Comment by signal11

Comment by signal11 2 days ago

531 replies | 3 pages

Tahoe is a macOS mis-step on par with Windows 8 or Windows Vista. If you’re from Apple and reading this, my feedback is pretty succinct: “I don’t recommend others upgrade. I wish I didn’t.”

Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to attract switchers.

Let’s see if Apple can turn things around. iOS 8+ did improve on iOS 7’s worst bits.

foxandmouse 2 days ago

> Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to attract switchers.

Yes, but Linux is finally in that position, not to mention we're seeing silicon from intel and amd that can compete with the M series on mobile devices.

  • Saline9515 2 days ago

    Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently).

    Let's not even talk about the case when you have monitors that have different DPI, something that is handled seamlessly by MacOS, unlike Linux where it feels like a d20 roll depending on your distro.

    I expect most desktop MacOS users to have a HiDPI screen in 2026 (it's just...better), so going to Linux may feel like a serious downgrade, or at least a waste of time if you want to get every config "right". I wish it was differently, honestly - the rest of the OS is great, and the diversity between distros is refreshing.

    • drnick1 2 days ago

      > Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently).

      I have been using a 4K display for years on Linux without issues. The scaling issue with non-native apps is a problem that Windows also struggles with btw.

      • thrdbndndn 2 days ago

        Windows struggles even with native apps, as soon as you have monitors using different scaling settings.

        I'm currently using a laptop (1920x1200, 125%) + external monitor (1920x1080, 100%) at work. The task manager has blurry text when putting in the external monitor. It is so bad.

      • GreenWatermelon a day ago

        When I still used windows (until windows 10) I always had to download some DPI fixer program to fix blurriness in many native windows programs.

        Text rendering × DPI seems to be one of those difficult problems.

    • necovek a day ago

      Since MacOS removed subpixel rendering a few years ago, regular resolution displays have terrible looking text in comparison to Windows or Linux.

      Gnome in Linux works great for a decade+ with a single high resolution screen, but there are certainly apps that render too small (Steam was one of the problems).

      Different scaling factors on several monitors are not perfect though, but I generally dislike how Mac handles that too as I mostly use big screen when docked (32"-43"-55"), or laptop screen when not, and it rearranges my windows with every switch.

      • ewoodrich a day ago

        I recently mentioned in another comment that Fedora 43 on my Ideapad is the first “just works” experience I’ve had with my multi monitor setup(s) on anything other than Windows 11 (including MacOS where I needed to pay for Better Display to reach the bar of “tolerable”).

        Zero fiddling necessary other than picking my ideal scaling percentage on each display for perfect, crisp text with everything sanely sized across all my monitors/TVs.

        I gave up on Linux Mint for that exact reason. I wasted so much time trying to fine tune fonts and stuff to emulate real fractional scaling. Whenever I thought I finally found a usable compromise some random app would look terrible on one of the monitors and I’d be back at square one.

        Experimental Wayland on Linux Mint just wasn’t usable unfortunately and tbh wasn’t a big fan of Cinnamon in general (I just really hated dealing with snaps on Ubuntu). I did tweak Gnome to add minimize buttons/bottom dock again and with that it’s probably my favorite desktop across any version of Linux/MacOS/Windows I’ve ever used!

        I kept reading endorsements of Fedora's level of polish/stability on HN but was kinda nervous having used Debian distros my entire life and I’m really happy I finally took the plunge. Wish I tried it years ago!

      • baxuz a day ago

        Steam has DPI scaling issues on Windows as well, especially on multimonitor setups.

    • starkparker 2 days ago

      Every 4K external display I've connected to every M1- and M2-series Mac running macOS has a known flickering issue with Display Stream Compression that Apple knows about and has been unable or unwilling to fix.

      The only reliable fixes are to either disable that DisplayPort feature if your monitor supports it, or to disable GPU Dithering using a paid third-party tool (BetterDisplay). Either that or switch to Asahi, which doesn't have that issue.

      The issue is common enough that BENQ has a FAQ page about it, which includes steps like "disable dark mode" and "wait for 2 hours": https://www.benq.com/en-us/knowledge-center/knowledge/how-to...

      • Wilder7977 a day ago

        I have been experiencing this on my 2k monitors as well (Also BENQ). I tried every "fix" under the sun, eventually it stops after enough voodoo (reboots, unplugs) and cursing.

        One of the many random issues on the OS with the best UX in the world (lol). Like music sometimes stopping and sometimes switching to speakers when turning off Bluetooth headphones, mouse speed going bananas randomly requiring mouse off and on, terminal app (iterm2) reliably crashing when I dare to change any keybinding, and many other things that never happened in years of working on Linux.

      • Terretta a day ago

        If you're looking for high quality text at 4K, your options are more limited than if you're looking for gaming. This is a good roundup, and the leading Dell is superb:

        https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/best/by-usage/busines...

        And as noted here on HN a couple days ago, avoid OLED. Coincidentally, the top office monitor per rtings is what that post compared OLED to:

        https://nuxx.net/blog/2026/01/09/oled-not-for-me/

        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562583

        We use pairs of these Dells per MacBook at our offices and provide them for WR as well. There've been no issues on this Dell or prior models on M1 through M4 (M5 iPad is fine too).

        As for DSC, that's been a complaint for a minute… Example HN reader theory on DSC, from Aug 2023:

        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025568

      • cestith 19 hours ago

        I use two 4k displays with an M1 Pro MBP. They work without any flickering. They’re using HDMI rather than DisplayPort.

        I’m also, to get the two external displays without them being mirrored, using a docking station and a display driver from Silicon Motion called macOS InstantView.

        This is of course not ideal if you need DP and DSC.

      • RHSeeger 2 days ago

        One of my external screens is 4k and I haven't noticed any flickering. It's an Apple monitor though, so maybe that's the difference.

      • pbasista a day ago

        > or switch to Asahi

        I would like to point out that, from my experience on M1, external displays do not work at all over DisplayPort on Asahi Linux at the moment.

    • Atlas26 a day ago

      > Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI.

      I’m glad everyone is dogpiling on this statement cause man people seriously have to stop parroting this years out of date claim at this point. Any big well supported distro using Wayland should be fine, at the very least KDE and GNOME are guaranteed work perfectly with HiDPI.

      Daily Fedora KDE user here on 4K HiDPI monitor plus another of a different lower resolution, flawless experience using both together in a setup. Fractional scaling also there working perfectly as well and you choose how you want KDE to scale the apps if you want (forcefully or let the app decide).

      • port11 a day ago

        Funny you mention Fedora, since the installer itself is unusable in my 4K display, defaulting to the 4K resolution instead of a 2x. I never managed to install Fedora using the GUI.

    • storus 2 days ago

      I recently bought a MacStudio with 512GB of RAM and connected it to a LG 5k2k monitor. For some reason there was no way to change the font size (they removed the text size "Larger Text ... More Space" continuum from the Display section of settings) so I ended up with either super small or super large fonts without anything in-between. In the end I had to install some 3rd party software and mix my own scaled resolution with acceptable font size. This has never been a problem on Linux in the past 10 years, all I needed to do at worst when it wasn't done out of the box was to set scale somewhere and that was it.

      • Saline9515 2 days ago

        I bought a MacStudio 2 months ago, on Sequoia you go to "display" and should see the various resolutions. If not, "advanced">"show resolutions as a list">"show all resolutions".

      • chrisweekly 2 days ago

        Curious what software; I've used "SwitchResX" in the past and it met all my needs...

        • storus 3 hours ago

          It was BetterDisplay. Thanks for the hint, will take a look at SwitchResX as well. BetterDisplay looks too complicated for what I need it to do (just switch the screen to 2560x1080 scaled).

