Comment by OGEnthusiast

Comment by OGEnthusiast 8 hours ago

The reason Liquid Glass on macOS specifically is getting so much blowback is that it isn't just updating the translucency effect with the new glass refraction effect - they've also increased the border radius of most windows, increased paddings in toolbars, sidebars, etc. and overall made the UI much less information-dense, which is wild for a desktop OS. If they had just changed the translucency effect, I think this would be much better received.

Personally, I'm sticking with macOS Sequoia for now, and if macOS 27 goes even more in the less-information-density direction, I'll probably fully move off of macOS, which is a shame as a 20-year Apple user.

kalleboo 4 hours ago

The only thing that really bothers me with the macOS 26 design update is the complete lack of contrast. Everything is white-on-white with super subtle shadows. You can't see what tab is selected in Safari, you can't see what is a button, etc. And it doesn't even look good - it just looks like something is broken, like a texture failed to load.

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cedws 5 hours ago

Border radius on everything on Apple devices has been progressively increasing, eventually I expect everything to be circular. No rectangles allowed.

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thehamkercat 3 hours ago

And then they'll go back to rectangles and call it "innovation", "giving users more space"

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- pkulak an hour ago
  
  Welcome to fashion cycles. Windows 7 has come back around.
  
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fridder 8 hours ago

If there is an alternative to the m-series that lets me keep the battery life I'd jump ship. The m-series chips are just so good though

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christophilus 7 hours ago

I’m using one of the Lenovo Aura editions. It doesn’t match the MacBook, but I also don’t worry about battery at all any more and perf is just fine for my needs. I don’t miss Apple at all. Now, if only there was a Linux phone…

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llm_nerd 7 hours ago

You'd jump ship because of the .0 release of Tahoe? Really? People get a little hysterical about things like this.
You know you don't have to upgrade to it, right? They'll support Sequoia for years, and you could even be running Sonoma if you wanted.
The response to this design is likely to be so overwhelmingly negative that we'll see a lot of subtle retreats in the point releases going forward, and when the macOS 7 version replaces TahoeVista, you can upgrade then.

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- Demiurge 5 hours ago
  
  It's not really hysterical to want to jump a ship that feels like is turning into a clown cruise. I can use Windows, Linux, and OSX equally well for work, even if I deploy to AWS in the end. However, I love the osx aesthetic and MacBook hardware, since around Snow Leopard, which is when I switched from Linux to OSX. Since then, OSX osx gotten worse with every release, and Tahoe is a very low, new low. At some point, it becomes not worth it. Just like it's not worth staying on the previous release of OSX while random apps and extensions lose compatibility. It's not hysteria, it's just the straw that breaks the camels back. The only thing is, I really like the M4 speed. There is nothing that runs as fast, and as cool, that I am aware of. If I wasn't doing a bunch of processing right now, I would probably switch. Non-hysterically.
  
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  llm_nerd 4 hours ago
  
  Sequoia is absolutely, undeniably better than Sonoma. Sonoma is undeniably better than Ventura. And so on. This notion that it's all downhill is just noisy nonsense as people wave their hands and have a tantrum that they don't like some change. And to be clear, every single macOS release yields this. It's incredibly boring.
  Like, it's fun to whine about the imperfection of macOS...versus Windows or Linux? LOL, come on. And just like you and probably everyone else on here, I use macOS, Windows and Linux every single day. Pretending that a couple of aesthetic changes are the big "straw that broke the camel's back" is just so lame.
  It is hysterical. It's noisy nonsense. This "fine this is it" tantrum that people pull is such a tired gimmick.
  And personally I think the aesthetics of macOS/iOS/iPadOS 26 are terrible. They're inevitably going to start easing down the heinous translucency and will claw back on the stupid round corners. Aside from that the system has a lot of fundamental improvements that will benefit everyone.
  But no, no one on Sequoia is going to suddenly be without apps or extensions. When apps start abandoning versions it's usually a couple of versions out.
  
