These visual UI problems which are showing some sloppiness in the UI is much better than macOS 26 and honestly I really like Golden Gate for more efficiency and the fact that Siri actually works now and can replace a great deal of things I usually would have googled.
I've been running Golden Gate since the first beta was released in June. I've generally been very happy with it. I think it'll take a couple years to unwind the Alan Dye era, but Golden Gate is a significant improvement over macOS 26
At this point you gotta think Apple is not using AI, or using too much AI, or using AI incorrectly. But then again, it’s not just them —- it’s everyone, really.
A friend who quit Apple a month or two ago left mostly because the whole company was utterly AI-pilled and they couldn’t take being a meat proxy talking to other meat proxies any more.
I sure ain’t upgrading my Mac any time soon if I can help it.
What I notice is that the entire OS feels very laggy. Many interactions just don’t feel as snappy anymore as before. The worst candidate for this is definitely Mission Control, it has become a total dumpster fire in my opinion. (BTW: running on an M4 Pro MBP)
I don’t understand why System Settings search is such a dumpster fire. It’s up to a couple thousand (probably overestimating) fixed text labels. Even when it’s not bugging out, half or more of deeper labels simply can’t be found even if you enter the exact string. Who the hell thought this sorry ass search is okay to ship and keep it that way after this many years? I swear even Windows’ settings search is more capable.
Yes, IIRC System Preferences was fine (hopefully not rose-tinted glasses), it became the current piece of shit when it was reborn as iOS-sibling System Settings, in Ventura?
Maybe Apple ported the Spotlight algorithm over for the System Settings search? Spotlight has, well, unique properties that take extra effort to achieve in a search system.
I haven't noticed any bigger bugs (Apart from search in System Settings still not working), the main annoyance is the Siri bubble showing up next to text fields.
definitive proof that apple's engineers are using GNOME workstations internally: now MacOS system apps look like any software created using that garbage pile called libadwaita.
Are you crazy? libadwaita looks way, way more polished and consistent than anything I've seen on macos for the last at least 5 years. And only one of these is an open-source project with a limited budget.
This isn't a new bug, it was present in MacOS Tahoe, but what happened to the tabs in the Maps app? The View menu still has Show Tab Bar and Show All Tabs itms, but they are always greyed-out. Cmd-T doesn't open a new tab, as was the case before Tahoe. (I count this as a bug in that the UI seems inconsistent with the function.) If anyone knows how to regain access to tabs, I'd love to hear it.
MacOS has felt like AI slop since before there was AI. I'm a decades long mac user, and there's simply no excuse for how sloppy their releases have become
I was chatting with a friend about the Decline and Fall of Apple over the weekend. We both miss Steve Jobs.
For all that Steve was batshit he was willing to do hard things that were "bad for business." I heard so many legendary stories over the years of Steve Jobs holding up releases at the last minute because they weren't up to par. That takes guts in a corporate environment where there is so much pressure to go along and say "well, we have to ship something." No, you don't have to ship something. You can take your time to do it right and ship things that are high quality.
Apple shouldn't assume that just because they are the incumbent that they will be around forever. Today's Steve Jobs could already be alive and plotting...
Could be a long wait. Mail is the one app I care most about and it's been broken in different ways since Catalina, along with issues in Photos, Music, etc. Might as well go to Linux where it's at least possible to fix the high priority issues.
What gets me is people saying macOs 26 -> 27 is an improvement. Maybe so.
But Sequoia -> 26 -> 27 is still a noticeable downgrade.
So is it really an improvement: making something much worse and then slightly improving it?
Yes, it is. How can’t you follow this logic? It is an upwards trajectory. Genuinely, what are you missing about this? Two things can be true at the same time. Nobody said that there had been a historical downward trajectory. Well, at least, in your description of what “gets you”. But I’ve never really seen many people arguing that macOS hasn’t degraded over the past ~10-15 years. The fact that’s “getting you” s still worth noting and not every online comment has to be a complete, comprehensive accounting of someone’s entire position. Some things are just left unsaid because there’s a shared understanding. At this point I think that “macOS had generally gotten worse” is easily one of those.
