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Tahoe is the worst user interface update in the history of the Mac
- Thread starter Apple Knowledge Navigator
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A question to consider is what do "normal" people think of the UI? These are the people who just use their computers who don't spend time on social media obsessing over Apple and/or technology.
I can't speak for everyone and an anecdote doesn't mean much (which also applies to the survey being referenced; since it is not a scientific survey it counts as anecdotal evidence), but here's the anecdote from my wife, who is one of those "normal" people. She's very intelligent and very competent but has almost zero interest in tech.
I upgraded her MacBook Air to macOS 26. What happened? She went back to work running her business and volunteer work as if nothing changed; she didn't even notice what changed. Not once has she had an issue with the UI. So if "Tahoe is the worst user interface update in the history of the Mac", that says a lot about Apple continuing to get things right for the "normal" person.
Could things be better? Yes, but if people really wanted Apple to make changes, they would contact Apple with suggestions about what should improve. Channel all this enthusiasm into feature requests, bug reports, and feedback to Apple rather than post here. People at Apple peruse these forums, but without actionable items, it's hard to do much.
I can't speak for everyone and an anecdote doesn't mean much (which also applies to the survey being referenced; since it is not a scientific survey it counts as anecdotal evidence), but here's the anecdote from my wife, who is one of those "normal" people. She's very intelligent and very competent but has almost zero interest in tech.
I upgraded her MacBook Air to macOS 26. What happened? She went back to work running her business and volunteer work as if nothing changed; she didn't even notice what changed. Not once has she had an issue with the UI. So if "Tahoe is the worst user interface update in the history of the Mac", that says a lot about Apple continuing to get things right for the "normal" person.
Could things be better? Yes, but if people really wanted Apple to make changes, they would contact Apple with suggestions about what should improve. Channel all this enthusiasm into feature requests, bug reports, and feedback to Apple rather than post here. People at Apple peruse these forums, but without actionable items, it's hard to do much.
MacBH928
macrumors G3
If you’re the tech person for friends & family and you constantly hear their frustration with ios26 and macos26, then it's inaccurate to keep saying that it’s just a vocal minority being negative about it.
svenmany
macrumors 68030
This comment from the linked report card :
"Apple gave developers great new APIs to use in the 26 OSes, but burdened them with half-baked redesigns that make it extremely challenging to create good UIs and reliable apps."
got me thinking about something which I would consider half-baked in Tahoe.
Tahoe has taken the step to remove the black dot on the red window-close button to indicate unsaved changes (for document-centric apps). Instead, they put an "Edited" comment below the document's title. Unfortunately, if you have your document shared on iCloud, the word "Shared" appears there and prevents "Edited" from appearing.
A number of applications have resisted using the new API for that and managed to keep the independent change indicator on the close button. Sadly, OmniOutliner did not, and I'm struggling with the problem now. I wrote them and they responded promptly and politely as usual.
"I believe this is an OS-Level change and not something we have control over."
It is not quite correct that they have no control over it, but they would have to fight against what Apple wants to push as the standard and they made a call. It works against my interests but saves them trouble when Apple finally finishes the design and fixes the API. I tested Apple's own Automator app and the new Numbers app. They both have this same issue.
It's hard to imagine Apple intended "Shared" to prevent "Edited" from appearing; it's just something they failed to consider and test. That is an example of a half-baked redesign and how a developer might be burdened with it.
"Apple gave developers great new APIs to use in the 26 OSes, but burdened them with half-baked redesigns that make it extremely challenging to create good UIs and reliable apps."
got me thinking about something which I would consider half-baked in Tahoe.
Tahoe has taken the step to remove the black dot on the red window-close button to indicate unsaved changes (for document-centric apps). Instead, they put an "Edited" comment below the document's title. Unfortunately, if you have your document shared on iCloud, the word "Shared" appears there and prevents "Edited" from appearing.
A number of applications have resisted using the new API for that and managed to keep the independent change indicator on the close button. Sadly, OmniOutliner did not, and I'm struggling with the problem now. I wrote them and they responded promptly and politely as usual.
"I believe this is an OS-Level change and not something we have control over."
It is not quite correct that they have no control over it, but they would have to fight against what Apple wants to push as the standard and they made a call. It works against my interests but saves them trouble when Apple finally finishes the design and fixes the API. I tested Apple's own Automator app and the new Numbers app. They both have this same issue.
