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Tahoe is the worst user interface update in the history of the Mac

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Original poster
John Siracusa, 9-to-5 Mac:

Tahoe is the worst user interface update in the history of the Mac. Every change is either wrongheaded, poorly executed, or both. The Mac remains usable only because of Tahoe’s lack of ambition: it mostly alters the appearance and metrics of interface elements rather than making fundamental changes to the structure of the Mac UI.
Thank goodness for that. The bad ideas embodied in Tahoe reveal an Apple design team that has abandoned the most basic principles of human-computer interaction.
Click to expand...

9to5mac.com

Mac hardware is great, but macOS 26 is a disaster, say pundits - 9to5Mac

Jason Snell’s annual Apple report card is out, rating the company’s performance according to 56 influential commenters, including 9to5Mac’s editor-in-chief...
9to5mac.com 9to5mac.com

Thoughts? I think it’s a well-articulated piece, overall.
 
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This is the survey article 9to5mac is referring to:
sixcolors.com

Apple in 2025: The Six Colors report card

It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time…
sixcolors.com sixcolors.com
 
Thoughts?

Anyone who thinks Tahoe is bad never used Lion on contemporary hardware of the day.


Tahoe is fine. It brings a bunch of new tech under the covers, it isn’t just a different UI.

edit:
Oh, worst UI update? Maybe. Still Lion was pretty stupid with the way full screen was originally implemented.
 
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throAU said:
Thoughts?

Anyone who thinks Tahoe is bad never used Lion on contemporary hardware of the day.


Tahoe is fine. It brings a bunch of new tech under the covers, it isn’t just a different UI.

edit:
Oh, worst UI update? Maybe. Still Lion was pretty stupid with the way full screen was originally implemented.
Click to expand...
The distant past doesn't matter; the point is that with the Sequoia interface, it was possible to implement other new features of the operating system and consider incremental improvements to the interface.

Tahoe breaks with patterns that worked, and those who use Macs for more than just fun understand this.

The operating system itself continues to function, but there are a myriad of graphical changes that do not seem to make sense in terms of improving/facilitating the use of the operating system.

The reality is that they have chosen to sacrifice a functional interface that has matured over the years in the name of standardizing the interface between devices with very different functions and uses... as could be expected, instead of achieving harmony, they have created difficulties because the task assigned to the designers is an impossible mission... transforming the interface of a laptop/desktop into that of a cell phone without loss of quality and without a specific goal other than the marketing gamble that the novelty would attract new users charmed by the fact that the ecosystem interface is all similar.

Do they want to make a touchscreen MacBook? I don't see a market for it... there's already iPadOS, which occupies the touchscreen segment and does it better than macOS ever will with touchscreens.

There are some ideas worth keeping (e.g., the transparent menu bar and dock), but they would be incremental and not a break from Sequoia.
 
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throAU said:
Thoughts?

Anyone who thinks Tahoe is bad never used Lion on contemporary hardware of the day.


Tahoe is fine. It brings a bunch of new tech under the covers, it isn’t just a different UI.

edit:
Oh, worst UI update? Maybe. Still Lion was pretty stupid with the way full screen was originally implemented.
Click to expand...

Lion had performance problems. But Tahoe along with Cheetah shipped with a lot of UI elements not even completed on time.

Cheetah had an excuse because it was the earliest of days. Tahoe had no excuses. It's 2026 now and salaries are big and fat. That's probably why, as others point out, the head of design had to walk.
 
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Wolf1701 said:
Do they want to make a touchscreen MacBook? I don't see a market for it... there's already iPadOS, which occupies the touchscreen segment and does it better than macOS ever will with touchscreens.
Click to expand...
Exactly my thoughts. The iPad does touchscreen computing better than a Mac, just as a Mac does keyboard and cursor computing better than an iPad.
 
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maflynn said:
The numbers are brutal, while I felt the negative reactions were over sized to what has actually changed and how tahoe actually is, particularly on 26.2 (I've yet to update to 26.3).

I won't try to do defend apple when it’s clear the surveys paint a different picture.
Click to expand...
I feel like calling the six colors report card a “survey” is a bit disingenuous, it was only like 40 people if that.
When actual surveys have been done of thousands of people about Tahoe and the 26 operating system redesigns in general, the numbers are not so negative as the pundits would think.
It’s almost always about 70/30 positive/neutral to negative.
Not great but certainly not sky is falling.

Also I feel like this needs to be said, John Siracusa has been writing about macOS since the 90s and every single UI redesign he calls a regression.
He was quite cold on the original aqua, he called “Leopard” a regression, he didn’t like the design of Lion, he was pretty neutral on Yosemite.
Anyone who has read his decades of macOS opinions should have seen this coming from 100 miles away.
Edit: giving it a quick reread, I think it’s been forgotten how absolutely brutal John’s original “Leopard” review was.
arstechnica.com

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review

After a two-and-a-half-year wait, Leopard is here. John Siracusa covers the …
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
It was almost as negative as his Tahoe opinions, which again makes them significantly harder to take seriously.
If Tahoe is truly the worst interface the Mac has ever had, but you also said the same thing about the original aqua, leopard, lion, Yosemite, and Big Sur, it has to be asked when was it at its best? System 1.0?
 
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Wolf1701 said:
transforming the interface of a laptop/desktop into that of a cell phone without loss of quality and without a specific goal other than the marketing gamble that the novelty would attract new users charmed by the fact that the ecosystem interface is all similar.
Click to expand...
We've no idea why Apple went down this route, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they presented it to a focus group or two. That implies that someone at Apple – we don't know whom – suggested the idea, and it gained some traction internally.

