The criticism here is a bit overblown. What happened is: on recent iOS versions, when you tap a video in Safari to show the controls it slightly dims the video until the controls hide. In the latest macOS release, macOS Safari has adopted this behavior.
The argument apparently being that any change at all, if it was first made on iOS, must inherently be a sign that the two platforms are merging. Now, I don't really have an opinion about this behavior (I imagine it makes it easier for the controls to always be legible, regardless of what the video content looks like?), but I'd assume that any logic that holds for it being a good idea when applied on iOS would apply just as well on macOS. It doesn't have to be a sign that they're merging, just that similar reasons to make a change can exist in both places.
As such it seems like a particularly strange adjustment to hang a "macOS is turning into iOS" rant on. Particularly when there's things like "iPadOS just got macOS-style windowing and menu bars!" sitting right there.
lapcat1 day ago
> The argument apparently being that any change at all, if it was first made on iOS, must inherently be a sign that the two platforms are merging
You know, it's frustrating when people just flippantly assume that someone who has been a professional Mac developer for 19 years could be so stupid. I'm not stupid.
Did you notice when I said in the blog post, "as we've seen repeatedly [emphasis added] since then" and "Apple is continuing [emphasis added] to merge iOS and macOS"? Also when I said, referring to the embedded video, "This rhetorical question was presumably in response to widespread criticism." So the impression that Apple was merging iOS and macOS was already out there years ago.
My criticism should be understood in the context, which is that Apple has been merging iOS and macOS for years, in many different ways, and this is just the latest example. I couldn't even enumerate all of the examples, because there have been so many. So no, the argument does not hang on this one example. It's an argument I've been making since at least Mac OS X Lion, 14 years ago.
I don't expect you to know my full history. However, I expect comments to follow the HN guidelines, which say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
> I'd assume that any logic that holds for it being a good idea when applied on iOS would apply just as well on macOS.
Why would you assume this? The two platforms are very different in physical characteristics.
This is a principal objection to merging the platforms, especially merging the user interfaces. What makes sense for a tiny touch screen doesn't necessarily make sense for a much larger screen with keyboard and mouse input.
kemayo1 day ago
If you want to talk about steelmanning arguments, have you considered that I might also be unconvinced by prior examples? And thus dismissed those off-hand references as largely irrelevant to the main content of your post?
Jeff, they're a pair of closely-related operating systems that share a lot of common subsystems, and always have been. I don't want to say they'll never unify them more closely, but that's not something they seem to me to be doing. If you've been saying they've been merging them for 14 years, then they're really not making much progress on that.
> Why would you assume this? The two platforms are very different in physical characteristics.
Are you saying that the make-controls-more-visible argument doesn't apply? Because although I just threw that one out there without much thought, it really does seem reasonable on any device to me.
lapcat1 day ago
> have you considered that I might also be unconvinced by prior examples
Yes. But then you're admitting that there are prior examples, not just this latest example.
> And thus dismissed those off-hand references as largely irrelevant to the main content of your post?
My opinions in the post, whether you agree with them or not, were indeed largely irrelevant to main content, which was highlighting the change of behavior.
You could have chosen to ignore those opinions, if you believe they were largely irrelevant. You chose not only to address my opinions but to turn them into a straw man. (Note that the HN guidelines also say, "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.") You don't have to agree with my opinions, but again, my opinions are part of a larger context, which you now acknoweldge. My opinions did not arise out of the blue with the video controls change.
somerandom240721 hours ago
You're coming across as a bit of an idiot here, arguing with legitimate criticism. You have titled your article starting with "macOS becomes iOS", which is reflected on hn, explicitly referencing the merging of the platforms. I don't know whether you framed it as such for clickbait or out of genuine obsession, however, this is the key point that drives people to view your article - people aren't clicking that link because they're interested in a darkening video on hover. If you don't want any negative commentary about your article or opinions, don't post them on the internet.
I too feel that your evidence is substantially lacking, along with similar claims by others. The changes they have made generally make a lot of sense, and you should expect some degree of overlap between related platforms. However, the merging that people were concerned about, and which was refuted by Apple, is fundamental merging that would make macOS less useful to people through either inappropriate UI choices (removing fine interface elements to support touch) and locking down the platform entirely to third-party software ecosystems.
> I don't know whether you framed it as such for clickbait or out of genuine obsession
The latter. Notice that I did not submit my own article to HN. I published it to my blog, for the people who already follow me, either via RSS or by Mastodon, and who already appreciate my writing. I did not write my article for HN commenters, and in many cases I would prefer that my blog posts not be submitted to HN, but I have no control over that.
> If you don't want any negative commentary about your article or opinions, don't post them on the internet.
This is victim blaming. You are responsible for your own commentary. Your comment started by insulting me and calling me a name. Do better. Also, HN claims to have better commentary than the rest of the internet. The issue here is not mere criticism, which is fine, but rather shallow dismissal, which is not.
> I too feel that your evidence is substantially lacking
You're both misinterpreting the entire purpose of the post. I explain this in later replies to this thread. My post was quite short, only 391 words, and not even intended to make an argument. You're expecting way too much here. You need to think about why an author writes an article and who the article was written for. If you think an author is completely flopping on their face, perhaps you just misunderstood what the author was trying to do.
> However, the merging that people were concerned about, and which was refuted by Apple, is fundamental merging that would make macOS less useful to people through either inappropriate UI choices (removing fine interface elements to support touch) and locking down the platform entirely to third-party software ecosystems.
This is indeed what I'm concerned about. It was denied but not refuted by Apple. And I think the darkening of videos is one (among countless) of those inappropriate UI choices.
NaN years ago
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kemayo1 day ago
> Yes. But then you're admitting that there are prior examples, not just this latest example.
...I'm admitting that people making this argument have suggested there were things that supported it before. Acknowledging that people have made prior claims I disagree with doesn't seem relevant?
> You could have chosen to ignore those opinions, if you believe they were largely irrelevant.
It was your opening paragraph that talked about merging the OSes. There's a reason I responded to it by assuming you thought the rest of your post supported your opening statement.
If you'd like, we really could just talk about whether the change to the video player behavior is a reasonable thing to apply to both platforms. I think it probably is, on balance, for the aforementioned control-visibility reasons. You?
(Though, sadly, I have to go pick up a child from school, so the rapid back-and-forth will have to cease for a bit.)
lapcat1 day ago
> I'm admitting that people making this argument have suggested there were things that supported it before. That doesn't mean I agree with them, which you seem to be implying there?
No, I'm not implying that. Whichever side of the controversy you stand on, apparently the opposite side from me, you have to admit, and seemingly are admitting, that many people have been arguing for years that iOS and macOS are merging.
My point is that if you're trying to interpret my views, you can't dismiss the prior examples as irrelevant. You may think my views are false, but my views are nonetheless based on the prior examples. You initially invented a straw man view out of thin air that I do not believe myself: "The argument apparently being that..."
> It was your opening paragraph that talked about merging the OSes. There's a reason I responded to it by assuming you thought the rest of your post supported your opening statement.
I think you misunderstood the purpose of the post, which was simply to highlight the latest abomination, not to make a larger argument.
A 391 word blog post is almost never going to be a comprehensive argument for anything. So if you're thinking "That's your argument???" well no, of course it's not. I don't have the time or desire to make every little blog post into a book-length treatise just so that random internet commenters don't assume I'm an idiot. (Some probably would anyway, so it would be wasted effort.)
> If you'd like, we really could just talk about whether the change to the video player behavior is a reasonable thing to apply to both platforms. I think it probably is, on balance, for the aforementioned control-visibility reasons. You?
I've never seen an case where the visibility/legibility of the controls were a problem. Do you have any examples?
The irony is that Tahoe has made many things on macOS less legibile, which of course is a matter of great public controversy now.
NaN years ago
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pjmlp16 hours ago
Personally, I think the momement iPadOS gets a bit more flexible, and Apple finally creates an iPad version of XCode (not the playground), then you will have it, macOS will slowly wither away just like the Mac Pro desktop.
aakkaakk1 day ago
As long as apple doesn’t do a ”Sinofsky”, and implement a touch optimised gui… on servers, I think we’re good.
GuinansEyebrows1 day ago
"now `finger` is as lickable [0] as OS X's window buttons"
I recently went down a rabbit hole on how researchers make mice depressed so they can test antidepressants on them. The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's environment in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable. It's a standard protocol. We know that this causes depression.
The culture of products not under the control of the customer does the same thing. A culture that sees this as normal is a depressed culture.
To test whether the mice are depressed, researchers give them something rewarding that requires a little effort to get (e.g., sugary water vs. plain water).
The depressed mice give up. They are apathetic.
I imagine the mice believe that there is no way to change things. That might be true for the mice but it's not true for us.
woah1 day ago
I imagine the mice would be far more depressed if they had to get trackpad drivers to work and give a good response on Linux
dishsoap19 hours ago
Seems to be an insurmountable task for anyone apart from engineers at apple, let alone mice
lwhi16 hours ago
I think they'd find that to be an engaging task, and they'd get a great deal of satisfaction once they had sorted it out themselves.
If the mice had to deal with an intermittently disappearing cursor, and erratic hover behaviour on a 2 year old M2 Mac with the latest version of Sequoia .. that would probably illicit a very different response.
Are mice known to spill blood?
yogorenapan1 day ago
There are laptops that work with Linux and ones that don't. Nobody is forcing you to use it on a device that isn't supported
righthand1 day ago
This is that depression the comment author is talking about. Apple fans will make it a point to lash out at Linux for not being a trillion dollar company supported product. Only depressed people lash out at the parts of the world where communities are trying their best.
lwhi16 hours ago
macOS support for anything that isn't a new Apple product is appalling.
sjw98715 hours ago
Yeah. I had a laptop which is only 4 years old causing issues, took it to an Apple Store and they couldn't give a toss.
Everything was pushing me in the direction of buying a new laptop (with a small discount relative to the new price) and transferring everything across.
fpsvogel1 day ago
Agreed. If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered. Even if there are more things to tweak/fix (which is not necessarily true these days), there IS probably a way to do it.
On MacOS, I more often have to give up and live with the annoyances.
Hardware is the the big exception. None of my PCs have had nearly as good build quality or battery life (on Linux, at least) as a Macbook. Maybe I should try a Framework.
kergonath1 day ago
> If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered
There are also more footguns and rabbit holes. Overall, I am about as happy with Linux than with macOS (I use both daily), but I would not say that one is really more empowering than the other.