It's hard to imagine Apple intended "Shared" to prevent "Edited" from appearing; it's just something they failed to consider and test. That is an example of a half-baked redesign and how a developer might be burdened with it.
bogdanw
macrumors 604
With Defer90.mobileconfig https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/defer-tahoe-for-90-days.2465304/
svenmany
macrumors 68030
I don't know if you're right or wrong. I have no idea if submitting directly to Apple pushes them in any particular direction. That approach gets no public visibility.
I've always thought that the best approach, if you're dealing with a bug, is force Apple to deal with it through a call to support. That approach costs them money. But, it costs the customer a ton of time, so I often just give up.
CrabQueenInc
macrumors regular
Nick Heer, whose writing I greatly appreciate, published an interesting article on the major changes to Pages’ interface since Lion: https://pxlnv.com/blog/window-chrome-of-our-discontent/.
TumbleDryer
macrumors 603
On a couple of occasions I emailed Steve Jobs back in the day with some suggestions. Two of which got included in the very next update. One was adding the pixel values next to the screen shot tool so you could measure the box you were drawing for example (so you can thank me for that - possibly/maybe 🤷♂️😂) and the other was something Finder related but I cant recall what it was. Now though you use the official feedback channels and I think it just goes into the abyss.
Ive asked for years to have a 'notes/comments' feature in Mail so when you are working through your inbox and you're waiting on clients or something you could attach a note a bit like comments in Numbers saying 'need CMYK PDF from Jenny'. I'd find that extremely useful but so far it's never been added.
MysteriousStain
macrumors 6502
I did a ⌘-shift-4 to see this again and then tried to take a ⌘-shift-3 to take a screen shot of me taking a screen shot - which actually sort of half works. But you have secured your immortality either way.
Contacting Apple can be time consuming, and even frustrating for the customer. The fact is that depending on which "settings" you allow to share with Apple and developers, even analytical reports, Apple is already being informed on how you use your Mac, iPhone, and so on.
It is much simpler for posters in this and other forums, to tell things that they may like or dislike about Tahoe. It is also a lot cheaper for Apple to monitors conversations such as this one we are having, I am certain that all we say is automatically gathered by Apple via AI as soon as certain keywords are posted on the Internet.
The truth is that Apple is not interested in anything that does not generate revenue. Only when Apple loses money it listens to the customers and tries to adjust accordingly. That's the bottomline.
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Herr Podspro
macrumors member
The people responsible are gone? If I’m not mistaking, the CEO that green lit the launch is still present. And so is VP of software design.
And honestly, I’d MUCH rather have the people that had the original vision still work on it than handing the fate of the entire Apple OS design language to new people that now have to fix other people’s mistakes.
I don’t think what you wrote is accurate or in reality means what you want to think it means.
However, the rest I whole heartedly agree with. They really should have taken the time to release Liquid Glass when it was intended to be, this year, Apple‘s 50th anniversary, if at all.
But definitely not before it was ready, which is still the case.
I mean, this kinda is classic Apple. Releasing a system wide bug fix for their 50th anniversary.
Hopefully not a sign of what’s to come in the next 50 years…
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A CEO cannot micro manage every department like Steve Jobs did. The company is too big for that now.
There is no "VP of software design". You are confusing Software Engineering with the Design team.
They have overlapping duties but SE focuses on the SDK and hardware integration with the OS.
Everyone puts the blame on Alan Dye. The suggestion is he didn't meet the deadline for Tahoe release date and didn't manage the UI refresh well.
HouseLannister
macrumors 68040
Do we know that? One man left. Lemay, Ternus, Federighi, Cook are all still there. Do you think they weren't involved in macOS 26 AT ALL? What were they all doing while Dye was running around like he owned the place? Removing one person isn't a panacea.
antmarobel
macrumors 6502a
I'm not fussed by the flourishes, but... the main thing that annoys me and which confuses my elderly parents and my kids... is the window resizing. You sort of have to move the cursor so it's at an imaginary point in the bottom right of a window, and guess where the true corner is.
This doesn't feel very Mac-like.
It was easier to quickly resize a window in GEM on my TOS 1.02 Atari ST than with macOS Tahoe.
Perhaps apple should bring in themes (though they find it hard enough to keep one theme consistent) - but supporting 3 or 4 different themes might finally allow people to have the system they way they want. Keep a plain/simple theme going, something retro, something at the cutting edge of experimentation and whatever the default experience apple want for us too.
I'd love to ahve something that looked at a bit like Leopard/Snow Leopard. Or even the older brushed metal.
