[HN Gopher] Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
___________________________________________________________________
Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
Author : vitosartori
Score : 403 points
Date : 2025-12-28 10:12 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eclecticlight.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (eclecticlight.co)
| thenaturalist wrote:
| Tahoe is such a criminal worsening of UI quality, it really is
| worrisome that Apple is proudly releasing it.
|
| If this kind of software trend continues in 2026, it might be the
| first time I take a serious look at Linux distros on Mac.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Installed Mint on my GAMING Windows system, uninstalled Steam
| on Windows. All is well.
|
| While at it, nuked my old MacBook Pro and Air with Mint too -
| not like they are getting updates anyway.
|
| It can be done, it should be done. These commercial operating
| systems have enshitified to a critical point and are beyond
| repair.
| roxolotl wrote:
| The thing that's weird about this though is it isn't
| enshitification. I don't want to defend the worsening of
| software quality/ux/ui for monetary gain but at least it's
| somewhat rational. This is not a change that emphasizes
| profit driven changes over user driven ones. Maybe I'm
| missing some profit motive but it just seems like an awful
| design choice.
|
| Edit: Not to disagree though. I too have a Linux gaming pc
| and are helping friends do the same.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Maybe not enshittification in the sense that every other
| UIImageView has an ad in it, but definitely a huge
| regression from the UI it had before.
|
| Sadly it's only a matter of time until everyone copies it
| because it's cool and it's what Apple does so they must be
| right!
| trinix912 wrote:
| I'm holding off upgrading my laptop (2013 MBP running Catalina)
| until they get their UI stuff together. I'd just gotten used to
| Sequoia on my desktop but this is unbearable.
|
| Not a single update since 2019 has improved the UI more than it
| regressed it in my opinion. Too much whitespace, too little
| contrast, too big controls, and now too little readability.
|
| It's almost like their entire UI department is under threat of
| being fired unless they invent a radical UI update every other
| year.
|
| Even Vista was a readability zen compared to this and they
| aren't listening to feedback at all.
| sylens wrote:
| Perhaps the thing I hate most about Tahoe is the embedded rounded
| rectangle around the menu inside of the larger rounded rectangle
| window. They're trying to go for this look of a menu floating
| above the rest of the window it belongs to, but it just looks
| sloppy to me in dark mode.
| Lord-Jobo wrote:
| Looks sloppy in any mode. The amount of wasted space has gone
| from "well a little bit of rounding/padding is alright to
| achieve a unified unique look" to "holy shit this is just
| Fischer price laugh and learn garbage".
|
| 1/2 pixel strips everywhere, around tons of elements. Huge
| rounded corners. Slow showy animations.
|
| This isn't a UI for adults, this is a UI for a fake computer
| sequence in a cheap Netflix movie.
| xp84 wrote:
| Even Jony Ive, who I thought was a bad UI designer when that
| job was unwisely given to him, thinks Alan Dye has no taste.
| That's saying something.
| rick_dalton wrote:
| Personally I couldn't get past the horrible gray squircle jails
| for icons that don't adhere to their boring new standard. They
| didn't even update the pixelmator icon for quite a while, which
| they themselves acquired. Shows you how much effort went in to
| this.
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| Tahoe has to be the worst software Apple has released in three
| decades. It's unbelievable it got through. If Macs and macOS were
| not a tiny portion of their revenue I would short the stock.
| uxp100 wrote:
| iOS 26 is also very bad. Many Christmas conversations between
| boomers baffled by their phones, and as I younger (than boomer)
| person I am not as baffled but there are a number of things
| that take more button presses than they did in previous
| versions for no apparent reason. And it's real ugly imo.
| treetalker wrote:
| Viewing all tabs in Safari is the thorn in my side.
| uxp100 wrote:
| Yes, that's the main one I was thinking of, though there
| are spots in the photos app too iirc.
| xp84 wrote:
| They've achieved sufficient lock-in that they can enshittify
| everything as much as they want with no consequences.
| Switching has too high an ecosystem cost, plus in the US it's
| a special case that a lot of people think if you don't use
| all Apple products you are probably poor.
| vegardx wrote:
| One thing that made Tahoe even worse is that Apple changed what
| they considered an update or upgrade, so for Tahoe it was
| suddenly considered as a update and not an upgrade, in all
| management solutions.
|
| This force-upgraded a lot of Macs at work and we lost days of
| effective work across many engineers. The machines was
| practically useless for weeks.
|
| They clearly don't care about power users anymore, and haven't
| for quite some time. It's so sad.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| That's egregiously bad, and malicious.
| xp84 wrote:
| >short the stock
|
| The frustrating part is that even if you take the position that
| iOS 26 is just as awful, their incentives are so decoupled from
| what you'd hope they would be, that ruining your product isn't
| really bad for the business! After all, Apple can just point to
| Windows 11's embedded ads, three or four layers of different
| generations of overlapping settings panes, and inferior
| hardware and dare you to switch. Most of the customer base has
| only those two realistic options.
| jwlake wrote:
| its very odd that apparently everyone working in Apple software
| dev either refuses to dogfood this stuff or just uses iPads for
| everything.
| mc32 wrote:
| Ironically that would be a new kind of dogfooding.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It would not matter if they dogfooded it, the decision makers
| higher up in the chain are getting paid more to make a visible
| change and/or increase revenue, not to make a better user
| experience.
| g947o wrote:
| I think this goes both ways.
|
| Famously, Jobs' demands pushed engineers to think and work
| harder to achieve what they think was impossible, which
| resulted in many of the most iconic designs of personal
| electronic devices in history.
|
| On the other hand, we have butterfly keyboard and this.
| lapcat wrote:
| Jobs did not run on a fixed annual schedule like Tim Cook
| does.
|
| Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, and 10.7 all took over 12
| months to develop, sometimes much more, and 10.5 was
| famously delayed out to 30 months.
|
| Jobs may have pushed engineers, but he was more careful
| about what he pushed out the door to consumers.
| franktankbank wrote:
| Doesn't sound very agile..............
| hamdingers wrote:
| So many of the rough edges disappear when "Reduce Transparency"
| is enabled I've theorized that setting must be pretty popular
| around Apple's offices.
| normie3000 wrote:
| My browser has a half-inch white bar at the bottom
| constantly, presumably because of this setting.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Cannot reproduce on 26.2 with either Safari or Chrome with
| the setting on. That would infuriate me.
| normie3000 wrote:
| When first scrolling, the bottom page controls disappear.
| But they leave their container blocking the page content.
| xp84 wrote:
| Using that option suddenly nerfed all my themes in Edge,
| forcing the window title bars to all be gray instead of the
| bold colors I use to differentiate the different profiles I
| use for work. I wish there was a "Reduce bullshit" toggle on
| MacOS and iOS, and also that it would skip all the
| increasingly stupid animations. No, reduce motion sucks
| because it just uses an equally-slow crossfade. Just STFU and
| let me move to the next task and stop animating everything.
| Good for you, you have a good GPU, I don't care.
| keyshapegeo99 wrote:
| iPadOS 26 is an even bigger F-up than macOS 26, though
|
| It's hugely embarrassing how they've had to perform a
| screeching U-turn in bringing back Slide Over and dock-
| launchable Split View with the .1 and .2 updates - lest graphic
| artists and others who depended upon these features left their
| platform in droves. This is essentially an admission that
| iPadOS 26's touch-based UX had precisely zero thought put into
| it. They do not have a clue what they're doing
|
| There are still many, many more nonsensical UX degradations and
| bugs that need ironing out
| mitchell209 wrote:
| For years I was begging to get better multitasking and more
| powerful apps, especially after they introduced the magic
| keyboard. They can take it all back now. I'd rather they
| stick with 0 multitasking, if this is the best they can do.
| ghusto wrote:
| Adding insult to injury, my fans are constantly going now because
| I have to pay for this disastrous upgrade with tons more
| resources.
| xp84 wrote:
| Well, the M1 is still good enough to last years longer under
| the sane demands of nearly any type of work. That's bad for the
| stock price. How else are they going to keep people on the same
| upgrade cycle as the Intel days if they don't tax those GPUs
| with all these pointless animations?
| avidphantasm wrote:
| Since macOS went to a yearly cadence, I usually upgrade during
| Christmas break, this allows for a couple of point releases to
| work out the kinks. I won't be upgrading this year. I hope macOS
| 27 fixes this abomination. Otherwise, this 30+ year Mac user will
| be moving on...
| Y-bar wrote:
| You would do well to avoid 26. I upgraded to be a Guinea Pig
| for a few colleagues and I regret it. Things like apps and
| scripts work in the technical sense, but it is worse because
| the myriad of graphical and interactive issues.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I just hope that my current Mac keeps being usable long enough
| that Liquid Glass has been fixed or replaced entirely by the time
| I'm forced to upgrade to whatever's shipping on my next computer.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| My kid dumped a glass of water all over my MBP M1 a few days
| ago. Deciding between an inferior M4 with Sequoia or a fancy
| new M5 with Tahoe has been rough :/
| HelloUsername wrote:
| > dumped a glass of water all over my MBP
|
| I believe that's how the designers at Apple came up with
| Liquid Glass
| dghost-dev wrote:
| Liquid Glass is not that bad lol.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| Neither is an M4 Pro.
| coldpie wrote:
| If it helps, I've been using XFCE since 2007 and it's
| remained functionally identical for all of those almost 20
| years. It just works, it improves a tiny bit with each major
| upgrade, and they don't rearrange everything every couple
| years for the sake of justifying a salary.
|
| Maybe it's a good opportunity to consider whether you
| actually _have_ to keep running on Apple 's treadmill.
| baq wrote:
| I'd love an XFCE (or even gnome tbh) environment on a
| properly built laptop, unfortunately only Apple is able to
| build something that works in all areas that matter: sleeps
| when lid closed, wakes when lid opens, touchpad and display
| don't suck.
| coldpie wrote:
| FWIW that all worked out of the box for me on my Intel
| Framework. But yes, it's fair to say there are tradeoffs
| for each solution. Maybe Apple's cons are getting big
| enough these days. Worth considering.
| gray_-_wolf wrote:
| > all areas that matter: sleeps when lid closed, wakes
| when lid opens, touchpad and display don't suck.
|
| All of these seem to be fine on my thinkpad (true, I
| probably have somewhat lower standards for passable
| display). Battery life sucks a bit, what I can usually
| fine outlet somewhat to plug into.
| somebehemoth wrote:
| I have an oled thinkpad running fedora that has never had
| a sleep issue. Excellent touchpad as well. Thinkpad X1
| Carbon.
| tasuki wrote:
| Which version? I have a X1 Carbon from, uhh, 2017? It
| supports S3 sleep. I'd think about an upgrade, if only I
| wasn't worried about sleep issues. I run Debian if that
| makes any difference.
|
| Actually now that I think about it, my visceral reaction
| is one of dread: a feeling the trouble will be more than
| the benefit of a new computer.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| For me the touchpad experience is not just about the
| hardware. I got a Magic Trackpad for my Linux desktop
| hoping that it would at least be somewhat comparable to
| my MacBook. But scrolling and gestures are nowhere near
| as consistent and fluid as in macOS since the software
| support just isn't there.
|
| As a fairly typical example, getting Firefox on Linux to
| actually scroll smoothly takes googling and fiddling with
| settings. Gesture support is hit or miss. On macOS,
| Firefox behaves just like any other native app in this
| regard.
| bigyabai wrote:
| My Magic Trackpad feels _more_ consistent on Linux, Force
| Touch notwithstanding.
| encom wrote:
| Firefox on Fedora on X1 Carbon and scrolling just works.
| Maybe it was different in the past.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| This was a few weeks ago. IIRC, the issue with Firefox
| was not that it didn't scroll but that the scrolling
| wasn't inertial unless you changed some settings.
| snazz wrote:
| If you "fling" the page, lift your fingers off, and then
| tap with two fingers, does the page come to a stop?