I like tinkering with KDE but it’s full of inconsistencies and instability in a way than even the worst Finder I’ve used was not (e.g. the whole desktop freezing when adding a widget to the desktop with a brand new install). Never mind the Russian roulette that is updating nVidia’s drivers.
On the other hand on macOS it’s easier to get to things that are actually productive.
giraffe_lady1 day ago
> The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's environment in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable.
For example like will my wifi work today. Will my laptop still have any battery when I open it. Is today the day I surprise boot to tty and have to figure out what changed before I can start working.
I'll stick with the year-to-year unpredictability of apple over the day-to-day unpredictability of linux.
StopDisinfo9101 day ago
Linux doesn't magically update itself. If it works today, it's going to work tomorrow unless you break it.
cosmic_cheese1 day ago
I dunno about that. Bleeding edge distros like Arch are infamous for breaking in random ways for those updating without paying attention and even distros that are considered more stable like Fedora and Ubuntu can from time to time break drivers or random smaller things. Definitely a YMMV sort of thing.
kergonath1 day ago
What are we going to do, then? Stop updating the OS and accumulate security issues? Stop doing anything that might possible touch an obscure config file somewhere in the bowels of the OS? It’s just unrealistic. "Do not update" cannot be a solution, it’s worse than the problem it is supposed to solve.
StopDisinfo91018 hours ago
I’m responding to someone pretending their system randomly breaks in the morning as per magic. This simply doesn’t happen, period.
A Linux system stays the same unless you change it.
I also personally disagree that updates break system by the way. I have used Arch for more than a decade and has yet to experience one of this alleged frequent disturbance.
giraffe_lady11 hours ago
You said magic twice attacking me but I said it zero times. It's just not even a "good" bad read of what I did say.
What I'm talking about is changes because of updates, yes. Auto updates, or ones I did, or an update to specific software that caused a library update to break something else. All that counts as "me changing it" sure. Like I said I guess I need a system a little less prone to breaking because of my actions. I'm a programmer not a linux admin.
ryanjshaw1 day ago
Not sure what point you’re making, are you saying to never update your system?
Not updating your system is not a magic solution either. I ran Linux Mint for 9mo and twice during that time I ended up in a bizarre situation:
1. the menu bar, or whatever it’s called (taskbar/dock equivalent) had disappeared on boot and I spent about 2 hours trying to get it back
2. the system simply wouldn’t boot into Cinnamon anymore; I ended up reinstalling
Bought a MBP and while it has some annoying quirks I don’t have any crazy ruined-my-day issues anymore.
tpmoney22 hours ago
By the same token, mac os isn't going to change in unpredictable ways if you never update it either.
giraffe_lady1 day ago
Alas the cross of a dumbass programmer is a heavy one. I need an OS that is harder to break I reckon.
b_e_n_t_o_n1 day ago
I too am especially prone to breaking my OS, as well as the software that runs on it. You aren't alone lol.
In practice, even with a rolling release distro I have not had things break on an update in a very long time (not at all on my current install, which is two years old), and with stable distros its literally been 20 years since something did not boot.
Any OS seems to have some bugs on updates.
I have heard battery life is better so not arguing about that, but its rarely that I will not wake my laptop for more than a day or two so its not a problem I experience either.
chuckadams1 day ago
Use an immutable distro like Bluefin or Aurora and you can just boot to yesterday's version.
(macOS is my daily driver too, but I wouldn't mind having that feature)
cadamsdotcom5 days ago
Apple internally must be a constant battle between those who want to unify iOS and macOS and those who understand they’re different systems with different purposes, and need different treatment.
Craig Federighi was a strong proponent of the latter camp but maybe he’s just getting on in years. Goes to show that key people being good and caring a lot can be all that stops things from backsliding.
So the battle for macOS is being slowly lost. Lucky we have KDE.
If it keeps going this way my next laptop won’t have that fruit logo. And that is a real shame.
rapind4 days ago
I remember many years ago (Snow Leopard) I liked Apple's OS enough to build a hackintosh, because the hardware wasn't great (subjective opinion).
Now I like the hardware enough, but have been gradually annoyed enough with the OS that I'd much rather be running Linux. At least I can just turn off most of the "modern" features, but I'm in that "keeping an eye out for potential alternatives" phase.
happymellon1 day ago
I've been quite frustrated today with my Jabra headset constantly triggering Apple Music.
There are plenty of mandatory features we unfortunately can't uninstall. I can't think of a scenario where I want Apple music on my work laptop.
I relate to this. I loved Snow Leopard. I used Hackintosh. Now there is no way I want to use that OS and there are just too many reasons to list by now.
sumuyuda4 days ago
Mojave was the last macOS version that had any features I cared about. Now each release is about how bad did they trash the macOS UI. Switching to Linux has been great.
antinomicus1 day ago
I’d love to switch to Linux but it seems impossible as someone who relies on macOS / logic for music production. I’m in too deep and feel like the floor is coming out from under me with all these insane changes and the direction Apple is taking
rvrb1 day ago
I know they’re different workflows entirely, but you could start dabbling with Bitwig, which is really good and runs on both macOS and Linux, then eventually switch when you feel like you’re out of the workflow hole
But to be honest, I’m still using Bitwig on a Mac for my studio despite having switched everywhere else to Linux
ben_w1 day ago
For me, it was Mountain Lion. Otherwise, much the same.
imglorp1 day ago
How are the ARM Linux on Mac projects going? Does anybody daily drive those yet?
galad871 day ago
Actually lately iPadOS is the one getting most of its features from macOS. iPadOS 26 introduced a menu bar, just like macOS, and a new windows manager that's just the same as macOS.
radley1 day ago
I feel like this is more of a calculated step towards eliminating macOS, because iPadOS can do "everything" too.
I expect it will happen within a few years after Xcode for iPad is released. MacOS is simply too open for Apple's business goals.
SirMaster1 day ago
Do you really think that Apple would alienate the big creative industries like Hollywood movie studios who use macOS?
Or do you really think that all their apps and toolsets will run on whatever you are saying is the future of macOS.
radley9 hours ago
I think macOS will go the way of the Mac Pro. It won't be cut off, it will simply atrophy over time.
As more MBP fundamentals are ported to iPad Pro, that will naturally convert more Mac users to iPads, especially the iPhone generation.
WorldPeas1 day ago
Those are more likely to continue working as they mostly work within the lines defined by the apple developer spec. The most likely workflows to break are those of programmers, as they require frequent execution of untrusted binaries and access to the system directories in some cases
overfeed1 day ago
> Do you really think that Apple would alienate the big creative industries like Hollywood movie studios who use macOS?
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Final Cut Pro X? I thought not. It's not a story Apple fanboys would tell you...
cyberax1 day ago
> Do you really think that Apple would alienate the big creative industries like Hollywood movie studios who use macOS?
A middle manager from Apple will easily toss all of Hollywood under the bus if it gets them a checkbox "shipped new toggle switch experience" and a promotion. And the upper management at Apple long since stopped caring about that.
b_e_n_t_o_n1 day ago
I think this change makes sense on both platforms. If you're gonna use it as an example of why merging the platforms is bad, I think you just strengthen the opposite argument.
seec3 days ago
Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS. That definitely makes it a less desirable desktop OS.
Today when you generate a PDF from you own content (from Apple Notes app) you are asked about opening links you click on. I thought that they were surely joking and there would be a way to disable that behavior.
But no, this is intended and there is no way to disable that.
It makes the Preview app a pain in the ass as a PDF reader, which means you have to replace it and begs the question of even using Apple software in the first place.
The answer is that there are fewer and fewer reasons. I mean if you are OK feeling like a child biking around on a cycle with training wheels while an overbearing parent keeps nagging you, it might be for you. Otherwise, the experience is really more like a prison/walled garden and the funny thing is that you paid for it !
nicce1 day ago
> Today when you generate a PDF from you own content (from Apple Notes app) you are asked about opening links you click on.
Or they don't have any usability studies. A hard regression in efficiency in many places.
E.g. Safari in iOS 26 forces you to do 50% more button presses. E.g. if you want to close a tab, you need to press one button more these days. Also one button press more to see the current tabs. These are likely the most used scenarios when you use the browser and they add one button press more?
ElectroBuffoon12 hours ago
"They pass more time with this! They like it a lot! Engagement achieved!!!11one11eleven" said the developer.
"Why is this slower? Why do I have to burn time massaging the interface instead of doing it fast and continuing with my life? What a waste..." said the user.
Over the last two decades "the user is the product, milking machines to 110%!!!" has leaked all over the computing world, infecting where the user is (and will be forever, let's hope) the user.
wpm1 day ago
UI/UX seems more like something driven, at Apple and industry wide, by vibes and dogma than it is actual usability.
linguae22 hours ago
The sad thing is that Apple used to have people like Bill Atkinson (RIP), Larry Tesler (RIP), Bruce Tognazzini, and Don Norman who cared deeply about usability. What made the Mac special wasn’t its looks, especially in the pre-iMac and pre-Mac OS X days when the computers were mostly beige and the classic Mac OS UI was quite plain-looking (though still good-looking, IMO) compared to Mac OS X and later. Rather, what made the Mac special was its attentiveness to UI.
Somewhere along the line Apple products became luxury goods that were appealing due to their visual design. I am particularly fond of Apple’s early 2000s design, with beautiful hardware such as the iMac G4 and the Power Mac G4 Cube running early Mac OS X. Apple still makes very visually-appealing hardware and software. However, I feel that under Tim Cook Apple has heavily leaned into its visual appeal at the expense of what made Apple great: the emphasis on usability.
seec1 day ago
Well I don't use Safari anymore. A few years ago, it stopped syncing passwords correctly with my iPhone and nothing I did could fix the problem (there is an issue in the backend on their part, maybe it has been fixed since). On top of that it didn't show favicon for bookmarks which was quite annoying and was slow/worked poorly with some web apps. So I went to Chrome, monopoly be damned.
At the rate it's going, there isn't going to be a single app from Apple that I want to keep using, quite soon.
By the way, the PDF export for Notes is ridiculously bad. It's an old note and there is some migration bug, all the links have the same target. I haven't bothered to investigate yet, but the plan is to stop using Notes as well, so whatever.
horrorente14 hours ago
You can swipe up from the url bar instead, that will open the current tabs as well.
nicce13 hours ago
Good to know! I wonder if this is documented anywhere...
stronglikedan1 day ago
> I mean if you are OK feeling like a child biking around on a cycle with training wheels while an overbearing parent keeps nagging you, it might be for you.
