires fewer keystrokes than 'move', and once you know that 'mv' = move, 'rm' = remove, and so on, then what is the issue? It makes sense. DOS had just as "arbitrary" names: 'del' instead of 'rm', for example. The UNIX versions are deliberately short for efficiency, and once you learn them, they are universal.
Man pages are fine. Just press '/' to search by string or regex, and 'n' for next match. They are also consistent: if you want a particular section, you search for it. But it is important to remember that man pages are reference material, not tutorials. If you want quick examples, try https://tldr.sh, https://cheat.sh, or another alternative.
If this is difficult, or you simply do not want to learn it, that is fine: use what works for you. But if you are a programmer, you are going to be learning tools constantly, and the core UNIX utilities are among the simplest. Once learned, they do not change. Personally, I have not had to learn anything new about them since I was 13. I am 31 now. You learn once, and you use forever.
That said, there are real examples of arcane tools. 'ffmpeg' and 'rsync' have some of the most obscure command-line options I have ever seen, which is why I keep bash aliases and functions for the things I do often. That is how you make your life easier as a programmer: learn the fundamentals, then abstract the complexity where it makes sense.
TL;DR: Learning is not optional. Whether it is GNU/POSIX utilities, GUIs, wizards, or even LLMs, you still have to learn them. Man pages are reference material, not tutorials. Learn the basics once, and you are set for life.
I don't think you fully understood my comment.
You need to step outside your own shoes and approach these from the perspective of someone who is new. Yes you have to learn things, that is obvious.But not everyone gets the chance to do that before they are dropped in a situation where the knowledge is needed. Up until a few years ago (before LLMs) if that was your case and you didnt know how to articulate what you wanted to google (or a teammate), you were fucked.
Like with VI or with emacs. It's sooooooo easy to screw things up in a big way. Better hope you remembered to type shift-colon-Q-exclamation instead of shift-colon-W-Q!
Please, tell me how that makes any sense to anyone without a background in *nix stuff.
I did not grow up in the environment where the above incantations had any context. It was literally a bunch of gobbledygook that made no sense. Why "write" instead of "save"? Why 'quit' instead of 'exit'? In fact I had VI dropped on me quite suddenly for a job, that was a real trial by fire, and I remember this well. (And yes I can operate VI quite fine now, thank you)
Yeah but for example if you are new to yet(tm) another JavaScript framework, you will have the same issues at any workplace. I mention this because these days there are millions of new ones.
I have not worked with many things they require of me either. Before I apply, I either have to learn the very basics, or I will have a hard time, unless they do not mind me not knowing but learning fast.
> ffmpeg' and 'rsync' have some of the most obscure command-line options I have ever seen,
These are power tools, meanings they set out to solve one problem quite extensively. They’re not really meant to use as is (just like git), best is to write some alias or functions as a wrapper (or memorize the set of flags you use most).
And that is what I said I did. :P
Incidentally, there's a TL;DR app as an alternative to man [0] that just gives you the most common examples/use cases for any command. Quite useful.
[0] `brew install tealdeer`, then invoke with e.g. `tldr chown`.
I use it when I can't remember the name of an app, or when I've first installed an app and it's not indexed yet.
My sentiments exactly
I've been using Macs since before Launchpad and have not used it once. Spotlight predates it, and I switched to Alfred fairly early on.
> The side bar, such as on Finder, just kind of floats there. That is fine and looks kind of neat on the Maps app as you can see some of the maps behind it, but on the Finder it is just a white bubble over top of a white background, which... is a choice.
Agreed. All of the transparency and liquid glass effects look terrible when they're displayed over a solid color, especially white. That said, they look good over top of something colorful and really AMAZING when displayed over something that's moving (video, whatever).
I imagine that the effect REALLY takes off on a display where EVERYTHING is moving, like on top of the real world on a VisionOS display. It's just out of place on MacOS when uses as a dev workstation.
Looking at the Slack icon right now, and it just looks blurry and low resolution, same for Calendar and some others, it's awful.
The maps icon is the most egregious. It makes my head hurt.
So people do use Apple maps and that too on a mac.
My big issue with the icons-in-menus is that they don't align properly. Each 'row' in a menu is an optional icon with some text to the right of it. But when an icon isn't displayed, the text shifts left into its position, meaning that menu text no longer aligns nicely on the left.
Usually I just go with the flow, because what else I could do :)?
But somehow the missing App Laucher made me bit sad (well, to the extent software can make one sad :)) - even though I can always switch to Finder to browse apps, App Launcher has some nice visual quality to it that makes it more pleasant to use for me..
I agree with a lot of what you said but the app launcher was dumb. It was just the iPhone’s Home Screen ported to Mac.
Spotlight is way faster than that when you’re at a keyboard. I barely even use the dock, just command space and type in the first few letters of the program I want. Clicking is for people with too much time on their hands.
It is for finding a program or quickly browsing what apps are installed when I don’t know the name. I find it useful in an unfamiliar machine. Yes, like most people, I launch apps primarily with Spotlight.
I could never understand why anyone would use it instead of just Finder > Applications, especially since Finder an give you a nice alphabetical list
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. After trying out the preview for a month, the writing was on the wall, and I began the process of switching to a Thinkpad with Linux. I am now fully off macOS for the first time in 20 years of being an Apple die hard. I could use a lot of emotionally loaded words to describe how I feel about this release, but the long and short of it is that I am no longer the target audience for Apple.
Similar story here. Loong time Apple fan, but as they say.. "trust arrives walking, but leaves on a horse". I'm real mad!
I installed tahoe in a virtualbuddy VM to see how it was before running on my main system... and.... I will be definitely be keeping Sequoia for a while (at least a year, probably).
If the situation does not improve in the meantime, I will probably switch to a framework laptop running cosmic desktop or something like that.
Yep I feel the same. To know if you're the target user or not I guess you go to Apple's marketing material.
Do you see anyone that looks like you, doing anything that looks like what you do? I don't and I can't remember the last time I did.
It seems to be a lifestyle brand now for people I have little in common with.
At least with Linux there's the possibility that you can make it your own even if it's not that way right now.
> Do you see anyone that looks like you, doing anything that looks like what you do? I don't and I can't remember the last time I did.
You mean you are not an ethnically interesting person with a head full of colored hair wearing ethically sourced pre-aged linen sipping responsibly grown coffee with a serene smile facetiming even more interesting people without any worry about any real problems in the world?!
In the same boat. After like 15 years I had enough. I've started de-Apple'ing my life in 2024. Still run M1 Pro Mac from work, which is great. 2 days ago I've finally ordered all the parts for a Linux PC, high spec. Not for gaming or so, just for compute. I'm soooo looking forward to the freedom that this will bring. The stuff that I already run on Linux, the distros are all great. I love Gnome for how it looks and KDE for how seamless it works. The new PC will let me tinker and try and hop and swap like I could never dream of for so many years.
Curious what kind of specs you've decided on, would you share? My mind always jumps to EPYC or Threadripper for this kind of use-case
Similar story here, but going from Windows to Linux. It seems like Linux is gaining some market share with the OS disasters from both Apple and Microsoft.
I have no where to go. I want to move away from iPhone, but Pixel is not available in my place, and Google doesn't seems to care about distribution. Nor does it do enough with its SoC development. There aren't anything come close on Laptop. And Windows or Linux aren't exactly in good shape either. I have no where to run. And I have wished for a third option for a very very long time.
You just move away from them on your computer. Just keep the iphone. It's a minor device. That's what I plan on doing. If I get fed up with my iphone, I also have nowhere to go. so will reduce usage. Sideloading gets more and more difficult everywhere.
Just run linux with utm!
I try not to indulge in negativity and scorn, but I agree with these sentiments. This is resoundly a regression. Text overlapping on text, searchboxes that are broken and now just function as text boxes, increased latency throughout the operating system.
It's so bad that it's kind of fascinating. Unfortunately, even "Reduce Transparency" doesn't fix the LG update.
It’s ugly as hell and plain stupid.
I couldn’t watch the WWDC and when I saw the screenshots I thought it was a joke. Giant buttons with weird padding and extreme transparency effects.
This is going to sound harsh but it looks like when “working” from home, Apple engineers outsourced their work to amateurs online.
I simply cannot believe that Apple is shipping an OS this out of touch with elegance.
Steve Jobs said in his inauguration speech that he slept on the floor to take typography classes and later obsessed over having great typefaces on Macs. Steve would’ve burn the place down instead of shipping a crap like this.
I've worked as a developer at Apple, I'm not surprised.
Or maybe Steve would tell us all that we're "holding it wrong".
Yeah similar situation here. I've been running it since basically the day after WWDC, and I've just had this sinking feeling that its so bad, they wouldn't be able to fix it before release. Or, they don't even view it as something that needs fixing.
I'll begrudgingly get a couple more years out of this personal M2 Air, but my engineering team is prepping to do upgrades on some older M1 Pros we've had since launch, and after seeing Tahoe, the CTO and I formed a plan to give devs the option of getting either an M4 Pro or a Framework. We haven't launched yet, but I think a solid number of our engineers are going to opt for the Framework, hopefully as high as half.
The whole "Liquid Glass" UI is by far their worst ever take on a design language. It feels like stepping backwards to web 2.0 but with even bigger accessibility issues.
It doesn't look or feel modern, its ugly, inconsistent and just all around crap. God knows what they were thinking with this.
Also who on earth green lit these low resolution looking blurry icons everywhere?!
I don't mind it on iOS I need to say, I was expecting to hate it and it's... okay. I like that I can make all icons just black.
It's really atrocious on macOS though. The new Finder looks so stupid. Preview now has artificially rounded corners in PDFs! What are we even doing here.
There are also under-the-hood changes that I found truly upsetting: among other things, all the Emacs versions I've tried (stock GNU Emacs or Mac Port, downloaded binary blobs and compiled on my machine) are either immediately unusable or become so slow after a day that they are almost unusable. Tracing things on Instruments suggests a culprit (the culprit?) is NSAutofillHeuristicController. This is not a new feature, but I'm guessing with them pushing Apple Intelligence it was rewritten. AFAIK no obvious way to disable this "feature". (Turning off Apple Intelligence doesn't seem to do it.)
I'm contemplating rolling back to Sequoia.
The developer of ghostty had this exact same issue with his terminal. Ironically apple's iCloud password autofill extension on firefox also practically halves my firefox performance. Seems like they haven't figured out autofill yet. https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/commit/b58a761aba75fa...
> among other things, all the Emacs versions I've tried (stock GNU Emacs or Mac Port, downloaded binary blobs and compiled on my machine) are either immediately unusable or become so slow after a day that they are almost unusable.
So basically my #1 work tool will no longer work.
That’s a hard deal-breaker right there.
As a longer-term means of escape, what’s the best way to run a «full» Linux desktop on a otherwise managed Mac?
Parallel or Vmware (the former is paid and the latter is tortuous to download). Then you can go with debian (for minimal installation) or fedora (for ready to work desktop installation). Works quite great.
The following should fix that:
Thanks! I'll give that a shot
There's SO much padding and wasted screen real estate
That seems to be a growing trend ever since "UX designers" started taking over (early 2010s?), to the point that I wonder if they're trying to see how far they can take it.
If you live in Figma then you never have to use what you design.
Who cares? if the senior designer is hot and young with 1 yr of experience that’s all that matters
I was on RC too, for a few days, and also uninstalled. I'm glad I did, the fresh Sequoia install feels much nicher. Even with reduce transparency on, the design was too ugly and the drab gray icon jails for non-squircle icons were downright offensive. First macOS version I'm gonna skip and I've been a day one updater since mountain lion, very sad.
lol are you an ATP listener?
I don’t think the icon situation is enough to keep me off the release, but agree that the design is just kind of a mess and not my taste.
ATP was enough to convince me to tell people at work not to upgrade right away.
Last time I did this was ... the version that removed 32bit compatibility, I think?
Haha I'm subscribed but haven't listened to that episode, I took the squircle jail term from the arstechnica tahoe review.
I made the mistake of updating my phone, and immediately regretted it. We tried Liquid Glass already, it was called mid-aughts Windows. It sucked then, and it sucks now.
Quite an insult to Windows Vista and Windows 7, where Microsoft actually took care to make things consistent and text readable. Here they didn't even put shadows behind all labels!
I'm glad I'm not the only one getting Vista vibes with this look.
and vista was MORE beautiful than this vomit
It would be one thing if they excessively rounded and padded the windows, but they shipped with a bunch of different padding and border radii. So far I’ve counted 4 different borders, and I’m sure there’s more.
Yeah, 4 different corner radius sizes is where I’m at too. Won’t be surprised if there are more.
I just counted 5 different radii in Apple’s apps alone. I also discovered they space the window control buttons in all sorts of different spots to, so it’s even more insane than just multiple radii.
> The new UI is so incredibly ugly I honestly cannot understand how they thought it was acceptable to even released as a beta let alone an RC and now release.
I feel like if you replaced all of the paper in a company's printers with transparency sheets you'd be fired because that's obviously a stupid idea that would never work. But then I guess that's why I'm not a software UI designer.
Everything I've seen of it looks a disaster. I'll wait for macOS 27.
Waiting an extra year to jump on new macOS releases has been the norm for sane people for quite some time now.
It sucks if you buy a new mac which isn't supported by older macOS releases though, so maybe don't do that for a year or so. I guess you sometimes just have to put your new Apple device in storage for a year until there's functional software.
For me I simply don't upgrade ever until I'm forced to, usually by an app that I want to use.
As someone without an iPhone and who doesn't really use included desktop apps, there are simply never any improvements in the OS for me, only regressions.
Waiting an extra year to jump on new macOS releases has been the norm for sane people for quite some time now.
/Looking forward to macOS Fresno.
I usually wait 6 months, but this time I plan to skip the release altogether
I have a Mac M1 that's been on MacOS 14 Sonoma for a couple years at this point - I've not seen anything even remotely interesting in later releases that could incentivize me to roll the dice and upgrade.
My Mac is also on Sonoma. I'm sure there are some incremental features that I would appreciate, but I'm always worried about what's going to break or be worse with the next OS update.
I'll update my phone because iOS jumps are bigger in terms of functionality. But 14 years in, OSX just doesn't have a lot of new bells and whistles that I care about. The last time I updated, I was only excited about getting Sidecar functionality so I could dual-screen onto my iPad. When a minor feature like this is the most memorable, that's saying something.
I think the only thing that would get me to update would be notable AI improvements. But seeing what I've seen of AI on iOS, I'm in no rush.
> SO much padding
No idea on macOS, but turn on Reduce Transparency on iOS and there’s tons of padding most of the time, but then sometimes zero padding. And I mean zero. The edges of buttons and text are at the edge of the underlying background. It’s…embarrassing.
I noticed that in iOS Safari. Reduce Transparency brings back the bottom toolbar containing the search/URL field and buttons, but there’s zero padding between the buttons and the edge. Makes it fairly obvious that nobody tested it.
Enabling Reduce Transparency is a sure-fire way to find a dozen bugs within a few hours. It is always quite apparent no one who is empowered tests it at Apple. At least the padding issue is the one Feedback report I sent that got the “more than 10 similar issues” label so it may actual get fixed.
Ugh I upgraded excitedly and can't stand the UI - there is no upside to any of it. Also for some reason things are also beachballing and VSCode keeps crashing - new M4 MBP. All the system log errors are present exactly as they were and my USB-C dock with Ethernet port still doesn't work.
This is quite a departure from the company the pioneered UX obsession and attention to the smallest detail. What's happening here?
Steve Jobs is no longer there to reign in the designers.
Not just designers, it's like the entire company has grown up depending on Jobs to course correct.
My progression:
1. Apple photos redesign from last year sucks and I’m already frustrated with iCloud abstraction and lack of cross platform friendliness
2. Switch to an alternate cloud photos provider
3. Find out about Liquid Glass, looks like shit, impulse sell my MacBook Pro in favor of a Framework
4. Surprise surprise, it’s actually the year of the Linux desktop. My gaming situation is way better on Linux and it does everything my Mac did. The only compromise is my need to carry a big extra battery around.
> There's SO much padding and wasted screen real estate, disjointed looking floating inner panels, window corners that are so rounded you see gaps in full screen apps, inconsistencies everywhere and - well, I could go on.
Remember in the beforetimes when we decoupled themes from OS updates? Wouldn't it be nice if once again we discovered this lost technology that let different users have different UIs?
Either Tim Cook does not use a Mac computer or he does not notice/care. I am not saying he should helicopter-parent all the design process but the "finished" product?
So: that is Apple's CEO for you.
Wouldnt be surprised if he spends more time on an iPad than Mac these days
These days?
You think that flunk is smart enough to figure out a keyboard?
He gets older so everything must get bigger
Why would he when he's a numbers and supply chain guy not a product and vision guy.
It’s Craig, not Tim.
> Basically the vibe I get from it is that they think their users are dumb
Your point would have been much more convincing had you refrained from this sort of pejorative assigning of motives. It wasn't necessary.
I've been running the betas to the final release and there are a number of basic affordances and system improvements that are definitely worthwhile. I will not be going back.
Having said that, while I know they had good intentions with this whole design, and probably really thought they were pursing a winner, what a massive, massive miss. This is such an aesthetic disaster that I'm just in awe. I feel like they had a huge push to do some seemingly substantial change, particularly on the mobile side, given the stumbles in the AI space, so they changed a lot of things maybe without quite enough thought.
Ugly as hell. More dead space. On the mobile side they released an update to iOS just today from the RC a few days ago that removes some of the particularly stupid animations (the app tray did some dumb thing where it expanded and shrank, and that and a few similar things are gone).
Yeah, agree the UI is not great, but after using it for a week I feel it's actually... fine. Probably because I use a lot of third-party apps who don't use the new design.
The Finder looks like shit. The sidebar is like badly retrofited from another program, perhaps from some crappy Gnome theme.
The Control Center (or however they call the drop down window with quick controls for volume, wifi, brigthness, etc) has floating isolated icons like crap.
Bring back Scott Forstall. Give him a big bonus. Let him fix this shit.
Otherwise, the code changes and actual features are probably fine.
I’m glad to see another member of Club Forstall here. My biggest wish for Apple is to bring back Forstall. Letting him go was their biggest mistake.
... but he was "difficult" to work with! (sigh)
I still have a few devices running iOS 5.x and power them up every now and then just to appreciate how incredible the interface was. Even on modest hardware, stuff felt interactive and was beautiful.
> they think their users are dumb
Aren’t they/we? :-)
*majority of
Well, hasn’t this been the single biggest reason for their sustained stellar returns year after year where often (or maybe most of the time) the biggest change their devices (like iPhones) used to see was the version number change e.g. iPhone 13 -> 14.
For the rest of their users — they make a noise (which is not even feeble in comparison), bicker around, lament the fact that the other alternative is Google (Windows and the Wild Linux West), and they stay. Rinse, repeat.
That was my experience with liquid glass on mobile. I’d heard it was bad, thought it couldn’t possible be that bad then tried it and was flabbergasted. Really unfortunate.
It's very unstable, indexing doesn't work anymore
Steve Jobs would never have allowed this to be released.
People need to stop idolizing Steve Jobs like Apple only produced consistent UI when he was there.
Apple have never respected its own guidelines, for example in the early days of MacOSX there were "brushed metal" apps that were supposed to be (according to the guidelines) for small non-resizable windows. Still, there most popular app, iTunes, broke that by being brushed metal despite being a big, resizable window.
iTunes also had a modal settings window, in defiance of another rule
Can you post screenshots of what you mean?
I see grossly rounded corners in some apps, but I don't see the other stuff like gaps in window corners for full screen apps. I may have some config bit flipped that has disabled those.
Yeah, the new corner radius is ugly but by and large, it's not much different than before, from what I see so far.
https://imgur.com/a/jLPM9oV
this is what I'm seeing with Safari, WhatsApp and Chrome all maximized but with various radius on each corner.
Wow! At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if they started mixing square corners with rounded just for the hell of it.
This is like back when a lot of major devs like Adobe just straight up started faking window borders instead of updating their apps to the newer framework and it all looked and felt inconsistent or just obviously way off.
This issue is with app developers not using native libraries, not Apple.