      • QuercusMax 2 days ago

        BetterDisplay has solved a ton of problems like this for me; when MacOS gets confused about non apple monitors, BetterDisplay knows how to fix things.

      • jjtheblunt 2 days ago

        it's not removed : you have to hold Option when choosing resolutions, and the panel changes to show myriad options.

        i think that's what you're describing, anyway.

      • stephenr 2 days ago

        AFAIK the smallest 5K2K is 34", with a PPI of 163. I don't believe that is treated as "HiDPI" by macOS, is it?

        • storus a day ago

          It should be, its size is somewhat similar to a 31" 4k I have next to it just the ultra-wide adds those extra inches.

    • blinkingled 2 days ago

      I am a full time KDE/Arch user and since Plasma 6 haven't had any HiDPI issues including monitors with different DPI or X11 apps - of which there are very few nowadays.

      • noisy_boy a day ago

        Fedora 43 with KDE - have been using 140% scaling with my Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4k monitor - no issues whatsoever. I've noticed that the Dells do a pretty good job with Linux - I have used monitors of various sizes ranging from 27" to 43" and never had any issues on Linux.

      • wolvoleo 2 days ago

        I run plasma 6 on X11 and it also functions amazingly well on 200% scaling.

    • lovasoa 2 days ago

      I use linux at home (with a HiDPI screen) and MacOS for work. The screen works well with both computers. I mostly just use a text editor, a browser, and a terminal though.

      Linux has bugs, bug MacOS does too. I feel like for a dev like me, the linux setup is more comfortable.

      • mcny 2 days ago

        Same here. I stick to 100% scaling and side step the whole hi dpi issue. I even have a single USB type c cable that connects my laptop to the laptop stand and that laptop stand is what connects to the monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

        I know people will say meh but coming from the world of hurt with drivers and windows based soft modems — I was on dial up even as late as 2005! — I think the idea that everything works plug and play is amazing.

        Compare with my experience on Windows — maybe I did something wrong, I don't know but the external monitor didn't work over HDMI when I installed windows without s network connection and maybe it was a coincidence but it didn't work until I connected to the Internet.

    • Macha 2 days ago

      > Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently).

      Meanwhile on MacOS my displays may work. Or they might not work. Or they might work but randomly locked to 30hz. It depends on what order they wake up in or get plugged in.

      I suspect the root of the problem is one of them is a very high refresh rate monitor (1440p360hz) and probably related to the display bandwidth limitations that provide a relatively low monitor limit for such a high cost machine.

      • QuercusMax 2 days ago

        I finally got fed up with my two external monitors (one of which I rotate to portrait) getting mixed up by MacOS every time my MacBook would go to sleep or I unplugged it, so I bought a thunderbolt docking station which has basically solved all my issues. Worth every penny to be able to swap my personal laptop and work laptop with a single cable.

        Macs don't support the USBC / displayport daisy chaining support that my monitors should be able to handle. Very frustrating that this stuff is still so nonstandard. If you have all Apple it all works perfectly, of course.

    • seba_dos1 2 days ago

      Sure, you can find some obscure DEs that don't handle that well yet. Or you could just use Plasma and have it all work just fine, like it did for many years now.

    • pkulak 2 days ago

      Wait, has MacOS finally figured out fractional scaling? Last I looked, Linux actually had better support. And now Linux support is pretty good. It’s really only older apps that don’t work.

    • bpye a day ago

      I'm not going to claim that every compositor/WM handles high DPI well on Linux, however both KDE and Gnome on Wayland are fine in my experience. I actually find that KDE on Wayland handles mixed DPI better than Windows, macOS doesn't really give you enough control to try.

    • cosmic_cheese 2 days ago

      It also doesn't offer a Mac-style desktop environment, which is one of the things keeping me away. KDE/Cinnamon/XFCE lean more Windows-style, GNOME/Pantheon (Elementary) is more like iPadOS/Android in desktop mode. My productivity takes a big hit in Windows-style environments and I just don't enjoy using them.

      I hope to put my money where my mouth is and contribute to one of the tiny handful of nascent Mac-like environment projects out there once some spare time opens up, but until then…

      • bsimpson 2 days ago

        So apparently when Canonical was the gorilla in desktop Linux, they had a push to have apps make their menus accessible via API. KDE supports that protocol. There are KDE widgets that will draw a Mac-style menu bar from it.

        That means you can take the standard KDE "panel" and split it in two halves: a dock for the bottom edge, and a menus/wifi settings/clock bar for the top edge.

        There are some things I don't know how to work around - like Chrome defaulting to Windows-style close buttons and keybindings, but if the Start menu copy is the thing keeping you off Linux, you can mod it more than you think you can.

      • freedomben 2 days ago

        Gnome with a persistent app drawer is relatively Mac-like. With a couple settings tweaks and possibly extensions, it can get pretty close. Even out of the box it feels a lot more mac-like than windows-like to me, but of course everybody is a bit different.

    • jhasse 2 days ago

      GNOME still has some problems with fractional scaling, but KDE works perfectly. I'm using two displays, one with 150% and one with 100%. No blurry apps and absolutely no issues. Have you tried it recently?

      • sbrother 2 days ago

        Can you independently set desktop wallpapers on the two screens? I know this seems nitpicky but it's literally impossible with Ubuntu/Gnome as far as I know; I have one vertical and one horizontal and have to just go with a solid color background to make that work.

        • Macha 2 days ago

          Yes. It was actually more tedious to do the inverse when I wanted three screens to do a rotating wallpapers from the same set of folders as I had to set the list of folders three times

      • cosmic_cheese 2 days ago

        KDE is in better shape than GNOME, but there are still some nits. Nearly all the available third party themes for example are blurry or otherwise render incorrectly with fractional scaling on.

      • freedomben 2 days ago

        I've been using fractional scaling on Gnome for years (including on the laptop I'm typing this on) and haven't had any issues. I haven't tried it with two displays that are set differently though. Is that a common thing?

    • larrik 21 hours ago

      I went from Linux (10 years) to Mac (4 years) to Windows (8 months) to back to Mac. (I have not upgraded to Tahoe, and didn't even realize it was so different until recently)

      IMO, there's basically no problem Linux has that isn't worse in Windows (at the OS level). Especially once you get into laptops.

      My final conclusion was that I hate computers.

    • shuntress a day ago

      Inconsequential minutiae concerning display resolution is absolutely NOT the thing keeping people away from Linux.

      Its the "getting every config" right thing that is the problem.

    • truncate 2 days ago

      I've not had any issues with 4k display. Mac does handle monitors with different DPIs well, but not really a issue for me. Most hardware I use also just works great. Gaming is great now as well.

      The only reason I can't completely switch to Linux is because there are no great options for anything non-programming related stuff I love to do ... such as photography, music (guitar amplifier sims).

    • eek2121 2 days ago

      My dude, It's been more than capable for years. I have an ultrawide OLED monitor (3440x1440@165hz) paired with a 4K@144hz monitor. Both HDR, different capabilities. Both have different DPIs set, 125% for one, 200% for the other. My setup required less configuration than Windows does. Right click -> Display Configuration -> Set Alignment (monitor position) -> Set refresh rate -> Set HDR -> Set DPI -> Apply. Done.

      Don't knock it unless you've tried it.

      This was CachyOS btw. Windows actually required MORE work because I had to install drivers, connect to the internet during setup, get nagged about using a Microsoft account, etc.

      CachyOS was basically boot -> verify partitions are correct -> decide on defaults -> create account/password -> wait for files to copy -> done. Drivers, including the latest NVIDIA drivers, auto installed/working.

