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Second macOS Tahoe 26.4 Beta Now Available for Developers

kingtj1971 said:
Exactly! It's easy to say from purely a technical standpoint that the "old code needs to go". But reality is, Apple is still only selling computers to a pretty small percentage of the computer-buying public. They don't have enough influence to force the hand of developers who aren't motivated to rewrite their existing programs.

Not everything is a well-known, mainstream application like Adobe's suite or Microsoft Office. Some of the music creation/editing type software out there gets written by a one or two person team and may only sell a small number of copies. If it's, say, a patch librarian tool for a music synthesizer or workstation? The users don't really mind or care if it receives an update. As long as it keeps doing the job it always did, it's useful to them. A new Mac OS breaking such a program just means the upgrade to Mac OS hurt them as much as it helped anything. That developer is likely to not have any motivation to rewrite the whole application. They may have only sold 500 copies of the first one.

Over time, what this REALLY does is drives more people over to the Windows platform where applications DO get regular updates, just because the sheer number of users ensures it's worth it, financially, for even small devs to maintain their programs.
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To all but the nerdiest among us, what matters is "does XYZ software work/run for me?".

Apple rug pulling folks along may be good for their own goals, but it's mostly a hassle (or worse, dealbreaker) for general users.
 
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I installed it here on the main SSD of my Air M1 and it caused some kernel panics during startup, be careful M1 users. I'll avoid restarting my computer until the next beta.
My iPhone no longer shows up in Finder or Sideloadly.

Edit: AirDrop between Mac and iPhone doesn't work here either. Both in beta 26.4 beta 2
 
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I watched the video below. 26.4 still has the giant puffy corners which are kinda dumb. Also has Liquid Glass in the control center stuff; icons primary in menus. So Apple's committed to poor design, still. Sticking with Sequoia. Perhaps macos 27 will be better.

 
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winxmac said:
Releases:
iOS 26.4 beta 2 (23E5218e)
iPadOS 26.4 beta 2 (23E5218e)
macOS 26.4 beta 2 (25E5218f)
tvOS 26.4 beta 2 (23L5219e)
visionOS 26.4 beta 2 (23O5220e)
watchOS 26.4 beta 2 (23T5221e)

Source
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we can add

audioOS 26.4 beta 2 (23L5219e)
macOS Sonoma 14.8.5 RC 2 (23J412)
macOS Sequoia 15.7.5 RC 2 (24G612)
 
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headlessmike said:
I work in a research lab where we use a laser that is dependent on software that hasn't been updated since 1986! In addition to the 80's PC that runs it we also have a Pentium 4 desktop running Windows XP with software needed to extract the data from the measurement PC and its 5.25" disks. I have a USB floppy drive for my 14" M1 MacBook Pro running Tahoe that I also keep around for accessing some of the data. Talk about a house of cards!
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Ages ago I used to do contract work for a local hospital that still had a couple midrange IBM mainframes running on 14" disk cartridges, a SPARCstation "pizza box" running in anti-static enclosure, and a number of PS/2s running IBM OS/2 2.x software...
 
jtfolden said:
It's unfortunate but it is that simple. It's not as if you are losing support tomorrow, either. macOS 27 will still offer Rosetta support and that will be maintained for a few more years. You don't have to immediately update to the latest release of macOS either. macOS shouldn't be hamstrung to support abandoned software that the original authors won't update themselves after numerous years.
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Some of the apps I use, the developers are switching from a fully paid one time app to subscription. They are only updating the subscription based versions, so doing away with Rosetta means apps I paid for I now need to pay every month for. I try to avoid any app that requires a subscription.
 
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jtfolden said:
I avoid apps that require Rosetta like the plague. Honestly, it's been over 5 years, and I think macOS will run better if they can jettison support for obsolete hardware and software. This has happened before with old PPC apps too, etc... Maintaining old code is a distraction from fixing more current pressing issues too.
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If Apple feel like they need more maintenance time they can jettison Liquid Glass and revert to the previous UI, which will free up plenty.
 
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WinstonSmyth said:
Some of the apps I use, the developers are switching from a fully paid one time app to subscription. They are only updating the subscription based versions, so doing away with Rosetta means apps I paid for I now need to pay every month for. I try to avoid any app that requires a subscription.
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Yes, I can understand how that would be annoying. It's often the case that newer versions of macOS can break older software even when we aren't talking about a transition like this. That's really on the developer when they move to subscription based offerings though.
 
capamac said:
I watched the video below. 26.4 still has the giant puffy corners which are kinda dumb. Also has Liquid Glass in the control center stuff; icons primary in menus. So Apple's committed to poor design, still. Sticking with Sequoia. Perhaps macos 27 will be better.

