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.
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’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.
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?
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...
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
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 run Debian with KDE on Wayland on my desktop PC. Font rendering seems perfectly fine. I can't speak for other combos.
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...
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.
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 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.
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.
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'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.
What exactly doesn't "just work" anymore?
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.
Was going to be my question too. Mine works…
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.
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.
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.
Just modify the source code for programs you want changes to.
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.
I just need one OS and probably you too.
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.