Just something clean, that doesn't have excessive white space.
And please please bring back the old system preferences.
This doesn't feel very Mac-like.
It was easier to quickly resize a window in GEM on my TOS 1.02 Atari ST than with macOS Tahoe.
Perhaps apple should bring in themes (though they find it hard enough to keep one theme consistent) - but supporting 3 or 4 different themes might finally allow people to have the system they way they want. Keep a plain/simple theme going, something retro, something at the cutting edge of experimentation and whatever the default experience apple want for us too.
I'd love to ahve something that looked at a bit like Leopard/Snow Leopard. Or even the older brushed metal.
Just something clean, that doesn't have excessive white space.
And please please bring back the old system preferences.
MacBH928
macrumors G3
yeah a $3T company won't read your email. You want to make damage, complain about it to death and make racket online.
thanks
do you know there is a post it notes app in macos?
svenmany
macrumors 68030
That doesn't follow. Most people won't notice negative impacts if they're small enough and spread over time. My wife is probably the same as yours in that she has no interest in tech. She wouldn't even think to complain about something that could be better since her lack of interest doesn't lead her to wonder about it.
When someone complains about a UI element they are struggling with, and explains why, that gives us some evidence of a problem with the design. When someone identifies a UI element that is particularly helpful, and explains why, that is evidence of the success of the design. When a regular person is silent or says the UI is OK, that doesn't add any evidence. However, when a person recognized as an expert in the field offers an opinion, that does add something. In that case it will be up to the details they provide to determine how much is added. Such a person's opinion is expected to be driven by more than their own personal tastes.
I wrote in another thread
I was trying to be funny but still make a point. A design tries to please people, not bother people, and facilitate long-term success and efficiency.
svenmany
macrumors 68030
I quite liked comment near the end:
The key is measurement to figure out the truth. Are there user studies? Is the distraction measurable?
Another aspect of that is whether distraction lessens with familiarity. I just downloaded the new Pages. The left corner of the page is a major distraction for me. This is how the app opens for me on a new document based on "Blank" template.
The bottom left looks like a tear in the paper. In old Pages, a scroll bar appears on the page bottom to eliminate this effect. But, even without that scroll bar, the effect is less noticeable in the old version since the corners of the window aren't as rounded.
As an aside - I think there's actually a bug. I have my mac set to always show scroll bars and with the new Pages the page is overlapping the scroll bar. Here's a shot where I scroll the page up slightly:
I'm rather certain, that with regular use, none of this will matter. But it bothers me now and that would add a bias to my review of the design. What's really important is what bothers me in the long term. Over time, would my eyes regularly drift to the bottom left? If so, (even if I didn't notice it was happening), then there's a problem. Eye tracking software could quantify the impact.
TumbleDryer
macrumors 603
I do but wouldn't it be much easier if you just hovered over an email and your quick comments popped up related to said email/contact?
svenmany
macrumors 68030
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.
It was almost as negative as his Tahoe opinions, which again makes them significantly harder to take seriously.
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
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?
This thread is quoting John Siracusa. John also extracted choice quotes related to Tahoe that were just some negative ones. But the real story is the survey (not John's biased commentary on it), which is quite a bit more balanced relating to Tahoe (still generally negative with respect to the UI). I think the only way to evaluate the survey is to research the background of the 40 people and read their words:
Apple in 2025: The complete commentary
Every year, we ask a collection of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people for their opinions about how Apple fared in the year just gone by. You can read our 2025 report card fo…
sixcolors.com
Search for the sections "Mac" (which is hardware and software) and "Apple Software" (which is macOS and the other operating systems). The latter is way down in this long post. There were some positive LG opinions in that section.
Herr Podspro
macrumors member
It shouldn’t take „micro management“ to get a clear and honest picture about the biggest (not the most important or noteworthy) redesign in computing history (it is, this is unprecedented).
Cook can care about so many things if he chooses to, including the outside appearance of Apple products to customers and share holders.
My point stands, Liquid Glass should have been released this year at the earliest.
If someone handed Cook a phone running the then most stable and complete version of iOS 26 to use for a week, he should have known it wouldn’t be finished by summer/autumn 2025.
I‘m actually pretty sure he knew what was going on but decided to go through with it anyway because they had nothing else to present after the debacle around Apple Intelligence.
iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe are both bad. I'm still skeptical of iOS 26, but I value my Mac and iPad more than iPhone.