[WoodenChair]

Apple very rarely admits mistakes. The fact they're rolling back some of the extremeness in Liquid Glass and actively mentioned in the keynote that they very seriously took the user feedback shows just how bad it was, at least initially.

[philistine]

It was literally the first specific announcement they made after they finished their introductions. Not anything iPhone related; they announced that Liquid Glass on macOS would move towards the older design. Goes to show that a year of anybody with any sort of clout complaining about the thousand little cuts of Liquid Glass on macOS will get a company to respond.

That and the guy who announced it last year fled to Facebook of all places.

[xoa]

>shows just how bad it was

>Goes to show that a year of anybody with any sort of clout complaining about the thousand little cuts of Liquid Glass on macOS will get a company to respond.

Worth remembering too that this isn't merely about "complaints", Apple has significant metrics on the rates at which users are upgrading to a new OS, or not. You can opt-out of sharing that data, but a lot of people (even technical people) may choose to check the box to share with Apple. Anecdotally, I myself and a LOT of other people have stuck with macOS 15 or earlier, but Apple should have a lot of hard data on it and adoption curves vs the past.

A real reaction does certainly suggest that this wasn't just a tempest in a teacup, but that they really weren't seeing the adoption on Macs they expected.

[lynndotpy]

Yes!! I agree with this entirely.

As far as I know, the best data the rest of us have is Google Trends. And based on that, it really does look like Liquid Glass elicited the largest negative reaction that Apple has ever had to an OS release.

"How to Switch to Android" hit 3x its all time peak, "iPhone revert update", hit 4x its all-time peak, "iPhone slow" hit 8x its all time peak, "iPhone bad now" hit 5x its all time peak, "iPhone fix battery" hit 3x its all-time peak (and 14x its five-year peak)

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=how%20to...

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%2...

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=i...

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%2...

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=iphone%2...

I mostly looked at this for iOS, but searches like "macOS slow", "mac slow", "fix mac battery", "fix mac", etc. all show similar hockey-stick jumps as Liquid Glass rolled out.

If this means a sudden highest-ever 10x shift in customer dissatisfaction - 1000% - then that has to have been significant.

[ksec]

There are probably other parts as well. Dissatisfaction against Apple for App Store has been high, may be for some Liquid Glass was the last straw. Omarchy had the highest number of Apple user switch to Linux. 100,000 downloads may be small numbers by Apple standards but even if half of that were developers coming from Apple Mac I think it is a pretty big shift.

The worst part, intentionally or not they left macOS 26 as the last release for all the Intel user.

[philistine]

> The worst part, intentionally or not they left macOS 26 as the last release for all the Intel user.

I cannot believe that Apple is that insidious to have planned a milquetoast release to be the last one for Intel, but I totally believe that Apple is insidious enough to see how they can benefit from it.

That they're literally marketing macOS 27 as we've listened to your complaints about 26 completely deflates anyone's interest in running macOS 26 on Intel. Their Intel users are being marketed hard to switch to Apple Silicon.

[rafram]

> Omarchy had the highest number of Apple user switch to Linux.

DHH's dotfiles repo is not a viable replacement for macOS, I promise you. Linux is fun, but macOS is already enough of a *nix for most developers, and it works well without much tinkering.

[philistine]

You just have to constantly tell the LLM to give you zsh commands, not bash ones.

[yurishimo]

I and most of my dev friends didn’t update. The reality is that many of us work in a web browser and an IDE all day writing software for non-Apple platforms. The only incentive I have to update is new and compelling OS features or bugfixes. Since major security patches will likely be backported, that just leaves new features and the reality is that macOS’ only new “feature” worth talking about was Liquid Glass considering their AI offering was also an absolute joke.

Given the other emphasis placed on performance improvements (likely in service to helping to mask the slowness of LLM Siri) I’m really hoping this is a modern Snow Leopard release. I’m looking forward to the Apple nerds digging and offering a compelling narrative about why I should care about updating.

And to add on to that, if this is a bug-fix bonanza release, hopefully we’ll also see a lot of positive movement during the beta period to keep shipping fixes. We’re getting a freaking EQ on AirPods!!!!111!!1! It seems Apple is finally taking some things to heart about listening to their users and I’m 10000% here for it.

[dijit]

not just that, people keeping to older OS’s will actively avoid converting to new hardware sales..

I did not upgrade my laptop because it would come with the latest OS- I am not alone.

[05]

The other side of it is forced obsolescence where new OS makes your existing hardware slower. So I wouldn't upgrade my phone beyond iOS18.x purely for performance reasons but if there's a killer feature in a new iPhone I would still consider buying it because its hardware was built to handle the new effects and extra ram it needs.