      • Saline9515 2 days ago

        Tried 3 months ago with Gnome (PopOS) and a 4k screen at 125% scaling, apps were blurry, especially Brave, which was a big disappointment.

        I give Linux a try each time I need to set up a new computer, and each time run into new issues. Last time (2 years ago) the hdmi connection with the screen would drop randomly twice a day. Same for the keyboard, and the wifi card didn't have drivers available. It became quite annoying, reducing my productivity as I had to reboot and pray. I then installed Windows, which solved all of the issues (unfortunately?)

        Maybe I'm just unlucky.

    • spockz a day ago

      I recently installed CachyOS and the text was crisp and accurate out of the box on my hidpi screen. So whatever settings and software combinations are required, cachyos got it right, with KDE and wayland at least. All apps I use have been rendered perfectly clear.

    • [removed] a day ago
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    • cherryteastain 2 days ago

      Not a problem on my Fedora Silverblue 43 machine with dual 4K 27" screens at 125% scaling. Zero blurry apps, including XWayland ones.

      • piskov 2 days ago

        Boy, does that fractional scaling should look like shit on any vector graphics.

        That’s why Apple used 4k on 22”, 5k on 27 and 6k on 32 to make it crispy always on 200%

    • chocochunks 2 days ago

      MacOS doesn't handle HiDPI screens that well either. The most common and affordable high res monitors are 27" 4K monitors and those don't mesh well with the way macOS does HiDPI. You either have a perfect 2x but giant 1080p like display or a blurryish non-integer scale that's more usable.

      And god forbid you still have low DPI monitor still!

      • bsimpson 2 days ago

        Blows my minded that a 4k 27" monitor that was $500 a dozen years ago is still near top tier now.

        5k has been surprisingly stagnant.

      • Saline9515 2 days ago

        You can adjust this in settings.

    • greenavocado 2 days ago

      You're supposed to use KDE with Xorg if you want things to just work. KDE with Wayland if you're adventurous.

      Therefore newcomers should use Kubuntu or the likes of it

      • 6SixTy 2 days ago

        KWin/Xorg AFAIK has been on maintanence duty (i.e. fixes mostly come from XWayland) for >5 years now. KDE has expulsed the Xorg codebase of KWin into a seperate repo in preparation of a Wayland only future.

        Even if KDE/Xorg is a stable experience is true now, it will not be true in the medium to short term. And a distro like Kubuntu might be 2 years out from merging a "perfect" KDE Plasma experience if it arrived right now.

  • jdejean 2 days ago

    Tahoe is uniquely bad in so many ways, so I tried the Asahi Fedora Remix with Gnome on my M2 Mac Mini. Aesthetically I was more attracted to Gnome, it feels like what we lost with Tahoe. Tahoe to me feels like a really chopped Android skin or something. I made it a few weeks on the Fedora Remix but ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam drivers and other random hardware issues. Plus there’s little OS things that Mac does that make it really hard to go elsewhere.

    • nine_k 2 days ago

      Could you list some of these little things that macOS does and that you miss?

      (I usually miss the little Linux-specific things that macOS does not.)

      • jonquest 2 days ago

        iMessage, Apple Pay (w/Touch ID), native Apple Music client, iCloud (if you're invested in the iCloud ecosystem) along with its seamless integrations with photo apps like Photomator (among others), shared music and movie library across my Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV.

        There's probably a lot more I'm not thinking of right now. Point is, if you're an iOS, macOS, and iCloud user you give up a lot of quality of life bits going to another platform. There are times I want to go back to Linux, but when I think about the stuff I'm going to loose I talk myself out of it. macOS isn't the greatest, but it's not the worst either and Apple's products and services just tie in very well with each other. I get annoyed by things like the shitty support for non-apple peripherals, needing 3rd party apps to make them work decent, crappy scaling except on the most expensive monitors and no decent font smoothing when running at native resolutions. But... I stick with it because I either like or love the tight integration and added quality of life that comes with it.

      • hunterloftis 11 hours ago

        For me it's the keyboard and hotkeys.

        I use macs at work and Linux at home. There's no uniform way to make a Linux machine accept things like cmd right arrow to jump to the end of the line, etc.

        This is the closest attempt, but it has many gaps: https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto

      • jdejean 2 days ago

        Most of my gripes are probably Gnome specific in this case - When you screenshot something it pins the image temporarily on the screen. If I drag into any open app it avoids saving it to disk. - Pressing CMD W or Q consistently closes any app (works on some gnome apps) - Mac keychain passkeys (I don’t own a usb stick) - Third party window management (through accessibility privileges only) - Apps respecting dark mode settings - The app menu (file, edit, window, etc) being in the same spot every time

        Definitely not exhaustive since I only spent a few weeks with it. There were also plenty of things I liked about Gnome more but not enough to tip the scale for me

    • Mistletoe 2 days ago

      >ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam drivers and other random hardware issues

      This has been my experience every time I try Linux. If I had to guess, tracing down all these little things is just that last mile that is so hard and isn't the fun stuff to do in making an OS, which is why it is always ignored. If Linux ever did it, it would keep me.

      • wtetzner 2 days ago

        One solution to this problem is to buy from a vendor that installs Linux for you (e.g. System76). Much like with Apple, they can sell you a fully functional computer that way.

      • black_puppydog 2 days ago

        My understanding is that the asahi team have been doing incredible work exactly with doing the non-fun bits. They just chose to do it on the hardware of a company that's extremely hostile to this kind of effort.

      • tuckerman 2 days ago

        I think this is true with an arm mac (and would be tricky to fix that, props to the Asahi folks for doing so much) but for a lot of other hardware (recent dell/asus/lenovo, framework, byo desktops) I find Linux complete. I'm sure there is hardware out there that with struggles but I've not had to deal with any issues for a few years now myself.

      • pxc 2 days ago

        Bringing random hardware from vendors who never intended to support an OS is a weird criterion to judge an OS' "readiness" by— and one no one seems to apply to macOS or Windows.

      • ryang2718 2 days ago

        It can be very device specific unfortunately. Thinkpad tend to work quote well. I had a Framework that my wife took from me and it's truly fantastic, works out of the box.

  • akagusu 2 days ago

    No, it is not. Apple went down to the same level of Linux, not Linux that became as good as Apple.

    Unfortunately today it is a race to the bottom.

    • nine_k 2 days ago

      As a long-term Linux user, and a regular macOS user, I must say that the motion is mutual. Linux has become way better, and macOS, somehow worse. But resizing and moving windows nearly , and switching between windows (not whole apps) has always been problematic in plain macOS, for reasons mysterious to me.

      • GeorgeOldfield a day ago

        i agree on the software level, but then we have hardware. M cpus, touchpads, battery life. it's hard to justify using PC hardware.

  • elAhmo a day ago

    "Linux is finally in this position" is a meme at this point.

    • RamblingCTO a day ago

      This year will be the year of the linux desktop for real, I swear!

  • pjmlp a day ago

    Windows has a much better chance, alongside WSL, even with all its warts than Linux.

    GNU/Linux isn't sold in shops like macOS and Windows for regular consumers, until it goes out from DYI and online ordering, it will remain a niche desktop system.

  • bsimpson 2 days ago

    I fell down the Nix hole this weekend, getting my corp Mac and my SteamOS Legion Go sharing a config. My corp device is a 5k iMac Pro that is going to be kicked off of the network when ARM-only Tahoe becomes mandatory later this year.