| ako wrote:
| I have a thinkpad p1 with popos, but it doesn't sleep
| properly. Closing the lid causes it to be super active. I
| have to lay it down up side down so the ventilation gaps
| are not blocked, otherwise it overheats. Burned one SSD
| this way.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| > unfortunately only Apple is able to build something
| that works in all areas that matter: sleeps when lid
| closed, wakes when lid opens, touchpad and display don't
| suck
|
| In my case I'd add:
|
| - Chassis that doesn't flex like crazy
|
| - Battery life good enough that I typically don't need to
| think about AC outlet accessibility
|
| - Can sit in standby for upwards of a week without
| battery drain forcing it to shut down
|
| - Is inaudible except when maxing out CPU or GPU for
| several minutes
|
| - Has a screen panel with a resolution that's either 1x
| or 2x UI scaling native
|
| The number of laptops in the market that check these
| boxes is disappointingly tiny.
| zingar wrote:
| I don't see anyone in these replies really addressing the
| touchpad. Would love to hear from people who have used
| macbooks if they have found a Linux machine that matches
| the Apple trackpad.
|
| "Never tried a MacBook, my Linux machine trackpad always
| worked perfectly" is the usual response I get when I
| press for a response... but without trying Apple (on this
| one thing) you'll never understand until you've
| experienced the downgrade.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| I've combined my MacBook with a Linux desktop for about
| five years now. Linux has its pros as a developer, but IMHO
| daily driving it is like walking around with pebbles in my
| shoes.
|
| Something as basic as scrolling feels slightly inconsistent
| in just about every app and keybindings are all over the
| place. There's always the allure of getting the config
| "just right" but after a while I swear I start seeing
| Sisyphus' reflection in my screen.
| coldpie wrote:
| What DE are you using? Some of the higher profile ones
| (Gnome, KDE) try to be all smooth and polished and
| feature-full and in my opinion just introduce more
| complications and bugs that get in the way of just being
| a good desktop. I like XFCE because it's just a really
| good, simple window manager, desktop, and set of basic
| utilities. Other than that it just gets out of your way
| and doesn't make you relearn how to do things every few
| years. It's like if the Win98 desktop got another 30
| years of gentle refinement.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| I've tried XFCE, i3, Pop Shell and plain Gnome.
|
| But it doesn't really matter, since the DE doesn't
| determine how individual apps behave.
|
| My baseline is OSX from decade ago OSX with native apps
| where everyone was following the Apple HIG so
| consistently that using a Java app felt like waking up in
| the twilight zone. macOS these days have fallen quite a
| bit from its UX glory days but there's still quite a bit
| to go before it hits the level of Ubuntu or Windows.
|
| On Linux it feels to me like every app exists in its own
| parallell dimension where you never know if even the
| basic laws of physics still apply.
| coldpie wrote:
| Fair. I guess I haven't had that experience, but so much
| stuff is web-based these days that probably 90% of my
| computing time is just spent in a browser and the rest in
| just a handful of applications that I know well.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| I'd guess that I am unusually picky about UX for being a
| techie. The story would probably have been very different
| 20 years ago when fiddling with my computer was more of a
| hobby than a chore.
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah, could be. You mentioned elsewhere in this thread
| having to tinker a bunch to get scrolling in Firefox to
| be smooth and I don't even know what that means :) I just
| put 2 fingers on the touchpad and move them up and
| Firefox scrolls the page down and I'm happy, haha.
|
| Anyway sounds like you've already done what I suggested
| and it didn't out work you. I hope for your sake Apple
| comes to their senses soon!
| docmars wrote:
| I'm completely with you on this. Everything from
| scrolling to how windows behave makes a huge difference
| in the feeling of quality and responsiveness.
|
| Once you're spoiled by a macOS machine's smoothness, it's
| hard to use anything else, where cursors feel like
| they're literally lagging behind your trackpad movements
| and land somewhere imprecise, and scrolling feels like
| opening a rusty car door as it catches on itself and you
| feel the friction.
|
| macOS on an Apple Touchpad is like using a well-oiled
| machine by comparison. These things really matter!
| dpedu wrote:
| There could be hope for it, but it might be too late now. I
| dumped tea on my M1 Macbook air earlier this year. I managed
| to save it - sort of. I had to replace the battery. The
| screen was working but also had liquid damage so I replaced
| it as well.
|
| Immediately after spilling tea on it I shut it off, took off
| the bottom plate, rinsed it with water, and rinsed it again
| with isopropyl alcohol. I think I waved a heat gun over it
| for a bit and then left it in front of a fan. This was about
| 8 months ago and it still works!
|
| The only lingering problem is that when caps lock is off, the
| light on the key is _slightly_ illuminated. Weird, but I can
| tolerate that!
| colechristensen wrote:
| eh, the problems aren't prominent on macOS.
| adolph wrote:
| Eventually it will go away just like brushed metal, lickable,
| green felt, and woodgrain. Unfortunately for that to happen
| they will need to invent something so heinous you will wish for
| liquid glass.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://imgur.com/a/5uHuYyV
| egypturnash wrote:
| Personally I would be down for a return to woodgrain or
| brushed metal.
| eoskx wrote:
| I thought Liquid Glass was cool & interesting when I first saw
| it in the Developer releases, but I find myself yearning to go
| back to Sequoia. Hopefully, Apple decides to go back to
| "simple" soon.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's infuriating that you can't downgrade.
| docmars wrote:
| Especially when Sequoia will be supported by security updates
| for at least another 1-2 years. There aren't any compelling
| "gotta have it" reasons to upgrade to Tahoe.
| encom wrote:
| Just keep giving Apple more money. That'll show them!
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| How is using an already paid for computer giving more money
| to Apple?
| simne wrote:
| They treat you belong to community, and use your appearance
| in hidden ads as "just another consumer choose A..
| products".
|
| Even if you will intentionally hide all logos of A.. from
| A.. products u use, their design is very distinctive and
| widely known, so even looking on Xiaomi most people will
| think it is A..
|
| Plus, A.. products usually deep integrated into their
| infrastructure, I mean A.. Wi-fi router, A.. printer, A..
| speakers, A.. interfaces (Lightning), etc.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Updated iOS overnight and what the fuck man. Also Settings search
| is so totally broken I can't even
| efficax wrote:
| liquid glass is a total disaster. what the hell is going on in
| the ux teams at apple? this is like their windows vista era. i
| hate it so much
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm almost positive that it's because they want to make as many
| apps as possible VisionOS-friendly.
|
| I suspect that they were rather shaken at how poorly AVP was
| received.
| emchammer wrote:
| I don't want to wear one of those things on my face. I want a
| high-quality computer and phone. Apple executives are out to
| lunch.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Alright grandad. You said the same thing about
| touchscreens, and look how well that went for blackberru.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Bring him inside, we're just about to start another round
| of _Ultraman Quiz King_ on the family Pippin.
| efficax wrote:
| the market agrees for the most part. VR goggle interfaces
| just aren't taking the world by storm. When it came out I
| thought: I'll wait for the iteration that comes 2 years
| later (the AVP 3 or whatever) since by then they'll have
| worked out the kinks and it will be a solid computing
| platform. It's 2 months shy of 2 years since general
| availability of the AVP and it's essentially identical to
| the initial release with just a minor chip upgrade. It's
| a dead product line
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| AVP may be dead but VisionOS is not. I'm pretty sure
| Apple smart glasses are coming.
| phantasmish wrote:
| If someone cracks "smart glasses" that's the next
| smartphone-size market and revolution, guaranteed, no
| question about it.
|
| VR headsets ain't it but I'm convinced the reason every
| company is working on them and developing AR stuff for
| their traditional devices (which are terrible to use for
| AR) is because they don't want to still be at the
| starting line if someone figures out smart glasses.
| PrairieFire wrote:
| This is the "answer" in plain sight and I agree. The
| iPhone is the beating heart of the modern Apple empire.
| Tim Cook has been a vocal proponent of AR since the
| summer of Pokemon Go. That combined with Meta getting
| traction with their Rayban line is almost certainly at
| the center of an overarching internal strategy at Apple
| to ensure they are positioned to maintain or even grow
| position as end user mobile computing form factors shift
| beyond the traditional smartphone. Getting the ux and app
| ecosystem ready visually is what 'caused' Liquid Glass.
| worksonmine wrote:
| Counterexample: how did the metaverse go? Is there anyone
| using it? Facebook even rebranded to Meta on that bet.
| array_key_first wrote:
| People were right about touchscreens, actually, and
| mobile phones.
|
| They never did replace the productivity usecases. They
| replaced a lot of casual usecases, and created a _bunch
| more_ usecases, mostly around media consumption.
|
| But if you go to an office anywhere in the world, and you
| look around, it's not people on their phones. It's a sea
| of desktop computers, like it's 1995. Even at Apple. Not
| because everyone is out of the times, but because we did
| truly find the perfect form factor, and have chosen to
| refine it.
|
| Apple vision pro wont replace the productivity suite,
| like the iPhone didn't. And it won't replace the iPhone,
| because it's way bigger and more inconvenient. So, I'm
| not sure where that leaves it.
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| Grandparents also said it about a lot of technologies
| that actually were worse and didn't survive. Those are
| just not around anymore to be the subject of survivorship
| bias.
|
| I'm not sure when we're started dismissing the elderly's
| advice as "just complaining because they're old" but it
| seems we're hell bent on reinventing the wheel of
| misfortune with every generation.
|
| If old people complain about something, maybe they have a
| point?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If they're still complaining about something that's
| around, do they have a point? How do we know? What things
| have survived the fires of testing and should just be
| accepted, and what things can be groused about as bad?
|
| ps. I am a grandparent, on the edge of elderly.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It would help if it wasn't 3500 dollars, they did not embrace
| games, and were expecting developers to buy such devices for
| so little return in development cost, released at a time most
| headsets were already on yet again going down on another VR
| headset cycle.
|
| It was bound to fail since day one.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Are there even enough active Vision Pro users to make the
| $3500 back selling an app for it, not even considering the
| cost to develop it, or Apple's 30% app store tax?
|
| How about porting "I Am Rich" to the Vision Pro, and it
| could just show a glowing red orb floating in front of your
| face.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That would be like the countdown in _Three Body Problem_
| (the Netflix version).
| btown wrote:
| IMO one of the big misses for launch, and one of the most
| untapped markets for VR/AR, was business analytics &
| visualization. Any manager worth flying to a corporate
| retreat is worth getting a capex-treatable top-of-the-line
| device to see an extra dimension of data breakdowns. There
| would be a trendiness factor here, too, much like how every
| executive needed a Blackberry back in the day.
|
| But one of my big takeaways from e.g.
| https://www.tableau.com/blog/exploring-spatial-computing-
| and... (2024) was that some of the most basic UX research
| around 3D visualization was left to the market to discover.
|
| > During Tableau Conference 2024 in San Diego, we recruited
| 22 attendees to help us assess the usability, learnability,
| and potential utility of Tableau on the visionOS platform,
| along with broader perspectives on the potential for HMDs
| to create engaging experiences around data. Participants
| were tasked with a series of analytical exercises using one
| of three datasets. These tasks included specifying filter
| settings, changing data fields, and interpreting trends
| across various visualizations, such as bar charts, line
| charts, and a 3D globe. Examples of tasks included
| identifying the country with the highest CO2 emissions in
| Asia and determining when poultry production first exceeded
| beef production in South America.
|
| If you want to launch a $3000 device properly, why are you
| making Tableau do this themselves?
| xp84 wrote:
| It sounds plausible, but only in the shallowest "yeah, make
| 'em look the same" way. Just like when they started shipping
| the Catalyst-based Mac apps of Messages, Photos, etc so that
| they'd look the same as the iOS apps (and no doubt so they
| could reuse some code from there instead of wasting
| developers on the Mac platform they hate).