If this were April 1st, it might make sense. But this is a major OS release by a brand that's famous for its design aesthetic. What the actual fuck Apple? Does nobody test anything anymore? How did this get out of the lab? Who exactly is steering this ship? Tim Cook's days at the helm might be winding down.
Probably not Apple's fault for that one, but Chrome and/or WhatsApp drawing their own window borders (with radius to match the previous macOS release)
> Does nobody test anything anymore?
Honestly feels like QA and release qualification are non-existent in so many organisations these days. This can't possibly be the case though, right? Right?
Holy crap is this real??
Brome Chrome and/or WhatsApp using their own window borders, and their stuck to the previous macOS look. They'll update them, but I wish they used the native chrome (no pun intended)
Good lord, that's awful. I'm definitely firmly in Camp Apple for the most part, but this just looks actually atrocious.
Try running console with tmux. The window menu just floats there instead of being snugly fit against the bottom from end to end.
How hard is it to downgrade?
I've been running the RC and I have had no issues. Some of the design choices (sidebars particularly) are strange, but it's generally fine.
I recommend not overcomplicating your life and just staying on the latest macOS.
It took a day of getting used to it, but I have had no issues either. Some of the commentary on this thread seems overly critical to me, but you tend to see that on any Apple thread on HN. There’s stuff I like, some stuff I don’t, but in the end I’ll adapt.
I think sime people just hate change. I am convinced that some folks complaining here will be complaining when MacOS 28 comes out and changes some OS 26 feature they have grown to like.
Did you notice any impact on battery life?
I'm afraid for the battery life of my MacBook Pro 2019 (Intel).
I'll think I'll never update and just keep using Sequoia until I switch to Linux.
You're in luck. Your device isn't supported.
It's supported.
But it's going to be the last major OS update for my device, so I won't upgrade. I don't want to be stuck with a half-assed version.
Mine has been fine, literally no perceptible differences on my MBA M4 since I loaded the public beta a few weeks ago.
Training/preparing users for upcoming AR glasses interfaces?
I just installed it (had to; if I am using the Mac, I'd rather be on the latest OS for security and compatibility reasons), and it is just disgusting. It is more disgusting than the iOS 26 monstrosity.
I mean, how do you even provide constructive feedback to such a pathetic design choice? Not that this company ever deals in feedback (unless it's a strong feedback directly to its wallet).
I do believe they are just exhibiting sheer incompetence and intellectual bankruptcy as a corporation. Is it beginning of an end? I don't know. Do giga corps even die anymore?
So the Gnome 3 gang were ahead of their time?
Indeed, gives old Gnome vibe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmWOtf4Ziso
Look how far we've fallen.
I am lucky to read this after before deciding to update. Unforunately did update to the new ios and it's incredibly ugly. Wish there would have been an easy way to roll back on iphone
Honestly, Windows 7's Aero effects are better looking. Best thing after that is KDE (with light customizations). Everything else has regressed.
I tried 3 betas of ios and then sold my iPhone and bought a Pixel, that's how disappointed I was from what I saw.
Eh. I like it. Seems more modern. Who cares as long as it’s not windows.
> The new UI is so incredibly ugly I honestly cannot understand how they thought it was acceptable to even released as a beta let alone an RC and now release.
I just tried it and maybe I've just been primed by the internet, but by god, I did not like it.
The side-bar design is terrible and lots of application (Maps, Music, etc) always look like they have a window overlapping the current application. So even with a single window open, my desktop already looks messy.
For people like me, with a slight OCD about certain details (don't talk to me about notification-bubbles), this is absolutely infuriating.
I'll disable auto-updates on all iDevices and Macs, and just keep on security-updates for previous gen OS as long as I can.
Eww.
I float around the VC world in SF. Several of the women that work for VCs in decent positions don't know how to maximize a window on the MacBooks.
You can downvote all you want but I've seen it and confirmed it by asking why they don't double click the menu bar. They didn't know it was a thing.
Every new version of MacOS exhibits four phenomena:
1. Old bugs are not fixed.
2. New bugs are introduced, and I have to spend hours online figuring out workarounds.
3. Old features I depended on are removed, and I have to spend hours online figuring out how to replace them.
4. New features I don't need are added and they get in my way, and I have to spend hours online figuring out how to disable them.
My workflow productivity takes a months-long hit every time Apple upgrades MacOS. As a result I rarely upgrade MacOS until it's around 3 years old and I have no choice.
It appears that Tahoe is going to be the worst example of this in a long time.
Which is why I'm moving as much of my daily workflow as possible to Linux.
I used Mac for 10 years and started feeling the same irritation around 2017. In 2020 I finally bit the bullet and switched to Linux. The initial investment into getting a usable Arch desktop was horrible. It took several days just to get to the point of something that I could boot into and be productive. It takes me a long time to get things working the way I want, but I kind of enjoy that aspect of total customization. The best part is, though, nothing ever changes. I get things working the way I want, and it just stays that way year after year. No UI language updates, no replacing my default shell, nothing. It just keeps working the way I like.
Now if they could just produce a touchpad as good as a MacBook's, give me 8-10 hours of battery life, and make the construction feel slim and solid, and not like it's going to get crushed in my backpack, and I'd be satisfied.
I fully get that macOS is not perfect, but checking out "modern" Linux (like a customized Arch) is a bit underwhelming. It still looks to me like Linux 20 years ago. And I started with Linux in the mid 90s. Not much has changed or improved on the pure fundamentals. I guess it's fine if all you do is sit doing CLI or spending your day in web browsers.
Day to day macOS driving to me is an absolute joy (granted, I'm still on Sonoma).
I do a lot of work in terminals but I also enjoy other apps, where that uniformity of Cocoa comes into play. And if you go deeper into Mach/Darwin, it's extremely powerful. On the userland .. from the launcher to dtrace and dynamic linker tricks and low level hooks. A lot of cool macOS APIs to experiment with, public or private. AppleScript/Automater, private frameworks like SkyLight (nifty!)
Oh and don't get me started on MLX...
To me, as a developer and as a power user, macOS delivers everything - and more.
Sometimes it does change and when that happens is for the worse.
Some developers suddenly realize that X system is old, and then they try to redo it from zero.
And when they do that, they throw decades of feature development down the drain:
- Xorg: Was Wayland worth the 10+ years of manpower needed to catch up?
- Synaptics: Now we have libinput, less configurable and with way fewer features
- Gnome: Something that happens when the devs think "If Apple can, then we can too" but without the money to invest in good UX (Gnome2 had actual UX research done by Sun)
- Systemd: I'll concede that nobody liked SystemV. But we also had OpenRC and strangely got ignored.
Sometimes "developercracy" is terrible, and we spend years arguing if Rust or Not, instead of trying to make good software
I agree with every point made except there’s two caveats;
1) I am a bonafide systemd hater, and I am bent out of shape about the fact other init systems (more akin to SMF) were (and are) routinely ignored when discussing what was available. But: I feel like Linux desktops are better now for systemd. Even if I can’t tolerate how it spiders into everything personally.
2) Wayland was a “We have pushed X as far as it will go, and now we’re going to have to pay down our tech debt” by the X11 developers themselves.
I know it was “baby with the bathwater”, but in theory we don’t need to do that again for the next 50 years because we have a significantly better baseline for how computers are actually used. The performance ceiling has been lifted because of Wayland; consistent support for multiple monitors and fractional scaling are things we have today because of Wayland.
I won’t argue about security, because honestly most people seem to want as little security as possible if it infringes on software that used to work a certain way, but it should be mentioned at some point that a lack of security posture leads to a pretty terrible experience eventually.
So, yes, Wayland was worth the 10y cost, because the debt was due and with interest. Kicking the can down the road would most likely kill desktop Linux eventually.
> because we have a significantly better baseline for how computers are actually used.
Except, they don't. X was device agnostic. Wayland makes some asumptions which will be wrong in 10 years. And being a monolith does not help.
this "device-agnosticism" is also the source of many of X11's modern problems. Because the X server has to handle all rendering and input, it acts as a middleman. For every frame, an application has to send rendering commands to the X server, which then composites the scene and sends it to the display. This extra step introduces latency and makes it difficult to implement modern features like smooth animations, variable refresh rates, and HDR. In contrast, Wayland's design is based on the idea of direct rendering. The application renders a frame directly to a buffer in memory, and then the Wayland compositor takes this finished buffer and displays it. This approach is highly efficient for modern GPUs and display technology. The trade-off is that it ties the display protocol more closely to the graphics hardware, but this is a necessary step to achieve the high performance and low latency that modern users expect.
"Wayland makes some assumptions which will be wrong in 10 years."
This is a fair and common criticism. Yes, Wayland assumes a graphics stack that is based on OpenGL/Vulkan and a kernel with a Direct Rendering Manager (DRM). This works well today because modern Linux graphics drivers are built around this model.
However, an X11 advocate might argue that this tight coupling could be a problem if a new, fundamentally different type of display technology or graphics hardware emerges. With its modular design, X11 could theoretically adapt by adding new extensions.
Wayland developers have addressed this by keeping the core protocol simple and extensible. New features, like HDR or adaptive sync, are implemented as extensions to the base protocol. The hope is that this design allows Wayland to evolve without the bloat and complexity that burdened X11. While it's impossible to predict the future, Wayland's developers believe that its modular design is flexible enough to handle future changes in display technology.
Which I think is fair.
> introduces latency and makes it difficult to implement modern features like smooth animations,
Move X [Wayland] into kernel space [provided stability isn't a concern].
It's easy to type that out, of course.
> It still looks to me like Linux 20 years ago.
I know this seems like a down side to you but the person you are replying to notes this as something they love about the platform. It not changing over time "just to change" is the point.
I backed up and upgraded to Tahoe earlier today so I could fully immerse myself in the disaster of a release that is being reported here today. After a half day with Tahoe I simply cannot understand all the drama.
It's fine. Maybe a bit more of a departure UI wise and not as polished as the previous release but whatever, I don't see how this would cause anyone to throw in the towel on Apple and move to Linux. I've used both for years and would never chose to use Linux exclusively or even primarily.
Yeah... that's my take so far. There are some issues here and there, but the incredible ranting that's been going on seems overblown.
I love(d) Linux and I've used it a lot over the years, but I finally got fed up and bought a Macbook Pro a few weeks ago. I find myself fiddling with my Linux machine way more than I'd like. I'm sure whatever distro I was using (Ubuntu) will seem like the problem to someone who likes another distro, but that's just more fiddling to me. It took me a while to get to where Zoom video calls with screen sharing worked properly. The last straw was that my wifi card stopped working one day. Debugging OS issues with no internet is really hard.
I've got my dev environment set up on my new Macbook Pro and everything is working perfectly and I'm very happy.
> It still looks to me like Linux 20 years ago. And I started with Linux in the mid 90s. Not much has changed or improved on the pure fundamentals.
Point taken, but that is exactly the quality I said I liked about it. I hope that 20 years from now my desktop will be exactly the same. The disjoint UI bothers me to an extent. I mostly use KDE apps or things built with Qt, but you're right that nothing is uniform. That said, I'd take disunity if it means stability. I don't care if the buttons in different apps look different, but don't take them away. Just look at what they did to Mail.app--in 2010 it was beautiful. Last I used it in 2020 it seemed like all the power user features of it were gone or hidden and everything was under a dot dot dot menu instead of out on the toolbar.
> Not much has changed or improved on the pure fundamentals
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. What DE are you talking about? Or are you talking about something else?
That's a bigger discussion, I guess. But all of them seem to just be gradual improvements and more eye candy, if anything. Fewer crashes, yet incompatibilities because of the ecosystem. You'll never see things like secure terminal input, handover of apps/data to other devices, and a dozen other things that Just Works™ on Mac. I don't want to make it seem like I am anti Linux though; I am a Linux user as well, but just not on my primary desktop.
Depends on the role. I build AI Agents for a living and Linux is for this edge case better.
> It still looks to me like Linux 20 years ago.
Like visually? I personally don't care much for animations, transitions, rounded corners (this one I actually hate, because you can't even disable them on mac). I'm not a florist, I am programmer. I want efficiency not the looks, bells and whistles. Although I recently started using Hyprland, and oh my, those window animations and transitions are super nice, not to mention that you can completely control every aspect of them.
> Oh and don't get me started on MLX...
Your pittance Apple gives you because they refuse to sign CUDA drivers? That MLX?
If you're into LLM's you need to consider using Apple Silicon so you can continue developing on your own machine with MLX. MLX isn't just a replacemnet for CUDA, no way - it's made for the Apple arch. The new M5 chip will likely have serious ANE and ability to use the unified memory. Then we're talking powerhouse. Current Mac Studios are already more cost effective than say RTX 6000.
That's just a unified memory architecture. Strix Halo has this, too. It's not only Apple. Memory bandwidth is lower than the ultra series but faster or on par for every other M series processor.
And it's great they are pushing each other. Strix Halo is based on Ryzen AI if I recall. My AI machine is currently Linux but I'd like to get a Mac Studio with an Ultra (or perhaps the M5 when it comes out) purely for the insane memory bandwidth.
> The initial investment into getting a usable Arch desktop was horrible.
It is my conviction that very few should go down the Arch route. If you want to sysadmin Linux or learn how to do so, fine. But if you want to do something else with your computer I'd strongly recommend looking into one of the https://universal-blue.org images (I use https://getaurora.dev btw).
These are based on atomic Fedora and my experience is that they offer extreme stability while still staying on the edge of development. Could we call it NixOS for mere mortals? Probably not if you ask the Nix peeps. :)
> It is my conviction that very few should go down the Arch route. If you want to sysadmin Linux or learn how to do so, fine.
I don't think sysadmin is fair, but certainly it's true that a lot of 'how do I do the equivalent of Windows/macOS built-in foobar' questions will have the answer 'well this is a non-exhaustive list of possible things you could install to do that'.
Which is to say that first time around it's almost inevitably going to be a lot of setup. But then it won't change, or when it does it will just be whichever puzzle piece changed - not 'Arch reimagined everything with Liquid Glass'.
>These are based on atomic Fedora and my experience is that they offer extreme stability
These were my hopes. Up until a new update introduced something that broke my nvidia drivers "integration".
After a few days I decided to try to update the system once more (which killed the oldest snapshot) and I was left with the system that can only be run in 1024 mode. I've tried every suggestion from the web to no avail.
It's been working well with my NVIDIA equipped laptop and desktop machine with a Radeon GPU. I would never buy NVIDIA for Linux use again though. GPU support needs to be in the kernel, So Arc or Radeon it is.
I attempted to make a ostree+Nix distro a while back, but ublue didn't exist at the time and the build documentation was a masterclass in obfuscation.
Immutable is definitely the future.
For better or worse, I'm exactly the person who should go down this route.
:D
If you gotta do it, you gotta do it.
> The best part is, though, nothing ever changes.
Wasn’t true when they switched to systemd, or when KDE 4 came out, or when the new Gnome came out, or when the kernel renamed Ethernet interfaces to enps-whatever.
Or when they switched from applications requesting exclusive access to ALSA audio devices to using sound servers for mixing, or when Xorg autoconfiguration was introduced (obviating manual Xorg.conf creation), or when the modesetting DDX replaced vendor specific DDX packages, or when Wayland was introduced with full backward compatibility with Xorg via XWayland. I suppose that last one is more of a lack of change.
> when Wayland was introduced with full backward compatibility with Xorg
you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet.
Those things are changes that are announced years before they happens and you would some distributions where they’re still using the old stuff. It’s not that unavoidable changes we you only have three years of holding on to the old stuff before being abandoned.
You can still use the old Sysv init on modern distros if you want. KDE3 is sorta still around (TrinityDE), ditto Gnome 2 (MATE).
Some of us use Slackware, with fvwm.
My biggest gripe with macOS vs. Linux is that the former allows IT departments to completely control them. They overload these otherwise very capable machines with so much crap that things start to crawl; they enable FileVault and install antivirus and NGFW clients; forcefully diminish the admin role to be a regular user, forcing users to use Admin-by-Request whenever they need to fart out anything sudo in the terminal.
I tried so hard to find reasons to like macOS, but frankly, if workspaces didn't force Macs, I would've totally chosen to use Linux. The only thing I miss in Linux is JXA/Applescript automation engine and Hammerspoon, nothing else - I don't use their web browser, or their mail app, GarageBand, and other crap like iTunes because frankly, they never felt to me like good solutions to solve specific problems, more like freeware before transitioning to better alternatives. Even the built-in terminal I use only to bootstrap Homebrew. Another good thing I should mention is that macOS really does set a good standard for accessibility features, even though I'm lucky not to have to rely on them, I'm sure many people do.
I honestly don't know how Apple has been getting away with so much crap for years - software developers are probably one of the biggest demographics of Mac users, and Apple keeps screwing them over, yet they stay loyal - partly because businesses force them to use Macs, partly because the alternatives suck even more - Linux ain't perfect and Windows is outright evil (really, I can't even rebind Win+L key on my computer? Fuck you MSFT!).
>The best part is, though, nothing ever changes. I get things working the way I want, and it just stays that way year after year. No UI language updates, no replacing my default shell, nothing. It just keeps working the way I like.
While Arch might make you safer by virtue of choice, some of the more "beginner friendly" distros aren't immune to changing things seemingly overnight. Ubuntu for instance dropped GNOME for Unity which I still have bad memories of to this day.
Yeah, I didn't mean to write a "Linux is better" polemic, just that building my own Linux desktop works better for me. I also haven't used Gnome since ~2009 except briefly to discover that Gnome 3 was trash. Unity was a travesty and I also hated it when Ubuntu force fed me that.
You're right. Locking yourself into a distro, especially the more user-friendly ones, can get you into just as much of a dictatorship as macOS.
I use i3 on X11 like a neanderthal and mostly Qt/KDE apps. I'll switch to Sway and Wayland when things stop working.
I'd switch if I were you - well, I did, after holding out for what I thought was a long time. A lot of minor nuisances I hadn't gotten around to investigating with X just disappeared, I think you'd find that by comparison you were/are actually nearer 'not working' than you realise, my sway experience has been much smoother.
Last sticking point when I tried was fractional scaling
Out of curiosity, what kind of work do you do on Linux. Because, some workflows are simply not possible on Linux due to missing applications.
I work on computer vision stuff. Most of my time is in the browser, or on the terminal (Alacritty, tmux, neovim). I've actually become more of a GUI user since switching from macOS to Linux. I used to be way more die-hard about CLI-everything, but I love using `git gui` now. I think Dolphin is the superior file manager experience available to mankind. Okular is an excellent PDF reader, but leaves a tiny bit to be missed about Preview.
I'm fairly serious about photography and spend a lot of time editing and post-processing photos. This is a major shortcoming of my desktop and I may end up getting a MacBook just for this purpose. digiKam is just okay for organizing photos, and RawTherapee is barely okay. I don't mind it's ugly UI, but I'm discovering that even aside from UI considerations it just can't produce the results that Adobe can. Things like noise reduction are just not there.
I exclusively used macOS for about 8 years and now I'm on Bluefin, work generic web development stacks... The last bit of software I'm missing on Linux is the Serif apps... gaming (in my particular case) is sorted, I was shocked to install Steam on Blufin and have almost my entire library available.
Some workflows not possible on Windows. I avoid using Windows thus I don't care about the pain of having to depend on it - have zero interest in what's not possible somewhere else. What's your point?
The only thing from macOS I truly miss when in Linux is JXA/Applescript automation engine. That's the only thing I miss.
> 1. Old bugs are not fixed.
If Apple would open source some of its OS apps, this would probably be a non-issue, I could see people putting in bugfix PRs the second Apple chooses to open source their core apps.
I don't see them doing this any time soon sadly, but it would make macOS much more stable, and probably secure.
The more I have thought about my views on Open Source vs Commercial software, I strongly feel that infrastructure code (an OS) should be more open source, I dont see Microsoft or Apple open sourcing any time soon, but it would make a world of a difference, imagine a world where Windows XP had been open sourced, and the community took it fully over and maintained its security, you'd have a drastically better version of Windows without all the fluff, or heck even Windows 7, which some argue was the last good version of Windows as well.
I wish ReactOS was drastically more usable.
Of the two, there's a lot clearer line to Apple open sourcing some of its core desktop apps, given market share (~16%?) and lack of internal resource prioritization (iOSiOSiOS).
