Mac OS 26 Is Utter Garbage and Apple Has truly lost its way....

[fisherking]

Software evolves, so does design. You can complain all you want, it wouldn’t change what the OS design heads to anyway

am not one complaining, but still... where there are things to improve or fix, i expect apple is, at least, paying some attention to the forums where mac nerds live (am including myself); we do see changes sometimes that reflect the discussions online

 

[nmt1900]

My goodness .. that is horrific. 🤮

You nailed it .. looks like a cheap theme.
I'd expect some knockoff Linux thing to look like this

I think that this Dock "reflections" thing is somewhat unintended. What comes to design and overall look then one failing of recent design comes to mind here - when looking into section "dynamic wallpapers" in system settings then there are only four really aesthetically pleasing wallpapers - Peak, Tree, Valley and Dome which came with Big Sur...

 

[Unregistered 4U]

took a break from the forum, and spent some time in the real world. troubled place, sure... but more trees ☺️

yes, there are things to fix, tweak... just like every mac OS before it. but as far as functionality, speed, stabilty, it's really great here.

eventually, the whining will die down, and life will go on. then the first beta for OS 27 will drop, and the cycle will repeat. same as it ever was 🤷

I wonder if these were the folks saying, “OSX may not be perfect, but it’s so much better than OS9”? What a difference a decade or so makes!

(actually, maybe they’ve been hating OSX all this time!)

 

[IceCool]

I disagree immensely with this. I think that macOS Tahoe has been perfectly stable and have experienced extremely few (if any) issues whatsoever... That being said, the one's that I have experienced have been small issues that do not impact usage or functionality in any way.

As for people complaining about the design... This happens every time there's a design refresh. People cried over iOS 7, macOS Big Sur, and now iOS & macOS 26. The biggest outlier is OS X Yosemite, that one was relatively well received. But there were still plenty of people who hated it. It is what it is.

 

[Marty80]

Saying liquid glass is rubbish, for shame.

 

[jsnuff1]

I've said it before I'll say it again, this is because people doing the interviews value useless leetcode skills over actual experience. I'm convinced it's why software is so bad these days.

Anecdotal but two guys I worked with were AWFUL developers, they couldn't even get the basics right, they couldn't do anything on their own and pulled in libraries for everything because, in their words "why reinvent the wheel?" (They don't realize often times "reinventing the wheel" is far better than pulling in some unnecessary third party dependency).

They both left and got jobs at Amazon. Not because of their coding skills, because they could pass leetcode interviews. They both ended up leaving (or getting fired who knows) within 6 and 9 months respectively but still.

This is how nearly all the modern tech companies work, experience be damned the only thing that matters is if you can pass those leetcode tests because some idiot at Google said that "anyone can be taught to code" and that "leetcode is how you get the best developers" and the entire industry went that way.

Turns out he was flat wrong. The people with tons of experience don't have time to study for leetcode nonsense, we're too busy writing scalable enterprise apps.

You got it...


Also for people complaining about my "complaining"

Ive been an apple fan longer than most of you have lived, worked for Apple, and produced a bunch of the best selling apps on the App Store.

The decline of Apple is real whether you want to see it or not. The decline is clear as day after using their products for three decades.

When you use a product for 10 years instead of of 30, you simply assume everything is the status quo, you never knew the perfection relative to the tech of the time from 20 years ago.

It obviously started after jobs died, but now it's clear the last of the good engineers are all but gone.

My post is mainly on that topic, and hopefully someone from Apple will see this and reflect on what needs to change before its too late, and Apple simply becomes the next less popular Microsoft they built their brand around NOT being...

 

[apple2022]

The liquid glass concept feels exactly like what it is: a language for a totally different user interface. I get the idea in 3D space. Apple certainly got carried away with the idea that THIS would be the unified design. How many tech giants will die on the hill of AR or VR before they stop?

 

[Timpetus]

I don't think there is any actual definition of Pro that I know of but the way it used to work was that MacBooks were home user laptops & MacBook Pro's were aimed at professional's with faster processors, larger ram capability, more storage, better graphics, better looking.

In Apple's parlance it just means more powerful with more of a focus on overall capability and less on thin/lightness. I've always had the "Pro" devices because I'm a gamer and a power user, but I'm not really doing professional work with my MBPs. As a professional photographer, my wife does use her MBP for true pro work, along with her Studio (and non-pro iMac before that).

 

[gsprs]

.0 = fool's update, every single time 🤣

why anyone would update right away on their daily driver machines when sequoia will get security updates for 2 more YEARS is beyond me, what's the point of updating to known bad buggy software just to complain that it's buggy and bad?