    I work at Google, which issued a Gubuntu workstation by default when I joined. I exchanged it for a Mac, which I've spent a literal lifetime using, because I didn't wanna fall down a Linux tinkering hole trying to make Gubuntu feel like home. Every corp device I've had has been a Mac.

    I'm reading this from a coffee shop. On my walk here, I was idly wondering if I should give Glinux (as its now called) a try when I'm forced to replace the iMac. SteamOS is making Linux my default environment in the same way Mac was for decades prior.

    • theodric a day ago

      > ARM-only Tahoe Tahoe supports x86. It's the last macOS release that will do so. Did you mean that Google is banning any non-ARM Tahoe box?

      • bsimpson a day ago

        Well I guess the iMac Pro isn't on the lucky list then. I know it's losing updates (and therefore support) this year.

        Unfortunately, I looked into it, and my other options are an Asus CX54 Chromebook or a Lenovo X1. There simply aren't competitive alternatives to Mac hardware, at least not at modern Google.

  • [removed] 2 days ago
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  • m-schuetz a day ago

    > Yes, but Linux is finally in that position

    I've heard that for almost 20 years now, but it never was.

  • J_cst a day ago

    This year's too early, but next year for sure.

  • CSSer 2 days ago

    Yeah, and gaming aside from anti-cheat isn't a broken mess anymore either. Valve has made sure of that.

  • zapzupnz 2 days ago

    In the Hacker News bubble, maybe. In the real world, not even close. The reasons why many a person chooses to use macOS, outside of the "YoU bUy It FoR ThE lOgO" that many hard-core technologists seem to believe, don't exist in any desktop environment.

    Sometimes, people think "it can be made to look similar, therefore it's the same" (especially with regard to KDE), and no, just no.

    • immibis a day ago

      What are those reasons?

      • zapzupnz 18 hours ago

        It's a mountain of little things that add up rather than a few killer features.

        It's the way drag and drop is a fundamental interaction in text boxes, the proxy icons in title bars, how dragging a file to an open/save panel changes that panel's current folder rather than actually move a file.

        It's how applications are just special folders that are treated like files, how they can update themselves independently of each other or any system packages, how you conventionally put them in the /Applications folder so you can put that folder on the Dock to use directly as a launcher.

        It's how all text fields consistently support emacs-style keyboard shortcuts, respond appropriately to the system-provided text editing features such as the built-in Edit menu, text substitutions, and writing features.

        It's how you can automate most Mac-assed apps; how you can extend the operating system through app-provided and user-created services to every other application that handles text, files, images, PDFs, through the built-in APIs using AppleScript, Automator, and Shortcuts.

        It's how the whole program rather than its last window is the fundamental unit of an application such that document-based applications can exist without a window without also polluting some system tray with an unnecessary icon, how that means workflows expect more than one window open.

        It's how there's a universal menu that works for every app, not just conforming ones (i.e. KDE's global menu only shows KDE apps' menus; other apps need a plugin or just don't show at all), how the help menu has a search field to look for menu items, how keyboard shortcuts are bound to the menu items are bound arbitrarily within the program's settings window and can thus be assigned globally in System Settings, how this means all of an application's main features are therefore accessible via the menu bar, how that creates consistency in the menus.

        Those are just some things off the top of my head but there are plenty of others, some a bit more user facing, some less. Just examples, a non-exhaustive list.

        I'm sure those who don't care about these things will dismiss it but if you've been using a Mac since before macOS, before OS X, or even before Mac OS X, these are things you won't drop for Linux just because the design is a bit uglier.

        Of course, if none of these things matter, then the swap is easier. It doesn't mean any DE is a drop-in replacement by any means. Many of the things that make some DEs "Mac-like" are skin deep.

  • dmitrygr 2 days ago

    > not to mention we're seeing silicon from intel and amd that can compete with the M series on mobile devices.

    [[citation needed]], benchmarks please, incl battery life, not promises. "We are seeing" implies reality

  • carlosjobim 2 days ago

    Linux doesn't have much in the way of quality apps for people who aren't programmers, server administrators, or gamers.

    Most people want to get productive work done with their computer, and OS X has top tier apps for every need possible.

    No good e-mail app, no good office apps, no good calendar app, no good invoicing app, no good photo editing app, no good designer app, etc

    • TheDong 2 days ago

      > people who aren't programmers

      > No good e-mail app, no good office apps, no good calendar app, no good invoicing app ...

      People who aren't programmers use Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Stripe Invoicing, etc for those various use-cases.

      Firefox and Chrome work just fine on Linux, so Linux has all the apps people actually use these days on computers.

      • carlosjobim a day ago

        The only people I meet who voluntarily use web apps in their day to day are Linux users who have convinced themselves that it is good enough because there aren't any good native apps on Linux.

        And then you of course have corporate, who will not switch from Windows.

        Nobody will voluntarily spend all day working within Gmail or Google docs.

        You also conveniently cut out photo editing and design in your quote.

        Edit: Also I wonder if all you server-admins, programmers and gamers would have switched to Linux if your only option was to do your work or gaming within a laggy and inadequate web-app? But you want other people to suffer that.

    • [removed] a day ago
      [deleted]
ryukoposting 2 days ago

Apple's worst release in years (maybe ever), Microsoft's worst release in years (maybe ever), meanwhile mainstream Linux UX has been taking baby steps forward on a nearly-daily basis for a decade straight.

I'm not saying 2026 is the year, but...

  • whywhywhywhy a day ago

    Tried Linux (Omachy) recently and the mouse pointer drops frames or chokes movement under load. Just can't use an OS that does that full stop.

    • _fat_santa a day ago

      I wouldn't call Omarchy "mainstream". Yes it's very popular among developers but that's about it and under the hood it uses some pretty non-mainstream components like Hyplrand WM.

      I would argue the OS closest to "mainstream Linux" is Ubuntu or Fedora with Gnome DE. Gnome has many many faults but it's probably the closest DE you're going to get to what Windows and MacOS have.

      • whywhywhywhy a day ago

        I'll give one of the more mainstream ones a try when I have a free afternoon, frustrating thing was it wasn't underpowered at all this was with a RTX3090 so very concerning investing in that, perhaps wrongly assumed Wayland etc would have been a similar feel to Mac Quartz Composer fluidity by now.

        • physPop 12 hours ago

          it does but you need various config tweaks

    • GreenWatermelon a day ago

      Oh God you fell for the hype and used DHH's juiced up distro. I encourage you to try a properly maintained distro e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora, or Leap instead of a racist narcissist's hobby project.

  • fainpul a day ago

    2026 is the year of the shitty desktop OSes.

  • hahahahhaah a day ago

    2026 is the year of nothing on the desktop so may as well pick Linux.

    • [removed] a day ago
      [deleted]
  • seemaze a day ago

    Linux is the worst desktop we have, except for all the others..

  • user3939382 a day ago

    Linux’s value proposition would have to be “Everything’s different learning curve yada yada but it’s so clean and well done users will see the light” Meanwhile run ps on an Ubuntu desktop. The same process bloat and shit that ruined Windows and macOS. Linux is a mess, almost by design.

michelb 31 minutes ago

I do hope things turn around, but having to wait until September is going to be painful.

nntwozz 2 days ago

Not to beat on my own drum but as a mac convert from the days of Tiger I saw the writing on the wall from miles away.

Still on iOS 18 and macOS 15 (Sequoia). I was a day one upgrader up until now, never had any regrets but this time things seemed very different.

It's worrisome but all is not lost, I'll start sweating for real if next year's releases don't improve things substantially.

