The criticism here is a bit overblown. What happened is: on recent iOS versions, when you tap a video in Safari to show the controls it slightly dims the video until the controls hide. In the latest macOS release, macOS Safari has adopted this behavior.
The argument apparently being that any change at all, if it was first made on iOS, must inherently be a sign that the two platforms are merging. Now, I don't really have an opinion about this behavior (I imagine it makes it easier for the controls to always be legible, regardless of what the video content looks like?), but I'd assume that any logic that holds for it being a good idea when applied on iOS would apply just as well on macOS. It doesn't have to be a sign that they're merging, just that similar reasons to make a change can exist in both places.
As such it seems like a particularly strange adjustment to hang a "macOS is turning into iOS" rant on. Particularly when there's things like "iPadOS just got macOS-style windowing and menu bars!" sitting right there.
> The argument apparently being that any change at all, if it was first made on iOS, must inherently be a sign that the two platforms are merging
You know, it's frustrating when people just flippantly assume that someone who has been a professional Mac developer for 19 years could be so stupid. I'm not stupid.
Did you notice when I said in the blog post, "as we've seen repeatedly [emphasis added] since then" and "Apple is continuing [emphasis added] to merge iOS and macOS"? Also when I said, referring to the embedded video, "This rhetorical question was presumably in response to widespread criticism." So the impression that Apple was merging iOS and macOS was already out there years ago.
My criticism should be understood in the context, which is that Apple has been merging iOS and macOS for years, in many different ways, and this is just the latest example. I couldn't even enumerate all of the examples, because there have been so many. So no, the argument does not hang on this one example. It's an argument I've been making since at least Mac OS X Lion, 14 years ago.
I don't expect you to know my full history. However, I expect comments to follow the HN guidelines, which say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
> I'd assume that any logic that holds for it being a good idea when applied on iOS would apply just as well on macOS.
Why would you assume this? The two platforms are very different in physical characteristics.
This is a principal objection to merging the platforms, especially merging the user interfaces. What makes sense for a tiny touch screen doesn't necessarily make sense for a much larger screen with keyboard and mouse input.
If you want to talk about steelmanning arguments, have you considered that I might also be unconvinced by prior examples? And thus dismissed those off-hand references as largely irrelevant to the main content of your post?
Jeff, they're a pair of closely-related operating systems that share a lot of common subsystems, and always have been. I don't want to say they'll never unify them more closely, but that's not something they seem to me to be doing. If you've been saying they've been merging them for 14 years, then they're really not making much progress on that.
> Why would you assume this? The two platforms are very different in physical characteristics.
Are you saying that the make-controls-more-visible argument doesn't apply? Because although I just threw that one out there without much thought, it really does seem reasonable on any device to me.
> have you considered that I might also be unconvinced by prior examples
Yes. But then you're admitting that there are prior examples, not just this latest example.
> And thus dismissed those off-hand references as largely irrelevant to the main content of your post?
My opinions in the post, whether you agree with them or not, were indeed largely irrelevant to main content, which was highlighting the change of behavior.
You could have chosen to ignore those opinions, if you believe they were largely irrelevant. You chose not only to address my opinions but to turn them into a straw man. (Note that the HN guidelines also say, "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.") You don't have to agree with my opinions, but again, my opinions are part of a larger context, which you now acknoweldge. My opinions did not arise out of the blue with the video controls change.
> Yes. But then you're admitting that there are prior examples, not just this latest example.
...I'm admitting that people making this argument have suggested there were things that supported it before. Acknowledging that people have made prior claims I disagree with doesn't seem relevant?
> You could have chosen to ignore those opinions, if you believe they were largely irrelevant.
It was your opening paragraph that talked about merging the OSes. There's a reason I responded to it by assuming you thought the rest of your post supported your opening statement.
If you'd like, we really could just talk about whether the change to the video player behavior is a reasonable thing to apply to both platforms. I think it probably is, on balance, for the aforementioned control-visibility reasons. You?
(Though, sadly, I have to go pick up a child from school, so the rapid back-and-forth will have to cease for a bit.)
> I'm admitting that people making this argument have suggested there were things that supported it before. That doesn't mean I agree with them, which you seem to be implying there?
No, I'm not implying that. Whichever side of the controversy you stand on, apparently the opposite side from me, you have to admit, and seemingly are admitting, that many people have been arguing for years that iOS and macOS are merging.
My point is that if you're trying to interpret my views, you can't dismiss the prior examples as irrelevant. You may think my views are false, but my views are nonetheless based on the prior examples. You initially invented a straw man view out of thin air that I do not believe myself: "The argument apparently being that..."
> It was your opening paragraph that talked about merging the OSes. There's a reason I responded to it by assuming you thought the rest of your post supported your opening statement.
I think you misunderstood the purpose of the post, which was simply to highlight the latest abomination, not to make a larger argument.
A 391 word blog post is almost never going to be a comprehensive argument for anything. So if you're thinking "That's your argument???" well no, of course it's not. I don't have the time or desire to make every little blog post into a book-length treatise just so that random internet commenters don't assume I'm an idiot. (Some probably would anyway, so it would be wasted effort.)
> If you'd like, we really could just talk about whether the change to the video player behavior is a reasonable thing to apply to both platforms. I think it probably is, on balance, for the aforementioned control-visibility reasons. You?
I've never seen an case where the visibility/legibility of the controls were a problem. Do you have any examples?
The irony is that Tahoe has made many things on macOS less legibile, which of course is a matter of great public controversy now.
I'm willing to rephrase it down to "the argument being that a change made on iOS later coming to macOS supports the idea that the platforms are merging", though that feels like a distinction without a difference to me.
> A 391 word blog post is almost never going to be a comprehensive argument for anything. So if you're thinking "That's your argument???" well no, of course it's not.
Putting aside my disagreement with the larger argument.... If you want people who see your posts from the HN frontpage to go do independent research about the history of your ideas on the topic before responding, you're going to be left a frustrated and unhappy person. Really, you're lucky when people are replying to the actual content of your post rather than just the title and other people's comments. :-D
> I've never seen an case where the visibility/legibility of the controls were a problem. Do you have any examples?
Just looking at your comparison screenshots in your post, my focus is drawn to the control-icons much better in the Tahoe one. In the Sequoia screenshot the button-outlines draw more of my focus because of how they stand out, and that actually makes me take longer to parse what their contents are. The Tahoe version thus feels easier to quickly use to me.
This might be a personal thing to do with how our respective brains process visual information, but I think the Tahoe one is a genuine usability improvement.
That seems like a really strange way of putting it. What does your willingness have to do with it? I, the article author, am right here. Thus, you can just ask me what I meant. To insist on putting words in my mouth that I don't believe would be absurd, especially when it's directly to my face.
> the argument being that a change made on iOS later coming to macOS supports the idea that the platforms are merging
This incorrectly assumes that an argument was being made. I already said: "I think you misunderstood the purpose of the post, which was simply to highlight the latest abomination, not to make a larger argument."
In fact, the second paragraph of the blog post, immediately after the embedded video, already takes for granted that Apple is merging iOS and macOS: "this denial [No.] did not age well."
> If you want people who see your posts from the HN frontpage...
Well, I didn't submit my post to HN. I'm not sure I wanted it to be on the front page.
