Most new Macs can still be downgraded with few downsides. Here’s what to know.
My biggest problem with Tahoe is they broke spotlight - like it’s completely useless 90% of the time, can’t find files, gives me some random app without the words “calc” in it (Wipr is the first hit for whatever fucking reason) and not Calculator. It’s insane how broken it is.
I have many legitimate complaints about Tahoe, but my biggest/pettiest complaint is that I’ve been waiting for a Tahoe OS since they started naming OSs California places because Lake Tahoe is my favorite place in California– and this OS shouldn’t be associated with the place.
tahoe is definitely the worst i’ve seen things since leopard. maybe we get lucky and apple does another “ok sure, maybe that one was an oops” and anounces another snow leopard style rewite of everything. pause a year to clean up the flashy bloat that only kinda half works. not like they’ve been innovating, they could at least stop slipping and making lazy mistakes regularly.
I think the new Liquid Glass UI is meant to better support the rumored upcoming MacBooks with touch screens. The Mac’s UI has been wasting more and more space over the years, I think with this target in mind.
It is great on paper for iPad Pros with larger screens, but absolutely horrible on both iPhone and iPad Minis. I had bought a new Mini during the Holidays and sourly returned it because it made it basically unusable. It was designed for the Vision Pro, which had “near-infinite” screen space, and for which made sense.
Following extensive use, I now personally hate the new Liquid Glass UI. I was hoping for the best, like an updated version of Aqua. But no, they actually made a worse Vista/Windows 8 UI instead.
Trying to unify the entire lineup with the same damn interface by not only throwing away the Human Interface Guidelines book, which was a masterpiece and a worldwide reference for the entire industry, and without truly taking into account of screen size was simply preposterous.
I have been an Apple fan since the 90’s, and for the first time in my life, I [still] regret upgrading both devices to OS 26. I truly hope they really fix everything in the next major release.
I‘m already exploring Linux. Both GNOME and KDE actually have sensible UI design and consistency in their own way.
I‘m starting to lose hope that this will become better. They have been stuffing macOS and iOS with endless features and their UI design is optimized for nice looking screenshots, not actual use.
The worst is everybody else is still copying Apple‘s UI design trends.
Photos.app has never reached the usability of iPhoto, that it replaced. System Settings is a convoluted pile of over engineering.
The hoops you to jumpt through to run software I download from a website have reached infuriating levels.
a touch screen macbook is already a thing, it’s just an ipad pro with a ‘magic’ keyboard. I used that set up as a daily driver at work for a couple years before getting to work remote. unless the failure to innovate continues on and they just make the macbook screen detachable like a surface book clone. before apple laid off all it’s vendor relations staff a few years ago they were constantly talking about the push to unify macOS and iOS UI. I suppose the default experience between macOS and iPadOS is pretty close now.
I have an iPad myself and try to use it to work every now and then. I always run into pretty basic limitations on iPadOS very quickly. For example working with large file on a network share is painful. The file manage is a slow toy compared to the Finder. The limited RAM and no swap means app will lose state regularly. Transferring data between applications is still cumbersome.
they were constantly talking about the push to unify macOS and iOS UI
They made several attempts at it and none succeeded. There’s lots of shared frameworks, Mac Catalyst, and Swift UI. None of them work consistently or are particularly good.
iOS and iPadOS have fundamental limitations baked into the design that severely limit it.
Making a unified mobile, tablet, touch, and desktop OS was also tried by Microsoft and Ubuntu and the results were weak to mixed.
What Apple really needs is a new paradigm. For that they need a vision, which they don’t have since Steve Jobs died.
The Vision Pro had potential as a new vision, but it’s still quite not there yet, too unaccessible to mainstream both by cost and practicality like its weight, and not being supported enough.
It’s become another disappointment.
Even Meta isn’t very successful with their much cheaper Meta Quest Series. VR Headsets are mostly toys.
oh yeah ipados is limited. the windowed gui option in 26 makes it more usable for keyboard/mouse if you’ve got a large screen model. but it still seems geared to sidecar usage not a standalone tablet computer. which makes the removal of sidecar a hilariously apple thing to do. honestly gnome on an old surface is a very solid competitor to ipados if you don’t need to do any creative work. and the issues i had when testing gnome and krita could have just been the cheaper 2nd hand hardware i used.
