It seems like a clear regression in usability. By moving from a high-density, full-screen experience to a constrained, scrolling window, they’ve increased the interaction cost for launching apps via the mouse. It feels like a 'unification tax. Sacrificing desktop utility to align with non-Desktop modalilties. Does anyone see a functional upside here, or is this purely aesthetic consistency?
Why would I want my dev tools, audio apps, 3-D-modeling apps, and office apps all jumbled together?
It's as if Apple is trying to catch up to Microsoft in the race to regress.
Mac OS comes with something like 80 apps out of the box. I have over 200 on my system, and I'm pretty stingy with space. I immediately delete stuff I try and don't like.
So the noobs who know nothing about Spotlight typically come back with some absurd suggestion like "put a shortcut to the Applications folder in your dock."
Um.. no. Not even close.
And Apple's categorization is trash, a huge regression. There is absolutely no advantage to anything offered now over Spotlight, which not only allowed FASTER search (because it only searched applications), but allowed you to group applications as you saw fit (which didn't preclude an OPTION to have Apple do it).
It also allowed you to launch several applications faster, because it kept your last-used group open. For example, if I sat down to do some development, I opened my Dev Tools group and could launch the four applications I typically use together with only eight clicks.
It wasn't a blunder. It was absolutely intentional to force users to start using the AI component.
I suspect someone probably pointed out no one would use it because launchpad has a better UX, so they removed it and forced the three finger pinch to launch spotlight.
I'm currently using the following to fix it.
- Bug in preferences that disabling show home also disables 3 finger pinch.
- I'm using AppGrid as my new launchpad.
- Using better touch tool to activate launchpad with 3 finger pinch.
"Open the SD-card data-recovery application I installed a few years ago"
So elegant!
Oh look, right now on the HN front page is an article about why this sucks: https://tidepool.leaflet.pub/3mcbegnuf2k2i
I complained about it to a team mate and he thought it was fine and I was weird for using the app launcher and not cmd-space. Although on Windows I always use win-r to run stuff.
Tahoe UI changes and LG are such a mistake and Apple being Apple will probably just double down on it.
I much prefer the new app launcher in Tahoe, but it was created at the expense of Launchpad, which some people actually relied on. I don't know why they couldn't have kept both options.
You get worse icon pop-in if you add your app folder with grid view to the dock. These aren't stored on the network, so it's baffling they take so long to load the icons.
No. Launchpad is just the iOS springboard brought to Mac, with big icons and folders and pages. When it was added people complained of "iOS-ification".
This time they made a proper, unique Mac equivalent, integrated in Spotlight and built around the keyboard. It's not as good, the window was too small in 26.0, doesn't support uninstallation like Launchpad, but it's definitely less iOS-like.