> to go do independent research about the history of your ideas on the topic before responding
I already addressed this earlier in the thread: "I don't expect you to know my full history. However, I expect comments to follow the HN guidelines".
> Really, you're lucky when people are replying to the actual content of your post rather than just the title and other people's comments.
I replied to you. What other people write in their comments is a separate matter. You're responsible for the content of your own comments about my article.
> Just looking at your comparison screenshots in your post, my focus is drawn to the control-icons much better in the Tahoe one.
It's important to note, however, that the controls themselves are brighter on Tahoe, independent of the background. Try cutting and pasting the controls from the Tahoe screenshot onto the Sequoia screenshot. You don't have to darken the video in order to achieve brighter controls.
The other issue, I would say the main issue, is that the controls remain on top of the video for several seconds after you're done manipulating them. So you keep having a darkened video for several seconds every time you adjust something, which is a degraded viewing experience. This happens even with play/pause.
I recently went down a rabbit hole on how researchers make mice depressed so they can test antidepressants on them. The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's environment in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable. It's a standard protocol. We know that this causes depression.
The culture of products not under the control of the customer does the same thing. A culture that sees this as normal is a depressed culture.
To test whether the mice are depressed, researchers give them something rewarding that requires a little effort to get (e.g., sugary water vs. plain water).
The depressed mice give up. They are apathetic.
I imagine the mice believe that there is no way to change things. That might be true for the mice but it's not true for us.
Agreed. If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered. Even if there are more things to tweak/fix (which is not necessarily true these days), there IS probably a way to do it.
On MacOS, I more often have to give up and live with the annoyances.
Hardware is the the big exception. None of my PCs have had nearly as good build quality or battery life (on Linux, at least) as a Macbook. Maybe I should try a Framework.
> If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered
There are also more footguns and rabbit holes. Overall, I am about as happy with Linux than with macOS (I use both daily), but I would not say that one is really more empowering than the other.
I like tinkering with KDE but it’s full of inconsistencies and instability in a way than even the worst Finder I’ve used was not (e.g. the whole desktop freezing when adding a widget to the desktop with a brand new install). Never mind the Russian roulette that is updating nVidia’s drivers.
On the other hand on macOS it’s easier to get to things that are actually productive.
> The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's environment in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable.
For example like will my wifi work today. Will my laptop still have any battery when I open it. Is today the day I surprise boot to tty and have to figure out what changed before I can start working.
I'll stick with the year-to-year unpredictability of apple over the day-to-day unpredictability of linux.
I dunno about that. Bleeding edge distros like Arch are infamous for breaking in random ways for those updating without paying attention and even distros that are considered more stable like Fedora and Ubuntu can from time to time break drivers or random smaller things. Definitely a YMMV sort of thing.
What are we going to do, then? Stop updating the OS and accumulate security issues? Stop doing anything that might possible touch an obscure config file somewhere in the bowels of the OS? It’s just unrealistic. "Do not update" cannot be a solution, it’s worse than the problem it is supposed to solve.
Apple internally must be a constant battle between those who want to unify iOS and macOS and those who understand they’re different systems with different purposes, and need different treatment.
Craig Federighi was a strong proponent of the latter camp but maybe he’s just getting on in years. Goes to show that key people being good and caring a lot can be all that stops things from backsliding.
So the battle for macOS is being slowly lost. Lucky we have KDE.
If it keeps going this way my next laptop won’t have that fruit logo. And that is a real shame.
I remember many years ago (Snow Leopard) I liked Apple's OS enough to build a hackintosh, because the hardware wasn't great (subjective opinion).
Now I like the hardware enough, but have been gradually annoyed enough with the OS that I'd much rather be running Linux. At least I can just turn off most of the "modern" features, but I'm in that "keeping an eye out for potential alternatives" phase.
Mojave was the last macOS version that had any features I cared about. Now each release is about how bad did they trash the macOS UI. Switching to Linux has been great.
I’d love to switch to Linux but it seems impossible as someone who relies on macOS / logic for music production. I’m in too deep and feel like the floor is coming out from under me with all these insane changes and the direction Apple is taking
I know they’re different workflows entirely, but you could start dabbling with Bitwig, which is really good and runs on both macOS and Linux, then eventually switch when you feel like you’re out of the workflow hole
But to be honest, I’m still using Bitwig on a Mac for my studio despite having switched everywhere else to Linux
Actually lately iPadOS is the one getting most of its features from macOS. iPadOS 26 introduced a menu bar, just like macOS, and a new windows manager that's just the same as macOS.
Those are more likely to continue working as they mostly work within the lines defined by the apple developer spec. The most likely workflows to break are those of programmers, as they require frequent execution of untrusted binaries and access to the system directories in some cases
I think this change makes sense on both platforms. If you're gonna use it as an example of why merging the platforms is bad, I think you just strengthen the opposite argument.
I’ve been on Mac for about 30 years. I’m planning my switch to Linux (probably KDE) and GrapheneOS. I can’t keep giving so much money to a company that clearly doesn’t have my interests in mind.
So much of the ecosystem doesn’t “just work” anymore and now instead of fixing those issues, they are actively working to make my computing experience worse. I’ve hade enough.
The more I investigate the current state of Linux desktops, the more excited I get. It seems like Linux is actually good for general use now, and I’ll have so many more options to make my technology fit me instead of the other way around.
I want to be excited about Linux, but as a long time Mac user (started in the 90s) I don't feel like there's a desktop environment for me. I've used GNOME and KDE on and off for years with some Cinnamon, elementary/Pantheon, and minimalist WM thrown in for good measure, and none of them cut it. The big DEs are much closer to Windows or mobile operating systems than anything else.
And that doesn't even get into the hardware situation, where the number of laptops with long battery life and everything working without quirks can seemingly be counted on one hand.
> want to be excited about Linux, but as a long time Mac user (started in the 90s) I don't feel like there's a desktop environment for me.
I can confirm that there is nothing that comes close. Gnome is an abomination even if it might be appealing on the surface. KDE is still very rough around the edges, despite making a lot of progress with each version. I used XFCE for a long time because it can be tweaked to a reasonably useable state and it is light on resources. KDE can be occasionally dog slow on a $12k workstation with a 64-core Threadripper pro and 256 GB of RAM for a reason I cannot imagine. Using my Mac Studio is a much better experience overall.
Try to use GNOME to drive a variable refresh rate display challenge (impossible).
Jabs aside, GNOME is pretty nice compared to where it used to be. Everything still takes a few iterations of touching, but not as many as it used to. Some things are frustratingly unsolvable (see: advanced monitor features), but at least it is a full replacement for Windows on the same hardware. Oh, and contemporary linux distress have audio drivers that appear to work out of the box without having to build the kernel.
When it comes to laptops: it'd be great if anyone made something that competes with a MacBook. It's been a long time. At this point I can only assume there is an economic reason rather than a technical one that Windows and Linux laptops are so bad.
You may want to give Omarchy a try. Not exactly Windows or Mac, but last time I checked myself 95 to 99% of my time on computer is spending inside a browser I think a lot of the old Desktop environment habits no longer matter as much.
It's not a matter of Linux conforming to the way you use a computer, it is rather you who have adapted to the most viable computing experience which Linux offers, which is being inside the browser all the time. You are serving the computer, instead of the computer serving you.
