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Comments (354)

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  jjice
  I don't mind how Liquid Glass looks at all. It's just insane how buggy the system has become. Even Messages will bug out, like deleting my first word if I type too fast after opening a conversation or auto scrolling and not letting me scroll down until I exit and re-enter.Unacceptable for the premium you pay for Apple software. Unacceptable for any software one is paying for. I hope they get their shit together and start fixing before they continue adding new stuff. 26.2 doesn't inspire me that they're on that trajectory.The thing that amazes me most is that everyone on the teams responsible is probably using their Apple devices and running into these same bugs!
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  cglan
  I think for the first time I’ve been considering moving off iOS because of liquid glass. The bugs on apple products have hit a breaking point for me. Mac is still unequivocally the best laptop around imho, but it’s less clear cut for phones. My iPhone 15 pro is borderline unusable. Every day is a new issue. I’m very much over it.You used to be able to count on the basics working smoothly, but stuff like the camera and messaging are frequently broken for me
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  renaudg
  Liquid Glass appears to be the culmination of the Alan Dye era at Apple, where UI terms like "radio buttons" were derided as "programmer talk".https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_jobThankfully he has now left. Things could hopefully pick up again usability-wise within 2-3 years.
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  egypturnash
  I just hope that my current Mac keeps being usable long enough that Liquid Glass has been fixed or replaced entirely by the time I'm forced to upgrade to whatever's shipping on my next computer.
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  efficax
  liquid glass is a total disaster. what the hell is going on in the ux teams at apple? this is like their windows vista era. i hate it so much
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  kruuuder
  Funny to see the last screenshot of OS X from 2014 in the article. I would love to use a system with such a high contrast and information density. But I also remember very well how many users were upset with the most recent design changes at that time: The all caps section titles in the sidebar, and the gray icons that were previously colored.
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  sylens
  Perhaps the thing I hate most about Tahoe is the embedded rounded rectangle around the menu inside of the larger rounded rectangle window. They're trying to go for this look of a menu floating above the rest of the window it belongs to, but it just looks sloppy to me in dark mode.
• jessegrosjean
  I dislike Liquid Glass.At the same time I make Mac apps and I've got to adopt liquid glass to keep my apps looking alive/updated. How to do this without making my apps UI worse?I would love to see some "how to fix Liquid Glass" type articles. List out the problems, list out potential solutions.Anyone run across articles like this? Please share relevant links.
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  dijksterhuis
  > Maybe this is because I’m getting older, but that gives me the benefit of having experienced Apple’s older interfaces, with their exceptional quality and functionality.i really missed snow leopard for about 10 years all the way up to when i moved on from my macbook circa 5 years ago.
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  rayiner
  > That was little more than a decade ago, in 2014. Not that I want to turn the clock back, but it would be really helpful if I could read clearly what’s on my display once again.I want to turn the clock back. It’s not a reflexive opposition to anything new. I thought OS X clearly got better from 10.0 to 10.4. But in the last vie versions it’s been a regression.
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  mvkel
  One of the most egregious issues with macOS 26 is the accessibility/usability regression. Apple prided itself on making their operating system accessible. Good ux is inherently accessible.There are so many parts of the os that flagrantly ignore well-established accessibility standards, some of which Apple themselves advocated for
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  avidphantasm
  Since macOS went to a yearly cadence, I usually upgrade during Christmas break, this allows for a couple of point releases to work out the kinks. I won’t be upgrading this year. I hope macOS 27 fixes this abomination. Otherwise, this 30+ year Mac user will be moving on…
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  nout
  This is a good time for trying Linux. If you are coming from Mac, then a distro with GNOME interface (Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu...) will feel like at home after a couple tweaks. I recommend "Dash to Dock" to get the MacOS dock experience and "Search Light" to get the spotlight search.
• joduplessis
  As others have noted here, LiquidGlass by itself isn’t a bad idea.However, the execution is horrible. Massively inconsistent border radii, a Finder window that reminds me of the Engineers’ ship from Prometheus, laggy performance, illegible fonts due to overlays, and the list goes on. Tahoe is so badly designed that using Windows 11 feels like a breath of fresh air.Curious if any Apple folk are on HN that could add some insight as to how it happened.
• frou_dh
  What's obvious to me is that the PRIMARY motivation for Liquid-Glass-ifying MacOS was not to improve MacOS, but simply to make it look consistent with the new version of iOS/iPadOS.So for Apple to start with a level of disrespect for the existing product where the question of whether each change is actually an improvement is effectively off-topic, it's no wonder they made a dog's dinner of Tahoe.
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  jwlake
  its very odd that apparently everyone working in Apple software dev either refuses to dogfood this stuff or just uses iPads for everything.
