To a new customer it doesn’t matter how Tahoe compares to previous MacOS, it matters how it compares to current Windows.

Makes me think if it was carefully calculated strategy, so Windows users would feel more familiar with new os. Everything in MacOs is frustratingly unusual for windows users, but at least annoying bugs are there. And you google how to deal with it, getting familiar with the os.

I think the target demographic is also young people raised with iPhones. So for them the new interface design is good for similarity (not for older Mac-people). As if apple planed that all along...

> It doesn't matter how much cheap hardware you throw at the unwashed masses.

> Apple Announces New Mac Sales Record Following MacBook Neo Launch

Yeah, it apparently matters at least a little

This.

Maybe it's not the cheap hardware? I don't know?

But when you put the following assertions out there:

>Tahoe/iOS26 are still the most godawful buggy pieces of software Apple ever created

and

>It doesn't matter how much cheap hardware you throw at the unwashed masses

with the market data being what it is.

I guess I'm just saying those statements definitely go under the old Abe Lincoln admonition that at times "Both may be, but one MUST be, wrong."

What was that sales record?

> Tahoe/iOS26 are still the most godawful buggy pieces of software Apple ever created.

What is everyone seeing that I'm not? I like Tahoe/iOS26, I haven't noticed regressions with it.

Start noticing all the text on top of text (caused by "liquid glass"). Then please don't hate me for pointing it out to you.

I was seeing this in the Xcode debugger. Didn’t realize this was a Tahoe issue, not Xcode.

The icons in the menu bars are rough, the spacing isn’t great and the inconsistent window borders aren’t great.

I’m not that opinionated though - I don’t really care that much. But the part that sucked was installing it on a 2020 intel MacBook Pro. It basically made it unusable to the point of being ready to throw it out. Going back from Tahoe breathed so much life into it that it was fairly upsetting to see Apple release it. It reminded me of early iPhone updates that would basically brick older devices due to the performance impact.

To be fair MacOS (and all apple software) is so heavily optimized for their current hardware. It is unfortunate that Intel macs are left behind, but my 2019 intel mac was capital-S Struggling with macos already in 2022. The M-series was such a leap forward. It’s a server under my desk now.

Yeah, and using macOS fresh is 100x better than the out of box experience for Windows Home. It took me nearly two hours to get that in what I’d call a usable state, disabling “world polar bear day” logos on the search bar and dumb stuff like that.

macOS is much better than any alternative and Tahoe and iOS 26 seem perfectly fine?

My Mac is staying releases back, but iOS26 no longer respects light mode. Since I see astigmatic halation, this will be my last iDevice.

I run light mode on my iPhone and haven't noticed it switching to dark mode in any way. Do you have the automatic mode selection enabled accidentally?

No, this is not switching to dark mode, it's particular system features now being dark only, like notifications, search, control panel, and some other lesser things I don't specifically now remember.

Its slightly worse in my opinion but I don't have huge issues with it. Still way better than Windows 11 on my work computer.

Compared to Windows? Tahoe is probably fine. Compared to previous versions of macOS/OS X? Nothing deal-breaking for me, but there are all kinds of little things that just don't have the polish long-time macOS users are accustomed to. Sibling comments have already listed a few things, but take the grab points of the window corners, which don't actually match the window borders. A minor thing, IMO, but not very "Apple-y" to let something like that ship. The menu icons are another: they add clutter, they don't add a lot of value, and they look like crap. Again, not a huge deal, but c'mon, Apple, UI is supposed to be your thing.

I don't hate Tahoe myself, but I don't particularly love it, either. I can still get done what I need to do with an OS, but along with a bunch of other paper cuts in recent macOS versions (looking at you, System Settings) on top of Liquid Glass, I can see why folks are upset.

0 improvements is unfair

https://github.com/apple/container

I wonder if it’s time to try this again. Last time I tried it, it was intensely buggy, not to mention almost every feature I wanted.