[preg_match]

Yes, anecdotally almost every I know with an older iPhone (14 or older) is not upgrading their iOS. It’s rare for non-technical people to even care about the specifics of a new iOS, but they’ve heard too many stories of slow down and battery usage issues.

It’s a big problem, because running an old iOS is very bad for security. There’s still new vulnerabilities popping up in iOS, especially in the image and video decoders, that are fixed in newer point releases of iOS 26. I’m not sure if Apple is back porting all the fixes. I would definitely be a little afraid, because iMessage previews are a common attack vector and are zero-click. I don’t think anyone really turns off automatic previews; they’re very convenient.

[Someone]

> Apple has significant metrics on the rates at which users are upgrading to a new OS, or not. You can opt-out of sharing that data

How? Aren’t all update requests made to, and all updates downloaded from their servers?

Also, doesn’t the system that pushes emergency updates (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/deployment/dep93ff7ea7...) have to know what OS you are running?

[05]

Opt out all you want do you really think Apple doesn't know what OS version hits their APIs?

[torben-friis]

It's still nice to see a company not double down on a fall! They seem to have been on a full year of tech debt and optimisation.

I still would have liked a more genuine walk back (they sold it as "iterations and adjustments" as if the rewinded stuff were new ideas) but overall reassuring.

[robot_jesus]

Yeah. It's clear they've been hearing the complaints. Not just Liquid Glass, but they even talked about the inconsistent menu bar icons and problems with rounded corner radii (among a bunch of improvements). I'm excited that this is basically Snow Leopard part II, for those who remember.

[sudokatsu]

Well, let’s wait a bit before giving it such an honorable name lol

[wpm]

Snow Leopard was a goddamn mess, everyone forgets. Yeah, 10.6.8 was rock solid. In 10.6.0 there was a bug that erased your user folder if you logged into the guest account. It was NOT a good release at the start.

[lynguist]

Snow Leopard even happened in the first place because Apple's A team was busy with iPhone, and iPhone has priority.

You will see that during this era Mac OS X was relegated to stepchild status and received far fewer support.

All this glory is just Steve Jobs selling it to us as a good thing! In the end it worked out, but it was more incidental and a collateral of the iPhone than the public memory likes to admit.

[latexr]

Exactly. And macOS 27 is unlikely to be a Snow Leopard release because it won’t have the time to. The yearly release schedule is too brutal.

[szundi]

Snow Leopard was a nothing release basically - but under the hood a lot got fixed and got better for devs

[xnx]

> Apple very rarely admits mistakes.

Probably the best reversion was getting rid of the butterfly keyboard and bringing back ports after Jony Ive was gone.

[simonebrunozzi]

He went on to ruin Ferrari now :)

[edbaskerville]

Whoa, didn't realize that was Jony Ive! Good job Jony! Gave both Ferrari and EVs bad press with a single product launch!

A good lesson in not messing with a good thing. If they had just put an electric motor in a classic Ferrari body, it could have been a nice moment for the energy transition.

[sethops1]

The Luce is so bad it makes Nissan's 2026 Leaf refresh look awesome!

[xiaoyu2006]

I hope they redesign their magic mouse. It's not a real product.

[kqp]

I think it’s basically recalcitrance. Same as they suddenly turn into the world’s worst devs every time they have to make software for Windows. Apple hates mouses, but many people won’t consider not using one, so they reluctantly make an expensive, pretty, and absolutely terrible mouse to get you over the hump of the macOS switch then keep pushing you along to where they really want you: the giant touchpad, where they do have a moat, and which trains you for the rest of their ecosystem. They even sneak half of that touchpad into the mouse itself, and half of the mouse out, so the transition is oh so easy.

[yurishimo]

I have been a desktop trackpad user for so long now, I literally don’t want to use a mouse for anything except playing video games. The amount of flexibility offered by a good trackpad just wins most of the time as it is plenty accurate for quickly jumping around on one axis.

With a large enough trackpad, you could even move to a 1:1 type of movement, or add that functionality to a layer for the best of both worlds (like gyro enhanced aiming in games).

[_doctor_love]

Wacom wants your money!

I’ve worked with some designers who did what you described with their huge tablets. Use the stylus to turn it into a giant touchpad. Works pretty good.

[acdha]

This is off-topic and it’s especially a waste of attention because it’s a social media meme, not a real problem. People who actually use them don’t spend time talking about it because it means every few months you plug it in long enough for a coffee break, and in return you can use it for many years without the connector breaking.

[wtallis]

Even if you set aside the stupid charging situation, it's still a bad mouse. The multitouch capabilities are not well used by the software, and it's the only mouse I've ever used that routinely sends scroll events while I'm just trying to click or drag. Their laptops are pretty good at rejecting accidental touchpad inputs despite those touchpads being quite large, but the mouse is a constant source of unintentional inputs.

