macOS 27: All The Little Things

[mcarvin]

I have this but it seems to be a rare bug. You are the only other report I've found on it. I submitted a bug report in Feedback assistant.

View attachment 2637777

It went away after a few hours and I noticed that the Spotlight UI no longer had an indexing progress bar, so I'm thinking the primary cause was a bad spinner implementation for Spotlight reindexing.

Why iPhone Mirroring launched when clicking just outside the lower left corner...that's still a mystery.

 

[CrabQueenInc]

Some additional observations after using Golden Gate more:

1. Golden Gate is a confusing mix of Aqua 3D, Big Sur flat, and Tahoe transparency. I like having the Aqua-ish toolbar buttons, but they appear cartoonishly large in Safari and look weird compared to the flat, lifeless URL input. Apple should add depth to elements that allow text input. If the Search bar in the Finder window has depth, there's no reason the URL input should be flat. Apple did this correctly and with subtlety up to Yosemite.

2. I really do applaud Apple for reverting to the Big Sur-style sidebar. The floating sidebar was nonsense. However, because the sidebar is so flat compared to the window to which it attaches, something seems off about the sidebar's appearance. If Apple made the traffic light buttons glassy, that might add balance to the sidebar, but I'm not sure if that's entirely the solution. Apple should consider some type of divider like in it used in Tiger.

3. I don't understand how anyone can use light mode because it is blindingly white in Tahoe on my MacBook Pro. Toolbar buttons and other parts of the UI are generally distinguishable when using dark mode.

4. I haven't a clue why Apple relies on window contents to provide colour to the UI. Apple, make a choice to use some texture and colour without relying on the background! The transparency is so lazy.

5. Apple has been accumulating a debt of bad pop notification UIs for years now. These do not seem considered at all, and because Apple is not laser-focused on macOS, these parts of the OS will continue to languish.

6. Music is a UI nightmare. Absolute rubbish. Scrap it and toss it in the dustbin.

7. Applications can still be dragged into the Finder toolbar for quick access!

8. The system is really responsive except for scrolling in the Finder with tabs open. Whatever calculations are needed to render the icons behind the transparent tabs causes very slight stutters.

9. Golden Gate is much more enjoyable than Tahoe, but it still has a long, long way to go. If Apple puts in the effort to actually consider all of the UI elements, it might find a winning combination that balances its three main main design languages. Golden Gate isn't there yet.

Edit:

10. The pill highlight in the top menubar and dropdown windows is such a tired, lazy design. I don't understand Apple's obsession with pill shapes. They cause disconnection and lag between the selection in the menu and dropdown window. It just looks weird.

 

[despotist]

• Siri AI sounds can be customized by picking a voice and then customizing expressivity and pace on devices with 12GB RAM and A19 Pro, Mac models with M3 or later, iPad models with M4 and later, and Apple Vision Pro with M5.

Does anyone actually have access to this? I just got the new Siri but only see the old voices (I have a supported Mac of course).

In the same vein, the new Advanced Dictation was limited to the same device models. Does anyone have access to it on macOS, or is it limited to iOS right now?

 

[CrabQueenInc]

Credit to Stephen Hackett and his macOS Screenshot Library for the screenshots that I'm using to compare against my screenshot of Golden Gate:

 

[walterpaisley]

For you Safari users, if you want to remove the Recently Visited section or anything else from the address bar dropdown, right-click and you'll get a list of options you can un-check. Not the most intimate, but it's there

 

[CrabQueenInc]

I’m not sure if this was in Tahoe, but when I right-click and select a picture to use as a desktop background from the Finder, the system takes a split second during which a little gear appears in the menubar until the background is changed.

 

[DankeBrutus]

Like a certain type of leopard, I can’t remember which. Can someone help remind me?

I find it kinda funny that Snow Leopard is evoked so often when High Sierra is the more recent example of this style of update.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

I find it kinda funny that Snow Leopard is evoked so often when High Sierra is the more recent example of this style of update.

I think it’s funny that snow leopard is brought up so often when it was a pretty awful release until about 10.6.5.
Before then, there were issues with it literally erasing people’s entire home folders, printers not working, iMovie and iPhoto being downright unusable, and on top of that, the fact that it only supported computers that were within the previous three years of it releasing.
To put it into perspective, the last Power Mac and PowerBooks were released in October 2005, they were not supported in August 2009. Even the first generation Apple Watch Ultra received longer support than the last power PC Macs.

 

[tkermit]

You can now paste text and images directly into the Finder:

Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social)

Attached: 1 image New Finder feature in macOS 27: you can paste things from your clipboard into the filesystem. Who else has been asking for this one? 😄

mastodon.social

 

[dumiku]

Anyone notice that when the MacBook goes to sleep, touching the Touch ID does not wake up the computer, you have to press it.

 

[tehabe]

I hate that with the new Siri enabled, my spotlight bar is now permanently dark mode.

Before
View attachment 2637886

After
View attachment 2637887

Why did they even redesign spotlight if they were just going to trash it so quickly with new Siri...

That look truely awful, even for someone who uses dark mode.