The concept is great, and I would love to ditch OrbStack for it. (OrbStack is slick. But their everything-shares-one-kernel-and-they-don’t-give-privileged-access model falls apart as soon as you try to do anything that doesn’t fit in their not-amazing sandbox. Even user namespaces don’t appear to work.) But, other than the actual core mostly working, Apple Containers was a buggy mess, and it was the only thing that made me frequently reboot the whole machine.

I certainly haven’t done anything outside of general happy path but i swapped out docker for it and it “just worked” - and i got more battery life

Maybe we can go back to a world where we decouple new under-the-hood features from complete UI fuckery.

You shouldn't have to cope with one to get the other.

> Tahoe/iOS26 are still the most godawful buggy pieces of software Apple ever created.

Someone hasn't been around for very long in the Apple era, not even counting things before NexT took over.

Indeed. In the NT 4.0 era, pre-Mac OS X, it was fun to watch Mac fans extoll the virtues of their OS while rebooting multiple times per day :)

I remember taking my Mac OS 7 laptop to the dealer because it wouldn't start up and they said it had crashed 273 times. It was a few months old.

Heck the first version of MacOS X on that titanium power book that flopped up and down like a 5 and a quarter inch floppy was maddening.

To say Tahoe is the worst only reveals how few of the releases of MacOS X the poster actually used.

Buggy as well as severe UX regressions. It is so unfortunate that their software division is underperforming when their hardware team is outperforming. Craig Federighi, get your act together!

Such as new screenshot dialog in iOS, where one click has now become three, because we've hidden the primary controls under two pointless single-fold menus.

I wonder if someone got a raise for that.

I like the new dialog? I basically always crop the image when screenshotting so the new UI results in less button pressing for me. How often do you need to capture your entire screen? I almost always want to focus on something.

I usually want to capture a window, not an arbitrary region (and will sometimes resize a window before a screenshot to enable this). Hotkeys already supported this without cropping needed, and with bonus proper transparent corners.

There was already a way to do that. Cmd-Shift-4, drag a rectangle around what you want to screencap. Cmd-Shift-4 Space, click a window to screencap it.

These have been in the OS for so long I can't even remember when they were added.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102646

The new screenshot flow is mostly to provide extra surface for Visual Intelligence. I've found it extremely useful for stuff like ingesting event details and doing Google Lens-esque searches.

This can be changed back to the old version. Just search screen capture in settings and disable Full-Screen Previews.

This doesn’t excuse the issues, but the mainstream alternative, Windows 11, is infinitely worse imho.

Well, I remember a time where I had to restart my PowerMac 7200 a lot because of some bug in MacOS 8...

Edit: Apple turns 50 this year

> It doesn't matter how much cheap hardware you throw at the unwashed masses. > It's all about the software they would say.

Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is even worse in this regard.

What’s so bad about it? I haven’t noticed anything different.

I only need Apple ecosystem integrations, Docker, a bunch of CLI tools, Homebrew, and VSCode with Claude.

It’s mostly UI and UX issues introduced by Liquid Glass, nothing as extreme as people are making it out to be but pretty annoying in their own right.

What are you talking about? How is breaking sales records chickens coming home to roost? Does that phrase not mean the consequences of a bad decision are being realized? If anything isn't this story the opposite, and people aren't that bothered by the software regressions you're concerned about?

> and people aren't that bothered by the software regressions you're concerned about?

People weren't that mad about the butterfly keyboard or the 16" Macbook Pro that idled near it's junction temp. That doesn't mean they were good products, it means that the majority of Apple customers fail to evaluate the products they're buying based on quality.

"Just avoid holding it that way." - Steven Jobs

It’s the customer who is wrong… for being happy with their purchases!

> Apple is having their Windows ME moment.

As someone who lived through the early days of Windows, macOS Tahoe and Windows ME aren’t in the same universe.

> It doesn't matter how much cheap hardware you throw at the unwashed masses.

It's meaningful that a product line that's 41 years old had its best launch for customers new to the platform. That's unprecedented in the computer industry.