That's exactly why I encouraged my parents to get iPhones.
mmmlinux1 day ago
last time i tried to set up a new android phone. the built in phone app asked me permissions to use the built in contacts app.
people complain if the apps don't all have fine grained permissions. and then complain when they have to agree to stuff all the time. and then complain they got "hacked". damned if you do, damned if you don't.
DangitBobby1 day ago
Implementation is the issue. They often forget your settings between updates. This is particularly bad on MacOS. MacOS updates and app updates both require me to re-grant permissions for the nth time! Then there's the separate issue of must-have apps requesting permissions they have no business asking for and refusing to function correctly without, and other must-have apps abusing their access for purposes not strictly limited to in-app functionality.
seec1 day ago
Yes, permissions are horrid in all systems. In my opinion they are just a failure to design proper security without completely delegating the problem to the user.
The funny thing is that since people who are subject to security problems will allow them regardless, defeating the entire purpose of the measures.
Computer security is just a people problem; you can't solve it by child proofing stuff. Imagine a car that would prevent you going over the speed limit or ask permission every time you want to do so...
But in that case, that's just beyond stupid, there is no permission for you to act on. They could have a per-document setting or an app level setting to allow opening links in PDFs without requiring the user to agree EVERY SINGLE TIME. On a document that was generated on the computer reading it. It's just complete incompetence.
johnisgood14 hours ago
I agree. I am a power user. I want to be a power user. The OS (Void Linux) and its current state reflects that. If I wanted "childproofing" crap, I would have made it so for myself.
joz1-k1 day ago
> Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS.
This is certainly happening. However, as long as you can still install your preferred browser with its own rendering engine or a different PDF reader, the situation isn't so bad.
fair_enough9 hours ago
I'm getting great mileage out of LibreWolf on macOS (currently running Sequoia). I don't know who at Apple thought it was a great idea to permanently kill off ad blockers in Safari, but it was a terrible idea that made the world a worse place.
Of course I say macOS is getting along fine for me, but I'm posting this comment from my workstation PC running Ubuntu 24.04. I'm pleasantly surprised by how much better my Linux experience is now than it was in 2013. It seems from my personal experience so far like a free desktop OS that can run a web browser and play games better than the paid alternatives is a solved problem. I find this machine much less frustrating than my M4 Macbook Air- many of the "security" behaviors are just annoyances.
seec1 day ago
Sure. For now.
My issue is that I don't see the point of overpaying for Apple hardware if I have to swap all softwares because what they ship sucks.
devinprater1 day ago
Which makes it even more important for Google to take accessibility seriously so that disabled people aren't stuck being the only ones that have a hard time switching from the play pin.
bluedino1 day ago
> Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS. That definitely makes it a less desirable desktop OS.
I mean this has been the conversation since the early days of Mac OS. I didn't get back to Mac until Snow Leopard but I remember the uproar over removing Java in 10.7
dwaite1 day ago
The removal of Java was perhaps the best example of people expecting Apple's obsolescence policy to be the same as Windows, and getting burned.
There were large software vendors who had not yet started on a strategy around the deprecation of Java until it was removed from the OS. They didn't look like they even noticed it had been removed in betas and come up with a plan on what to tell customers.
seec1 day ago
The situation today is not really comparable. Between the fully locked down hardware and many OS limitations it is much worse than it has ever been.
I mean now you cannot open a 3rd party software without going into settings to allow opening, another regression on previously needing to right click, open.
The next step is forbidding any unsigned software altogether.
And finally, forbidding any software that doesn't come from their fully controlled App Store.
It's really way beyond not shipping a software component directly in the system...
dimal5 days ago
I’ve been on Mac for about 30 years. I’m planning my switch to Linux (probably KDE) and GrapheneOS. I can’t keep giving so much money to a company that clearly doesn’t have my interests in mind.
So much of the ecosystem doesn’t “just work” anymore and now instead of fixing those issues, they are actively working to make my computing experience worse. I’ve hade enough.
The more I investigate the current state of Linux desktops, the more excited I get. It seems like Linux is actually good for general use now, and I’ll have so many more options to make my technology fit me instead of the other way around.
cosmic_cheese5 days ago
I want to be excited about Linux, but as a long time Mac user (started in the 90s) I don't feel like there's a desktop environment for me. I've used GNOME and KDE on and off for years with some Cinnamon, elementary/Pantheon, and minimalist WM thrown in for good measure, and none of them cut it. The big DEs are much closer to Windows or mobile operating systems than anything else.
And that doesn't even get into the hardware situation, where the number of laptops with long battery life and everything working without quirks can seemingly be counted on one hand.
kergonath1 day ago
> want to be excited about Linux, but as a long time Mac user (started in the 90s) I don't feel like there's a desktop environment for me.
I can confirm that there is nothing that comes close. Gnome is an abomination even if it might be appealing on the surface. KDE is still very rough around the edges, despite making a lot of progress with each version. I used XFCE for a long time because it can be tweaked to a reasonably useable state and it is light on resources. KDE can be occasionally dog slow on a $12k workstation with a 64-core Threadripper pro and 256 GB of RAM for a reason I cannot imagine. Using my Mac Studio is a much better experience overall.
willis9361 day ago
Try to use GNOME to drive a variable refresh rate display challenge (impossible).
Jabs aside, GNOME is pretty nice compared to where it used to be. Everything still takes a few iterations of touching, but not as many as it used to. Some things are frustratingly unsolvable (see: advanced monitor features), but at least it is a full replacement for Windows on the same hardware. Oh, and contemporary linux distress have audio drivers that appear to work out of the box without having to build the kernel.
When it comes to laptops: it'd be great if anyone made something that competes with a MacBook. It's been a long time. At this point I can only assume there is an economic reason rather than a technical one that Windows and Linux laptops are so bad.
makeitdouble13 hours ago
> anyone made something that competes with a MacBook
You need to define what's a MacBook for you. I'm not a fan of the form factor, but I've seen dozens of clones of it for years now and kinda wonder where a Surface Laptop for instance fails for you.
ksec4 days ago
You may want to give Omarchy a try. Not exactly Windows or Mac, but last time I checked myself 95 to 99% of my time on computer is spending inside a browser I think a lot of the old Desktop environment habits no longer matter as much.
It’s nice, based on the demo video I watched but I’m not spending lots of time in web apps or terminals.
carlosjobim1 day ago
It's not a matter of Linux conforming to the way you use a computer, it is rather you who have adapted to the most viable computing experience which Linux offers, which is being inside the browser all the time. You are serving the computer, instead of the computer serving you.
overfeed1 day ago
> It's not a matter of Linux conforming to the way you use a computer, it is rather you who have adapted to the most viable computing experience which Linux offers
This is the opposite of my Linux experience, especially in comparison with MacOS. Linux, especially when using KDE, offers customization up the wazoo. The out of the box experience may be a less than optimal, but investing time customizing your installation[0] is very rewarding. Almost anything that can be done on/by your DE can be bound to a shortcut or automated. You'd have to purchase MacOS tools to come close to the configurability of KDE (e.g. window positioning)
1. Or copying your config directory.
dustbunny4 days ago
I've been happily on cinnamon for years and find it similar to Mac but with way better window tiling out the box.
What's wrong with cinnamon for you?
cosmic_cheese4 days ago
Cinnamon gets a lot right and has some Mac-like aspects, like how the UI in its apps are laid out, but as a whole it's more comparable to Windows with its taskbar, windowing model, no global menubar, and Control-based key shortcuts among other things.
dustbunny4 days ago
Cinnamon is like if Microsoft hired apples design department and gave them control of windows.
nullpoint4204 days ago
GNOME with DashToDock and BlurMyShell on Fedora Workstation.
Trust me, it’s macOS enough. I switched from a 16” M2 Max MBP to a HP Elitebook G1A Ultra with Fedora. It’s been a dream.
happymellon1 day ago
I always have to set the dock to auto-hide on my Macs. Having a dock that fucks off in Gnome is great.
dangus1 day ago
I’m very happy with KDE Plasma. Just switched from a MacBook Pro to a Framework.
I’m shocked at how much “just works” like a Mac. It wasn’t like this even a short amount of time ago.
I’m really happy with the hardware too and all it needs is more battery life. Nothing an external battery doesn’t solve (and the framework is a lighter machine so the difference is moot).
Everything works. Fingerprint reader authenticating commercial apps like 1Password, graphics drivers are a part of the kernel and I’m enjoying Windows games on Steam, firmware gets updates from the OS instead of messing around in the BIOS like on Windows, KDE Connect is like AirDrop for Linux, it’s literally a better experience than Windows and Mac if you ask me.
I don’t mind that KDE resembles Windows, I personally think it’s a lot like Windows but without the dumbassery. And of course you can theme it and change settings to have it act more like a Mac (or go with Gnome).
nathan_compton1 day ago
I guess for me having control of the machine is worth a lot of little inconveniences.
cosmic_cheese1 day ago
For me it’s more than a little inconvenience. Switching to Linux represents turning my ability to be productive on a computer totally upside down, tossing out decades of flow building and muscle memory.
As for battery life, it being crappy makes me wonder why I’m even bothering with laptops at all. More than half of their selling point is being portable, which needing to be tethered frequently heavily impinges upon. The sacrifices that come with the portable form factor just aren’t worth it for 3-5h life with real world usage.
nathan_compton12 hours ago
I guess I spend 90% of my time in a terminal or in emacs or looking at firefox and so I don't really see what the desktop is doing for me, really. I switch desktops every once and awhile and I find I'm as happy on XFCE as I am with Gnome or KDE. Maybe that is because they all suck?
the laptop battery life issue is a real thing -- I kicked the can by getting an M1 MacBook Pro instead of a Framework for my most recent upgrade.
acephal5 days ago
Last I touched a Linux desktop was 10+ years ago and you had to muck about with FontConfig and third-party config packages to even come close to Windows or macOS type rendering. Has this seen significant improvement?
mitchell2094 days ago
I uninstalled my Bazzite partition because of the text. Initial searches showed similar frustrations on reddit without obvious and immediate fixes, so I decided to cut my losses and go back to using Windows full time instead of spending hours or days trying to get the rendering to an acceptable level.
stefanfisk4 days ago
This was my experience when trying to get fonts to look good in Ubuntu about a year ago. FontConfig, Gnome and of course some individual apps like browsers all have their own little settings for font rendering that interact in weird and not so wonderful ways.
I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox and realized that kerning is completely broken. I can only assume that it's because of some setting that I changed but I'd rather reinstall the whole machine than go on a wild goose chase...
cosmic_cheese5 days ago
Don't quote me, but if I recall some number of years ago there were some font shaping/AA patents that expired and so good font rendering comes out of the box in most cases these days. Used to be only Ubuntu shipped like that.
cassianoleal4 days ago
I run Debian with KDE on Wayland on my desktop PC. Font rendering seems perfectly fine. I can't speak for other combos.
matthewolfe5 days ago
What exactly doesn't "just work" anymore?