Cinnamon gets a lot right and has some Mac-like aspects, like how the UI in its apps are laid out, but as a whole it's more comparable to Windows with its taskbar, windowing model, no global menubar, and Control-based key shortcuts among other things.
I’m very happy with KDE Plasma. Just switched from a MacBook Pro to a Framework.
I’m shocked at how much “just works” like a Mac. It wasn’t like this even a short amount of time ago.
I’m really happy with the hardware too and all it needs is more battery life. Nothing an external battery doesn’t solve (and the framework is a lighter machine so the difference is moot).
Everything works. Fingerprint reader authenticating commercial apps like 1Password, graphics drivers are a part of the kernel and I’m enjoying Windows games on Steam, firmware gets updates from the OS instead of messing around in the BIOS like on Windows, KDE Connect is like AirDrop for Linux, it’s literally a better experience than Windows and Mac if you ask me.
I don’t mind that KDE resembles Windows, I personally think it’s a lot like Windows but without the dumbassery. And of course you can theme it and change settings to have it act more like a Mac (or go with Gnome).
For me it’s more than a little inconvenience. Switching to Linux represents turning my ability to be productive on a computer totally upside down, tossing out decades of flow building and muscle memory.
As for battery life, it being crappy makes me wonder why I’m even bothering with laptops at all. More than half of their selling point is being portable, which needing to be tethered frequently heavily impinges upon. The sacrifices that come with the portable form factor just aren’t worth it for 3-5h life with real world usage.
Last I touched a Linux desktop was 10+ years ago and you had to muck about with FontConfig and third-party config packages to even come close to Windows or macOS type rendering. Has this seen significant improvement?
I uninstalled my Bazzite partition because of the text. Initial searches showed similar frustrations on reddit without obvious and immediate fixes, so I decided to cut my losses and go back to using Windows full time instead of spending hours or days trying to get the rendering to an acceptable level.
This was my experience when trying to get fonts to look good in Ubuntu about a year ago. FontConfig, Gnome and of course some individual apps like browsers all have their own little settings for font rendering that interact in weird and not so wonderful ways.
I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox and realized that kerning is completely broken. I can only assume that it's because of some setting that I changed but I'd rather reinstall the whole machine than go on a wild goose chase...
Don't quote me, but if I recall some number of years ago there were some font shaping/AA patents that expired and so good font rendering comes out of the box in most cases these days. Used to be only Ubuntu shipped like that.
Can't go to previous track when "autoplay" is enabled in Apple Music. Clearly an intentional choice. Works on iPhone. But on Mac it doesn't "just work". Syncing my music library with Apple Music doesn't "just work" anymore either. Some albums are visible, but are greyed out and can't be played. Time Machine hasn't "just worked" in several years - would corrupt my backups and have to re-create from scratch every week or so, I've switched to Carbon Copy Cloner. Non high-DPI displays don't "just work" anymore. The forward button in Finder, the icons in Music settings, all squished horizontally like it's someone's first time adding clipart to a Power Point. Safari stopped "just working" with 26.0, now opening a new tab or typing into the search bar randomly presents me with a 1-5s delay - or sometimes the whole thing hangs. I could go on, I don't dare upgrade to Tahoe - it's death by a thousand cuts.
Edit: LOL, how could I forget Siri. I don't use it often - generally only in the car to switch music - but it's terrible at understanding what song/album I'm asking for. Tried repeatedly to get it to play the "Mob Song" from Beauty and the Beast and I got some death metal instead. Completely useless.
Autocomplete on iOS is a shit show. It regularly autocompletes non-grammatical text, which is unforgivable in 2025 when we have AI that can write coherent sonnets and code. Dictation is still at the same level it was at 10 years ago - complete shit. Carplay sometimes randomly starts playing music when I get in the car, other times it doesn't. My Apple Watch regularly can't find my heart rate, for long time periods. The HomePod app and Watch display incorrect information about what's playing on HomePods about 50% of the time. There's no way to filter text spam. The Messages app on MacOS doesn't let you filter by known senders. If you delete a text thread on iOS, it doesn't delete it on MacOS, so my desktop messages are cluttered with fucking donation requests from PACs. Try to do anything with Siri, even simple things like playing a song. It still makes bizarre mistakes. It can't answer basic questions about my calendar.
The list is endless, really. Everything looks "delightful" as fuck. Mac and iOS fonts, colors and text padding are immaculate, so it gives the impression of solidity and competence that isn't really there. A lot of things "mostly work" but aren't reliable, so I can't rely on them. They can list them as "features" but if I can't rely on them, I can't use them, because I don't want to deal with constant frustration. They act like all their systems are this one integrated whole that works well together, but it doesn't.
I don't think that everything will "just work" on Linux, but at least I won't be paying a premium for the privilege of having my needs as a disabled person ignored. I'll be able to customize my experience to meet my basic accessibility needs without fighting against a company that seems to hate me.
> Autocomplete on iOS is a shit show. It regularly autocompletes non-grammatical text
Android has the same issue with Google's keyboard, which will go back and change things you've typed correctly to be obviously wrong for no clear reason. I swear it used to work much better.
At least on Android alternative keyboards are easier to use. I have no idea how they both have such an awful implementation of it.
> Carplay sometimes randomly starts playing music when I get in the car, other times it doesn't.
Android Auto does the same thing for me, despite having auto-play disabled. One possible explanation I've seen online is that some infotainment systems send an unsolicited "play" signal to your device. For Android that seems to mean it will send "play" to the most recently used app that supports audio playback.
Siri has always been a shitshow for sure. I basically use it for timers and even that it fucks up a non-negligible number of times. For the few experiences I've had with it, at least Google assistant is a lot more reliable.
I also noticed worsened reliability in the heart rate tracking of my Apple Watch in recent workouts. It must have happened in one of the recent updates because it was fine previously. I could say it's programmed obsolescence but I'm sure I would be accused of conspiracy theory. But it is hard to interpret the failing reliability otherwise when it suspiciously happens after updates and around new hardware release.
In any case, I don't think the Apple Watch is a very good product for the price, so whatever, the next watch will be focused on sports and the competition has made great alternatives.
I completely share the sentiment that everything looks good but doesn't work that well in practice. There are so many random issues that make the hardware prices very unpalatable.
Ah well, everything changes, not always for the better. The pain is in transitioning to something else, but that's something that is very true for most tech related things since we can't ever agree on proper standardisation.
It’s comical how you can copy and paste these same comments anytime there’s been a new macOS for probably the last 10 or so years. Hell maybe longer.
Every. Single. Year. “Apple is taking away my laptop I’m switching to Linux.”
I’m grateful to you all though — I think your constant griping every year probably does at least apply some pressure on Apple to focus on keeping macOS good at what it does: provide a pleasant but still powerful desktop experience for those who just want to do stuff and not spend hours under the hood making some Linux flavor usable.
Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS. That definitely makes it a less desirable desktop OS.
Today when you generate a PDF from you own content (from Apple Notes app) you are asked about opening links you click on. I thought that they were surely joking and there would be a way to disable that behavior.
But no, this is intended and there is no way to disable that.
It makes the Preview app a pain in the ass as a PDF reader, which means you have to replace it and begs the question of even using Apple software in the first place.
