A detailed review of macOS 26 Tahoe

16 points by hoistbypetard

I updated my work Mac as the company guinea pig today, and so far it’s been ‘fine’. Everything I’ve tried works.

I’m not the biggest fan of the graphical changes but I don’t find them a big issue either, at least on Mac - on iPhone I think the “Reduce Transparency” accessiblity option is going to get a lot more use!

hoistbypetard

I won’t be upgrading very soon, but this review doesn’t make it feel like the thing that would drive me back to a Linux desktop[1]. Which is kind of the impression I had from earlier commentary.

1: I quite like a few Linux DEs, so that wouldn’t be awful. But I do kind of like MacBook hardware and some of the integration features better.

meerm

I’ve recently switched to https://github.com/mogenson/PaperWM.spoon and it makes the macos desktop a real pleasure. It just works (tm; for the most part. Sometimes I need to restart hammerspoon).
- hoistbypetard
  
  That looks really nice! I’m going to have to give that a try.
  
  I currently use (and mostly like) rectangle:
  
  https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle
- incanus
  
  The big deal breaker for me was that Safari tabs aren’t supported.
- alper
  
  I can’t deal with it and am still on Aerospace, but have the source checked out and building to see if I can hack something like this into it.
- mplant
  
  Maybe I need to try it again, but I found it pretty janky :-/
zie

Agreed, I’m basically in the same boat. I currently assume this M2 Pro laptop will be my last macOS machine. Though perhaps I’ll have iPhones a little longer still.

I moved from Linux/FreeBSD way back in original MacOS 10 because it made $WORK life easier, since I could run MS Excel, etc plus I still got a UNIX. The UNIX seems to be headed for the scrap heap as soon as they can manage it, even if it’s still the world’s largest deployment of UNIX(tm) anywhere, ever.
- probablydan
  
  I’d love to hear why you think they’ll scrap the UNIX part. I had not considered that, and found the idea of it surprising when you mentioned it, so I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts.
  - zie
    
    I don’t think it will be all at once, I think it’s already started though. It’s just atrophying and not being upgraded or touched or anything. Currently, like @hoistedbypetard mentioned, they certify it every year still. I imagine they will stop at some point when a middle manager that approves the bill will think, hey I can get my expenses down easy!
- hoistbypetard
  
  Every release, they get it certified and I’m a little surprised.
  
  I’m not sure what my line will be. If I can’t download some source code, build it and run it without some attestation from Apple, that will certainly be over my line.
  
  If a Linux DE figures out continuity (screen sharing and clipboard sharing) with iOS devices, that coupled with winapps letting me use Affinity tools on Linux probably pushes me back, too. Assuming I can find a keyboard/screen/battery/trackpad combo that is about as comfortable as my M1 Pro.
  - zie
    
    Agreed, I’m not sure exactly where my line is either. Rumor has it, the certification is because way back in 10.0, they advertised UNIX, but forgot to pay the certification fee, and the open group got a bit upset. So now they certify it every year. I don’t know how true that is, I have no direct knowledge either way. I do know they did in fact advertise UNIX way back in 10.0. Past that I’m out of knowledge.
    
    I imagine a middle manager at some point will think they can save a few bucks if they stop and that will be the end of that.
    
    I agree with you about not being able to compile and run source code as being way over the line.