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If you are expecting macOS 27 to make any major reversals on the user interface, prepare to be disappointed. That’s not happening.
iOS 26.4 Beta 2, an update released almost three months after Alan Dye left, actually introduces *more* glassiness in areas like the home screen edit menu, and macOS 26.4 Beta allows the mouse to properly interact with the rounded corners of windows.
Liquid glass, and the rounded corners, are here to stay, likely for at least the next decade.
 
capamac said:
Then I'll leave Mac for Linux.
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Options abound there. The cool kids are using Plasma. I tried it and it's pretty showy. Supposedly works really well on multi-monitor setups which I don't use. Don't try it with old integrated graphics unless you are patient. Cinnamon is easy on the eyes and easy to learn. I have been using that since 2019. MATE (pronounced maa-tay) is a bit different although it seems sort of Mac like for some reason. I rather like it too.

I tried pure Gnome over the weekend. I wasn't impressed, but apparently you can make Gnome very Mac-like. It's an option in Zorin.

The Cinnamon box is a home-built PC. The other Linux machines are Intel Macs, mostly Minis (a 2012 and a couple of 2014s), but also Big Al, the 2010 Mac Pro.

All my tinkering has been with the Debian/Ubuntu branch. There is also the Fedora branch. I used Suse Linux back in 2016 at work. It wasn't quite ready for casual users yet, but that was a decade ago (eek!) I used the xfce desktop as well which is austere but works just fine. MATE has only a slightly heavier footprint and works well on the 2012 mini including the up to date Firefox.

As I said, options abound. If Apple's one size fits all doesn't sit well with you maybe it is time to leave. I'm beginning to think they outsourced the user interface to Sirius Cybernetics. 🤔
 
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Lounge vibes 05 said:
Okay?
Not sure why this is said like some type of “gotcha”, you should use the OS that makes you happiest.
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The "OS that makes you happiest" was OS X several revs ago. I started using Macs when OS X became solid enough to be dependable (Tiger, I think it was). Prior to that time I was on Windows and Unix and Linux because I needed to be able to run the Office suite (not a work-alike) and I needed a pro-level command line. With OS X I was able to not only pare down to just one computer, but also gained a more stable OS and one that required much less fiddling. If I am forced back to Linux because macOS becomes unusable (for me), that means back to Linux AND Windows. So, the OS that made me happiest is being slowly turned into crap. Going back to Linux is not a happy move, it's a step backwards forced by bad choices and lousy testing by Apple.
 
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anyone facing this? I cannot update from B1 to B2. I tried reinstalling b1 from recovery, tried installing through terminal, no luck. I get this error when in preparation mode, last 5 minutes. 16" m3 max here

Screenshot 2026-02-24 at 11.09.52.png
 
For the ones with browser and freezing issues:

The cause seems to be a bug in Network filters. On my Mac it was Little Snitch. After I removed the network extension and especially the network filter everything worked fine again. No problems in Beta 1.

AdGuard already stopped working in the final version of 26.3. In the betas it still worked.

I replaced Little Snitch with LuLu now and it seems there are also problems. But not in every browser like with Little Snitch. My Firefox based browser for example is working fine but Safari isn't working. With Little Snitch every browser stopped working more or less.
 
apn3agr said:
anyone facing this? I cannot update from B1 to B2. I tried reinstalling b1 from recovery, tried installing through terminal, no luck. I get this error when in preparation mode, last 5 minutes. 16" m3 max here

View attachment 2607551
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Someone fixed this with booting into safe mode. But I would be careful with the update if you use network filtering.
 
AdGuard crashes from time to time on B2 because the service could not start properly. Malwarebytes 5.21 Beta cannot be opened on B2. But I see the icon in the menu bar.
Seems that Apple changed something under the hood that got inn conflict with some security tools.
 
Tranel said:
AdGuard crashes from time to time on B2 because the service could not start properly. Malwarebytes 5.21 Beta cannot be opened on B2. But I see the icon in the menu bar.
Seems that Apple changed something under the hood that got inn conflict with some security tools.
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I would recommend to turn off everything listed in Network Filters in this version of macOS. It might lead to massive problems with no Internet at all and freezing Macs, depending on the filter. The one from Little Snitch made my Mac almost unusable while any kind of browser was running.
 
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