  • testfrequency 2 days ago

    Maybe you didn’t catch this yet, but Apple pulled their latest iOS 18.7.3 update and they seem to only promote iOS 26 now. They really want everyone off iOS 18 :/

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2026/01/07/hundreds-...

    • cr1895 2 days ago

      You can sign up for Apple beta and keep doing iOS 18 updates.

      • Foivos a day ago

        There are many reports that since around Christmas day, you can not do this any more on phones that support iOS 26. Updating to iOS 26 is the only option now.

        • aziaziazi a day ago

          I may suggest the other option is to buy an iPhone not supporting iOS 26.

          - an happy iOS 15 user

      • oreilles a day ago

        Nope, they don't sign iOS 18 updates anymore.

      • andrei_says_ a day ago

        Not anymore. Tried this but the pulled 18.7.3 for beta upgrades too.

    • MarleTangible a day ago

      They don't allow you to upgrade to iOS 18.7.3 if your device supports iOS 26.

  • godelski a day ago

    My phone updated on me and yesterday it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to listen to my voice mail. Like seriously, how do we go from clicking on the name calling to clicking on the name to see the voicemail left by that specific caller and no others

    • lewisgodowski a day ago

      You can tap on the filter button (three stacked horizontal lines of decreasing length) and select the "Voicemails" filter to view them all.

      • godelski 21 hours ago

        I did find this later, but that's also very unintuitive. I'm looking at a call log, why would I filter my calls to look at voicemails? I mean even the options there are categorically inconsistent. It is "Calls", "Missed", "Voicemail". voicemail is a different category than received and missed. I'm expecting that because that's what used to be at the top of that page. They taught me that that's what I should expect from the filtering option.

        My solution was to change from "Unified" to "Classic" which changes the bottom bar from [("Calls" "Contacts" "Keypad") "Search] to ["Favorites" "Recents" "Contacts" "Keypad" "Voicemail"]. THE ICONS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME SIZE. The only difference is the spacing between them.

        But again, this is fucking crazy because going back to the classic mode, if I click on a recent name it starts dialing them. But in the unified mode it gives me information. The unified makes the whole name act as if I'm pressing the info button.

        The problem is that Apple created an anti-pattern, TO ITSELF. They taught users that an action did one thing and then used that action to do something completely different. No one on iOS 26 should expect that clicking the call line will take you to the information page and should instead expect that doing so will start dialing that person.

    • billti 20 hours ago

      This is the most disappointing aspect of the slide in quality for me.

      I working in software and "build features" for a living, and over the years I've come to prioritize reliability, performance, and an intuitive experience over all else. No matter how good the feature set is, if it crashes, is painfully slow, or I can't figure out how to use it, then I don't want it.

      Apple used to have that focus, but seems to have lost it of late.

      • godelski 15 hours ago

        Apple definitely had that focus under Jobs but people now are all too happy to tell you you're holding it wrong and I think Apple internalized this mentality.

        But I find iOS 26 absolutely disrespectful. It wants you to use it in ways that previous iOS versions pushed you away from. It's an anti pattern to previous versions. I'm sorry, if you teach users one pattern don't update to have them do the opposite. Nothing is could be less intuitive

  • ValentineC 2 days ago

    > Still on iOS 18 and macOS 15 (Sequoia). I was a day one upgrader up until now, never had any regrets but this time things seemed very different.

    I've tried and returned the iPhone 17 Pro. Love the hardware (especially the camera), but iOS 26 is inefficient (for lack of a better term), and the new camera UI hides too many things.

  • steve_adams_86 21 hours ago

    My HN comment history shows I've been worried about macOS for quite a while now, too. I'm a bit less optimistic than you, but I hope you're right. I'd really prefer to be wrong.

    macOS has been an incredible productive OS for me since I was 15. I'm now 39. In the last few years is the first time in that period that I've seriously begun to wonder if it would be wise to get off the platform. I've already dropped iOS, watchOS (Garmins are actually amazing these days, for what it's worth), and iPadOS. I still use macOS daily along with tvOS when I happen to watch something, but the days seem numbered now. I'm pretty disappointed. I hope it turns around, but I'm slowly preparing myself to be on Linux primarily.

  • bborud a day ago

    Upgrading to iOS 26 was a mistake. All the slow, distracting UI features that only makes the iPhone feel like some slow Android phone is really not an "upgrade" in any reasonable sense of the word.

  • rconti 2 days ago

    Same I'm on iOS 26 and it's reasonably bad but I figured I might as well pull of the band-aid and have app compatibility.

    I can't see a single reason to upgrade to Tahoe. We'll see what 2026 brings.

    • shawnz 2 days ago

      One huge benefit of Tahoe for me is that you can now hide any menubar icon, even if they don't explicitly support hiding. It's a small thing but that alone makes the upgrade worth it for me

  • nextos 2 days ago

    The Tiger to Snow Leopard era was fantastic. Things were simple and worked.

    There was also a great boutique apps ecosystem.

    Right now, it seems that macOS is going through its enshittification phase, sadly.

    • stevage 2 days ago

      I still remember Snow Leopard - I think that's when I started using Mac.

      Most of the upgrades since then I have resisted and not enjoyed, though I seem to recall liking Mavericks.

      A lot of the big features each time seem to be about tieing further into the Apple ecosystem, which doesn't interest me at all, since I have no other devices and don't use iCloud.

    • zokier 2 days ago

      I think also that Snow Leopard era (unibody) MacBook Pro design was peak Mac. It was really full-featured while also having clean intentional design.

    • port11 a day ago

      Snow Leopard was spectacular. Rock solid, I never had a single problem with the OS. Lots of third-party developers making good software helped, I think shortly after (Lion?) I bought Things, Little Snitch, Sketch, and Alfred.

    • JumpCrisscross 2 days ago

      > Tiger to Snow Leopard era was fantastic. Things were simple and worked

      Was it also great for developers? (Genuine question.)

      • wk_end 2 days ago

        Yeah, OS X was definitely the nicest native development experience at the time. Apple's documentation was considerably better and more searchable back then than it is now (especially as it is now for desktop). And even though they've introduced lots of niceties (including Swift), as Apple's piled additional features and APIs into Cocoa/Xcode I find the overall experience quite a bit less coherent or intuitive or ergonomic than it used to be.

      • sandbags a day ago

        Pretty much. Xcode was quirky but it still is. But the frameworks were well documented and 1 Cocoa book could get you a long way. I loved building Obj-C/Cocoa apps back then.

      • zokier 2 days ago

        I'm not mac dev but wasn't apple all in on objc back then and these days it's more swift? that is pretty big shift, I'd assume for the better for most parts.

        • debo_ 2 days ago

          I prefer Swift as a language, but Apple's developer documentation back then was clear, detailed, and overall excellent. Occasionally I felt like I was reading a classic CS text rather than a manual. I could always find the guide on the particular facet I was looking for within a few clicks.

      • billylo 2 days ago

        xcode has been getting better bit-by-bit. No major regression.

  • hahahahhaah a day ago

    I am also HODLing Sequoia. Started using a Mac 2024.

    (Hold On for Dear Life)

ost-ing 2 days ago

Apple software has noticeably declined from my experience, both iOS and macOS. I find the lifecycle of Apple products to be offensively short, also.

If I buy a product and the hardware is good for 10 years (because I looked after it), I expect the software to also run just as well as when I purchased it - that is the case with Linux, why isn't it the case with macOS?

Every year the software upgrades invariably degrade system performance. Outrageous.

  • yuryk a day ago

    I personally hold Swift and SwiftUI responsible, as Apple has increasingly adopted them in its own products. Moreover, by introducing frameworks that are exclusive to Swift, the company effectively compels developers to use this rather mediocre language.