 

[Aquamite]

You can now paste text and images directly into the Finder:

Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith@mastodon.social)

Attached: 1 image New Finder feature in macOS 27: you can paste things from your clipboard into the filesystem. Who else has been asking for this one? 😄

mastodon.social

added to the first post list 🙂

 

[Brettka7]

That look truely awful, even for someone who uses dark mode.

This year’s WWDC is all about brown gradients, which is unusual. It’s probably because 70s style/designs are coming back in real-life the same way MCM did about a decade ago.

I think the brown gradient will be short-lived.

 

[Omega Mac]

Credit to Stephen Hackett and his macOS Screenshot Library for the screenshots that I'm using to compare against my screenshot of Golden Gate:

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Man those squricles for app icons really kill the macOS dock, subduing the whole vibrancy of the desktop and askewing it's personality.

You can see in the previous docks, and you don't even have to go all the way back to Snow leopard, the one that looks like Sequoia, it still has non squircle app icons and has so much more life and character.

 

[CrabQueenInc]

Man those squricles for app really kill the macOS dock, subduing the whole vibrancy of the desktop and askewing it's personality.

You can see you even the previous docks and you don't even have to go all the way back t Snow leopard, the on that looks like Sequoia, even it still has non squircle app icons, it has so much more life and character.

Apple built OS X to have photo realistic icons only to reduce it all to squircles and one texture (glass) decades later. Distinguishing between applications and identifying functions was so much easier and faster when different shapes were used.

 

[n-evo]

Completely off-topic: I really miss all the cool eye candy Aqua had. Like the pulsing confirmation buttons, rippling progress bars, etc. I still can’t believe they didn’t bring that back with Liquid Glass. Seemed like a no-brainer. I was hoping the release after macOS Tahoe would restore some of that. But alas.

 

[CrabQueenInc]

Completely off-topic: I really miss all the cool eye candy Aqua had. Like the pulsing confirmation buttons, rippling progress bars, etc. I still can’t believe they didn’t bring that back with Liquid Glass. Seemed like a no-brainer. I was hoping the release after macOS Tahoe would restore some of that. But alas.

The gentle pulse of the icons made OS X seem alive. I miss it, too.

 

[maxoakland]

I like this:

macOS 27 Golden Gate makes it clear when apps are sneakily running in background - 9to5Mac

Google Gemini for macOS was recently flagged for not being a very good app citizen on the Mac. Apple’s new...

9to5mac.com

This is so good. This kind of user-centric feature is exactly what I've been missing from Apple for quite awhile. The kind of thing you can't exactly build a commercial around but works to make the system better to use

 

[MakaniKai]

Can someone tell me if this is new? When I fill my screen with a window by dragging it to the top of the screen (or double clicking the title bar of a window), the wallpaper becomes darker.

I am unsure if it's new or I just never noticed it before.

It also happens if you tile multiple windows, as long as they fill the screen.

 

[maxoakland]

Man those squricles for app icons really kill the macOS dock, subduing the whole vibrancy of the desktop and askewing it's personality.

You can see in the previous docks, and you don't even have to go all the way back to Snow leopard, the one that looks like Sequoia, it still has non squircle app icons and has so much more life and character.

It makes it look like Fischer Price babby’s first OS(tm)

It’s happened so slowly I didn’t even really realize it. Yuck.

 

[Luftkopf]

It makes it look like Fischer Price babby’s first OS(tm)

It’s happened so slowly I didn’t even really realize it. Yuck.

At least that's Apple's tradition. macOS: Fischer Price OS since 2001.

 

[Aggedor]

Man those squricles for app icons really kill the macOS dock, subduing the whole vibrancy of the desktop and askewing it's personality.

You can see in the previous docks, and you don't even have to go all the way back to Snow leopard, the one that looks like Sequoia, it still has non squircle app icons and has so much more life and character.

I agree, but I wonder if this design trend will actually be fading soon - squricles look lame, and with GG's other UI changes, maybe macOS 28 will give a bit more icon flexibility.

 

[judgeFire]

I agree, but I wonder if this design trend will actually be fading soon - squricles look lame, and with GG's other UI changes, maybe macOS 28 will give a bit more icon flexibility.

Having elements of icons reach outside the squircle area, refracting their surroundings, would kinda fit in with the Liquid Glass ideology. The Dock background in itself isn't much to refract, but the idea of layers in icons would get visually stronger when breaking the boundary.

 

[MakaniKai]

Can someone tell me if this is new? When I fill my screen with a window by dragging it to the top of the screen (or double clicking the title bar of a window), the wallpaper becomes darker.

I am unsure if it's new or I just never noticed it before.

It also happens if you tile multiple windows, as long as they fill the screen.

I verified with a friend’s MacBook Pro running macOS 26 that this feature is new.

 

[Aggedor]

Having elements of icons reach outside the squircle area, refracting their surroundings, would kinda fit in with the Liquid Glass ideology. The Dock background in itself isn't much to refract, but the idea of layers in icons would get visually stronger when breaking the boundary.

Yeah it's curious, in some ways the Liquid Glass concept is grounded in a kind of physical reality (trying not to say skewmorphism here!), and yet a lot of the modern UI is still in the flat design, like the Dock.

An angled glass dock, like we used to have in OS X, would actually work rather well in the revised Golden Gate version of Liquid Glass - which would then suit icons that are not limited to the squircle design.