How to Bring Back Oddly Shaped App Icons in macOS 26 Tahoe
simonbs.dev
simonbs.dev
The new numbering makes sense to me, considering Apple have been on an annual release schedule for their OSes for some time. The question is, will they do this for hardware too? Will the iPhone 17 actually be the "iPhone 26"?
What? No. This is just silly.
It also helped that it was a moment where the market exploded considerably
It makes sense to have all the product families on the same versioning scheme because they keep blurring the lines between iOS and macOS but that’s the part I don’t like as much
I don’t like my laptop/desktop OS to look and feel like a tablet interface but this is the way they have been going for a while
That's IMHO a critical distinction, as it's neither common nor natural.
For that, they'd need to release iOS 26 for all devices, including discontinued ones, and force people to upgrade (and prevent them from upgrading to iOS 27 in September 2026!)
Since all that won't happen, no, it does not make sense.
They have control over one thing: The year in which they make a new iOS version available. That's the year they should have named it after.
To me it feels inauthentic.
Based on early comments, which say it makes sense, I’m an outlier.
However, this shifts from something that had semantic value (not saying Apple used Semver, but there were linear major and minor versions) to marketing driven version numbers.
This change makes a ton of sense
And indeed, that specific Macbook was released in 2021, not 2020.
So they're breaking their own convention purely for the marketing benefits.
I’m not saying it’s a perfect system but I can see why they prefer that then having people use iOS 25 for the majority of 2026.
To say that they did not use the years sounds like some one commenting on something they are not as familiar as they’d like the rest of the internet to think they are.
Also, people refer to the OS by the cat or California location. I couldn’t tell you what year snow leopard or mavericks came out though
That wasn't a consideration in the past. e.g.
"MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2011)", introduced on October 24th 2011
https://support.apple.com/en-us/111341
> they prefer that then having people use iOS 25 for the majority of 2026.
I'm not blind to the advantage of their new naming scheme, and honestly they could name it iOS 2077 it would be their prerogative. It just sounds off to me to equate "they're just cheating a bit" to "it makes sense".
Ah, yes: "macOS Late 25" just rolls of the tongue.
Perhaps instead of release/update macOS 25.2 they could go with "macOS Early 26". :)
It’s not marketing fluff, it is maximizing the amount of time out of each year that the year matches the current version number, given that macOS releases are in the second half of the year and not on 1 January.
Doing it with version = release year would mean more days each year where the year != version.
Why are strategic decisions like this always interpreted in the most superficial ways? Apple does scumbag shit frequently (monopolistic anticompetitive practices, walled garden price gouging, illegal wage fixing) but this isn’t that. It’s just math.
One could argue that this is simply a marketing concern.
Except for some brands like Peugeot and formerly Renault but those had nothing to do with the year.
But even even naming them after the year of release makes more sense than the year after. I think for cars it's sometimes done because people don't want to buy cars in the last 3 months because it affects the resale value.
Check out Dodge Chargers, over the years.
Most US models are not sold in Europe because they're unpractically big or don't meet our standards. Even the US brands that operate here like Ford make models specially for the foreign market. Like the Ford Escort (now Focus), Fiesta or Mondeo.
When I see a version number, what I really care about is how new/old it is, not how many releases it’s been since the first version. Which is why one of my most common Google searches is “when did <software> <version number> release”
Who the *fuck* does Apple think they are forcing app icons provided by the developer into a specific shape? Or applying some weird ugly "glass" filter on it? Without permission from the user?
Hey Alan Dye, take a chill pill man. It's not your computer once I buy it.
I'm also incredibly saddened by this. I don't really hate allowing icons to use the glass effect, but forcing all icons to be the same shape is very sad.
Hasn't that been a thing of the past for a while now?
I just had to double-check my dock to even find a non-squircle icon, and there's exactly one in mine: Spotify. (Two if we count "Disk Utility", which has a disk icon overlaid at the bottom right but is otherwise a squircle; three if we count "Activity Monitor", which shows a CPU histogram.)
I agree that it's not a great change. In my view, it makes app icons much harder to distinguish by shape alone, and increases reliance on color (which, at least on iOS, I don't have displayed anymore on most of my home screen themes).
But I left macOS because of the ever worsening lockdown, Apple constantly messing with the design without a way back and the move towards iOSisms. I'm glad I left when I see the sorry state it is in now.
I use KDE now which gives me a world of customisation options. I don't even have to use the themes or plugins to make it work the way I want to, which is quite different from the default.
One of the reasons I'm still in the Apple world is how well my phone works with my computer. It's little things like being able to turn my phone into a scanner from my desktop, and synchronised DnD. All these little things add up to an experience where I can ignore the tech and get on with what I'm trying to do.
If KDE connect can give me something like that then I'm jumping, even if it means switching to Android (actually, that'd be a bonus because the iPhone cameras _suck_ in comparison).
Same here, but almost all of them have apparently proactively given in to Apple’s design “guidelines”. (It’s unclear whether Spotify is actively resisting or if this is just their regular glacial software development speed.)
Update: The article goes on to address exactly what I mentioned. It’s a change in specs, one that is easily fixable. It’s all good folks, no need to freak out.
No, the article describes a workaround developers can use, it's not an official method to opt out or anything.
And no, Apple doesn't apply it to their own icons as usual, they've always ignored their own guidelines. Like with the brushed metal apps when everything else was still supposed to use the previous form (pinstripe iirc). The folder accounts also.
And as usually Apple doesn't bother giving the user a choice. Only a workaround which may be removed at any time.
I suspect Apple won't approve this for apps distributed through the App Store, though, right? Not that many apps distribute through the app store on Mac in the first place.