While generally happy with the speed improvements it brought, I can't back question the presence of testers on Apple side. Sure they are a small niche company (/s) but they can do better.
Major example, desktop switching shortcuts are borked after device comes up from sleep!
>https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1whtmc3/macos_27_mis...
Mission Control is unusable in macOS 27. Shortcuts to switch spaces stop working (Dock must be killed to get them to work again), there is a padding between spaces thumbnails and the top of the screen so it's no longer possible to just easily move the mouse at the top to select one, windows rearrange randomly when one is clicked, full screen app spaces breaks each time you try to use them, animations are wonky and you can't reenter mission control while some animations are running, etc…
I also genuinely cannot believe how broken Mission Control is. I use it constantly and the flickering, black spaces, and other small issues lead to an overall frustrating experience I did not have in 26. I'm very surprised that these issues didn't come up on HN from all the beta users, many reporting that they're very happy with 27. Is Mission Control a feature that those likely to download the beta are disproportionately unlikely to use?
Objective-C doesn't have namespaces (like C), so people use two-letter prefixes on their types to prevent name clashes. The NS prefix is used by Apple's Foundation and AppKit frameworks, that originated from NeXTSTEP, hence NS.
Every AppKit and Foundation type uses the NS prefix, and will keep doing so for any foreseeable future. New NS types are added to these frameworks each macOS release.
It’s been a strict improvement on my computers, which isn’t to say that the author isn’t having problems, just that theirs (or mine!) isn’t the universal experience.
I noticed the Quick Look animation (space bar on any file) is very sluggish, at least on my M2 Max.
These visual UI problems which are showing some sloppiness in the UI is much better than macOS 26 and honestly I really like Golden Gate for more efficiency and the fact that Siri actually works now and can replace a great deal of things I usually would have googled.
Can Golden Gate really be considered a fix release for Tahoe with its massive AI updates?
There are so many new bugs…
Safari Developer Tools freezes the app.
Even though I’ve disabled the Siri AI tools, they still show up everywhere for some reason.
The main menu bar sometimes gets darker.
Apple Mail keeps formatting my emails in ways I don’t like (bullet lists, etc.).
Apple Mail Smart Mailboxes are broken if you have multiple Macs.
The list goes on…
I've been running Golden Gate since the first beta was released in June. I've generally been very happy with it. I think it'll take a couple years to unwind the Alan Dye era, but Golden Gate is a significant improvement over macOS 26
So is iOS
Hell, frickin watchOS 27 Siri on my Ultra 3 can't set a timer because "the Clock app isn't installed on this device" ...????
and 2027 was supposed to be a "Polishing" release.
When will we start seeing the benefits of all the smart AI coding shit they've supposedly rented from Anthropic? 2030?
We are seeing the benefits in real time in this release if those images mean anything lol
At this point you gotta think Apple is not using AI, or using too much AI, or using AI incorrectly. But then again, it’s not just them —- it’s everyone, really.
A friend who quit Apple a month or two ago left mostly because the whole company was utterly AI-pilled and they couldn’t take being a meat proxy talking to other meat proxies any more.
I sure ain’t upgrading my Mac any time soon if I can help it.
These are the benefits.
It looks like Tahoe is about to become the new Snow Leopard.
What I notice is that the entire OS feels very laggy. Many interactions just don’t feel as snappy anymore as before. The worst candidate for this is definitely Mission Control, it has become a total dumpster fire in my opinion. (BTW: running on an M4 Pro MBP)
I don’t understand why System Settings search is such a dumpster fire. It’s up to a couple thousand (probably overestimating) fixed text labels. Even when it’s not bugging out, half or more of deeper labels simply can’t be found even if you enter the exact string. Who the hell thought this sorry ass search is okay to ship and keep it that way after this many years? I swear even Windows’ settings search is more capable.
It was fine until a few releases ago, then they rewrote it, and it sucks now. Had to give it that SwiftUI magic.
Yes, IIRC System Preferences was fine (hopefully not rose-tinted glasses), it became the current piece of shit when it was reborn as iOS-sibling System Settings, in Ventura?
