macOS Tahoe 26 RC

Guzmán’s approach is correct: stop developing for Apple’s platforms. Develop for the open web or linux/bsd.

Unpopular opinion. I gotta say, despite my reluctance I took the plunge and I don’t hate it.

Thing is, the bar was already pretty low. I’ve gotten used to weird behavior and inconsistency and bugs just like on Windows, so it’s not like what I had was perfect.

None of my apps broke, in fact a lot of the most important ones RC day one updates specifically to support it, even some that hadn’t been updated in a while.

It probably was not fun for developers but they seem to have managed to ship something that works at least as well as macOS does.

It’s about as buggy as any RC/.0 release, actually made some improvements, didn’t break anything. It’s a lot more annoying on the phone actually.

> just yesterday, I had a laugh at how SwiftUI layout is broken on macOS 26, in entirely new ways. But I assumed they still have few months to fix it.

I heard this story last year…and the year before…and the year before…and the year before.

Maybe they’ll nail it down next year though right? How many more years are we going to give them? How about everyone just use Appkit and tell Apple no? SwiftUI should be deprecated. It’s a failed experiment, stop the fucking bleeding already

@ObjC4Life I laugh at people using SwiftUI and getting surprised every year how bad it is, then double down because *THIS YEAR IT’S FINALLY GETTING GREAT BABY* 🤦‍♂️

The sad thing is, that, at least on UIKit, they seem to have filled the old framework with Swift and SwiftUI now, and, you guessed it, the parts they touched are the hottest of messes. It’s like a vicious cycle (more like a maelstrom turning into a cyclone by the year); terrible language + terrible framework + terrible tooling + incompetent engineering + incompetent and apathetic management + rabid fanboys that will buy anything Apple regardless of quality. There is no turning this shitshow around anymore.

The approach to release notes shows a lack of respect. If Apple had respect for developers then writing proper release notes would be a blocker in the process of putting out a beta/RC.

I think the worst thing for me - as someone who uses the Music app a lot, and has written books about iTunes and Apple's media apps - is the playbar at the bottom of the screen. It's a bad location; it's not where you expect it to be, it's too small, if you don't have Reduce Transparency on it can be hard to see, and it totally unbalances the app's window, which, on Apple Music pages, for example, has content that scrolls to the very top border of the window.

It's probably the worst interface element ever in iTunes/Music. The previous play header - which Apple has called internally the iTunes LCD - was separated from the rest of the content, making it an easy place to see what was happening. This interface element isn't as bad on iPhone or iPad, but it certainly is not ideal on the desktop. And the idea that Apple is trying to make it so that everything matches on the three devices is proven terribly wrong by this.

Is this specially bad, or do people talk like this every new release?

Well, I'm just a user, and year in, year out, the new OS releases just work. Is this time going to be different?

@ObjC4Life I wish. Compare and contrast how quickly Obj-C Garbage Collection was tried and killed to SwiftUI. They're sunk-cost fallacied on all things Swift.

@Léo Apple's software development and management is deeply broken. How many years has it been where Beta 1 -> RC 1 basically fixes a few obvious bugs, but they built and pushed the wrong solution? How many things do they ship that end up performing exactly for a WWDC demo and quickly fall apart beyond that? They ship it anyway, promote it as great, push a year of multiple +0.1 OS updates, but foundational problems remain. Then next year, onto a new feature rolled out the same way.

Software dev has gone from caring and craftsmanship to punching tickets and shipping quickly (even if it's crap).

@Felipe Pait Multiple things can be true at once.

Yes, the influencer-dev crowd shouting from their podcast and social media soapboxes are being overly dramatic.

And yes, this release is rough. It probably needed another couple of months in the oven, and Liquid Glass on the Mac in particular feels like it needs a fundamental rethink.

But none of this is new. It’s the same story we’ve lived through since Mac OS X 10.0—Cheetah was nowhere near ready for prime time, and Aqua was a disaster zone. Even earlier: I’ve got hazy memories of the chaos around Open Transport. This is just the latest lap in a very old cycle.

I can rattle off multiple 2000s and 2010s releases that shipped with show-stopping bugs we’d already reported months earlier, only to see them finally patched in the inevitable .1 update. Back then we’d haul a PowerBook to WWDC, install the new OS Developer Preview on day one from the DVD, and then go track down the engineer responsible to beg for confirmation that the fix was coming.

What’s changed isn’t Apple—it’s the noise. Back then, if you wanted to vent, you had developer mailing lists or a WWDC feedback session. It was kept behind closed doors. Now everyone has Mastodon, Threads, Twitter, or whatever, and apparently every single one of them has a podcast where they can sit around congratulating themselves and smelling their own farts.

@Sparky Context matters.

Mac OS X 10.0 was rough, but critical to ship because it followed high-profile failures as Apple neared bankruptcy. Users talked Apple off the ledge from their stupider ideas in the RCs (the giant Apple logo where the notch is now in the menubar and I believe Apple wanted to ship a Finder without Desktop files). The following macOS updates introduced meaningful features and fixes.

Compare to today where Apple has tens of billions in cash but only cares about share price and PR. Where Apple puts money into *any* project except their core OSes. Where macOS is now an iOS accessory and revolves around its release schedule.

Nobody asked for Liquid Ass or most of the other dumb features and changes, esp recently. Most devs and users just want shit to work. We've been clamoring for it for years now.

You're right that they've shipped many show-stopping bugs and that continues to be a problem. They don't learn or care.

Apple's process of "your only slight chance to fix a bug is to report it during WWDC or wait another year" gets more retarded by the year. They act like they have 0 resources or time, but it's 0 care or competency. Apple has pipelines for collecting bugs and user feedback and ignores it all.

macOS Tahoe is Vista in its purest form (yet).

I can see how people who genuinely care about crafting good software are fucking livid at this release.

It does remind me a lot of Vista. Remembering that Vista laid the foundation for Windows 7, everyone’s favorite version ever.

Some of these design decisions were dumb and clearly meant to draw attention to the interface. I’ve never had my phone screen so cluttered with shit until they decided to “let my content shine through.”

Which apparently means TikTok has succeeded in getting people used to having buttons everywhere all over what they’re trying to see.

But, none of my apps broke. Aside from obvious visual interface bugs they’ll fix, it feels snappier and works fine. I just hope this does turn into another Vista and next year’s release is really fine tuned and what users want.

At least that keeps hope alive.