I’ve deferred my next Mac upgrade to when my current M1 air on Sequoia stops being supported. If they mess it up further I may just move off the platform. Such a shame because the hardware is great.
Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
81–90 of 432 posts
Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that is what you get used to. I've been using Android for over a decade and my wife's iPhone is super confusing to me.
Yep, my parents are both Android users and have to ask "where is the home button" when someone passes them an iPhone.
Followed by “where is the back button.”
Answer: sometimes apps let you swipe right from the left margin, sometimes there may be a left arrow in the upper left, but it may not be visible unless you enable tinted Liquid Glass, but also look in the bottom left, there may be a less-than sign, and some times you have to force-quit the app and restart (like with Libby books borrowed via Kindle…)
Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
#83Tahoe has to be the worst software Apple has released in three decades. It's unbelievable it got through. If Macs and macOS were not a tiny portion of their revenue I would short the stock.
One thing that made Tahoe even worse is that Apple changed what they considered an update or upgrade, so for Tahoe it was suddenly considered as a update and not an upgrade, in all management solutions. This force-upgraded a lot of Macs at work and we lost days of effective work across many engineers. The machines was practically useless for weeks. They clearly don't care about power users anymore, and haven't for qu…
That's egregiously bad, and malicious.
Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
#84Liquid Glass appears to be the culmination of the Alan Dye era at Apple, where UI terms like "radio buttons" were derided as "programmer talk".
https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job
Thankfully he has now left. Things could hopefully pick up again usability-wise within 2-3 years.
Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dunno man, I’ve used Android recently and it’s still as bafflingly confusing and crappy as I remember it being. Definitely an “to each their own” kind of situation.
I think that is what you get used to. I've been using Android for over a decade and my wife's iPhone is super confusing to me.
I had (the same) Samsung android phone from 2017-2025. I bought an iPhone, mainly because of privacy concerns (for which I consider apple to be the least bad mainstream option, not good).
But I couldn’t get over how bad the ux is compared to my 7 year old phone. Things like highlighting, autocorrect, placing the cursor where you want “just don’t work”, the setup is unintuitive, the hotspot doesn’t work half the time, there are bugs (like email not connecting) that based on my searches are prevalent and have no solution “did you try updating and restarting”. I really couldn’t believe how bad it is.
But evidently people really like them, and I imagine they could find things not to like about my old Samsung, so to each his own I guess.
Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’d love an XFCE (or even gnome tbh) environment on a properly built laptop, unfortunately only Apple is able to build something that works in all areas that matter: sleeps when lid closed, wakes when lid opens, touchpad and display don’t suck.
I have an oled thinkpad running fedora that has never had a sleep issue. Excellent touchpad as well. Thinkpad X1 Carbon.
Which version? I have a X1 Carbon from, uhh, 2017? It supports S3 sleep. I'd think about an upgrade, if only I wasn't worried about sleep issues. I run Debian if that makes any difference.
Actually now that I think about it, my visceral reaction is one of dread: a feeling the trouble will be more than the benefit of a new computer.
Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
#87Tahoe has to be the worst software Apple has released in three decades. It's unbelievable it got through. If Macs and macOS were not a tiny portion of their revenue I would short the stock.
iOS 26 is also very bad. Many Christmas conversations between boomers baffled by their phones, and as I younger (than boomer) person I am not as baffled but there are a number of things that take more button presses than they did in previous versions for no apparent reason. And it’s real ugly imo.
Viewing all tabs in Safari is the thorn in my side.
Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would not matter if they dogfooded it, the decision makers higher up in the chain are getting paid more to make a visible change and/or increase revenue, not to make a better user experience.
I think this goes both ways. Famously, Jobs' demands pushed engineers to think and work harder to achieve what they think was impossible, which resulted in many of the most iconic designs of personal electronic devices in history. On the other hand, we have butterfly keyboard and this.
Jobs did not run on a fixed annual schedule like Tim Cook does.
Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, and 10.7 all took over 12 months to develop, sometimes much more, and 10.5 was famously delayed out to 30 months.
Jobs may have pushed engineers, but he was more careful about what he pushed out the door to consumers.
Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t want to wear one of those things on my face. I want a high-quality computer and phone. Apple executives are out to lunch.
[flagged]
Counterexample: how did the metaverse go? Is there anyone using it? Facebook even rebranded to Meta on that bet.
Re: Last Year on My Mac: Look Back in Disbelief
#90Liquid Glass appears to be the culmination of the Alan Dye era at Apple, where UI terms like "radio buttons" were derided as "programmer talk". https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job Thankfully he has now left. Things could hopefully pick up again usability-wise within 2-3 years.
The worrying thing is that his departure seems in no way like a consequence of his terrible job. He wasn't squeezed out by upper management, he left because Meta made him a better offer. I'm sure Apple's software quality will go up now that he's gone and his replacement is allegedly liked by Apple's competent UX people who disliked Dye; but Cook clearly doesn't recognise the problems, lest he'd have planned to get rid of Dye by now.