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by tengwar29 hours ago |
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upvoteby jghn8 hours ago|
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> For context, there have been issues with MacOS 26 which have led many people to defer upgrading

For me the issue is liquid glass. Which I doubt is getting fixed any time soon

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upvoteby illithid08 hours ago|
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Also a liquid glass hater, but for what it's worth, 27 is supposed to make it a little bit better. I would prefer to go back to what I had before I had to upgrade into this horrible UI, but this is better than nothing.

https://www.cultofmac.com/news/liquid-glass-changes-ios-27-m...

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upvoteby hbn7 hours ago|
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I've been running the 27 beta and it fixes so much of the ugliness I hated in Tahoe. Lots of places had toolbars restored, solid areas that indicate where the window can be grabbed. The shitty icon spam in menus is back to sanity. And window corner radii are consistent and less bulbous.
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upvoteby noname1206 hours ago|
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macOS 17 is decisively faster on my MacBook Air M1 16 GB than macOS 26/27 is on my MacBook Pro M2 Max 32 GB. And I don’t mean just the animations themselves but lag/sluggishness/responsiveness in general.
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upvoteby classified6 hours ago|
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There is no macOS 17.
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upvoteby noname1202 hours ago|
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Gosh I thought I had edited it to macOS 15, now it’s too late
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upvoteby 4 hours ago|
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upvoteby iknowstuff5 hours ago|
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Slower than 15 though
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upvoteby trollbridge8 hours ago|
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You can almost turn it off on the 27 beta, and 27 seems to perform a lot better too.
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upvoteby flohofwoe8 hours ago|
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You can already turn off most glass effects in 26 via "System Settings => Accessibility => Display => Reduce Transparency".

I had that turned off years ago (for reasons I don't remember), and was wondering what all the fuzz was about when 26 came out because I didn't see much of a difference ;)

IMHO the actual important visual changes in the 27 beta is that rolls back the bizarre oversized corner radius in Finder windows, and they also got rid of the 'every menu item must have an icon' idea.

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upvoteby trollbridge8 hours ago|
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27 seems superior to 26 in almost every way, although I'm still on a fairly old beta.
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upvoteby Melatonic2 hours ago|
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I think that is just iOS no? Or does that work on MacOS too
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upvoteby SanjayMehta7 hours ago|
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It's the first thing I turn off on a new iPhone or iPad. Started around ten years ago in the release which had animated app icons. Induced nausea.
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upvoteby trollbridge1 hours ago|
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Yep. That’s why it’s in accessibility - some people can’t handle it. Other useful options are reduce motion, reduce transparency…
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upvoteby lapcat8 hours ago|
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> this is better than nothing.

Having installed the beta, I think that's the best you can say about it.

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upvoteby etempleton8 hours ago|
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Also on the beta. Agreed. Definite visual and UX improvement over 26, fixing the most egregious issues with 26 implementation of Liquid Glass, but maybe not quite as good as 25 overall.
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upvoteby lapcat8 hours ago|
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> not quite as good as 25 overall

Nothing will ever be as good as 25.

Because macOS 25 does not exist. ;-)

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upvoteby etempleton3 hours ago|
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Ahhh, my mistake. macOS 15 not to be confused with macOS 10.15
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upvoteby Jolter8 hours ago|
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I hear it’s slower? Can you comment on that?
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upvoteby Tagbert7 hours ago|
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The 27 betas? No, they are generally faster than 26.
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upvoteby alwillis5 hours ago|
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Definitely not slow.
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upvoteby lapcat8 hours ago|
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I haven't noticed or heard that it's slower.
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upvoteby Jolter5 hours ago|
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Nice, thanks for that.
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upvoteby illithid08 hours ago|
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As long as the UI improves and I can ignore all the AI stuff they're starting to push through, that's fine with me, though like many longtime macOS users, I'm not holding my breath for a bug-free experience.
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upvoteby ChrisMarshallNY6 hours ago|
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> AI stuff they're starting to push through

iOS 26 anecdote:

A couple of weeks ago, I had a Baltimore Oriole (a cool-looking bird, not a baseball player) in my yard. They aren't rare, per se, but they are uncommon.

Took my iPhone out to snap a picture, and pressed the camera button. I hadn't used it, since upgrading to 26.

It takes the picture. It's there. I can see it, but it won't let me save it. Instead, it wants to tell me about the cool new voice-activated AI retouch feature. There was no way to save.

I probably could have figured it out, but I was so furious, I just nuked the picture.

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upvoteby dylan6046 hours ago|
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> though like many longtime macOS users

For those of us older than just 10 years of using macOS, the older Apple OSes have instilled within us the desire to never install the X.0 release and wait until at least the X.1 release. The bug-free experience is a myth

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upvoteby D-Coder2 hours ago|
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> wait until at least the X.1 release

I think that applies to almost all software, not just Apple OSes. After all, Confucius said: "The only thing worse than old software is new software."

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upvoteby coldpie4 hours ago|
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I found if you turn off transparency effects and turn on high contrast in the accessibility settings, it's actually a pretty nice looking UI. Still has some dumb quirks like inconsistent corner radiuses and text appearing under UI elements (because they're assumed to be transparent, but aren't). But all software is trash in 2026 so be thankful it isn't even worse, I guess.
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upvoteby Melatonic2 hours ago|
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Been doing that for years now already (performance boost). You can also do high contrast mode per app (if were talking about iOS). Must have for iMessage I think personally as it makes hard to read Green Bubbles a nice dark green that is very pleasant.
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upvoteby shepherdjerred4 hours ago|
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27 is a lot better. You can make the UI opaque again (they provide a transparency slider)
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upvoteby pmdr6 hours ago|
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I bought a MBP mainly for the hardware, otherwise I'd have stuck with Linux. OS-wise, the jump from Monterey (which I'd last used) to Sequoia was smooth and still feels that way. I prefer not to notice the OS at all, something that I feel would be hard to do on Tahoe due to all that liquid glass and dumb transparency and animations.