|
| It's not as though anything about Liquid Glass makes a
| meaningful difference in usability.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| I think this goes deeper. Transparency is clearly not a
| good fit for desktop or mobile apps, but imagine smart
| glasses where every app completely blocks your view of the
| things behind it. It just wouldn't work.
|
| To move around safely with smart glasses on your face, apps
| need to be semi transparent from day one. It's not about
| superficial stylistic similarities this time. And it's not
| primarily about design either.
|
| This is absolutely about core usability, just not for macOS
| or iOS.
| xp84 wrote:
| You seem to have a more solid idea than I of what a
| Vison-like device is for. As far as I know, it's for
| approximately nothing. I have no opinion on what I'd use
| a $4,000 AR goggles for besides the world's most
| expensive way to watch Netflix on a plane, or the second-
| most-expensive monitor you can buy for your Mac (Apple's
| hilarious $6K 6K monitor being the first, of course).
|
| So I don't think I necessarily buy that apps have to have
| any transparency at all. If I'm walking around doing
| things in the real world with a Vision Pro on my head,
| that itself beggars belief to me. It's wildly impractical
| for that with its 2-hour battery life, super heavy
| weight, and hilarious appearance, and all those will
| continue to be true long after the 5-year window when the
| "26" OS aesthetic will likely persist.
|
| So, might some future glasses or something benefit from
| transparency? Maybe. But if I find myself walking down
| the street with a screen on my face, I'd personally
| prefer to just close the apps that I don't need, rather
| than look through them. If the glasses are going to
| highlight place names, people's names, etc. they can do
| that with text floating in midair, like a subtitle.
| ninkendo wrote:
| I would be shocked if Apple was making any product decisions
| to benefit visionOS at the expense of anything else. It's so
| abundantly clear that the vision pro was a failure, it would
| be a horrible mistake to sacrifice anything to try and save
| it at this point. I think Apple is done with that experiment.
| glhaynes wrote:
| I keep seeing this take lately and I don't understand it at
| all because there is ~zero Liquid Glass in visionOS,
| including in visionOS 26.
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| Remember when Windows 8 tried to make all desktop
| applications touch-friendly? The situation seems remarkably
| similar.
| crooked-v wrote:
| VisionOS doesn't actually have the degree of transparency of
| Liquid Glass, though, which makes the whole thing
| particularly weird. It has a much more opaque frosted glass
| effect.
| Shadowmist wrote:
| It actually runs on Metal so the "GL" wasn't supposed to be in
| the name.
| ics wrote:
| Liquid (Gl)ass
| baggy_trough wrote:
| I do enjoy the liquid glass controls in some places. The glass
| effect is really beautiful. What I hate about it is the way the
| overall UI constantly gets in the way of my content.
| treetalker wrote:
| I expect and demand a level of, for want of a better term, UI
| _crispness_.
|
| It is equally aggravating to err on either side: Windows 3.1
| clunk to the left, Tahoe's operationally useless (indeed,
| operationally detrimental) visual fireworks to the right.
|
| Apple needs to hit a sweet spot of _crisp_ , but the priority
| must be fast, logical interaction that lets me operate at the
| speed of thought. With Tahoe, Apple tried to gild the lily.
| sho_hn wrote:
| MacOS aesthetically peaked with Leopard in '09, but speaking
| frankly the OS has felt abandoned to me since around 10.2, with
| so many basic interaction issues with window management and the
| dock just never getting fixed properly and a long list of half-
| assed bandaids and abandoned experiments over the years.
|
| There is no true passion in MacOS, and the marketing has come
| face to face with reality in 2025. It's the neglected step-child
| of a company distracted by other things.
|
| There's been some impressive engineering done by lower-level
| folks under the hood of it all, though.
| drnick1 wrote:
| The answer is KDE and GNOME, at least on the machines that
| support some form of Linux.
| tensor wrote:
| That is not the answer. Many of us run software that is not
| available on Linux.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > Maybe this is because I'm getting older, but that gives me the
| benefit of having experienced Apple's older interfaces, with
| their exceptional quality and functionality.
|
| i really missed snow leopard for about 10 years all the way up to
| when i moved on from my macbook circa 5 years ago.
| hallole wrote:
| Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion were so peak. The first step into
| minimalism was beautiful, too, I'll admit, but it's culminated
| in this Liquid Glass garbage, so it was ultimately a misstep.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| I feel so old saying this, but back in the days both Apple and
| third party developers would follow the HIG closely enough that
| something felt off right away when an app wasn't behaving 100%
| native. Running something like a Java app was jarring to say
| the least even if they were supposedly using a "cross platform"
| UI library.
|
| But then Gruber said that the HIG was dead and the decline
| gained more and more momentum...
| Groxx wrote:
| Very much yes. When "affordance" was one of the primary
| goals, rather than "breathing room". Information density took
| a nose-dive and we lost all visual separation and gained...
| what? Less battery life?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > back in the days both Apple and third party developers
| would follow the HIG closely enough that something felt off
| right away when an app wasn't behaving 100% native.
|
| That's only true for desktop productivity apps and widgets.
| Apple and 3rd party "creativity" apps never followed the HIG
| religiously, if at all.
| dc_giant wrote:
| Design got worse since Maverick for professional users.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| It has been worsening since Snow Leopard. That is cliched but
| true.
| layer8 wrote:
| There are claims that Liquid Glass was in development for three
| years. If that is accurate, the results are even more appalling.
| api wrote:
| All the non-technical people I know loved it. It's pretty. It's
| neat. It looks cool. Apple is a consumer products company.
|
| My personal feeling on it is just "meh." My productivity with
| my laptop hasn't changed. I'm not a huge fan but it's not a
| deal breaker. I still find it better than Windows 11 for the
| most part, and Linux has other issues as a daily driver for me.
|
| IMHO Apple needs a "tick" release where they only polish and
| fix bugs and usability issues with an almost total feature
| freeze. I've heard they may be doing that.
| omnimus wrote:
| Looking at popularity of similar design on iOS it would be
| surprising "non-technical" users like it. People HATE new
| iOS. Low contrast, not clear layering and focus, things being
| moved around for unknown reasons.
|
| Also who uses MacOs beaides developers? Majority are creative
| prosumers in arts/design and they are even more annoyed by
| messed up designs. What you are left with are lawyers,
| writers, students? I guess they might like it.
| rr808 wrote:
| > Also who uses MacOs beaides developers?
|
| Students - all of them.
| omnimus wrote:
| I said that in the next sentence. Than again this is
| really true only in US. In rest of the world (including
| europe) Macs are seen as luxury environment.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| Macs are not seens as a luxury environment in Sweden at
| least.
|
| Of the people I know only old folks, gamers and some
| techies own PCs. A lot of people will however just use
| whatever wintel laptop their employer provides them with.
| hu3 wrote:
| Sweden is another rich country.
|
| But worldwide Chromebooks are more numerous than macs in
| education.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| I'm not arguing that macs are more common than non-macs,
| only that "In rest of the world (including europe) Macs
| are seen as luxury environment." is false.
|
| Chromebooks dominate K12 here so it kinda depends on what
| you mean by "students". Once people start buying their
| own computers however my impression is that Macs are
| quite common of not dominating.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Very few uni and high school students have MacBooks in
| East and Southeast Europe and it's seen as quite a flex
| there. They're also impractical for those in engineering
| schools due to required software that only works on
| Windows.
| hu3 wrote:
| My wife is non-technical and hates it. She said it looks
| "ugly and childish".
|
| And I made sure to not bias her with my or HN's opinion about
| liquid glass. I patiently waited for her initiative to
| comment on the update.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yup. I didn't say anything. My partner's first question to
| me was "is there any way to get rid of this?"
| someNameIG wrote:
| > All the non-technical people I know loved it. It's pretty.
| It's neat. It looks cool. Apple is a consumer products
| company.
|
| My partner doesn't like it, and outside of excel she is not a
| technical person.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| While the UI designers are rearranging deck chairs, the UX is
| totally failing to love up to the promise of an ecosystem. Cross
| system cut n paste is a neat trick, but I just want timers and
| alarms to actually work as expected.
|
| I shouldn't be surprised given that the mac save as dialog box
| has a name field that is still hard coded to 32 characters
| visible. Whenever I bitch about it I get pushback that filenames
| shouldn't be longer than that! Um hello - tell me you have never
| worked in the real world outside your iphone bubble without
| telling me.
| cglan wrote:
| I think for the first time I've been considering moving off iOS
| because of liquid glass. The bugs on apple products have hit a
| breaking point for me. Mac is still unequivocally the best laptop
| around imho, but it's less clear cut for phones. My iPhone 15 pro
| is borderline unusable. Every day is a new issue. I'm very much
| over it.
|
| You used to be able to count on the basics working smoothly, but
| stuff like the camera and messaging are frequently broken for me
| SkyeCA wrote:
| I've recently been using an Android phone a family member gave
| me after they upgraded and to my shock it's...fantastic? It's
| not at all like I remember Android from back in the early
| Android days.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Dunno man, I've used Android recently and it's still as
| bafflingly confusing and crappy as I remember it being.
|
| Definitely an "to each their own" kind of situation.
| rr808 wrote:
| I think that is what you get used to. I've been using
| Android for over a decade and my wife's iPhone is super
| confusing to me.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| That's a good observation, I think you're right.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Yep, my parents are both Android users and have to ask
| "where is the home button" when someone passes them an
| iPhone.
| mceachen wrote:
| Followed by "where is the back button."
|
| Answer: sometimes apps let you swipe right from the left
| margin, sometimes there may be a left arrow in the upper
| left, but it may not be visible unless you enable tinted
| Liquid Glass, but also look in the bottom left, there may
| be a less-than sign, and some times you have to force-
| quit the app and restart (like with Libby books borrowed
| via Kindle...)
| tempest_ wrote:
| Does apply still sometimes put the back button in the top
| left?
|
| That used to drive me nuts especially as they grew the
| phone to size 5+ inches
| phantasmish wrote:
| You mean the "roulette-wheel do-something-vaguely-
| backish" button?
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I've encountered an app
| that didn't let you swipe to go back. That's practically
| built into iOS at this point.
| Groxx wrote:
| iOS UX-affordance has done an incredible reversal from
| "one of the best" to "unambiguously the worst" over the
| years :| it's stunningly unapproachable nowadays, and
| Android seems excited to follow them
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| > ask "where is the home button" when someone passes them
| an iPhone.
|
| This is actually hilarious because Android had all-screen
| phones with only virtual buttons long before iPhones did
| :)
| andy99 wrote:
| I had (the same) Samsung android phone from 2017-2025. I
| bought an iPhone, mainly because of privacy concerns (for
| which I consider apple to be the least bad mainstream
| option, not good).
|
| But I couldn't get over how bad the ux is compared to my
| 7 year old phone. Things like highlighting, autocorrect,
| placing the cursor where you want "just don't work", the
| setup is unintuitive, the hotspot doesn't work half the
| time, there are bugs (like email not connecting) that
| based on my searches are prevalent and have no solution
| "did you try updating and restarting". I really couldn't
| believe how bad it is.
|
| But evidently people really like them, and I imagine they
| could find things not to like about my old Samsung, so to
| each his own I guess.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Things like highlighting, autocorrect, placing the
| cursor where you want "just don't work"
|
| Hilariously, those things actually did work back in 2017,
| and Apple has since broken all of them in various OS
| updates
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yeah that's the joke. 10 years ago all of this basic
| stuff was working well. Now, autocorrect and cursor
| placement regularly make me want to chuck the phone into
| a chipper shredder.
| macNchz wrote:
| I've had an iPhone since 2009 and feel they have gotten
| much more confusing over time.