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  Demiurge 4 hours ago
  
  In some sense, some releases are always better than the previous version. Of course, Apple developers do some valuable work. However, there are changes that are not "undeniably better". I don't think every Sonoma feature was better. I don't want widgets, I don't want notifications, I don't want pretty much anything they've added in Tahoe. Not a single thing, that I'm aware of. And, now it's ugly as heck, to me.
  I don't know what you're picturing, but I promise you, I am not being hysterical, I'm just annoyed. I feel like, when you "its hysterical", you think my mouth is foaming, my face is red, my heart rate is above average... It's definitely not. I'm just looking at CPU benchmarks and Windows ARM compatibility discussions. Honestly, it's kind of fun to have a reason to switch. I used to run hackintoshes, because Apple hardware was overpriced. But now, unfortunately, it is the other way around, and running Windows on M4 seems impossible.
  Anyway, I don't think it's a huge deal, but it is definitely a straw that can break many peoples backs in terms of their preferred development environment. I know many people who have switched to Linux from the previous releases too. Un-hysterically, also.
  
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- OGEnthusiast 7 hours ago
  
  It's not just Tahoe though, there have been more and more UX papercuts over the years.
  Here's an example of one such UI regression, that started with Big Sur and now got slightly worse in Tahoe (written by someone who is very knowledgeable about macOS): https://eclecticlight.co/2025/06/15/last-week-on-my-mac-fide...
  Is cropping PDFs to rounded corners (without a way to disable it) enough to get someone to switch to another OS? Probably not, but it's still IMO a UI regression regardless.
  
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- viraptor 5 hours ago
  
  > They'll support Sequoia for years, and you could even be running Sonoma if you wanted.
  Unless the app you want doesn't support them anymore. Or the corporate policy forces an upgrade.
  
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- wsc981 2 hours ago
  
  I don't think you can expect any major UI changes in Tahoe at this point. Maybe the next version of macOS will return to its desktop roots a bit more.
  
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- dartharva 3 hours ago
  
  Except that it's impossible to downgrade to previous MacOS versions on new Mac computers
  
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bitmasher9 8 hours ago

I feel like every macOS update has been worse than the last, since like 2015-2018 or so. Still, their only real competition is Windows 11, which isn’t well received either.

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spudlyo 7 hours ago

I'm still on Sonoma on my Mac, but I've recently been splitting my time between macOS and Linux and I'm starting to be pretty happy with Linux.
The main problem I had with living in a Gnome desktop environment, is with the keyboard. I'm not willing to abandon my use of Emacs control+meta sequences for cursor and editing movements everywhere in the GUI. On macOS, this works because the command (super/Win on Linux/Windows) key is used for common shortcuts and the control key is free for editing shortcuts.
I spent a day or so hacking around with kanata[0], which is a kernel level keyboard remapping tool, that lets you define keyboard mapping layers in a similar way you might with QMK firmware. When I press the 'super/win/cmd' it activates a layer which maps certain sequences to their control equivalents, so I can create tabs, close windows, copy and paste (and many more) like my macOS muscle memory wants to do. Other super key sequences (like Super-L for lock desktop or Super-Tab for window cycling) are unchanged. Furthermore, when I hit the control or meta/alt/option key, it activates a layer where Emacs editing keys are emulated using the Gnome equivalents. For example, C-a and C-e are mapped to home/end, etc.
After doing this, and tweaking my Gnome setup for another day or so, I am just as comfortable on my Linux machine as I am on my Mac.
[0]: https://github.com/jtroo/kanata

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dsego 7 hours ago

Oh, apple would have to do much worse for windows 11 to look good.

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stevage 7 hours ago

Yeah me too. I think I liked Mavericks or Yosemite or something and have pretty much hated every upgrade since.

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OGEnthusiast 8 hours ago

Possibly, although I definitely don't recall the macOS Big Sur re-design being as disruptive UI-wise as Tahoe is.

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itopaloglu83 3 hours ago

Just thinking out loud.

Maybe some people took remote working really seriously and just delegated their work to amateurs online while they traveled the world.

Just saying. There’s no other explanation to how bad this is.

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leptons 5 minutes ago

This is incompetence on display. Hundreds of people were involved in this from concept, to implementation, to testing. And they all thought this was okay.

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