[ksec]

This! It is a bad design because it is a compromise. It is flat because of the need of multitouch, which doesn't get used. And because of this flatness it is not ergonomic to hold it.

It is neither a good trackpad replacement nor a good mouse design.

[zapzupnz]

> which doesn’t get used

Any non-anecdotal data on that assertion?

[acdha]

I can’t say I’ve ever had that problem. Multitouch still works great on the one I bought in 2010 after near daily usage. You’re not required to like it, of course, but I think it’s a question of personal preferences more than an objective good/bad verdict.

[m463]

Best I can say about it - at least it's not round.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_puck_mouse

[numpad0]

obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMX2cQdPubk&t=737s

[xiaoyu2006]

How is Magic Mouse even close to ergonomics lol

[yurishimo]

Do you use a Magic Mouse? It’s really not that bad if your only computer use consists of social media and the occasional budgeting spreadsheet.

And before you mention it, yes the charging cable. In reality, plugging it in for literally 1 minute will get you enough battery to last hours. 5 minutes will get you an entire day. Normal people plug it in and go get a coffee or pee and then it’s fine until they log off for the day. Could it better? Of course, but it’s not so large an issue that they are losing customers on it, so it is what it is.

You’re not the target market for an Apple mouse and that’s okay.

[ashdksnndck]

You’ve convinced me. I hope on the next iPhone, they make it so you have to put the MagSafe puck on the front where the screen is instead of that back where it is now.

[m463]

"You’re not the target market"

Unfortunately I had to learn this when I got my first mac.

You don't have to go very deep into the ecosystem to encounter things that... well, things bottom out at shallow.

Looking back... glossy displays. flat keyboards without curvature to center your fingers on the keys. more and more hurdles to using macos as a technical person. prematurely missing USB-A. memory/storage that's not expandable. Dongles everywhere as a checkbox item/workaround.

and of course, anything that superficially seems to be a mouse.

[spartanatreyu]

It's not just the terrible charging that makes it a bad product.

It's also the terrible ergonomics.

It's the epitome of putting form before function. It's a desk ornament that leads to frequent injuries with use. See: https://www.google.com/search?q=magic+mouse+injury

[wookmaster]

I was always baffled by people who use the Apple mouse and keyboard my wrists hurt just looking at them

[unshavedyak]

Man did I despise that keyboard. I went from hating that to adoring my M3. Which feels good because I loved my MacBook before those butterfly switches, and again I love my MacBook now.

I almost left apple entirely over those stupid switches lol.

[analogpixel]

Maybe I wasn't in the minority of people that stopped updating macos to wait for them to remove it.

[GeekyBear]

Apple has always tweaked new UI designs over the first few OS releases.

They did it with Aqua when MacOS launched and again with the iPhone's original skeuomorphic UI and yet again with the flat redesign of iOS.

[marbletiles]

What they don’t do is open their keynotes with announcements of the tweaks. This isn’t like the other situations.

[try-working]

Of course. Every company does that. There is no company ever that just freezes after they release something.

[tsunamifury]

He means the classic revolution/evolution cycle. Move forward, and then refine. This means you have to accept some errors in the name of momentum.

[tomduncalf]

Yeah I’m surprised by what a design misstep it was. The shiny corners of icons on iOS look so tacky and on macOS the corner radius mismatch is crazy. Also not a fan of the “bulbous” shapes of things with excessive rounded corners.

Whenever I use my personal Mac or iPad, still on the old OS, I wonder what they were thinking - I would guess it was rushed to hit the annual release, as it does have potential in parts.

That said, it looks from the few screenshots in this like you’re able to pare it back to something much closer to how it used to look, which is great and I’m glad they’re taking feedback on board.

[wpm]

The screenshots are generous. I just spent a few hours in macOS 27 and while yes, some of the absolutely galling and baffling errors have been rolled back, it's still bad.

I cannot help but think: they are such cowards, so afraid of anything that stands out after years of flat design. Like, you can almost feel like there is someone trying to sneak it in, only for it to get squeegeed at the last minute. The buttons could look like classic Aqua ( if they are allowed a background color that is), if it got slammed with a belt sander. Everything has to be too subtle, too toned down, too pale, and too faint, only noticable blown up to 4x on an OLED screen. It's like all they are allowed is "mimiminalizm", just remove, remove, remove, tone down, remove, slavishly, without thought. I'm supposed to cheer they added color back to in-focus window sidebars? First: good lord, what were they thinking? Of course they rolled such an utterly stupid decision back. Second: what color? Some single accent color applied to some whisper thin monochrome squiggles they call icons?

Its still more of the same. In the Installer app, there are windows where the dividing line between toolbar and content is like a 1px 30% grey line on same old bland 20% grey background, and that's with the new "Draw Borders" Accessibility setting turned on.