|
| It seems to be there has been some sort of internal
| conflict between the need to add basic functionality to
| be remotely comparable with Android, and the desire to
| keep everything "simple". The end result being a kind of
| a worst case of neither being especially featureful nor
| all that simple. There's a cottage industry of apps that
| exploit users' lack of understanding of their own
| device's capabilities (e.g. flashlight apps with ads +
| in-app purchases).
| Groxx wrote:
| If you want to see daily bugs on top of it: disable
| animations in accessibility. Constant, 10x-daily-or-more
| issues in system UI (apps are surprisingly much better
| normally). E.g. it has partly or completely broken the
| recent app switching for the past 4 major versions so far,
| especially if you use a non-stock launcher.
|
| I still prefer it over iOS due to being able to install
| stuff outside of the Play Store. If/when Google kills that,
| I'll be switching to a Linux mobile something. (I'm aware
| of the verification nonsense, but that isn't in place yet,
| and it has been shifting a bit)
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Android has frequently been ahead of Apple in terms of
| features for years at this point. But Apple's overall
| "ecosystem" is (or was) much more cohesive, so everything
| felt very Apple, while Android's has (for better or worse)
| been something of a wild west situation; and iPhone's have
| excellent cameras. If you go with a flagship Android phone,
| though, you're now getting an equally good camera (if not
| better in some cases) and the benefit of Android's more
| freedom, in relative terms of course.
|
| NA seems to really fixate on the luxury and social significer
| aspect of having an iphone though. But I think this update is
| finally ending that for some people. I have many friends who
| were diehard iPhone users that are now thinking of moving to
| Android. There's also a growing sense that new gens of most
| phones are making only marginal advances. Keeping a phone for
| 3 or more years is much more common and some mid-tier phones
| are now getting long security and update commitments.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > NA seems to really fixate on the luxury and social
| significer aspect of having an iPhone though
|
| I have yet to experience that. The biggest reason I have
| mostly stayed with iPhones over the years was because the
| tight integration with my MBP was useful, and iMessage is
| way better than SMS.
|
| RCS helps even out the playing field a bunch, but just
| about the time that went mainstream I hear that it's a
| regular source of trouble for _everyone_ (Android an iPhone
| both) because the carriers suck. And Apple did at least
| finally add some equivalence for one of the Android
| features I had wanted (call screening).
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Teenagers supposedly care. But I've never seen adults who
| care in the least what kind of phone someone has.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > I think this update is finally ending that for some
| people.
|
| For some people in the HN social sphere, maybe. My sisters
| have had iPhones since they were first released in the
| naughties. They used to make fun of me for using Android
| and then Windows Phones (I'm on iOS now). The notion that
| my sisters would ever switch over to Android is risible;
| they don't care about phones "making advances" or having
| "security commitments." They care about iMessage, TikTok,
| Instagram and Snapchat.
|
| There are no other phones that are not iPhones for them.
| The blue/green gap is real.
| tempest_ wrote:
| Fair if you haven't looking at it in a while but they have
| largely been on par for a decade.
|
| The Apple hardware is more consistently premium of course but
| if you compare the Samsung Galaxy whatever with the iphone
| they have been pretty close for a while. The entire industry
| has been in incremental innovation for a long time.
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| Things like media playback via a web browser (and really
| browsing in general) are so superior to iOS it's not even a
| fair comparison.
| coldpie wrote:
| I recently switched from a 13 Mini to a Motorola Razr and wow
| Android is so much nicer than iOS. Notifications don't randomly
| disappear on Android, I have a Back button, and I can use real
| Firefox!
| ewoodrich wrote:
| As an Android user since the T-Mobile G1, I tried switching
| to an iPhone 15 Pro as my primary phone from a carrier deal
| as the hardware looked nice plus Android/iOS has converged so
| much over the years with all the same apps available on
| either. I was pretty used to iOS from iPads and as a backup
| phone so the switching costs were minimal and the better
| MacOS integration seemed cool.
|
| But man, the notifications are a _constant_ thorn in my side.
| I have missed so many work notifications due to the lack of
| persistent notification indicator (other than on the lock
| screen), and the overall weirdness of iOS lockscreen
| notification panel (segmentation between "old" notifications
| that can be mass dismissed and "new" notifications that pile
| up individually-ish). I use an Apple Watch and somehow still
| miss Teams notifications as they come in, I'm not even sure
| how that happens...
|
| I'm so close to abandoning the iPhone as my main phone and
| going back to my S23 Ultra pretty much entirely because of
| notifications, it's been a disappointment...
| guestbest wrote:
| I'm actually glad because it seems like we are finally leaving
| behind the flat design that started in iOS 7, if I remember
| correctly. I'm not sure it would be good to go full
| skeuomorphic but at least a button looks more like a button
| again
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I'm not the biggest fan of Liquid Glass, but I regularly use
| Android via single-use tablets and dev test devices and I think
| I dislike Material 3 Expressive even more. M3E feels weirdly
| awkward and unrefined and it's a struggle to come up with a
| color scheme that looks right. It would be a constant
| irritation if Android were my daily driver.
| jjice wrote:
| I don't mind how Liquid Glass looks at all. It's just insane how
| buggy the system has become. Even Messages will bug out, like
| deleting my first word if I type too fast after opening a
| conversation or auto scrolling and not letting me scroll down
| until I exit and re-enter.
|
| Unacceptable for the premium you pay for Apple software.
| Unacceptable for any software one is paying for. I hope they get
| their shit together and start fixing before they continue adding
| new stuff. 26.2 doesn't inspire me that they're on that
| trajectory.
|
| The thing that amazes me most is that everyone on the teams
| responsible is probably using their Apple devices and running
| into these same bugs!
| eoskx wrote:
| I've had similar observations with different behaviors in
| Safari and Finder. One would think the quality of Apple's
| software would be increasing with the usage of Swift over
| Objective-C, but the opposite seems to be true.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Spotlight is also slow and buggy now, on an M3 Pro no less. I
| loathe the feeling of being faster than my computer and
| having to wait for it to catch up, something that I haven't
| felt since the M1 came out.
| runjake wrote:
| This was my last straw that caused me to disable Spotlight:
|
| Typing something into Spotlight, having it pull up the
| right result and highlight it, and me hitting the Enter
| key, and the search results suddenly updating after and
| highlighting some new result and then opening that instead.
|
| It's not just Liquid Glass. It's bugs like these where I
| realized Apple software was truly rotten to the core.
| Whomever is running the show (Craig) can't do their job.
|
| I'm now noticing the same bug in the latest versions of
| Windows 11 when I hit the start button and run a search.
|
| This _was_ a solved computer science problem.
| ptr wrote:
| Apple software used to exhibit reasonable UX for "edge
| cases" just like the one you described. This was one of
| my main reasons for going Mac -- they cared about the
| details. Sad to see that seems to be going away.
| layer8 wrote:
| It seems to be that these things never last, as company
| culture inevitably changes.
| seemaze wrote:
| The updating input locations under your cursor in
| particular is _so_ f*ing frustrating.
|
| To be fair, it's not just macOS, but many webpages which
| load dynamic content as well.
| jkestner wrote:
| That laggy behavior plus indexing not appearing to find
| some obvious files made me switch to Raycast.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Raycast looks really cool, thanks
| phantasmish wrote:
| There are like a half-dozen blatant bugs I encounter between
| daily and weekly in Safari. Text input and textarea editing
| is buggy in a couple ways, Apple Pay has a positioning bug
| where sometimes its bottom button is about 1/3 off the
| screen, certain elements on a couple pages smear when I
| scroll (but only sometimes). Not even counting ways the
| keyboard itself is worse now.
|
| I haven't seen browsing this buggy outside weird niche Linux
| browsers in... 15+ years?
| eoskx wrote:
| My issues with Safari have mostly been iCloud-related. The
| latest one being the iCloud tabs SQLlite database getting
| corrupted constantly and keeping stale tabs around that I
| have long closed. 26.2 seems to have fixed it, but it was
| around at least since Sonoma. I've had similar issues with
| Reading List, where again, the database gets corrupted and
| changes that I've made to Reading List get reverted. It is
| just little stuff like this that adds up and creates poor
| UX.
| eoskx wrote:
| What's also telling is how long the bugs stayed around,
| too. They were reported on Reddit and Apple's forums for
| awhile with various workarounds, like deleting the
| phantom entries from the SQLlite database manually and
| doing some other gymnastics like removing the other
| devices from iCloud in hopes that everything would sync
| up nicely. No one at Apple had the time or took the time
| to chase down the bugs. In a world of Claude Code or
| Codex you would think they would have at least tried a
| cursory "fix this".
|
| On a related note, maybe one of these days iCloud will
| have a force sync option that tells the other devices to
| trash their copies vs having to remove all devices and
| re-add to get everything coherently synced.
| mitchell209 wrote:
| I gave up on the normal iCloud tabs for over a decade
| now. But the Safari Tab Groups implementation is by far
| the best I've used. If I need to share a window, I just
| open it in a tab group and those have synced flawlessly
| for me so far.
| amluto wrote:
| If you switch Safari's tab bar mode to bottom (i.e.
| restoring the sort-of-one-touch controls that existed
| before iOS 26), textareas become utterly and completely
| broken. It's almost impossible to reply to an HN message,
| for example.
|
| This bug is so blatant that I assumed my would have been
| fixed by now, but no.
| mrkstu wrote:
| I've highly preferred Safari on Mac OS for a very long
| time- the bugs and memory leaks are forcing me to Firefox
| at this point, it's completely unusable on the betas I've
| been driving lately in the hope they fix the previous bugs.
| manoDev wrote:
| Swift was the worst thing that happened to Mac OS, because
| we're now suffering second system syndrome.
| voidhorse wrote:
| I completely agree. I saw the writing on the wall the
| moment they started boosting swiftUI as a UI library of the
| future where it was only half done and not even compatible
| with existing frameworks.
| voidhorse wrote:
| Maybe the sharper edges of objective-C lead to a programming
| practice that was more careful, which has been abandoned
| under the impression of Swift's increase default safety.
| mort96 wrote:
| I think parts of Liquid Glass on macOS looks pretty bad. But I
| don't care that much about how things look, so it doesn't
| offend me.
|
| What does offend me are all the bugs, as you say. It's still
| utterly broken all these months after the public release.
| Spotlight is a mess; I've seen it take _DAYS_ before it has
| made an app in '/Applications' findable through search (even
| as the app shows up in Spotlight's long scrollable list of
| apps), and the animation where it comes in as a result of the
| four finger gesture has so many bugs I won't go through them
| all here. The most annoying is that it can end up in a state
| where Spotlight is not on screen, but you need to do the "make
| Spotlight go away" gesture before the "make Spotlight appear"
| gesture works again. It also often loads icons slowly;
| sometimes loading them in one by one over time, sometimes all
| at once after thinking for a second. It's arguably better from
| a UX design perspective than Launchpad was, but Launchpad was
| _so_ much more polished and better performing.
|
| There's also just constant minor graphical glitches. Things
| which pop in, things which load in with the wrong background
| color, that sort of stuff. The Settings app sometimes loads in
| stuff gradually and parts of the app jump around for a second
| before it settles, like a bad web app. It feels _janky_.
|
| Mac OS X used to feel like a solid operating system. It has
| been going downhill for a while, but macOS 26 is the biggest
| leap in a long time.
| pdpi wrote:
| > I think parts of Liquid Glass on macOS looks pretty bad.
| But I don't care that much about how things look, so it
| doesn't offend me.
|
| I don't care overmuch about the purely cosmetic side of it,
| but Liquid Glass looks absolutely terrible from an ergonomics
| point of view. It's just plainly, objectively bad UX.
