#macos 26

[xantia1997]

Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) intro on period correct iMac of 2007

[netscapenavigator-official]

Part of me wonders if the appleOS 26 lineup failed to land with nostalgia-seeking consumers because of how Apple limited themselves.

They’re clearly trying to recapture the magic of Aqua from the pre-Yosemite eras. But… there’s one big problem: Liquid Glass isn’t a design language. It’s a design material.

“Liquid Glass” is one material. It has one aesthetic and that’s it. You take the old minimal SVG files from the Minimalist era, slap a fancy filter on them, and boom: Liquid Glassified.

But “Aqua” wasn’t just “Aqua.” Apple’s intent behind the “Aqua” interface language was to relate software to a familiar place: reality. When Apple released Mac OS X, personal computing was a ripe, growing market. When Apple released the iPhone 2G, people weren’t accustomed to using palm-sized, touch-based computers. In both of these instances, Apple was trying to make a new way of life easy to understand and use. They did that by relating software to reality.

What Mac OS X started, iPhone OS (later iOS) continued. The materials in “Aqua” aren’t just the liquid Frutiger Aero-inspired blobs you see throughout the OSes (although they are the most iconic part). Certain UI elements look like they’re made from milled aluminum. Some look like real wooden bookshelves. Even the Notes app had a realistic paper texture. All of these small material choices come together to create Aqua: the design language. Aqua wasn’t limited to just Aluminum, Wood, Water, etc. It had all of these materials at its disposal coming together to create a unified language. Liquid Glass on the other hand? It starts and stops at glass.

It feels cheap. It feels lazy. It feels undercooked. To some, it even feels un-Apple-like. It feels like pre-Tahoe iOS with a fancy filter over it… because that’s exactly what it is. Apple saw people demanding realism, but wanted to do it in the most noncommittal, cheapest way possible: Take the minimalism of the outgoing era and add some extra lighting, shading, and transparency. Boom: realism.

Except not “boom.” What should’ve been Apple’s chance to cash in on the nostalgia Frutiger Aero boom is now just… a half baked, poorly implemented, lighting filter overtop of the boring, minimal SVGs were all used to at this point. This isn’t Aqua Reborn. It’s just Minimalism+.

And I don’t wanna say all this to dogpile and be like “Boooooo! Bring back the minimalism,” like a lot of people are. I think certain elements of iOS 26 are beautiful, and I’m glad to have realism back in any form I can have it. Specifically, the slider blob on the bottom tabs is gorgeous. But, I just think iOS 26 is underwhelming, and Apple’s rushed, underthought, greedy intentions behind “Liquid Glass” are more apparent than ever.

The actual implementation of Liquid Glass on iOS 26 feels very un-Apple-like with its inconsistency. But even more so, it just feels disappointing. I (among plenty of other people) were wanting realism back in OSes. So when Apple announced they’d be doing that for their Tahoe-era softwares, I was excited. But the reality of the execution is just… sad.

Like, this is it? This is all the “realism” we’re getting for the next ten years? This is our taste of “realism” before we inevitably go back to Minimalism once Maximalism falls back out of fashion? That’s a bummer, man.

I was hoping for an oasis, and all I got was a single drop of rain.

[causticgrip]

Just making it a little festive. 🎅🏽

[keriwalsh]

yes... www.Apple.com

[mishtiiikrishnaaa]

why the fuck is macos 26 called 'macos tahoe'. why does it feel like a joke.

[xantia1997]

2006 iMac intel on Mac OS Snow Leopard

[netscapenavigator-official]

With macOS Tahoe 26 being the last version of macOS to support AMD64 processors, I might have to move back to Linux sooner than I thought. I dread finding a distro that suits my needs and designs preferences, but at the same time: OpenCore Legacy Patcher has proven significantly less stable in macOS Sequoia than it was when I originally used it back in macOS Monterey. I do miss the stability of Linux on my MacBookPro8,2; but ugh… I do not miss the distro setting-up and elitism. 🫠

[netscapenavigator-official]

I feel like Apple did the whole Liquid Glass reveal and version number 26 change to distract people from the fact that they’re about discontinue OS updates for 2-year-old, $52,000 Mac Pros with 1.5 TB of RAM, 28-core Intel Xeon W CPUs, and Dual Radeon Pro W6600X GPUs.

I just hope Linux support for T2 Chipped Macs is viable, and I hope the BOOTCAMP Drivers don’t break anytime soon. 3rd Party OSes are quite literally the only way to preserve these machines, now, which is unacceptable for a device which had a starting price of $6,000.