Tailscale's new macOS home • Hacker News Board

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#311

Post by VerifiedReports » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:16 AM UTC

osicjwjxiwu wrote: post #307

VerifiedReports wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really defensible as an excuse, especially considering Apple's grooming of users to believe that they never need to quit applications. All Apple had to do was add a "more" indicator at the end of the area, at the very least. Or... to give all applications' entries equal footing, collapse them all into a disclosure control once there are too many to show. But no... once again, a simple and fair solution elu…

If the “simple and fair solution” makes it so lazy developers lose money over putting things in the menu bar where they most definitely should not be putting anything, then so be it. Stop putting things in the menu bar. End of.

I don't disagree.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#312

Post by Nevermark » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:24 AM UTC

al_borland wrote: post #214

Nevermark wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empty advice like "you should want what I want, because here is how it works for me", benefits from pushback. Another common one: responding to a commenter's device or OS problem by suggesting a platform switch. Despite the massive number of unrelated tradeoffs such a decision would involve. And of course, the pedantic "well, it always works for me" or "really, that should work", chime-in non-advice to just not have…

The advice was to question what is truly needed. I may be a bit on the extreme end, as I never stop asking this question and seeing what life is like without various things. This doesn’t seem like horrible advice to someone who is running into UI breaking problems. This also isn’t a new notch issue. I remember this being a common topic of discussion going back to the 12” MBP 20+ years ago. People with a lot of menuba…

I take your points, in good faith. There is a subtle but meaningful difference between suggesting a rethink, vs. suggesting a think transplant.

And you are right, the former is completely valid.

I have seen far too many cases of the latter apparently.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#313

Post by philistine » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 3:09 AM UTC

dangus wrote: post #294

philistine wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cannot hear the fan in a Switch, I implore you to get your hearing checked. It’s not a noisy fan, it’s not a problem the fan is there, but it’s not silent!

I don’t believe I ever said it was silent. Do you not agree that having a fan in the system was a good design trade-off?

> I’ve never heard the fan in my Nintendo Switch.

If that's not saying it's silent for you, you don't only need to get your hearing checked.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#314

Post by philistine » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 3:19 AM UTC

dangus wrote: post #263

philistine wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice of you to decide we’re just parroting instead of thinking. If the MacBook Air had a fan, it would be thicker and would need a bigger battery. It would then be the same, aside from the screen, from the base MacBook Pro. You are 100% correct. The fact it has no fan allows Apple to reduce its weight and thickness. Thus reducing its price. You’re absolutely right. Fans in laptops are more and more a gamer pilled fli…

Removing a fan reduces the price? By how much do you think? Is the Nintendo Switch expensive because of the fan? Is the Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 a thick device? They are thinner than the MacBook Pro, and they have more space constraints than a MacBook Neo. If fans in laptops are just for “gamer pilled” why does the MacBook Pro have one? Do you think Apple can continue to grow their marketshare indefinitely if they co…

Computing as gone on one road; less parts. Separate northbridges, daughter boards for everything, floating point coprocessors, spinning media. All those things have been simplified, reducing the parts count of a usable computer.

I don't bet against simplicity. Those who really require complexity pay for it. On the Apple side, that now includes those who need sustained throughput achieved by a fan.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#315

Post by Etheryte » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 9:40 AM UTC

kstrauser wrote: post #289

Etheryte wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is most apps have no business having a menubar icon, but many of them cannot even be disabled out of the box. There's a number of third-party tools that help with the issue, but really this should be handled at the OS level. I want a permission similar to notifications to control whether an app can litter the menubar or not.

It is in Tahoe, which is on the short list of things I strongly, genuinely like about the update.

Thank you! I did not know about this change, even though I already am on Tahoe. Much appreciated.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#316

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 10:02 AM UTC

VerifiedReports wrote: post #298

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF, there isn't a computer on earth that will solve that problem perfectly. At some point, "you shouldn't have so many utilities running" is perfectly acceptable advice.

No, because their icons can simply be collapsed into a disclosure control.

"You'll run out of memory eventually" was my point.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#317

Post by dangus » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

philistine wrote: post #313

dangus wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe I ever said it was silent. Do you not agree that having a fan in the system was a good design trade-off?

> I’ve never heard the fan in my Nintendo Switch. If that's not saying it's silent for you, you don't only need to get your hearing checked.

I listen to the game audio, which is why I don’t hear it.