  • werdnapk a day ago

    I have a fully functional iPad mini for my kids that only supports iOS 12. I can barely install or use any software though because it's not supported on such an old OS.

  • mschuster91 2 days ago

    > I find the lifecycle of Apple products to be offensively short, also.

    Apple is miles ahead of Android when it comes to phones and tablets, most in the Android ecosystem is e-waste four or five years in, while Apple stuff can still be re-sold for actual money at that time assuming you didn't bust your screen.

    For laptops, Apple is so far ahead it can't even be described. Most Windows laptops physically break apart before macOS ceases to support any Apple laptop.

    Only thing we can maybe talk about is desktop PCs ever since the switch to M that basically made meaningful upgrades impossible, but eh, in my attic there's a 2009 Mac Pro still chugging along as my homelab server + gaming rig.

    • chadcmulligan 2 days ago

      I'm using a MacBook Pro 2016 for dev still works great, and its still better than every windows laptop available now. The touchpad itself is still superior - its crazy when you think about it. I know people on their 3rd or 4th windows laptop since I've been using mine. I tried a M4 recently and its battery life is fantastic, and its faster so I'll probably upgrade when this one dies, but it still works well.

      Edit: just did a google and it seems I can still sell it for about $600AUD, I don't know how anyone is buying a non apple lap top.

    • ost-ing 2 days ago

      The hardware is very good, it can absolutely last 10 years and is miles ahead of competition - which pains me even more that the software degrades. I will eventually install linux on my M1 but I shouldn’t have to.

    • TheDong 2 days ago

      > Apple is miles ahead of Android when it comes to phones and tablets, most in the Android ecosystem is e-waste four or five years in

      I have a very old android tablet (Nexus 7, 2013). I can install Linux on it and it works just fine. I can convert it into a full screen kiosk mode thing that displays photo albums, put it next to my tv as a song controller, etc etc.

      Older iPads no longer get updates, and I can't install linux on them. Apple is wildly behind a lot of other hardware in terms of software-support since I can install linux on a lot of other stuff. Apple devices turn into useless e-waste bricks, other devices can get a second life running linux.

      • mschuster91 a day ago

        > I have a very old android tablet (Nexus 7, 2013).

        Yeah, Nexus and being old, that's the thing. Everyone else other than Nexus, you gotta be lucky if you even get kernel sources and device trees that you can compile, but the code quality will usually be so rotten there's no hope of mainstreaming it to the Linux kernel.

        > Apple devices turn into useless e-waste bricks

        Only the iDevice lineup though. The Intel and M series devices all can be made to run Linux.

    • sofixa a day ago

      > Most Windows laptops physically break apart before macOS ceases to support any Apple laptop.

      If you buy the $199 Windows laptop that can barely run Windows, yes. Anything comparable in price to a MacBook? Not really.

      • mschuster91 21 hours ago

        I've yet to spot a full aluminum frame in any Windows laptop even matching Apple's price point. And I've yet to come across to a touchpad comparable in size, feel (Apple's is virtually flush with the case, most Windows touchpads are recessed, every one I came across was plastic while Apple's is glass) and gesture behavior either.

        > Anything comparable in price to a MacBook?

        The current MacBook Air is at ~1100€ here in Germany. That's not that expensive, particularly as even the entry models still blow away the competition for CPU.

    • brailsafe a day ago

      > Apple is miles ahead of Android when it comes to phones and tablets

      Eh, I had to use a variety of iPhones for work recently, don't remember which models, from probably the last ~7 years though, and they really felt limited and frustrating on the software side. My already years old Pixel 7 feels miles ahead, and so did my Pixel 4a, even with the worse hardware of the latter. They just feel more capable.

      I've been a mac guy for work for at least 15 years though, now with an M4 on Sequoia, and definitely won't be buying anything else (windows for most gaming), but Tahoe is not looking promising.

    • everdrive a day ago

      >Apple is miles ahead of Android

      And Mussolini wasn't nearly as bad as Hitler. A relative measure like this sets an artificially low bar. If these devices had replaceable screens and batteries, they would be good until the mobile standards stopped being supported.

      • mschuster91 a day ago

        > And Mussolini wasn't nearly as bad as Hitler.

        Damn, I haven't seen an instance of Godwin's law outside of political threads for years in the wild.

        > If these devices had replaceable screens and batteries, they would be good until the mobile standards stopped being supported.

        The problem is, even replaceable components don't matter when the OS support drops and the device becomes a bad netizen as a result. And no, there is no viable FOSS competition to Android and iOS, many including giants such as Mozilla learned that lesson the hard way.

        And that's before getting into the whole issue with BSPs, horrible code quality (good luck trying to get any SoC BSP upstreamed to u-boot or god forbid the Linux kernel), or the rapid evolution in mobile SoC performance.

bborud a day ago

I don't understand why Apple change things needlessly. What other purpose does it serve? How does this positively affect the bottom line? How does it improve life for Apple's users? Breaking basic interaction with windows purely because someone feels we should waste more screen real-estate on ornamentation by having bigger radius rounded corners is, for lack of a better word, stupid.

I'd like Apple to focus more on the things that actually matter to users. To fix bugs, to work on performance, to simplify things rather than complicate them. Focus on making it a better platform for doing work and less a playground for pointless fiddling with design and sloppiness.

  • gwbas1c a day ago

    Because if you don't make periodic cosmetic changes, people will think you're going out of business.

    It's why your favorite shoe company, that you buy from every 2-3 years when you wear out your favorite shoes, always has new styles and discontinues other styles. Converse is a great example.

    • 72deluxe 7 hours ago

      But when Apple released macOS Snow Leopard (widely held to be great), it announced 0 new features over Leopard, to much applause. It focused exclusively on fixing issues, and was better for it.

      Journalists will report whatever they get fed anyway (notice how they all talk gleefully over the wobbly new iPhone with a jutting-out camera bump when only a few years ago they talked gleefully about how flat the iPhone was, and then gleefully wrote about how their screen estate was invaded by a notch etc), so if Apple focused on fixing issues instead of short-attention-span apps (when was the last time you used "Image Playground"?) the media could report how committed to reliability and quality Apple is, gleefully.

    • autoexec 17 hours ago

      Generally I agree with you. My advice is that when you find a pair or shoes you like pick up at least 3 pair because by the time you need to replace them they'll be gone, but Converse isn't a great example of that because I can get a pair of Chucks which look/fit basically exactly like any pair I've ever had. It's actually kind of nice that Converse doesn't seem to play the same game as the tennis/running shoes I wear out.

      • gwbas1c 3 hours ago

        FYI: You can't get the cons that they sold about a decade ago. They changed the sole a bit so they are now "slippers" in order to avoid tariffs. (I also suspect there's a reason why they also sell "boots" too.)

        I do wish I heeded your advice. I bought some awesome Doc Marten boots/sneaker hybrids called "Boury" a few years ago, and they stopped making them. I can't find any in my size anywhere, like EBay. I walked all around Disney World with them in shorts, and they looked / felt awesome.

  • renegade-otter a day ago

    There has to be work done. Each sprint, new FEATURES must be completed.

    Features, people, FEATURES.

    • dillydogg a day ago

      We finally have processors in our pockets that can calculate the pretty lights and colors, so make them calculate, people!

      • bborud 10 hours ago

        I’d like to use that extra processing and efficiency to get longer battery life when the phone isn’t doing anything special, and to have better performing apps.

  • AnthonBerg 10 hours ago

    Managers are incentivized to do things to the real world that show up as "• Led implementation of [bla]" on their resume.

    It's more effort to do things that also make sense than only to produce the bullet point.