 

[turbineseaplane]

I disagree immensely with this. I think that macOS Tahoe has been perfectly stable and have experienced extremely few (if any) issues whatsoever... That being said, the one's that I have experienced have been small issues that do not impact usage or functionality in any way.

As for people complaining about the design... This happens every time there's a design refresh. People cried over iOS 7, macOS Big Sur, and now iOS & macOS 26. The biggest outlier is OS X Yosemite, that one was relatively well received. But there were still plenty of people who hated it. It is what it is.

This post would get much further with folks if you didn't say things like "people cried".

Let's try to disagree about our experiences without derogatory descriptors.
It simply does not foster good faith dialogue.

 

[Hajj.david]

Don't care much about the Liquid Glass but Tahoe made my M1 Max really slow. The UI is slow, I'm waiting more and more for the beachball. And this is a clean install.

Whenever you install a new OS it spends a bunch of resources indexing, downloading assets, etc. I have an M1 Max in addition to my M4 Mac Studio I can assure you that after a few hours or even a day or two it will work well again.

 

[Charliebird]

Said about every OS upgrade from the beginning of time.

 

[mectojic]

Steve Jobs released OS X 10.0 with half the features missing and extremely slow UI. How about you try that?

 

[amancalledsun]

Steve Jobs released OS X 10.0 with half the features missing and extremely slow UI. How about you try that?

Context is important. Apple was a dying company and SJ needed to do something to turn the ship around. That is not the current state of Apple.

 

[FatLouie]

I dont actually notice LG in Tahoe that much but were I do it's horrible & has no place on a desktop OS.

Tahoe doesn't seem to have as many seriouse bugs as previous versions but it does have many many annoying bugs especially in Safari & I also find that I have to reboot my M1 MBP quite often to keep the OS running fast, but hardly ever rebooted previously.

I agree with jsnuff1 in that Apple have lost their way in terms of the products that they make, both hardware and software & now it's all about profit & screwing over it's loyal user base.

My business run's on Macs but I won't be buying another Apple product, & that includes phones until the greed is replaced with much better products that dont require extortionate amounts of money to actually make them usable.

Same here. No more Apple computer products for me either. I did send Apple feedback last week stating as much. As long as nonsense designs like Liquid Glass continue, I will no longer buy Apple computer products. I have been holding out for a 13-inch iPad Pro M5, but not now, not with LG on it. If the GUI does not work for me, then I do not need the device, and currently, LG does not meet my needs.

The OnePlus 14 is set to release at the end of this year, or so I read. I will get one of those, learn it, and then wean myself off the 15+ I currently use. I will miss Airdropping files to my Mac, but I can use a USB-C cable for file transfers.

Apple won't miss my business, but I won't miss this crappy LG.

 

[Cape Dave]

It's clear that the next generation of useless engineers are completely taking over those that built the iPhone and OS X, and it's a sad day.

I have never thought I would say I would be installing garbage from Apple, but here it is. OS 26 Tahoa is truly garbage and an affront to what Jobs and Ives built.

You can see the carelessness and horrible work throughout. Non cohesive designs, BUGS EVERYWHERE, loss of caring of whats going on behind the hood, and chasing visual eye candy over function.

Its sad.

I cant even get my tabs to work correctly in safari and have to access the sidebar to access them correct (icons bugging out etc).

Apple really needs to sit down and fire half its team and spend a whole major version update just clearing the junk that has been built up and going back to building functional systems first, we have reached windows Vista level of garbage...

I totally completely 100% agree with you. This is shameful, and an example of a company that simply has too much money. It is criminal that Apple felt that this was necessary in any shape or form. 100% UNNECESSARY! A waste of all of our time and energy and money.

 

[DCIFRTHS]

I thought mods ran a tight ship around here in regard to similar threads. There have been 100 threads with people just crying about 26. Yes. We get it. Clear bubbles are the devil. Can't you just add your thoughts to one of the other threads about this topic?

There are just as many threads extolling the virtues of iOS 26.

Yes. We get it. Clear bubbles are amazing.

 

[sarcasticgamer]

I’m loving it😍

 

[ddhhddhh2]

You got it...


Also for people complaining about my "complaining"

Ive been an apple fan longer than most of you have lived, worked for Apple, and produced a bunch of the best selling apps on the App Store.

The decline of Apple is real whether you want to see it or not. The decline is clear as day after using their products for three decades.

When you use a product for 10 years instead of of 30, you simply assume everything is the status quo, you never knew the perfection relative to the tech of the time from 20 years ago.

It obviously started after jobs died, but now it's clear the last of the good engineers are all but gone.