AlexandrB1 day ago
Can't go to previous track when "autoplay" is enabled in Apple Music. Clearly an intentional choice. Works on iPhone. But on Mac it doesn't "just work". Syncing my music library with Apple Music doesn't "just work" anymore either. Some albums are visible, but are greyed out and can't be played. Time Machine hasn't "just worked" in several years - would corrupt my backups and have to re-create from scratch every week or so, I've switched to Carbon Copy Cloner. Non high-DPI displays don't "just work" anymore. The forward button in Finder, the icons in Music settings, all squished horizontally like it's someone's first time adding clipart to a Power Point. Safari stopped "just working" with 26.0, now opening a new tab or typing into the search bar randomly presents me with a 1-5s delay - or sometimes the whole thing hangs. I could go on, I don't dare upgrade to Tahoe - it's death by a thousand cuts.
Edit: LOL, how could I forget Siri. I don't use it often - generally only in the car to switch music - but it's terrible at understanding what song/album I'm asking for. Tried repeatedly to get it to play the "Mob Song" from Beauty and the Beast and I got some death metal instead. Completely useless.
dimal4 days ago
Autocomplete on iOS is a shit show. It regularly autocompletes non-grammatical text, which is unforgivable in 2025 when we have AI that can write coherent sonnets and code. Dictation is still at the same level it was at 10 years ago - complete shit. Carplay sometimes randomly starts playing music when I get in the car, other times it doesn't. My Apple Watch regularly can't find my heart rate, for long time periods. The HomePod app and Watch display incorrect information about what's playing on HomePods about 50% of the time. There's no way to filter text spam. The Messages app on MacOS doesn't let you filter by known senders. If you delete a text thread on iOS, it doesn't delete it on MacOS, so my desktop messages are cluttered with fucking donation requests from PACs. Try to do anything with Siri, even simple things like playing a song. It still makes bizarre mistakes. It can't answer basic questions about my calendar.
The list is endless, really. Everything looks "delightful" as fuck. Mac and iOS fonts, colors and text padding are immaculate, so it gives the impression of solidity and competence that isn't really there. A lot of things "mostly work" but aren't reliable, so I can't rely on them. They can list them as "features" but if I can't rely on them, I can't use them, because I don't want to deal with constant frustration. They act like all their systems are this one integrated whole that works well together, but it doesn't.
I don't think that everything will "just work" on Linux, but at least I won't be paying a premium for the privilege of having my needs as a disabled person ignored. I'll be able to customize my experience to meet my basic accessibility needs without fighting against a company that seems to hate me.
gs171 day ago
> Autocomplete on iOS is a shit show. It regularly autocompletes non-grammatical text
Android has the same issue with Google's keyboard, which will go back and change things you've typed correctly to be obviously wrong for no clear reason. I swear it used to work much better.
At least on Android alternative keyboards are easier to use. I have no idea how they both have such an awful implementation of it.
DangitBobby1 day ago
> Carplay sometimes randomly starts playing music when I get in the car, other times it doesn't.
Android Auto does the same thing for me, despite having auto-play disabled. One possible explanation I've seen online is that some infotainment systems send an unsolicited "play" signal to your device. For Android that seems to mean it will send "play" to the most recently used app that supports audio playback.
seec3 days ago
Siri has always been a shitshow for sure. I basically use it for timers and even that it fucks up a non-negligible number of times. For the few experiences I've had with it, at least Google assistant is a lot more reliable.
I also noticed worsened reliability in the heart rate tracking of my Apple Watch in recent workouts. It must have happened in one of the recent updates because it was fine previously. I could say it's programmed obsolescence but I'm sure I would be accused of conspiracy theory. But it is hard to interpret the failing reliability otherwise when it suspiciously happens after updates and around new hardware release.
In any case, I don't think the Apple Watch is a very good product for the price, so whatever, the next watch will be focused on sports and the competition has made great alternatives.
I completely share the sentiment that everything looks good but doesn't work that well in practice. There are so many random issues that make the hardware prices very unpalatable.
Ah well, everything changes, not always for the better. The pain is in transitioning to something else, but that's something that is very true for most tech related things since we can't ever agree on proper standardisation.
kcplate4 days ago
Was going to be my question too. Mine works…
whynotminot1 day ago
It’s comical how you can copy and paste these same comments anytime there’s been a new macOS for probably the last 10 or so years. Hell maybe longer.
Every. Single. Year. “Apple is taking away my laptop I’m switching to Linux.”
I’m grateful to you all though — I think your constant griping every year probably does at least apply some pressure on Apple to focus on keeping macOS good at what it does: provide a pleasant but still powerful desktop experience for those who just want to do stuff and not spend hours under the hood making some Linux flavor usable.
resfirestar1 day ago
I don't think I've ever appreciated a video player putting gradients above and below the controls or darkening the entire video when the controls are active. It's extremely annoying when you're trying to scrub through a video and read a particular bit of text. Why do UI designers from Apple to YouTube to Amazon think this is necessary?
sippeangelo1 day ago
Or putting a huge play button covering it when paused. Or taking painfully long to fade-out the UI after pressing play... The list goes on.
anon70005 days ago
I’ve seen this in a ton of video players. This is an especially bad example. But it’s so common for the entire top third of the screen to be blurred or darkened just to display a single small UI element in a corner. Stupid design.
The reason it’s especially stupid for Apple is because half of their new design system is about making content front & center.
wpm1 day ago
I love having to install Deno so I can run yt-dlp to download a video that I want to see a brief or small detail in when that small detail happens to be in the lower third of the video because when I pause, it puts a stupid gradient over the video or blocks it entirely with the controls.
That's why the entire thrust of Liquid Glass was bad and dumb from the start. "The controls will get out of the way of your content....so we put them floating in front of your content" just absolutely braindead. There was a way to get them out of the way, give them their own space!
internet20005 days ago
So they made a change he doesn't like, and that means merging macOS with iOS? Non-sequitur.
rapind5 days ago
It is a pretty dumb change though, let's be honest.
lapcat5 days ago
> So they made a change he doesn't like, and that means merging macOS with iOS? Non-sequitur.
No. The change was made in iOS first, and then the same exact change was brought to macOS, as has happened many times now over the years.
leakycap5 days ago
Tahoe seems to be so full of straws to break the camel's back for so many macOS users who have been slowly annoyed by the grind of version ~10.10 to 15.7
jemmyw5 days ago
I updated a couple of days ago. All the new transparency and blur they've added looks really bad. But then I turned on "Reduce transparency" and it's fine. There's nothing else new or different.
I read a few of the stories on HN about it and was braced for a bad experience. But honestly - a few icons changing (don't care); the border radius of finder, the only Apple app I use much, changing (don't care).
leakycap4 days ago
I'm glad you didn't find your straw in this version of macOS. Your lack of "caring" -as you put it- probably smooths a lot of rough edges that might be important to others.
NoSalt1 day ago
This is one of the main reasons why I left the Macintosh ecosystem several years ago. Apple is, has been, transitioning from a computer company to a computing appliance company for many years now, and I just couldn't take it any longer. I have happily been a full time Linux user since then.
ddtaylor5 days ago
Just modify the source code for programs you want changes to.
mimsee1 day ago
Apple also built a custom video element for web they use for their events. See the Apple Events page[0] and click "Watch the event". It also seems to dim the video when mousing over. I kinda like the design, but the animations seem a tad bit slow.
I love Apple Silicon and hope Apple tones down all the iOSification of macOS. It's a mistake.
octo8884 days ago
I also hate how the controls are on top of the content, on eg desktop and QuickTime. I want to see the entire frame when scrubbing.
chrisbrandow1 day ago
the liquid glass video controls on iOS absolutely does obscure more of the content than the pre-26 players did and it's not even close. it's just UI chrome for its own sake
ZhiqiangWang1 day ago
The biggest difference between macOS and iOS is file system access. One day macOS terminal will disappear, just a matter of time.
alberth1 day ago
Since the thread is slipping into a Liquid Glass topic …
Question: does anyone have anything good to say about Liquid Glass?
kemayo1 day ago
I like how it looks. It's nice to have a fairly-minor shake-up in the aesthetics every now and then, and it makes everything feel a bit fresh and new. And I do sincerely find it fairly minor -- things got a bit rounder and glossier, and there's a few bits of iOS that have some fairly cute glass-distortion effects, and some apps got some not-huge UI redesigns.
Overall, particularly on my phone, it's just giving me an occasional pleasant burst of "ooh, shiny". On my laptop, I admittedly barely notice anything has changed.
(I don't personally have any legibility issues with it, though I'm willing to believe that's down to individual usage patterns.)
kstrauser1 day ago
1) Aesthetically, I think it's pretty. That's a subjective opinion, though.
2) I vastly prefer it displaying buttons as buttons, instead of as just undifferentiated text on a screen. In the past I've sometimes been frustrated that an app didn't have a feature I wanted, only to learn that it actually had that feature, hidden behind what I'd assumed was just a text label but was actually a button. This is an enormous freaking improvement.
3) I very much prefer the new UI patterns in other places. For example, when highlighting text on iOS, the old UI gives a horizontally scrolling list of options with arrow keys to rotate through them. The new UI replaces that with a ">" More button that pops up a vertical list of all available actions. Again, this is an enormous freaking improvement.
I like the appearance of Liquid Glass, but that could go either way. I think the actual UI implementation behind the graphics is so much better than before.
dwaite1 day ago
I agree with the strategy that Liquid Glass is part of.
They are making the iPadOS the mother platform for developing most things - scale down to iOS, or add a few extra changes for visionOS/macOS. iPadOS is gaining features to bring it closer to parity to macOS to make this delta smaller, and macOS is gradually becoming styled more to match iPadOS so apps look at home if the layout and graphic assets were mostly kept the same.
This started around macOS 11, with some major design changes along with Catalyst and SwiftUI to help developers.
wpm1 day ago
There is something about the font weights or I dunno in the context menus on macOS Tahoe that I really like. Somehow, they feel a lot more readable than they did from Big Sur to Sequoia.