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  karmakaze
  The day that I need to update to macOS 26 for continued security patches is the last day I'll choose to run macOS. I'm pretty much all on Linux for non-work stuff anyway with an old Windows 'gaming' PC that only runs a 10 year old game.
• walterbell
  2023 Vision Pro (iPad-on-Skull) sold less than 500K devices, with v2 cancelled.In 2025, the design failed upward to 4000 x 500K users, https://archive.is/gxaYw> [Apple] is working to simplify the way users navigate and control their devices.. The design is loosely based on the Vision Pro’s software.. will mark the most significant upgrade to the Mac since the Big Sur operating system in 2020.. For the iPhone, it will be the biggest revamp since iOS 7 in 2013... 2 billion devices in use around the world.. when Apple revamped its Photos app last year, legions of users complained. With the entire operating systems changing, the stakes are much higher.Since 2023 launch, Meta Ray-Ban sold ~4M camera glasses priced below $500.
• felixding
  If only Apple could bring Scott Forstall back.Oh one can dream...
• DrProtic
  I was about to upgrade my MacBook but instead booted up Linux on my dust collecting desktop, all because liquid glass.They managed to break so many things, they even managed to mess up the volume slider. Instead of showing up across the screen now it’s tucked away to the top right. What the hell.
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  layer8
  There are claims that Liquid Glass was in development for three years. If that is accurate, the results are even more appalling.
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  ghusto
  Adding insult to injury, my fans are constantly going now because I have to pay for this disastrous upgrade with tons more resources.
• t1234s
  Using Liquid Glass on both a retina and non-retina display it looks like Apple is trying to depreciate non-retina displays just like they have done in the past with floppy disk, cd rom, and having useful ports. Tahoe on a non-retina display looks slightly but noticeably shittier than the previous version.
• LucidLynx
  Not gonna lie, this year has been exceptionnaly disappointing for every product and every OS (more generally: software) from Apple.The battery life first: I lost 6 to 8h of battery life EVERY DAY because of iOS 26. The battery life of my macbook is worst too, even after all the updates and a fresh install of macOS 26.2. The interface is very ugly, and not easy to use at all. I am oftenly loston both systems (iOS 26 and macOS 26) because of all those glass interfaces on top of each other. The performance did not improved either, and the gaming ecosystem that I was very optimistic is becoming a mess. Again. To finish, an exceptional high number of annoying bugs that are not solved yet, despite my feedbacks since the first Beta versions. It seems nobody care.It’s infuriating that I can’t downgrade the OS on both devices. Especially on my mac.This pushed me to re-try a Linux distro on my old laptop, and re-try Android on an old Google Pixel phone. Both are great for my needs, and the phone has way more battery life than the iPhone (despite the phone has already 5yo).I did not expected at all that 2025 would be the year of Apple pushing me out of it ecosystem... Very nice job guys.
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  pmdr
  For me, earlier versions of macOS/OS X and Windows Vista/7 were the right mix of eye candy and usability. Apple's just showing off with this liquid glass thing. Yeah, it's cool that they attempted it, but it should've remained entirely opt-in. Apple being Apple, there's no opt-in -- once they like it, it's the default.
• anon
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  foxygen
  My MacOS has this insane bug where the cursor sometimes won't change to a pointer/loading/any other state on my second monitor. This is really bad, but even worse for me who writes websites for a living, and need to check that my CSS cursor pointer class actually worked. I can't count how many minutes I've lost refreshing my browser and double-checking my code. Now I just keep my browser on my primary monitor. I've found many other people with this bug on the internet, and it has been happening for YEARS. I honestly can't understand how a premium product aimed at developers can have something like this for YEARS without a fix. I'm moving away from MacOS, and might ditch my iPhone too as I won't have all the nice integration with MacOS anymore.Fuck you, Apple.
• diebillionaires
  Couldn't agree more. I haven't and won't update to Tahoe, and am now using linux more frequently as I begin to move away from Mac OS, and eventually Apple products.
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  xqcgrek2
  Tahoe has to be the worst software Apple has released in three decades. It's unbelievable it got through. If Macs and macOS were not a tiny portion of their revenue I would short the stock.
• rick_dalton
  I’ve deferred my next Mac upgrade to when my current M1 air on Sequoia stops being supported. If they mess it up further I may just move off the platform. Such a shame because the hardware is great.
• QuiEgo
  The really really frustrating thing is that even in this lesser state, all of the alternatives are still a worse experience than an Apple Silicon macbook.It’s sad to be in a time where enshitifcation is the word of the day and things are getting worse as time goes on. There’s nothing on the horizon of tech that excites me anymore. I used to feel joy and excitement for the future of tech. Now I feel profound sadness at this reality.
