macOS Tahoe Finder Bug Underscores Apple's Slipping UI Polish

[RumorConsumer]

I've been using Apple computers for over 40 years, since before the original Mac was released. I haven't seen this slide. That doesn't mean there isn't one, but I've not had any bugs or issues that impede my getting things done. I've seen OSes grow dramatically in complexity as computers are drastically more powerful and capable, but again haven't had issues that prevent me from getting my work done.

I'll admit I like Liquid Glass though so if that means your opinion about my opinions is not positive, then just ignore me.

Edit: see my post below. I tried recreating this issue and didn't see it, although I might not have my settings all matching.

Literally on the way to replying to this, I encountered this graphical UI bug in Safari:

What you're supposed to see here to the right of where it says CP (a google doc) are two more tabs. One I opened to reply to you, the other I opened as a second attempt. Above are my Favorites Bar bookmarks to Headfi Forums and my Synology surveillance cameras. There should be two active page tabs in that blank space. If I minimize and then bring the window back, they finally appear. I have seen this since 26.0. For Apple in their flagship browser, thats insane.

I do lots of work with file sharing over SMB. My network is rock solid. The number of times Finder has some kind of fit over a connected server's mount status, how it responds (or simply doesn't) to volume ejection commands (back through Sequoia) is embarrassing.

If you have multiple spaces and your Calendar app is on one space and you double click a.ics file, you aren't brought to the calendar where a new window has popped up to ask you what calendar you want to pin the event to, and if you really meant to add this even to your calendar. Instead, everything in your active space becomes unresponsive until you figure out that you have to manually skip over to the space with the calendar app open.

Messages does not reliably tell you a message was delivered. It often just leaves it blank on iMessage. Did it deliver or didn't it? Why no readout? Has been like this for many generations of macOS even after Messages got its little overhaul. They dont even reliably change the version number on the Apple Apps anymore.

In the Music app, sometimes the search just stops working and you have to quit the app and reopen it.

Contacts app is design wise the most cluster****ed overlap of UI of nearly any app on the Mac.

In the Finder, find a video file, right click it, go to Services and select Encode Video File. Then try to uncheck the box that says "same as source file" for the save location. Notice you both cannot uncheck the ticker box but you also cannot see the words because they overlap.

If you want more, listen to Gruber's last two episodes of the Talk Show with John Gruber.

Im really not here to be a jerk and say Im a better more Mac-ier user than you are and if you are really using all aspects of the OS I dont know how anybody can say things are fine. There is not a single pundit (ATP.fm, Gruber, Snell, etc) who says anything other than this. John Siracusa who wrote macOS reviews for like a decade for ArsTechnica wont even upgrade because it's so rough and riddled with bugs. Sorry. Facts.

 

[JTK Awesome]

Surprising dearth of “Steve Jobs rolling in his grave” “fire Tim Cook” “Apple is doomed” replies here ⁉️

Liquid Ass

“Can’t innovate my ass”

Or was that “can’t innovate my glass” 😕

 

[johnrlaporta]

You know what? I never even knew those were there. I always put the mouse pointer wherever right over the bar separating the columns, wait for it to turn into a bidirectional arrow. Then I just drag the bar.

 

[neuropsychguy]

When I resize the bug appears when I expand it out past all the columns it 'fixes' itself. Obviously more broken than first thought. 🙄

That's weird because it never showed up for me in any test on my two Macs running 26.2. I did at least 20 different tests where I have all those settings. I opened new Finder windows, went to some very buried directory, and never had that issue. I'm going to upgrade to 26.3 and see what happens after that upgrade.

I don't know why this isn't affecting everyone or why it's not affecting my two computers. 🤷‍♂️

Edit: Okay, you also have to turn on "Show the path bar". With that I see the issue now.

This should only affect people who turn on/use 2 specific settings: Finder --> Columns && Finder --> View --> Show Path Bar

You do not necessarily need this turned on: Settings --> Appearance --> Show scroll bars --> Always show scroll bars

I cannot recreate it without Show Path Bar turned on, however.

It's a good little UI "bug" catch, but I can also understand why it wasn't really addressed before. I doubt most users of Macs are using that particular combination of settings. There are many who are, but you must change 2 default behaviors to get it to show, which goes beyond what the typical Mac user is likely to do.

 

[Ja50n]

Yeah, there are some bugs, but compared to Windows 11 the latest macOS is coding perfection… Yeah, it would be nice to have even fewer bugs, but it’s been years upon years since I had a Mac fully crash. With my work laptop I measure it in days.

 

[Rafagon]

Tim Cook you better be reading this article. And take appropriate action.

 

[chris1958]

Am I doing something wrong? I use column mode all the time but I don't have or need those resize handle, I can just grab the column anywhere and resize it...

If you change the system setting for the scroll bar to "always" this small handles appear.