Maybe Apple ported the Spotlight algorithm over for the System Settings search? Spotlight has, well, unique properties that take extra effort to achieve in a search system.
Still rocking a Sonoma and everything works, without the liquid glass slop.
I haven't noticed any bigger bugs (Apart from search in System Settings still not working), the main annoyance is the Siri bubble showing up next to text fields.
definitive proof that apple's engineers are using GNOME workstations internally: now MacOS system apps look like any software created using that garbage pile called libadwaita.
At least Gnome doesn't have liquid glass
Are you crazy? libadwaita looks way, way more polished and consistent than anything I've seen on macos for the last at least 5 years. And only one of these is an open-source project with a limited budget.
It’s 25 years old at this point and got lapped by Gnome & kde at least 10 years ago.
It’s time for some apple internal honesty about the state of MacOS gui.
am I the only one not liking the black tint in Spotlight?
I'm sure there's plenty of actual bugs, but a list of places where alignment is off by a few pixels ain't it, chief.
This isn't a new bug, it was present in MacOS Tahoe, but what happened to the tabs in the Maps app? The View menu still has Show Tab Bar and Show All Tabs itms, but they are always greyed-out. Cmd-T doesn't open a new tab, as was the case before Tahoe. (I count this as a bug in that the UI seems inconsistent with the function.) If anyone knows how to regain access to tabs, I'd love to hear it.
They don't just mention one bug here.
Especially worrying is the last bug, which hangs the entire system.
I recommend reading more than the first two clauses of the above comment.
Yes, fair.
MacOS has felt like AI slop since before there was AI. I'm a decades long mac user, and there's simply no excuse for how sloppy their releases have become
I was chatting with a friend about the Decline and Fall of Apple over the weekend. We both miss Steve Jobs.
For all that Steve was batshit he was willing to do hard things that were "bad for business." I heard so many legendary stories over the years of Steve Jobs holding up releases at the last minute because they weren't up to par. That takes guts in a corporate environment where there is so much pressure to go along and say "well, we have to ship something." No, you don't have to ship something. You can take your time to do it right and ship things that are high quality.
Apple shouldn't assume that just because they are the incumbent that they will be around forever. Today's Steve Jobs could already be alive and plotting...
If anybody from Apple is reading, just give this article link to claude or codex and have it fixed! The work has already being done for you!
It could be that those bugs are Claude or Codex works of art.
In the not so distant future, we'll just ask Claude to write the entire MacOS from scratch without those bugs :)
Have they fixed getting a name server over VPN?
macOS 15 is the last usable release.
I switched from Linux to macOS but the lack of QA is going to force me back to Linux once security updates stop for Sequoia.
[delayed]
I'm so glad I stayed on Sequoia, gonna wait this mess out
Could be a long wait. Mail is the one app I care most about and it's been broken in different ways since Catalina, along with issues in Photos, Music, etc. Might as well go to Linux where it's at least possible to fix the high priority issues.
What gets me is people saying macOs 26 -> 27 is an improvement. Maybe so. But Sequoia -> 26 -> 27 is still a noticeable downgrade. So is it really an improvement: making something much worse and then slightly improving it?
Yes, it is. How can’t you follow this logic? It is an upwards trajectory. Genuinely, what are you missing about this? Two things can be true at the same time. Nobody said that there had been a historical downward trajectory. Well, at least, in your description of what “gets you”. But I’ve never really seen many people arguing that macOS hasn’t degraded over the past ~10-15 years. The fact that’s “getting you” s still worth noting and not every online comment has to be a complete, comprehensive accounting of someone’s entire position. Some things are just left unsaid because there’s a shared understanding. At this point I think that “macOS had generally gotten worse” is easily one of those.
iMessage (Messages) doesn't work for me after upgrading. Downgrading to macOS 26 looks to be a chore so I guess I'm just SOL until it gets patched.
I have been avoiding new macOS versions since I tried Tahoe and hated it. Still on Sequoia.
I don't know if I'll ever upgrade to Golden Gate, and this blog post isn't giving me confidence.
Yeah, I currently have 4 Macs.
