macOS Tahoe: see you in September

It’s becoming a habit. Earlier this year, instead of waiting, like I usually do, for the next version of macOS to be ready (or nearly ready) before installing the current one, I installed Sequoia on all my Macs. A few days ago, I decided to take the plunge and install the very first developer beta of Tahoe on a Mac that I don’t use much, mainly to try out the new Liquid Glass interface on macOS.¹

Since this is my first time trying a macOS beta, I cannot say whether previous versions were more or less mature than Tahoe at this stage of development, which admittedly is still far from the official release.

Therefore, I will share my first impressions of the new interface here, focusing in particular on the Finder, which is one of the most frequently used applications, and on System Settings, which is essential when getting familiar with a new operating system. After the official release in September, there will be time for a more in-depth evaluation.

Update

The update from Sequoia 15.5 to Tahoe 26 Beta weighs just over 7 GB, which seems in line with previous updates, and perhaps even slightly below average.

The installation of the new operating system is fast. I dont’t know exactly how long it took, but I was surprised when I found out that it was already finished.

After the update, the first thing you see is this screen, which gives a preview of Liquid Glass, with the buttons raised above the rest of the window. Here, there is no visible transparency effect yet, but there will be time for that, too.

Desktop and widgets

Once you click Continue, the Tahoe Welcome Screen appears, which, poor boy! looks like toothpaste writing overlaid on my Mac’s default background. Sadly, the days of the magnificent Welcome Videos of the early macOS versions with the big cat names are long gone.

From here, you go straight to the Mac Desktop, which now displays a few widgets on the left-hand side of the screen (some of the widgets do not show any information just because the screenshots were taken late at night, with an inactive internet connection).

I’ve never really liked widgets. On Tiger and later versions, I used a few, but only because they were neatly tucked away on a separate screen, the now forgotten Dashboard. Having them on the Desktop, which I use all day, just annoys me. I already know that, as soon as I finish this post, I’ll remove them without hesitation.

But there’s time for that. For now, I’m just going to change the wallpaper to Tahoe’s default.²

I’m not thrilled with the new wallpaper: there are too many details and gradients for my taste, and the contrast with light icons, such as the disk icon, is too low. But no one is forcing me to use this exact wallpaper, so this is a non-issue.

Finder

A true problem, however, are the application icons with the dark gray background, which literally make me jump out of my seat when I first opened the Finder.³

The original icons had a transparent background, which can be noticed simply by changing the background of the Applications folder in Sequoia or earlier macOS versions. For reasons beyond understanding, in Tahoe this invisible background is replaced by a dark gray tone, that is an understatement to define as ugly.

Clearly, Apple applications do not have this issue. However, as shown in the previous image, some of the most popular ones are affected by it, with Google Chrome being one of the main examples.

However, when I scroll down towards the less popular apps, I find lots of ugly icons bordered in gray! In some cases, the icons have even been shrunk, presumably due to the new dynamic scaling rules of Liquid Glass, making the gray area around them even larger. Who on earth came up with something like this?

This is not the only questionable aspect of the new Finder. Here, the familiar Toolbar has been replaced by separate groups of translucent icons that seem to float above the main window.

The change feels somewhat rushed, especially since they forgot to raise also the folder name. That said, the new toolbar can be considered acceptable, even if inconsistent, when there is a light background behind the icons (as shown in some of the images above).

But when the translucent icons of the Toolbar overlap the most colorful icons of the main Finder window (as shown in the image below), the result is a chaotic, unpleasant mix of colors, that makes it hard to tell one Toolbar icon from another.

Maybe using a stronger blur effect or reducing the transparency might help to avoid the issue. However, wouldn’t it be better to just stick with the old white toolbar, with the new floating icons on top?

And yes, I understand that everything must speak the liquid concept now, but was it really necessary to turn the cursor in the Finder’s status bar (the one in the bottom right corner that lets you resize the icons) into such a huge yet barely visible capsule?

On the other hand, the new Trashcan isn’t bad at all; it looks more modern than the classic cylindrical one we have always had. I do wonder how it would stand upright, but it is clear that skeuomorphism has been dead for a while now.

Still on the topic of the Finder: could someone explain why the Settings window in the Finder still has the slightly rounded corners from Sequoia, and why its icons look thinner than those in the sidebar of the main window?

The new Apps

The new Apps application, on the other hand, isn’t bad at all: it groups installed apps in a logical way, more or less as iOS already does. It definitely looks better than Launchpad, which I tried to use but quickly gave up on,⁴ though I don’t like the fact that it takes two clicks to access the apps in a given group.

Mission Control hasn’t changed, and I’m totally fine with that. I use it a lot, and I wouldn’t like to break my habits. The same goes for Chess, which I never play because I always lose, but that has been a part of macOS since… forever (and was present in its forefather, NeXTSTEP, too).

The other default applications don’t seem to have changed much either, but I’ll save a more detailed analysis for later.

System Settings

Lastly, a look at System Settings. I won’t to comment on how confusing it has become. Up to Monterey, a quick glance was enough to find what you needed. But ever since macOS started mimicking iOS, you basically have to rely on the search function every time you need to find some setting.⁵

What I will comment on is the new feature that globally changes the color of macOS Tahoe icons. Here you can see the Default icon style which, aside from the grayish border I mentioned earlier, is what we have always been used to seeing.

This image shows what happens when the Dark style is enabled. While all the Apple icons visible in the Dock do change, the application icons shown in the Finder do not —- probably because they need to be updated to support this new style. However, the Light theme doesn’t really do this new style justice,

whereas with the Dark theme, it’s a whole different story.

However, if I enable the Dark style and select the Auto mode, the entire interface reverts to looking exactly like the Default style. You can see it in the two images below: the first shows the Mac screen with the Dark style and Auto mode enabled, while the second shows the Default style.

I assume that the Auto mode is supposed to allow the operating system to automatically select the style that best fits the current theme. While this makes sense, it might need a different implementation; as it stands, it just ends up being confusing.

The other two styles, Clear and Tinted, are nice enough, but personally I don’t like the idea of having all the icons in the same colour. I’m sure plenty of people will appreciate these new uniform styles, but I doubt I’ll ever use them myself.

Even with these styles, the Auto mode automatically adjusts the appearance to match the active theme. Here too, I think that both the placement and the labeling of the automatic mode needs some improvement.

Not bad at all, the option to change the accent color of the user interface.

I’m not really into these things, but a lot of people like them, and since they don’t overhaul the interface, why not?

The final gem is the huge switch that toggles Bluetooth (as well as Wi-Fi and VPN). True, even in Sequoia these switches were larger than the others, but don’t you think Apple has gone a bit too far this time?

Conclusions (for now)

This ends up my quick overview of macOS Tahoe and its Liquid Glass interface. If I gave the impression that I’m not thrilled about it, well, that’s exactly how I feel.

I really appreciate that Apple had the courage to change, aiming to develop a consistent interface across all its devices. Liquid Glass definitely has a lot of potential, but it’s still quite immature on macOS, perhaps even more so than on the iPad. It reminds me of the metallic transition of Leopard, which needed several subsequent macOS releases to refine.

In any case, Liquid Glass is the future, and we’ll have to live with it for quite a few years. So it’s best to start appreciating its positive aspects now, and be patient with the negatives.

In the meantime, Apple’s developers have fixed the flipped Finder icon, which caused quite a stir. Hopefully, before the official September release, they’ll do the same for the many other oddities and inconsistencies.