So how would you phrase the question presented to the focus group without bias?

> Would you prefer a consistent interface across all you devices?

No one would answer no to that – and the bias is obvious.

My point is that it's very easy to convince yourself that your bias is correct, even when it's completely wrong, especially when you have supporting evidence, despite that evidence being flawed or even imagined. (There are endless examples of this from politics that I'm sure everyone can think of.)

The test, of course, is how to get back on track when the error becomes clear. Apple is still in the doubling down stage, and the longer they stay there, the more they will alienate their customers.
 
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the gui looks like an appliance, overboard rounded corners, the settings is actually worse to navigate. Compare to my settings panel on Monterey macos 12. The system preferences looks like Windows control panel.

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1772454132559.jpeg
 
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Lounge vibes 05 said:
I feel like calling the six colors report card a “survey” is a bit disingenuous, it was only like 40 people if that.
When actual surveys have been done of thousands of people about Tahoe and the 26 operating system redesigns in general, the numbers are not so negative as the pundits would think.
It’s almost always about 70/30 positive/neutral to negative.
Not great but certainly not sky is falling.
Click to expand...
Indeed, it’s just a panel. And you may be right that asking thousands of users would show a 70/30 split. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we get the same split asking Windows users about their OS. The point is a lot of people don’t care that much about the quality of the GUI as long as they can understand how to navigate and use it. They learn to live with the bad design choices and illogical decisions that make the GUI worse and they adapt. And there are even some more psychological reasons to accept that or rationalize the acceptance.
The point of the Six Colors panel is to give reasoned opinions from longtime “power users” and Apple professionals.
I think there was a time not so long ago when Apple would not ship so many mistakes in one time and be satisfied if about 70% of the users liked or somewhat liked their product. This kind of “good enough” was what we expected from the likes of Microsoft. But we hold Apple at a higher standard (and pay for it). I think that’s what the defiance rating from the panel means.
 
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Its the internet. Some just see themselves as holders to "almost-monopoly" of truth and others are trying to feed their confirmation bias with this stuff.

It is just overrated...
 
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Luke MacWalker said:
Indeed, it’s just a panel. And you may be right that asking thousands of users would show a 70/30 split. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we get the same split asking Windows users about their OS. The point is a lot of people don’t care that much about the quality of the GUI as long as they can understand how to navigate and use it. They learn to live with the bad design choices and illogical decisions that make the GUI worse and they adapt. And there are even some more psychological reasons to accept that or rationalize the acceptance.
The point of the Six Colors panel is to give reasoned opinions from longtime “power users” and Apple professionals.
I think there was a time not so long ago when Apple would not ship so many mistakes in one time and be satisfied if about 70% of the users liked or somewhat liked their product. This kind of “good enough” was what we expected from the likes of Microsoft. But we hold Apple at a higher standard (and pay for it). I think that’s what the defiance rating from the panel means.
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Right.
However, I will say that it is quite annoying when you can find examples of these longtime power users calling almost every single version of macOS the “worst ever”, including that Leopard review I posted above.
If everything new is always the worst, nothing was ever the best.
 
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Adora said:
I finally downgraded a few days ago and it's so beautiful.


View attachment 2609087
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How did you do it?

I'm thinking of manual backup of documents folder, music and TV library. Photos are backed up to iCloud so they will repopulate themselves. Email is IMAP so no issues there.

Then just Internet Recovery back to Sequoia and manually add the stuff back in the correct places then redownload apps as required. I prefer it that way as its a fresh install so to speak instead of a full backup restoration that might bring any hidden funkiness with it.
 
Lounge vibes 05 said:
Right.
However, I will say that it is quite annoying when you can find examples of these longtime power users calling almost every single version of macOS the “worst ever”, including that Leopard review I posted above.
If everything new is always the worst, nothing was ever the best.
Click to expand...
This reasoning would make sense if ‘new’ were always implicitly better than ‘old’. In all my years at MacRumors, I don't think I've ever seen so many people still dissatisfied with a version .3.
It's a reality that must be faced, however uncomfortable or ‘blasphemous’ it may be for others.
 
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*I have not idea how bad Tahoe is compared to Sequoia, but because of all the opposition to Tahoe made by users in this and other forums (all over the Internet, really), I held back from upgrading to Tahoe in my M4 Max Studio purchased earlier this year. Just last night I updated Sequoia to 15.7.4. Hopefully Apple will provide more updates.

**Now, I am not impressed at all about iOS 26 in two iPhones and one iPad in my household, which was the second reason why I refrained from upgrading three Macs (including the Studio) in my household. The iOS colors transparencies (Liquid Glass?), doesn't make my iPhone more efficient, nor the looks of the apps as shown on the display. It feels like the iOS designers shuffled things around and then embellished then as the saying, "putting lipstick on a pig" (?).

Please forgive my comments, for I am not trying to offend anybody in this forum nor anywhere else. My comments are based on the way I feel about iOS 26, plus on how all my friends, family members/relatives, and acquaintances feel about iOS 26 compared to the previous iOS.

*Reason number 1 for not upgrading to Tahoe.
**Reason number 2 (if Tahoe looks or performs anywhere similar to iOS 26, I don't need it since Sequoia is working well along all the non-Apple apps in my Mac's).
 
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This person doesnt work for apple do they?
Apple is better
Windows 11 is better
Linux is better.
There i fixed it!
But then you keep buying!
 
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