Reminder to wait a couple of months before upgrading macOS! Every single time issues are found after a new macOS version, give it a little bit of time before jumping right away on your work machine :)
But my experience with 26 hasn’t been great. From the top of my head: Random repeated flashing window chrome in the background, notifications that keep on showing while everything is disabled, Finder tooltips from four windows down, tooltips that don’t disappear, Java update interruptions that hijack your flow - just when you where about to hit enter for something else the pop-up shows and bam: you’re installing it. There is nothing right about the update process of Java anyway. Spotlight search has completely stopped working. People I’m mailing with for over a decade are not suggested when drafting a mail. Clicking on the dock icon does not reveal the app. The list goes on and on. It has been a total grueling experience. Worst in all my experiences since System 7.
I’ve shut down the notification system at some point, which alleviated the constant reminders of non-compatibility with the next OS version. Being reminded of that four times a day for months on end is just insulting, even if I used compatible versions. There was no way to shut it off. Notifications are lazily designed and completely uninspired, as they could also adjust the app icons and so on and actually do it right.
I promised myself to update once it came out and then just screen record everything to collect residual garbage to help the Apple team make this stuff work well for everyone.
Sorry to let this all out, but it has been on my mind for a while and I’m happy they say they focussed on quality. Therefore I’m upgrading asap this time.
launchctl disable "gui/$(id -u)/com.apple.notificationcenterui" killall NotificationCenter 2>/dev/null || true
launchctl disable "gui/$(id -u)/com.apple.usernoted" killall usernoted 2>/dev/null || true
To refine my statement on lazy or non-design. Notifications can be valuable, for me i'd like backup notifications and find my messages. Only those, ever. When only those are enabled, MacOS has their own secret settings and is allowed to nag about updates, incompatibility and maybe some other things i don't remember. Part of the problem is the illusion of control, and being spammy about self-importance of new OS versions. Great for some users, insulting to me.
This is made even worse by "focus" which still shows notifications but without the text. Then i'm distracted AND i don't know why.
For anyone jumping versions: remember that Apple messed with the login keychain not being able to be backed up in the most recent Tahoe release [1], which means that issue will be around in Golden Gate.
The Tahoe Dock "App View" / Spotlight just lists my 30 installed apps intermingled with Apple System Apps, which I hardly ever use. Hard coded categories, no way to re-order as far as I can tell.
Seems like the closest thing to LaunchPad is dragging ~/Applications to the Dock.
The other thing I have noticed is scrolling in Firefox is more choppy, and animations are more Janky than Sequoia on this old MacBook Air M1.
iOS 27 is pretty good though.
macOS 27 itself won't run on Intel chips, just Apple Silicon
but it does still have Rosetta (macOS 28 will drop it completely though)
Gotta say, a massive downgrade.
iPadOS 27 also isn't looking so hot that I'd believe macOS 27 to be a magic bullet.
AI is also making plenty of holes.
I have not seen a single case of anything that an AI has found that could not have been automatically found without AI.
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It's also worth pointing out that the developers at Mozilla literally decided to make a brand new programming language (Rust) that eliminated an entire categories of bugs and started working on a new browser (Servo) where its components could be switched into firefox.
Then Mozilla fired the team working on it.
Lesson 1: Better tools and processes eliminate bugs.
Lesson 2: If you don't have the tools, make them.
Lesson 3: Mismanagement leads to security vulnerabilities.
FWIW, Rust is my main language, so I am grateful to the humans that created it, and it is indeed a monumental effort. But vuln finding is a different kind of creative endeavour, and one that is heavily weighted against defenders.
You would choose rust (from a security standpoint) because it massively reduces memory safety issues (which from a Microsoft study was responsible for around 70% of bugs).
Then you look at things like linting, fuzzing, design by contract, proofing, deterministic test runs, etc...
As I said above: use better tools and processes.
LLMs don't fit that criteria.
In my memory, that does not seem 100% right. And indeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)#20... says a single developer who happened to work at Mozilla started it as a personal project.
After a few years Mozilla became interested in it and then sponsored its development, transforming it into the language it is today.
There have certainly been changes like Liquid Glass that were for the worse overall (though the degree of which had been highly overblown). But outside of directional disagreement with a release, I can’t say I’ve ever seen an issue where I’ve regretted pulling the trigger on an update.
cool beans.
One exception maybe is for music producers. For some reason AU/VST/DAW developers don't seem to take part in the beta programs and their software can take a while to get updated. But I've happily been playing with Bitwig (with some Arturia VSTs) over the weekend on Golden Gate without issue.
My impression from audio developers is that the audio infrastructure is very badly documented (like so much of MacOS nowadays) and using it properly requires a combination of luck, WWDC videos, and devrel threads. Also, Apple introduces changes that are genuine improvements in theory, but break undocumented assumptions.
The lack of rigor is a bit surprising given that audio is probably the only mission-critical hard-real-time thing MacOS does. People routinely run an entire live concert on a Mac and an audio glitch is not OK! (Yes, if it’s Taylor Swift budget then there are at least two machines in sync with a big red button to switch over…)
But given what they’re dealing with, I understand why it’s more involved than just “the developers didn’t try the betas”.