this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
667 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
79674 readers
3941 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Mac is going to shit too, which is so sad since that transition to ARM was a huge success. Their OS is ridiculously janky dogshit now. It’s not Microsoft level bad but it’s heading in the same direction.
I’m glad I finally started switching. The Linux stuff is more annoying in some ways but in predictable and therefore manageable ways. Mac=there is no war in bag sing sei. Windows=I have altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further.
There was a period when "ergonomics" became something users assumed to have been achieved for all eternity. Late 90s, early 00s, when developers generally made UIs following strict guidelines and looking natively with no designer bullshit.
Before that period (and before popularization of computers) "ergonomics" was something absolutely paramount, half of any mechanism a human uses. Another half would be the actual functionality, which differed between domain areas, but ergonomics didn't. And once a factory would start issuing those mechanisms with some kind of control panel, it wouldn't just release an update a few days earlier, no Star Trek transporters, no Harry Potter transfiguration, Carl!
So, somehow making ergonomic UIs is now irrelevant for profitability of making a product.
It's not really about AI. It's not really about ads. It's not really about telemetry. And it's not even really about something being slow.
It's just about ergonomics of old concepts implemented being by inertia not totally awful, but gradually worsening, and ergonomics of new concepts implemented being non-existent. That's all.
After spitting left and right for a few years even I would generally be fine with agentic AI or whatever else. If those things had ergonomic controls. They don't.
What is wrong with Mac? I find macOS to be very clean and nice. I find it similar to KDE Plasma.
I gave up with MacOS a couple of years ago (after nearly a lifetime of using them - my first 'own' Mac was a Lombard PowerBook G3 - lovely machine,) because it became increasingly apparent that Apple had stopped caring about the desktop operating system and were intent on turning it into a mobile phone with a keyboard and bigger screen.
Annoying desktop bugs - like constantly (and randomly) forgetting the resolution and position of second displays, not powering up external USB drives properly after sleep, and (as a developer) endlessly having to fight with "why is my build suddenly broken? oh, MacOS decided it doesn't trust the linker again" type problems just wore me out. Every time they released some pointless new UI fluff but ignored the fact that the Finder had been essentially unusable since Mac OS X (because why should you be using the Finder anyway, you should just trust that your files are stored in Magic Apple Cloud Land...) just reminded me they really didn't care about desktop users, they just want desktops as accessories to their mobile phones.
So, I cut the cord and finally switched to Linux on the desktop. Which is a shame, because they do make some really nice hardware...
(Although now that I'm actively trying to cut all US suppliers out of my life, it's actually been a blessing.)
Okay, cmd+space and search.
Waits.
Fucking why?
Results pop up, if what I want is on top (never is) I click and just before I do, it changes the top result and opens something else.
Fucking why?
Liquid Glass just existing.
Fucking why?
Giant window corner radius
Fucking why?
Dynamic resorting lists are awful.
I dont use macs, havent for years, but its genuinely sad their ui has fallen to that low.
It’s also ridiculous that I’ve never got to this point in the first place. Spotlight was a solved problem. It was fast as hell. You type, it did. That was it no drama no waiting nothing it just did the thing and it did it fast and predictably then this last update comes out and they ruined spotlight.
My iphone just updated to the version with liquid glass and it's the worst thing I have every fucking seen. Wasted space on the edges, over exaggerated animations, moving buttons that are normal (contacts in the phone app) from 1 click to 2+ depending on what ever fucking mood is is in, the lag on all the buttons where things bop around right as you click as if it's loading ads on a page right before clicking a URL. I gave it a week and then sold my phone and go and android. Hurts breaking an entirely apple ecosystem household,but fuck liquid glass.
Apple‘s mobile UI definitely needed a visual overhaul. It’s time. But liquid glass was a step in the wrong direction. I’m firmly in the camp of neumorphism. This was horseshit. This does not solve a problem. It is not visually interesting. It is an obstacle in every goddamn fucking way. This says they had no engineers or designers in the room when they made this, it was all business majors and they fucking suck.
Why not good old 3d controls (or skeuomorphism) like in Winamp classic skin or Windows 3.11 or you get the general idea?
Why even combine fake 3d with flatness?
Also "electronic paper" (as in no 3d look, just lines and geometric figures and fillings, but not what's called flat design - element borders are lines, elements without borders don't exist) - fine. Think, if talking Apple, MacOS 8, but with less pretense.
Neumorphim mockups I’ve seen were visually interesting, clean and easy to read and understand, and flexible.
I have a Mac for work (dev shit) and used to love it. Still prefer it over Windows, but what really bugs me: All the preinstalled jank you can't get rid of makes it do weird default behavior way too often. And the screens man. Trying to use multiple monitors on a dock makes me hate my life a little more every day. It's an absolute shitshow
I'm a developer who uses both Linux and Mac (because of company machine) for work. Directly comparing them every day, I'm just much more happy with the Gnome (with popshell) experience than Mac all the time
I’ve actually been really enjoying MacOS because of how they’ve sort of abandoned it. There’s no gimmicky bullshit in it. It’s just simple and old school and just works.
Maybe I’ll give it a fresh install when the next OS releases.