I’ve always respected macOS for being the 'stable' choice for not-as-techy people. But recent versions feel like a mess. Running Tahoe on my 2019 Mac Pro (Yes the cheese grater one) has been surprisingly frustrating. Simple things are broken: Ableton couldn't even trigger a microphone permission prompt, forcing me to meddle with a SQLite database, which is definitely not meant for end users to touch, just to get it working.
Logitech’s software is also stuck in a loop denying it has Bluetooth access (Which it has). And with the added graphical glitches (Apple likes to call them liquid glass) and weird window artifacts (For some reason, all my windows had a black, rectangular border one day), it’s honestly less reliable than my macOS-style Linux rice from 2015. But I'm still stuck with MacOS since I NEED Adobe Lightroom for my work and there is still now way to run that with GPU acceleration on Linux. But if there was, there would be no device running Windows/MacOS left in my household
I've also recently come upon this talk by an ex-apple UI/UX engineer: https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQ
I think what he's talking about is precisely what got lost at apple.
Edit: In case someone stumbles upon this after experiencing the same problem with ableton, here is the command I executed:
sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db "INSERT OR REPLACE INTO access VALUES('kTCCServiceMicrophone','com.ableton.live',0,2,4,1,NULL,NULL,0,'UNUSED',NULL,0,1725000000,NULL,NULL,'default',0);"
Disclaimer: I have absolutely no Idea what it does, as it was generated by Gemini. I do not have anything super important on this computer so I just executed it, but please don't touch obscure system files if you have data to lose.
Your Ableton and Logitech issues seem to be the same: screwed up access permissions. Not your fault, macOS has been sucking at it for a while. It’s not unheard of for System Settings to show you some app has some permissions, but in practice it doesn’t.
What usually works is fully resetting permissions for an app:
There definitely is something weird with Tahoe permission system. I was trying to learn Swift and after a couple keystrokes, the banner asking for the permission to access other's app data pops up without fail. Making it almost impossible to use Swift Playground. And it's been like that for a couple months now.
The System Settings panel for TCC permissions has been fucked since Ventura. It never reflects reality properly and won't show managed settings either (like those granted or denyed outright by a configuration profile). So users have no idea that Firefox can't access their microphone because their device administrator explicitly denied that. The redesign of System Preferences should have raised far more alarm bells than it did, and it did raise a fuck ton of alarm bells that something utterly broken is happening in Cupertino. Along the same line as the another comment in here said, it's just that some amateur is following the "wrong rules". Like, oh, we have to have the macOS settings app look and work exactly like iOS', despite being a far more complex system with a lot more legacy components.
I am literally writing a bug report right now for 26.2, because on my Mac, for whatever reason, running tccutil reset All on com.apple.Terminal isn't removing Full Disk Access. It removes everything else (screen recording, specific folder domain access, but not FDA).
I did try that amongst other things. Launching Ableton via Terminal also brought up the microphone permission pop-up...for the Terminal app. One has to wonder if a System that regularly "forgets" permissions is even secure at all.
> One has to wonder if a System that regularly "forgets" permissions is even secure at all.
It does not "forget", the permissions are limited to 30 days. So you have to re-grant them periodically.
Oh, and if you miss the popup (because sometimes it pops _under_ other windows) then you just start getting silent failures. With absolutely NO indication in the UI that something is wrong. There is literally no way to find that out without looking directly into the TCC database.
Yeah I'm hopeful that they spend the next software update atoning for their UI sins.
I remember being really excited for Liquid Glass, because it felt like a return to the good old days of Skeuomorphism, at least in some spirit. In reality, it was a botched delivery, I suspect for two reasons:
1. Trying to unify all of their design (in one year no less) against one style -- developed primarily on Apple Watch & the now defunct Vision Pro -- was a colossal undertaking.
2. There's so much goddamn software packed into each OS that you're going to inevitably be stuck with bloated menus. Imagine Apple releasing OS 27 this year and saying "we're stripping you down to the bare bones. It's going to feel like Snow Leopard, but we're going to give you customization menus to alter that experience." I would lose my mind with joy. I'd be so excited to be able to operate my fucking phone again.
No, Liquid Glass was stunted from its conception. Any UI designer worth his salt could have pointed out the legibility issues immediately.