They can dress it up. Fix the worst issues. I'm thankful for it. Hell, I might not skip this one. But the problem still remains: Liquid Glass was a *bad, flawed* design from the start, whose central principle is contradictory (we'll get out of the way of your content by floating directly in front of your content all the time, in the way). There is no salvaging it.

[robomartin]

I would love to be able to have a conversation with the people who decided Liquid Glass was a good idea. The first question would be:

Given all other truly useful things you could implement as well as bug fixes, why did you think that investing time and money on Liquid Glass would deliver useful value to users?

I wonder how much time and money they wasted on something that nobody wanted, cared for, needed or solved any real problem?

[sethops1]

My theory is they made Liquid Glass for the Watch first, where (IMHO) it's actually pretty great, and assumed it would translate well to iOS and macOS, which in retrospect it did not.

[zulux]

Sort of how Microsoft made Windows 8 look like a Zune.

[adi_kurian]

Zune was low key pretty damn solid. (Yes, I lived in Redmond as a teenager.) In fact I may even say it was their last gasp of a solid user interface. Right before Vista.

[Lammy]

Zune HD was itself based on the UI design of Windows Media Center: https://www.redmondpie.com/windows-media-center-in-windows-7...

[andrewl-hn]

> Apple very rarely admits mistakes

Excep every time they do a big redesign like this. This happened when they moved away from skeuomorphism in iOS7(?) and then backpedalled hard in the following revision because of negative user feedback. Similar thing happened when they presented the reinvented Safari (I do't think that one even survived through betas). And it is happening now.

[sirwhinesalot]

It didn't happen when they introduced Leopard, because the new design was legitimately better than the ugly brushed aluminium look that preceeded it.

When they toned down the horrific excesses of skeumorphism (like leather textures) on macOS but still retained some skeumorphic design (e.g., buttons that look like buttons) people were pretty ok with it too. I remember some complaints that the lickable aqua buttons were gone but that wasn't really a serious complaint, just more of a "I kind of liked those gaudy buttons, sad they're gone" type of sentiment.

[matesz]

I bet they planned this before the initial release and actually had this capability then and there. Just needed some guinea pigs (aka their users) to learn more and establish the trend.

[kefabean]

well, they also needed the initial release to facilitate a 'speed bump' in the new release, so perhaps!

[mjsweet]

“We are sorry and we think we fixed it… ok, here is a slider”

[firemelt]

so bad like john ive ferarri lmao

[dry_soup]

Maybe I’m misremembering but I feel like Steve Jobs era Apple was much better at admitting mistakes. Nowadays even fiascos like the butterfly keyboard don’t warrant an apology, just a quiet change.

[dmitrygr]

At least, unlike microslop, they ARE fixing things based on user feedback.

[thewebguyd]

So is Microsoft, albeit a bit late to the party. Taskbar now movable, performance improvements hitting insider builds, MS BUILD half about WSL containers, native coreutils, a dev edition of windows using Winget config to strip all the bloat out, all new system dialogs replacing a good chunk of the old Win32 stuff, WinUI reactor, ability to remove AI models & Copilot from the OS, etc.

Classic case of the reality distortion field here.

[dmitrygr]

Oh? So I can now disable "AI" and "onedrive" and "microsoft accounts" in windows? COOL! where do i enable that?

[thewebguyd]

You always could disable OneDrive (it's uninstallable), and you could always use a local account on Pro editions of Windows, that's nothing new.

Uninstalling Copilot and the local AI models is whats new on current insider builds.

[dmitrygr]

https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+blocks+local+accou...

https://redmondmag.com/articles/2025/10/08/microsoft-ends-lo...

[thewebguyd]

Hmm, funny, because I literally just set up a Win11 PRO machine yesterday, I could still create a local account, no bypass script needed.

Your links only apply to Home editions.

[Melatonic]

Wait - what is the dev edition of windows?

[thewebguyd]

Edition is probably a bit generous (although that's the verbiage they used at the BUILD conference), but its a set of winget configs (works like Ansible) to disable a bunch of stuff, install WSL, starship, coreutils, node, python, whatever other SDKs you want, etc. with one command. https://github.com/microsoft/WindowsDeveloperConfig

I believe they used the word edition because they plan on offering W365 cloud VMs with this config pre applied.

[moogly]

Jobs: "You're holding it wrong, idiot."

Also Jobs: fires the antenna designer

[Y-bar]

Multiple things can be true:

We could be holding it wrong, and Jobs be correct to point out that many rival phones at the time literally had manuals dictating how to hold their phones to avoid reception issues.

The antenna designer could have done a better job, preventing the situation, thereby not dragging Jobs into a PR storm.

Jobs could have handled the situation and communication _significantly_ better.