The best time to do so would have been ~2010, after iTunes revenue provided a clear monetizable carve-out.
The second best time would be today.
The number of people saying 'I love the hardware you sell me, but am switching platforms because your software is trash' should be a flare that even Tim Cook can notice.
And anything that moves MacOS closer to OSS should be welcomed by Apple -- it's their easiest (and most affordable) path to competing with Microsoft (Azure) on desktop.
Or if they would just embrace Asahi! Have a team work full-time on parity, have asahi-linux feature complete on Mac launch day; mainlined soon thereafter.
We can dream.
I mean, there's more of a rationale there. If they cede complete control of the OS, then that starts to eat into their services business.
And it's hard to pick a middle ground once they open up the OS.
At least with apps, there's a clear dividing line between this app and that app.
Mail.app alone had enough issues and missing features to sustain an entire cottage industry, and would be one app I would certainly like to contribute to. But it shall never come to pass.
The tragedy here is that Apple mail was far and beyond the BEST IMAP client up until ~2014.
I worked for a defense contractor that used an encryption mechanism for email that was primarily supported by Outlook, Thunderbird had a paid plugin, but Apple just opened all my emails just fine.
Maybe it's just nostalgia but i really miss Eudora.
Mail.app makes me sad, because it is neglected. Outside of Thunderbird, it's sort of this last bastion of desktop-first mail clients when everything else, even "New" Outlook, has become a web app or some electron monster.
I use mail.app daily across phone, iPad and Mac - it's "fine" but I'd really love it to get some investment.
> I strongly feel that infrastructure code (an OS) should be more open source, I dont see Microsoft or Apple open sourcing any time soon
If only there were another platform vendor with different thoughts about open source infrastructure code. Alas.
the same for me (e.g. yabai didn't work anylonger properly with latest update). But for the past 2 months (or so), I couldn't be happier with Omarchy. It's a Linux build that comes with all the Mac specifications out of the box and is set up as a tiling window manager, which is what I used on macOS. But no more bugs, and it just works. Plus I can tweak my own OS, if I need to change something. In case of interest, I wrote a little here: https://www.ssp.sh/blog/macbook-to-arch-linux-omarchy/ (It was also on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44955923)
Can you say a little more about the "fan always running"? Can it be attended to?
As someone coming from mac, i didn't know about basic things. So one thing I found, don't put your none-mac on a desk mat, it's very bad for thermal throttling. So that helped a ton. I also found that when plugged in in powermode, the lenovo was always on high power, therefore fan on. By switching to balanced, that turned of as well.
But also, as I stuck with Omarchy, I wanted a more beefier machine, as I work all day on the laptop. So with the new machine, Tuxedo latest version, I don't have any fans anymore too, just because it's much faster and better thermal. I will eventually write these up in a second part of the article.
I was able to fix the fan always running issue by changing the fan mode for both my Asus laptop and old macbook pro; I am using silent mode or equivalent and that seems to be fine. there are policy files for throttle_thermal_policy/fan_boost_mode, and you can use a systemd service to set to whatever is your preferred mode.
Sounds sensational. If it takes you a month to ignore stuff, I have doubts that your workflow is even productive. I use every OS, you gotta roll with the punches, and they all punch back. There is no silver bullet OS. They all have issues and many of them fit your exact description. Good luck out there!
Re 1., based on [1] it seems that some data loss bugs are getting fixed. Asymptotically :)
[1] https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/10/11/mail-data-loss-in-macos-1...
I used to love Apple Mail but it was precisely this bug that made me move permanently to Thunderbird. It's hard for me to fathom a bug so severe that it caused data loss on an IMAP server, but Apple created said bug and put it into production.
Thunderbird has the nice advantage of working on both MacOS and Linux with the same UI. It's not quite as nice as Apple Mail's classic UI (which is no longer available -- see (3) above) but it's good enough.
Also ran into serious issues with Apple Mail, and started building a new product:
https://marcoapp.io
I can't seem to select any text on your website so had to go screenshot, then select. But:
> All your devices, synced
> Mac, Windows, iOS, Android-stay in sync across all platforms.
Does this mean email passes through a server like Spark[1]?
[1] https://sparkmailapp.com
Your screenshot looks nice. I hope you succeed with this, and I'd be happy to try it. From what little I know, building a fully-compliant IMAP client is hard work.
Yes, it's been over a year of extremely hard work but we're nearly there!
I can imagine that some race condition slips into production, but what's hard for me to process is why it’s 5 or 6 years later and it’s still not fully fixed.
I mean, even if you have no idea what's the cause, you e.g. stuff counters everywhere and when they don't match you send the telemetry with the details. Privacy is preserved and over time you get an idea what to look for.
I admit I have no idea how mail client works, but clearly there must be some way they could pinpoint it, with such large userbase..
> but what's hard for me to process is why it’s 5 or 6 years later and it’s still not fully fixed
Because Apple's (the company's, as a whole) bug -> triage -> engineering -> deployment process is fundamentally broken, and obviously has been for decades at this point.
Say what you want about MS, but at least critical issues that actual customers are experiencing tend to get fixed.
Apple seems to have some weird 'maybe someone will look at it, if they have time, after they get done implementing new features for the next release' process. (Glaring example: daisy chaining DisplayPort support)
When I was young I loved getting the latest of everything but that was partly because I didn't have to carry certain workflows or older tech along with me. It's the baggage that we accumulate is the problem.
Now I understand why plenty of old timers just leave the OS version on the MacBook that it came with. All you ever really need is the security patches.
Unless there is some specific new feature that you absolutely must need or some push factor, don't upgrade.
For me its every time I reinstalled my OS and didn't backup any of my chat convo logs. My wife still has them on all her old Macs, and her first Windows computer we met online through has some (not all) of our MSN convos still on it. I never thought about that unfortunately.
I can relate, but generally if I avoid updating in the first quarter of the release, I don't find it is too difficult to get my Mac back to a happy state. I did try to move to Linux a couple of years ago, but just couldn't. The keyboard, mouse, window system, and app ecosystem were far and away less usable for me and there was nothing I could find to do that would make the machine work as well for me as Mac, despite what Apple is throwing at us.
Yep. Contacts.app still has the same bugs where it doesn’t sync to Google unless you create a “note” in your Google account… yet it’s got the full new UI refresh. Truly feels like lipstick on a pig.
1) and 2) are common to all major software releases (whether it's an OS like macOS a DE like Gnome or some complicated program like Photoshop or Blender or something). Inevitable to a degree as you can't fix everything, and you can't ship 100s of thousands of new lines of code without some bugs.
These are only a big problem if those bugs bugs are major, and/or widely applicable to different user setups, and/or very annoying.
3) is the worse though, especially when it happens for no good reason, or for novelty value.
4) is not that bad
Nothing on this list compares to removing an ESC key. That was apple starting to leave reality. I had to buy used laptops for that time period.
Definitely the worst era of Mac laptop hardware that I lived through. I still have a work-provided 2019 MBP and the keyboard is shot (even though I never use it because it's docked to a monitor + keyboard 99.9% of the time), while the Touch Bar flickers with random white rectangles regularly while the machine is asleep. I personally kept using a 2015 MBP until last year for just this reason.
You're right about the hubris, but Caps Lock -> Esc is The Way regardless!
I am a vim user. I map caps lock to super for a dead simple app shortcut system. I prefer being able to switch applications perfectly over a more convenient escape key. macOS app switching is broken by default.
AeroSpace WM really made a lot of sense for me for better application switching.
Caps Lock as Esc (tap) and also Ctrl (hold) is the true way
Interesting, haven't tried that, but I will.
Wow I already forgot about the touch bar. And imagine being so stubborn to keep the touch bar but introduce a physical ESC key, they lost their minds during that time.
There was non-touch bar variant, right ? Personally i like how manufactures try out new thing, instead of staying inside their safe zone.
They lost their mind when Jobs died, he was the only mind worth mentioning in that cult.
If they just put the fancy bar ON TOP of the f-row, we'd still have it.
As a Vim user, I thought it would be a deal breaker, but it really wasn't that bad.
The rest of the laptop was though.
I just switched to ^C for Escape (which usually works) and ^[ for the rare time I needed actual escape mode.
The Touch Bar was awful - except I was able to get a great deal on my former employer’s Touch Bar era laptops they were decommissioning, since nobody wanted them. One of them (2018, fully loaded) is still in active use, although it mostly runs T2Linux now.
As a Vim user, and a 65% keyboard user with my ESC key mapped to `~`, I found out early on that using ESC in Vim is better relegated to CTRL+[ or `jk` (when in insert mode). Fortunately, that stupid touchbar didn't slow me down as much as others have mentioned. The volume control (that would get stuck) on the other hand...
In Vim, I've used ^[ instead of ESC since forever so the ESC thing didn't bother me either. Still, the Touch Bar is such a pain in the ass when I have to interact with it. It's also bad if I touch it by accident when carrying the laptop.
The early touch bar models were terrible. I still remember the day I traded that thing in for an M1.
super lolllz
Just curious, what yype of featureres where removed?
To be honest Im new to macos, but after spending years suffering with gnome, that did removed a lot of features, Macos seens like it dosent suffer of this that much.
My mouse and keyboard are connected via the USB dock function of my monitor.
After the update, I can't even login. Great.
Not that it was working well before. To get the second monitor to even turn on, I had to first power off and then subsequently turn on again the primary monitor.
And that ritual was unique to my M2 Pro Mac mini.
On Windows, or a M1 Pro Macbook, everything just works.
And I'm not the only one with this super annoying external monitor issue. Apple apparently never fixed it. It just sucks.
yea, same thing here. I have the M1 Pro MacBook, connected via usb-c hub. No bugs so far.
> Every new version of MacOS exhibits four phenomena:
This is specific to almost every new software.
As jwz said "But that's what happens when there is no incentive for people to do the parts of programming that aren't fun. Fixing bugs isn't fun; going through the bug list isn't fun; but rewriting everything from scratch is fun (because "this time it will be done right", ha ha) and so that's what happens, over and over again. "
If apple didnt win in hardware theyd be gone.
If Mike Tyson didn't punch so hard back then...
I swear I don't usually complain about UI styling updates, because it's usually not a big deal - but this looks really, really bad [1]. It's less functional with bizarre transparency choices destroying legibility, and big rounded corners taking up more dead space. And stylistically, the layouts just look unbalanced and amateurish (It reminds me of what happens when I attempt to do CSS layouts). Most Linux desktops unironically look better than this.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/macos-26-tahoe-the-a...
It's ironic that Apple makes screen size incredibly expensive for every millimeter - and then designs UI which proceeds to waste that pricey real-estate as well as user time by burying options (or worse, simply removing many advanced user options "because they don't fit").
Same irony applies to storage
> Sequoia install used 21.6GB and a Tahoe install used 27.4GB, a nearly 6GB increase
6GB of absolute shit, as if that wasn't enough.
As a rule almost any UI redesign of just about any product in the last decade will increase padding and reduce information density. I don't know if it's because the average designer/user is getting older or large screens are more common so it seems like there's lots of room available thus it can be wasted.
Sadly, this often applies to Linux as well, so there's no escape. I guess Xfce is still around at least.
People tend to behave as they're treated, so treat them like toddlers and ruling them becomes a lot easier.
Wow. I know I’m not the first to say it, but it really does give me Windows Vista vibes. No bueno.
vista was pretty nice looking tbh (or, it was to me, especially the black ultimate edition with the frosted glass).
It just chugged like madness, the UAC dialogs were slow to fade in (and numerous) and the widgets and moving wallpaper was about 10y too early.
I was distinctly not happy with the control panel changes, but hindsight tells me that I should have been.
It’s funny how different people saw things. UAC was hated back then but I was a Linux user primarily and when I bought my laptop I kept the Windows Vista while dual booting. UAC mostly made sense and worked like gksudo.
I remember saying so once and got flamed by people online because of course Microsoft didn’t copy this from Linux and of course gksudo was much better.
But the subjective experience I had was the same. IMHO the greatest victory with Electron has been that the OS wars have practically ended.
Vista made me jump ship to Linux on 2006, where I remained for a good 17 years.
Maybe I'm going to jump back to Linux because of this update.
I see people making this comparison but as someone who used vista back in the day and someone who has been using all flavors of 26 for over a month now, it really bears no resemblance in UI or UX to vista at all.
I kind of think the people making this comparison are doing it off screenshots and not actual experience with the two operating systems.
Imagine if Steve saw this...
https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/tahoe...
Steve saw this and approved it...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Apple_US...
The iMac mouse looks amazing though! Ergonomics, not too sure about those.
Right, so now everything is a fcking web page, great.
These are machines with SSDs with multiple GB/s of throughput and memory throughput of over 200GB/s. How it is even possible to load this slowly these icons ?
At some point "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" morphed into "optimization is evil". Your PR will always get shot down if it tries to improve perf by making code less clean. Imagine applying this handbrake to every single layer of every single thing running on your computer https://www.computerenhance.com/p/clean-code-horrible-perfor...
Major throwback to icon rendering on the Amiga Workbench.
Seems like it takes the worst feature of React and moves it to the desktop.
I had the same issue on first start, the icons had to load while I was scrolling.
my iphone 16 and m1 mac are much slower on this.
Think something is borked there. Mine doesn't do that.
Something is indeed borked: Apple's (lack of) QA, bug fixing, and attention to detail.
Windows Aero is back
Aero didn't have absurd padding. It made good use of texture, colour and shade. It actually looked quite appealing. We've been steadily downhill since.
Aero was peak HCI compared to this
Agreed. Very few UI's has surpassed Windows 7's Aero
oooh, nice burn ^^
Didnt vista try and do a similar thing when it came out, lots of "widgets" and transparency crap that felt cool then tacky after 2 minutes...
I'll give it a try, I installed the iOS and iPadOS betas and I actually like some of the changes.
But I do not understand how the color-tinted UI/icons ever got shipped. They just look... bad...
That’s just a psychological experiment to see how many people go through the standard: enable puke disable cycle.
I too fell for it.
I have a red tint that turns on only when I'm in sleep mode--it's like an added layer of dark mode. That's about the only use I've found for it!
I absolutely hate it. I guess we’ll probably get used to it but until then… gah ugliest MacOS ever?
Don't think of it as the ugliest MacOS ever, think of it as the most beautiful MacOS of the rest of your life.
Ugliest macOS... So far!
Hoping the next update is the iOS 8 to the iOS 7 redesign and then it'll be fine.
What's not to love about macOS Vista?
You'll get used to it.
I'd rather get used to Linux.
Do it.
So far the only thing bothering me so far is the way the tabs look (in Finder and Safari). And I did turn on the menu bar background.
Have the tabs in Finder always been slow to appear? Right now there is a noticeable delay from when I press cmd+tab to when tab animates itself into existence, reminds me of lag in windows 11.
For me it is very fast to appear. I am on a M3 MacBook Pro.
It seems instant to me?
I do dislike how toy-like the user interface looks, but I really hate how illegible notifications are on iPadOS. I had to turn on the reduce transparency setting so I could read the notification text against my lock screen wallpaper.
You've been disabled by Apple. There's no other way to characterize your (and my) need for an accessibility setting to make the OS usable.
You're just old, kids love this shit
The reason Liquid Glass on macOS specifically is getting so much blowback is that it isn't just updating the translucency effect with the new glass refraction effect - they've also increased the border radius of most windows, increased paddings in toolbars, sidebars, etc. and overall made the UI much less information-dense, which is wild for a desktop OS. If they had just changed the translucency effect, I think this would be much better received.
Personally, I'm sticking with macOS Sequoia for now, and if macOS 27 goes even more in the less-information-density direction, I'll probably fully move off of macOS, which is a shame as a 20-year Apple user.
The only thing that really bothers me with the macOS 26 design update is the complete lack of contrast. Everything is white-on-white with super subtle shadows. You can't see what tab is selected in Safari, you can't see what is a button, etc. And it doesn't even look good - it just looks like something is broken, like a texture failed to load.
Tab styling across the board is terrible. I'm struggling to read inactive tab labels in Terminal.
I've used and loved macs for decades. This is the first time (maybe the second, if you count early Apple Music) that I've thought they've lost their way.
Agreed. I've been a Mac fan even through the dark ages of buying Performas at Sears... but Tahoe is a bridge too far for me.
I doubt I'll switch away from iOS for my phone/watch as I'm reliant on some iOS-specific features. But the Mac has excellent competition, so sadly I'll be a non-Mac user for the first time since the 1990s.
Border radius on everything on Apple devices has been progressively increasing, eventually I expect everything to be circular. No rectangles allowed.
And then they'll go back to rectangles and call it "innovation", "giving users more space"
Welcome to fashion cycles. Windows 7 has come back around.
7 used rather small border radius and on was done through the added window border/non client area, not chopped out of the window like today's UX. It was also trivially easy to adjust that to make it as tight as XP's 2-3px so if you really didn't care for it they would go away. For buttons in dialogs the radius was the same size as the embossed effect in earlier windows version.
Vista and 7 rounded things out but they sacrificed very little usable area in the application and could be adjusted to taste. Both Apple and MSFT took the stance that this was too much user control.
Maybe once it’s round enough, we’ll get a round Apple Watch screen.
I feel like every macOS update has been worse than the last, since like 2015-2018 or so. Still, their only real competition is Windows 11, which isn’t well received either.
I'm still on Sonoma on my Mac, but I've recently been splitting my time between macOS and Linux and I'm starting to be pretty happy with Linux.
The main problem I had with living in a Gnome desktop environment, is with the keyboard. I'm not willing to abandon my use of Emacs control+meta sequences for cursor and editing movements everywhere in the GUI. On macOS, this works because the command (super/Win on Linux/Windows) key is used for common shortcuts and the control key is free for editing shortcuts.
I spent a day or so hacking around with kanata[0], which is a kernel level keyboard remapping tool, that lets you define keyboard mapping layers in a similar way you might with QMK firmware. When I press the 'super/win/cmd' it activates a layer which maps certain sequences to their control equivalents, so I can create tabs, close windows, copy and paste (and many more) like my macOS muscle memory wants to do. Other super key sequences (like Super-L for lock desktop or Super-Tab for window cycling) are unchanged. Furthermore, when I hit the control or meta/alt/option key, it activates a layer where Emacs editing keys are emulated using the Gnome equivalents. For example, C-a and C-e are mapped to home/end, etc.
After doing this, and tweaking my Gnome setup for another day or so, I am just as comfortable on my Linux machine as I am on my Mac.
[0]: https://github.com/jtroo/kanata
Oh, apple would have to do much worse for windows 11 to look good.
Yeah me too. I think I liked Mavericks or Yosemite or something and have pretty much hated every upgrade since.
Depends on what you're using it for. Windows 11 is the only main stream competition, but for work I've used Pop OS for a few years and was amazed by how stable and usable it is for work.
Back to Mac OS now due to a change of workplace, and while I'm absolutely blown away by the M3 performance and battery life the OS is something I'm still struggling with a bit.
https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/
Rectangle
karabiner
Hammerspoon
others but I'm not at my laptop rn
Possibly, although I definitely don't recall the macOS Big Sur re-design being as disruptive UI-wise as Tahoe is.
> Still, their only real competition is Windows 11, which isn’t well received either.
It was at a certain point revealed that the people creating the new Windows-designs were in fact not using Windows anymore, they were using Macs.
In short they didn’t have to eat their own dogfood.
I’m starting to suspect the same thing have happened to Apple-designers…
> I feel like every macOS update has been worse than the last, since like 2015-2018 or so.
Tha's been going on for as long as the Mac has been a thing.
Snow Leopard was certainly better than Leopard.
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Are you implying that Mac OS 9 was a better OS than 10.4?
Not that OS9 was better - there are thing that I miss, such as drag and drop control panels and system extensions. My point is that people have been complaining about the newer versions of Mac operating systems since there were numbered upgrades.
If there is an alternative to the m-series that lets me keep the battery life I'd jump ship. The m-series chips are just so good though
I’m using one of the Lenovo Aura editions. It doesn’t match the MacBook, but I also don’t worry about battery at all any more and perf is just fine for my needs. I don’t miss Apple at all. Now, if only there was a Linux phone…
There are now plenty of ARM laptops with Windows (and Linux) support and very similar, if not better, battery life.
Like?
