Reminder to wait a couple of months before upgrading macOS! Every single time issues are found after a new macOS version, give it a little bit of time before jumping right away on your work machine :)
Reminder to wait a couple of months before upgrading macOS! Every single time issues are found after a new macOS version, give it a little bit of time before jumping right away on your work machine :)
Normally I’d agree.
But my experience with 26 hasn’t been great. From the top of my head: Random repeated flashing window chrome in the background, notifications that keep on showing while everything is disabled, Finder tooltips from four windows down, tooltips that don’t disappear, Java update interruptions that hijack your flow - just when you where about to hit enter for something else the pop-up shows and bam: you’re installing it. There is nothing right about the update process of Java anyway. Spotlight search has completely stopped working. People I’m mailing with for over a decade are not suggested when drafting a mail. Clicking on the dock icon does not reveal the app. The list goes on and on. It has been a total grueling experience. Worst in all my experiences since System 7.
I’ve shut down the notification system at some point, which alleviated the constant reminders of non-compatibility with the next OS version. Being reminded of that four times a day for months on end is just insulting, even if I used compatible versions. There was no way to shut it off. Notifications are lazily designed and completely uninspired, as they could also adjust the app icons and so on and actually do it right.
I promised myself to update once it came out and then just screen record everything to collect residual garbage to help the Apple team make this stuff work well for everyone.
Sorry to let this all out, but it has been on my mind for a while and I’m happy they say they focussed on quality. Therefore I’m upgrading asap this time.
How do you shut down the notification system?
Without any warranty, you need to get rid of NotificationCenter and usernoted. The first gets rid of the gui, the second of the entire infrastructure.
launchctl disable "gui/$(id -u)/com.apple.notificationcenterui" killall NotificationCenter 2>/dev/null || true
launchctl disable "gui/$(id -u)/com.apple.usernoted" killall usernoted 2>/dev/null || true
To refine my statement on lazy or non-design. Notifications can be valuable, for me i'd like backup notifications and find my messages. Only those, ever. When only those are enabled, MacOS has their own secret settings and is allowed to nag about updates, incompatibility and maybe some other things i don't remember. Part of the problem is the illusion of control, and being spammy about self-importance of new OS versions. Great for some users, insulting to me.
This is made even worse by "focus" which still shows notifications but without the text. Then i'm distracted AND i don't know why.
I'm still on Sequoia (which took me ages to jump to from Ventura). :)
For anyone jumping versions: remember that Apple messed with the login keychain not being able to be backed up in the most recent Tahoe release [1], which means that issue will be around in Golden Gate.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49651046
Me too. I was just thinking recently about updating from Sequoia, now I've got to take a while and reconsider everything.
I'm staying on Sequoia for at least one more year.
iOS 27 is pretty good though.
I was on Sequoia as well, and just updated ... first thing I noticed is LaunchPad is gone.
The Tahoe Dock "App View" / Spotlight just lists my 30 installed apps intermingled with Apple System Apps, which I hardly ever use. Hard coded categories, no way to re-order as far as I can tell.
Seems like the closest thing to LaunchPad is dragging ~/Applications to the Dock.
The other thing I have noticed is scrolling in Firefox is more choppy, and animations are more Janky than Sequoia on this old MacBook Air M1.
I feel pretty good about the 27 series in a way I haven't in the past (I've been running iOS 27 and it's working well), except for one thing, they remove x86 support (no more Rosetta), so just keep that in mind in case that might disrupt anything for you.
People have already replied in part, but to clarify:
macOS 27 itself won't run on Intel chips, just Apple Silicon
but it does still have Rosetta (macOS 28 will drop it completely though)
you’re right, thanks for clarifying!
Rosetta is still present in 27.
I keep getting so many warnings about this though - maybe I'm misreading it? is 27 the LAST version with Rosetta maybe?
Yes, 27 is the final Rosetta version. The warnings are worded in a way that makes sense if you already know that but are easy to misunderstand if you don’t. I think they initially didn’t want to commit to the next version being called macOS 28. The final 27 release has started explicitly saying it’s going away in 28 which makes it a lot more straightforward.
I thought they weren't removing Rosetta until macOS 28. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102527
I normally suggest the same, but 26 has been universally bad. This is the "point release" or "Snow Leopard" edition of 26.
Sequoia is still supported and very solid right now. I'll probably skip Tahoe and update around 27.5.
So far, I haven’t read many complains about GG. Only the huge amount of space that the AI takes on the disk
As it stands Sequoia is the last good version of the OS.
Don't worry I am still on Sonoma :)
I'm still on Sequoia and I have zero intention of updating to this AI-saturated slop.
There are over 200 security patches in the newest versions of macOS. AI is helping patch previously unrealized holes.
> AI is helping patch previously unrealized holes.
AI is also making plenty of holes.
I have not seen a single case of anything that an AI has found that could not have been automatically found without AI.
Mozilla had 400 Firefox CVEs found by Mythos; if those were so easy to find, why didn’t humans do it before?
Humans did do it before.
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It's also worth pointing out that the developers at Mozilla literally decided to make a brand new programming language (Rust) that eliminated an entire categories of bugs and started working on a new browser (Servo) where its components could be switched into firefox.
Then Mozilla fired the team working on it.
Lesson 1: Better tools and processes eliminate bugs.
Lesson 2: If you don't have the tools, make them.
Lesson 3: Mismanagement leads to security vulnerabilities.
