This. I have been a big (and loud) fan of M-series hardware from the beginning, but if Apple is going to keep making their software worse, I will find myself lingering on older generations that run Asahi Linux or going back to a traditional x86_64 laptop instead of buying into new generations.

I don't trust Asahi after the whole Asahi Lina thing. Lina being an alt in denial of her other identity is a big red flag. If Hector was honest about it I would feel differently. The deception behind the Lina identity is very weird to me.

I'm not sure what Hector's personal choices have to do with not "trusting" a piece of software? It's open source, so if you don't trust the quality of the software, then just inspect it yourself?

Also, FWIW: Hector/Lina is no longer associated with Asahi anymore.

Oh, who cares about that?

You making a big deal out of it is very weird to me.

I've upgraded to Tahoe at 26.2, zero complaints from my side. Haven't had any runaway memory leaks or similar that were reported.

Same here. I know some people are unhappy with some of the UX tweaks but honestly I don't notice much of it. The whole liquid glass thing is a bit gimmicky. Other than that, I don't see much difference. The rounded corners on windows are a bit silly. But I don't spend a lot of time fiddling with windows. Most of my windows are maximized (not full screen). I'm sure there are other issues people dislike that I just haven't noticed.

I use my laptop for development. I don't actually use most of the built in applications. My browser is Firefox, I use codex, vs code, intellij, iterm2, etc. Most of that works just fine just as it did on previous versions of the OS. I actually on purpose keep my tool chains portable as I like to have the option to switch back to Linux when I want to. I've done that a few times. I come back for the hardware, not the OS.

In my experience, if you don't like Apple's OS changes that is unfortunate but they don't seem to generally respond to a lot of the criticism. Your choices are to get further and further out of date, switch to something else, or just swallow your pride. Been there done that. Windows is a "Hell No" for me at this point. I'll take the UX, with all the pastel colors that came and went and all the other crap that got unleashed on macs over the last ten years. Definitely a case of the grass not being greener on Windows. Even with the tele tubby default desktop in XP back in the day.

I can deal with Linux (and use that on and off on one of my laptops). However, that just doesn't run that well on mac hardware. And any other hardware seems like a big downgrade to me. Both Windows and Linux are arguably a lot worse in terms of UX (or lack thereof). Linux you can tweak. And you kind of have to. But it just never adds up to consistent and delightful. Windows, well, at this point liking that is probably a form of Stockholm Syndrome. If that doesn't bother you, good for you.

So, Mac OS it is for me as everything else is worse. I've in the past deferred updates to new versions of Mac OS as well. Generally you can do that for a while but eventually it becomes annoying when things like homebrew and other development toys start assuming you run something more recent. And of course for security reasons you might just not drag your feet too long. Just my personal, pragmatic take.

Is your Spotlight usable? Mine literally will not find an app

Searching for Chat yields "Ask ChatGPT", "ChatGPT Atlas", "ChatGPT Atlas" the website, and chatgpt.com. Does not yield the actual ChatGPT.app which I have currently open lol.

Spotlight is so bad that they removed Launchpad to force people to use it.

Raycast replaced spotlight for me years ago. Highly recommend replacing your spotlight hotkey with it.

Closing Tabs in Safari till takes more than a second though. And if you hold Cmd-W to close all of them it just completely locks up and crashes. Still not fixed since the release of Safari 26.

Literally unusable

I'm on an M4 Pro MacBook-- basically the fastest computer you could buy from Apple before today-- and opening/closing the tab sidebar in Safari on Tahoe takes multiple seconds, even if I have only 4-6 tabs open, and seems to drop to 5 FPS. It's comically bad.

It's so bad I switched back to Chrome. I had thought Chrome had a major battery life penalty compared to Safari on Macs, but I checked more up-to-date info and apparently that's outdated.

Never had this problem, been on Tahoe since it released. My safari tabs are buttery, silken smooth.

