Mac OS 26 Is Utter Garbage and Apple Has truly lost its way....

[nmt1900]

Yes - what Jobs once said about Microsoft is still true - "they have no taste"...

All the useless bloat - not necessarily ads, but useless Micosoft's own stuff and above all Copilot. Microsoft is shoving its' own AI solution down the throats much more aggressively then Apple does. It does not end with this actually - fundamental security fails like Recall and the fact that Home version does not have a Bitlocker. It is just like version of macOS which would not have Filevault.

As one working in IT field and being constantly dealing with both Mac and Windows machines... yes Windows has come a long way since Vista, but there's actually nothing compelling in Windows than better integration to enterprise infrastructure and applications not available for Mac. After Apple ditched Intel, Microsoft have been forced to do significant catch-up and considering their size and legacy bloat, it is not easy for them... and even after this they still have "no taste" - even compared to "Solarium UI" a.k.a. Liquid Glass.

P. S. And don't forget after all - what does Windows 10/11 Settings window remind you of by its' layout?

 

[elptdbi3lYI]

P. S. And don't forget after all - what does Windows 10/11 Settings window remind you of by its' layout?

It reminds me of phone UI, the same tasteless toddler design Apple brought to macOS since Ventura.

 

[tomekwsrod]

I am sorry but I disagree with you, I am so disappointed in Windows 11. If you do not customize it you literally see adds in the Start Menu, it's very bad. Pushing CoPilot is also bad. I went to a lot of trouble just to customize the install.wim and remove all of the crap Microsoft throws in there in order to get a clean install. This is difficult for the regular user. Also the design of Windows is just ugly. Don't get me started about the Nvidia drivers. I constantly had to tune my Windows just to keep it in a good working condition. In contrast a Mac is a joy to use. I really used only Windows and Android for the last 3 years and it feels good to be back with Apple. That's my honest opinion. Everyone with his own preference. I feel a relief being back to Apple, they evolved quite a lot during these 3 years I was out.

No need to be sorry. I don’t see any ads, but during intial OS setup I was careful not to blindly click “yes” to everything. Apple does the same thing on macOS and iOS under "Apple Delivered Advertising". it’s just buried deeper in the settings, which arguably makes it worse for users who aren’t paying attention.

I’ve had zero driver issues on MS Windows 11, aside from needing Boot Camp drivers for my now dual OS Windows 11 iMac. But let’s be real, try running macOS on non-Apple hardware and see how far you get.

Copilot is genuinely impressive. It’s a productivity/learning booster, not just a gimmick.

As for design. totally subjective. If you like LiquidGlass, great. Personally, I think it’s a step backward in its current form.

Microsoft’s products feel solid and well-integrated. Meanwhile, judging by Apple’s recent track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if the upcoming macOS and iOS updates flop too, and they will fail to fix many fundamental bugs reported on these forums. Even their employees seem to have doubts: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/10/19/ios-26-4-revamped-siri-concerns/

 

[kagharaht]

Quicktime tends to freeze here and there forcing me to quit it. Specially when it's playing very large files. It does it when you try to scrub forward or back. iMac M3 24gb RAM.

 

[elptdbi3lYI]

Bro it's new normal to have cmd+opt+esc and activity monitor as your best friend these days, can't have more than few days of uptime before windowserver s..hits it self and animations start to stutter, control center non stop eats ram for some reason (even though i don't use it) and having to force quit xcode few times a day to regain 10s gbs of ram...
Back on Mojave I could have a month of uptime and it still felt like freshly booted system...

 

[elptdbi3lYI]

cmd+ctrl+n , one of the best finder features - broken since ventura, deadlocks the finder and force quit we go again...

 

[fisherking]

cmd+opt+n , one of the best finder features - broken since ventura, deadlocks the finder and force quit we go again...

cmd+opt+escape brings up force quit... 🤔

 

[kagharaht]

OMG... the more I use Apple Music on Tahoe, the more I truly hate where they placed the controls. I mean it's absolutely ridiculous. I saw the Terminal command to force it to go to the top again, but I did submit a "strongly worded " feedback on Apple's feedback page.

 

[MBAir2010]

seems to me Tahoes is not the only  2025 software problem as everything  has problems galore!
strange ones, keyboard not functioning, photos crashing, annoying alerts, music being music and TV spinning a ball!

how is Tim Crook's financial portfolio doing, that is what really matters nowadays!
what if them s were a fiduciary? hmmmmmm!

 

[goodthymes]

OMG... the more I use Apple Music on Tahoe, the more I truly hate where they placed the controls. I mean it's absolutely ridiculous. I saw the Terminal command to force it to go to the top again, but I did submit a "strongly worded " feedback on Apple's feedback page.

Thanks so much for making the reference to the terminal command, found it!

For anyone else who wants to revert to the old Apple Music layout, close Apple Music, run this command in terminal, and restart Music and voila!

defaults write com.apple.Music com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES

Apparently you are able to turn off Liquid Glass (Solarium) on a per app basis and this is the command for Apple Music.

 

[nmt1900]

cmd+ctrl+n , one of the best finder features - broken since ventura, deadlocks the finder and force quit we go again...

Seems to work fine here on 26.0.1....

 

[amancalledsun]

Thanks so much for making the reference to the terminal command, found it!

For anyone else who wants to revert to the old Apple Music layout, close Apple Music, run this command in terminal, and restart Music and voila!

defaults write com.apple.Music com.apple.SwiftUI.DisableSolarium -bool YES

Apparently you are able to turn off Liquid Glass (Solarium) on a per app basis and this is the command for Apple Music.

SO MUCH BETTER. Thank you for this.