> It's also worth pointing out that the developers at Mozilla literally decided to make a brand new programming language (Rust)
In my memory, that does not seem 100% right. And indeed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)#20... says a single developer who happened to work at Mozilla started it as a personal project.
After a few years Mozilla became interested in it and then sponsored its development, transforming it into the language it is today.
Good point about the whole new language as a tool for eliminating many thousands(?) as a whole category
Yes, and even after introducing and using Rust, there were still vulns in the remaining code.
FWIW, Rust is my main language, so I am grateful to the humans that created it, and it is indeed a monumental effort. But vuln finding is a different kind of creative endeavour, and one that is heavily weighted against defenders.
Yes, which is why you don't stop at rust.
You would choose rust (from a security standpoint) because it massively reduces memory safety issues (which from a Microsoft study was responsible for around 70% of bugs).
Then you look at things like linting, fuzzing, design by contract, proofing, deterministic test runs, etc...
As I said above: use better tools and processes.
LLMs don't fit that criteria.
If Apple wanted to make the OS more secure, they would make the OS more modular, allowing users to reduce the surface risk by not installing bloated components
You have the same long list for Sequoia 15.8, so how is that better? Besides, newer OSes are also more likely to have uniquely knew bugs from both AI slop and in general all the shiny new broken features
i'm sure most of those patches will keep coming to Sequoia over the coming years
They've already come?15.8 has a long list of vulns fixed
Yes, I should have been clear - I don't mind AI working on patches or vuln-hunting; my issue with MacOS 27 is the amount of AI included in the OS that is not opt-in. I use Claude Code everyday - but it doesn't run locally on my main production machines.
I finally upgraded to Tahoe a couple weeks ago after putting it off for ages. As soon as it came up, my external monitor (connected by DVI to a caldigit dock) started being flaky af. I have to reconnect 2-3 times to get it to properly detect.
cool beans.
This seems to be the consensus viewpoint but outside of a few highly specific and known-in-advance incompatibilities on work laptops, I have been essentially a day-one adopter since Leopard and I cannot recall any issues that rose above a minor annoyance.
There have certainly been changes like Liquid Glass that were for the worse overall (though the degree of which had been highly overblown). But outside of directional disagreement with a release, I can’t say I’ve ever seen an issue where I’ve regretted pulling the trigger on an update.
I’ve been running it for a couple months, I’d say we’re pretty much out of danger.
yes. I have been waiting 12 months already because Tahoe didn't convince many people, and I dread the moment I upgrade my mpb m3. Maybe I should just keep the factory OS
I don't understand this viewpoint. So, the release version is 27.0 build 26A428. That build is static, how can it get more stable than it is right now? Lets say 27.1 comes out in 2 weeks - do you update to 27.0 instead of 27.1? When is it snappy enough?
There have been far more buggy iOS releases than stable ones. A few years in particular were absolute disasters until December or January. It is very sound graybeard advice to wait until the .1 release. Apple has not earned the trust to upgrade on day 1.
I don’t understand what you mean by snappy. Apple is notorious for releasing buggy macOS major versions. You wait 6 months, then upgrade without having to be their tester. Snappiness has nothing to do with that, any macOS version on apple silicon is snappy
Taking this at face value they say wait for the incremental updates. I think some big rollouts have had fringe issues and they are saying to minimize the probability you get a random bug it's better to wait for a 27.x or 27.0.x before upgrading, and to upgrade to that one, not 27.0
Maybe it's time to upgrade from Sequoia? But a few more months can't hurt :)
In theory that makes sense, in practice I've never had any issues with updating on day one and it's often necessary if you want to develop for iOS / macOS anyway unless you have a dedicated developer machine.
I just updated my Mac Studio from Sequoia to Tahoe.
Gotta say, a massive downgrade.
why did you do that to yourself when an alleged fix is coming in a few months?
Figured it might be slightly less painful to update one major version at a time.
iPadOS 27 also isn't looking so hot that I'd believe macOS 27 to be a magic bullet.
I used to always do this but I hate liquid glass with such passion that I even upgraded to an iOS beta just to get any improvements to it. Worst UI update in the history of the company.
I have updated macOS and iOS around day one of release since 2008 and have yet to experience meaningful issues, AMA.
There is not much point in asking if you're so imperceptive
yep last time it completely broke Internet but fortunately there was a workaround available via cellular
Good advice.
You don't have to! I always update the day of. So far, no regrets!
You do you. I backup and install once the RC goes live. Have done for years. Only problem I recall was a few years ago Homebrew got in a tizzy for a day.
One exception maybe is for music producers. For some reason AU/VST/DAW developers don't seem to take part in the beta programs and their software can take a while to get updated. But I've happily been playing with Bitwig (with some Arturia VSTs) over the weekend on Golden Gate without issue.
I keep the studio computer OS a full version behind.
My impression from audio developers is that the audio infrastructure is very badly documented (like so much of MacOS nowadays) and using it properly requires a combination of luck, WWDC videos, and devrel threads. Also, Apple introduces changes that are genuine improvements in theory, but break undocumented assumptions.
The lack of rigor is a bit surprising given that audio is probably the only mission-critical hard-real-time thing MacOS does. People routinely run an entire live concert on a Mac and an audio glitch is not OK! (Yes, if it’s Taylor Swift budget then there are at least two machines in sync with a big red button to switch over…)
But given what they’re dealing with, I understand why it’s more involved than just “the developers didn’t try the betas”.
I think it’s because apple has no competition with regards to audio, there is close to no pressure to document and QA things properly