The answer is that there are fewer and fewer reasons. I mean if you are OK feeling like a child biking around on a cycle with training wheels while an overbearing parent keeps nagging you, it might be for you. Otherwise, the experience is really more like a prison/walled garden and the funny thing is that you paid for it !
> Today when you generate a PDF from you own content (from Apple Notes app) you are asked about opening links you click on.
Or they don't have any usability studies. A hard regression in efficiency in many places.
E.g. Safari in iOS 26 forces you to do 50% more button presses. E.g. if you want to close a tab, you need to press one button more these days. Also one button press more to see the current tabs. These are likely the most used scenarios when you use the browser and they add one button press more?
> I mean if you are OK feeling like a child biking around on a cycle with training wheels while an overbearing parent keeps nagging you, it might be for you.
That's exactly why I encouraged my parents to get iPhones.
last time i tried to set up a new android phone. the built in phone app asked me permissions to use the built in contacts app.
people complain if the apps don't all have fine grained permissions. and then complain when they have to agree to stuff all the time. and then complain they got "hacked". damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Implementation is the issue. They often forget your settings between updates. This is particularly bad on MacOS. MacOS updates and app updates both require me to re-grant permissions for the nth time! Then there's the separate issue of must-have apps requesting permissions they have no business asking for and refusing to function correctly without, and other must-have apps abusing their access for purposes not strictly limited to in-app functionality.
> Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS.
This is certainly happening. However, as long as you can still install your preferred browser with its own rendering engine or a different PDF reader, the situation isn't so bad.
Which makes it even more important for Google to take accessibility seriously so that disabled people aren't stuck being the only ones that have a hard time switching from the play pin.
> Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS. That definitely makes it a less desirable desktop OS.
I mean this has been the conversation since the early days of Mac OS. I didn't get back to Mac until Snow Leopard but I remember the uproar over removing Java in 10.7
I don't think I've ever appreciated a video player putting gradients above and below the controls or darkening the entire video when the controls are active. It's extremely annoying when you're trying to scrub through a video and read a particular bit of text. Why do UI designers from Apple to YouTube to Amazon think this is necessary?
I’ve seen this in a ton of video players. This is an especially bad example. But it’s so common for the entire top third of the screen to be blurred or darkened just to display a single small UI element in a corner. Stupid design.
The reason it’s especially stupid for Apple is because half of their new design system is about making content front & center.
Apple also built a custom video element for web they use for their events. See the Apple Events page[0] and click "Watch the event". It also seems to dim the video when mousing over. I kinda like the design, but the animations seem a tad bit slow.
I like how it looks. It's nice to have a fairly-minor shake-up in the aesthetics every now and then, and it makes everything feel a bit fresh and new. And I do sincerely find it fairly minor -- things got a bit rounder and glossier, and there's a few bits of iOS that have some fairly cute glass-distortion effects, and some apps got some not-huge UI redesigns.
Overall, particularly on my phone, it's just giving me an occasional pleasant burst of "ooh, shiny". On my laptop, I admittedly barely notice anything has changed.
(I don't personally have any legibility issues with it, though I'm willing to believe that's down to individual usage patterns.)
1) Aesthetically, I think it's pretty. That's a subjective opinion, though.
2) I vastly prefer it displaying buttons as buttons, instead of as just undifferentiated text on a screen. In the past I've sometimes been frustrated that an app didn't have a feature I wanted, only to learn that it actually had that feature, hidden behind what I'd assumed was just a text label but was actually a button. This is an enormous freaking improvement.
3) I very much prefer the new UI patterns in other places. For example, when highlighting text on iOS, the old UI gives a horizontally scrolling list of options with arrow keys to rotate through them. The new UI replaces that with a ">" More button that pops up a vertical list of all available actions. Again, this is an enormous freaking improvement.
I like the appearance of Liquid Glass, but that could go either way. I think the actual UI implementation behind the graphics is so much better than before.
This is one of the main reasons why I left the Macintosh ecosystem several years ago. Apple is, has been, transitioning from a computer company to a computing appliance company for many years now, and I just couldn't take it any longer. I have happily been a full time Linux user since then.
Tahoe seems to be so full of straws to break the camel's back for so many macOS users who have been slowly annoyed by the grind of version ~10.10 to 15.7
I updated a couple of days ago. All the new transparency and blur they've added looks really bad. But then I turned on "Reduce transparency" and it's fine. There's nothing else new or different.
I read a few of the stories on HN about it and was braced for a bad experience. But honestly - a few icons changing (don't care); the border radius of finder, the only Apple app I use much, changing (don't care).
I'm glad you didn't find your straw in this version of macOS. Your lack of "caring" -as you put it- probably smooths a lot of rough edges that might be important to others.
The fact that they synced up the version numbers (macOS 26, iPadOS 26, iOS 26) is a signal that they intend to unify all OSes.
My experience with iOS 26 + liquid glass (ew) on my phone has been terrible. Feels like a step backward. I am dreading upgrading my macbook bc I love it the way it is. Regrettable.
The criticism here is a bit overblown. What happened is: on recent iOS versions, when you tap a video in Safari to show the controls it slightly dims the video until the controls hide. In the latest macOS release, macOS Safari has adopted this behavior.
The argument apparently being that any change at all, if it was first made on iOS, must inherently be a sign that the two platforms are merging. Now, I don't really have an opinion about this behavior (I imagine it makes it easier for the controls to always be legible, regardless of what the video content looks like?), but I'd assume that any logic that holds for it being a good idea when applied on iOS would apply just as well on macOS. It doesn't have to be a sign that they're merging, just that similar reasons to make a change can exist in both places.
As such it seems like a particularly strange adjustment to hang a "macOS is turning into iOS" rant on. Particularly when there's things like "iPadOS just got macOS-style windowing and menu bars!" sitting right there.
> The argument apparently being that any change at all, if it was first made on iOS, must inherently be a sign that the two platforms are merging
You know, it's frustrating when people just flippantly assume that someone who has been a professional Mac developer for 19 years could be so stupid. I'm not stupid.
Did you notice when I said in the blog post, "as we've seen repeatedly [emphasis added] since then" and "Apple is continuing [emphasis added] to merge iOS and macOS"? Also when I said, referring to the embedded video, "This rhetorical question was presumably in response to widespread criticism." So the impression that Apple was merging iOS and macOS was already out there years ago.
My criticism should be understood in the context, which is that Apple has been merging iOS and macOS for years, in many different ways, and this is just the latest example. I couldn't even enumerate all of the examples, because there have been so many. So no, the argument does not hang on this one example. It's an argument I've been making since at least Mac OS X Lion, 14 years ago.
I don't expect you to know my full history. However, I expect comments to follow the HN guidelines, which say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
> I'd assume that any logic that holds for it being a good idea when applied on iOS would apply just as well on macOS.
Why would you assume this? The two platforms are very different in physical characteristics.
This is a principal objection to merging the platforms, especially merging the user interfaces. What makes sense for a tiny touch screen doesn't necessarily make sense for a much larger screen with keyboard and mouse input.
If you want to talk about steelmanning arguments, have you considered that I might also be unconvinced by prior examples? And thus dismissed those off-hand references as largely irrelevant to the main content of your post?