My post is mainly on that topic, and hopefully someone from Apple will see this and reflect on what needs to change before its too late, and Apple simply becomes the next less popular Microsoft they built their brand around NOT being...

Same thought as yours — I started using Apple products around 1996. Back then, I learned everything I needed on a school Power Mac 7200. After graduation, once I began working, I started buying my own Apple devices, and I’ve been using them ever since.

By all logic, I should be a pretty loyal user — and in fact, I want to believe I still am. But over the past few years, a certain thought has kept coming back: “Maybe I could choose something else…” That thought has been showing up more and more often. One thing’s for sure though — back when S.J. was still alive, such a thought would’ve been completely unthinkable, almost like a crime.

What’s interesting is that the Apple ecosystem back then was far more unfriendly than it is now. The workplace vibe was always something like, “Apple? That won’t work here.” Yet none of that stopped us from getting things done. Ironically, what wears you down today isn’t anything grand — it’s ordinary, unavoidable stuff. You just keep enduring it, and that persistent thought keeps coming back, more and more often.

 

[ddhhddhh2]

Steve Jobs released OS X 10.0 with half the features missing and extremely slow UI. How about you try that?

The thing is, very few actual Mac users back then upgraded to OS X 10.0 or 10.1 — most people stayed on OS 9 because those early builds were almost unusable for daily work. Even Adobe users didn’t really move over until 10.2 Jaguar.

So yeah, 10.0 was rough, but it’s a bit of an extreme example since hardly anyone was using it full-time.

 

[ddhhddhh2]

Same here. No more Apple computer products for me either. I did send Apple feedback last week stating as much. As long as nonsense designs like Liquid Glass continue, I will no longer buy Apple computer products. I have been holding out for a 13-inch iPad Pro M5, but not now, not with LG on it. If the GUI does not work for me, then I do not need the device, and currently, LG does not meet my needs.

The OnePlus 14 is set to release at the end of this year, or so I read. I will get one of those, learn it, and then wean myself off the 15+ I currently use. I will miss Airdropping files to my Mac, but I can use a USB-C cable for file transfers.

Apple won't miss my business, but I won't miss this crappy LG.

Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but you often see this kind of opinion on car and motorcycle forums. No brand is ever completely free of problems. When people say things like, “I’ll never buy that brand again,” too quickly — well, they might end up with nothing left to use. That’d be quite a headache.

 

[Madonepro]

It's clear that the next generation of useless engineers are completely taking over those that built the iPhone and OS X, and it's a sad day.

I have never thought I would say I would be installing garbage from Apple, but here it is. OS 26 Tahoa is truly garbage and an affront to what Jobs and Ives built.

You can see the carelessness and horrible work throughout. Non cohesive designs, BUGS EVERYWHERE, loss of caring of whats going on behind the hood, and chasing visual eye candy over function.

Its sad.

I cant even get my tabs to work correctly in safari and have to access the sidebar to access them correct (icons bugging out etc).

Apple really needs to sit down and fire half its team and spend a whole major version update just clearing the junk that has been built up and going back to building functional systems first, we have reached windows Vista level of garbage...

That's funny, I can't see that. I'm having a great time with it. It has a bug with the dock disappearing at times, but I know that will get fixed. Perhaps you'd like to join Apple and give them a hand. Oh wait...

 

[Arctic Moose]

The MacBooks atm are a good spec until you look at the cost & then they, like all other Mac products are ridiculously priced.

I’m curious, can you show me a PC laptop of comparable specification that is significantly cheaper?

 

[Arctic Moose]

The decline of Apple is real whether you want to see it or not. The decline is clear as day after using their products for three decades.

When you use a product for 10 years instead of of 30, you simply assume everything is the status quo, you never knew the perfection relative to the tech of the time from 20 years ago.

Then you’ll remember:

• The segmented nonsense of the Performa line, often slow and missing features, but still expensive.
• Steve’s precious cube that cracked and overheated, and was swiftly cancelled.
• Steve shrugging and saying ”you’re holding it wrong”.
• The painfully slow Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah release that had a lickable liquid interface, but lacked standard features such as DVD playback and printer support.
• The common full-system freezes of the pre-X systems.
• Project Pink and Copland.
• Butterfly keyboards.
• Apple Maps.
• Brushed Metal.

 

[Brighton Apple Guy]

I barely notice LG and when I do I like it. I also don't use Safari or Mail.

Not Tahoe related, but Safari on iOS is fundamentally broken. It can't even display websites properly as it ignores basic CSS rules. When the URL bar is at the bottom it allows websites to display under it but then when you apply a fixed div to the page the URL bar doesn't allow the fixed div to extend under it - but still shows the webpage under the fixed div. It's hilariously bad - although it's not funny.