The fact that no one (in power) saw a problem with Liquid Glass shows that Jobs was right, that letting the MBAs take the power never works out. And he was wrong for appointing Cook. Remember that Jobs made MacBooks "expensive" (no more expensive or even cheaper than a Vaio or Portege) because he wanted to make great devices with a great UX and UI, which needed a certain level of investment. Jobs loved his users. Cook only loves his shareholders.
But how would they do that without scrapping the whole version?
Their marketing for this year heavily relies on liquid glass but if they remove the shiny stuff, it’s not very pretty, it’s just functional. Functional is what people with work to do appreciate, marketing people will want the shiny back now that it was introduced.
I really don't think the shininess is the issue at hand. It's interface clutter. My iPhone is so cluttered. It's packed full of software I'll never use. I wade through menu options I'll never use.
I like the look of Liquid Glass and I'm generally for it. It just needs to be organized better.
> just functional
This is ultimately what I disagree with. I think iOS/macOS have become entirely dysfunctional. Software is broken, webpages are broken simply because they're running from OS 26. Alarms and calendar events either run randomly or not at all. The system preferences menu is hardly navigable. I could go on. Maybe I'm just getting old and crusty, and yearn for the days when Steve Jobs was running the ship.
They just pack needless software in and do nothing to keep it organized/usable.
> But how would they do that without scrapping the whole version?
There is a way for them to fix this while saving face. You see, Liquid Glass™ was just the first of their incredible new Material Design paradigm. Now introducing Apple Stone™, Apple Paper™, Apple Linen™ and Apple Brushed Metal™. All just as realistic as Liquid Glass™.
> Yeah I'm hopeful that they spend the next software update atoning for their UI sins.
I have heard Liquid Glass was in development for two years, so I see no hope of them spending all that money over again. Nevermind all the developers who have redesigned apps for IOS26.
They could just re-release IOS 18, but that would piss me off as a developer.
This is why I left the Apple Ecosystem last month, I see no hope.
That’s on point - it really reminds me of a Linux distro that someone went a bit too overboard on customizing. The inconsistencies are so familiar from cobbling different OS and window themes and icon sets etc together. One more reason to move away from MacOS since they don’t have that anymore either
I know someone who works on the macOS permission system. If you submit a bug report and share the feedback number, I will send it their way
https://bugreport.apple.com/
Tahoe broke trackpad scrolling in Safari on my 2023 MBP. Other users have been experiencing and reporting the issue for months. Apple still hasn’t fixed it in any of its updates or addressed it. Pretty bad.
>Simple things are broken: Ableton couldn't even trigger a microphone permission prompt, forcing me to meddle with a SQLite database, which is definitely not meant for end users to touch, just to get it working.
You shouldn't have to do any of that. Even if Live couldn't trigger the permission prompt, you should be able to give it a microphone permission in Settings.
For whatever reason, apps need to request the microphone permission first to show up in the settings menu. For other permissions you can drag/drop the application into the settings window, but not for the microphone permission.
I wonder if this is a symptom of a broader shift away from cathedral-style "owned" software toward bazaar-style free software, perhaps due to the ascendant SaaS model sucking investment away from traditionally shipped product teams, or if Apple is just sleepwalking down the slope of mediocrity.
What you are describing is a symptom of a system already in the process of breaking. The "OG Hacker Mentality" is a thing of the past, corporations are run by executives looking at money, maybe at shareholders but never at users. Most companies have internal processes with complexity comparable to government processes and outsourcing/using a SaaS for everything is just what managers do to get a short term win and thereby a promotion. UI/UX design on the other hand has to be done by a small group, with a very thought out concept and lots of freedom and no financial pressure. However, executives see UI/UX developers as glorified icon-generators. They are already talking about doing UI/UX design with AI. Tell me, when has an AI ever cared for usability?
A UI/UX Dev has two choices in 2026:
1. Try to execute their own vision and get shot down into burnout by management
2. Just make everything look shiny and modern, create demos that look great and get promoted
Exactly. The whole permissions system, while nice in theory, just does not work in practice most of the time. Apple needs to understand, that unifying experience across mobile/desktop is neither possible nor the right thing to do.
