Honest question. Is it possible to install an earlier version of macOS on these machines? Liquid glass looks so.. unprofessional to my eyes. And I hear it's also unstable.

That's a big part of what's keeping me from upgrading. Every time I look at my wife's iPhone I'm dumbfounded by just how bad the liquid glass looks.

It's the first time I've ever been so repulsed by a design that I actively avoid it just... out of sheer preference.

I have a base M5 since last year. You cannot, no. It is literally impossible. Do with that what you will.

You barely see any liquid glass on Tahoe. I keep my dock hidden and it's just the icons mostly which aren't that different than before.

Same here. Not really understanding the complaints for macOS. I think the addition of icons in the context and menus is worse than glass.

accessibility settings can turn off some (but not all) of the garish animations, transparencies, etc.

It does look terrible, but I haven't found it to be unstable, personally

Yes. This page has several ways to get older macOS versions: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102662, but the earliest macOS version you can use on Apple Silicon is macOS 11.

If you move your home directory to a different disk partition, you can even share it between two different macOS versions!

these Macs can't go below Tahoe. People on Mac Rumours were complaining about M5 MacBooks unable to install Sequoia, so it's safe to assume Pro/Max chips will be the same.

This. You can’t downgrade below the version the device ships with (a forked build of the current version at time of mass production)