macOS 26: All The Little Things

[gank41]

Is there any apple official link to download mac os tahoe, instead of the usual update through settings?
I would prefer to gain time from downloading at home, and download it at work (pc/windows), and have it on my usb flash disk, and installation to be the only remaining thing to be done.

It'll be on the App Store once it's released..

‎Download macOS Versions : App Store Story

‎Learn about collection Download macOS Versions featuring macOS Sequoia, macOS Sonoma, macOS Ventura, and many more on Mac App Store. Enjoy these apps on your Mac.

apps.apple.com

 

[nortonandreev]

I'm talking about the fact that the bottom of the scrollbar is cut off by the rounded corner on the right.

View attachment 2549056

Not related, but the execution of this bit is also really poor.

 

[JMalone]

Look at this comparison Sequoia vs Tahoe

 

[FNH15]

Is the text meant to be misaligned like this (Console)? Something funky is up with Calendar in full screen mode - doesn't blend the traffic lights into the main UI like it should.
Same thing happens in Clock too. Looks like a Chromium app running in a container as opposed to a native app.

 

[fisherking]

Look at this comparison Sequoia vs Tahoe

View attachment 2549292

yep, tahoe does look a little better. 👍 (but there's not much difference, really)

 

[Joseph C]

Really annoys me how you can’t resize System Settings to be wider, only taller. You can do it on iPad windowing so why not on Mac!

 

[UgoDream]

Look at this comparison Sequoia vs Tahoe

View attachment 2549292

They clearly know about this defect because they have fixed it in other areas. However, as they added more rounded corners everywhere, they should have reviewed all their apps to address it. System Settings is one of the first places users visit after installation, and the issue is immediately noticeable. Yet, people seem to think this is acceptable for a company like Apple, which clearly cares about design and aesthetics.

 

[JMalone]

They clearly know about this defect because they have fixed it in other areas. However, as they added more rounded corners everywhere, they should have reviewed all their apps to address it. System Settings is one of the first places users visit after installation, and the issue is immediately noticeable. Yet, people seem to think this is acceptable for a company like Apple, which clearly cares about design and aesthetics.

100 % facts.

 

[Sniper08]

They clearly know about this defect because they have fixed it in other areas. However, as they added more rounded corners everywhere, they should have reviewed all their apps to address it. System Settings is one of the first places users visit after installation, and the issue is immediately noticeable. Yet, people seem to think this is acceptable for a company like Apple, which clearly cares about design and aesthetics.

I agree. This bothers me a lot more than it should. A UI update shouldn't feel this messy. Confusing because things shift around and layouts change? Sure. I've had my share of UI changes that I didn't like but at least it was cohesive.

LG breaks a lot of interaction peices that I didn't know I relied on, like having a title bar so I know where to drag. Floating buttons over the content is cool, but randomly fading into white or black without a visual indicator of where that begins makes me hesitant to even move a window, and I'm not gonna use keyboard shortcuts to drag windows around.

There are dozens of these little examples that I never thought of, manually, but they add up on the cognative load when working around the OS.

It's dumb, because I like the concept of liquid glass and some of the execution on iOS but the MacOS variation or assets seem forced into the motif instead of the design being created/adapted for Macs

 

[Cape Dave]

I will be delaying this alleged update as long as possible. If it ain't broke, do not fix it. Except incrementally. I thought we learned this long ago on Interwebs 101.

 

[ErikGrim]

I'm talking about the fact that the bottom of the scrollbar is cut off by the rounded corner on the right.

View attachment 2549056

Yes, that does make sense

 

[tenjikuronin]

Upgraded the iPad and iPhone, definitely waiting for the Macs though. The stuff that made it to release is ridiculous.

 

[thohnb]

Upgraded the iPad and iPhone, definitely waiting for the Macs though. The stuff that made it to release is ridiculous.

I'm using it now. A little laggy on first minutes. Maybe because indexing .
After that, everything is smooth now.
I'm upgraded btw, not clean install

 

[KoolAid-Drink]

Reduced transparency and it's pretty nice. Not too fond of the grey cells surrounding toolbar icons, but I'll live. Noticed little small bugs here and there, but hey, what do you expect out of a .0 release?

Nice little throwback to Mac OS X Tiger. Hard to believe it's been 20 years since it was released!

 

[thohnb]

Reduced transparency and it's pretty nice. Not too fond of the grey cells surrounding toolbar icons, but I'll live. Noticed little small bugs here and there, but hey, what do you expect out of a .0 release?

Nice little throwback to Mac OS X Tiger. Hard to believe it's been 20 years since it was released!

View attachment 2549718

Oh yes looking good.
How battery life after you update btw?

 

[KoolAid-Drink]

Oh yes looking good.
How battery life after you update btw?

Seems about the same as Sequoia (which I upgraded from, btw).

 

[n-evo]

Look at this comparison Sequoia vs Tahoe

View attachment 2549292

The cutt off scroll bars do look bad unfortunately. Good thing they disappear quickly.

 

[JMalone]

The cutt off scroll bars do look bad unfortunately. Good thing they disappear quickly.

It’s just crazy that the scroll bar’s track is missing in places like that. Not even a crap Linux theme has an issue like that.