Jeff, they're a pair of closely-related operating systems that share a lot of common subsystems, and always have been. I don't want to say they'll never unify them more closely, but that's not something they seem to me to be doing. If you've been saying they've been merging them for 14 years, then they're really not making much progress on that.
> Why would you assume this? The two platforms are very different in physical characteristics.
Are you saying that the make-controls-more-visible argument doesn't apply? Because although I just threw that one out there without much thought, it really does seem reasonable on any device to me.
> have you considered that I might also be unconvinced by prior examples
Yes. But then you're admitting that there are prior examples, not just this latest example.
> And thus dismissed those off-hand references as largely irrelevant to the main content of your post?
My opinions in the post, whether you agree with them or not, were indeed largely irrelevant to main content, which was highlighting the change of behavior.
You could have chosen to ignore those opinions, if you believe they were largely irrelevant. You chose not only to address my opinions but to turn them into a straw man. (Note that the HN guidelines also say, "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.") You don't have to agree with my opinions, but again, my opinions are part of a larger context, which you now acknoweldge. My opinions did not arise out of the blue with the video controls change.
> Yes. But then you're admitting that there are prior examples, not just this latest example.
...I'm admitting that people making this argument have suggested there were things that supported it before. Acknowledging that people have made prior claims I disagree with doesn't seem relevant?
> You could have chosen to ignore those opinions, if you believe they were largely irrelevant.
It was your opening paragraph that talked about merging the OSes. There's a reason I responded to it by assuming you thought the rest of your post supported your opening statement.
If you'd like, we really could just talk about whether the change to the video player behavior is a reasonable thing to apply to both platforms. I think it probably is, on balance, for the aforementioned control-visibility reasons. You?
(Though, sadly, I have to go pick up a child from school, so the rapid back-and-forth will have to cease for a bit.)
> I'm admitting that people making this argument have suggested there were things that supported it before. That doesn't mean I agree with them, which you seem to be implying there?
No, I'm not implying that. Whichever side of the controversy you stand on, apparently the opposite side from me, you have to admit, and seemingly are admitting, that many people have been arguing for years that iOS and macOS are merging.
My point is that if you're trying to interpret my views, you can't dismiss the prior examples as irrelevant. You may think my views are false, but my views are nonetheless based on the prior examples. You initially invented a straw man view out of thin air that I do not believe myself: "The argument apparently being that..."
> It was your opening paragraph that talked about merging the OSes. There's a reason I responded to it by assuming you thought the rest of your post supported your opening statement.
I think you misunderstood the purpose of the post, which was simply to highlight the latest abomination, not to make a larger argument.
A 391 word blog post is almost never going to be a comprehensive argument for anything. So if you're thinking "That's your argument???" well no, of course it's not. I don't have the time or desire to make every little blog post into a book-length treatise just so that random internet commenters don't assume I'm an idiot. (Some probably would anyway, so it would be wasted effort.)
> If you'd like, we really could just talk about whether the change to the video player behavior is a reasonable thing to apply to both platforms. I think it probably is, on balance, for the aforementioned control-visibility reasons. You?
I've never seen an case where the visibility/legibility of the controls were a problem. Do you have any examples?
The irony is that Tahoe has made many things on macOS less legibile, which of course is a matter of great public controversy now.
I'm willing to rephrase it down to "the argument being that a change made on iOS later coming to macOS supports the idea that the platforms are merging", though that feels like a distinction without a difference to me.
> A 391 word blog post is almost never going to be a comprehensive argument for anything. So if you're thinking "That's your argument???" well no, of course it's not.
Putting aside my disagreement with the larger argument.... If you want people who see your posts from the HN frontpage to go do independent research about the history of your ideas on the topic before responding, you're going to be left a frustrated and unhappy person. Really, you're lucky when people are replying to the actual content of your post rather than just the title and other people's comments. :-D
> I've never seen an case where the visibility/legibility of the controls were a problem. Do you have any examples?
Just looking at your comparison screenshots in your post, my focus is drawn to the control-icons much better in the Tahoe one. In the Sequoia screenshot the button-outlines draw more of my focus because of how they stand out, and that actually makes me take longer to parse what their contents are. The Tahoe version thus feels easier to quickly use to me.
This might be a personal thing to do with how our respective brains process visual information, but I think the Tahoe one is a genuine usability improvement.
> I'm willing to rephrase it down to...
That seems like a really strange way of putting it. What does your willingness have to do with it? I, the article author, am right here. Thus, you can just ask me what I meant. To insist on putting words in my mouth that I don't believe would be absurd, especially when it's directly to my face.
> the argument being that a change made on iOS later coming to macOS supports the idea that the platforms are merging
This incorrectly assumes that an argument was being made. I already said: "I think you misunderstood the purpose of the post, which was simply to highlight the latest abomination, not to make a larger argument."
In fact, the second paragraph of the blog post, immediately after the embedded video, already takes for granted that Apple is merging iOS and macOS: "this denial [No.] did not age well."
> If you want people who see your posts from the HN frontpage...
Well, I didn't submit my post to HN. I'm not sure I wanted it to be on the front page.
> to go do independent research about the history of your ideas on the topic before responding
I already addressed this earlier in the thread: "I don't expect you to know my full history. However, I expect comments to follow the HN guidelines".
> Really, you're lucky when people are replying to the actual content of your post rather than just the title and other people's comments.
I replied to you. What other people write in their comments is a separate matter. You're responsible for the content of your own comments about my article.
> Just looking at your comparison screenshots in your post, my focus is drawn to the control-icons much better in the Tahoe one.
It's important to note, however, that the controls themselves are brighter on Tahoe, independent of the background. Try cutting and pasting the controls from the Tahoe screenshot onto the Sequoia screenshot. You don't have to darken the video in order to achieve brighter controls.
The other issue, I would say the main issue, is that the controls remain on top of the video for several seconds after you're done manipulating them. So you keep having a darkened video for several seconds every time you adjust something, which is a degraded viewing experience. This happens even with play/pause.
As long as apple doesn’t do a ”Sinofsky”, and implement a touch optimised gui… on servers, I think we’re good.
I recently went down a rabbit hole on how researchers make mice depressed so they can test antidepressants on them. The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's environment in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable. It's a standard protocol. We know that this causes depression.
The culture of products not under the control of the customer does the same thing. A culture that sees this as normal is a depressed culture.
To test whether the mice are depressed, researchers give them something rewarding that requires a little effort to get (e.g., sugary water vs. plain water).
The depressed mice give up. They are apathetic.
I imagine the mice believe that there is no way to change things. That might be true for the mice but it's not true for us.
I imagine the mice would be far more depressed if they had to get trackpad drivers to work and give a good response on Linux
There are laptops that work with Linux and ones that don't. Nobody is forcing you to use it on a device that isn't supported
Agreed. If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered. Even if there are more things to tweak/fix (which is not necessarily true these days), there IS probably a way to do it.
On MacOS, I more often have to give up and live with the annoyances.
Hardware is the the big exception. None of my PCs have had nearly as good build quality or battery life (on Linux, at least) as a Macbook. Maybe I should try a Framework.
> If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered
There are also more footguns and rabbit holes. Overall, I am about as happy with Linux than with macOS (I use both daily), but I would not say that one is really more empowering than the other.