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| Tip: in accessibility , enable High Contrast and disable
| transparency. Optionally disable animations. Decent
| experience imo. I can now see what areas are clickable.
| pdpi wrote:
| I did basically that on my iPhone. My laptop was needing
| a cleanup, so I just wiped it and re-installed Sequoia.
| the Mac Studio never got the upgrade at all. If at some
| point I find there's something in Tahoe that I
| particularly need, I'll revisit upgrading.
| mitchell209 wrote:
| Doing a fresh install of Sequoia was the best move for
| me, too. I had an unnecessary amount of third party apps
| installed for no reason. I don't even use Ice for the
| menu bar anymore, I realized the icons that I had hidden
| I didn't need in the first place so I completely disabled
| them, in whichever apps it's possible.
| phantasmish wrote:
| Nb I see tons of rendering bugs across a bunch of apps
| and I suspect it's because I disabled as much animation
| and transparency as I could. Things like the keyboard
| opening slightly off the screen to the right then jumping
| into place, some apps going black when certain overlays
| are open, stuff like that.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| This year I've had to perform many hard resets on my MacBook,
| iPhone and even Apple Watch because they've locked up. And
| they're all relatively new devices. Apple needs to get its
| shit together. I already expect to move away from their
| mobile ecosystem when it comes time to upgrade.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| It's Apple itself that needs a hard reset. Maybe if we all
| at the same time collectively hold our power buttons down
| for sixty seconds, Apple Park will reboot.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I recently upgraded (downgraded?) from an iPhone 15PM to a
| smaller iPhone 17P, and I have found myself wondering if I
| got a glitchy piece of hardware or if it's just iOS 26
| bugs. I hardly had any problems with the previous phone,
| but on the 17 it's pretty routine that I have to close apps
| (including native Apple ones) which have become non-
| responsive. Frustrating, for sure.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Nope, that's iOS (I'm on a 16 Pro). I routinely have apps
| I can switch into but are entirely dead. They're not
| chewing CPU cycles, the phone is "cold". But very much
| so.
|
| So very frustrated.
| davnicwil wrote:
| the one I've noticed being the worst for lock ups is the
| camera / photos app, which is frankly very surprising
| given how central the photography usecase appears to be
| to iPhone sales and therefore Apple's bottom line.
|
| I'm talking, I pull up the camera and try to take
| literally 4-5 shots quickly and by the 6th there's what
| feels like seconds of lag between the button press and
| the photo being taken.
|
| It feels like I'm using an ancient camera phone, or a
| more modern phone but in extreme heat when the CPU is
| just throttling everything. But instead, this is a 2 year
| old iPhone at room temperature.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Interesting, likewise, the Camera app. And other camera
| apps, I use Halide too.
|
| And Photos. Will it sync? Yes. When? Who the fuck knows?
| Doesn't matter whether you're on Ethernet or Wifi,
| gigabit internet. You can quit Photos on both devices,
| you can then keep Photos open foreground... so what?
| Photos will sync when it wants to, not what when you want
| it to.
| davnicwil wrote:
| you're right! The photo syncing is comically bad, again
| given the alleged importance of photos in the Apple
| marketing material. That said I've rarely used it in the
| past and so wasn't sure if it was a newly degraded
| experience or had always been that poor.
| dham wrote:
| > But I don't care that much about how things look, so it
| doesn't offend me.
|
| So I'm guessing you use some default Mac editor (Xcode?)? You
| don't change your color scheme, you don't change your font,
| etc?
|
| Aside: Software devs are very weird, they spend all this time
| crafting their dev setup and but when it comes to their OS
| they just give up and whatever Tim Cook feeds them their in.
| Makes no sense. Anyway, off to Linux land. See ya'll!
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| My IDE provides 98% of the pixels on my screen and provides
| 90% of the overall experience. That's why it gets all the
| attention. If the OS is able to show my IDE on one screen
| and a web browser and UNIXy terminal on the other, it's
| working.
| dham wrote:
| So you don't use the built-in Terminal? What about
| Finder, Safari, Mail, Spotlight, System Settings, etc? If
| someone doesn't care about how they look, they should use
| all the built-in stuff right?
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| > It also often loads icons slowly; sometimes loading them in
| one by one over time, sometimes all at once after thinking
| for a second.
|
| This is frequent, if not constant, on iOS for me. I never
| witnessed it before the 26 update.
|
| How can it take an entire second or more to display an icon
| in list in the settings application? It was literally a
| solved problem for every iOS version I've ever used.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is akin to some military operations doomed to fail, and
| everyone ends up dying because of the chain of command no one
| is willing to speak against.
|
| That is how the current chaos feels like.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Apple employees should have kidnapped Alan Dye from his
| office and deposited him on Facebook's doorstep wrapped up in
| a straightjacket with ribbons and a bow years ago before he
| finally left voluntarily.
| philistine wrote:
| Like the Hong-Kong guy in _The Dark Knight_!
| kibwen wrote:
| Using Dye as a scapegoat feels like cope. The rest of the
| executives were fully content with this effort, and in the
| end he wasn't even forced out. There's no evidence that
| Apple will correct its course without him.
| danaris wrote:
| Yes, there is: Lemay, who replaced him, is a career UI
| guy.
|
| Regardless of whether the C-suite recognized the problem
| or made a conscious decision to replace Dye with Lemay,
| it is _likely_ that this outcome will, indeed, result in
| improved UI.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Sort of in agreement here.
|
| In-between not paying attention to general software
| quality and not voicing concern, Craig Federigi should
| not get a free pass.
|
| In-between kissing the boots of Kings, and dining with
| Murderers, and posting AI slop on Twitter, Tim Cook ought
| to have been more involved.
|
| There is enough blame to pass around at Apple today among
| the leadership, but the specific shitty UI buck stops
| with Dye. Dye is putting his signature on it and is the
| face of the Liquid Glass demo, if he wants the primary
| fame, he can have the primary blame.
| acdha wrote:
| I agree that it's a mark of shame that he left
| voluntarily, but I do think a lot of this traces back to
| Apple being more of a hardware company at heart. Jony Ive
| pulled off some industrial design which looked really
| nice and I think his history there meant that when he
| promoted the packaging designer to be in charge of UI
| people gave it too much credence, forgetting that Jony
| Ive also wasn't experienced in that area and, as the
| history of UX botches shows, was about as good at it as a
| software developer would be at winging hardware design.
| People who've been successful at one thing just aren't
| guaranteed to be successful somewhere else and loyalty to
| the company shouldn't overshadow that.
| concinds wrote:
| > The rest of the executives were fully content with this
| effort, and in the end he wasn't even forced out
|
| Tim Cook, by all accounts, can be very micromanaging and
| demanding when it comes to logistics underlings, but has
| been extremely hands-off with all his other underlings,
| doesn't insert himself into their loops or require his
| approval, doesn't decide by decree like Jobs which forces
| underlings to fight the bureaucracy on their own, leaves
| them to resolve conflicts among themselves on their own.
| He treats Apple like a machine or system where his role
| is to keep things running smoothly.
|
| It's not "the rest of the executives", that's how Cook's
| Apple is run. Reportedly.
| kace91 wrote:
| Such laissez-faire attitude should lead to teams that
| feel something's great but it doesn't connect. Like a
| product that's an amazing feat of engineering but feels
| convoluted to the end user.
|
| The thing is, when glass was presented the very first to
| cry in disbelief were designers. It is very much at odds
| with many industry standards.
|
| So I really have nothing on how this came to pass. At
| this point, the tinfoil hat view that this design was a
| resource hogger as a feature for obsolescence sounds
| reasonable. At least there would be a method to the
| madness.
| concinds wrote:
| Corporations are more boring than that. Reportedly, Jony
| Ive (who was given oversight of Apple's UIs), in turn put
| Dye in charge of the iOS 7 redesign. Dye and Ive then
| presented it internally. Here's how journalist Tripp
| Mickle reported it back in 2022, long before Liquid Glass
| came about:
|
| > Ive's focus on visual styling vexed the software design
| team. Though they obsessed over colors and shapes, they
| prioritized how people interacted with the phone and
| often built demonstrations of the software they planned
| to introduce so they could experience how intuitive it
| would be for users and adjust as needed. Many of them
| believed that design was how the software behaved and
| thought that Ive was myopically focused on how it looked.
| [...] At Ive's direction, they shifted from demonstrating
| how an app worked to making paper printouts that showed
| how an app looked. They became more like graphic
| designers than software savants.
|
| The book then details a big talent drain from the design
| team.
|
| Fast forward to the Liquid Glass release, reportedly many
| Apple designers hated the direction. Fast forward to last
| week, John Gruber says Ive hates Liquid Glass and Dye,
| and heavily implies that he heard this either from Ive
| himself or a close associate.
|
| When you leave a moron in charge and a chunk of the
| talent leaves, Liquid Glass is what you get. It's
| ultimately Cook's fault. Dye was under Jeff Williams
| (operations, now gone) who was under Cook. Operations
| dictates everything under Cook, I doubt anyone else could
| say no to him.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > The thing that amazes me most is that everyone on the teams
| responsible is probably using their Apple devices and running
| into these same bugs!
|
| This is what surprises me the most to be honest. CarPlay
| seemingly still suffers from a (sometimes deadly) issue of
| covering the entire map on your dashboard with the
| avatar/number of the person calling, so if you're actively
| using it for navigation (since, you know, there is a map there
| and all) someone calling you is a highly stressful moment and
| more than not you need to hang up because otherwise the call is
| in the way.
|
| I've had my iPhone 12 Mini for so many years now, and this is
| still an issue, the only conclusion I can take from this is
| that people at Apple actually all have Android phones.
| varispeed wrote:
| Often it is that people who use the devices learn how to work
| around bugs and then they forget they exist.
|
| There is also subconscious resistance to create an action
| that will uncover a bug and then remind of personal failure.
|
| Then once whole teams get used to this, it's not possible to
| get it fixed as it gets deprioritised always.
| lapcat wrote:
| The Apple release schedule is unremitting. We know that bugs
| are reported to Apple by developers, and we know that
| reported bugs get ignored for years, or forever. I suspect
| that every Apple engineer has a mountain of bugs in their
| queue.
|
| If Apple leadership doesn't care about software quality, then
| Apple engineers can't care about software quality. They use
| the same buggy crap that we do, because they have no choice.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| Indeed - the system as a whole is starting to feel bloated.
| Today's macOS design is akin to the cosmetic mufflers/exhaust
| pipes in cars, which serve only to justify the "Sport" badge. I
| long for the days past.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| It's felt bloated for a while. Everytime I setup a new Mac I
| have to remove all of the icons from the doc. A new Dell
| isn't that bloated.
| jakeydus wrote:
| > a new Dell isn't that bloated.
|
| At least a new Mac doesn't try to serve you ads in the app
| launcher.
| muro wrote:
| what about iCloud and News?
| jakeydus wrote:
| I was specifically referring to ads for third party
| applications in the start menu, so you're technically
| correct and I should have been more specific. I'd argue
| that those are upsells for the OS to enhance existing
| apps and systems. Not my favorite, but preferable to
| windows telling me to install candy crush in the start
| menu.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| A new ${computer_brand} with Linux doesn't show you any
| ads, doesn't add more bloat than you let it, doesn't
| insist on you creating any iCloudy or Microsofty
| accounts, doesn't try to police what software you run on
| the thing, doesn't try to upsell you to some
| ${precious_metal} plan, doesn't insist your 5 year new
| computer is obsolete, doesn't spy on you, etcetera.
|
| What are you waiting for?
| dundundundun wrote:
| Proper sleep.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Works fine for me, on Fruit Factory hardware even. Close
| the thing, it goes to sleep. Open it, it wakes up. Leave
| it closed for a very very long time and it hibernates.
| Open it again and it comes back to life. Your experience
| may vary depending on what hardware you run it on but for
| me it works fine on the mentioned machines, on a HP
| Spectre 360, another HP Elitebook and on a really ancient
| Toshiba Satellite. I've had problems with sleep on a
| Thinkpad P50 with a discrete NVidia Quattro GPU, it goes
| to sleep but won't wake up so I have that machine set to
| hibernate as soon as the lid is closed. This takes a bit
| longer (but not that long, SSD is fast) but it would have
| been more pleasant to use if normal sleep worked as
| intended.
