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.