• anon
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  dc_giant
  Design got worse since Maverick for professional users.
• steve-atx-7600
  Hurts to even look at this post. Today I pulled up a podcast episode in apple podcasts for Mac and could hardly see the app buttons that got obscured by the window turning black to "match" the episode artwork. When I found the buttons, I could literally not read their labels because they were now black on black. This is just asinine at this point. The design change should have been aborted before it became such a mess that it distracts from fixing all of Apples other problems.
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  thenaturalist
  Tahoe is such a criminal worsening of UI quality, it really is worrisome that Apple is proudly releasing it.If this kind of software trend continues in 2026, it might be the first time I take a serious look at Linux distros on Mac.
• e40
  I 100% agree with OPs take, though I don't really mind it as much as he does. I do hope the changes will be rolled back in 27, or at least controls given to us that allow us to roll back changes.
• anon
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• wintermutestwin
  While the UI designers are rearranging deck chairs, the UX is totally failing to love up to the promise of an ecosystem. Cross system cut n paste is a neat trick, but I just want timers and alarms to actually work as expected.I shouldn’t be surprised given that the mac save as dialog box has a name field that is still hard coded to 32 characters visible. Whenever I bitch about it I get pushback that filenames shouldn’t be longer than that! Um hello - tell me you have never worked in the real world outside your iphone bubble without telling me.
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  CodeWriter23
  The Bozo Explosion is in full force at Apple now. They should bring Forstall back. Engineers need to be be humiliated for making stupid decisions.
• zingar
  Without arguing with the main point I do want to say that although I didn’t ask for increased control size from 18 to 26, my hands are really appreciating it.
• analogpixel
  If you notice your OS/Window Manager, then they have failed in what they were designed to do.I don't own a computer for the OS, I own it to run the Applications that I find useful.
• JaggerJo
  +1 I only updated my MacBook Air and really don’t like it. Will keep all other macs on Sequoia until macOS 27 hopefully fixes most of the issues.
• baq
  Not upgrading to Tahoe for as long as $DAYJOB allows. ‘Defer update‘ dialog can be conveniently moved away to the second display almost out of sight.
• anentropic
  all else aside...> two windows in the same app, both created using SwiftUI, can’t even share a common radius, as shown belowthis actually looks correct to me, the smaller 'subordinate' dialog has smaller radius, like nesting dolls
• soulofmischief
  M2 MBP here. Definitely skipping Tahoe. Sequoia is already just terrible, not only is the UX clunky and hostile, but Apple seems to have flat out broken its Bluetooth and networking stacks in multiple ways, and in general the system is extremely unstable.Best hardware around, but at this point I might even take W11 over this locked down mess. At least Asahi support is decent these days.And I'm tired of paying for things that should be stock, such as proper window and mouse management, or reasonable fan control so that the keyboard doesn't burn my fingers under moderate workloads.
• virgil_disgr4ce
  Just as a datapoint: Not only do I actually like Liquid Glass, I don't have any errors or bugs on my MBP or my iPhone EXCEPT for the audio scratching sometimes on macos. Which alone is flatly unacceptable.
• embedding-shape
  > After three months of strong feedback during beta-testing, I was disappointed when Tahoe was released on 15 September to see how little had been addressedNow it was a while ago I left the Apple ecosystem as it became clear they didn't actually care about UX anymore, but did "strong feedback during beta-testing" ever actually result in any results? I remember doing something similar back in 2012-2013 sometime, and friends having similar feelings across the years, that it makes me think that Apple never really did any changes based on feedback receiving during the beta testing.Has anyone here ever written something in via the traditional feedback forms/venues and actually had something changed before the final release? I even asked around my circle of acquaintances and even the ones 110% into the Apple ecosystem seem to never have noticed anything changed based on their feedback.
• eviks
  > with their exceptional quality and functionality.This was never true, for example, taking this simple criterion of readability:> would be really helpful if I could read clearly what’s on my displayLook at the device's names at the left-most screenshot - you can't clearly read them even though there is plenty of space wasted on the margins and the "…"I mean, sure, liquid glass made everything worse, but it doesn't mean all the other decades-old UI sins disappear in the exceptionally fuzzy rearview window
• spike021
  honestly the issue i hate the most is how bad the keyboard has gotten over the past 3-5 years/major iOS releases.on top of the bug people mention a lot where types are miss-pressed, there's a problem i get where if iOS considers a word misspelled it'll refuse to let me use the space key or otherwise move away from the word or close the keyboard. it's almost like a UI thread lockout. it's extremely frustrating.
• anon
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  baggy_trough
  I do enjoy the liquid glass controls in some places. The glass effect is really beautiful. What I hate about it is the way the overall UI constantly gets in the way of my content.