I still never said it’s silent. I merely implied that it’s quiet enough to satisfy the design parameters, where it is so quiet it’s forgettable. My ears might hear it but my brain doesn’t notice it. Maybe you need to dust out your Switch, it’s not a loud system.

I have no idea why you’re arguing this so hard, but I guess people just go crazy to defend trillion dollar corporation Apple. Enjoy your fanless computer that gives up 15-30% performance just to save a few millimeters and $3 on the BOM.

I bet Mac zealots would be surprised to find out that almost every PC with a fan comes with configurable modes so you can decide how loud or quiet you want your system and trade off performance. Crazy right? The user gets to choose for the situation rather than having to choose at time of purchase.

I would rather own a system that doesn’t slow down after 7 minutes of sustained activity. MacBook reviewers act like this is no big deal since they don’t play any games like the other 900 million PC gamers in the world. “Oh, your video exports will be done by the time throttling starts, so it’s not big deal.” These reviewers also only know about video editing since it’s their job to edit videos. But playing games is by definition dependent on sustained high performance. If I lose performance after 7 minutes I’m losing performance for most of my session.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#318

Post by kstrauser » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 2:41 PM UTC

Etheryte wrote: post #315

kstrauser wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is in Tahoe, which is on the short list of things I strongly, genuinely like about the update.

Thank you! I did not know about this change, even though I already am on Tahoe. Much appreciated.

You’re welcome! I stumbled across that myself. It wasn’t exactly a premier feature, yet still one of my favorites.

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#319

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

philistine wrote: post #314

dangus wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing a fan reduces the price? By how much do you think? Is the Nintendo Switch expensive because of the fan? Is the Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 a thick device? They are thinner than the MacBook Pro, and they have more space constraints than a MacBook Neo. If fans in laptops are just for “gamer pilled” why does the MacBook Pro have one? Do you think Apple can continue to grow their marketshare indefinitely if they co…

Computing as gone on one road; less parts. Separate northbridges, daughter boards for everything, floating point coprocessors, spinning media. All those things have been simplified, reducing the parts count of a usable computer. I don't bet against simplicity. Those who really require complexity pay for it. On the Apple side, that now includes those who need sustained throughput achieved by a fan.

[deleted]

Re: Tailscale's new macOS home

#320

Post by bsmith » Sat, Apr 04, 2026, 6:24 PM UTC

jwrallie wrote: post #221

bsmith wrote: post #220

I don't understand why people are still using Tailscale after the issue they had where two independent tunnels were connected together.

Never heard of it, could you send us a reference? What do you use instead?

I use almost plain old wireguard, hosting a wg-easy container that has a nice web gui wrapper that makes it easy with QR codes, no configuration files to create like just wireguard. It's the technology that Tailscale uses, so why would you complicate it, adding more risk?

The incident seems like it was never exploited, and it was fixed within 24 hours. However, in my opinion, the fact that this COULD happen, let alone that id DID happen, is too much risk, and why I switched immediately after hearing about it.

AI overview of the incident:

TS-2023-001:

Node Sharing Across Tailnets Without Authorization (January 2023) A bug in Tailscale's node sharing logic allowed the creation of sharing invitations by unauthorized users. A malicious individual who knew a target node's database ID could generate and accept a sharing invite for that node without being an admin of the target node's tailnet — for any node in any tailnet. Circl So in practice, a node from one unrelated tailnet could be pulled into another person's tailnet without the owner's consent. A node's ID is only visible in the API or admin console, by admins of either the node's tailnet or a tailnet to which that node has already been shared Circl — which limited exploitability, since you'd need to already know the target's internal database ID (a random 64-bit integer, not easily guessable). Tailscale fixed it server-side on 2023-01-12 and stated they verified it was never exploited. The bug reporter (Benjamin Roberts, HN user tsujamin) noted it was discovered accidentally while managing their own tailnet. The Hacker News thread praised Tailscale for deploying a fix within 24 hours:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34420142

TS-2024-002:

ACL Overwrites Across Tailnets (May 2023 – July 2024) There's also a second related incident that's perhaps even more alarming in concept: an admin user could overwrite the ACLs of one tailnet with ACLs from another tailnet. Any user who was an Admin in multiple tailnets and edited ACLs in the admin console between May 22, 2023 and July 17th, 2024 could trigger this bug after switching the active tailnet. Tailscale This one involved the tailnet-switching feature in the admin console accidentally "bleeding" policy configuration between separate, unrelated tailnets.