The Surface Laptop 7 gets just under 23 hours of battery life for low intensity usage like video playback. https://mashable.com/review/microsoft-surface-laptop-7
Outside of benchmarks, it's obviously getting much lower than that, but it's pretty much on par with MacBooks.
You'd jump ship because of the .0 release of Tahoe? Really? People get a little hysterical about things like this.
You know you don't have to upgrade to it, right? They'll support Sequoia for years, and you could even be running Sonoma if you wanted.
The response to this design is likely to be so overwhelmingly negative that we'll see a lot of subtle retreats in the point releases going forward, and when the macOS 7 version replaces TahoeVista, you can upgrade then.
It's not really hysterical to want to jump a ship that feels like is turning into a clown cruise. I can use Windows, Linux, and OSX equally well for work, even if I deploy to AWS in the end. However, I love the osx aesthetic and MacBook hardware, since around Snow Leopard, which is when I switched from Linux to OSX. Since then, OSX osx gotten worse with every release, and Tahoe is a very low, new low. At some point, it becomes not worth it. Just like it's not worth staying on the previous release of OSX while random apps and extensions lose compatibility. It's not hysteria, it's just the straw that breaks the camels back. The only thing is, I really like the M4 speed. There is nothing that runs as fast, and as cool, that I am aware of. If I wasn't doing a bunch of processing right now, I would probably switch. Non-hysterically.
Sequoia is absolutely, undeniably better than Sonoma. Sonoma is undeniably better than Ventura. And so on. This notion that it's all downhill is just noisy nonsense as people wave their hands and have a tantrum that they don't like some change. And to be clear, every single macOS release yields this. It's incredibly boring.
Like, it's fun to whine about the imperfection of macOS...versus Windows or Linux? LOL, come on. And just like you and probably everyone else on here, I use macOS, Windows and Linux every single day. Pretending that a couple of aesthetic changes are the big "straw that broke the camel's back" is just so lame.
It is hysterical. It's noisy nonsense. This "fine this is it" tantrum that people pull is such a tired gimmick.
And personally I think the aesthetics of macOS/iOS/iPadOS 26 are terrible. They're inevitably going to start easing down the heinous translucency and will claw back on the stupid round corners. Aside from that the system has a lot of fundamental improvements that will benefit everyone.
But no, no one on Sequoia is going to suddenly be without apps or extensions. When apps start abandoning versions it's usually a couple of versions out.
In some sense, some releases are always better than the previous version. Of course, Apple developers do some valuable work. However, there are changes that are not "undeniably better". I don't think every Sonoma feature was better. I don't want widgets, I don't want notifications, I don't want pretty much anything they've added in Tahoe. Not a single thing, that I'm aware of. And, now it's ugly as heck, to me.
I don't know what you're picturing, but I promise you, I am not being hysterical, I'm just annoyed. I feel like, when you "its hysterical", you think my mouth is foaming, my face is red, my heart rate is above average... It's definitely not. I'm just looking at CPU benchmarks and Windows ARM compatibility discussions. Honestly, it's kind of fun to have a reason to switch. I used to run hackintoshes, because Apple hardware was overpriced. But now, unfortunately, it is the other way around, and running Windows on M4 seems impossible.
Anyway, I don't think it's a huge deal, but it is definitely a straw that can break many peoples backs in terms of their preferred development environment. I know many people who have switched to Linux from the previous releases too. Un-hysterically, also.
It's not just Tahoe though, there have been more and more UX papercuts over the years.
Here's an example of one such UI regression, that started with Big Sur and now got slightly worse in Tahoe (written by someone who is very knowledgeable about macOS): https://eclecticlight.co/2025/06/15/last-week-on-my-mac-fide...
Is cropping PDFs to rounded corners (without a way to disable it) enough to get someone to switch to another OS? Probably not, but it's still IMO a UI regression regardless.
Except that it's impossible to downgrade to previous MacOS versions on new Mac computers
> They'll support Sequoia for years, and you could even be running Sonoma if you wanted.
Unless the app you want doesn't support them anymore. Or the corporate policy forces an upgrade.
I don't think you can expect any major UI changes in Tahoe at this point. Maybe the next version of macOS will return to its desktop roots a bit more.
The huge amount of padding is one of the reasons I hate the official reddit app compared to redreader. There's just such a huge amount of padding between every UI element that it means half the screen is just empty space
its insane to me that apple could feature "liquid glass"... the amount of devs that must of worked on this is probably not insignificant and could have been used on better things...
> overall made the UI much less information-dense
is this an attempt make, users buy bigger screen models ?
Is it me or did they also fiddle with the font rendering?
On the few screencaps I saw from external ~100 DPI non-retina displays, everything looks a lot blurrier.
Just thinking out loud.
Maybe some people took remote working really seriously and just delegated their work to amateurs online while they traveled the world.
Just saying. There’s no other explanation to how bad this is.
This is incompetence on display. Hundreds of people were involved in this from concept, to implementation, to testing. And they all thought this was okay.
I'm pretty sure my previous manager was involved, this smells like his bullshit.
I decided to install this and the updated iOS today to see how I felt about it.
My very initial impressions on MacOS:
(1) I like the look of Safari better and the Mail app compared to the prior designs. They both look really nice to me and the Mail app especially looks like a huge improvement in terms of design unification with some of the features like summaries and unsubscribe options that looked bolted on in the past now blending in seamlessly.
(2) I really, really don't like the new icons! Especially so on iOS.
(3) On iOS the app group/folders look terrible to me with the way they distort my wallpaper. Not a fan.
(4) A lot of people are complaining about transparent icons. It's not a valid complaint and is strong evidence whoever is saying that hasn't used the new OS as that is a choice you can make if you want. The default is not transparent.
(5) The increased radii in some places doesn't seem to have any meaningful impact to my information density. A simple comparison of Chrome (old styling) and Safari (with the liquid glass design) shows that Safari has a few pixels fewer in height search + tab bar as a concrete example.
(6) Messages app in MacOS looks like shit. I hate almost everything about it.
(7) Spotlight search has marked improvements! UI is nicer and functionality has expanded greatly (eg clipboard search).
I really like the Apps change. Instead of opening up the icons full screen, it opens in a spotlight search window.
Except when I forgot the name of an app
Drag a folder of application shortcuts into the the dock and you’ll have roughly the same thing
Like this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/i3prgq/til_you_can_dra...
CMD + SPC for spotlight and then CMD + 1 gets you to the full set of apps.
Wow! I didn't know that cmd + number switches context of spotlight. Amazing tip, thank you!
Spotlight upgrades are really great in Tahoe.
Take a look at being able to search an app from Spotlight: CMD + SPC => "Mail" => TAB => then I'm searching all my emails
Which is shit because with launchpad you had muscle memory.
Imagine you no longer have pages with icons on your phone and instead only have a search bar
I guess thats personal preference because you’re describing exactly how I use both macOS and iOS.
I can’t be bothered by app icon locations or launchpad. Just CMD+Space and boom its there.
I have to believe that Apple had anonymized telemetry that told them how many people used Launchpad and acted as justification to nix it. I remember when it came out, and I probably used it more in the first month when it was novel and new than I have since then. I'm sorry a feature that you liked is gone, but I'm sure it wasn't done blindly.
Your “Imagine…” hypothetical is literally how I run my iPhone. I don’t need piles of icons cluttering up my screen. I can pull down and type 1-2 characters and get any app on my phone, easily.
More room for glanceable, informational widgets that way.
Hah. I can pull down and type 1-2 characters and my app might show up. Eventually.
Sadly you can’t swipe left and instantly type into the App Library search - that search bar actually works pretty well.
I have a 16 pro and pull down and type a couple of characters is delivering apps to me pretty much instantly
> Imagine you no longer have pages with icons on your phone and instead only have a search bar
I haven’t had pages of icons on my phone since the App Library was added. Generally the app I want is right there and if not a couple of letters in the search bar and there it is
In a phone writing text is not as simple, but I also find looking for the right icon there tedious, so I hope there was a better solution. In contrast, imo it is easier to get muscle memory with a keyboard (cmd+space > "first 3 characters of app name") than with searching for the app icon around. I cannot imagine the case where looking around in the launchpad is better except with some app you use so rarely you do not know the name (but somehow you have muscle memory for where it is there?).
I use CMD+SPACE 95% of the times I want to open an app. The rest 4% I do it with `open -a` on a terminal with autocomplete (or `/path/to/apps/binary &` for some specific stuff), and 1% going through the `/Applications` directory. I never use launchpad.
What I find weird: you can have light icons with color, dark icons with color, but not clear (and/or tinted) icons with color.
It’s a strange omission.
Spotlight improvements are one of the only things I actually like about it so far, it's unbelievable how bad messages app looks... we're certainly losing some space in cases where they're doing this weird sidebar container
Being able to search an app from spotlight is so great.
CMD + SPC => "Mail" => TAB => then I'm searching all my emails is fantastic. Spotlight really is a huge improvement for me.
No more *poof* animation when you drag a control out of the toolbar during customization.
The poof animation was such a lovely touch. Removing it feels like a crime honestly.
Most of the friendly computer interactions are being removed. I presume someone thinks it takes too much effort to replicate. They’re making the computer soulless, just like Windows, they might as well remove the Mac name as well.
But I was told Liquid Glass was going to add a bit more whimsy to the OS!
I weirdly like the clear apps on iOS. Less visually stimulating.
I've been trying this now too based on your comment. I think I like it too but I also think it only works for me because I know where everything is on my phone. If I ever reorganized or expand my regular app usage to new things, I think it will be much harder as differentiating the apps is much harder.
Whew. Those screenshots: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/09/macos-26-tahoe-the-a...
As a KDE Plasma dev, I always counted on us getting better, but I didn't expect the competition to get so much worse. We'd be flamed to high and heaven for shipping broken notification popups and rendering glitches like that in a prod release.
What happened internally to cause this, I wonder?
After years with Xfce and GNOME, I recently switched to distro that by default prefers KDE, and I'm overall satisfied - Qogir theme, little customization and I'm as good as I was with Win7. Plasma 6.4.5 feels way more stable than line 5 that would crash during stupidest things.
As for what happen at Cupertino: it seems that they replaced people who knew theory and practice, principles of interface design with designers who were told to make a product that looks "fresh" and will diverge attention from Apple's AI failure.
Because why this Liquid Glass now if not as "rattling keys" effect? It's not a technological breakthrough - we've seen translucent plastic/glass/acrylic elements and fancy animations in operating systems before. Hell, even Plasma had that glass stuff in initial line 4 of release. And OSX had Aqua interface, window animations long before Microsoft wasted years for Longhorn finally releasing it as Vista with Aero. Not mention Compiz on Linux around same time.
My partner is already baffled with lack of polish and consistency across the system in this release. In some places it's just a transitional animation added on top of flat style for "wow" effect because hardware nowadays doesn't tax much for that. Tahoe feels like it tries to follow GNOME/Adwaita big interface elements that should stay exclusively on mobile devices, and it does this quite late and also really bad.
The rumor mill speculates that Apple needed to ship something big and flashy to distract people from calling them out on their failure to deliver on the AI features promised (and previewed!) more than a year ago.
I've heard another take that is interesting and a clear departure from that never ending moaning: Like the ultra slim new iPhone that could be a step to validate the technical challenges to a foldable device, this change in UI is to prepare the user base for a complete change in the form factor, be it a glass slab or a greater focus on wearable (ala glasses).
They probably should have just eaten the AI non delivery instead of now having two major failures.
There’s no way this was developed by Apple. I keep thinking that they outsourced the macOS development to some amateurs online and took a year off traveling the world.
Looking at the screenshots and review videos, I cannot believe how ugly and out of proportion it is. Normally, there would be a consistent design and some people like it while others don’t. But this is simply ugly.
My guess is that it’s all product managers and “designers” now, a whole religion of procedures and terminology, and unfortunately very little engineering of the kinds that some of the early Ux pioneers applied.
Have you seen Windows 11? It's like they copied random ideas out of KDE 4 and bolted them on top of Windows, badly.
My theory is that big companies like to compress salaries. To compress salaries, you hire young and fire old, which means losing historical knowledge.
The other theory is that people who grew up with Kde-look.org are now running the asylum, without ever going through the sort of formal training that the previous generations of UI designers had to experience.
That’s the important question. Someone else on the thread suggested it was to divert attention from one failure (AI) and now they have two. I wonder how Steve Jobs would react to this mess. Maybe he’d say he would not have been in such a mess in the first place. :)
At this point, I have Plasma configured as a better macOS shell. Not a clone, those always look bad, but layouts close enough that my macOS muscle memory can't tell the difference.
Wow those looks broken. I switched to Mac precisely thinking Apple knew best. Whatever happened to don’t change it if it ain’t broken?
My guess is organizational inertia around dependency chains
People in glass houses...
I feel like we’ve gone full circle. For decades Apple hardware sucked and was badly overpriced, but you paid the price to enjoy running Mac OS X. Now Apple makes amazing hardware (especially laptops) but the drawback is that you have to run macOS on them.
I really wish Asahi Linux had more support, I would have bought a couple M4 Minis.
If you don't need the battery life of a MacBook and you're happy getting a desktop device, there's plenty of machines running new AMD chips that are just as fast as an M series mac, if not faster. And they'll run Linux with no compromises. Check out Bee-Link (https://www.bee-link.com/) for some mac-inspired hardware.
Without knowing your specific workloads, I'd imagine an M2 Pro Mac mini (which is supported by Asahi) is still plenty fast.
That's going the opposite direction not full circle. Hardware bad, OS good is now hardware good, OS bad.
That's not a full circle, a full circle would be if Apple later returned to badly overpriced yet enjoyable macOS again
If Asahi Linux had support for Thunderbolt and DP alt-mode I would be running it today, but those are dealbreakers for me unfortunately.
I'm donating to them and hoping they eventually get those implemented.
>I really wish Asahi Linux had more support, I would have bought a couple M4 Minis.
Me too. Just wonder instead of reverse engineer to SOC to get Linux running? Why can we just use the Darwin Kernel (which is suppose to be Open Sourced right? ) and build something like FreeBSD desktop for the M3/M4? Would that be more long term viable than reverse engineering SOC? Is there any project in that direction?
Actually, save power efficiency, Apple is still behind the curve and has been for decades. Nvidia has reigned uninterrupted for longer than I can remember and regularly beats Apple in raw performance on available hardware, and AMD has regularly topped benchmarks for years.
In fact, AMD and Nvidia have been the de facto high-performance combination for so long, that I can't remember when it was any different. But prior to that, it was Intel and Nvidia. Apple was never a real high quality hardware competitor. The only thing they ever had to offer were products produced by a production process almost no one replicates.
Razer started used CNC unibodies for their laptops 14 years ago, but they're maybe the only company I can think of that does so other than Apple.
And MSI has shipped high performance laptops for so long that even Apple used their laptops for comparison during the M-series chip releases in the MacBook Pro.
Awful cheap UX, cartoonish style with huge padding, lack of structure and hierarchy. The spacing is inconsistent, everything is rounded. The app launcher stutters, the icons load one by one, it flickers each time I do the 4 finger gesture. Why does the volume bubble have tick marks but the one in the menu doesn't? The trash icon looks like the windows recycle bin or gnome theme from 20 years ago, not sure why it's flattened like that.
You explained the design inconsistencies the best. Though I’m worried that instead of fixing the underlying problems, they’re just going to make a bullet list of what people mention here and change those only. Then we’re going to have an OS where no two screens have the same paddings etc.
What the hell happened to the Apple design guides. Did all the engineers who read them retire.
> they’re just going to make a bullet list of what people mention here
bold of you to assume they're reading this (and will fix this)
Oh boy, I opened the settings app to change the wallpaper, the scrollbar gets cut off by the right bottom rounded corner. The wallpapers can be scrolled horizontally and they show up under the side rail (blurred), looks like a glitch, and I still can't resize this window to see more of the wallpapers. They may have fixed the custom color bug though.
It really does look like ass on the laptop. Maybe it works on mobile, idk, but terrible on laptop. Also not a good sign since apple is not known for rolling back releases.
I think this might be the one.
Realistically speaking, they’re not going to rollback anything. They even kept and even double downed on that’s stupid photos app redesign on iOS.
At least the review sites are making some noise this time instead of parroting Apple’s announcements. They all sold us that awful photos app as the great new thing.
It’s like a crap Linux theme pretending to be windows vista or something. I don’t get it.
I always considered the butterfly keyboard[1] the point at which Apple's design system jumped the shark as it focused on it's own aesthetics vs. building quality and reliable products.
Funny enough, it's the only time period since 1999 that I was apple free for a while. My MBP broke. I've previously had a butterfly keyboard on my work mac, and it got replaced on a regular bases. While unfortunate for a work computer, this was not acceptable as my personal one with no spares)
Thankfully Apple returned to making great products that work, and I bought the next MBP.
Seeing that Apple's returning to it's "design roots"[2], I really hope they do not loose sight of building great products that work well for their customers.
[1] https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Butterfly_keyboard
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-09-14/apple-...
> Seeing that Apple's returning to it's "design roots"
There's a very important and relevant design quote from Steve Jobs that keeps popping up in my head:
https://mastodon.world/@lensco/115184866965741757
When Steve died, so did the Apple we all knew and loved.
I worked at Apple in the years shortly after his death, and was trying to convince myself this wasn't true, but it is.
Tim should find someone smart and willing to take a real look at the company and ceed power to the next generation.
> Funny enough, it's the only time period since 1999 that I was apple free for a while.
Same here. After the butterfly keyboard era, I spent about 5 years with Windows 10/11 and powershell, then WSL. There's still a lot of annoyance in the Windows space (NTFS is slow due to all the filesystem filters), but Linux package managers are much better than homebrew and WSL does make Windows a pretty reasonable developer system. I'm back on the MacOS now but I wouldn't hate a nice Windows machine.
Yes, WSL2 is quite good. WSL1 was even a step up, but WSL2 gives me an environment that I can use quite well and be productive with.
The NTFS speed thing is kinda amazing. I use cursor on MacOS. My friend has a windows laptop which is likely 2-3x more powerful than my Macbook Air. I can install a new cursor in 2-3s tops, on the Windows machine it takes minutes. Wow. It's all file copying speed.
> I always considered the butterfly keyboard[1] the point at which Apple's design system jumped the shark as it focused on it's own aesthetics vs. building quality and reliable products.
This statement describes pretty much every mouse Apple ever made, from the circular ones to the horrendous magic mouse with charging port underneath.
This is true, but Apple mice have always been consistently bad. A laptop where getting a single grain of dirt under the keyboard meant you couldn't type was a very new thing in 2015.
Ooh, the mouse myth! Love it when this one gets dragged out. Turns out it’s not really a problem - the battery life is measured in months, you’ll get several hours from plugging it in for thirty seconds, and days if you plug it in for a few minutes while getting coffee.
People love to hate it, but it’s never been a real problem. The ergonomics are bad. The charging isn’t.
So the ergonomics are bad and the charging port is in inconvenient location. What's good about it? Anything? Most Logitech mice go for months on a set of batteries too.
>Most Logitech mice go for months on a set of batteries too.
Definitely not true for the two MX Masters I have owned - they need charging every couple of weeks. But also I often just leave them plugged in, because, get this, they put the charging port at the back.
I own and like apple products, android, Google, Microsoft, razr, keychron, Logitech.
The apple mouse is one of the worst mainstream products I've ever had to use. It has no advantages that can even begin to scratch away at the terrible TERRIBLE ergonomics alone.
The main thing it has going for it is the whole surface of the mouse is touch sensitive, so you can do 2/3 finger gestures on it.
I hated that feature SOOO much. It was so difficult to grab the mouse without accidentally doing some additional gesture. I'm really glad that feature never caught on.
It did catch on, in that you can still do it with a brand new Magic Mouse on today's macOS.
I use a Magic Trackpad day to day, but back when I worked in an office I would occasionally use a Magic Mouse, and I liked the gestures. (Hated the charging port location, of course.)
>The ergonomics are bad. The charging isn’t.
Yes, it was the ergonomics I particularly despised. The charging was salt in the wound.
I should know better, but I'm still surprised they're shipping this version of Liquid Glass. Performance is stable but there are so many UI bugs and inconsistencies that haven't been fixed from early betas, including low-hanging fruit that a second year design student would notice. I don't mind change or interface elements moving around but keynote-level UI overhauls should be fully implemented at launch, otherwise people are stuck using a broken OS for a year.