• sho_hn
  MacOS aesthetically peaked with Leopard in '09, but speaking frankly the OS has felt abandoned to me since around 10.2, with so many basic interaction issues with window management and the dock just never getting fixed properly and a long list of half-assed bandaids and abandoned experiments over the years.There is no true passion in MacOS, and the marketing has come face to face with reality in 2025. It's the neglected step-child of a company distracted by other things.There's been some impressive engineering done by lower-level folks under the hood of it all, though.
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  jama211
  There are a lot of valid criticisms here especially regarding accessibility but after seeing the first item be complaining about “wasted space” because of rounded corners on a finder preview it made me find it very hard to take seriously, too much old man yells at cloud energy to be honest.
• docmars
  Can Apple get it over with and revert this overhaul? It's such a disaster. Sequoia's UI and icons were nearly perfect and still looked modern. There was no need for this change whatsoever.
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  rich_sasha
  I'll have to upgrade my M1 MBP some time and no way am I putting up with this nonsense - back to Linux laptop for me.What recommendations do people have for good metal-body linux-friendly "ultra books" (or whatever they're called these days)?
• anarticle
  I think if macOS is a tool it should change less.Looks too much like vista to me.
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  fauigerzigerk
  It seems obvious to me that liquid glass is no designer's idea of a good UI. It's a business move to force developers to support the upcoming iGlasses where transparency is actually necessary.Perhaps Apple is willing to accept that most macOS users will enable "reduce transparency" so long as devs implement support for transparency.But there is another explanation making the rounds, possibly a conspiracy theory. Some people claim that Apple is doing this to make cross-platform technologies look obsolete and hard to implement.If there's any truth to this, it's a terrible idea that could easily backfire. People could get used to there not being a consistent platform look and feel. Like on Windows, "native" could lose its meaning.Whatever Apple promotes as "native" could become just another style among many.
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  bratwurst3000
  i switched this year from windows to mac because windows is unbearable.... but apple seems to want to get rid of desktop user also
• petesergeant
  Updated iOS overnight and what the fuck man. Also Settings search is so totally broken I can’t even
• wutwutwat
  windows vista called, it wants its Aero back...just format and install Sequoia, that's what I did
• anal_reactor
  The cycle of most products:Step 1: company caters to a nicheStep 2: niche loves product, recommends to wider audienceStep 3: wider audience adopts productStep 4: company switches to targeting the wider audienceStep 5: niche doesn't like product anymore, switches to a competitorWindows is in step 5 - previously undisputed king of desktop, now an ad-infested boomer legacy system. MacOS is in step 4 - previously pricy but good solution for devs and creatives, now PITA for devs and "I would switch if it weren't for Adobe suite" for creatives, but normies think it looks pretty. Linux is in step 1 - Valve has been consistently investing in making it a viable gaming system. If you told me 10 years ago that Linux actually runs games other than TuxCart, I'd have laughed, but nowadays "does it run on Linux" is a serious question for every new release. It just needs some time to mature, and once gamers switch, other desktop users will slowly follow.
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  drnick1
  The answer is KDE and GNOME, at least on the machines that support some form of Linux.
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  synapsomorphy
  I'm a Linux and Windows user thinking of getting a Macbook, mostly for the hardware.All these recent proclamations of disappointment in Tahoe seem insanely overblown to me. The problem that this post leads with is that thumbnails' corners are too rounded, which "misrepresents" the original? Seriously?Maybe it's worse now compared to the golden years, I don't know, never owned a Mac. And it's fair to criticize it from that perspective. But I am completely at a loss for how any of these issues could be bad enough to make you switch platforms. Windows and Linux are not exactly usability all-stars! I had to write my own app for decent speech-to-text on Linux which is built in at a system level on Macs.This feels to me like just the age-old tale of people wanting to (love | hate) brands, when really, things are nuanced. I switched from Android to iOS recently and the experience did not change much. iOS is absolutely not "borderline unusable" like I've seen many claim. If anything it's maybe a 10% nicer experience overall.Lack of nuance in people's takes makes for less signal in the noise and makes it annoying to figure out the actual pros and cons of different platforms.
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  talentedcoin
  These articles always make me laugh. Everyone complains and then everyone lines up and buys Macs again. macOS has been on the decline for literally years now. If you really want things to change put your money where your mouth is and switch!
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  estetlinus
  I am trying hard to have strong feelings about it, but I just can’t bother. The only thing constant is change.What I do know for a fact, is that for each error I have on my MacBook, I’ll have ~10 ungoogable errors on any other OS. I rage-sold my last Windows due to losing my Java installation (or just confusing which terminal I installed it in).Please, crop all thumbnails in the corners, as long as you come pre-installed with just one working terminal.