And even if I think they utterly botched the concept and execution, I will always cheer the death of "minimullizm" that destroyed Aqua. I've absolutely loathed how macOS looks since Big Sur.
ekvintroj5 days ago
I just need one OS and probably you too.
dangus1 day ago
Not so related, putting the full screen button in the top left is completely annoying. No other video player puts it there.
hirvi7411 hours ago
Tahoe is my favorite macOS since Snow Leopard. I really enjoy how everything looks overall. Sure, it's not perfect, but I can't remember any OS that truly ever was. I feel as though people will always find something to complain about.
jajuuka1 day ago
A change in webkit (which both OS's have used forever) somehow means they are merging iOS and macOS? I'm not following this logic at all.
chrisbrandow1 day ago
it's not a change in webkit. the webpage just displays the current OS video player. i read the page in Sequoia and it shows the old version
cesarvarela1 day ago
No, everything is becoming visionOS.
Razengan17 hours ago
Oh god that darkening infuriates me as well
b_e_n_t_o_n1 day ago
[flagged]
lapcat1 day ago
> Am I hearing this right?
No.
rTX5CMRXIfFG5 days ago
The whole thing about “merging iOS and macOS” was about combining them into a single source code, not a single design system.
This is an irrational and especially dishonest and rant article.
game_the0ry1 day ago
The fact that they synced up the version numbers (macOS 26, iPadOS 26, iOS 26) is a signal that they intend to unify all OSes.
My experience with iOS 26 + liquid glass (ew) on my phone has been terrible. Feels like a step backward. I am dreading upgrading my macbook bc I love it the way it is. Regrettable.
dsego1 day ago
Oh, it's even worse on MacOS, everything got rounder and bigger. There is no other explanation than touch enabled macs and eventual OS unification.
The criticism here is a bit overblown. What happened is: on recent iOS versions, when you tap a video in Safari to show the controls it slightly dims the video until the controls hide. In the latest macOS release, macOS Safari has adopted this behavior.
The argument apparently being that any change at all, if it was first made on iOS, must inherently be a sign that the two platforms are merging. Now, I don't really have an opinion about this behavior (I imagine it makes it easier for the controls to always be legible, regardless of what the video content looks like?), but I'd assume that any logic that holds for it being a good idea when applied on iOS would apply just as well on macOS. It doesn't have to be a sign that they're merging, just that similar reasons to make a change can exist in both places.
As such it seems like a particularly strange adjustment to hang a "macOS is turning into iOS" rant on. Particularly when there's things like "iPadOS just got macOS-style windowing and menu bars!" sitting right there.
> The argument apparently being that any change at all, if it was first made on iOS, must inherently be a sign that the two platforms are merging
You know, it's frustrating when people just flippantly assume that someone who has been a professional Mac developer for 19 years could be so stupid. I'm not stupid.
Did you notice when I said in the blog post, "as we've seen repeatedly [emphasis added] since then" and "Apple is continuing [emphasis added] to merge iOS and macOS"? Also when I said, referring to the embedded video, "This rhetorical question was presumably in response to widespread criticism." So the impression that Apple was merging iOS and macOS was already out there years ago.
My criticism should be understood in the context, which is that Apple has been merging iOS and macOS for years, in many different ways, and this is just the latest example. I couldn't even enumerate all of the examples, because there have been so many. So no, the argument does not hang on this one example. It's an argument I've been making since at least Mac OS X Lion, 14 years ago.
I don't expect you to know my full history. However, I expect comments to follow the HN guidelines, which say "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
> I'd assume that any logic that holds for it being a good idea when applied on iOS would apply just as well on macOS.
Why would you assume this? The two platforms are very different in physical characteristics.
This is a principal objection to merging the platforms, especially merging the user interfaces. What makes sense for a tiny touch screen doesn't necessarily make sense for a much larger screen with keyboard and mouse input.
If you want to talk about steelmanning arguments, have you considered that I might also be unconvinced by prior examples? And thus dismissed those off-hand references as largely irrelevant to the main content of your post?
Jeff, they're a pair of closely-related operating systems that share a lot of common subsystems, and always have been. I don't want to say they'll never unify them more closely, but that's not something they seem to me to be doing. If you've been saying they've been merging them for 14 years, then they're really not making much progress on that.
> Why would you assume this? The two platforms are very different in physical characteristics.
Are you saying that the make-controls-more-visible argument doesn't apply? Because although I just threw that one out there without much thought, it really does seem reasonable on any device to me.
> have you considered that I might also be unconvinced by prior examples
Yes. But then you're admitting that there are prior examples, not just this latest example.
> And thus dismissed those off-hand references as largely irrelevant to the main content of your post?
My opinions in the post, whether you agree with them or not, were indeed largely irrelevant to main content, which was highlighting the change of behavior.
You could have chosen to ignore those opinions, if you believe they were largely irrelevant. You chose not only to address my opinions but to turn them into a straw man. (Note that the HN guidelines also say, "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.") You don't have to agree with my opinions, but again, my opinions are part of a larger context, which you now acknoweldge. My opinions did not arise out of the blue with the video controls change.
You're coming across as a bit of an idiot here, arguing with legitimate criticism. You have titled your article starting with "macOS becomes iOS", which is reflected on hn, explicitly referencing the merging of the platforms. I don't know whether you framed it as such for clickbait or out of genuine obsession, however, this is the key point that drives people to view your article - people aren't clicking that link because they're interested in a darkening video on hover. If you don't want any negative commentary about your article or opinions, don't post them on the internet.
I too feel that your evidence is substantially lacking, along with similar claims by others. The changes they have made generally make a lot of sense, and you should expect some degree of overlap between related platforms. However, the merging that people were concerned about, and which was refuted by Apple, is fundamental merging that would make macOS less useful to people through either inappropriate UI choices (removing fine interface elements to support touch) and locking down the platform entirely to third-party software ecosystems.
> You're coming across as a bit of an idiot here
This is a gross insult. Please review and respect the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> I don't know whether you framed it as such for clickbait or out of genuine obsession
The latter. Notice that I did not submit my own article to HN. I published it to my blog, for the people who already follow me, either via RSS or by Mastodon, and who already appreciate my writing. I did not write my article for HN commenters, and in many cases I would prefer that my blog posts not be submitted to HN, but I have no control over that.
> If you don't want any negative commentary about your article or opinions, don't post them on the internet.
This is victim blaming. You are responsible for your own commentary. Your comment started by insulting me and calling me a name. Do better. Also, HN claims to have better commentary than the rest of the internet. The issue here is not mere criticism, which is fine, but rather shallow dismissal, which is not.
> I too feel that your evidence is substantially lacking
You're both misinterpreting the entire purpose of the post. I explain this in later replies to this thread. My post was quite short, only 391 words, and not even intended to make an argument. You're expecting way too much here. You need to think about why an author writes an article and who the article was written for. If you think an author is completely flopping on their face, perhaps you just misunderstood what the author was trying to do.
> However, the merging that people were concerned about, and which was refuted by Apple, is fundamental merging that would make macOS less useful to people through either inappropriate UI choices (removing fine interface elements to support touch) and locking down the platform entirely to third-party software ecosystems.
This is indeed what I'm concerned about. It was denied but not refuted by Apple. And I think the darkening of videos is one (among countless) of those inappropriate UI choices.
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> Yes. But then you're admitting that there are prior examples, not just this latest example.
...I'm admitting that people making this argument have suggested there were things that supported it before. Acknowledging that people have made prior claims I disagree with doesn't seem relevant?
> You could have chosen to ignore those opinions, if you believe they were largely irrelevant.
It was your opening paragraph that talked about merging the OSes. There's a reason I responded to it by assuming you thought the rest of your post supported your opening statement.
If you'd like, we really could just talk about whether the change to the video player behavior is a reasonable thing to apply to both platforms. I think it probably is, on balance, for the aforementioned control-visibility reasons. You?
(Though, sadly, I have to go pick up a child from school, so the rapid back-and-forth will have to cease for a bit.)
> I'm admitting that people making this argument have suggested there were things that supported it before. That doesn't mean I agree with them, which you seem to be implying there?
No, I'm not implying that. Whichever side of the controversy you stand on, apparently the opposite side from me, you have to admit, and seemingly are admitting, that many people have been arguing for years that iOS and macOS are merging.
My point is that if you're trying to interpret my views, you can't dismiss the prior examples as irrelevant. You may think my views are false, but my views are nonetheless based on the prior examples. You initially invented a straw man view out of thin air that I do not believe myself: "The argument apparently being that..."
> It was your opening paragraph that talked about merging the OSes. There's a reason I responded to it by assuming you thought the rest of your post supported your opening statement.
I think you misunderstood the purpose of the post, which was simply to highlight the latest abomination, not to make a larger argument.
A 391 word blog post is almost never going to be a comprehensive argument for anything. So if you're thinking "That's your argument???" well no, of course it's not. I don't have the time or desire to make every little blog post into a book-length treatise just so that random internet commenters don't assume I'm an idiot. (Some probably would anyway, so it would be wasted effort.)
> If you'd like, we really could just talk about whether the change to the video player behavior is a reasonable thing to apply to both platforms. I think it probably is, on balance, for the aforementioned control-visibility reasons. You?
I've never seen an case where the visibility/legibility of the controls were a problem. Do you have any examples?
The irony is that Tahoe has made many things on macOS less legibile, which of course is a matter of great public controversy now.
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Personally, I think the momement iPadOS gets a bit more flexible, and Apple finally creates an iPad version of XCode (not the playground), then you will have it, macOS will slowly wither away just like the Mac Pro desktop.
As long as apple doesn’t do a ”Sinofsky”, and implement a touch optimised gui… on servers, I think we’re good.
"now `finger` is as lickable [0] as OS X's window buttons"
[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/lickable-buttons/
... i'll just show myself out
I recently went down a rabbit hole on how researchers make mice depressed so they can test antidepressants on them. The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's environment in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable. It's a standard protocol. We know that this causes depression.
The culture of products not under the control of the customer does the same thing. A culture that sees this as normal is a depressed culture.
To test whether the mice are depressed, researchers give them something rewarding that requires a little effort to get (e.g., sugary water vs. plain water).
The depressed mice give up. They are apathetic.
I imagine the mice believe that there is no way to change things. That might be true for the mice but it's not true for us.
I imagine the mice would be far more depressed if they had to get trackpad drivers to work and give a good response on Linux
Seems to be an insurmountable task for anyone apart from engineers at apple, let alone mice
I think they'd find that to be an engaging task, and they'd get a great deal of satisfaction once they had sorted it out themselves.
If the mice had to deal with an intermittently disappearing cursor, and erratic hover behaviour on a 2 year old M2 Mac with the latest version of Sequoia .. that would probably illicit a very different response.
Are mice known to spill blood?
