I think the target demographic is also young people raised with iPhones. So for them the new interface design is good for similarity (not for older Mac-people). As if apple planed that all along...

Makes me think if it was carefully calculated strategy, so Windows users would feel more familiar with new os. Everything in MacOs is frustratingly unusual for windows users, but at least annoying bugs are there. And you google how to deal with it, getting familiar with the os.

Yeah, it apparently matters at least a little

What was that sales record?

Yeah, and using macOS fresh is 100x better than the out of box experience for Windows Home. It took me nearly two hours to get that in what I’d call a usable state, disabling “world polar bear day” logos on the search bar and dumb stuff like that.

macOS is much better than any alternative and Tahoe and iOS 26 seem perfectly fine?

The icons in the menu bars are rough, the spacing isn’t great and the inconsistent window borders aren’t great.

I’m not that opinionated though - I don’t really care that much. But the part that sucked was installing it on a 2020 intel MacBook Pro. It basically made it unusable to the point of being ready to throw it out. Going back from Tahoe breathed so much life into it that it was fairly upsetting to see Apple release it. It reminded me of early iPhone updates that would basically brick older devices due to the performance impact.

Start noticing all the text on top of text (caused by "liquid glass"). Then please don't hate me for pointing it out to you.

My Mac is staying releases back, but iOS26 no longer respects light mode. Since I see astigmatic halation, this will be my last iDevice.

Its slightly worse in my opinion but I don't have huge issues with it. Still way better than Windows 11 on my work computer.

Compared to Windows? Tahoe is probably fine. Compared to previous versions of macOS/OS X? Nothing deal-breaking for me, but there are all kinds of little things that just don't have the polish long-time macOS users are accustomed to. Sibling comments have already listed a few things, but take the grab points of the window corners, which don't actually match the window borders. A minor thing, IMO, but not very "Apple-y" to let something like that ship. The menu icons are another: they add clutter, they don't add a lot of value, and they look like crap. Again, not a huge deal, but c'mon, Apple, UI is supposed to be your thing.

I don't hate Tahoe myself, but I don't particularly love it, either. I can still get done what I need to do with an OS, but along with a bunch of other paper cuts in recent macOS versions (looking at you, System Settings) on top of Liquid Glass, I can see why folks are upset.

[dead]

Maybe we can go back to a world where we decouple new under-the-hood features from complete UI fuckery.

You shouldn't have to cope with one to get the other.

I wonder if it’s time to try this again. Last time I tried it, it was intensely buggy, not to mention almost every feature I wanted.

The concept is great, and I would love to ditch OrbStack for it. (OrbStack is slick. But their everything-shares-one-kernel-and-they-don’t-give-privileged-access model falls apart as soon as you try to do anything that doesn’t fit in their not-amazing sandbox. Even user namespaces don’t appear to work.) But, other than the actual core mostly working, Apple Containers was a buggy mess, and it was the only thing that made me frequently reboot the whole machine.

Indeed. In the NT 4.0 era, pre-Mac OS X, it was fun to watch Mac fans extoll the virtues of their OS while rebooting multiple times per day :)

Heck the first version of MacOS X on that titanium power book that flopped up and down like a 5 and a quarter inch floppy was maddening.

To say Tahoe is the worst only reveals how few of the releases of MacOS X the poster actually used.

Such as new screenshot dialog in iOS, where one click has now become three, because we've hidden the primary controls under two pointless single-fold menus.

I wonder if someone got a raise for that.

It’s mostly UI and UX issues introduced by Liquid Glass, nothing as extreme as people are making it out to be but pretty annoying in their own right.

> and people aren't that bothered by the software regressions you're concerned about?

People weren't that mad about the butterfly keyboard or the 16" Macbook Pro that idled near it's junction temp. That doesn't mean they were good products, it means that the majority of Apple customers fail to evaluate the products they're buying based on quality.

"Just avoid holding it that way." - Steven Jobs