I grew up with this animation so I didn't consider it annoying until I bought a new Macbook a couple years ago.

I noticed sometimes I would press keyboard shortcuts before my system's focus had switched. Just little stumbles here and there, some inoffensive, some annoying, but who knows maybe I didn't catch enough sleep.

Over time it happened often enough that I decided to google it, and it turns out my muscle memory wasn't failing me; the animation speed did change ever so slightly and was slower in new Macs with 120Hz displays [1][2] (newer MacBooks, 2021+). If you switch your screen to 60Hz it goes back to the faster animation.

Why is this animation slower now, and why does it depend on screen refresh rate? I have some technical theories but can't think of an organizational reason it happened and hasn't been fixed 5 years later at a 3.82 trillion market cap company. If you Google it there's plenty of discussions online about this. It's noticeable and annoying to people who have used the feature often enough.

[1]: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256124324?sortBy=rank

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNBWt4NvqHg

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veber-alex 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is such an insane bug to still have around all these years.

Are apple engineers not using macOS?

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PaulHoule an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I think Apple's self-image of being the epitome of design actually acts against them. Leads to monstrosities like Liquid Glass kinda vandalizing random parts of the UI in small ways that I intuitively read as "they are anti-anti-aliasing" not "they added cool refraction effects." It used to be you'd see something in a well-chosen color, now it is just a muddy kind of greyish brownish whatever.

I'd like to see them make some costly signalling to indicate that they are going to turn it around like maybe buy two Superbowl ads in a row and let the CEO make a personal apology.

Isn't going to happen because the competition is Microsoft and Intel and Dell who won't hold them accountable and it is just too easy to turn reject iPhone chips into netbooks in 2026.

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ryanmcbride an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I mean, their damn phone keyboards are so bad I'm 100% confident that Tim only does voice to text on his phone. There's no way that the CEO of a company could use a keyboard that horrible and not want to fix it.

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sen an hour ago | parent | next [-]

It’s SO bad. It makes me not want to use my phone anymore and physically go get my laptop if I’m chatting/messaging someone.

It’s probably the worst typing experience I’ve had since resistive-touch screens on PDAs. At least with them you could still type what you intended to though, just slowly.

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fizwidget an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In my experience iOS 26.4 did largely fix it btw. Update if you haven’t already.

	▲	ryanmcbride an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm on 26.4 on a brand new 17 Pro Max, recently upgraded from a 13 Pro Max, and I have noticed absolutely no difference in the keyboard. It's still awful.

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Barbing an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If Tim used speech to text we’d be at least testing SotA local voice models in the iOS betas

	▲	ryanmcbride an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Starting to wonder what he DOES use. I guess just the cameras since they seem to be the only things that change.

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JoeBOFH an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Most of my issues were fixed when I disabled swipe to type. Not all, but most.

	▲	ryanmcbride an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I've heard this advice before and I've tried it, and I really didn't notice a difference. I also, unfortunately, use swipe to type a lot. If I'm typing one handed I'm pretty much always using swipe. Sure it barely works, but that's the same as if I was typing normally so feels like a wash.

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mrguyorama 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Even if they did, what are they going to do? File a bug report that will sit at the bottom of the priority pile forever?

Devs don't set priorities. Software "Engineers" largely don't get to engineer at all.

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amelius 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I wouldn't be surprised. Their 3D solid modeling is done on Windows, so why not their electronics.

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tranceylc 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I would assume it’s something based around whatever deacceleration animation it is calculating? So in the inverse of what you would see in games that don’t support uncapped framerates. It would at least explain why the refresh rate has an inverted relationship