There are laptops that work with Linux and ones that don't. Nobody is forcing you to use it on a device that isn't supported
This is that depression the comment author is talking about. Apple fans will make it a point to lash out at Linux for not being a trillion dollar company supported product. Only depressed people lash out at the parts of the world where communities are trying their best.
macOS support for anything that isn't a new Apple product is appalling.
Yeah. I had a laptop which is only 4 years old causing issues, took it to an Apple Store and they couldn't give a toss.
Everything was pushing me in the direction of buying a new laptop (with a small discount relative to the new price) and transferring everything across.
Agreed. If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered. Even if there are more things to tweak/fix (which is not necessarily true these days), there IS probably a way to do it.
On MacOS, I more often have to give up and live with the annoyances.
Hardware is the the big exception. None of my PCs have had nearly as good build quality or battery life (on Linux, at least) as a Macbook. Maybe I should try a Framework.
> If I weren't a computer nerd I probably wouldn't feel this way, but on Linux I feel more empowered
There are also more footguns and rabbit holes. Overall, I am about as happy with Linux than with macOS (I use both daily), but I would not say that one is really more empowering than the other.
I like tinkering with KDE but it’s full of inconsistencies and instability in a way than even the worst Finder I’ve used was not (e.g. the whole desktop freezing when adding a widget to the desktop with a brand new install). Never mind the Russian roulette that is updating nVidia’s drivers.
On the other hand on macOS it’s easier to get to things that are actually productive.
> The short answer is they disrupt the mouse's environment in ways that are unpredictable and uncontrollable.
For example like will my wifi work today. Will my laptop still have any battery when I open it. Is today the day I surprise boot to tty and have to figure out what changed before I can start working.
I'll stick with the year-to-year unpredictability of apple over the day-to-day unpredictability of linux.
Linux doesn't magically update itself. If it works today, it's going to work tomorrow unless you break it.
I dunno about that. Bleeding edge distros like Arch are infamous for breaking in random ways for those updating without paying attention and even distros that are considered more stable like Fedora and Ubuntu can from time to time break drivers or random smaller things. Definitely a YMMV sort of thing.
What are we going to do, then? Stop updating the OS and accumulate security issues? Stop doing anything that might possible touch an obscure config file somewhere in the bowels of the OS? It’s just unrealistic. "Do not update" cannot be a solution, it’s worse than the problem it is supposed to solve.
I’m responding to someone pretending their system randomly breaks in the morning as per magic. This simply doesn’t happen, period.
A Linux system stays the same unless you change it.
I also personally disagree that updates break system by the way. I have used Arch for more than a decade and has yet to experience one of this alleged frequent disturbance.
You said magic twice attacking me but I said it zero times. It's just not even a "good" bad read of what I did say.
What I'm talking about is changes because of updates, yes. Auto updates, or ones I did, or an update to specific software that caused a library update to break something else. All that counts as "me changing it" sure. Like I said I guess I need a system a little less prone to breaking because of my actions. I'm a programmer not a linux admin.
Not sure what point you’re making, are you saying to never update your system?
Not updating your system is not a magic solution either. I ran Linux Mint for 9mo and twice during that time I ended up in a bizarre situation:
1. the menu bar, or whatever it’s called (taskbar/dock equivalent) had disappeared on boot and I spent about 2 hours trying to get it back
2. the system simply wouldn’t boot into Cinnamon anymore; I ended up reinstalling
Bought a MBP and while it has some annoying quirks I don’t have any crazy ruined-my-day issues anymore.
By the same token, mac os isn't going to change in unpredictable ways if you never update it either.
Alas the cross of a dumbass programmer is a heavy one. I need an OS that is harder to break I reckon.
I too am especially prone to breaking my OS, as well as the software that runs on it. You aren't alone lol.
Has Apple never done an update that breaks something? This seems worse than anything I have heard of with linux: https://www.tomsguide.com/phones/iphones/ios-18-4-1-update-i...
In practice, even with a rolling release distro I have not had things break on an update in a very long time (not at all on my current install, which is two years old), and with stable distros its literally been 20 years since something did not boot.
Any OS seems to have some bugs on updates.
I have heard battery life is better so not arguing about that, but its rarely that I will not wake my laptop for more than a day or two so its not a problem I experience either.
Use an immutable distro like Bluefin or Aurora and you can just boot to yesterday's version.
(macOS is my daily driver too, but I wouldn't mind having that feature)
Apple internally must be a constant battle between those who want to unify iOS and macOS and those who understand they’re different systems with different purposes, and need different treatment.
Craig Federighi was a strong proponent of the latter camp but maybe he’s just getting on in years. Goes to show that key people being good and caring a lot can be all that stops things from backsliding.
So the battle for macOS is being slowly lost. Lucky we have KDE.
If it keeps going this way my next laptop won’t have that fruit logo. And that is a real shame.
I remember many years ago (Snow Leopard) I liked Apple's OS enough to build a hackintosh, because the hardware wasn't great (subjective opinion).
Now I like the hardware enough, but have been gradually annoyed enough with the OS that I'd much rather be running Linux. At least I can just turn off most of the "modern" features, but I'm in that "keeping an eye out for potential alternatives" phase.
I've been quite frustrated today with my Jabra headset constantly triggering Apple Music.
There are plenty of mandatory features we unfortunately can't uninstall. I can't think of a scenario where I want Apple music on my work laptop.
I use https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes to fix this "feature"
I relate to this. I loved Snow Leopard. I used Hackintosh. Now there is no way I want to use that OS and there are just too many reasons to list by now.
Mojave was the last macOS version that had any features I cared about. Now each release is about how bad did they trash the macOS UI. Switching to Linux has been great.
I’d love to switch to Linux but it seems impossible as someone who relies on macOS / logic for music production. I’m in too deep and feel like the floor is coming out from under me with all these insane changes and the direction Apple is taking
I know they’re different workflows entirely, but you could start dabbling with Bitwig, which is really good and runs on both macOS and Linux, then eventually switch when you feel like you’re out of the workflow hole
But to be honest, I’m still using Bitwig on a Mac for my studio despite having switched everywhere else to Linux
For me, it was Mountain Lion. Otherwise, much the same.
How are the ARM Linux on Mac projects going? Does anybody daily drive those yet?
Actually lately iPadOS is the one getting most of its features from macOS. iPadOS 26 introduced a menu bar, just like macOS, and a new windows manager that's just the same as macOS.
I feel like this is more of a calculated step towards eliminating macOS, because iPadOS can do "everything" too.
I expect it will happen within a few years after Xcode for iPad is released. MacOS is simply too open for Apple's business goals.
Do you really think that Apple would alienate the big creative industries like Hollywood movie studios who use macOS?
Or do you really think that all their apps and toolsets will run on whatever you are saying is the future of macOS.
I think macOS will go the way of the Mac Pro. It won't be cut off, it will simply atrophy over time.
As more MBP fundamentals are ported to iPad Pro, that will naturally convert more Mac users to iPads, especially the iPhone generation.
Those are more likely to continue working as they mostly work within the lines defined by the apple developer spec. The most likely workflows to break are those of programmers, as they require frequent execution of untrusted binaries and access to the system directories in some cases
> Do you really think that Apple would alienate the big creative industries like Hollywood movie studios who use macOS?
Did you ever hear the tragedy of Final Cut Pro X? I thought not. It's not a story Apple fanboys would tell you...
> Do you really think that Apple would alienate the big creative industries like Hollywood movie studios who use macOS?
"We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company" skit perfectly applies to Apple these days ( https://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76aphonecompany.phtml ).
A middle manager from Apple will easily toss all of Hollywood under the bus if it gets them a checkbox "shipped new toggle switch experience" and a promotion. And the upper management at Apple long since stopped caring about that.
I think this change makes sense on both platforms. If you're gonna use it as an example of why merging the platforms is bad, I think you just strengthen the opposite argument.
Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS. That definitely makes it a less desirable desktop OS.
Today when you generate a PDF from you own content (from Apple Notes app) you are asked about opening links you click on. I thought that they were surely joking and there would be a way to disable that behavior. But no, this is intended and there is no way to disable that. It makes the Preview app a pain in the ass as a PDF reader, which means you have to replace it and begs the question of even using Apple software in the first place.
The answer is that there are fewer and fewer reasons. I mean if you are OK feeling like a child biking around on a cycle with training wheels while an overbearing parent keeps nagging you, it might be for you. Otherwise, the experience is really more like a prison/walled garden and the funny thing is that you paid for it !
> Today when you generate a PDF from you own content (from Apple Notes app) you are asked about opening links you click on.
Or they don't have any usability studies. A hard regression in efficiency in many places.
E.g. Safari in iOS 26 forces you to do 50% more button presses. E.g. if you want to close a tab, you need to press one button more these days. Also one button press more to see the current tabs. These are likely the most used scenarios when you use the browser and they add one button press more?
"They pass more time with this! They like it a lot! Engagement achieved!!!11one11eleven" said the developer.
"Why is this slower? Why do I have to burn time massaging the interface instead of doing it fast and continuing with my life? What a waste..." said the user.
Over the last two decades "the user is the product, milking machines to 110%!!!" has leaked all over the computing world, infecting where the user is (and will be forever, let's hope) the user.
UI/UX seems more like something driven, at Apple and industry wide, by vibes and dogma than it is actual usability.
The sad thing is that Apple used to have people like Bill Atkinson (RIP), Larry Tesler (RIP), Bruce Tognazzini, and Don Norman who cared deeply about usability. What made the Mac special wasn’t its looks, especially in the pre-iMac and pre-Mac OS X days when the computers were mostly beige and the classic Mac OS UI was quite plain-looking (though still good-looking, IMO) compared to Mac OS X and later. Rather, what made the Mac special was its attentiveness to UI.
Somewhere along the line Apple products became luxury goods that were appealing due to their visual design. I am particularly fond of Apple’s early 2000s design, with beautiful hardware such as the iMac G4 and the Power Mac G4 Cube running early Mac OS X. Apple still makes very visually-appealing hardware and software. However, I feel that under Tim Cook Apple has heavily leaned into its visual appeal at the expense of what made Apple great: the emphasis on usability.
Well I don't use Safari anymore. A few years ago, it stopped syncing passwords correctly with my iPhone and nothing I did could fix the problem (there is an issue in the backend on their part, maybe it has been fixed since). On top of that it didn't show favicon for bookmarks which was quite annoying and was slow/worked poorly with some web apps. So I went to Chrome, monopoly be damned.
At the rate it's going, there isn't going to be a single app from Apple that I want to keep using, quite soon.
By the way, the PDF export for Notes is ridiculously bad. It's an old note and there is some migration bug, all the links have the same target. I haven't bothered to investigate yet, but the plan is to stop using Notes as well, so whatever.