| jakeydus wrote:
| Oh I 100% agree, but what consumer-grade Dell comes with
| Linux out of the box?
| runjake wrote:
| This is my shining moment! I just happened to setup a new
| Dell. It was _far more cumbersome_ than dealing with a new
| Mac.
|
| Here's some of the stuff I had to do on my new Dell, from
| memory:
|
| - Uninstall all the bloatware apps that come installed with
| Windows 11. They nag and beg you not to uninstall them, but
| after several prompts, they mostly seem uninstalled?
|
| - Remove the trial offers from the Start menu.
|
| - Remove the third-party stub apps from the Start menu (eg.
| TikTok).
|
| - Remove the O365 stub apps.
|
| - Remove the McAfee antivirus payware.
|
| - Remove Dell SupportAssist from the laptop.
|
| - Then, just reinstall Windows 11 from scratch, because of
| all the remaining detritus left after performing the above
| steps. And uninstalling SupportAssist caused some
| instability and weird errors upon login.
|
| - Uninstall all the bloatware apps the come installed with
| Windows 11 again.
|
| - Remove the trial offers from the Start menu.
|
| - Remove the third-party stub apps from the Start menu (eg.
| TikTok).
|
| - Remove the O365 stub apps.
|
| Compared to on my Mac:
|
| - Remove apps from the Dock
|
| - Go into /Applications and uninstall about 6 Apple apps I
| don't use.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Here's some of the stuff I had to do on my new Dell,
| from memory:
|
| Or, you know, just format the disk and install Linux.
| general1465 wrote:
| I agree with bugs, you can't even scroll through settings with
| touchpad without permanently enabling scroll bars.
| apexalpha wrote:
| >I don't mind how Liquid Glass looks at all.
|
| I do, and the fact that it isn't even optional is crazy.
|
| Windows Vista vibes where they first looked at what the could
| technically pull off on todays' hardware. And mind you: Liquid
| Glass _is very impressive!_.
|
| It's just not necessary.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Who decided things that slide in place need to jiggle like
| jello?!
| seemaze wrote:
| I've been describing it as if the ui has been covered in
| corn syrup; like it has been drizzled in a slow and sticky
| and slightly blurry layer of transparent obfuscation.
| cmurf wrote:
| Although outright opt-out isn't possible, it seems like
| heading to Accessibility -> Motion -> Reduce Motion (on) and
| Prefer Cross-Fade Transitions (On) reduces the effect.
|
| I'm not sure if this reduces the buggy artifacts though.
| therealpygon wrote:
| Necessary has never been the deciding factor for Apple's
| decisions, especially when it comes to design. Nor has
| "optional" ever really been part of that discussion. They
| know, like most people, supporting multiple interface simply
| creates more BS to maintain for the few resistant people who
| don't accept change. Like it or hate, you bought an Apple.
| shimman wrote:
| I have these insane bugs where my apple tv will connect to my
| mbp even tho my mbp has blutooth disabled. I'll be listening to
| a podcast on my mbp with airpods while my wife is watching some
| show on the apple tv. It will still randomly connect to my
| airpods when my wife never tries to connect them.
|
| Apple is quickly becoming a trash company and we're seeing the
| effects of an industry writ large when you only hire leetcode
| monkeys.
| eviks wrote:
| > Unacceptable for the premium you pay for Apple software.
| Unacceptable for any software one is paying for.
|
| You don't pay anything for the software, so the quality matches
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| This is not an argument that works for the company proudly
| pairing hardware and software as their core business.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Funny, last time I used macos there were so many annoyances
| and every suggestion was to use some paid third party app. I
| finally caved and used hammerspoon to write everything I
| needed myself.
|
| You pay for it in lots of ways, including an obscene premium
| on minor hardware upgrades, not to mention you have to buy
| their hardware to even use the software itself.
| frizlab wrote:
| I don't mind Liquid Glass either to be honest. I kind of like
| it even. I also completely agree regarding software quality,
| which is abysmal (I am sufficiently aware of the internals of a
| lot of things on macOS to know most of the time _why_ it's like
| this, but it's still unacceptable).
| bbkane wrote:
| I'll bite. Why is it like this (in your opinion of course)?
| estetlinus wrote:
| I am trying hard to have strong feelings about it, but I just
| can't bother. The only thing constant is change.
|
| What I do know for a fact, is that for each error I have on my
| MacBook, I'll have ~10 ungoogable errors on any other OS. I rage-
| sold my last Windows due to losing my Java installation (or just
| confusing which terminal I installed it in).
|
| Please, crop all thumbnails in the corners, as long as you come
| pre-installed with just one working terminal.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > I'll have ~10 ungoogable errors on any other OS.
|
| If you ever attempt to compile software, the shoe instantly
| hits the other foot. WSL is a godsend, and Apple's "native"
| terminal environment becomes a confusing liability.
|
| Catering to different audiences, I suppose.
| baq wrote:
| Not upgrading to Tahoe for as long as $DAYJOB allows. 'Defer
| update' dialog can be conveniently moved away to the second
| display almost out of sight.
| mvkel wrote:
| One of the most egregious issues with macOS 26 is the
| accessibility/usability regression. Apple prided itself on making
| their operating system accessible. Good ux is inherently
| accessible.
|
| There are so many parts of the os that flagrantly ignore well-
| established accessibility standards, some of which Apple
| themselves advocated for
| xp84 wrote:
| It's what you get when you install a hack print designer who
| knows nothing about UI as the head of software design and leave
| him there for a decade. Even Jony Ive, who also had no business
| designing software, didn't respect Dye.
|
| Thank goodness Meta has done Apple the biggest favor of the
| century by poaching him.
| hu3 wrote:
| I hope I'm wrong but I don't see quality control improving
| with Dye's leave.
|
| The man had a bad taste for design but bug prevalence is
| endemic and changing head of design won't fix that.
| franktankbank wrote:
| How is it possible that the head of a divisions particular
| UX taste pervades the product?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Well once Tim started hanging out with Trump and licking his
| boots and awarding him participation trophies and illegal
| gilded emoluments, the MAGA attitudes that empathy is a
| weakness, transparency is performative cosmetics, accessibility
| is for crippled people who should be mocked, and usability is
| for DEI hires, all start trickling down into the culture and
| user interface design.
|
| Liquid Glass looks like Trump hooked Alan Dye up with Don Jr's
| coke dealer.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| It seems obvious to me that liquid glass is no designer's idea of
| a good UI. It's a business move to force developers to support
| the upcoming iGlasses where transparency is actually necessary.
|
| Perhaps Apple is willing to accept that most macOS users will
| enable "reduce transparency" so long as devs implement support
| for transparency.
|
| But there is another explanation making the rounds, possibly a
| conspiracy theory. Some people claim that Apple is doing this to
| make cross-platform technologies look obsolete and hard to
| implement.
|
| If there's any truth to this, it's a terrible idea that could
| easily backfire. People could get used to there not being a
| consistent platform look and feel. Like on Windows, "native"
| could lose its meaning.
|
| Whatever Apple promotes as "native" could become just another
| style among many.
| xp84 wrote:
| I think people are already used to inconsistency. Whatever
| Apple thinks, and honestly even in spite of what any users
| think, only the very largest companies have the appetite to
| mess around making bespoke SwiftUI things, so that they have to
| build their app twice. So, actual "native" stuff is mainly the
| realm of passionate indie developers and everyone else will
| always use cross-platform tools.
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| i switched this year from windows to mac because windows is
| unbearable.... but apple seems to want to get rid of desktop user
| also
| xp84 wrote:
| It's clear how much Apple now hates the MacOS as we have known
| it... I think the concept of a computer which can run code
| outside a sandbox and without tollbooths that extract rents for
| Apple is abhorrent to them.
|
| I think the vague plan is to iOSify it more and more until
| there is no real difference, including the lockdown and
| mandatory App Store requirement.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| M2 MBP here. Definitely skipping Tahoe. Sequoia is already just
| terrible, not only is the UX clunky and hostile, but Apple seems
| to have flat out broken its Bluetooth and networking stacks in
| multiple ways, and in general the system is extremely unstable.
|
| Best hardware around, but at this point I might even take W11
| over this locked down mess. At least Asahi support is decent
| these days.
|
| And I'm tired of paying for things that should be stock, such as
| proper window and mouse management, or reasonable fan control so
| that the keyboard doesn't burn my fingers under moderate
| workloads.
| rayiner wrote:
| > That was little more than a decade ago, in 2014. Not that I
| want to turn the clock back, but it would be really helpful if I
| could read clearly what's on my display once again.
|
| I want to turn the clock back. It's not a reflexive opposition to
| anything new. I thought OS X clearly got better from 10.0 to
| 10.4. But in the last vie versions it's been a regression.
| E39M5S62 wrote:
| I booted a G4 Mac the other day, running 10.4.something. I was
| thrown back in time to a period where OS X was clearly their
| flagship software stack. Everything was coherent and cohesive -
| and shockingly - fast. I'd daily 10.4 again if it could operate
| on the modern internet comfortably!
| vdupras wrote:
| Nevertheless, I also remember that in the 10.4 days, OS X had
| the reputation of being sluggish compared to Linux or even
| Windows (I guess it was Windows 7 at the time?). And it kinda
| was. Bouncing ball when launching an app.
|
| How high the bar was back then.
| rick_dalton wrote:
| I've deferred my next Mac upgrade to when my current M1 air on
| Sequoia stops being supported. If they mess it up further I may
| just move off the platform. Such a shame because the hardware is
| great.
| renaudg wrote:
| Liquid Glass appears to be the culmination of the Alan Dye era at
| Apple, where UI terms like "radio buttons" were derided as
| "programmer talk".
|
| https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job
|
| Thankfully he has now left. Things could hopefully pick up again
| usability-wise within 2-3 years.
| mort96 wrote:
| The worrying thing is that his departure seems in no way like a
| consequence of his terrible job. He wasn't squeezed out by
| upper management, he left because Meta made him a better offer.
| I'm sure Apple's software quality will go up now that he's gone
| and his replacement is allegedly liked by Apple's competent UX
| people who disliked Dye; but Cook clearly doesn't recognise the
| problems, lest he'd have planned to get rid of Dye by now.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| It's honestly hard to tell from outside - execs at that level
| are very rarely fired. They tend to be asked politely to find
| something new to do with their time
| mort96 wrote:
| They also tend to not be featured very prominently on a
| huge product launch event while in the process of "finding
| something new to do with their time". If he's actually
| being squeezed out, that process must've started after the
| public launch of iOS 26.
|
| EDIT: though I guess you could also read it as, iOS 26 had
| come too far to stop it, so they let Dye be the visible
| face of it so that he'd be the fall guy and the next guy
| would get the credits for fixing it... I don't know, I
| guess we don't really have enough info to speculate one way
| or the other
| acdha wrote:
| I'd also believe that he was able to ride his past
| reputation and his sponsor's memory enough to get the
| commitment to ship Liquid Glass, but that gamble blew up
| once most reviews revolve around how they'll probably
| make it less bad in an update. Apple values keeping users
| on current releases and this is the first one where so
| many experienced users and fans have been advising people
| to hold back. I think Dye knows he had enough capital to
| bull the release through but not to recover from making
| the story about the release about his shortcomings.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I'm hopefully optimistic that he can destroy Meta in less time
| than that!