Seriously, who the heck even asked for those?

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upvoteby frizlab7 hours ago|
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macOS 27 does polish Liquid Glass and makes it look passable on macOS IMHO. It was very bad on 26. Comically bad.
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upvoteby reddalo7 hours ago|
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That's the sad thing: Apple decided to leave all Intel macs on broken macOS 26. Very bad on Apple's part.
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upvoteby drnick14 hours ago|
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Fortunately, those can run Linux. I recently installed Arch on an Intel T2. The only issue is that it does not have a TPM module, so the LUKS password needs to be manually entered at boot.
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upvoteby normie30002 hours ago|
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What's the alternative to typing in a LUKS password?
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upvoteby IdiotSavage7 hours ago|
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I hate the round corners. It's already too much on 15, but way worse on 26. It looks like "Baby's first OS", designed by Fisher-Price.
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upvoteby hbn7 hours ago|
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They reverted this in 27

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/09/macos-golden-gate-liqui...

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upvoteby ak2176 hours ago|
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Love to see this, now if only they could revert the whole shimmering oil slick disaster that is "glass" on iOS (unlike macOS, even if I "reduce transparency", the oil slick effect still appears in many places, in addition to all the spacing issues).
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upvoteby Hamuko8 hours ago|
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Same. It's not the worst thing in the world, at least with Reduce Transparency enabled in the Accessibility settings, but I still don't feel any inclination to upgrade. My personal Mac Studio is macOS 15 and my work MacBook is on macOS 26, and I don't think there's a single thing that I find to be better on the work laptop than on my personal machine.

I might update to macOS 26 in September to be ready to update to macOS 27. Being two versions behind doesn't seem reasonable and I'd rather be on the "Tahoe but less shitty" version than Tahoe itself.

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upvoteby simlevesque7 hours ago|
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You can disable it in the accessibility preferences.
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upvoteby embedding-shape8 hours ago|
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Same thing happens almost every release. I've stopped updating my Mac machine until I see something in the release notes I literally have to have in order to continue doing macOS/iOS builds, otherwise I'm staying on the version I've validated to work, and I know the existing bugs with.
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upvoteby GeekyBear1 hours ago|
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As we used to say in the Windows world, wait for service pack 3.
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upvoteby DavideNL7 hours ago|
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A better strategy would probably be to stick with the previous *major* release, but, do install its ("minor") security updates...
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upvoteby embedding-shape6 hours ago|
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> do install its ("minor") security updates

Yeah, I thought so too, but surprise surprise; some months ago one of the "minor" updates "broke" ("upgraded") something that made my CI/CD setup stop working, that's when I dropped the idea that Apple even do "minor" updates anymore.

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upvoteby reddalo7 hours ago|
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>have led many people to defer upgrading until MacOS 27 is available

Then there's me, crying in MacBook Pro 2019 stuck on MacOS 15 because 27 won't be available for my machine.

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upvoteby bouke7 hours ago|
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The question now is, is 27 sufficient enough of an improvement over 15 to upgrade and tolerate Liquid Glass?
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upvoteby ExoticPearTree8 hours ago|
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26.0 had a very annoying video jitter issue, but that was the first things that I noticed to be fixed in the next 26 release. Other than that, it worked just fine.
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upvoteby andreasley8 hours ago|
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The bug that led to network connection issues after 49 days of uninterrupted uptime was a bit of a showstopper for me.
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upvoteby carra8 hours ago|
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Are there no versions between MacOS 15 and 26???
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upvoteby kylemaxwell8 hours ago|
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They changed the numbering scheme, so... no, there aren't. Version numbers are now year-based, but previously they were not.
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upvoteby hbn7 hours ago|
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Last year they unified all their OS version numbers to just match upcoming year.

macOS went from 15 to 26

iOS went from 18 to 26

watchOS went from 11 to 26

and so on

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upvoteby 8 hours ago|
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upvoteby classified6 hours ago|
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No, 26 is the successor of 15. They changed the numbering to year-based.
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upvoteby gokohl7 hours ago|
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[dead]
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upvoteby crossroadsguy7 hours ago|
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Did they un-hardcode the corner radius? I mean were they able to? I mean not that that anyone at this point needs convincing how utterly disgusting incompetent they’re at software.
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upvoteby gedy7 hours ago|
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They reduced the radius back to older, smaller size and now all apps use a single radius, vs the weird 3 different radii in Tahoe. Looks better.
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upvoteby hbn7 hours ago|
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I was shocked to find out the inconsistent corner radii in Tahoe was an intentional design decision. I figured it's so obviously bad that it was just sloppy work. But one of the WWDC session videos bafflingly clarified that it depends on whether the app has a toolbar or not.

https://youtu.be/VqTn9NgiE1s?t=439

I can't imagine how the people who signed off on that were put in charge of design at Apple.

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upvoteby gedy6 hours ago|
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I am fairly convinced this was all designed only in graphic tools, and looked nice in static mockups, like those fake desktops with overlapping small windows widely spaced, etc. The design folks probably all had giant studio displays with plenty of room, etc.

Then the reality of "what about toolbars", "what about dark mode", "what about laptop screens", etc were all afterthoughts and resulted in bolt-on fixes like that.

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