You can swipe up from the url bar instead, that will open the current tabs as well.
Good to know! I wonder if this is documented anywhere...
> I mean if you are OK feeling like a child biking around on a cycle with training wheels while an overbearing parent keeps nagging you, it might be for you.
That's exactly why I encouraged my parents to get iPhones.
last time i tried to set up a new android phone. the built in phone app asked me permissions to use the built in contacts app.
people complain if the apps don't all have fine grained permissions. and then complain when they have to agree to stuff all the time. and then complain they got "hacked". damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Implementation is the issue. They often forget your settings between updates. This is particularly bad on MacOS. MacOS updates and app updates both require me to re-grant permissions for the nth time! Then there's the separate issue of must-have apps requesting permissions they have no business asking for and refusing to function correctly without, and other must-have apps abusing their access for purposes not strictly limited to in-app functionality.
Yes, permissions are horrid in all systems. In my opinion they are just a failure to design proper security without completely delegating the problem to the user.
The funny thing is that since people who are subject to security problems will allow them regardless, defeating the entire purpose of the measures.
Computer security is just a people problem; you can't solve it by child proofing stuff. Imagine a car that would prevent you going over the speed limit or ask permission every time you want to do so...
But in that case, that's just beyond stupid, there is no permission for you to act on. They could have a per-document setting or an app level setting to allow opening links in PDFs without requiring the user to agree EVERY SINGLE TIME. On a document that was generated on the computer reading it. It's just complete incompetence.
I agree. I am a power user. I want to be a power user. The OS (Void Linux) and its current state reflects that. If I wanted "childproofing" crap, I would have made it so for myself.
> Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS.
This is certainly happening. However, as long as you can still install your preferred browser with its own rendering engine or a different PDF reader, the situation isn't so bad.
I'm getting great mileage out of LibreWolf on macOS (currently running Sequoia). I don't know who at Apple thought it was a great idea to permanently kill off ad blockers in Safari, but it was a terrible idea that made the world a worse place.
Of course I say macOS is getting along fine for me, but I'm posting this comment from my workstation PC running Ubuntu 24.04. I'm pleasantly surprised by how much better my Linux experience is now than it was in 2013. It seems from my personal experience so far like a free desktop OS that can run a web browser and play games better than the paid alternatives is a solved problem. I find this machine much less frustrating than my M4 Macbook Air- many of the "security" behaviors are just annoyances.
Sure. For now. My issue is that I don't see the point of overpaying for Apple hardware if I have to swap all softwares because what they ship sucks.
Which makes it even more important for Google to take accessibility seriously so that disabled people aren't stuck being the only ones that have a hard time switching from the play pin.
> Apple is quietly but surely increasing its control on macOS. That definitely makes it a less desirable desktop OS.
I mean this has been the conversation since the early days of Mac OS. I didn't get back to Mac until Snow Leopard but I remember the uproar over removing Java in 10.7
The removal of Java was perhaps the best example of people expecting Apple's obsolescence policy to be the same as Windows, and getting burned.
There were large software vendors who had not yet started on a strategy around the deprecation of Java until it was removed from the OS. They didn't look like they even noticed it had been removed in betas and come up with a plan on what to tell customers.
The situation today is not really comparable. Between the fully locked down hardware and many OS limitations it is much worse than it has ever been.
I mean now you cannot open a 3rd party software without going into settings to allow opening, another regression on previously needing to right click, open. The next step is forbidding any unsigned software altogether. And finally, forbidding any software that doesn't come from their fully controlled App Store.
It's really way beyond not shipping a software component directly in the system...
I’ve been on Mac for about 30 years. I’m planning my switch to Linux (probably KDE) and GrapheneOS. I can’t keep giving so much money to a company that clearly doesn’t have my interests in mind.
So much of the ecosystem doesn’t “just work” anymore and now instead of fixing those issues, they are actively working to make my computing experience worse. I’ve hade enough.
The more I investigate the current state of Linux desktops, the more excited I get. It seems like Linux is actually good for general use now, and I’ll have so many more options to make my technology fit me instead of the other way around.
I want to be excited about Linux, but as a long time Mac user (started in the 90s) I don't feel like there's a desktop environment for me. I've used GNOME and KDE on and off for years with some Cinnamon, elementary/Pantheon, and minimalist WM thrown in for good measure, and none of them cut it. The big DEs are much closer to Windows or mobile operating systems than anything else.
And that doesn't even get into the hardware situation, where the number of laptops with long battery life and everything working without quirks can seemingly be counted on one hand.
> want to be excited about Linux, but as a long time Mac user (started in the 90s) I don't feel like there's a desktop environment for me.
I can confirm that there is nothing that comes close. Gnome is an abomination even if it might be appealing on the surface. KDE is still very rough around the edges, despite making a lot of progress with each version. I used XFCE for a long time because it can be tweaked to a reasonably useable state and it is light on resources. KDE can be occasionally dog slow on a $12k workstation with a 64-core Threadripper pro and 256 GB of RAM for a reason I cannot imagine. Using my Mac Studio is a much better experience overall.
Try to use GNOME to drive a variable refresh rate display challenge (impossible).
Jabs aside, GNOME is pretty nice compared to where it used to be. Everything still takes a few iterations of touching, but not as many as it used to. Some things are frustratingly unsolvable (see: advanced monitor features), but at least it is a full replacement for Windows on the same hardware. Oh, and contemporary linux distress have audio drivers that appear to work out of the box without having to build the kernel.
When it comes to laptops: it'd be great if anyone made something that competes with a MacBook. It's been a long time. At this point I can only assume there is an economic reason rather than a technical one that Windows and Linux laptops are so bad.
> anyone made something that competes with a MacBook
You need to define what's a MacBook for you. I'm not a fan of the form factor, but I've seen dozens of clones of it for years now and kinda wonder where a Surface Laptop for instance fails for you.
You may want to give Omarchy a try. Not exactly Windows or Mac, but last time I checked myself 95 to 99% of my time on computer is spending inside a browser I think a lot of the old Desktop environment habits no longer matter as much.
https://omarchy.org
It’s nice, based on the demo video I watched but I’m not spending lots of time in web apps or terminals.
It's not a matter of Linux conforming to the way you use a computer, it is rather you who have adapted to the most viable computing experience which Linux offers, which is being inside the browser all the time. You are serving the computer, instead of the computer serving you.
> It's not a matter of Linux conforming to the way you use a computer, it is rather you who have adapted to the most viable computing experience which Linux offers
This is the opposite of my Linux experience, especially in comparison with MacOS. Linux, especially when using KDE, offers customization up the wazoo. The out of the box experience may be a less than optimal, but investing time customizing your installation[0] is very rewarding. Almost anything that can be done on/by your DE can be bound to a shortcut or automated. You'd have to purchase MacOS tools to come close to the configurability of KDE (e.g. window positioning)
1. Or copying your config directory.
I've been happily on cinnamon for years and find it similar to Mac but with way better window tiling out the box.
What's wrong with cinnamon for you?
Cinnamon gets a lot right and has some Mac-like aspects, like how the UI in its apps are laid out, but as a whole it's more comparable to Windows with its taskbar, windowing model, no global menubar, and Control-based key shortcuts among other things.
Cinnamon is like if Microsoft hired apples design department and gave them control of windows.
GNOME with DashToDock and BlurMyShell on Fedora Workstation.
Trust me, it’s macOS enough. I switched from a 16” M2 Max MBP to a HP Elitebook G1A Ultra with Fedora. It’s been a dream.
I always have to set the dock to auto-hide on my Macs. Having a dock that fucks off in Gnome is great.
I’m very happy with KDE Plasma. Just switched from a MacBook Pro to a Framework.
I’m shocked at how much “just works” like a Mac. It wasn’t like this even a short amount of time ago.
I’m really happy with the hardware too and all it needs is more battery life. Nothing an external battery doesn’t solve (and the framework is a lighter machine so the difference is moot).
Everything works. Fingerprint reader authenticating commercial apps like 1Password, graphics drivers are a part of the kernel and I’m enjoying Windows games on Steam, firmware gets updates from the OS instead of messing around in the BIOS like on Windows, KDE Connect is like AirDrop for Linux, it’s literally a better experience than Windows and Mac if you ask me.
I don’t mind that KDE resembles Windows, I personally think it’s a lot like Windows but without the dumbassery. And of course you can theme it and change settings to have it act more like a Mac (or go with Gnome).
I guess for me having control of the machine is worth a lot of little inconveniences.
For me it’s more than a little inconvenience. Switching to Linux represents turning my ability to be productive on a computer totally upside down, tossing out decades of flow building and muscle memory.
As for battery life, it being crappy makes me wonder why I’m even bothering with laptops at all. More than half of their selling point is being portable, which needing to be tethered frequently heavily impinges upon. The sacrifices that come with the portable form factor just aren’t worth it for 3-5h life with real world usage.
I guess I spend 90% of my time in a terminal or in emacs or looking at firefox and so I don't really see what the desktop is doing for me, really. I switch desktops every once and awhile and I find I'm as happy on XFCE as I am with Gnome or KDE. Maybe that is because they all suck?
half joking: https://www.windowmaker.org
the laptop battery life issue is a real thing -- I kicked the can by getting an M1 MacBook Pro instead of a Framework for my most recent upgrade.
Last I touched a Linux desktop was 10+ years ago and you had to muck about with FontConfig and third-party config packages to even come close to Windows or macOS type rendering. Has this seen significant improvement?
I uninstalled my Bazzite partition because of the text. Initial searches showed similar frustrations on reddit without obvious and immediate fixes, so I decided to cut my losses and go back to using Windows full time instead of spending hours or days trying to get the rendering to an acceptable level.
This was my experience when trying to get fonts to look good in Ubuntu about a year ago. FontConfig, Gnome and of course some individual apps like browsers all have their own little settings for font rendering that interact in weird and not so wonderful ways.
I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox and realized that kerning is completely broken. I can only assume that it's because of some setting that I changed but I'd rather reinstall the whole machine than go on a wild goose chase...
Don't quote me, but if I recall some number of years ago there were some font shaping/AA patents that expired and so good font rendering comes out of the box in most cases these days. Used to be only Ubuntu shipped like that.
I run Debian with KDE on Wayland on my desktop PC. Font rendering seems perfectly fine. I can't speak for other combos.
What exactly doesn't "just work" anymore?