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I'll have to upgrade my M1 MBP some time and no way am I putting
| up with this nonsense - back to Linux laptop for me.
|
| What recommendations do people have for good metal-body linux-
| friendly "ultra books" (or whatever they're called these days)?
| evantbyrne wrote:
| It would be newsworthy if Linux laptops could compete with
| MacBooks on performance and quality. Maybe reconsider Windows
| if you feel the need to switch?
| syabro wrote:
| Try installing asahi on mbp? I tried on my mbp m2 pro, works
| great
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > After three months of strong feedback during beta-testing, I
| was disappointed when Tahoe was released on 15 September to see
| how little had been addressed
|
| Now it was a while ago I left the Apple ecosystem as it became
| clear they didn't actually care about UX anymore, but did "strong
| feedback during beta-testing" ever actually result in any
| results? I remember doing something similar back in 2012-2013
| sometime, and friends having similar feelings across the years,
| that it makes me think that Apple never really did any changes
| based on feedback receiving during the beta testing.
|
| Has anyone here ever written something in via the traditional
| feedback forms/venues and actually had something changed before
| the final release? I even asked around my circle of acquaintances
| and even the ones 110% into the Apple ecosystem seem to never
| have noticed anything changed based on their feedback.
| foxygen wrote:
| My MacOS has this insane bug where the cursor sometimes won't
| change to a pointer/loading/any other state on my second monitor.
| This is really bad, but even worse for me who writes websites for
| a living, and need to check that my CSS cursor pointer class
| actually worked. I can't count how many minutes I've lost
| refreshing my browser and double-checking my code. Now I just
| keep my browser on my primary monitor. I've found many other
| people with this bug on the internet, and it has been happening
| for YEARS. I honestly can't understand how a premium product
| aimed at developers can have something like this for YEARS
| without a fix. I'm moving away from MacOS, and might ditch my
| iPhone too as I won't have all the nice integration with MacOS
| anymore.
|
| Fuck you, Apple.
| dgreensp wrote:
| I ran into this, and there was a bizarre fix--I think having
| Adobe apps open in the background caused it, or something.
| foxygen wrote:
| I saw some responses like this. I have zero Adobe apps in my
| Mac.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| Do you have a trackpad? If you re-enter focus by right clicking
| (very easy to do with gestures), focus stops working until you
| leave and re enter by left clicking. Unfortunately not a new
| issue.
| foxygen wrote:
| I don't use a trackpad. I leave my Macbook closed with 2
| external monitors and an external mouse/keyboard.
| frou_dh wrote:
| What's obvious to me is that the PRIMARY motivation for Liquid-
| Glass-ifying MacOS was not to improve MacOS, but simply to make
| it look consistent with the new version of iOS/iPadOS.
|
| So for Apple to start with a level of disrespect for the existing
| product where the question of whether each change is actually an
| improvement is effectively off-topic, it's no wonder they made a
| dog's dinner of Tahoe.
| talentedcoin wrote:
| These articles always make me laugh. Everyone complains and then
| everyone lines up and buys Macs again. macOS has been on the
| decline for literally years now. If you really want things to
| change put your money where your mouth is and switch!
| 7e wrote:
| Switch to what? Windows is horrible and Linux is just as bad
| (but in different ways).
| nutjob2 wrote:
| Although its not for everyone, I run a Hackintosh and stick
| to 10.15 or lower.
| analogpixel wrote:
| I think a lot of people on HN don't realize that some people
| require software outside of a terminal and a web browser. Can
| I run Ableton on linux? can I run all the audio plugins that
| only ship windows/mac versions? is there a decent graphics
| editor? (gimp is not it.) If all I did was play in the
| terminal and a web browser, I'd have switched to Linux by
| now.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Exactly. There's nothing that comes close to the Adobe
| suite. Maybe someday an investment similar to what was made
| in Proton will happen to Wine in general.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > Can I run Ableton on linux
|
| Yes? The .msi installer for Live has worked in Wine for
| more than a decade.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Until you need a specific plugin that doesn't, or some
| hardware equipment with custom drivers (very common in
| the AV world).
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Can I run Ableton on linux?
|
| Well, _they_ do (what do you think powers the Push 3?) They
| just choose not to let you make that choice.
|
| > can I run all the audio plugins that only ship
| windows/mac versions?
|
| Obviously not (though yabridge can go quite a long way).
| Also note that you cannot run AudioUnit-only plugins on
| Windows, though there are not many released in only this
| format.
|
| Fortunately, however, you _can_ run Bitwig on Linux, along
| with one of a thousand or so 3rd party plugins. If you
| prefer a FLOSS alternative, those exist too, though the
| core functionality of Live & Bitwig is still not quite as
| polished (it is getting there, though).
|
| Your point, however, is well taken. There's a world of
| software out there beyond the browser, and it is absolutely
| OS-dependent.
| kibwen wrote:
| Windows is horrible, yes. But Linux definitely isn't "just as
| bad" as MacOS, it's already better, and it keeps getting
| better every year while MacOS keeps getting worse.
| troupo wrote:
| > But Linux definitely isn't "just as bad" as MacOS, it's
| already better
|
| Is this better Linux in the room with us [1]?
|
| My main gaming computer used to be Windows until this year
| when Windows has gone completely to shit. So first I ran
| Omarchy for a few months, and now running CachyOS because
| it's better for gaming.
|
| Yeah... Even with things going to shit MacOS is still a
| better proposition (at least I have a working sleep and
| restore, and the OS remembers which windows need to be open
| next time you restart/go out of sleep, and in which
| locations). Though I haven't upgraded to Liquid Ass yet.
|
| [1] Let's count the number of "oh, you chose the wrong
| distribution" and count the number of different
| distirbutions people will come up with that are 100%
| guaranteed to not have issues.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| Obviously not representative, but recently I installed the
| most recent release of the "user friendliest desktop Linux"
| and tried to get it to stop asking me for my password, or
| asking me to select the user, on startup.
|
| Not only is the issue spread across more than one similar
| sounding system setting which interact in strange and
| mysterious ways, but nothing works as designed or
| described. It's a horrible mess.
|
| Searching for an fix was great: forums were full of
| sanctimonious "you shouldn't be doing that, it's not
| secure" and no solution.
|
| I gave up. The average user has no chance with desktop
| Linux is my experience is any guide.
| edoceo wrote:
| Laughs in very stable Xfce for 15 years.
| eigenspace wrote:
| Linux has loads of problems, but at least to me, I register
| these problems in a very different way.
|
| The problems with Windows and MacOS are almost all the result
| of bad incentives, user hostile arrogant design, or just
| neglect. As such, the presence of these problems feels
| malcious, and it always feels like I'm pitted against the
| very company that I'm paying quite a bit of money to. I'm
| left with very little hope of things actually improving,
| because these companies seem to have no incentive to actually
| make their operating systems more useful or aligned with my
| needs.
|
| On Linux, the problems are almost always just a result of
| "hey man, I tried my best to make something good and useful,
| but I either don't have the resources or the skills to get it
| all the way there." Sometimes things break or are ugly or
| whatever, but it's not malicious. There's a strong sense that
| things are rapidly improving, and that I can play a small
| part in helping those improvements along (via the patches I
| submit, or with donations or other forms of support). Because
| of this, I find the problems on Linux so much less
| frustrating than analogous problems on MacOS or Windows.
|
| I also think a lot of people might not realize just how
| rapidly things have been improving on Linux. The situation
| today is pretty different versus even just 3-5 years ago.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > On Linux, the problems are almost always just a result of
| "hey man, I tried my best to make something good and
| useful, but I either don't have the resources or the skills
| to get it all the way there."
|
| Or, since there are few to zero gatekeepers of UI and/or UX
| on Linux, you and the person who was responsible for the
| UI/UX in question just don't agree.
|
| On Windows and macOS, at least for components provided by
| MS or Apple, there's a degree of gatekeeping that means you
| agree or disagree with one to 10 people. On Linux, not so
| much.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > Windows is horrible and Linux is just as bad
|
| I will civilly contradict you about both MW11 and about
| Linux.
|
| MW11 is rather good for _usability_. The failures at this
| point are the egregious telemetry, the spyware misfeatures
| (e.g. _Recall_ ), and the AI slop being squeezed into
| everything including _Notepad_ for pity 's sake.
|
| Linux with Wayland is sweet. Gnome and KDE now use Wayland by
| default and they are celebrated for their usability. I
| personally have taken a _leaner_ approach by opting for Sway
| (tiled) and _labwc_ (floating) depending on the current task.
|
| TL;dr _ Get with the times, Linux is great. Windows UX is
| _actually_ rather good, but the leadership of MSFT continues
| to be ghoulish.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Linux with Wayland is sweet
|
| Unless you want to run KiCAD. Or Ardour. Or any other
| number of applications that assume X Window functionality
| that Wayland does not yet (and might never) support.
| analogpixel wrote:
| If you notice your OS/Window Manager, then they have failed in
| what they were designed to do.
|
| I don't own a computer for the OS, I own it to run the
| Applications that I find useful.
| JaggerJo wrote:
| +1 I only updated my MacBook Air and really don't like it. Will
| keep all other macs on Sequoia until macOS 27 hopefully fixes
| most of the issues.
| pmdr wrote:
| For me, earlier versions of macOS/OS X and Windows Vista/7 were
| the right mix of eye candy and usability. Apple's just showing
| off with this liquid glass thing. Yeah, it's cool that they
| attempted it, but it should've remained entirely opt-in. Apple
| being Apple, there's no opt-in -- once _they_ like it, it 's the
| default.
| brokencode wrote:
| For a major revamp, you should either do it or not do it.
| Making it opt-in or even opt-out means every app then has to
| try to support both different UIs, which is a longterm
| maintenance cost. Not only for Apple, but the entire ecosystem.
|
| I personally sort of like the liquid glass, but it's also kind
| of a mess in a lot of edge cases. I feel like it was an
| interesting idea that didn't really pan out fully and should
| have been scrapped. It's just too controversial for pure eye-
| candy.
| e40 wrote:
| I 100% agree with OPs take, though I don't really mind it as much
| as he does. I do hope the changes will be rolled back in 27, or
| at least controls given to us that allow us to roll back changes.
| kruuuder wrote:
| Funny to see the last screenshot of OS X from 2014 in the
| article. I would love to use a system with such a high contrast
| and information density. But I also remember very well how many
| users were upset with the most recent design changes at that
| time: The all caps section titles in the sidebar, and the gray
| icons that were previously colored.
| lapcat wrote:
| Yes, IMO Tiger was actually peak Mac UI.
|
| As soon as Apple released iPhone, the Mac took a back seat.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Tiger with 10.5/10.6-style 2D grid virtual desktops and
| Mavericks traffic light buttons, or alternatively Mavericks
| with aqua scrollbars and 10.5/10.6-style 2D grid virtual
| desktops is very close to my ideal desktop environment.
| docmars wrote:
| Wow I completely forgot that Spaces were also vertically
| oriented. I miss that.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| It was really nice. With the current linear design I
| organize desktops by theme (e.g. one for dev, one for
| research, etc) and with the 10.5/10.6 design I'd use
| vertical desktops for subcategories -- so following the
| same example, on a single screen setup I might have
| desktops arranged something like: |
| Rails Docs/Search | Backend Dev | Music |
| +-----------------------+----------------+------------+
| | UIKit Docs/Search | iOS Dev | Chat |
| +-----------------------+----------------+------------+
| | MDN/Web Dev Search | Web Dev | Email/News |
|
| With this, I quickly develop muscle/spatial memory for
| where each category "lives" and can navigate there in a
| flash. It also substantially reduces the need for
| individual programs like browsers to bear organizational
| load, so for example suddenly "just" single-tier vertical
| tabs become sufficient, making browser workspaces and
| tree style tabs much less necessary.
| vintagedave wrote:
| It was worse than what came before, but we had no idea how bad
| it was going to get.
| karmakaze wrote:
| The day that I need to update to macOS 26 for continued security
| patches is the last day I'll choose to run macOS. I'm pretty much
| all on Linux for non-work stuff anyway with an old Windows
| 'gaming' PC that only runs a 10 year old game.