  • enaaem a day ago

    Good design should be timeless. For example, I like wat Leica did for their M serie cameras. At a certain point they decided that the design was done, and stopped messing around. For that you need leadership with good taste, because designers will always design.

    • bborud 10 hours ago

      Mostly, but they made mistakes too. Just look at the M5 vs the M6 vs the M7. The original M6 came out in 1984 and it is still the preferred model to this day in terms of film cameras. The M5 was too large and the M7 was too «electronic». People preferred the cameras that stuck closer to the original DNA. M6 cameras still fetch a pretty penny today. (So much so that Leica made a reissue a few years ago).

scarlehoff 2 days ago

I agree. This is the first time I regret updating macOs.

I hoped the .1 or .2 would fix things, but I'm still seeing glitches and even random freezes.

Microsoft is a disaster right now, but if the new intel processor can compete on battery life with mac I might go back to linux.

  • type0 a day ago

    > if the new intel processor can compete on battery life with mac I might go back to linux.

    Unfortunately Intel is cutting down their Linux involvement so I wouldn't have high hopes for it. Newer AMD laptops are probably on par with Intel on Linux now.

    • 72deluxe 7 hours ago

      It's a pity Lenovo isn't doing Linux support for their Snapdragon laptops. I'd switch.

codyb a day ago

When I read the welcome screen which includes the "hit features", all I remember was

"You can change your icons!" - What? Was that the big issue of my day? (Although, after I saw what they had done to them, it certainly loomed larger in my mind)

and

"Notification summaries that may be incorrect"

Miserable. Won't be upgrading the personal computer, am fast moving away from Apple as a whole, am telling others not to upgrade for as long as possible.

taminka 2 days ago

first time i used tahoe to help a friend w/ their laptop i legit thought it was like a knockoff macos or something, genuinely the ugliest macos version and even in the brief time that i've used it, i've encountered annoying bugs, QC at apple is dead lowkey

  • MarleTangible a day ago

    When the iOS 26 video player first leaked, I thought to myself, this has to be some kind of April 1st joke or a knock-off smear campaign or something. Nope, Apple did really half-assed their entire iOS to the ground.

jazzyjackson 2 days ago

> "I wish I didn’t.”

Can't you do a factory reset/recovery on Mac that lands on the version of macos shipped with the device? Then you could re-upgrade to the os you wanted, without trying it it seems Sequoia is still available in the app store

  • trollbridge 2 days ago

    Yes, you can install any version of macOS that was ever supported for your Mac. (It’s been a long time since they used System Enablers.) I’m so frustrated with Tahoe that I’m about to do this.

    • valleyer 2 days ago

      But you cannot, in general, migrate your data backwards. Apple's system apps will upgrade their data stores forward only. This isn't a problem if you are willing to e.g. re-download all of your (Mail.app) mail.

      • ValentineC 2 days ago

        > But you cannot, in general, migrate your data backwards. Apple's system apps will upgrade their data stores forward only.

        One huge reason to use third-party programs where possible. I dislike Apple's tight coupling of utilities as it is.

        • valleyer 2 days ago

          Yep, that's a great workaround, as long as you have third-party apps you're happy with.

      • xoa 2 days ago

        Yep, though you can mitigate it a little bit in various ways. For one weird example, I keep my main user Home folder on my NAS and mount it via iSCSI. Mostly that's for data integrity/size/backup purposes, but it does also make it free to snapshot before trying out a system upgrade. If I hate it I can rollback my entire set of user data along with the OS.

        Though amongst many other wonderful things lost in the mysts of Mac history I still desperately miss NetBoot/NetInstall and ultra easy clone/boot with something like CCC and TDM. It's so fucking miserable now in comparison to do reinstalls/testing/restores.

    • larsmaxfield 2 days ago

      Safari can't be upgraded past a certain point on older versions of macOS. That can cause certain websites to break. Minor but annoying.

      • MarleTangible a day ago

        While we're talking about Safari, it also developed this bug where picture-in-picture leaks memory like crazy where it sometimes consumes over 80GB of RAM, gets compressed to nothing but freezes the app to the point where I cannot type anything in the address bar.

      • zapzupnz 2 days ago

        That's where the WebKit previews come in handy, if you stick to a preview version you know matches a stable version.

layer8 2 days ago

At least on Windows 11 it’s possible to disable the rounded corners.

  • cestith 19 hours ago

    Only because those aren’t required for account centralization, advertising in the main OS menu, or AI “features”.

  • userbinator 12 hours ago

    It's also for a rather unbelievable reason --- if your GPU is not "powerful enough", you don't get rounded corners by default.

    You read that right: apparently rounded corners are so resource-intensive that if you don't have or disable GPU acceleration, they'll disappear.

    As much as I absolutely hate rounded corners in general, it's astonishing the apparent inefficiency with which MS have implemented them. Then again, mediocrity seems to be par for the course with their developers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28743687

leokennis a day ago

I'm not sure if it's pure nostalgia but I long back to the "Lion era" of OS X.

Apple had a HIG and third party developers used it. Different apps looked consistent: toolbar, sidebar etc.

Apps had borders. If there was too much content there were big blue scrollbars.

Buttons had borders. Windows had texture. You could find stuff.

I could go on forever. But the OS was simultaneously better visible to the eye, and less visible to the mind. Stuff worked.

testing22321 2 days ago

Thanks for the advise. I have not upgraded, and have no plan to.

ekropotin a day ago

I have maybe unpopular opinion, but Apple always been terrible in UX.

Just to give a few examples which annoys me the most:

- Finder. It just something else. After 10 years of using OSX I still can’t figure out how to use it efficiently for selecting the path - this experience is different every time, depending on the context where Finder was called from. I just don’t get.

- Lack of the true tiling window manager experience. Yes, there is Yabai, but it still suck due to the fact that you can’t have truly independent spaces each with individual layout and stack of windows.

- Infamous Magic Mouse’s charting port at the bottom.

I just wish I could have normal Linux natively on MB Pro.

  • dlandis a day ago

    Regarding the window manager and Finder; I had a better experience with the Windows equivalents way back on Windows 2k or even Windows 98 more than quarter century ago. Truly baffling.

    • 72deluxe 7 hours ago

      Yes, even the Windows 98 Explorer with IE integration (let's load a JPG of clouds to the left of the file detail pane) was better than modern equivalents. In Windows 10 (or was it 7?) they introduced a stupid column view in detail view that became focused with tab, so you couldn't just tab between the 3 places of directory list, file pane, address bar.

      They also added stupid "quick launch" areas with places nobody went, like "3D Objects", and reduced the menu area to a "grope and find a button" ribbon.

      The older Explorers were usable like File Manager on Windows 3.11 was: address bars that were usable from the keyboard and mouse (no subdivision buttons for parts of the path), acceptable launch speed, and no extra "features" that were unnecessary (like it ignoring "use same view for all folders" when your directory happens to have MP3s in it - it'll switch to showing rating / bitrate etc.)

      I believe all developers should use older versions of the software to see how usable they were in comparison to the modern "improvement".

balops a day ago

Windows vista was a good OS. Windows 7 was vista with a new skin. People were just really dumb and didn’t realise vista needed new drivers and when 7 came out all the drivers were written so stuff worked and for some reason it made people think 7 was good and vista was bad.

gkanai a day ago

I am still on Sequoia and dont plan to move to Tahoe.

ksec a day ago

> iOS 8+ did improve on iOS 7’s worst bits

Or iOS 8 and 9 did revert back a lot of iOS 7 changes.