Can't go to previous track when "autoplay" is enabled in Apple Music. Clearly an intentional choice. Works on iPhone. But on Mac it doesn't "just work". Syncing my music library with Apple Music doesn't "just work" anymore either. Some albums are visible, but are greyed out and can't be played. Time Machine hasn't "just worked" in several years - would corrupt my backups and have to re-create from scratch every week or so, I've switched to Carbon Copy Cloner. Non high-DPI displays don't "just work" anymore. The forward button in Finder, the icons in Music settings, all squished horizontally like it's someone's first time adding clipart to a Power Point. Safari stopped "just working" with 26.0, now opening a new tab or typing into the search bar randomly presents me with a 1-5s delay - or sometimes the whole thing hangs. I could go on, I don't dare upgrade to Tahoe - it's death by a thousand cuts.
Edit: LOL, how could I forget Siri. I don't use it often - generally only in the car to switch music - but it's terrible at understanding what song/album I'm asking for. Tried repeatedly to get it to play the "Mob Song" from Beauty and the Beast and I got some death metal instead. Completely useless.
Autocomplete on iOS is a shit show. It regularly autocompletes non-grammatical text, which is unforgivable in 2025 when we have AI that can write coherent sonnets and code. Dictation is still at the same level it was at 10 years ago - complete shit. Carplay sometimes randomly starts playing music when I get in the car, other times it doesn't. My Apple Watch regularly can't find my heart rate, for long time periods. The HomePod app and Watch display incorrect information about what's playing on HomePods about 50% of the time. There's no way to filter text spam. The Messages app on MacOS doesn't let you filter by known senders. If you delete a text thread on iOS, it doesn't delete it on MacOS, so my desktop messages are cluttered with fucking donation requests from PACs. Try to do anything with Siri, even simple things like playing a song. It still makes bizarre mistakes. It can't answer basic questions about my calendar.
The list is endless, really. Everything looks "delightful" as fuck. Mac and iOS fonts, colors and text padding are immaculate, so it gives the impression of solidity and competence that isn't really there. A lot of things "mostly work" but aren't reliable, so I can't rely on them. They can list them as "features" but if I can't rely on them, I can't use them, because I don't want to deal with constant frustration. They act like all their systems are this one integrated whole that works well together, but it doesn't.
I don't think that everything will "just work" on Linux, but at least I won't be paying a premium for the privilege of having my needs as a disabled person ignored. I'll be able to customize my experience to meet my basic accessibility needs without fighting against a company that seems to hate me.
> Autocomplete on iOS is a shit show. It regularly autocompletes non-grammatical text
Android has the same issue with Google's keyboard, which will go back and change things you've typed correctly to be obviously wrong for no clear reason. I swear it used to work much better.
At least on Android alternative keyboards are easier to use. I have no idea how they both have such an awful implementation of it.
> Carplay sometimes randomly starts playing music when I get in the car, other times it doesn't.
Android Auto does the same thing for me, despite having auto-play disabled. One possible explanation I've seen online is that some infotainment systems send an unsolicited "play" signal to your device. For Android that seems to mean it will send "play" to the most recently used app that supports audio playback.
Siri has always been a shitshow for sure. I basically use it for timers and even that it fucks up a non-negligible number of times. For the few experiences I've had with it, at least Google assistant is a lot more reliable.
I also noticed worsened reliability in the heart rate tracking of my Apple Watch in recent workouts. It must have happened in one of the recent updates because it was fine previously. I could say it's programmed obsolescence but I'm sure I would be accused of conspiracy theory. But it is hard to interpret the failing reliability otherwise when it suspiciously happens after updates and around new hardware release. In any case, I don't think the Apple Watch is a very good product for the price, so whatever, the next watch will be focused on sports and the competition has made great alternatives.
I completely share the sentiment that everything looks good but doesn't work that well in practice. There are so many random issues that make the hardware prices very unpalatable.
Ah well, everything changes, not always for the better. The pain is in transitioning to something else, but that's something that is very true for most tech related things since we can't ever agree on proper standardisation.
Was going to be my question too. Mine works…
It’s comical how you can copy and paste these same comments anytime there’s been a new macOS for probably the last 10 or so years. Hell maybe longer.
Every. Single. Year. “Apple is taking away my laptop I’m switching to Linux.”
I’m grateful to you all though — I think your constant griping every year probably does at least apply some pressure on Apple to focus on keeping macOS good at what it does: provide a pleasant but still powerful desktop experience for those who just want to do stuff and not spend hours under the hood making some Linux flavor usable.
I don't think I've ever appreciated a video player putting gradients above and below the controls or darkening the entire video when the controls are active. It's extremely annoying when you're trying to scrub through a video and read a particular bit of text. Why do UI designers from Apple to YouTube to Amazon think this is necessary?
Or putting a huge play button covering it when paused. Or taking painfully long to fade-out the UI after pressing play... The list goes on.
I’ve seen this in a ton of video players. This is an especially bad example. But it’s so common for the entire top third of the screen to be blurred or darkened just to display a single small UI element in a corner. Stupid design.
The reason it’s especially stupid for Apple is because half of their new design system is about making content front & center.
I love having to install Deno so I can run yt-dlp to download a video that I want to see a brief or small detail in when that small detail happens to be in the lower third of the video because when I pause, it puts a stupid gradient over the video or blocks it entirely with the controls.
That's why the entire thrust of Liquid Glass was bad and dumb from the start. "The controls will get out of the way of your content....so we put them floating in front of your content" just absolutely braindead. There was a way to get them out of the way, give them their own space!
So they made a change he doesn't like, and that means merging macOS with iOS? Non-sequitur.
It is a pretty dumb change though, let's be honest.
> So they made a change he doesn't like, and that means merging macOS with iOS? Non-sequitur.
No. The change was made in iOS first, and then the same exact change was brought to macOS, as has happened many times now over the years.
Tahoe seems to be so full of straws to break the camel's back for so many macOS users who have been slowly annoyed by the grind of version ~10.10 to 15.7
I updated a couple of days ago. All the new transparency and blur they've added looks really bad. But then I turned on "Reduce transparency" and it's fine. There's nothing else new or different.
I read a few of the stories on HN about it and was braced for a bad experience. But honestly - a few icons changing (don't care); the border radius of finder, the only Apple app I use much, changing (don't care).
I'm glad you didn't find your straw in this version of macOS. Your lack of "caring" -as you put it- probably smooths a lot of rough edges that might be important to others.
This is one of the main reasons why I left the Macintosh ecosystem several years ago. Apple is, has been, transitioning from a computer company to a computing appliance company for many years now, and I just couldn't take it any longer. I have happily been a full time Linux user since then.
Just modify the source code for programs you want changes to.
Apple also built a custom video element for web they use for their events. See the Apple Events page[0] and click "Watch the event". It also seems to dim the video when mousing over. I kinda like the design, but the animations seem a tad bit slow.
[0]: https://www.apple.com/apple-events/
I love Apple Silicon and hope Apple tones down all the iOSification of macOS. It's a mistake.
I also hate how the controls are on top of the content, on eg desktop and QuickTime. I want to see the entire frame when scrubbing.
the liquid glass video controls on iOS absolutely does obscure more of the content than the pre-26 players did and it's not even close. it's just UI chrome for its own sake
The biggest difference between macOS and iOS is file system access. One day macOS terminal will disappear, just a matter of time.
Since the thread is slipping into a Liquid Glass topic …
Question: does anyone have anything good to say about Liquid Glass?
I like how it looks. It's nice to have a fairly-minor shake-up in the aesthetics every now and then, and it makes everything feel a bit fresh and new. And I do sincerely find it fairly minor -- things got a bit rounder and glossier, and there's a few bits of iOS that have some fairly cute glass-distortion effects, and some apps got some not-huge UI redesigns.
Overall, particularly on my phone, it's just giving me an occasional pleasant burst of "ooh, shiny". On my laptop, I admittedly barely notice anything has changed.
(I don't personally have any legibility issues with it, though I'm willing to believe that's down to individual usage patterns.)
1) Aesthetically, I think it's pretty. That's a subjective opinion, though.
2) I vastly prefer it displaying buttons as buttons, instead of as just undifferentiated text on a screen. In the past I've sometimes been frustrated that an app didn't have a feature I wanted, only to learn that it actually had that feature, hidden behind what I'd assumed was just a text label but was actually a button. This is an enormous freaking improvement.
3) I very much prefer the new UI patterns in other places. For example, when highlighting text on iOS, the old UI gives a horizontally scrolling list of options with arrow keys to rotate through them. The new UI replaces that with a ">" More button that pops up a vertical list of all available actions. Again, this is an enormous freaking improvement.
I like the appearance of Liquid Glass, but that could go either way. I think the actual UI implementation behind the graphics is so much better than before.
I agree with the strategy that Liquid Glass is part of.
They are making the iPadOS the mother platform for developing most things - scale down to iOS, or add a few extra changes for visionOS/macOS. iPadOS is gaining features to bring it closer to parity to macOS to make this delta smaller, and macOS is gradually becoming styled more to match iPadOS so apps look at home if the layout and graphic assets were mostly kept the same.
This started around macOS 11, with some major design changes along with Catalyst and SwiftUI to help developers.
There is something about the font weights or I dunno in the context menus on macOS Tahoe that I really like. Somehow, they feel a lot more readable than they did from Big Sur to Sequoia.
And even if I think they utterly botched the concept and execution, I will always cheer the death of "minimullizm" that destroyed Aqua. I've absolutely loathed how macOS looks since Big Sur.
I just need one OS and probably you too.
Not so related, putting the full screen button in the top left is completely annoying. No other video player puts it there.
Tahoe is my favorite macOS since Snow Leopard. I really enjoy how everything looks overall. Sure, it's not perfect, but I can't remember any OS that truly ever was. I feel as though people will always find something to complain about.
A change in webkit (which both OS's have used forever) somehow means they are merging iOS and macOS? I'm not following this logic at all.
it's not a change in webkit. the webpage just displays the current OS video player. i read the page in Sequoia and it shows the old version
No, everything is becoming visionOS.
Oh god that darkening infuriates me as well
[flagged]
> Am I hearing this right?
No.
The whole thing about “merging iOS and macOS” was about combining them into a single source code, not a single design system.
This is an irrational and especially dishonest and rant article.
The fact that they synced up the version numbers (macOS 26, iPadOS 26, iOS 26) is a signal that they intend to unify all OSes.
My experience with iOS 26 + liquid glass (ew) on my phone has been terrible. Feels like a step backward. I am dreading upgrading my macbook bc I love it the way it is. Regrettable.
Oh, it's even worse on MacOS, everything got rounder and bigger. There is no other explanation than touch enabled macs and eventual OS unification.