macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses • Hacker News Board

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#191

Post by selimthegrim » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

merlindru wrote: post #69

stein1946 wrote: post #45

It just seems to me that that Macbook Neo is basically them telling us that come next year they will unify iOS and MacOS and they are testing the waters at the moment. All this version alignment, the blurring of "here is a laptop with A processor and iOS" points to that direction. The errs of Tahoe are basically a result of the rush on that direction

i hope you're wrong. they certainly have seemed to test the waters on many other fronts. the $99/yr notarization fee is now basically required as running unnotarized apps is made hard and scary enough to turn off probably 97% of average users they also briefly took away the ability to disable gatekeeper per terminal command (now back) next they wanna launch a touchscreen macbook, presumably this fall

>they also briefly took away the ability to disable gatekeeper per terminal command (now back)

Does this require a Tahoe upgrade?

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#192

Post by htk » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:46 PM UTC

nnwright wrote: post #36

Mac OS's UX design has been in free fall the last 5-10 years (ever since the "iOS-ify everything" zeitgeist took root). Sincerely hope that they one day revert back, because the current UX is just godawful for any usecase I can imagine.

"In 2015, Dye became the head of Apple's user interface design team"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Dye

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#193

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #154

jlnthws wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that imply that design is solved (at least regarding visual elements discussed here)? Then why not move onto other things? Why self-sabotage their success?

If I'm being cynical: because the design team at Apple needs something to do.

A lot of bad, unwanted features get written purely because "developers need something to do" and the same thing happens on the design side. I spent over a decade as a developer at various companies fighting bored designers who just had to redesign the look and feel of the app over and over because the current one was "stale" and "lacked pizzazz and pop!" But, then we devs would do the same thing to the feature list, refactoring and reimplementing and adding features for the sake of writing software, so... I was a hypocrite to complain.

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#194

Post by lapcat » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

FYI I just published a follow-up, "The evolution of Mac app window corners": https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/3/4.html

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#195

Post by out_of_protocol » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

marxisttemp wrote: post #62

ant6n wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find confusing and unhelpful is how The Apple OS deals with windows. Say if you have 4 safari windows, 3 excel windows, 5 window word documents and a bunch of terminals spread across a bunch of desktops. To me, I have clearly conceptionalized different work streams into desktops. Apple doesn’t understand and respect that. Firstly, alt-tab doesn’t consider windows, it considers apps. So if you have multiple bro…

> Firstly, alt-tab I assume you mean cmd-tab. >doesn’t consider windows, it considers apps. So if you have multiple browser windows or word windows open, you can’t alt-tab between them. It’s totally confusing. You use cmd-tilde to switch between windows. >So I install an app just to get the normal alt-tab behavior of other OSs, to alt-tab between windows (mine is called alt-tab, and it’s a bit buggy and slow, I think…

> This is a configurable setting.

Give me pointers please. Getting same headaches every day. Clicking on icon in dock, closing some window produces random results every time, across many, many apps

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#196

Post by tristor » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

stein1946 wrote: post #45

It just seems to me that that Macbook Neo is basically them telling us that come next year they will unify iOS and MacOS and they are testing the waters at the moment. All this version alignment, the blurring of "here is a laptop with A processor and iOS" points to that direction. The errs of Tahoe are basically a result of the rush on that direction

I would say the M5 Max MBP, Mac Studio, and the acceptance of Apple hardware as the pinnacle for personal local LLMs are good signs that they are not going to unify iOS and macOS.

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#197

Post by bitvoid » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

unfunco wrote: post #108

postalcoder wrote: post #12

This one really bothers me. Whenever maximizing or tiling my windows (which is all the time), I see multiple layers of oddly rounded corners. I think if there's any upside to Tahoe, the grievances may push me into blogging for the first time ever, because I can't keep these to myself. I actually feel sorry for Apple's developers because there's no way you ship software this bad and inconsistent unless you've been han…

Are the Apple-owned app windows inconsistent too? I see some inconsistencies but it's generally 3rd party apps mixed with Apple's apps.

Yes. The article only shows Apple-owned apps: TextEdit and Calculator. And it shows the various border radiuses for different elements straight from XCode's UI builder.

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#198

Post by vanc_cefepime » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

htk wrote: post #192

nnwright wrote: post #36

Mac OS's UX design has been in free fall the last 5-10 years (ever since the "iOS-ify everything" zeitgeist took root). Sincerely hope that they one day revert back, because the current UX is just godawful for any usecase I can imagine.

"In 2015, Dye became the head of Apple's user interface design team" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Dye

"Dye also contributed greatly to the design language of iOS 7 in 2013. In 2015, Dye became the head of Apple's user interface design team. In 2022, he played an integral role in the creation of the Dynamic Island, a feature on iPhones and then in 2025, he led the design of Liquid Glass."

Left for Meta in Dec 2025. Hopefully things normalize a bit? Wishful thinking, I suppose.

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#199

Post by eproxus » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

postalcoder wrote: post #12

This one really bothers me. Whenever maximizing or tiling my windows (which is all the time), I see multiple layers of oddly rounded corners. I think if there's any upside to Tahoe, the grievances may push me into blogging for the first time ever, because I can't keep these to myself. I actually feel sorry for Apple's developers because there's no way you ship software this bad and inconsistent unless you've been han…

They obviously have been cutting corners.

Re: macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

#200

Post by unconed » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 3:20 PM UTC

This article's timeline is mostly accurate, but contains a few inaccuracies:

- Unified toolbar and titlebar dates from much earlier... it was 10.4, not 10.7.

- The brushed metal look was supposed to be applied to "appliance-like" apps as opposed to "document-like" apps... But Apple was never able to stick to that rule themselves.

There are a few design ideas that always turn out to be bad when implemented, but which designers seem to have to learn the hard way. Transparency is the biggest one, but I guess so is excessive rounding now.