At this point I'm doubtful that these will be addressed in the 26.X updates, so the wait begins for 27.0...
Heh. I can imagine Cook having his own O'Reilly's "We'll do it live!" moment for Liquid Glass initial backlash.
Fixing this mess will surely take a while but then they use that as PR in future keynotes, saying how hard they were working on it.
This is always how it goes. The big change happens, and it’s refined over time.
For what it’s worth, there where threads here on HN where people complained at length about the bugs and inconsistencies in the previous version of the Apple operating systems.
Yes, and many of those bugs and inconsistencies never went away. We're now at the point of Apple piling new bugs on top of old bugs.
Yeah I shouldn't be surprised this was allowed to launch today, but yet I am.
I ran the whole beta on all my devices. Every new beta I'd ask myself "Surely they fixed 'x' by now, right?" and we advanced, beta after beta, with the same bugs and performance regressions all the way up to launch.
The icons still need to redraw in the settings app and app library. It's overall sluggish. The drop shadows are huge in the finder and other apps top bar. If you turn on always show scrollbars they get cut off at a weird angle due to the excessive corner radius.
My iPhone 16 PM runs hot all the time, even on release now, vs. iOS 18.
I don't mind the transparency or glass effects. I actually like it in some areas. But man does it need some serious polish and bug fixing, and a lot of time and effort spent on consistency.
This should never have went live in this state. I consider .0 just another beta, really. Actual release will probably be .2 or .3
> I consider .0 just another beta, really. Actual release will probably be .2 or .3
This is good advice for Apple software in general. Always let it burn in for a couple patch releases. Being a guinea pig for Apple is a losing bet.
(This about iOS, not Mac, but obviously a lot is similar.)
I might be in the minority on hn, but I’m using iOS 26 for the first time today and am pretty happy with the new design. For one, it’s a lot snappier and faster. I’m glad they finally did something about the slow-ass animations iOS had in a lot of places. Secondly, it has a lot more personality. I enjoy that. Thirdly, they finally moved more basic UI stuff close to the thumbs instead of literally 6 inches away at the top of the screen. Love that. Knowing app designers, my apps are about to get easier to use just by migrating to the new UX concepts Apple is pushing.
The glass look is mostly fine. iOS had contrast issues before, and I don’t think it’s any worse. If anything, it’s more adaptive to different types of backgrounds now.
There are some visual glitches and weird things, but they’re pretty minor and will be resolved with time. The glass panes for, say, folders look nice, and I like it more than the previous blur.
I don’t mind the visual appearance of iOS 26. My main gripe is that this update introduces some pointless additional taps for common interactions.
Here’s some of the UX regressions:
- Apple Music: the “next track” button is only visible if the tab bar is expanded. So now we have to scroll or tap, wait for an animation and then click next. - Web views search web for selected text: previously we could highlight, swipe the action menu and then tap the button. Now we have to highlight, tap the small arrow, wait for the horizontal list to animate into a vertical list, tap the button. They removed the ability to swipe the action menu. - Tab bars: since 2007, you could change tabs with one tap. Now it’s one or two taps, depending on whether it’s collapsed or expanded.
Personally, I like the vertical list in the web view for highlighted text. The action menu was so annoying. The items were always in a different order and I always had to highlight, tap, tap, tap… on small targets to get to what I wanted.
Agreed! Accidentally dismissing the old menu and needing to scroll again drove me up the wall. My phone has over 3 million pixels and I did not gain anything by having a small, horizontally scrolling menu specific to highlighted text.
The worst thing is Safari removing all tabs button.
Quick way is to pinch out with two fingers but that is impossible one-handed.
Another is to swipe up (or left/right) on address bar but that often triggers app switching because he indicator is 3mm lower
It’s still there, just moved. Tap the … icon next to the address bar. “All tabs” will be under your thumb.
I’ve settled on swiping up on the (…) button. But yeah, either way I’m bummed that usability had been traded for shiny/trendy aesthetics here. Worst part is that they know and have provided options to have “classic view”/“try new ui” rather than iterating and polishing it to the point it’s substantially improved and there’s no choice but to release it.
Design is a series of decisions. Those decisions should be rooted in a strong, thoughtful, point of view. It’s a problem when the final product embodies multiple points of view; view options should be the extreme exception, not the norm we now see in phone, mail, safari, etc.
Settings > Safari > Set tabs to “Bottom”. This gives you back the old style bottom bar, including the all tabs button.
The “Compact” UI option is complete and utter garbage.
The keyboard on iOS 26 is all messed up. Letters on the keys are no longer vertically centred and are shifted up slightly, while the shift and delete glyph are still in the middle. It looks like a mistake replicated 26 times.
Edit: Also, information density is down across the board. Of course.
Interesting. Looks like they decided to vertically center lowercase letters at the expense of the rest. The lowercase L key looks particularly bad.
I don't really like the look, but I noticed it feels a lot faster, too. That is certainly welcomed!
THE CURSOR (╯°益°)╯彡┻━┻
They went way too far with the corner radii and pill shapes imo, looks like a Fisher Price toy. Some inner buttons retained the old radii and don't match the outer window radii anymore.
It's truly hideous to look at. I really can't believe they went for these massively rounded corners. They're too stubborn to allow you to select an option for right angled corners again. They just tinker as there's no other real UI enhancements.
> They're too stubborn to allow you to select an option for right angled corners again.
"right angled corners again"
I have a feeling you aren't and haven't been a Mac user for a long time. When was the last time Macs had right angled corners!? 30+ years ago?
I think it was in the Steve Jobs biography (or maybe I read it somewhere else), that Jobs made them do rounded corners on the windows back on the first Macintosh after noticing the rounded corners on a table they had. The engineers complained about how much extra memory that would take on such a limited system, but they figured it out.
Literally never. System 1 has corners that are superficially pointy looking, but if you look close they have a sort of smoothing instead of being a hard right angle. On a screen with 340 lines of resolution.
I've used Macs since 1988.
Whenever I see people try to make their Linux environment look modern and fancy, they generally include extremely rounded corners.
"modern and fancy" isn't how I'd describe these bizarre rounded corners in Tahoe. They remind me more of a Buck Rogers TV episode from the 1970s or Speak & Spell from the 1980s. They are ghastly to look at.
It’s a trend that’s visible in other designs too, like Material 3 Expressive.
I’m not a fan of Windows but I believe that probably the best modern UI design system for desktops right now is probably the flavor of Fluent used in Windows 11. It still retains somewhat desktop-like information density, doesn’t go overboard on radii, and has a touch of depth. I’d like to see more design languages exploring in its general direction.
I still find KDE superior in productivity, information density and "useful effects" category.
Apple still has the best "get out of the way, be invisible" UI.
Both are valid ways to approach to a problem, but I like KDE's batteries included, infinitely customizable way better.
I think KDE has the right spirit but its execution leaves something to be desired.
I don't think "defaults to windows-like" is a bad choice for newcomers.
I don't customize it heavily either. Move tray, clock and menus to the top, a-la GNOME2, leave taskbar at the bottom, both auto-hidden and narrower than screen.
Add four desktops as a 2x2 grid, re-enable old CTRL+ALT+$ARROW keyboard shortcuts, add a couple of usability effects with custom key combinations and two active corners, and I'm done.
Some applications (Konsole, KATE) get custom fonts and themes, but everything else is bog standard. Setting it up takes 30-ish minutes, and it's the same config for decades now. Probably because of sharpening the same tool and optimizing without knowing.
Then, I can just concentrate and fly on that environment.
Also, they have improved a lot in the small areas where it was lacking. You can use your system without a terminal if you want, plus Baloo works really well.
I would argue that it actually doesn’t go far enough in windows-like-ness to be viable for a lot of people, and for those who prefer a mac-like setup the possible customization doesn’t take it far enough in that direction, either. It’s not Windows or macOS, it’s KDE, and that’s fine but I think there need to be environments more specifically aimed at people who are happy with their current commercial OS setups.
I'm a bit time-restrained while writing this reply, but I can argue that KDE is 95% there with macOS emulation, if you really want to go that far.
The only missing piece is "global menu bar" and full-screen applications.
Since I don't use KDE on a mobile system, I don't know how well multi-touch trackpad works, but the rest is almost there.
As I said that I neither need or desire to go that far (my custom layout works like a charm for me more than ~15 years now), but it's not off the left field for KDE.
I don’t really agree. The global menubar is a central pillar of the Mac desktop, so it being missing (or only present sometimes) is a big problem, and there’s lots of smaller things like differing conventions and design approaches. By my estimation, the furthest KDE can be made Mac-like is 55-60%. Anything further is going to take forking and wading through code.
The funny thing is, KDE 3.5.x had the global menu bar as a feature. It didn't get ported to >4.x since there was not much interest.
I guess it still can be done.
How mouse/keys/scrolling behaves, what pointing devices do in what cases are easy cases for KDE. Notification system is also pretty powerful.
The reality is, everything is cross-pollinating from each other. Even if making pixel-perfect copies is not possible, both are pretty interchangeable.
I use both Macs and KDE for more than 15 years now, and can switch from one to other instantly. Both are in front of me during a normal workday, and I just switch without thinking.
Definitely the “be invisible” part.
It reminds me of the Wii U interface[1]. Except less playful. It really is a disaster.
[1] https://wiki.cemu.info/images/1/1a/Wii_U_Menu.png
Not sure if people remember but Fisher Price was actually used to describe Windows XP's Luna theme.
totally agree, this is kind of an embarrassing look for supposed workstations
The humiliation " " "
Apple no longer cares about disabled people.
Transparent UI, with controls sitting on top of arbitrary and changing content can NEVER be legible/discernible. Apple knows this, but fashion was more important than function and they decided, "who cares about disabled people, anyway."
Microsoft learned this lesson back in the Vista era but Apple's charging ahead with this terrible set of changes that will literally disable millions of users, people who will need to visit the accessibility settings to reduce the transparency.
It's a sad day when a company that has often lead in accessibility ships the least accessible OS in modern history. I guess it was a nice run having a Big Tech company to point to as a good example of doing various accessibility things well. Damn.
It might be more accurate to say that they are giving non-disabled people an experience akin to that of disabled people. ;)
Apple's accessibility features enabled my mother to enjoy what little independence she had due to a rare debilitating illness [Multiple System Atrophy].
She could read eBooks & emails, listen to audio books, view photos and call her family by herself (iPhone use extends to many uncles/aunties/cousins).
Every few months I would help her recalibrate her iPad as it was a vital life line.
> literally disable millions of users, people who will need to visit the accessibility settings to reduce the transparency.
I'm confused. You're condemning them for not accommodating the disabled, yet admitting they provide an accommodation in the same sentence.
I've been submitting endless feedback about how Liquid Arse breaks dark mode during the beta. I keep seeing dark text on dark backgrounds all over the place in both Tahoe and iOS 26, for example: https://imgur.com/a/R3DTcSd
I've pretty much given up with submitting feedback though.
CarPlay has dark text on dark backgrounds in the latest version of iOS. And I’m talking about stock apps like Messages, not some obscure text buried somewhere deep in the operating system.
Absolutely brutal.
> Apple no longer cares about disabled people.
Did you enable the relevant accessibility options that are there for this purpose?
Why do that? If they did any investigation into the accessibility options whatsoever then they wouldn't be able to treat us to Kanye style analysis.
I'm sorry, but that's not a logical stance. If this were the method that anyone in the industry used (which absolutely nobody does) all interfaces would be high contrast 150pt font, no transparency, two color, because that's what my grandma needs.
My post is agreeing with you. It's sarcasm. Please try to parse it again.
Text emojis were invented by the grey beards out of necessity, not cuteness. ;)
This is what happens when designers are treated as royalty and are told that their new "clothes" are "awesome" all the time.
It's also a symptom of consumption addiction where there is demand/motivation for drastic, superficial changes that don't really offer any value except to those who are consumed by the need for constant change for change's sake.
Apple used to care more about disabled people because of how the Accessibility APIs worked and were required for most apps.
It's also a lack of real competition. If a car company ships an ugly car, you can easily avoid buying it and go with a competitor. With tech products you're often locked into, at best, a duopoly. Worse, the products have become increasingly integrated such that it's impossible to pick and choose components from multiple vendors.
If you want Apple's hardware you're stuck on their software. If you want access to some professional software, you're stuck on Windows. Etc, etc. This all means that bad ideas or user-hostile behavior are rarely punished in the market. The biggest competitor to Windows is older versions of Windows. The biggest competitor to macOS is older versions of macOS.
It's unreadable even for normal people least to say for disabled folks.
Tahoe is Apple's very own "Windows 8".
Changing toolbars to text-only is pretty bad. The button hotboxes are tiny
Generally I think the toolbar settings needed more testing, they can be wonky (e.g. in Automator for text+icon it causes the traffic lights to misalign, in Safari toggling the sidebar on and off is janky).
You can turn off the transparency in the accessibility settings. Sure products could be 100% accessible out of the box but unless you had some sort of limit on that it would likely make the experience worse for the majority of users. I can’t imagine Helvetica Neue Extra Light was particularly accessible as the system font a decade ago - but there were accessibility settings.
Much the same on Linux with Wayland.
I haven't touched Windows for over a decade, does it still have a decent story for disabilities? They've certainly regressed in other areas ...
[dead]
I am the only one to think that these days, GNOME and KDE are more usable than anything made by Microsoft or Apple? I think part of the reason is that devs working on these projects don't have an incentive to make arbitrary changes like people who need to justify their paychecks.
I agree, except for the GNOME part. I think GNOME 2 was the last usable version, everything went downhill since GNOME 3.
KDE or Cinnamon (Linux Mint) are good though.
You can still use Gnome 2 with e.g. the Mate desktop. I use it every day and it works good enough (though it has some bugs in the file manager).
Been using Fedora + KDE since ~March on my main dev machine (hp laptop), basically without any issues and it hasn't broken itself yet. Works amazing. KDE has cured my last bit of distrohopping I had left and I moved on from Gnome too. Things that irritate me on my last macos machine is literally 3 config toggles away in KDE.
In the coming month will install Fedora+KDE on 5 more machines for family members due to Windows 10 hitting end of life.
With KDE Plasma being so great, and Tahoe desktop UI being so awful, I am being nudged more and more towards using linux as my desktop instead of just using it headless.
Even Mate is more usable, and to do decent work on a Mac I need a Lenovo Thinkpad external keyboard, which is much better than anything Apple has to offer and it even has a trackpoint and two mouse buttons.
You’re not the only one.
Can anyone speak to whether the performance of the Settings app has been improved? In Seq and every version since they redid it in presumably SwiftUI, if you select one of the navigation panes and then hold either the up or down arrow keys to quickly navigate between them, something like a memory leak occurs due to (seemingly) launching all of the nested panes as separate apps (this is what appears to be the case in activity monitor) and the Settings app will start lagging until you fully quit and reopen.
No, it's worse. Basically it's the same experience but with an uglier UI
The search textbox overlaps with text which scrolls underneath.
The search box did not work for a few minutes after updating, but I assume that was a temporary indexing bug.
Whoa, you can now search clipboard history. Go to Spotlight Search, Command+4. You'll get a list of entries, each with a copy button, and is searchable. Even shows the app it was copied in.
At last Apple implemented a decent clipboard history. KDE has this thing for a decade now, I guess...
KDE also can encode entries as QR codes, so you can make URLs transferable to your phone or whatnot.
-- Sent from my MacBook Air.
If you use KDE Connect, your clipboard history immediately goes to your phone's clipboard :)
macOS/ios can also share clipboards for awhile now.
For KDE Connect, does the phone have to be an Android or ?
KDE Connect works on macOS, Windows, Linux, Android and iOS
KDE Connect exists on both iOS and Android, though some functions like text messages aren't available on iOS.
KDE doesn't have infinite clipboard history yet, like the GPaste extension for GNOME Shell has.
I'm fine with ~250 entries (which I configured), plus search. I don't prefer to have "forever" files which grows all the time.
I found out that being able to let go of things relieves a lot of load over one's proverbial and literal shoulders.
CopyQ works for forever history for me, it also doesn't save copied passwords, which is nice.
How does it detect passwords? Usually those are just plain-text when copied.
https://hluk.github.io/CopyQ/
Either way, I think it is better to not copy passwords to the clipboard or the selection, but store and transfer them via password-manager/browser/etc APIs.
With KDE on Wayland, there is a clipboard hint MIME type `x-kde-passwordManagerHint` for passwords that clipboard managers can choose to drop.
Not too much support out there, but at least some important things do:
https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=x-kde-passwordManager...
At least in my experience, it works with the password and clipboard managers I use, and even some command-line utilities like wl-clipboard.
Wish it was a protocol-level setting, though, instead of something KDE specific and honored at the application level.
More like, almost 3 decades.
Including passwords from password managers?
Pretty handy, right :)?
And seriously, managers like 1Password clear the clipboard after some time. I would guess that there’s some clipboard API that allows managers to exclude copied passwords from being permanently added to the history.
Still, there are pieces of data that one might not want to store in such unobvious place as clipboard history so it’s good to know about it.
I use KeePassXC which does empty the keyboard after a few seconds. But keeping history seems like a breaking change to the social (if not technical) contract of the OS' clipboard API.
Windows has this with Win+V for those wondering.
There were already a zillion and one apps (Maccy, ClipMenu, Jumpcut, Flycut, Alfred, ...) that provided this.
It'll be one of the first things I turn off whenever I get around to installing it ~6+ months from now.
Does that mean that add-on clipboard managers like Maccy are obsolete now?
In most cases Apple’s integrations do the 20% that 80% of users want. Third party apps give the additional 80% of features that the 20% may want.
How obsolete those apps are depends on you as a user.
No. Spotlight’s clipboard history doesn’t even keep items for longer than eight hours.
Wow, didn't realise there was more than one tab
When you open it for the first time there is a display that tells you all the shortcuts.
Beyond that, if you move your mouse while Spotlight is on-screen, it shows the tabs and tells you the shortcuts as you hover over them.
I'm normally on about 1 year delay on upgrading macOS for a multitude of reasons. I might not wait the full year but something else will have to force me to upgrade within the first few months.
I'd heard from people who were running the betas that it's not ready and they are surprised Tahoe wasn't delayed.
No way I'm upgrading any time soon to Apple's least cared for OS with a change this big (and this untested).
I'll be honest, I hear this every single time. But I've never delayed upgrading, and I've never regretted it. That's not to say every upgrade has been a strict improvement, but going back to my first Mac at 10.4 (Tiger) I've never wished I had stayed on an older version. We'll see how I feel after going to Tahoe, maybe this will be the one that breaks the trend.
Windows, on the other hand…
You always have to be moving forward and I'll never say "I'll just stay on Sequoia for forever" but delaying a bit does make life easier. I know I'll eventually upgrade but being there day 1 or even month 1 is not something I'm interested in. There are never new features that outweigh sending my development workflows into disarray or dealing with broken apps.
There aren't always huge issues or huge time sinks but I'm happy to let other people be on the bleeding edge and I'll upgrade once the Github issues, blog posts, etc have been created/fixed so that when I upgrade I can easily find solutions to any remaining issues I might run into. Especially with Tahoe, I've heard that some apps are just broken, period, unless the developer makes (sometimes significant) changes to get the same functionality working again (that was working fine in Sequoia).
> But I've never delayed upgrading, and I've never regretted it.
I was the same way for until one of the upgrades, I forget which, broke resume from suspend about 10-20% of the time for my combination of laptop and monitor. Every morning I’d get a sense of dread when I tried to open the laptop to see if today was a day where I’d get to pick up where I left off or if I was in for a crash and reboot as soon as I tried to use the laptop.
I thought for sure it would be fixed with one of the point updates, but it went on for the better part of a year.
You obviously haven't had firewall issues with EDR software a couple years ago or so.
I won't ever touch a .0 macos release again.
That’s from the old lore and I’m surprised so many have forgotten it. I learned that back when we had to buy upgrades on physical media, .0 is .no.
Wasn’t this sequoia?
Same here, I'm not dogfooding this for Apple, I pay them enough already.
I don't wait a full _year_, but I definitly give it many months before upgrading. This one I might wait longer...
