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Comment by aaronbrethorst | Hacker News Reader

The macOS 26 screenshots all look profoundly amateurish to me. And I say this as a continuous user of this operating system since 2001, when I installed Mac OS X Public Beta on my iBook G3. I really hope Apple spends the next few months before release focused on making their new visual language usable.

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At first glance, I found the aesthetic of liquid glass to be pretty nice. I actually like the visual effect of glass they managed to create. At least something different from flat design !

But then came the interface overhaul. That’s incredibly bad. Looking at the screenshots comparing Liquid Glass Finder vs, e.g. Snow Leopard Finder, it truly feels like Apple should be _ashamed_ to present this.

It’s so wrong that it truly feels like Apple is making fun of me, the user.

I tried the developer beta of iOS 26 out of curiosity and I swear it’s the first time I felt so wrong about a new iOS version. I know it will still be refined but in its current state ? It feels so wrong. There are bugs, ok that’s an early version, no issue. But the new UI ? The supposed next big thing ? It’s incredibly broken, inconsistent, chaotic, hard to read.

I hope they are on a miracle to fix this but they seem to be so proud about it …

I think it’s also interesting to keep in mind that in 2025 people don’t really use Finder as much as they did in 2009. It was an important part of the OS and of users’ workflow back then, but nowadays it’s just a browser for the Downloads folder, it’s time to admit that. No need to keep it fancy — file system power users will likely use other specialized software anyway

People dont' use Finder? "File system power users"? Are we talking about MacOS or iOS here? Seriously, I think that's an interesting take - that does not relate even a little bit to most work domains I ever was in contact with.

I think both fewer and more people use finder than we assume.

Spotlight has replaced app search.

In-app file browsers have replaced a lot of Finder functionality (project views, file views, browsing etc. in IDEs and power tools).

And given how anemic Finder still is, I wonder if its use among power users is very low.

What do you think power users use?

Console

I think you might mean "Terminal". Console is an app that just gives you macOS's log spew. Also, I don't know any Mac power user, myself included, who doesn't use both the terminal and Finder. Most of them use iTerm2, actually.

You’re right

That’s not my use case but even if it were true : is the current design broken ? Can’t even the Snow Leopard version do the job of "just browsing the download folder" and allow more "advanced" users to have a decent tool ?

I mean, sure, usages changed (even if not for everyone) but even for someone "just browsing downloads", the new design is not better.

Changing/modernizing the general theme of the OS ? Changing colors ? Textures ? Fonts ? I’m not against it and it’s an age old tradition at this point. But why mess with the general organisation / visual clues / layout to make it less functional especially when your users are already happy with the current design ?

It’s change for the sake of change, not to build a better tool for the user.

iOS 7 faced a lot of similar criticisms of being hard to read and amateur looking. The minimalism of the hardware did not translate well to the software.

Over time, various aspects were improved/refined, and people simply got used to it.

I expect the same thing to happen here.

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