I like tinkering with KDE but it’s full of inconsistencies and instability in a way than even the worst Finder I’ve used was not (e.g. the whole desktop freezing when adding a widget to the desktop with a brand new install). Never mind the Russian roulette that is updating nVidia’s drivers.
On the other hand on macOS it’s easier to get to things that are actually productive.
> The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's environment in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable.
For example like will my wifi work today. Will my laptop still have any battery when I open it. Is today the day I surprise boot to tty and have to figure out what changed before I can start working.
I'll stick with the year-to-year unpredictability of apple over the day-to-day unpredictability of linux.
Use an immutable distro like Bluefin or Aurora and you can just boot to yesterday's version.
(macOS is my daily driver too, but I wouldn't mind having that feature)
Linux doesn't magically update itself. If it works today, it's going to work tomorrow unless you break it.
I dunno about that. Bleeding edge distros like Arch are infamous for breaking in random ways for those updating without paying attention and even distros that are considered more stable like Fedora and Ubuntu can from time to time break drivers or random smaller things. Definitely a YMMV sort of thing.
Not sure what point you’re making, are you saying to never update your system?
Not updating your system is not a magic solution either. I ran Linux Mint for 9mo and twice during that time I ended up in a bizarre situation:
1. the menu bar, or whatever it’s called (taskbar/dock equivalent) had disappeared on boot and I spent about 2 hours trying to get it back
2. the system simply wouldn’t boot into Cinnamon anymore; I ended up reinstalling
Bought a MBP and while it has some annoying quirks I don’t have any crazy ruined-my-day issues anymore.
What are we going to do, then? Stop updating the OS and accumulate security issues? Stop doing anything that might possible touch an obscure config file somewhere in the bowels of the OS? It’s just unrealistic. "Do not update" cannot be a solution, it’s worse than the problem it is supposed to solve.
Alas the cross of a dumbass programmer is a heavy one. I need an OS that is harder to break I reckon.
I too am especially prone to breaking my OS, as well as the software that runs on it. You aren't alone lol.
Apple internally must be a constant battle between those who want to unify iOS and macOS and those who understand they’re different systems with different purposes, and need different treatment.
Craig Federighi was a strong proponent of the latter camp but maybe he’s just getting on in years. Goes to show that key people being good and caring a lot can be all that stops things from backsliding.
So the battle for macOS is being slowly lost. Lucky we have KDE.
If it keeps going this way my next laptop won’t have that fruit logo. And that is a real shame.
I remember many years ago (Snow Leopard) I liked Apple's OS enough to build a hackintosh, because the hardware wasn't great (subjective opinion).
Now I like the hardware enough, but have been gradually annoyed enough with the OS that I'd much rather be running Linux. At least I can just turn off most of the "modern" features, but I'm in that "keeping an eye out for potential alternatives" phase.
I've been quite frustrated today with my Jabra headset constantly triggering Apple Music.
There are plenty of mandatory features we unfortunately can't uninstall. I can't think of a scenario where I want Apple music on my work laptop.
I use https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes to fix this "feature"
Mojave was the last macOS version that had any features I cared about. Now each release is about how bad did they trash the macOS UI. Switching to Linux has been great.
For me, it was Mountain Lion. Otherwise, much the same.
I’d love to switch to Linux but it seems impossible as someone who relies on macOS / logic for music production. I’m in too deep and feel like the floor is coming out from under me with all these insane changes and the direction Apple is taking
I know they’re different workflows entirely, but you could start dabbling with Bitwig, which is really good and runs on both macOS and Linux, then eventually switch when you feel like you’re out of the workflow hole
But to be honest, I’m still using Bitwig on a Mac for my studio despite having switched everywhere else to Linux
How are the ARM Linux on Mac projects going? Does anybody daily drive those yet?
Actually lately iPadOS is the one getting most of its features from macOS. iPadOS 26 introduced a menu bar, just like macOS, and a new windows manager that's just the same as macOS.
I feel like this is more of a calculated step towards eliminating macOS, because iPadOS can do "everything" too.
I expect it will happen within a few years after Xcode for iPad is released. MacOS is simply too open for Apple's business goals.
Do you really think that Apple would alienate the big creative industries like Hollywood movie studios who use macOS?
Or do you really think that all their apps and toolsets will run on whatever you are saying is the future of macOS.
Those are more likely to continue working as they mostly work within the lines defined by the apple developer spec. The most likely workflows to break are those of programmers, as they require frequent execution of untrusted binaries and access to the system directories in some cases
I think this change makes sense on both platforms. If you're gonna use it as an example of why merging the platforms is bad, I think you just strengthen the opposite argument.
I’ve been on Mac for about 30 years. I’m planning my switch to Linux (probably KDE) and GrapheneOS. I can’t keep giving so much money to a company that clearly doesn’t have my interests in mind.
So much of the ecosystem doesn’t “just work” anymore and now instead of fixing those issues, they are actively working to make my computing experience worse. I’ve hade enough.
The more I investigate the current state of Linux desktops, the more excited I get. It seems like Linux is actually good for general use now, and I’ll have so many more options to make my technology fit me instead of the other way around.
I want to be excited about Linux, but as a long time Mac user (started in the 90s) I don't feel like there's a desktop environment for me. I've used GNOME and KDE on and off for years with some Cinnamon, elementary/Pantheon, and minimalist WM thrown in for good measure, and none of them cut it. The big DEs are much closer to Windows or mobile operating systems than anything else.
And that doesn't even get into the hardware situation, where the number of laptops with long battery life and everything working without quirks can seemingly be counted on one hand.
> want to be excited about Linux, but as a long time Mac user (started in the 90s) I don't feel like there's a desktop environment for me.
I can confirm that there is nothing that comes close. Gnome is an abomination even if it might be appealing on the surface. KDE is still very rough around the edges, despite making a lot of progress with each version. I used XFCE for a long time because it can be tweaked to a reasonably useable state and it is light on resources. KDE can be occasionally dog slow on a $12k workstation with a 64-core Threadripper pro and 256 GB of RAM for a reason I cannot imagine. Using my Mac Studio is a much better experience overall.
Try to use GNOME to drive a variable refresh rate display challenge (impossible).
Jabs aside, GNOME is pretty nice compared to where it used to be. Everything still takes a few iterations of touching, but not as many as it used to. Some things are frustratingly unsolvable (see: advanced monitor features), but at least it is a full replacement for Windows on the same hardware. Oh, and contemporary linux distress have audio drivers that appear to work out of the box without having to build the kernel.
When it comes to laptops: it'd be great if anyone made something that competes with a MacBook. It's been a long time. At this point I can only assume there is an economic reason rather than a technical one that Windows and Linux laptops are so bad.
You may want to give Omarchy a try. Not exactly Windows or Mac, but last time I checked myself 95 to 99% of my time on computer is spending inside a browser I think a lot of the old Desktop environment habits no longer matter as much.
https://omarchy.org
It's not a matter of Linux conforming to the way you use a computer, it is rather you who have adapted to the most viable computing experience which Linux offers, which is being inside the browser all the time. You are serving the computer, instead of the computer serving you.
It’s nice, based on the demo video I watched but I’m not spending lots of time in web apps or terminals.
I've been happily on cinnamon for years and find it similar to Mac but with way better window tiling out the box.
What's wrong with cinnamon for you?