Any actual interesting changes under the hood other than UI changes? I cant remember the last time macOS release that actually brings any useful feature I use.
It's been so long since Apple has released anything in either iOS or macOS that excited me as a user. I don't seem to be their target customer anymore.
The only reason I even have to "upgrade" to a higher version number is how quickly app developers (including Apple themselves) drop support for older OS's. My iPhone which is stuck on iOS 15 runs just as well as the day I bought it, but every other app I download tells me (in essence) "LOL your phone is too old and our developers are too lazy to keep our software running on it. Upgrade your OS or get lost loser".
That's literally the only thing motivating me to upgrade anymore: The treadmill of software compatibility. Apple doesn't have to innovate--they just need to make sure the ecosystem is broken after ~5-10 years or so.
Isn't that true for pretty much every OS? The feature set we need to be able to do our jobs and computing hobbies have been available for two decades.
Operating systems like Debian is sufficiently boring that I can just upgrade and continue computing. macOS upgrades have become a small gamble, the stuff that I depend on may not continue to work, or at least it will take a good deal of work. There are however no reason to upgrade, so the risk isn't really worth the hassle of upgrading and breaking Java or Python.
You can still get software that installs and works perfectly on Windows 7 (released 16 years ago). Good luck finding software that even installs on Snow Leopard (released 16 years ago), let alone works well.
The flip side of this is that every attempt at advancing the Windows UI framework story beyond win32/MFC and WPF has failed and the platform itself is steeped neck deep in technical debt.
You can't blame this all on backwards compatibility. Microsoft can't just stick to one successor technology and keeps obsoleting every attempt after a few years. With that approach, of course no one is going to move over.
That’s one issue, but another is that they don’t make into successors full replacements. They’ve stuck to WinAppSDK aka WinUI for a while now, but it’s missing such basic elements as a datagrid/tableview which makes it difficult to take seriously as a desktop UI framework.
Also, they didn't even migrate their own internal dialogs with each replacement. You can still uncover dialog styles all the way back to Windows 95-style if you poke around Windows 11 long enough. Whenever they came out with yet another successor, they haphazardly migrated a handful of P1 components and then called it a day.
Snow leopard is a unix based os. There is a ton of software that can still install on it and work fine.
Easy to say - much, much harder in practice.
Microsoft still manages to do 'cool stuff' at the kernel level; IO Rings, VBS, Rust, etc.
Only thing I see on the Apple' what's new that looks interesting is Metal updates. Most of the rest is UI.
I mean OS updates are necessary, from security updates to support for new hardware. Stuff like init scripts were a suboptimal solution to begin with, it is not like that old stuff was a good solution. Xorg also doesn't fit how modern computers work, and is merely a collection of bandaids that is inherently unable to reach sane security by todays standards. So its not like progress is entirely superficial. And also with Flatpak there has emerged a way of shipping stuff such that used libraries can be shared but do not have to be, and every app can move at its own pace without conflicting with other apps or the OS. So at least in Linux land, especially in the last couple years, there has been great advances from a technical point of view. And those tackle also the problems arising when a huge number of indipendent parts come together, which were naturally very pronounced for Linux in the past.
Sometimes it’s Apple and Google that are forcing developers. The system is perfectly capable of running the app (you’re not using any new API) but store policies force you to add the restriction anyway.
Yeah we are in this situation right now with an App, we literally can't update it unless we target a more modern version of the SDK, which introduces breaking changes
Does it mean that you potentially have multiple version of the same software released if you are choosing to support devices that have been dropped from the latest SDK?
This problem could be mitigated by Apple making older versions of software available. Then you could continue to release updates, and users on older devices could continue to use earlier versions of your app on their devices.
Apple actually partially solves this: as a user, if I have EVER downloaded Older Version X of an app, and then go to download it again, they let me. However, if I have never downloaded the old version and go to download it, they just say “this app is not compatible with your device.” and don't give me the chance to get the older, compatible version. I don’t know why they make this distinction.
Worse are the third party apps where the old version still actually runs, but the developer deliberately blocks you with a full-screen “go away” dialog (I’m looking at you, FlightAware).
I got my first MacBook at Catalina, and still miss it. For a while, I downgraded my Intel Mac to Catalina again; I love the aesthetic compared to the newer releases, and it’s fast and snappy.
But the situation now is: No recent apps work on Catalina since it’s considered obsolete (except open-source apps you compile yourself). But Big Sur and higher are ridiculously slow on Intel hardware, to the point where it’s unusable. I now have an otherwise perfectly good 2019 Intel MacBook that has been gathering dust for the past years.
I’ve got a MacBook and Mac Mini stuck on Monterey (12), and an iMac stuck on Big Sur (11). I’m pretty much dead in the water when it comes to software compatibility, unless I want to put Linux on them. Even homebrew gives me a warning that they’ve stopped support and to expect everything to break. It’s a sad state of affairs.
This[1] worked well to upgrade old Macs that were stuck on old versions of macOS for me, if you're not choosing to stay on older versions for other reasons.
[1] https://github.com/dortania/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher
OCLP is the solution.
Linux runs fine on my wife’s old (2013) MacBook. It’s more than fine, actually. I have Arch and Niri on there, and it makes a great SNES emulator.
Yes, but 2016-2020 Intel Macs use T1/T2 chips that make installing Arch or Niri a bit more of an aspiration for most people.
Support rapidly being dropped happens mostly with smaller devs, because when resources are limited in the Apple platform world you can either adopt newer APIs and language features or you can support old OSes 3+ versions back. Trying to do both lands you in feature check conditional hell and requires a large matrix of test devices to ensure that nothing is being broken.
It’s less of a burden for corporate giants which is why you see much longer support timelines from e.g. Google.
When was the next Windows or Linux (distro) release that "excited" you?
It's all slow incremental updates pretty much.
The immutable and atomic movement in Linuxland is very exciting. Cloud native distro building with docker/podman in CI pipelines is just insane: Building+testing+deployment with ci/cd can now not only be done with some python package, but a whole distribution. Also Wayland, Pipewire, Flatpak and Btrfs are great stuff. Of course they don't get developed in one release cycle, but in recent years they made large leaps and became default on many distros.
Not Linux, but I still look forward to window managers and Neovim releases. The Cosmic desktop also looks promising, though I’m not using it until it has a scrolling window manager available for it.
https://xkcd.com/2224/
But yeah, I agree with you.
Spotlight got a major upgrade. It’s notably faster and deeply integrates with Shortcuts (letting you specify input variables, for example) among other things.
I’ve got Spotlight configured to index nothing but my applications (which is surprisingly difficult to configure and breaks with every major OS upgrade). Disabling all its default indexing has alleviated 95% of unexplainable CPU spikes and autocomplete pollution, so now I can finally use it for what it’s meant to be: the most overengineered fuzzy finder application launcher.
Even more importantly: there's a clipboard manager built into it now.
I actually preferred the pre-tahoe spotlight. The information density was higher and while it did not always give me the most relevant result atleast it was consistent and I could scroll down to find it. New spotlight is less dense and jumbles everything together.
Anyone using Raycast has had these features forever. Nice to see some attention on Spotlight but it's still nowhere close to the functionality you get from Raycast.
I've been using Raycast for a couple months but I'm hoping I can uninstall it if Spotlight is responsive enough in Tahoe. What bothers me about Raycast is the monthly subscription for certain features. I don't mind paying for Mac software – I'm quite happy to do that – but I do mind paying monthly subscriptions for Mac software with seemingly no justification for it (i.e. what monthly resources does running a "window command" use on Raycast that justifies locking it behind a monthly subscription?)
What's the window command? I'm able to use things like "Top Left Sixth" on the free plain. AFAIK you only the pro for the AI features.
I thought Pro was only for AI features as well (that's what it said when I installed Raycast), but this dialog is saying Pro is required for custom window layouts as well. I only discovered this today when I was trying to create a new command to paste the screenshot from my clipboard into Preview for OCR.
https://imgur.com/a/6OeqJYQ
I wrote my own window management with Hammerspoon, mostly duplicating what Rectangle et al do, but with specific tweaks just for me.
The most useful feature is the fact it uses my display layout + wifi name to figure out where I am and adjusts window locations accordingly.
Raycast is interesting but I’m not going to touch it so long as VC funding is involved. Alfred has been doing the job well enough, only requires me to buy a new version a couple times per decade, and isn’t going to become enshittified because there’s no VCs to come knocking looking for a profit.
+1 for Alfred. I'm a proud Power Pack / lifetime-license holder from the beginning. Very few outfits anymore have the chops to both offer and make good on a single-payment, long-lasting product with frequent and excellent substantive updates.
Mad props and three cheers for the Alfred team!
It’s insanely tiny and efficient for what it does, too. One of the only apps that’s so small that updates are done downloading within a second or two of clicking “Download”, even on a mediocre connection!
Sure and QuickSilver had it even earlier. But it is nice that one can finally extend Spotlight with Services ehm I mean Shortcuts.
I'm curious if it will get me to stop using Alfred
Alfred leverages the spotlight indexes, so Alfred will also get the speed up
Does "BetterDiscord" still show up as the first choice after you type "Disc"?
I'm the solo user of my device & have rarely if ever launched Photos or Photo Booth, but I launch Photoshop a handful of times everytime I work.
For the last few years, it is a total gamble of what Spotlight's first suggestion will be when I trigger it and type "Pho"
Often, Photos.app Weirdly, about once a week, Photo Booth.app 80% of the time, it correctly guesses Photoshop.app
So I can't just trigger spotlight, type "pho", and hit return. I have to wait for Spotlight's guess, sometimes arrow to Photoshop, or sometimes just hit enter when it guesses correctly.
So many macOS microFrustrations like this, and now Tahoe looks like it does.
What’s wrong about this?
"starts with" > "contains"
Can it find my files now?
At a minimum, it can not find them faster!
The fact that so much of the page is devoted to this liquid glass feature pretty much tells you the answer is no. Plus the fact that the "And so much more" section lists 10 different updates in the same space as their poster with a link to a PDF instead of building out a larger webpage speaks volumes.
Native container support is pretty exciting.
ICYMI: Apple's new native containers start in ~100ms and have better security. I updated to Tahoe just for this.
And it's open-source:
https://github.com/apple/container
It's not really supported before Tahoe, presumably due to required hypervisor support.
Interesting to see this utilizes kata-containers project alongside virtualization.framework. Cool project.
https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers/
Linux containers, not Darwin containers.
Does this mean I can dump Docker Desktop for good?
- Apple Sparse Image Format allows you to create virtualized disk images with a virtualized file format that can be formatted to any kind of file
- Terminal.app now supports 24-bit color and powerline glyphs
- Vehicle Motion Cues to reduce motion-sickness when in a moving vehicle
Good catch on the terminal. I missed that, and it might get me off Ghostty (I prefer to have less apps installed in general).
I have 5000+ git repos locally that I grep through regularly and I have to admit my hopes for ASIF being faster were busted. It is faster than sparsebundle, but nowhere near native, unfortunately.
The on-device foundation models framework is interesting to me. So far the responses have not been good but the potential is appealing.
TextEdit has a styling toolbar now which I appreciate. The new spotlight has more functionality and seems faster (and less likely to pull up a website instead of the app I'm trying to launch)
I was in Beta since Beta 2, and I saw massive improvement in energy efficiency on my MacBook Air M2 and Pro Max M4
Apple had a chance to bring back taste when they got rid of Ive, but missed it entirely. The overly rounded windows, the weird amount of blank space, the lack of clarity in general — the only thing that makes sense is that middle managers brought this about.
edit: Things are even worse — they already made newer apps much more difficult to read, likely because they have been brought from mobile to desktop. Now fonts are even smaller in System Settings, for example. What are they even thinking?
> Now fonts are even smaller in System Settings, for example. What are they even thinking?
It's worse on the iPad. They apparently think an iPad is now also a mouse and cursor device because they made touch targets so small, and the fonts in menus shrunk down making them more difficult touch targets as well.
Read most of the comment, was hesitated. Then thought "it can't be that bad". Ok, it is that bad. I absolutely hate extra round corners and extra margin in the windows. Sigh.
It’s just change. People complain every time the UI changes on anything.
People will get used to it. Apple will refine some things over time.
It will be ok.
I usually agree (and enjoy reading angry threads years later), but wasting screen real estate and getting measurably worse in terms of accessibility is simply not a good design decision.
I guess you can bookmark this thread and set a reminder to revisit it in 5 years and see how it went.
Email I sent to staff
Good Afternoon,
Apple released its new operating system today, macOS Tahoe. This is a full version upgrade (26.0) with a new look, feel, and many changes. At this time, I recommend NOT updating to Tahoe for the following reasons:
Stability: Version 26.0 is the first release and, like most “.0” versions, contains glitches that will take time to fix. Later versions (26.1, 26.2, etc.) are expected to address these issues.
Release Cycle: Apple now releases a new macOS every year instead of every two years. These initial yearly releases are often closer to “beta” products, and Apple typically patches problems over the first 6–8 weeks.
There is no real advantage to upgrading right now. It’s best to wait 6–8 weeks until the system stabilizes and then reevaluate.
How to Skip the Upgrade
When prompted, simply do not click “Upgrade Now.” This upgrade may pop up on your machine over the course of the next few days.
Close the upgrade window, or scroll down to select other updates.
For reference, macOS Sequoia (15.x) is now at version 15.7, which means it’s very stable and well-patched.
Aside from the Liquid Glass stuff, has anyone detailed the changes to the Unix bits of the OS? What's new, deprecated, moved, locked-down, etc. ... ?
The most notable change is probably the new native container runtime: https://github.com/apple/containerization
Metal 4 is interesting: https://developer.apple.com/metal/whats-new/
New enterprise-y stuff: https://support.apple.com/en-us/124963
FireWire support is gone, and this is the last macOS release for Intel.
How dare you not complain about the UI?
First rule of MacOS upgrade: don't. Second rule: wait for x.1 or x.2 releases, so it's more stable and most importantly, the dependencies you need get updated.
I always wait until x.6 or x.7! usually around May
Christmas is a good time to update usually.
Had such a bad experience with Sonoma, multiple micro-glitches that stole time and focus, that I dropped back to Ventura and have been avoiding updates ever since. The weird thing is that despite numerous bugs being logged all over the place, the 'new features' updates from Apple OS didn't seem to address any of them. They were mostly weird gimmicky new add-ons that don't mean anything to a power-user.
I might be interested in trying Tahoe if they'd undone whatever the awful policy is that puts a tonne of unwanted apps and desktop pics etc into your desktop that cannot be removed. I don't want Apple News, the clock in the menu bar and even Airplay - I purchased the computer, why can't I have what I want on it without compulsory apps from Apple?
You can remove the desktop widgets, no idea about turning off the clock though…
Maybe it's new and controversial, but I like it. Honestly, I think there is something more about it. Like another Apple product that we're going to see in the future, like Apple glasses would work perfectly with this UI.
I've been using it for ~6 weeks, and I'm also a bit confused by the hate since it's barely changed. I'm a fan of the improved UX harmonization across form factors. My intuition is that the minor and gradual "Duploization" of macOS in Sequoia and now Tahoe foreshadows touchscreen MacBooks.
> I'm a fan of the improved UX harmonization across form factors.
Don't understand why. A ~6" phone screen and a 3x1440p setup have little in common regarding what "effective" UX looks like. Unifying them for the sake of consistency risks making both worse.
Absolutely, scalable UX is a hard problem, and it's taken Apple nearly two decades to get to this point. But to be able to learn a "Control Center pattern" (for example) and apply that across desktop, tablet, phone, HMDs and TV UXs has real benefits for ordinary users.
I don't see it. What I see is a crippled Control Centre in macOS because Apple couldn't be bothered to adapt it for a desktop environment. For example, there's no equivalent to "long tap" on macOS Control Centre, nor does right click do anything. So what you have left is the lowest common denominator of behaviours that could be supported with single-left-click only.
This isn't unifying anything, but providing the laziest solution possible for MacOS by copy/pasting the visual design of iOS.
Sidenote: Does macOS Control Center even support any shortcut keys? I've honestly never tried, but a cursory search suggests there's no way to map a shortcut key to a Control Center action though you can open it with Fn-C. Again, lazy copy/paste of the iOS UI without adding any of the functionality a desktop power user might expect.
> For example, there's no equivalent to "long tap" on macOS Control Centre, nor does right click do anything.
Long-press isn't a macOS convention, which I assume is why there's an "Edit Controls" button at the bottom of Control Center for macOS. Right-clicking controls does show contextual menus as you'd expect.
> …a cursory search suggests there's no way to map a shortcut key to a Control Center action…
Desktop power users can (1) Fn-C and tab through them (as you said), (2) navigate Control Center using macOS's usual keyboard accessibility features, (3) create keyboard-activated Shortcuts, (4) use third-party utilities like Keyboard Maestro and Karabiner-Elements, etc.
I understand that Linux has solved this problem, but it's interesting to see Apple's progress on harmonizing their OS/device experiences over the last decade. I expect that there will always be shitty individual UI details you can pick on if that's your thing, like this detail from macOS 26.0's Calendar: https://imgur.com/a/BYalaa1
I agree with you. It really hasn't changed all that much. It's a bit more cartooney, but as long as it doesn't get in the way of my work, I don't care.
It looks like a lot of the hate flowing on HN is just people looking at worst-case screenshots on blogs and piling on. They haven't even used it.
There are a few things I'm not wild about, but for the most part it's a bunch of shoulder-shrugs. This isn't the end-of-the-world scenario that people are making it out to be.
I have a regular non-techie person in the family with a Mac who I think will like the changes. Those are the people who Apple is targeting. Not the tech bros and the wannabe posers who are desperately clutching their 10-year-old iPhones out of some kind of righteous indignation.
I hope they pay well at least.
Same. I like it so far. After the upgrade I spent a lot of time looking around, trying things out, and generally exploring. I haven’t haven’t felt that sense of exploration and discovery since the first iPhone.
The latest macOS updates have me pining for macOS Mojave. I really liked that release - first-class dark mode support that felt reasonably polished, it still had a "normal" Mac OS X style UI, 32-bit support if you wanted it, it was snappy even on my 3 year old 2015 MBPr, and I think it wouldn't look out of place on a modern M4 Mac even though it's a seven year old release.
I’ve been using Omarchy (Arch+Hyprland) as my daily driver for over a month. It is faster, prettier and more efficient than macOS in my opinion. I have a Framework 16” on order. I can’t wait to get it.
Is there an equivalent to macOS' Ctrl-scroll to zoom the screen yet?
It's little accessibility features like that keep me coming back to macOS everytime I switch to Linux.
try this, works great https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mouse-pinch-to-zoom... (I already used it on MacBook, but also on Omarchy now)
Thanks for the suggestion but that's just for Chrome/Chromium isn't it?
It's a nice start but really I'm looking for something that works for the entire screen desktop. I did have a plugin for Gnome that sort of worked (Meta+scroll) but it's very clunky compared to the macOS equivalent.
it is, but as Omarchy is heavily based on web apps, which include Figma, Notion, Google Photos, etc. it works there too.
And in the native apps, such as Terminal, Obsidian, etc., you can just use ctrl++ or ctrl+-. At least that is how i use it. Or what specific apps you need that?
If there are enough OGs, they should recall Windows XP with all those bells and whistles AND those life-saving switch to "Windows Classic" that survived next three generations of Windows.
I personally pray for that "MacOS classic" switch... It's sad to enter that decay era for Apple where every next software upgrade for the device feels effectively as a hardware downgrade.
The global reduce motion and reduce transparency settings help you a little, but that only goes so far.
The new approach they took is a disaster, technically and visually. This is a joke.
I agree, it's hideous. I miss the cleanliness of macOS Sierra.
I'll just stay on Sequoia for the time being, and then switch to Linux.
Curious what your life is like that you can 'just' switch to Linux. For me changing desktop OSes at this point would be like moving to a different country.
I'm a developer. I'll only miss the iOS Simulator to try my Expo apps, but I can use a real device instead.
I'll also miss OneDrive, but I can switch to other providers with Linux support (e.g. Dropbox).
The new UI is horrible. That’s it. No need to deep analysis.
A small but important detail of Aqua was that the assumed light source was pointing straight down, whereas everybody else was usually using a 45 degrees angle. I wish Apple took a lesson from the old masters.