 

[zemoleman]

This window bug is infuriating, I encounter it all day long, it should NEVER have happened. The inability to choose a folder of pictures for Desktop pictures is utterly embarrassing, in fact Tahoe as a whole is outside of OSX 1 the worst OS Apple ever released and Apple should be investing Moon Landing scale resources to fix this major horrorshow.

 

[gd2024]

I don't get it. I haven't noticed it before, but since I installed 26.3 I decided to check. Seems to work fine in full screen mode or otherwise. I went 5 columns wide and still works.

 

[MacBH928]

given that the image editor on iOS photos seems like it was vibe coded on Qwen 2.5(3b)

 

[YuniHKim]

Apple’s UI’s breaking down. It’s not just for macOS, but for iOS and iPadOS too. They abandoned their own identity and I think the empire just started collapsing. Tim Cook has to resign as soon as possible.

 

[ProbablyDylan]

It's like design metaphors designed for AR headsets do not perfectly translate to a 2-dimensional desktop or something.

 

[coolfactor]

... Safari keeps crashing almost every day and some websites are not even working properly in Safari. Every Mac user needs Chrome installed as well as Sarfari is so useless following web-standards.
...

Not my experience, and any time I come across a site that only works in Chrome, I declare that a fault of the site, not Safari. Some site developers are just biased.

As for Tahoe issues, I've only experienced one Safari crash, so extremely rare, and I primarily run Safari Tech Preview, so the bleeding edge.

In Finder, I've had annoying "file listing glitches" where several file names overlap in List view. A relaunch of Finder fixes that.

Apps seem to become "unclickable" if I switch between apps quickly. I've managed to recover from this, but it's very disconcerting.

And predating Tahoe... why won't Finder remember my preferred window size?!? It's supposed to persist this setting if you resize a window while holding the Cmd key.

Certain apps remain neglected, too, such as Image Capture. That's been the case for many years.

Feedback sent in via Feedback Assistant seems to be getting ignored.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Hey it’s just the Finder.
Who even needs to use that, right?

 

[neuropsychguy]

I don't get it. I haven't noticed it before, but since I installed 26.3 I decided to check. Seems to work fine in full screen mode or otherwise. I went 5 columns wide and still works.

I wasn't getting it either. You must also turn on "Show Path Bar" under the Finder View settings. It's a bit of an obscure issue. I understand how it might be frustrating to people with that particular Finder set up though.

 

[Logamaniac]

Once upon an Apple, they polished every last pixel. It’s very strange to witness the lack of care they have now.

I’d disagree that it’s a lack of care because who doesn’t care if they’re doing good work at this level?

I would agree that arbitrary deadlines and feature creep are likely candidates for these issues.

 

[coolfactor]

Apple’s UI’s breaking down. It’s not just for macOS, but for iOS and iPadOS too. They abandoned their own identity and I think the empire just started collapsing. Tim Cook has to resign as soon as possible.

I think Tim's done a great job, but I do wonder if he actually uses a Mac much? If I were CEO, the Mac Finder would get a *lot* more attention.

 

[sahajesh]

Tim Cook you better be reading this article. And take appropriate action.

He’s at the cinema watching Melania.

 

[sahajesh]

I think Tim's done a great job, but I do wonder if he actually uses a Mac much? If I were CEO, the Mac Finder would get a *lot* more attention.

He just sends emails and opens Keynote slides that have been emailed to him, no doubt.

 

[sahajesh]

I’d disagree that it’s a lack of care because who doesn’t care if they’re doing good work at this level?

I would agree that arbitrary deadlines and feature creep are likely candidates for these issues.

I’d love to see their JIRA backlog - likely it’s so long that items have been auto-deleted.

 

[Black_Mage]

In other words, I made the right decision to install 15.7.4 instead of 26.3. Good to know. 👍

 

[klasma]

This is actually extremely common for devs (not just apple) to forget about the always show scroll bars settings. Because most trackpad users don't use this setting. Even if you use a mouse, chances are if you have a scroll wheel or anything like that, you don't use this setting. It is meant for old school mouses, or people who still prefer the workflow associated with an old school mouse. I've been at more than one company where this oversight has caused UI bugs.

IMO this has little to do with what pointing device you use. It's that people want to see the current scroll position and relative viewport size at all times, even when they are not scrolling.

 

[klasma]

It's NOT the default LOL this is not Windows.

You might not be aware, but Windows is hiding scrollbars by default as well since Windows 11. Luckily one can switch them on again, without weird overlay effects like on macOS.

 

[Luigiboy]

I honestly think there should be a class action lawsuit filed against them for how unfinished, buggy, and all around terrible Tahoe is. Also, all the transparency, which I know you can turn off, bogs down even the newest computers making people think they need a new one. And they don’t let you downgrade once you’ve upgraded - locking people into this nightmare.

 

[QuantumPulse]

I think this is just an tad alarmist. On the other hand, I’m glad they fixed the hide my email bug.