Yeah I really don’t get it at the end of the day. Laptop/desktop screen and the couple of inches on my phone cannot operate the same way anymore than a car and a motorized scooter can. They’re just not the same thing.
I guess they only work on Apple Silicon software by now and only do the absolute minimum on Intel/AMD support. It's getting phased out anyway next update, which is also a shame for a machine that 5 years ago cost more than a pretty great car.
Liquid Glass is horrible on my iPhone SE 2020. Slow and looks weird on the smaller screen. I tried to turn most effects off but it still is just worse in every way
Yes, I have 'reduce transparency' set to true. Overnight after upgrade the UI became noticably sluggish.
The outstanding example is Spotlight. For years since the M1 release I have been able to bring the bar up and type C-H-R then Enter, in ~500ms I guess, and I would always get Chrome.
Now, I have to wait another 1-2 seconds for it to think. If I hit enter before it has finished thinking, Spotlight goes away and nothing else happens!
The UI and Spotlight are still fine on my 2020 M1 Air running Sequioa
Fair enough. With Tahoe's removal of Launchpad, I assume you're talking about Spotlight in the sense of what appears when you press the Launchpad icon (F4)? Anyway, I can confirm that I also get very weird laggy behaviour from it—sometimes a double-press is interpreted as two presses, sometimes as just one.
I hadn't noticed that they killed Launchpad! On my M3's keyboard, F4 is a magnifying glass icon for Spotlight. I've always used cmd+space, which has been around for a while.
What's even worse is I have disabled all search categories for Spotlight except Apps and System Settings. It's searching a list of 40 apps and idk maybe 200 settings, and it still sucks.
I also never had a problem launching apps from Launchpad (I guess because that was its sole purpose, and it did it well) while I think it was pretty much day 1 that I encountered an app that just refused to show up in the Spotlight replacement.
I can only speak from personal experience. But as a 21 Year old, I'd definitely say that AI has made me so much more unproductive and reduced my attention span immensly. My Brain was already fried from social media and now there is always an "easy" way to do annoying but very educational tasks. And amongst my peers, especially those without a background in IT, misunderstanding and anthropomorphising has made this even worse. I think for people who already have great skills, AI will probably be helpful, not harmful. But for my generation, which has been through covid, social media and now has to figure out healthy AI usage, this is a fight already lost.
Eh, there's literally always something like this being told and doom and gloomed over. When I was 21 I heard almost the identical statement you said. Covid being the exception.
The only thing that matters is if YOU care. Do you like software? Do you want to learn and make something that was unatainable to you a year ago?
There's also a major difference between college and work so you shouldn't sweat it so much.
BlahDNS is nice, it's privately operated so uptime is not a guarantee but I have not had problems in years. Other than that, both Njalla and Mullvad provide DoH services, they are pretty reputable in regards to user privacy
DJ Pro AI is really underrated. Frequently updated, extremely fast and good hardware compatibility. While it may not be as "robust" as traktor, everything else feels like going back in time.
Get good shoes, this can make a huge difference. Apart from that it's just staying consistent and walking as much as possible and you'll be able to do over 20km pretty soon (depending on your current fitness ofc)
Logitech’s software is also stuck in a loop denying it has Bluetooth access (Which it has). And with the added graphical glitches (Apple likes to call them liquid glass) and weird window artifacts (For some reason, all my windows had a black, rectangular border one day), it’s honestly less reliable than my macOS-style Linux rice from 2015. But I'm still stuck with MacOS since I NEED Adobe Lightroom for my work and there is still now way to run that with GPU acceleration on Linux. But if there was, there would be no device running Windows/MacOS left in my household
I've also recently come upon this talk by an ex-apple UI/UX engineer: https://youtu.be/1fZTOjd_bOQ I think what he's talking about is precisely what got lost at apple.
Edit: In case someone stumbles upon this after experiencing the same problem with ableton, here is the command I executed:
sqlite3 ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db "INSERT OR REPLACE INTO access VALUES('kTCCServiceMicrophone','com.ableton.live',0,2,4,1,NULL,NULL,0,'UNUSED',NULL,0,1725000000,NULL,NULL,'default',0);"
Disclaimer: I have absolutely no Idea what it does, as it was generated by Gemini. I do not have anything super important on this computer so I just executed it, but please don't touch obscure system files if you have data to lose.