Apple 2020 Mini - Sequoia - Music/DAW
Intel 2017 MBP - Sequoia (OCLP) - Software Development
Intel 2014 MBP - Sequoia (OCLP) - Board game tutorials and videos at the gaming table (dining room)
Intel 2012 Mini - High Sierra - Very retro video gaming (doesn't access the net)
Since I can't afford to buy anything anymore, I'm keeping these the way they are for a long time. As each one dies, so does my enjoyment of computing.
While generally happy with the speed improvements it brought, I can't back question the presence of testers on Apple side. Sure they are a small niche company (/s) but they can do better. Major example, desktop switching shortcuts are borked after device comes up from sleep! >https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1whtmc3/macos_27_mis...
Mission Control is unusable in macOS 27. Shortcuts to switch spaces stop working (Dock must be killed to get them to work again), there is a padding between spaces thumbnails and the top of the screen so it's no longer possible to just easily move the mouse at the top to select one, windows rearrange randomly when one is clicked, full screen app spaces breaks each time you try to use them, animations are wonky and you can't reenter mission control while some animations are running, etc…
Pretty sure Apple must dedicate a product manager to coming up with new ways to break spaces in each OS release.
Why dedicate one, an AI agent can do that job way better!
I also genuinely cannot believe how broken Mission Control is. I use it constantly and the flickering, black spaces, and other small issues lead to an overall frustrating experience I did not have in 26. I'm very surprised that these issues didn't come up on HN from all the beta users, many reporting that they're very happy with 27. Is Mission Control a feature that those likely to download the beta are disproportionately unlikely to use?
So no one’s gonna mention that this guy thought NSText was a reference to NeXTSTEP?
I’m not a Mac developer: what does the NS stand for?
NeXTSTEP.
Objective-C doesn't have namespaces (like C), so people use two-letter prefixes on their types to prevent name clashes. The NS prefix is used by Apple's Foundation and AppKit frameworks, that originated from NeXTSTEP, hence NS.
I'm pretty sure all the NS* calls and references in MacOS are from NextSTEP.
Yes, but it's not like this is some hidden legacy stuff, that you're not supposed to encounter. This is part of the public macOS API: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nstext
Every AppKit and Foundation type uses the NS prefix, and will keep doing so for any foreseeable future. New NS types are added to these frameworks each macOS release.
It is; in MacOS NSText is a Cocoa API which arrived and evolved from NeXTstep.
Seems like most people think the NS prefix stands for NeXTSTEP. What do you think?
Tell me you're ignorant about computer science history, without telling me you're ignorant about computer science history.
It is.
Citation: I was a NeXTSTEP developer.
Look at Apple's market cap and salary ranges before reading this article.
not to mention that the Music app that has been completely destroyed in macOS 26 is still completely unusable
The author of this article is basically me when I’m bored, just trying to find some problems to complain about
Just AI it /s
[delayed]
The golden rule with MacOS is never update before February, or after August.
I waited until Aug 31 before updating to MacOS 26, a new record for me. I very much hope 27 will be ready to go by Feb 1.
I've been running the beta on my machines. Definitely a huge upgrade over Tahoe. Visually and performance-wise.
This is a usual crap Apple has turned to, other things are so fucked up, so I’d close my eyes on the former. E.g.:
Apple (iCloud) Data Recovery works only if you deleted files from Drive via GUI, which places them in Trash.
So you actually do have them. Whaat? Why would you need a recovery? Good question.
Now it gets really interesting: you’ve emptied the Trash and now wanna to recover some.
But they are no more. Gone. Can’t be recovered anymore.
And there is a reason of course: because fuck you, that’s why.
And it’s documented FYI, so it’s a feature.
Checkmate.
I had this naive assumption for years that MacOS was the most stable / workable *nix desktop available, but I’d been sleeping on modern Linux distros.
Been on Mac since the 90s, now a very happy Linux desktop user.
It’s been a strict improvement on my computers, which isn’t to say that the author isn’t having problems, just that theirs (or mine!) isn’t the universal experience.
And they’ve finally fixed some annoying, long-endured audio bugs: https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2026/09/24/macos-27-fixes-mul...
watchOS 27 broke noise monitoring.
[delayed]