Also these colors make my eyes bleed. And the border radius is ridiculous.
Am I one of few people that doesn't have a big negative sentiment torwards Tahoe? I suspect that if it is this bad they will start making a point release to address liquid glass. I do agree though that there is a jarring look to the slabs of glass on glass for the layouts in the system. Another thing that sort of weirds me out is that the system preferences has the icons being loaded after the window is present and I have liked using spotlight for a much longer time. I have also been using Siri by typing in queries and the integration of the dynamic island into the menu bar is pretty great.
It's not bad, I barely noticed the change. Most of the comments are just trolls by people who don't own a Macbook, as you can see from their posts suggesting their Framework laptops and Arch linux.
I've run every version of macOS since Mac OS X Public Beta. I'm pretty sure I'm going to skip Tahoe. macOS 15 Sequoia is great; why would I switch to something profoundly ugly and unpolished if everything will keep running on my current OS and Apple's liable to make macOS 27 look tolerable?
It always seemed quite cringe to me. A use it once and "Ehh I guess it works and is cool, sure" and then never touch it again sort of feature.
Other than old people that always send gifs on Facebook and children who this is probably one of the only AI art things they have access too, idk who else uses this.
If one tech giant has it then they need to too for feature parity. Not a whole lot of use cases for generative AI for the masses, so if someone comes up with one, gotta copy!
This seems more of a toy. I hope we get to eventually able to use a local Apple LLM model with more flexibility.
Something quite cool they shipped with the 26 family of operating systems is a new system-level API to let developers access the built-in on-device models directly: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/FoundationModels
People want this.
Remember, those of us on HN aren't really the target demographic. They are targeting people who use their device(s) for fun and entertainment.
Agreed.
I've been using Tahoe since yesterday and so far I find the glass changes fine. I don't have any sort of accessibility requirements and I can understand how loss-of-contrast may impact folks but to me it feels fresh.
What an ugly UI update. I usually don't mind too much about the changes in MacOS UI and visuals, but opening up Finder leaves me shocked that this actually got the green light. Who in their right mind looked at this and thought: "yep that's the future, it looks fantastic!".
For Finder I discovered that changing the Toolbar to Icon Only significantly improved it. Then I set the sidebar icons to small in the Appearance system setting. That helped a lot.
Most of the new UI is designed almost exclusively for icon only toolbars.
I posted this before but again, this new OS from Apple is the deal breaker for me to buy any new devices from Apple again. And I’ll hold on the existing OS until Apple won’t provide any security updates anymore.
MacOS updates are probably the best I know of for any unix-like OS. It was one of the main benefits of switching from ubuntu. I just did the update this morning and I'm carrying on with my work like nothing happened. I'm a software developer and run everything from docker to ios/android simulators and vscode. All seems fine.
Long time Apple user advice: don't update before .1 version if you use your mac for important things.
For a more granular features list: https://www.apple.com/os/pdf/All_New_Features_macOS_Tahoe_Se...
Writing this comment from my FrameWork laptop with AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, 96GB Ram, 4TB Storage, that I got for $4k. Running Fedora with KDE. How much would I need to pay Apple to get a laptop with this much ram?
The day I got my only Apple device, an ipad, only to know they will kill my browser download as soon as I switch to a different app, it became my last. I don't want to pay a company only to be subject to their decision of what I can and cannot run on my machine.
If I vote for that with my wallet, I deserve it.
You can get a 128GB MacBook for around $4300. With a 4TB SSD it'll be around $5k I think.
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/G1FW7LL/A/Refurbished-16-...
You could buy a Lenovo with the same spec for a good grand less. And people buy Macbooks so that they don't have to deal with the abomination that is called Linux/GNU and GPL, not for the hardware.
I'm not quite sure what to make of Liquid Glass, I developed an allergy of sorts to the term while listening to the keynote. Any 'relevant' new features for power users / cmd line geeks that you know of?
https://github.com/apple/container is supported from macOS 26
The changes to Spotlight are fairly power-user focused. There's a lot of enhancements to make it quicker to set up shortcuts within it, and they've added a clipboard manager feature to it.
This summary looks acceptable: https://www.computerworld.com/article/4041433/spotlight-is-m...
Apple Notes now supports Markdown import and export.
Spotlight now supports actions, so you can do things directly from Spotlight (kind of like Quicksilver back in the day, or Raycast more currently). Your custom made Shortcuts can also be triggered. It’s also context aware, so you can do things for the app/document you’re in.
Spotlight also integrates clipboard history.
The Terminal gets Powerline glyphs, new themes, and new fonts.
The full list of changes is here:
https://www.apple.com/os/pdf/All_New_Features_macOS_Tahoe_Se...
What new fonts?
This is the description under it in the PDF.
> With 24-bit color support, your commands now have over 16 million color choices.
I’m not sure if there are new fonts, expanded color support for the fonts, or both.
Not a direct response to your question but (I guess like you) I often find with these releases that the changes I actually care about aren’t flashy enough to even warrant a mention in the presentations or on the main web page.
There seems to be some expansion of screen time, finally, but I haven’t been able to figure out what it is yet based on the only *os 26 update I’ve done so far is the public beta on a single Apple TV.
I think we'll have to wait for benchmarks to see if this is a leopard or a snow leopard
First macOS version I’m holding off on. Just too unusable.
I don't like things getting more and more round (quite often having custom css with `* { border-radius: 0px !important; }`) and they are going even worse with it.
I don't like transparency - it's flashy but in overwhelming majority of cases is just a gimmick distraction (like transparent terminals on linux)
Sticking to Squoia
Among all macOS apps and their weird choices, finder is the most enigmatic one. The Recents tab sorts by Last Opened by default where I would expect to see the rencently added files first. Sorting by another column will not add said column to the view. Files from the Downloads folders seems to be excluded from Recents, or they take hours to be taken into account.
It does not show the current path, no button to go up the file tree, the only text input is behind this search button and it does not understand relative or full paths.
Well, thank god I have a terminal and an IDE at hand.
The pixel above the menu bar Weather widget isn't clickable. Sound, wifi, battery, Control Center, clock are just fine.
Let that one get under your skin.
Screenshots of this OS sure are...something. I'm gonna hold off on upgrading. Maybe they'll tone it down next year.
These extreme rounded corners are super triggering my desktop OCD
Text on frosted glass over other text is really hard to read
We need an option to turn these “improvements” off
FWIW my system does feel more snappy and the improvements to Spotlight are nice
Meanwhile in iOSland I am hesitant to update an iPhone SE 2nd gen from 16 to 18 due to the apparant lack of option to customize the charging limit. To anyone with an engineer mind, this seems like a non-implementation that would have an excuse behind it if it were ever exposed. I also wonder if the Personal Hotspot wifi bug ever will get fixed for old hardware, or will the speculation remain of another service changing its mode to promiscuous momentarily for the sake of more data collection.
And also AD-Hoc wifi which was quietly taken away. Many many developer rely on it. Yes there are some apps that the added latency via wifi hub vs ad-hoc wifi makes the difference!!!!
I imagine there will be a day soon when disabling wifi and bluetooth will no longer be behind five button presses, rather just always on.
I still hurting from the crappy System Settings. Please Apple, make System Settings better... It's a mess
To be honest I just installed last night and the only significant change I notice are the round corners. And now the email app have a progress indicator.
Other than that is just windows vista visuals, but not as shit as windows vista.
But it's bad, because the new rounded style with floating buttons doesn't match the traditional UI toolkit and it shows. They've messed up the whole layout where windows have a title bar and then a sidebar, etc. Now the side rail is on top, and all the toolbar buttons float, but you're still supposed to know you can drag on the title bar, but there are no visual signifiers (affordances). It's harder to visually parse the mess, there is no visual hierarchy and everything is floating and has a drop shadow now. And then there is the double border on the left side, where for some reason the sider rail also needs to be floating, which just takes up more space. And it's just for visuals, some apps show content under it (like the wallpaper), while finder for example doesn't, so it's really inconsistent and means nothing.
I took screen shots of a few inconsistencies that bother me, things getting cut off or looking visually messy. The most egregious is the music app showing a dinky progress bar that's almost impossible to mouse over and when you do it blurs everything so you don't see the song name. There was real estate for that whole currently playing section to be bigger so you can start dragging that slider immediately without hovering over it first.
https://imgur.com/a/1PsFAQi
and a few more I forgot
https://imgur.com/a/1CWFqRP
Ok, the clipping of the end of the scroll bar is really terrible.
If Apple stopped at the over-saturated/rounded-corners, it would have been a decent iteration on something established (and very much not broken). I realise the transparent icons are optional - but it now looks like a budget Android theme.
Am I the only one finding this design extremely dated? Like Android Kitkat like from 10 years ago?
A reminder, if you dislike the liquid glass look, that going into System settings / Accessibility / Display and toggling “Increase contrast” gets you a properly nice design with actual borders and solid backgrounds. 100% recommended.
I initially tried that and thought it improved some things, but it increased contrast across the OS, such that some webpages, including stock HN became too blinding. I instead switched to "Reduce Transparency," but that has its own issues.
Overall not pleased. I really did not want to care about the UI changes at all. But having experienced it now, I'm so annoyed I upgraded to iOS 26 and I'm having trouble focusing on the screen. I want WebGPU support, but I'm very hesitant to upgrade to macOS 26 (which is required for WebGPU in Safari).
This settings turns reduce transparency and it turns makes the menu bar gray, which looks horrible on a display on notch.
Is there any way to make it black? Like it appears on full screen applications? (apart from enabling the transparency together with a black wallpaper)
Currently even on dark mode it doesn't have a black background while reduce transparency is toggled on.
We're all disabled now. Thanks, Apple.
If you use the societal modal of disability as your lens on liquid glass you can see that it’s not you with a disability, it’s Apple disabling your ability to use the system with their design choices.
Weirdly, I had that enabled pre-Tahoe and have had to turn it off as it was even worse with it on for me.
Everyone’s different I guess :)
Back on Sequoia, but this is great advice, thank you!
The part that I am so tired of is the ‘we are the best at this and this is amazing’ pitch that comes with every release. Never mind that this release’s design ‘language’ DIRECTLY conflicts with things they used to say ‘never do that’.
So what changed exactly? Change is understandable but this is a full 180. - floating anything was verboten - accessibility was paramount - clarity was prioritized
How did this release come about??
New people in design roles that no longer care about old rules.
Declining institutional taste and no one at the helm who appreciates or enforces old rules when necessary.
Isn't that just how Apple has always operated?
2004: You don't need an iPod that plays videos. 2005: Here's an iPod that plays videos.
It’s butt-ugly, but I find the usability better. Previously everything was so white that I found it difficult on occasion to distinguish between windows above and below. The heavier drop shadows and rounded corners are actually quite helpful
My first impressions? It's fine.
It will take a bit of getting used to, but there are some design elements that actually do make sense.
Open up the Calendar app on macOS Tahoe. Look in the upper right at the time zone selector. It is left justified to a fault, leaving a very awkward amount of space between it and the expand arrow/flyout arrows.
That looks so bad :D
they need to bring Scott Forstall or someone Bertrand Serlet-esque back, and a designer who isn't Alan Dye
Rich Corinthian Leather? Green baize backgrounds? Really..?
At least he was consistent and the UI design made sense, textures aside. And UI gossip aside, all the accounts from every engineer who worked under him consistently praised him.
Safari with its KHTML underpinnings was also created under his watch, apparently.
Webkit (along with Safari) was started under Avie Tevanian's watch. Scott Forstall worked under him and Bertrand Serlet, along with Lisa Melton, who lead the development team for Webkit. Forstall was responsible for the development and release of Apple Maps.
I'm pretty sure Melton credited Forstall with giving with the support and cover for safari/khtml - she's written extensively about it.
https://donmelton.com/2013/01/10/safari-is-released-to-the-w...
And for Apple Maps, I remember reading somewhere that one reason Forstall refused to sign the infamous apology letter was that the initial release was from a team not directly under his supervision, but I can't find the old reference to that...granted, whatever went down was probably a joint failure of everyone involved
Who is macOS designed for? I assume a non negligible customer base are software professionals and this iOSification of the desktop is borderline hostile. I don’t get it.
66% of Mac users are female,
around 55.7% of Mac users in 2024 are aged 18-34,
macOS has a 29.62% share of the U.S., but only 15.1% of the global PC market
Macs still maintain strong pedigree in graphic design and visual arts
(from https://www.spyhunter.com/shm/macos-stats/)
I'm a software developer as well and I avoid programming on the Mac whenever possible (i.e. developing on Linux and just go to the Mac to build and test). Since the last OS version, you cannot even download and run precompiled open source software without being an expert, and we can expect that Apple will even close the present work-arounds for "security reasons" (what a good justification for all kinds of monopolistic and patronizing business decisions).
Not gonna lie, it’s still ugly to me. But same story with every macOS - give it a few weeks and you forget about it and just use your Mac
If anyone here feel aggravated by both Liquid Glass and whatever Windows 11 calls their UI, give KDE a try (Fedora is pretty stable with it). After tweaking a few things (display dpi, theme, wallpaper) - its a very coherent experience & information dense. You can do 95% of your computing in this environment. After getting used to KDE, it will be hard to go back to windows or macos.
Does anyone know what Qt 5 or Qt 6 applications look like on macOS Tahoe?
OpenSCAD and others look like they did even before Sequoia, with a small corner radius and older control spacing.
It looks like you can make your Qt app look like it did for previous OSes:
https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-on-macos-26-tahoe
That might be a useful stop gap.
Looks horrible on non-hdpi monitors
Apple straight up doesn't give a fuck about us third-party monitor users. Timmy says 1440p at 27" is big enough for anyone.
Just a joke of a company
They openly fucked DP 1.4 to make the ProDisplay XDR work.
Catalina, sure, you can drive a DP 1.4 monitor at 144Hz in HDR10. Big Sur, coinciding with the ProDisplay...? No, that will get you 60Hz HDR10 or 95Hz SDR.
So stupidly that downgrading my monitor (mine would allow you to select advertised support) to DP 1.2 would increase your refresh and HDR options.
And it was never fixed, not in Big Sur, Monterey or Ventura, when I had switched monitors.
People were wondering how Apple made the math work. Simple, by "Fuck you if your monitor isn't our $6,000 flagship".
Eh, it has always looked horrible. Non fractional scaling is just too much to ask at this point...but hey look at this tiny toggle element doing this cool liquidy effect wohoo
Only since OS X Yosemite. Then they decided to mess with the font smoothing and it went downhill from there. And no, it wasn't because of Retina, as OS X Mavericks had Retina support and still worked fine on low DPI screens.
I'm not a fan of the forced border radius on maximized (but not full screen) apps
Other than that I tilt slightly towards the 'like it' side. Really like it on iOS
update: my god how did they release it in this state. The inconsistencies in the UI.. my dark mode widgets are now white.. different border radiuses by app.. I've found 2 UI bugs in under an hour
I wish Apple would skip yearly macOS releases, there is no need.
Or alternate feature releases with bug fix releases. I'd love to see a "Snow Leopard" every other year.
A lot of the focus here is on the design (obviously). It took me a while to get used to it. But there are a lot of really great improvements in this release that make it worth it. Spotlight gets big updates. Live activities and notifications syncing from your phone. Journal. Music app has been massively updated and redesigned. Phone app. And surprisingly it doesn’t feel like a launch release - definitely less buggy than previous efforts.
> Music app has been massively updated and redesigned.
How is this good design? I have to precisely hover over the puny slider and then it blurs everything? There is enough space to show proper controls for playback. And why are the controls at the bottom.
https://imgur.com/a/vdBeG8g
That doesn't take away from the fact it had a major update and redesign. There are definitely still issues but it seems much snappier than the previous iteration where it felt like using embedded web views. Pins are great too.
It feels like change for the sake of change, I didn't notice any improvements for my use case.
They didn't even fix the horizontal resizing in the Settings app.
Sigh.
I still need to use the Scroll Reverser because the scroll direction (aka natural scrolling) can only be turned on or off globally, not per pointing device. I love natural scrolling on the trackpad, but it doesn't make sense on the mouse scroll wheel.
I use a Shortcut for this because it cuts down on the unnecessary apps. Hammerspoon.app would work too though.
I wonder if they realized they're recycling the codename from the old BSD version.
For me the main thing is that search is now more prominent for a lot of apps (this is even more true on iOS). It used to be that we had to go to the top on iOS to get search but now it's always at the bottom near the fingers.
This might be relevant again: Apple's Liquid Glass: When Aesthetics Beat Function (https://www.maxvanijsselmuiden.nl/liquid-glass)
The key question - now that Liquid Glass is a reality, will Tim Cook lose his job like Ballmer did over Windows 8 metro design?
I thought it was Sinofsky who lost his job over Windows 8.
I had thought Tahoe was the first version to drop Intel CPU support, but it looks like it will be the last version to still support Intel Macs.
Two of the latest Intel MacBooks, and the last Intel iMac, so technically, yes, there’s still some Intel support in there. My 2019 iMac is one version too old.
does not support 2018 Mac mini
Apple have always seemed to drop support for hardware after 5-7 years, and then it's just a question of the last supported OS becoming itself unsupported too. My early 2015 Macbook Pro (new in April 2015) got as far as macOS Monterey (released October 2021) - and they stopped updating that in October 2024.
(I'm not digging through Wikipedia to double check but my previous 2 Macbooks Pro felt like they lasted about as long.)
It'll be interesting to see if they change this with the (presumably cleaner slate) Apple Silicon-based hardware.
I'm on the beta right now and a "<<" icon has appeared.
It's embarrassing that it took them that long but they have in fact fixed it.
> And Vehicle Motion Cues help reduce motion sickness in moving vehicles.
I love that the copy was directly copy pasted from iOS copy. I don't think vehicle motion sickness is a big concern with macOS
The GUI of an OS has never concerned me. Seems like a red flag when the main selling point is a slight bit of transparency.
Well, that's why there is a lot of complaints.
The main selling point of a macbook is not a UI with transparency. It's hardware stuff (like ARM processors, battery life, aluminum frames, etc..) and a decent, stable, unix-ish software environment. No one is using macOS for the visual effects, so it is annoying that Apple is revamping the UI everyone is used to in order to add more visual effects.
Seems nuts to me, but I'll be curious to see how this all pans out.
The new Spotlight seems like a strong selling point for power users.
Reminds me of Windows Vista.
Just upgraded my wife’s laptop and my iPhone. It’s fine. I think her use (she lives in the browser) and my iPhone use (calls, camera, browser) don’t really reveal anything terrible. It’s kind of a dumb gimmick, but it’s mostly fine so far. It would annoy me if a UI that I frequently used “upgraded” to this, though.
i really wish they didn't give up on stage manager. every beta i would look if they fixed the opening behavior to open a new application in the same stage :/ but stage manager seems like it would have potential to fix window management on the mac without needing rectangle, yabai, alt tab etc
Stage Manager works fine in macOS 26: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-stage-manager-m...
This looks like their Windows Vista.
The juxtaposition in the marketing speak is ridiculous.
"...all with a whole lot less effort."
Seriously Apple, a whole lot less?
Not a fan of the new Safari design. I used to like it for its compact and minimalist look, but now the address bar and tab bar feel like they take up more space than they should.
Isn't this what KDE 4 did like 15 years ago?
Windows XP had Theme Settings. I never used them, but at least they allowed you to choose.
This is the first time I've ever seen a macOS update and not seen a single feature worth bothering to upgrade over. Is there anything developer-facing? I don't use any Apple ecosystem stuff and this is all that AFAICT
There is support [1] for containers.
[1]: https://github.com/apple/container#requirements
Anytime a UI redesign comes with bullshit abstract designer justifications ("a translucent new material that reflects and refracts its surroundings", etc) you know it's bad.
are they giving any hints that in high vis/accessibility modes this will be fully disabled? I've been largely insulated from changes like this for a while by that, if that were to change however, more drastic measures may be needed
I'd like to see the presentation they used internally to sell the liquid glass aeshetic. I bet it is sillier than the famous Pepsi logo redesign document.
Widget appearance is tied to *icon appearance. Grumble grumble. I want clear for my widgets but default for my dock and other icons. Too bad so sad me I guess.
edit: replaced dock with icon, because it affects much more than just dock
I like it. There's hardly any difference for me.