There are lots of issues and you will notice them more if you are a macOS developer using SwiftUI.

If you compile your app on Tahoe your app’s UI will be ruined in a number places with new font sizes and misaligned super flat buttons and misaligned drop down menus.

You set the build target to macOS 13 or macOS 14 to maintain backward compatibility. That’s not good enough for Apple. They maliciously treat you like a bastard for trying to maintain backward compatibility and they force this garbage new theme on your app.

Now you have an issue. You have to rewrite the UI to make it look “normal” on Tahoe, but when you do that the UI is ruined on Sequoia and earlier. So now you are forced to write conditions in your app so that Tahoe and Sequoia run different UI code.

But that’s still not good enough for Apple. They still treat you like a bastard. You compile the app on Sequoia so you can test on Sequoia. Fine. Goes well. You try to run the app on Tahoe and it complains that your app is an actually ****ing virus even though it uses only the frameworks Apple provides and no third party frameworks.

You are then forced to compile the app only on Tahoe to make it run. Now the same app with the exactly the same code runs on Tahoe without any virus warning.

This company is making garbage decisions when it comes to user experience and needs a new CEO who has a love of macOS developers immediately. This Tahoe nonsense is objectively the worst thing that has happened to macOS since the buggy useless first release of Cheetah. This looks like Tim Cook and some rich outsiders forcing augmented reality interface garbage where we do not want it. The same interface is appearing at other companies so I do not believe it was an internal decision by Federighi’s team or the people at Apple who respect macOS users.

 

[n-evo]

I’ve used every Mac OS X/OS X/macOS version to date and every new interface had its fair share of problems. But yah, there are some real issues with macOS Tahoe.

Window elements of some apps are just comically large for reasons I can’t really phantom. They don’t look that bad on their own, but it really shows when you have an app like Pages running next to it. The window control buttons seem massive compared to non-updated apps (Safari vs Pages per example).

When you set sidebar icons to small (something I always did) they look insanely small. Probably because they still scale the same way as they did since macOS Big Sur, which just doesn’t work with the macOS Tahoe window proportions.

There’s no way to keep the default folder color in combination with other theme colors (I think I hate this one the most). The drive icons look too small and out of place. I also really don’t get why they didn’t update the external drive icon at the least.

Window animations are really fickle and inconsistent. Mail sorta pops open and fades out when closing. Same for Maps, Calendar and Podcasts. Phone opens without animation, but does fade out when quitting. Safari does nothing, but its settings window pops open but closes without animation.

I truly dislike there’s no compact tab bar in Safari anymore. Its entire interface looks really clumsy and Fisher-Price-y. Hate the tab design.

Apple broke applying Finder view options to all folders, which is really annoying.

Despite all that, there’s also a lot I like and I’m eager to see how this evolves.

 

[MacGizmo]

I hate how the Finder Preview sidebar is semi-transparent (showing the Wallpaper through it), which in turn highlights the fact that the Finder Windows don't have a toolbar that goes all the way across the window. It's a minor thing that doesn't really affect me other than I can't un-see it

 

[SnowCrocodile]

I’ve used every Mac OS X/OS X/macOS version to date and every new interface had its fair share of problems. But yah, there are some real issues with macOS Tahoe.

Window elements of some apps are just comically large for reasons I can’t really phantom. They don’t look that bad on their own, but it really shows when you have an app like Pages running next to it. The window control buttons seem massive compared to non-updated apps (Safari vs Pages per example).

When you set sidebar icons to small (something I always did) they look insanely small. Probably because they still scale the same way as they did since macOS Big Sur, which just doesn’t work with the macOS Tahoe window proportions.

There’s no way to keep the default folder color in combination with other theme colors (I think I hate this one the most). The drive icons look too small and out of place. I also really don’t get why they didn’t update the external drive icon at the least.

Window animations are really fickle and inconsistent. Mail sorta pops open and fades out when closing. Same for Maps, Calendar and Podcasts. Phone opens without animation, but does fade out when quitting. Safari does nothing, but its settings window pops open but closes without animation.

I truly dislike there’s no compact tab bar in Safari anymore. Its entire interface looks really clumsy and Fisher-Price-y. Hate the tab design.

Apple broke applying Finder view options to all folders, which is really annoying.

Despite all that, there’s also a lot I like and I’m eager to see how this evolves.

The new mounted drive icon is horrible. It's ugly, nondescript, and the perspective seems all wrong. Good thing it's easy to customize for often used drives.

 

[JMalone]

Downgraded, or I should say upgraded, back to Sequoia. We will tell our app users that Tahoe is not supported at the moment so if they find bugs on Tahoe we will not support it.

 

[tkermit]

We will tell our app users that Tahoe is not supported

I'm not sure that is sustainable

 

[fisherking]

Downgraded, or I should say upgraded, back to Sequoia. We will tell our app users that Tahoe is not supported at the moment so if they find bugs on Tahoe we will not support it.

which app are you talking about?

 

[JMalone]

I'm not sure that is sustainable

There are hundreds of apps since Cheetah that skipped direct support of the newest macOS. Some apps like Scrivener have only had a couple of major app and UI updates in the last 20 years with minor bug fixes in between.