Cinnamon gets a lot right and has some Mac-like aspects, like how the UI in its apps are laid out, but as a whole it's more comparable to Windows with its taskbar, windowing model, no global menubar, and Control-based key shortcuts among other things.
Cinnamon is like if Microsoft hired apples design department and gave them control of windows.
GNOME with DashToDock and BlurMyShell on Fedora Workstation.
Trust me, it’s macOS enough. I switched from a 16” M2 Max MBP to a HP Elitebook G1A Ultra with Fedora. It’s been a dream.
I always have to set the dock to auto-hide on my Macs. Having a dock that fucks off in Gnome is great.
half joking: https://www.windowmaker.org
the laptop battery life issue is a real thing -- I kicked the can by getting an M1 MacBook Pro instead of a Framework for my most recent upgrade.
I’m very happy with KDE Plasma. Just switched from a MacBook Pro to a Framework.
I’m shocked at how much “just works” like a Mac. It wasn’t like this even a short amount of time ago.
I’m really happy with the hardware too and all it needs is more battery life. Nothing an external battery doesn’t solve (and the framework is a lighter machine so the difference is moot).
Everything works. Fingerprint reader authenticating commercial apps like 1Password, graphics drivers are a part of the kernel and I’m enjoying Windows games on Steam, firmware gets updates from the OS instead of messing around in the BIOS like on Windows, KDE Connect is like AirDrop for Linux, it’s literally a better experience than Windows and Mac if you ask me.
I don’t mind that KDE resembles Windows, I personally think it’s a lot like Windows but without the dumbassery. And of course you can theme it and change settings to have it act more like a Mac (or go with Gnome).
I guess for me having control of the machine is worth a lot of little inconveniences.
For me it’s more than a little inconvenience. Switching to Linux represents turning my ability to be productive on a computer totally upside down, tossing out decades of flow building and muscle memory.
As for battery life, it being crappy makes me wonder why I’m even bothering with laptops at all. More than half of their selling point is being portable, which needing to be tethered frequently heavily impinges upon. The sacrifices that come with the portable form factor just aren’t worth it for 3-5h life with real world usage.
Last I touched a Linux desktop was 10+ years ago and you had to muck about with FontConfig and third-party config packages to even come close to Windows or macOS type rendering. Has this seen significant improvement?
I uninstalled my Bazzite partition because of the text. Initial searches showed similar frustrations on reddit without obvious and immediate fixes, so I decided to cut my losses and go back to using Windows full time instead of spending hours or days trying to get the rendering to an acceptable level.
This was my experience when trying to get fonts to look good in Ubuntu about a year ago. FontConfig, Gnome and of course some individual apps like browsers all have their own little settings for font rendering that interact in weird and not so wonderful ways.
I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox and realized that kerning is completely broken. I can only assume that it's because of some setting that I changed but I'd rather reinstall the whole machine than go on a wild goose chase...
Don't quote me, but if I recall some number of years ago there were some font shaping/AA patents that expired and so good font rendering comes out of the box in most cases these days. Used to be only Ubuntu shipped like that.
I run Debian with KDE on Wayland on my desktop PC. Font rendering seems perfectly fine. I can't speak for other combos.
What exactly doesn't "just work" anymore?
Can't go to previous track when "autoplay" is enabled in Apple Music. Clearly an intentional choice. Works on iPhone. But on Mac it doesn't "just work". Syncing my music library with Apple Music doesn't "just work" anymore either. Some albums are visible, but are greyed out and can't be played. Time Machine hasn't "just worked" in several years - would corrupt my backups and have to re-create from scratch every week or so, I've switched to Carbon Copy Cloner. Non high-DPI displays don't "just work" anymore. The forward button in Finder, the icons in Music settings, all squished horizontally like it's someone's first time adding clipart to a Power Point. Safari stopped "just working" with 26.0, now opening a new tab or typing into the search bar randomly presents me with a 1-5s delay - or sometimes the whole thing hangs. I could go on, I don't dare upgrade to Tahoe - it's death by a thousand cuts.
Edit: LOL, how could I forget Siri. I don't use it often - generally only in the car to switch music - but it's terrible at understanding what song/album I'm asking for. Tried repeatedly to get it to play the "Mob Song" from Beauty and the Beast and I got some death metal instead. Completely useless.
Was going to be my question too. Mine works…
Autocomplete on iOS is a shit show. It regularly autocompletes non-grammatical text, which is unforgivable in 2025 when we have AI that can write coherent sonnets and code. Dictation is still at the same level it was at 10 years ago - complete shit. Carplay sometimes randomly starts playing music when I get in the car, other times it doesn't. My Apple Watch regularly can't find my heart rate, for long time periods. The HomePod app and Watch display incorrect information about what's playing on HomePods about 50% of the time. There's no way to filter text spam. The Messages app on MacOS doesn't let you filter by known senders. If you delete a text thread on iOS, it doesn't delete it on MacOS, so my desktop messages are cluttered with fucking donation requests from PACs. Try to do anything with Siri, even simple things like playing a song. It still makes bizarre mistakes. It can't answer basic questions about my calendar.
The list is endless, really. Everything looks "delightful" as fuck. Mac and iOS fonts, colors and text padding are immaculate, so it gives the impression of solidity and competence that isn't really there. A lot of things "mostly work" but aren't reliable, so I can't rely on them. They can list them as "features" but if I can't rely on them, I can't use them, because I don't want to deal with constant frustration. They act like all their systems are this one integrated whole that works well together, but it doesn't.
I don't think that everything will "just work" on Linux, but at least I won't be paying a premium for the privilege of having my needs as a disabled person ignored. I'll be able to customize my experience to meet my basic accessibility needs without fighting against a company that seems to hate me.
> Autocomplete on iOS is a shit show. It regularly autocompletes non-grammatical text
Android has the same issue with Google's keyboard, which will go back and change things you've typed correctly to be obviously wrong for no clear reason. I swear it used to work much better.
At least on Android alternative keyboards are easier to use. I have no idea how they both have such an awful implementation of it.
> Carplay sometimes randomly starts playing music when I get in the car, other times it doesn't.
Android Auto does the same thing for me, despite having auto-play disabled. One possible explanation I've seen online is that some infotainment systems send an unsolicited "play" signal to your device. For Android that seems to mean it will send "play" to the most recently used app that supports audio playback.
Siri has always been a shitshow for sure. I basically use it for timers and even that it fucks up a non-negligible number of times. For the few experiences I've had with it, at least Google assistant is a lot more reliable.
I also noticed worsened reliability in the heart rate tracking of my Apple Watch in recent workouts. It must have happened in one of the recent updates because it was fine previously. I could say it's programmed obsolescence but I'm sure I would be accused of conspiracy theory. But it is hard to interpret the failing reliability otherwise when it suspiciously happens after updates and around new hardware release. In any case, I don't think the Apple Watch is a very good product for the price, so whatever, the next watch will be focused on sports and the competition has made great alternatives.
I completely share the sentiment that everything looks good but doesn't work that well in practice. There are so many random issues that make the hardware prices very unpalatable.
Ah well, everything changes, not always for the better. The pain is in transitioning to something else, but that's something that is very true for most tech related things since we can't ever agree on proper standardisation.