 

[baryon]

Just a ridiculous annoyance with "Apps" that has replaced Launchpad. Yes, Launchpad was a trainwreck, and absolute abomination, as it didn't allow you to quickly and easily organize the apps the way you could do in the Finder. There was no way to select a bunch of apps with a rectangle and just drag them into a folder. It was crap.

But this is just as bad. Now you can't even arrange the apps whatsoever. Which means that for every useful app, you now have a service utility that you would never, ever want to click that gets installed with every piece of junk app nowadays. These have the same icon, the same name, and so they show up right next to the dumbass app you're trying to open. Take Autodesk Fusion for example. The two icons look almost identical, and the names are identical save for the "..." at the end. I would never, ever want to ever open the one on the right. I'd love to just banish it to a "crap" folder like I did with Launchpad. But you can't even do that.

75% of apps that show up here are junk that gets installed with apps, these are being used by the apps for updates, menu items and other system stuff. They are not meant for the user to ever launch them. I don't want to have to sift through them each time I want to find an app.

Oh and why not put Fusion in the dock? Because Fusion is crap and each time it forces itself to update (which is every single damn day for some reason), it breaks the shortcut.

 

[elptdbi3lYI]

Seems to work fine here on 26.0.1....

Turn on column view (cmd+3), do it in a quick succession and it will deadlock

 

[OneMike]

If you don't have complaints, would the OP listing specific issues have made a difference to you anyways?

Yes it would have. I didn’t have complaints in the testing I had done at the time. Maybe something I hadn’t experienced yet could’ve been pointed out or a discussion could’ve take place. This is a discussion forum.

 

[amancalledsun]

Yes it would have. I didn’t have complaints in the testing I had done at the time. Maybe something I hadn’t experienced yet could’ve been pointed out or a discussion could’ve take place. This is a discussion forum.

Pretty sure it's just a forum. There is no representation made anywhere that says "discussion".

 

[nmt1900]

Turn on column view (cmd+3), do it in a quick succession and it will deadlock

Works fine in column mode as well

 

[fisherking]

Pretty sure it's just a forum. There is no representation made anywhere that says "discussion".

google AI: An internet forum is

"an online platform where users can post and reply to messages on specific topics, creating threaded discussions that remain accessible for later viewing"

(i bolded discussions)

 

[nmt1900]

Apple should clean their desk. Back to basics, what they were once good at. Get rid of 80% cruft. Focus on excellent hardware, one core (open) operating system (macOS) and one safe AppStore for consumers to make sure they get quality assured and privacy respecting quality apps at nog 'apple premium', but as a service to make the most out of the hardware Apple intends to sell. Restore the 'it just works' mantra. What the heck, make it 'it just works flawlessly'.

K.I.S.S.

I didn't know they have multiple operating systems and AppStores.

Oh wait - there's these pesky iPhones and iPads. Some might not notice that Apple sold over 280 million iPhones and iPads (232 million iPhones and 52 million iPads), but only 22 million Mac's last year. It is not hard to see what product lines are actually determining the direction of development and resource allocation in the company. It is obvious which products are determining how software development unification is done.
There's no way around it.

 

[MBAir2010]

is there a way not to use 2025 September software  stuff anymore?
or did we go too far?

 

[tomtattoo]

Software unification is nothing else than laziness to create the optimal software for each device.
Look at all these websites today: made for iPhonescreens (small and long) - looking horrible on a desktop (wasted space everywhere). It is laziness and disrecpect. Nothing else.

 

[fisherking]

Software unification is nothing else than laziness to create the optimal software for each device.
Look at all these websites today: made for iPhonescreens (small and long) - looking horrible on a desktop (wasted space everywhere). It is laziness and disrecpect. Nothing else.

many (not all) websites are automatically scaled for the device you're viewing the site on (ie smartphone, tablet, computer). and unifying elements might be useful for people who use several devices.

nothing about that suggests laziness, especially, if the idea, as you said, is to "create the optimal software for each device"

 

[yaddam205]

Software unification is nothing else than laziness to create the optimal software for each device.
Look at all these websites today: made for iPhonescreens (small and long) - looking horrible on a desktop (wasted space everywhere). It is laziness and disrecpect. Nothing else.

This reminds me of apps that are just web wrappers.

 

[jsnuff1]

Does anyone know how to turn of all the iPhones apps the show up in the apps launcher.

I cant find my 20 Mac apps without searching because they are buried with the hundreds of iPhone apps I have.

Nevermind found the toggle in the settings, why this is on by default is beyond me...

 

[Undecided]

Just a ridiculous annoyance with "Apps" that has replaced Launchpad. Yes, Launchpad was a trainwreck, and absolute abomination, as it didn't allow you to quickly and easily organize the apps the way you could do in the Finder. There was no way to select a bunch of apps with a rectangle and just drag them into a folder. It was crap.

But this is just as bad. Now you can't even arrange the apps whatsoever. Which means that for every useful app, you now have a service utility that you would never, ever want to click that gets installed with every piece of junk app nowadays. These have the same icon, the same name, and so they show up right next to the dumbass app you're trying to open. Take Autodesk Fusion for example. The two icons look almost identical, and the names are identical save for the "..." at the end. I would never, ever want to ever open the one on the right. I'd love to just banish it to a "crap" folder like I did with Launchpad. But you can't even do that.

75% of apps that show up here are junk that gets installed with apps, these are being used by the apps for updates, menu items and other system stuff. They are not meant for the user to ever launch them. I don't want to have to sift through them each time I want to find an app.

Oh and why not put Fusion in the dock? Because Fusion is crap and each time it forces itself to update (which is every single damn day for some reason), it breaks the shortcut.

View attachment 2570341

Have you considered creating a folder of aliases, and putting that folder in your Dock? I had not, but then I saw this video by MacMost.