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Just as a datapoint: Not only do I actually like Liquid Glass, I
| don't have any errors or bugs on my MBP or my iPhone EXCEPT for
| the audio scratching sometimes on macos. Which alone is flatly
| unacceptable.
| QuiEgo wrote:
| The really really frustrating thing is that even in this lesser
| state, all of the alternatives are still a worse experience than
| an Apple Silicon macbook.
|
| It's sad to be in a time where enshitifcation is the word of the
| day and things are getting worse as time goes on. There's nothing
| on the horizon of tech that excites me anymore. I used to feel
| joy and excitement for the future of tech. Now I feel profound
| sadness at this reality.
| LucidLynx wrote:
| Not gonna lie, this year has been exceptionnaly disappointing for
| every product and every OS (more generally: software) from Apple.
|
| The battery life first: I lost 6 to 8h of battery life EVERY DAY
| because of iOS 26. The battery life of my macbook is worst too,
| even after all the updates and a fresh install of macOS 26.2. The
| interface is very ugly, and not easy to use at all. I am oftenly
| loston both systems (iOS 26 and macOS 26) because of all those
| glass interfaces on top of each other. The performance did not
| improved either, and the gaming ecosystem that I was very
| optimistic is becoming a mess. Again. To finish, an exceptional
| high number of annoying bugs that are not solved yet, despite my
| feedbacks since the first Beta versions. It seems nobody care.
|
| It's infuriating that I can't downgrade the OS on both devices.
| Especially on my mac.
|
| This pushed me to re-try a Linux distro on my old laptop, and re-
| try Android on an old Google Pixel phone. Both are great for my
| needs, and the phone has way more battery life than the iPhone
| (despite the phone has already 5yo).
|
| I did not expected at all that 2025 would be the year of Apple
| pushing me out of it ecosystem... Very nice job guys.
| zingar wrote:
| Without arguing with the main point I do want to say that
| although I didn't ask for increased control size from 18 to 26,
| my hands are really appreciating it.
| wutwutwat wrote:
| windows vista called, it wants its Aero back...
|
| just format and install Sequoia, that's what I did
| synapsomorphy wrote:
| I'm a Linux and Windows user thinking of getting a Macbook,
| mostly for the hardware.
|
| All these recent proclamations of disappointment in Tahoe seem
| insanely overblown to me. The problem that this post leads with
| is that thumbnails' corners are too rounded, which
| "misrepresents" the original? Seriously?
|
| Maybe it's worse now compared to the golden years, I don't know,
| never owned a Mac. And it's fair to criticize it from that
| perspective. But I am completely at a loss for how any of these
| issues could be bad enough to make you switch platforms. Windows
| and Linux are not exactly usability all-stars! I had to write my
| own app for decent speech-to-text on Linux which is built in at a
| system level on Macs.
|
| This feels to me like just the age-old tale of people wanting to
| (love | hate) brands, when really, things are nuanced. I switched
| from Android to iOS recently and the experience did not change
| much. iOS is absolutely not "borderline unusable" like I've seen
| many claim. If anything it's maybe a 10% nicer experience
| overall.
|
| Lack of nuance in people's takes makes for less signal in the
| noise and makes it annoying to figure out the actual pros and
| cons of different platforms.
| LucidLynx wrote:
| It is not only for the corners.
|
| Do some searches and you will find a ton of bugs, bad
| performances and bad battery life for laptops, random crashes,
| ...
|
| The issue is not only on the lack of good design ideas, but
| also on the quality of what Apple provides since a few years
| now.
| synapsomorphy wrote:
| Maybe the quality is reduced, sure. But if you "do some
| searches" you can find all of those things for any major
| software release.
|
| Seems to me like people in Apple's walls are forgetting that
| the outside world is not some Garden of Eden. But yeah, I'd
| have to use it to say for sure.
| LucidLynx wrote:
| > you can find all of those things for any major software
| release
|
| Maybe it is because you were using Windows all the time and
| you can't judge outside (no judging), but the quality and
| the (legendary) reliability of macOS was true. Everything
| was well engineered, well designed, and had a purpose.
|
| This is not the case anymore, and this is why people are so
| upset too. People are also upset because all those annoying
| things have been reported since betas and Apple did not
| really listened to them (except most absolute valid
| points).
| bigyabai wrote:
| Okay, now go use it and report back. The grass isn't always
| greener.
| Daishiman wrote:
| > All these recent proclamations of disappointment in Tahoe
| seem insanely overblown to me. The problem that this post leads
| with is that thumbnails' corners are too rounded, which
| "misrepresents" the original? Seriously?
|
| The example in Photos is absolutely egregious, and as a user of
| Linux for the past 25 years and recent user of a Mac for work I
| can't remember something that bad in a mainstream desktop
| environment on Linux.
|
| In fact from a usability perspective a modern Gnome desktop
| seems for more usable and consistent than modern Mac OS and
| that's saying something. Font scaling seems to work better in
| Linux, UI wisgers in Gtk seem to be more consistent. Dark
| themes have been around on Linux far longer and it shows.
|
| I don't use the latest Mac OS version; it's _okay_ from a
| usability perspective. But this new version seems like a clear
| downgrade for something where the purpose of paying large sums
| of money is for higher productivity and comfort.
| walterbell wrote:
| 2023 Vision Pro (iPad-on-Skull) sold less than 500K devices, with
| v2 cancelled.
|
| In 2025, the design failed upward to 4000 x 500K users,
| https://archive.is/gxaYw
|
| _> [Apple] is working to simplify the way users navigate and
| control their devices.. The design is loosely based on the Vision
| Pro's software.. will mark the most significant upgrade to the
| Mac since the Big Sur operating system in 2020.. For the iPhone,
| it will be the biggest revamp since iOS 7 in 2013... 2 billion
| devices in use around the world.. when Apple revamped its Photos
| app last year, legions of users complained. With the entire
| operating systems changing, the stakes are much higher._
|
| Since 2023 launch, Meta Ray-Ban sold ~4M camera glasses priced
| below $500.
| diebillionaires wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. I haven't and won't update to Tahoe, and am
| now using linux more frequently as I begin to move away from Mac
| OS, and eventually Apple products.
| eviks wrote:
| > with their exceptional quality and functionality.
|
| This was never true, for example, taking this simple criterion of
| readability:
|
| > would be really helpful if I could read clearly what's on my
| display
|
| Look at the device's names at the left-most screenshot - you
| can't clearly read them even though there is plenty of space
| wasted on the margins and the "..."
|
| I mean, sure, liquid glass made everything worse, but it doesn't
| mean all the other decades-old UI sins disappear in the
| exceptionally fuzzy rearview window
| anarticle wrote:
| I think if macOS is a tool it should change less.
|
| Looks too much like vista to me.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| The Bozo Explosion is in full force at Apple now. They should
| bring Forstall back. Engineers need to be be humiliated for
| making stupid decisions.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I get where you're coming from, but the word humiliation is not
| constructive in a professional setting. Reasonable decisions
| can easily look stupid without context and hindsight is always
| 20/20. Being responsible for your actions should be the norm,
| but ridicule is not the right way to get there.
| nout wrote:
| This is a good time for trying Linux. If you are coming from Mac,
| then a distro with GNOME interface (Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu...)
| will feel like at home after a couple tweaks. I recommend "Dash
| to Dock" to get the MacOS dock experience and "Search Light" to
| get the spotlight search.
| LoganDark wrote:
| I love GNOME Wayland; it has some of the best support for
| trackpad gestures of any Linux desktop experience I've ever
| tried. On the other paw though, client-side decorations are not
| the way to go on Linux, and I'm still incredibly frustrated
| that they insist on not even supporting server-side decorations
| at all.
|
| Client-side decorations are for apps that are designed
| specifically for a certain desktop experience; server-side
| decorations are for compatibility with the many millions of
| apps that already exist!! (And for anything cross-platform /
| cross-DE.)
|
| Apple gets away with it because macOS is largely monolithic,
| and doesn't really have swappable desktop experiences. GNOME
| does not get away with it because they're just one competitor
| in a large landscape of Linux and they should want to be
| compatible with Linux applications in general, not only GNOME
| applications.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| My biggest beef with client-side decorations is that they're
| not optional. For those of us using tiling window managers
| those decorations are totally superfluous and only take up
| space, especially since the Gnome folks seem to have decided
| that every UI element needs to have _lebensraum_ by adding
| huge areas of white space around them. I want my windows
| densely populated and I want lots of them on my screen
| because I 'm using a COMPUTER - not a PHONE - with a LARGE
| SCREEN and a pointing device. I do not need to be able to
| fat-finger those buttons, I have an accurate pointing device
| with which I control a pointy cursor with which I can
| accurately hit single pixels if needed. Now I need to
| LD_PRELOAD some library to get rid of those stupid unneeded
| decorations, I need to find the current iteration of the
| compact Adwaita theme (for as long as that is still
| possible...) and I otherwise need to FIGHT the software as if
| I were running some proprietary blob of malware from the
| Fruit Factory or from Redmond. Blegh, so much wasted time and
| effort.
| lawn wrote:
| I installed CachyOS recently for my 8 year old kid.
|
| Fantastic experience all around. KDE Plasma is an excellent
| window manager and everything just worked out of the box
| (gaming, wifi, etc).
| t1234s wrote:
| Using Liquid Glass on both a retina and non-retina display it
| looks like Apple is trying to depreciate non-retina displays just
| like they have done in the past with floppy disk, cd rom, and
| having useful ports. Tahoe on a non-retina display looks slightly
| but noticeably shittier than the previous version.
| docmars wrote:
| Can Apple get it over with and revert this overhaul? It's such a
| disaster. Sequoia's UI and icons were nearly perfect and still
| looked modern. There was no need for this change whatsoever.
| jessegrosjean wrote:
| I dislike Liquid Glass.
|
| At the same time I make Mac apps and I've got to adopt liquid
| glass to keep my apps looking alive/updated. How to do this
| without making my apps UI worse?
|
| I would love to see some "how to fix Liquid Glass" type articles.
| List out the problems, list out potential solutions.
|
| Anyone run across articles like this? Please share relevant
| links.
| anentropic wrote:
| all else aside...
|
| > two windows in the same app, both created using SwiftUI, can't
| even share a common radius, as shown below
|
| this actually looks correct to me, the smaller 'subordinate'
| dialog has smaller radius, like nesting dolls
| anal_reactor wrote:
| The cycle of most products:
|
| Step 1: company caters to a niche
|
| Step 2: niche loves product, recommends to wider audience
|
| Step 3: wider audience adopts product
|
| Step 4: company switches to targeting the wider audience
|
| Step 5: niche doesn't like product anymore, switches to a
| competitor
|
| Windows is in step 5 - previously undisputed king of desktop, now
| an ad-infested boomer legacy system. MacOS is in step 4 -
| previously pricy but good solution for devs and creatives, now
| PITA for devs and "I would switch if it weren't for Adobe suite"
| for creatives, but normies think it looks pretty. Linux is in
| step 1 - Valve has been consistently investing in making it a
| viable gaming system. If you told me 10 years ago that Linux
| actually runs games other than TuxCart, I'd have laughed, but
| nowadays "does it run on Linux" is a serious question for every
| new release. It just needs some time to mature, and once gamers
| switch, other desktop users will slowly follow.
| spike021 wrote:
| honestly the issue i hate the most is how bad the keyboard has
| gotten over the past 3-5 years/major iOS releases.
|
| on top of the bug people mention a lot where types are miss-
| pressed, there's a problem i get where if iOS considers a word
| misspelled it'll refuse to let me use the space key or otherwise
| move away from the word or close the keyboard. it's almost like a
| UI thread lockout. it's extremely frustrating.
| DrProtic wrote:
| I was about to upgrade my MacBook but instead booted up Linux on
| my dust collecting desktop, all because liquid glass.
|
| They managed to break so many things, they even managed to mess
| up the volume slider. Instead of showing up across the screen now
| it's tucked away to the top right. What the hell.
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