In Tahoe, they broke that for 3rd party menu bar icons (and some Apple ones) See video: https://shot.3e.org/ss-20250918_074040.mp4
This worked fine until Tahoe.
It gets stranger, though - this is only broken if the menu bar is light-colored. That means it's broken if Reduce Transparency is turned on - OR if it's off, but you're using a very light (white or light gray) colored desktop background.
This isn't just the canary in a coal mine. The miners are dead. The mine has collapsed.
This reduces cognitive load when operating the mouse. I miss that on macOS.
I absolutely love the machine. It’s by far the best hardware I’ve used and it makes up for everything and then some. But I’ve got to say the OS really sucks.
Settings have been half-assed so many times that random options require going back three or four generations back into the control panel. Modal confirmation boxes that must be dealt with before you can do anything else with your computer are a constant occurrence. Everyone feels the need to completely redesign their own UI chrome. Updating drivers requires remembering going to a dozen separate vendors and manually fetching them (not to mention knowing where to go in the first place). It's filled to the brim with ads that need to be disabled across five or six different places, that need to be re-disabled every upgrade. Every developer, including Microsoft itself, spams notifications for absolutely inane things. And on and on and on.
macOS isn't perfect by any means. But the level of abject disdain for users going on in the Windows ecosystem these days is impossible to ignore.
I don't think so. I use all 3 OSs and they all have their strengths. macOS major strength for me is the hardware that comes with it. But the OS is so unbearable that I hardly use it.
Linux is better in a lot of ways way than Windows and macOS since you can customize it. But the catch is that it takes a bit of constant work and knowledge to tame it.
It's pretty clear how many sharp edges macOS has because there's an entire market of tools to fix it.
Window management: Windows > Linux > macOS.
Games: Windows > Linux Proton > macOS.
Battery (partly because of hardware): macOS > Windows > Linux
Performance (laptops): macOS > Linux > Windows
> Settings have been half-assed
Whenever I see someone complain about windows setting I know they barely use it, or use it in a non-power user way because when I need to access a setting, I just press Windows key and type part of the word I need to access. It searched settings from there. Only grandma navigates settings with a cursor.
> Modal confirmation boxes that must be dealt with before you can do anything else with your computer
If the operation will permit changing system files, yes, and that is good. In my experience I get one or 2 of these per day. Some days none.
> Updating drivers requires remembering going to a dozen separate vendors.
For some hardware perhaps. And that's because Windows runs in almost all PCs that are not macs. But for popular hardware, windows updates also downloads drivers. I think I only installed NVidia driver and that's because I wanted to keep it at a fixed version.
> that need to be re-disabled every upgrade
Not my experience but maybe because I use Windows Pro version.
All this being said, I still prefer my Mac. The battery life, screen, speed — basically the hardware — is so good that it makes up for all of the shittyness in the OS.
You're thinking of UAC popups, on which I agree with you.
However, I've frequently turned on Windows PCs to see a full-screen dialog telling me to sign into a Microsoft account or install Office or whatever new thing MS is pushing.
And to add insult to injury, these aren't YES/NO dialogs, and often require multiple clicks to dismiss, and have no option to say "Never show this", only "Remind me in 3 days".
Try that with GOG Galaxy (it's app-dependent).
GOG Galaxy is an app that redraws everything from scratch with bad UI.
It's funny because they use floating controls with excessive spacing, just like Apple's new theme. And that was the culprit in their case: https://i.imgur.com/dsey4c3.png
I would file a bug if I worked there as QA.
I’m not surprised they’ve also broken the pointer for anyone using a trackpad or mouse.
Similarly, if you decide that your button positioned at the edge of the screen actually shouldn't be an infinitely long click target, you aren't breaking Fitts' Law. You might be doing it with Fitts' Law in mind, or not, but Paul Fitts' ghost isn't waiting in the shadows to prosecute small buttons. Some actions should be difficult!
With that said, they definitely screwed up here, but I don't like when we're like "but Fitts' Law" and act like that proves our point on its own. If they wanted, they could "Fitts' Law" right back at you.
There are too many aggressive regressions for power users over recent versions of Apple software, and now Tahoe is broken in every way.
I miss the days of System 7, but Apple didn't really lose it until sometime around iWork 13. Looking at what they had in iWork 09 and what came as a release 4 years later was shocking and it hasn't changed directions since.
PaulHoule•4mo ago
Of course the competition is the folks who made the logo for their OS a trash can and are oblivious to what that means. That's how they can get away with it.
tyleo•4mo ago
What do you mean? I honestly have no idea.
bobwaycott•4mo ago
PaulHoule•4mo ago
https://yamato.fandom.com/wiki/Analyzer_(OS)
and he looks like a half-walking, half-rolling trash can. (All of Star Wars was a rip-off of Space Battleship Yamato)
JustExAWS•4mo ago
It is the first OS version that made my iPad Air 3 (released in 2019 with an A12 processor) feel slightly sluggish. But I could see using it with a Bluetooth key used and mouse without hating myself.
I’m waiting for my wife to get back to see how it feels on her current generation M3 13 inch iPad Air.