I’ve not upgraded to MacOS 26 yet. The comments from John Siracusa on ATP have left me cautious.
Have you upgraded? If so how is it for life on your Mac?
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I’ve used Tahoe for weeks. It’s OK. I’ve seen no glitches, lost no data, not been unable to do my work with any app I use. Safari is annoying, but if you turn off “show color in tab bar” it’s not so bad. By now, most developers have Tahoe-ized their apps (except DEVONthink which hasn’t issued a Tahoe interface update for DEVONthink 4).
I can imagine a world where in macOS 28 we see Apple gradually scraping away all traces of Liquid Glass.
Katie
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It’s not terrible; things work, mostly. But I have vision issues, and have, despite Accessabilty & text tweaks, found text on UI elemends unreadable, buttons that are badly placed (obscuring other UI elements), dialogs with typos and missing/incorrect text, in the OS and Apple’s apps.
It’s not the worst ever, there are some super features, but I’m not giddy with joy, either.
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Thanks for the hint: turn off “show color in tab bar” makes a big difference.
I’ve been running Tahoe and had no problems.
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I might upgrade my MacBook Air M1 just to play with it, but hands down I will not upgrade my M4 Mini for a number of months. I run music production software on it and OS upgrades almost always break stuff early on.
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Upgraded, but I have run into a few issues:
I’m loving it actually, more than I expected. Spent the day on Tuesday using it on a big ultrawide monitor and today on my laptop screen on the go.
It has that version 1 feeling about it for sure, there’s little bits of wonky animations happening, the odd bit of lag. It would be no bad thing to wait a month or two before upgrading, let the first few bug fixes land.
But overall I really like the new design language. Mail is excellent, which is most timely, since legacy Outlook is retired next month, so I’m back on Mail for all my accounts. Preview is also good.
The main third party apps I’ve tried that are using the new look are Forklift, Drafts and Omnifocus, they all seem to benefit. (Though Forklift is now indistinguishable at all glance from Finder, which is kind of annoying, but that’s another story).
I think that the overall feel is more friendly and it strikes a good balance between professional and friendly at moment. That said I wouldn’t want it to be any more friendly feeling than it is right now, if they continue too far down that road it would feel cartoony. But as is at the mo, pretty happy with it.
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I have installed it on my M1 Pro Macbook Pro and on my wife’s 2019 16“ MacBook Pro.
Everything so far is working for us and the update was very smooth.
So far we are both really enjoying the new UI and new feel to the system - as mentioned, it feels more friendly and play-like and we both have fun finding little animations and glass effects here and there.
We like to run the standard UI and wallpaper for the first time to get a feel for how Apple intended the system? And while I have some minor things I don’t like that much - I for instance miss the yellow folder icons in the notes app, as it looks too bland/dark for me with the black/white icons - I enjoy the new consistent look and feel.
But as mentioned, it also feels like a 1.0 of a new system and Apple will certainly tweak it over time…
But given Apples idea of a single sheet of glass for the iPhone, I imagine glass like UI is here to stay for longer …
I won’t touch it for 6 months minimum for MacOS server (my primary computer).
VPN breaks constantly and leads to kernel crashes with every new MacOS release.
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I have been running it on the Beta, Public Beta and Release Candidates. It was fine. On launch day, I decided to wean myself off Betas and RC and I turned them off, so my mac downloaded the 26 that everyone else is using and I started to see problems especially after waking up from sleep - some apps like WhatApp, Balatro or some other random apps cannot be launched and must be forced quit (even after forced quitting and relaunching, they are still stuck and not responding). I had to shutdown, restart and then it works until the next morning when the mac sleeps. So, I suggest you wait a bit before upgrading.
I’ve been using it since release. It’s fine and some things are really good (e.g. spotlight is now useful). Other things that were a little flaky in for me in Sequoia (e.g. using more than one monitor or iPhone tethering) are now rock solid. I quite like liquid glass (and I have old eyes) but I guess app developers need to think about how to use the language and that will take time. I’ve seen some nasty hard crash bugs in a few third party apps where they’ve rushed to update for Tahoe and broken something but most of those are already fixed.
Small signs of Apple Intelligence beginning to work - e.g. Craft now lets you choose to use on-device Apple model for AI assistance instead of Open AI and for my purposes (e.g. proof reading, summarising) it works. Everlog (journalling app) lets you generate image playground illustrations from your journal entries in the app.
2nd thanks for the color in tab bar tip!
Overall I have no problem, maybe some minor UI glitches due to the new glass design.
The one thing that really bothers me is that they have removed compact mode for Safari, which is something I really don’t understand. On my 13’ MBA M1 that small amount of real estate was precious.
Another thing I don’t like, but it isn’t an issue just a preference , it’s the new bubbles on the top bar of every Apple app… I prefer one single bar. But again, it’s just a preference and not a problem.
The biggest down is not even Apple’s fault, the Dark Mode on Overcast is really bad. But overall, the clear icons on the dock I really like.
I’ve been running it since the first developer beta on my second Mac. Liquid Glass changes with each release, including from the release candidate last week until the general release this week. Still lots of glitches. It’s not ready for prime time. All our other systems won’t be upgraded until at least the .1 release. The same goes for our iPhones.
Downloaded and started using last night. The only thing I don’t like so far is the “Apps” in the dock replaced the Launcher (I already forgot what it was called). And I cannot figure out how to add a non-Apple app (Banktivity) to the Apps so it shows up to open. I have to manually search for it.
It’s extremely easy to install MacOS on an external drive. That’s how I’m looking at Tahoe. A normal boot brings up Sequoia.
If I switch my startup disk, I boot Tahoe/MacOS 26.
I don’t know what to do about the missing Launchpad. I understand it can be resurrected, but I think there are implications.
Maybe Shortcuts can help fill the gap.
Shortcuts has limitations, though. For instance, an action to open a file in an app halts the Shortcut until that app is closed. It would be nice to open a file in a spreadsheet and then open another file in a word processor.
The workaround is for Shortcuts to open apps and then run Applescript snippets to tell the apps to open the files you want.
A restart of the app from the Applications Folder and full reboot and my Banktivity app is showing up in the Apps (formerly Launchpad) now. Quick fix.
Upgrade and liking so far… I was a bit concerned for this release but everything running fine and nothing to complain about (so far).
Stack:
- M4 Pro MBP
- iPhone 16p
- Apple Watch Series 8
- Standard iPad
Just upgraded. Maybe I’m not a power user. Haven’t seen that much of a difference. Trying to learn the new spotlight search.