I can't remember the last time I was excited for a macOS release. This time again there is nothing I'm looking forward in this new release.
I've grown so used to Apple shipping buggy software that I wait a year or more before upgrading my mac to a major version. I do all the minor releases and security patches, of course.
> More you. Shines through.
It just sounds like a shampoo commercial.
Is that call screening example a new feature or something I can do now that I didn't know about? That's something I've missed since switching from a Pixel to an iPhone last year.
That's new in the 26 OSes.
Sure, sure... The UI is a waste.
But: 24-bit color support in Terminal.app!
Finally.
(Next year, macOS Ukiah will use Apple Intelligence: just describe the UI you want in Spotlight, and macOS will vibe-code it up for you.)
I really dislike how everything MUST become rounded to be "more user-friendly and fluid". The UI looks awful and I will probably never be upgrading.
It's not as bad as the first previews but ugly nonetheless and overall accessibility nightmare.
All I hope is that the design language stays contained in Apple ecosystem and does not spread.
Accessibility hasn't changed at all, and it remains trivial to turn off visual effects that present a problem. https://imgur.com/a/Vw55f8V
It's like every macos release. The internet rushes to upgrade to it and then tries to be the first to sh*t on it. Nothing to see here. Winning.
Is it bad that my primary motivation for considering an upgrade is getting my notes as Markdown?
I feel like Joey Tribbiani with Rachel’s Traditional English Trifle, because I like it. iOS, macOS, ipadOS, tvOS.
I like the new feature in tvOS to see incoming calls on the tv.
Will I be able to disable the glass effect so there isn't any load on the system just for the ui to exist?
Looks like they're putting an AR UI in a Desktop
I, for one, am going to wait a much longer while before installing this.
The internets suggests the following disables glass effects:
I think I’m going to stick with the previous version of macOS on my work laptop until I’m forced to upgrade.
This is unrelated, but in Indonesian language, "Tahoe" is a word for tofu but spelled the old way
Updated to iPadOS 26 on my iPad 9.
It's so laggy on the home screen now. Absolutely ruined the poor thing.
https://www.apple.com/v/os/c/images/macos/highlights/mac_pho...
Two different fonts (Mac vs iOS) for the same data display?
And replacing all humans by AI avatars, to make it easier for spambots to impersonation people?
I love how when apple could offer nothing more, their ui became nothing, and a celebration of blankness
That’s the goal of all their products, the hardware as well. Get out of your way, and effectively disappear, so you can focus on what you’re actually working on.
How has Apple still not addressed many basic UI issues, such as menu bar icons disappearing behind the notch with no way to see them?
I take it as a sign of typical increasing corporate dysfunction. Obvious problems, some even easy and uncontroversial, don't get fixed. Why?
The people who can fix them are not in control. The org must be very top-down. But Steve Jobs had a top down style, so what's the difference? Its: Using and caring about the product.
It's top down direction with the people at the top not using/caring about the product. Presumably they're concerned with other things like efficiency, stocks, clout.
Also if you had a majorly obvious bug, you could email steve@apple.com, which he would forward to a VP, who would be fired if it wasn't fixed ASAP. Knew a guy who lost his job that way, so it's not just a myth. Steve really was like that.
The wrath of Steve was a real thing that people feared.
On the one hand, this kind of thing seems like a mercurial, dictatorial management style. On the other hand, you do need a way to cut through the levels of hierarchy in a large company so that fixes like this don't always get bogged down in process and stakeholder meetings.
It seemed to work for Apple/Steve Jobs, but I'm not convinced it would work for everyone.
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Menu extras were never intended to be treated like Windows tray items. For the earlier portion of OS X’s life, there wasn’t even a public API to create them and required a hack and a private API, and the current API is intended for ephemeral menu extras that disappear when their host app isn’t running. In short, the menubar isn’t designed for users to collect menu extras like Pokémon.
But that’s exactly how it is used, and them disappearing behind the notch feels like a bug.
Sure, but for twenty years that’s not how they’ve been used.
In case you don't know, at least there's a setting to help:
I have collected a long list of these types of settings over the years, for example disable font smoothing:
It used to be a checkbox, now there's only this command.Eventually that will be gone too, and none will be the wiser except the old who remember the good old days.
I'm starting to think these settings are left there by rogue engineers who fight against the oppression while staying under the radar. It's like a secret cabal that works to maintain sanity while the plebs are left to suffer at the mercy of their own ignorance.
what is the purpose of disabling font smoothing?
PSA: Turn off "font smoothing" https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/16tow2w/psa_turn_off...
macOS applies something called "font smoothing" (image) which is adding a layer of pixels to your text. The effect is that text is made a little more bold—not "bad" but it isn't exactly as the typeface designers intended.
Here's a good example:
The thing about 4K on macOS is that its sharpest setting will be when you make it "look like 1080p" which means its sized like a 1080p monitor but its 2x sharper. If you make it "look like 1440p" which is what you're used to, macOS will draw a 5K image and scale it down to "look like 1440p" but it doesn't fit the pixels on your display 1:1, so there is a slight blur or its not as sharp as native "looks like 1080p"—but it will still be sharper than your 32-inch 1440p display, so I still recommend you move forward if sharp viewing is a priority. The only sharper alternative is to buy Apple's 27-inch 5K display at $1600 (although $1300 refurb) or a 32-inch 6K display (Dell and Apple make them).
I'm guessing something to do with low-DPI external displays?
BetterDisplay has an option to "disable" the notch i.e push the menubar down, essentially making the screen the same as before there were a notch. Lose a little bit of real estate, but regain sanity.
There are some dedicated apps for that like Say No To Notch.
And the apps that provide solutions for it, like Bartender, need screen reading permissions which I just can't bring myself to grant.
If you really want to use such a thing, switch to Ice. It’s an open source thing similar to Bartender, before BT was bought by a shifty outfit. It still requires those permissions, but at least you can look at the code. I have a paid Bartender license. I liked it enough to pay for it, but don’t like the road it went down and stopped using it.
Tahoe lets you selectively remove app icons from the menu bar. I’m going to try that for a while and see if I can tolerate not using Ice anymore.
I think they kinda did? I'm not sure where to look for a link to this info, but I remember watching a YouTube video showing the ability to group and hide menu bar icons in Tahoe so they take up less space (and therefore encroach less toward the notch).
Maybe I'm misremembering the video though.
(edit) The linked page seems to hint at it:
> Personalized controls and menu bar. Your display feels even larger with the transparent menu bar. And you have more ways to customize the controls and layout in the menu bar and Control Center, even those from third parties
I love my Mac and yes, this is easily the most absurd problem. It happens to me all the time and I can’t believe they haven’t fixed it.
Apple…if you’re listening…please fix this.
They need to bring back the control strip!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Strip
Solves this exact issue.
It was great, but they had to quietly retire it when somebody pointed out it looked like a dick.
Notice how on the menu bar, when you click File and then the dropdown appears, you can move the mouse arrow to the right (without clicking) over Edit and now the Edit menu shows up. But the same doesn't work on the status menu icons, if I click on the volume icon and move the mouse, nothing happens, the volume menu stays open, even if hover over the battery indicator. So many little things like this that never worked consistently.
Apparently it's not important.
I'm trying to give it a chance but it's kind of rough.
- File save dialog has a massively reduced width sidebar. It has a resize handle. But the resize handle does nothing. This is the most infuriating thing for me because all of my sidebar locations are cut off. - M4 Pro Macbook Pro and I'm now experiencing stuttering when scrolling. - Why is everything in Spotlight enormous?! Was it always like this and I just seemingly never noticed?
Otherwise, if you 'reduce transparency' and turn off 'tint window background with wallpaper color' (both of which I had done already anyway), things are decidedly nicer visually.
I usually wait a couple weeks for the bugs to be worked out before installing.
Reminder that if you have an old Mac, and you'd like to run more recent versions of macOS on it, you can do so with Dortania OpenCore (https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/).
They don't have Tahoe support yet, but almost certainly will in the coming months.
I highly recommend doing this instead of throwing away a 5 or 6 year old computer as ewaste!
(Windows and Linux also work on Intel Macs.)
I'm so bummed that the workarounds to keep a 5k iMac in commission all seem to be really likely to piss off your corporate IT department.
Patching the bootloader in memory seems like a big op-sec no-no.
Last time this came up on Hacker News, someone pointed out that there are new display boards you can buy from China to reuse a 5K's panel as an external display.
I think we're only allowed to run Linux at work on blessed devices. Last I looked, the 5K panel in the iMac was actually presented to the firmware as two smaller displays, which were glued back together in software. Apple does that magic to support its own hardware, but it sounded like Linux doesn't.
Thank you so much. I only need a Mac to compile/debug with Xcode (still can't get USB pass through with quickemu working) but Apple has been killing old versions such that projects wont build and home brew has no bottles and whatnot.
Worse.
I'm ok with most of it but let us get rid of the stupid rounded corners. Apple clearly does great HW and it does great systems. OTOH, its UI is faddish.
Tim Cook has no taste
Has anyone gotten this running in with QEMU and kvm?
I'm baffled by the hate. So far, it's just some nice looking cosmetic changes.
All entirely inconsequential -- I've seen nothing yet that will affect my workflows in any way.
I don't think so, apple supposedly cares about aesthetics and design. If I didn't care about little details I would use windows. Like Steve Jobs said, it comes down to taste. Why would I use a flawed unpolished product, it doesn't reassure me that the technical side was even done well.
This UI refresh seems better than Jony Ive’s attempt. The first version he was in control of was probably the worst UI they’ve had. Poor contrast, ultra-thin fonts, strange color pallet, and the buttons were gone. Need a back button, here: <. Liquid Glass seems much better than that, and they will continue to refine it, just like they did Ive’s design.
Wait until you use it a bit more and get some overlap into an unreadable mess.
Open System Settings right now, do a search, then scroll the view. That’s the least worst you’ll find.
I tried it and it works well, and looks good.
What's the bad thing I'm supposed to be seeing?
how to change this enormous windows radius to something reasonable?
This is the Windows 7 version of MacOS
Looks like a niche Gnome theme that’s trying to clone a MacOS look.
I don’t think it’s that bad, nothing to get upset over - but yeah sort of like candy iMac aesthetic.
Running it already. Seems pretty solid. No compatibility issues. UI changes are fairly ok. Glad they got rid of launcher and merged it into spotlight.
Never used spotlight. I have it disabled permanently. I don’t like the indexing.
If you ever used Quicksilver, the new Spotlight feels a lot like it.
This is a really rough UI update to ship out of Apple.
I don't want to use "the worst UI thing they've ever done" lightly, but it is hard to think of something that feels this unfinished and hard to use. Why are none of the corner radii consistent? This is literally the sort of thing Apple's entire reputation is built on getting right! It's like an amateur hour Linux skin.
This seems like a relatively minor update.
This is the last ever version with Intel support, right? That's a milestone of sorts.
Which is a bit sad. There were some choices that didn’t pan out in the last Intel era (butterfly, touchbar), but part of me loved those changes (the keyboard and the touchbar felt super premium, until you tried to work with them for any amount of time).
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my 2020 iMac in a year. I really want to be able to repurpose that 5k screen but Apple does not make it easy.
I might just leave it in perma-Windows Boot Camp.
If you're up for a project, you can swap the guts of those 5K iMacs for an aftermarket controller board which turns it into a regular monitor. It's a bit janky but a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a new 5K monitor.
I mean the obvious other choice would be Linux. Wayland is pretty good with hidensity screens nowdays.
This update is hideous. I'm already regretting the upgrade. So many design flaws that it's too distracting to use.
Okay that seems pretty nice. A lot of small improvements to day-to-day use. This is what I want from a desktop OS update.
I don't want the low contrast glassy stuff or even bigger corner radiuses on my iPhone or mac, so I disabled automatic OS updates for the first time.
When I updated to iOS 18.7, it automatically re-activated iOS updates! Fuck you very much, Apple!
So be warned, if you don't want to update, check your settings.
Maybe it's some A-B stuff - I've updated to 18.7 both phone and tablet and updates settings were untouched
I hate to say it, but Windows is much more productive than MacOS for the usually tasks you perform on an OS (with GUI, both have CLIs, but I'm not talking about them). I'm using both at work all day long switching between them. When reflecting why, I think it comes down to windows management and the file explorer (vs finder).
That’s an entirely subjective thing, though. I’ve used Macs more than PCs and I can’t stand what feels to me like Windows’s abysmal window management.
I don’t say that to argue that macOS is better at it, just that I strongly prefer the Mac way as much as you prefer the way Windows does things, and that’s perfectly fine.
I disagree on this.
I’ve used both interchangeably for decades and can swap between them without slowing. So much of this comes down to knowledge of and experiences with the quick/er ways for getting around.
For quite sometime using search tools is vastly more efficient for navigation and file movement than Explorer or Finder anyway.
It's good
Is there anywhere to find a comprehensive list of updates made "Under the hood"? Sure the new UI is cool and all, but what are they doing to make the OS better? In a previous life I was a mac administrator and every update, apple would remove some binary and suddenly we couldn't natively make calls to LDAP or something.
That’s why I miss the old Ars Technica reviews.
The closest I’ve seen is this Apple PDF and I’m not sure it’s what you’re after: https://www.apple.com/os/pdf/All_New_Features_macOS_Tahoe_Se...
So ugly and pointless it hurts. Same for iOS 26.
I hope they'll acknowledge what they've done and fix most of this nonsense. I like macOS how it is right now, and I switched from Linux partly for this. I always wonder why don't they just add new stuff based on user feedback?
Looking at this webpage I realise I am absolutely no longer part of Apple’s demographic for MacOS. I couldn’t care less about any of these new features. I was hoping the UI would be improved but it’s just a diabolical clusterfuck.
Hard pass.
I will not be installing this one!
The poor application scripting story on macOS has made me grumpy for the last few releases of macOS.
AppleScript was never good, but the tooling has been left to rot and other language bindings steadily deprecated. And it seems it has not improved in Tahoe. I know the product manager of scripting for macOS ran it into the ground before being let go, but I've seen no discernible improvements.
For a platform touted as the first choice for technical users, this is a really poor showing.
Ios26 isn’t bad. Installing it on my non work MacBook.
I hate it. Everything has become larger and weirder and uglier? When I reboot the machine the time on the lock screen is in liquid glass but the date isn't?
It reminds me of Cydia Themes
Am I the only one here who thinks liquid glass is pretty? I like it.
More than that, I love the new Spotlight features, and the ability to remove apps from the menu bar without installing Ice (or the legacy Bartender).
I suppose I'm in the minority, but I do like the new changes. It's refreshing, and looks good. Most issues can be tweaked away if you desire that. (disabling transparency or removing tint window with background wallpaper)
What I want is my single row Safari address+tabbar back - why did they take it out? And where the hell is the newly refreshed Terminal.app?
I really hope spotlight didn't just get ruined
"ruined"?
It hasn't been able to find anything in years.
It's faster to scroll down in Finder than use the search box to locate anything =)
I mean it’s gotten bad already, but I think people’s hope is that they fixed it that if I type in a file name I work with all the time it’ll be the first result. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.
that and some kind of weighted memory for search history. i use photoshop almost daily, photos once a month or so, and photo booth once a year, but they appear in reverse order based on alphabetization.
Disappointed with the background image. I was expecting a similar treatment like with Sequoia and previous versions with a beautiful and inspiring scene in nature. Instead it is vaguely inspired by water?
The Tahoe beach pictures are pretty nice.
https://mrmacintosh.com/download-the-new-macos-tahoe-wallpap... has them at the bottom of the link
Is there alternative backgrounds included? Often there are two or three.
There are four alternative Tahoe backgrounds/screensavers in Landscape. They're the same shot of the lake at different times of day.
To help highlight the new "Liquid Glass" UI?
Or because Tahoe is a lake?
Both?
the launcher is amazing
day one upgrade here nothing broke, im very happy so far
m3max mbpro 14
The new UI is incredibly disappointing, it looks like an old Android theme from 2005.
Wake me up when it's 26.1 o'clock.
Things I like: reintroducing a little bit of 3D/skeumorphism. I'm sick of flat. Also the Music and Podcasts app changes aren't bad. Haven't tried the iPhone/desktop tighter integration but it looks interesting. Not UI, but it seems like my wifi is faster, but I could also be nuts. Maybe a driver update?
Things that are "meh": the "apps" thing that replaces the previous launch pad, the translucency, the "dark" icon theme.
Things I don't like: stop wasting my f'ing screen real estate. Stop it with the unnecessary whitespace and the f'ing thicc menu bar. This is a desktop/laptop and it's for real work. It's also ugly. Speaking of ugly, I count several different window corner radii. Why do Windows need gigantically rounded corners?
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It's Apple house style. Marketing writes in tiny sentences. Even fragments. Makes the copy more punchy. And it's been like this for decades.
I think this is just 'sales writing'. As if written for a trailer video.
Apple used to be like... the standard for how to do this.
IMO we're losing a lot of writing craftsmanship across many industries with Gen X'ers retiring
Now imagine it being said by someone presenting and doing the same hand pyramid stance that they make every Apple employee in WWDC videos do.
All kidding aside, it’s weird to read. Ever since I was a kid, I was taught that beginning a sentence with “And” or “But” is not “correct”. Times change and all that, I get it - it’s just weird though.
The hand pyramid stance. Yes! I find it quite off putting. It feels overly choreographed and fake.
Have they got any further on their roadmap to only allowing apps from the Mac store in this release?
They will certainly be enough idiots who think that it is for the user's own good, so that apps are more "secure."
What evidence do you have that they are trying to do that?
All of the major commercial OS vendors are trying to do that. Apple started it with iOS. Google have gradually been tightening the net. Microsoft are furthest away but they have the longest legacy of freedom so they the furthest to go.
Obviously they aren't going to publicly say that's their intent, but you don't have to be a genius to read between the lines.
As for why... money and power are pretty big motivators.
Ok, so no?
What evidence have you got that they aren't? I don't see why you're expecting some quote from Tim Cook saying "yes we're going to lock down macos in the next 10 years". Obviously not going to happen.
The evidence is their actions with gatekeeper, app signing, removing the right-click workaround, etc.
> What evidence have you got that they aren't?
I'm sorry, but I can't take this question seriously.
The main evidence is that they haven't. I also believe that it would be quite damaging to an important part of their user base.
Other than that, you're essentially asking me to prove a negative.
> The main evidence is that they haven't.
They have taken many gradual steps in the direction of locking things down.
> it would be quite damaging to an important part of their user base.
Not as important as we'd hope. Look at iOS.
> Other than that, you're essentially asking me to prove a negative.
They could have said "we won't ever lock down macOS". They haven't.
I'll file this under "mark my words". Like this one :-D
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17363885
(I think it will probably take longer than 7 years though; maybe 15.)
I remember when there was option to run any application. With Sequoia there are only 2 options: App Store; App store + Known developers. Third option was removed. You can still run other apps but you need to manually approve them with ~3 popups where first option is "move to Bin". You need to do this after every OS or App update. I wonder when this option will be removed as well.
It's been missing since at least Big Sur, so if they're going to go any further they do seem to be taking their time over it.
They are still working on it. This is from a year ago
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/macos-15-sequoia-mak...
Obviously they can't do it instantly or there would be too much resistance. Microsoft have to go even slower.
This is tiresome. You cannot lock down development machines. If you pay attention you'll see that OSes made for development work will be the only ones not locked down. Android was a holdout but Google is now tightening the screws. MacOS, Linux, BSD, and Windows are the only OSes that can't be locked down. Microsoft tried but they abandoned that.
Good point, but it is entirely possible for Apple/Microsoft to lock down "consumer" versions of their operating systems, effectively turning the common man's computer into a glorified phone and a new cash cow. Add to that a requirement for an online account, age verification, and other malware.
> You cannot lock down development machines.
Of course you can. What makes you think you couldn't?
Shwiggity shwagg, the GA release hath come!
Can't wait to write a beamline control application for crystallography on this sumbitch!
Whoever downvoted this despite the fact that it was neither factually inaccurate nor disrespectful to another person, congrats on being an incel.
P.S. My hot Japanese fiancee thinks you're pathetic too. Her exact words were: チー牛