I am not against changing UI, but it seems every time they are doing it they forgot all the lesson learned from previous attempt, and in such short period of time suggest they haven't learned anything.

danaris a day ago

Given the departure of Alan Dye and his replacement with someone (whose name I have temporarily forgotten) who comes from an actual UI design background, I am very optimistic that the next few iterations of macOS and iOS will actually start to improve the UI situation.

  • MarleTangible a day ago

    I still think Alan Dye was secretly fired. When you live in a bubble and everybody around you is propping you up, you think everything is fine and dandy, but users don't care about your or anybody's feelings.

    Dye didn't bring something that users didn't know they needed, he brought chaos to the entire ecosystem, and he's the only Apple executive folks are willing to talk garbage about.

    • danaris 19 hours ago

      I mean, it feels like it would make some sense, and honestly I'd love for it to be true—but everything I've heard, from people who know Apple much better than me and/or have inside sources, is that not only was he not secretly fired, his departure blindsided the C-suite.

      If Cook and his other senior staff had recognized the problems Dye was causing and wanted him gone, what possible motivation would they have to make his firing secret? How could it possibly serve them better to have it look like they were chumps?

mkzet a day ago

I regret dearly the upgrade as well. I've turned a beautiful $3500 hardware into a close to Windows Vista machine that frustrates me daily. Just looking at it kills my productivity instantly, I just use full screen for all my apps now.

ketzu a day ago

> Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to attract switchers.

Yes, because my apple hardware does not run properly with any other operating system. I would have switched to linux a while ago otherwise.

  • mcv a day ago

    I would love linux on Apple hardware. Lots of people would, I suspect.

    I guess Apple has realized that their hardware is so good that they don't have to worry about the software anymore.

j-krieger 2 days ago

I had to upgrade my iPhone to iOS 26 to setup my watch. I wish I had never done it. Nothing is where it's supposed to be from a UI perspective. Stuff breaks often. I can't use my contact search bar to search contacts. It only searches past calls. What the hell.

  • usefulcat 2 days ago

    I don't like all the changes either, but I just opened the contacts app and started typing a name and it showed me exactly what I expected--several of my contacts with the name I typed. iOS 26.2.

jader201 2 days ago

I was in the market for a new MBP (still on my 2015 MBP). After all of these articles and reports of how terrible Tahoe is, I’m holding off.

I’m hoping they’ll wake up and fix this with the next release, but I’m not super optimistic.

We’ll see.

  • acdha a day ago

    The M4 I bought last month shipped without Tahoe and hasn’t been updated. If you can get one which isn’t already upgraded, you can leave it on the better release as long as Sequoia was ever supported on that generation.

72deluxe 7 hours ago

I wonder if they'll show charts of how few people have upgraded in the same way they mocked Windows 10 adoption and Android versions a few years ago at the Keynote, to rapturous applause. I for one am staying on Sequoia as the OS looks like a children's toy on Tahoe.

caro_kann a day ago

When I saw the first liquid glass demo I decided not to upgrade both my phone and macbook for couple of years to come till they fix it.

pier25 2 days ago

Staying with Sequoia and iOS 18 for as long as I can.

btbuildem a day ago

The most annoying part about it is they won't admit the obvious colossal mistake and fix it.

I've blocked Apple's update servers via /etc/hosts so this monstrous thing doesn't sneak onto my machine in the middle of the night, still happily on Sequoia.

gherkinnn a day ago

Tahoe is a bit shit, yes. But I was there for both Vista and Windows 8 and they were both utterly unusable.

Vista ate every bit of RAM it could find, had severe driver issues and riddled with instabilities. It would not run on half the hardware at the time. I faintly remember a DX10 shitshow as well. And 8 hopelessly tried to apply Metro to the desktop and added a third (or was it forth?) settings panel. Also killed the Start menu.

  • MarleTangible a day ago

    Just to be playful, Tahoe killed the launchpad and brought us the random size rounded corner madness.

jwr a day ago

Tahoe actually harms their hardware sales. I would normally upgrade to the latest MacBook Pro as soon as they become available, but I know that the next M5 generation will come with Tahoe installed and I intend to keep my current machine for as long as I can…

  • gherkinnn a day ago

    The M1 hurt their future hardware sales, as now, 5 years later, it remains a viable machine. The M1 MacBook Air has become a bit of a meme.

  • grliga 20 hours ago

    similar here, i bought refurb m3 mbp last nov just to get pre-tahoe

weaksauce 2 days ago

though use linux is in a great state. tahoe and windows are really bad right now and i don't regret moving to linux even a little bit.

dont__panic 2 days ago

Unfortunately for Apple, Linux has not rotted the same way that macOS has. Will Linux win the desktop wars through attrition because it won't suffer the same enshittification as for-profit software?

If it wasn't for Apple Silicon and its stellar impact on battery life, I'd be gone. iOS 26 might make it happen anyway!

neonmagenta 2 days ago

oof. i'll be holding off after seeing all this. already have to deal with adobe's bad updates

cyri a day ago

same here. still running on the previous version on all devices. Gonna sit this out ...

bluescrn a day ago

> Tahoe is a macOS mis-step on par with Windows 8 or Windows Vista

Not even close.

It's taken a few steps in the wrong direction, but nothing compaered to the user-hostility of Win8 (attempting to move users from 'real Windows' into locked-down dumbed-down touch-centric mobile-like app store hell), let alone Win11 (creating an e-waste mountain, then pushing AI slop into everything)

ramijames a day ago

The worst part is the audiocore substack that is glitching. I waited to major subversions to upgrade and still got bit. I hate this.

  • dunham a day ago

    Yeah, for me with a USB headset, the audio will go noisy about two minutes into a video / podcast. It clears up if I restart and doesn't happen when playing to the internal speakers.

kaashif 2 days ago

I switched from Windows 11 to macOS after a disastrous upgrade experience and drastic downgrade in performance on my Windows laptop.

I mean Windows 10 wasn't great but I got used to the taskbar searching the web somehow and the dual config menus everywhere and so on. But 11 was just terrible.

macOS has its pain points but man oh man what a disaster Windows is.

I have had Linux on my personal desktop and laptop forever so that hasn't been an issue, only used Windows for work.

CGMthrowaway 2 days ago

>Tahoe is a macOS mis-step on par with Windows 8 or Windows Vista.

Are you just saying that because it has new glassy windows and is a resource hog? What is that different about Tahoe vs Sequoia?

  • TuxSH a day ago

    Not OP, but there are plenty of minor annoyances (I had the "pleasure" of upgrading my work laptop to Tahoe) :

    - Apple Music requires one more click to pop the multiplayer, UI is worse and the click hitbox for the progress seek bar is too small

    - Volume +/- now acts like a notification (top-right corner of screen and clickable). Horrible design decision (gets in the way of browser tabs)

    - The "A > B > C" folder thingy at the bottom of Finder windows is gone, and the tabs' styling looks unsettling

    - Weather (and Stocks, to a lesser degree) looks worse, lots of space wasted

bitfilped 2 days ago

I hope so, Tahoe seems particularly bad, but the downhill slide has been happening for several releases.

mschuster91 2 days ago

> Tahoe is a macOS mis-step on par with Windows 8 or Windows Vista.

Other than that weird resize thing written about here (which I didn't notice, thanks SizeUp for providing me with hotkeys remarkably similar to Windows) - why? Vista and 8 were immediately obvious changes in the UI, but in general it still looks and feels just like macOS has for well over a decade now.

New icons, new fonts, but... that's it?

Oh and HyperSwitch for some reason can't switch to Finder windows any more, but that's probably because HyperSwitch hasn't seen an upgrade in years...