It’s comical how you can copy and paste these same comments anytime there’s been a new macOS for probably the last 10 or so years. Hell maybe longer.
Every. Single. Year. “Apple is taking away my laptop I’m switching to Linux.”
I’m grateful to you all though — I think your constant griping every year probably does at least apply some pressure on Apple to focus on keeping macOS good at what it does: provide a pleasant but still powerful desktop experience for those who just want to do stuff and not spend hours under the hood making some Linux flavor usable.
Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS. That definitely makes it a less desirable desktop OS.
Today when you generate a PDF from you own content (from Apple Notes app) you are asked about opening links you click on. I thought that they were surely joking and there would be a way to disable that behavior. But no, this is intended and there is no way to disable that. It makes the Preview app a pain in the ass as a PDF reader, which means you have to replace it and begs the question of even using Apple software in the first place.
The answer is that there are fewer and fewer reasons. I mean if you are OK feeling like a child biking around on a cycle with training wheels while an overbearing parent keeps nagging you, it might be for you. Otherwise, the experience is really more like a prison/walled garden and the funny thing is that you paid for it !
> Today when you generate a PDF from you own content (from Apple Notes app) you are asked about opening links you click on.
Or they don't have any usability studies. A hard regression in efficiency in many places.
E.g. Safari in iOS 26 forces you to do 50% more button presses. E.g. if you want to close a tab, you need to press one button more these days. Also one button press more to see the current tabs. These are likely the most used scenarios when you use the browser and they add one button press more?
> I mean if you are OK feeling like a child biking around on a cycle with training wheels while an overbearing parent keeps nagging you, it might be for you.
That's exactly why I encouraged my parents to get iPhones.
last time i tried to set up a new android phone. the built in phone app asked me permissions to use the built in contacts app.
people complain if the apps don't all have fine grained permissions. and then complain when they have to agree to stuff all the time. and then complain they got "hacked". damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Implementation is the issue. They often forget your settings between updates. This is particularly bad on MacOS. MacOS updates and app updates both require me to re-grant permissions for the nth time! Then there's the separate issue of must-have apps requesting permissions they have no business asking for and refusing to function correctly without, and other must-have apps abusing their access for purposes not strictly limited to in-app functionality.
> Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS.
This is certainly happening. However, as long as you can still install your preferred browser with its own rendering engine or a different PDF reader, the situation isn't so bad.
Which makes it even more important for Google to take accessibility seriously so that disabled people aren't stuck being the only ones that have a hard time switching from the play pin.
> Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS. That definitely makes it a less desirable desktop OS.
I mean this has been the conversation since the early days of Mac OS. I didn't get back to Mac until Snow Leopard but I remember the uproar over removing Java in 10.7
I don't think I've ever appreciated a video player putting gradients above and below the controls or darkening the entire video when the controls are active. It's extremely annoying when you're trying to scrub through a video and read a particular bit of text. Why do UI designers from Apple to YouTube to Amazon think this is necessary?
Or putting a huge play button covering it when paused. Or taking painfully long to fade-out the UI after pressing play... The list goes on.
I’ve seen this in a ton of video players. This is an especially bad example. But it’s so common for the entire top third of the screen to be blurred or darkened just to display a single small UI element in a corner. Stupid design.
The reason it’s especially stupid for Apple is because half of their new design system is about making content front & center.
So they made a change he doesn't like, and that means merging macOS with iOS? Non-sequitur.
It is a pretty dumb change though, let's be honest.
> So they made a change he doesn't like, and that means merging macOS with iOS? Non-sequitur.
No. The change was made in iOS first, and then the same exact change was brought to macOS, as has happened many times now over the years.
Apple also built a custom video element for web they use for their events. See the Apple Events page[0] and click "Watch the event". It also seems to dim the video when mousing over. I kinda like the design, but the animations seem a tad bit slow.
[0]: https://www.apple.com/apple-events/
The biggest difference between macOS and iOS is file system access. One day macOS terminal will disappear, just a matter of time.
Since the thread is slipping into a Liquid Glass topic …
Question: does anyone have anything good to say about Liquid Glass?
I like how it looks. It's nice to have a fairly-minor shake-up in the aesthetics every now and then, and it makes everything feel a bit fresh and new. And I do sincerely find it fairly minor -- things got a bit rounder and glossier, and there's a few bits of iOS that have some fairly cute glass-distortion effects, and some apps got some not-huge UI redesigns.
Overall, particularly on my phone, it's just giving me an occasional pleasant burst of "ooh, shiny". On my laptop, I admittedly barely notice anything has changed.
(I don't personally have any legibility issues with it, though I'm willing to believe that's down to individual usage patterns.)
1) Aesthetically, I think it's pretty. That's a subjective opinion, though.
2) I vastly prefer it displaying buttons as buttons, instead of as just undifferentiated text on a screen. In the past I've sometimes been frustrated that an app didn't have a feature I wanted, only to learn that it actually had that feature, hidden behind what I'd assumed was just a text label but was actually a button. This is an enormous freaking improvement.
3) I very much prefer the new UI patterns in other places. For example, when highlighting text on iOS, the old UI gives a horizontally scrolling list of options with arrow keys to rotate through them. The new UI replaces that with a ">" More button that pops up a vertical list of all available actions. Again, this is an enormous freaking improvement.
I like the appearance of Liquid Glass, but that could go either way. I think the actual UI implementation behind the graphics is so much better than before.
I love Apple Silicon and hope Apple tones down all the iOSification of macOS. It's a mistake.
This is one of the main reasons why I left the Macintosh ecosystem several years ago. Apple is, has been, transitioning from a computer company to a computing appliance company for many years now, and I just couldn't take it any longer. I have happily been a full time Linux user since then.
Tahoe seems to be so full of straws to break the camel's back for so many macOS users who have been slowly annoyed by the grind of version ~10.10 to 15.7
I updated a couple of days ago. All the new transparency and blur they've added looks really bad. But then I turned on "Reduce transparency" and it's fine. There's nothing else new or different.
I read a few of the stories on HN about it and was braced for a bad experience. But honestly - a few icons changing (don't care); the border radius of finder, the only Apple app I use much, changing (don't care).
I'm glad you didn't find your straw in this version of macOS. Your lack of "caring" -as you put it- probably smooths a lot of rough edges that might be important to others.
Just modify the source code for programs you want changes to.
I also hate how the controls are on top of the content, on eg desktop and QuickTime. I want to see the entire frame when scrubbing.
A change in webkit (which both OS's have used forever) somehow means they are merging iOS and macOS? I'm not following this logic at all.
No, everything is becoming visionOS.
I just need one OS and probably you too.
Not so related, putting the full screen button in the top left is completely annoying. No other video player puts it there.
[flagged]
> Am I hearing this right?
No.
The whole thing about “merging iOS and macOS” was about combining them into a single source code, not a single design system.
This is an irrational and especially dishonest and rant article.
The fact that they synced up the version numbers (macOS 26, iPadOS 26, iOS 26) is a signal that they intend to unify all OSes.
My experience with iOS 26 + liquid glass (ew) on my phone has been terrible. Feels like a step backward. I am dreading upgrading my macbook bc I love it the way it is. Regrettable.
Oh, it's even worse on MacOS, everything got rounder and bigger. There is no other explanation than touch enabled macs and eventual OS unification.