I have this issue as well on multiple Tahoe Macs. Opening a new Safari window is 500ms to 1000ms. Adding a tab is faster most of the times. But Safari frequently loses tabs turning them into a blank page without a URL. Searching in the passwords app talkes multiple seconds. This is on multiple macs with different icloud accounts even.

I don't have that problem (new Safari window in < 100ms) but I believe you, LOL.

Because I have the problem on 7+ Macs (as in all mine, my kids', my sister's and my dad's (all of which I am primary tech support on)) where if I press ⌘+ to increase the font size on a website, it increases — and then immediately reverts back to the previous size.

Every single time. But only the first time. I just did it on this site to be sure it still happens.

Do it again, and it works.

It's been happening for at least one or two years, across more than one major OS upgrade. ¯\_(ಠ_ಠ)_/¯

Works fine for me. I wonder if you have some extension or script on one of the sites you use slowing down the tab closure.

I’ve been running the macOS 26.4 beta and have none of these issues.

I will say that 26.4 beta 2 was the first time I've regretting using betas since Sonoma beta 2. The Sonoma beta ruined the firmware on my machine and Apple had to replace the logic board; the latest Tahoe beta broke all networking on my machine and I had to erase the installation to fix everything. I've since dropped off the beta train for the time being.

I already left the beta train on my iPhone because I had too many issues getting my grocery apps to allow me to place orders without going to my laptop and doing it in a web browser.

Do you have more info on those crashes (e.g. crashlogs)? I work on Safari and might be able to get that forwarded to other people.

That's objectively false. I use safari all day everyday and have never experience any of that stuff.

This sounds like swap needing to be swapped in and then released. Check your memory usage.

I moved away from mac because of the OS and couldn't be happier. The hardware may be great but non-Apple hardware is fine too, and Linux is significantly better experience than MacOS these days.

The next macOS will be touch screen centric with elements getting bigger when you're close to touching them, rumors say. That being said, I run Tahoe and it works perfectly fine to me, I am not sure what issues people have with it. Sure, some corner radii aren't exactly the same but I honestly couldn't give less of a shit as long as it runs the programs I need.

Safari routinely using 20+ Gb of memory with a handful of tabs open. Safari tabs refusing to close. Unresponsive System Settings window. Random application freezes and crashes, Apple Music not playing music. This is on a 32Gb M1 Max. My M1 Air on Sequoia doesn't experience any of these issues, even if it has half the unified memory.

Just do a fresh OS install erasing full disk first. Then be careful what apps you add. Done.

Never seen any of this even once.

I never had any of those issues, but then again I don't use Safari or other Apple apps like music.

The fact that avoiding Apple-made software provides an overall better user experience is very telling

Not necessarily, because I never used Apple apps, it's not like I'm avoiding them now because they're ostensibly buggy (as others don't seem to have the same issues in this thread).

I read a rumor about it being “touch friendly instead of touch 1st”.

Presumably touch will be fully interchangeable and equivalent with mouse clicks and trackpad gestures.

Yeah this is a real issue with these new Macs. I would wait until macOS 27 to see the direction Apple takes.

Hopefully less `border-radius`.

Same. Im waiting for the next macOS release. Tahoe is ugly as hell

same, but will it change?

Unfortunately it won’t be long til we’re all forced up to Tahoe anyway. Well, ee iOS developers will be anyway once they make the latest Xcode only work with it…

Exactly. My org forces me to use Tahoe. The left hand slows you down while the right the right giveth performance and taketh money.

Just yesterday, my colleague's mac Time Machine couldn't recover backup and they had to reinstall everything.

But I think this predates Tahoe.

Silent corruption has been a feature of Time Machine for the last 19 years. But haven't you seen the new glass effects, isn't it cool?

What's wrong with Tahoe? I've been using it for quite a while and I haven't noticed anything odd?

Tahoe is just fine. Been using MacBooks since 2012 and never had an issue. UI just looks nicer now.