>I don't mind how Liquid Glass looks at all.

I do, and the fact that it isn't even optional is crazy.

Windows Vista vibes where they first looked at what the could technically pull off on todays' hardware. And mind you: Liquid Glass is very impressive!.

It's just not necessary.

I've had similar observations with different behaviors in Safari and Finder. One would think the quality of Apple's software would be increasing with the usage of Swift over Objective-C, but the opposite seems to be true.

It is akin to some military operations doomed to fail, and everyone ends up dying because of the chain of command no one is willing to speak against.

That is how the current chaos feels like.

Indeed - the system as a whole is starting to feel bloated. Today’s macOS design is akin to the cosmetic mufflers/exhaust pipes in cars, which serve only to justify the “Sport” badge. I long for the days past.

I think parts of Liquid Glass on macOS looks pretty bad. But I don't care that much about how things look, so it doesn't offend me.

What does offend me are all the bugs, as you say. It's still utterly broken all these months after the public release. Spotlight is a mess; I've seen it take DAYS before it has made an app in '/Applications' findable through search (even as the app shows up in Spotlight's long scrollable list of apps), and the animation where it comes in as a result of the four finger gesture has so many bugs I won't go through them all here. The most annoying is that it can end up in a state where Spotlight is not on screen, but you need to do the "make Spotlight go away" gesture before the "make Spotlight appear" gesture works again. It also often loads icons slowly; sometimes loading them in one by one over time, sometimes all at once after thinking for a second. It's arguably better from a UX design perspective than Launchpad was, but Launchpad was so much more polished and better performing.

There's also just constant minor graphical glitches. Things which pop in, things which load in with the wrong background color, that sort of stuff. The Settings app sometimes loads in stuff gradually and parts of the app jump around for a second before it settles, like a bad web app. It feels janky.

Mac OS X used to feel like a solid operating system. It has been going downhill for a while, but macOS 26 is the biggest leap in a long time.

I agree with bugs, you can't even scroll through settings with touchpad without permanently enabling scroll bars.

> The thing that amazes me most is that everyone on the teams responsible is probably using their Apple devices and running into these same bugs!

This is what surprises me the most to be honest. CarPlay seemingly still suffers from a (sometimes deadly) issue of covering the entire map on your dashboard with the avatar/number of the person calling, so if you're actively using it for navigation (since, you know, there is a map there and all) someone calling you is a highly stressful moment and more than not you need to hang up because otherwise the call is in the way.

I've had my iPhone 12 Mini for so many years now, and this is still an issue, the only conclusion I can take from this is that people at Apple actually all have Android phones.

I have these insane bugs where my apple tv will connect to my mbp even tho my mbp has blutooth disabled. I'll be listening to a podcast on my mbp with airpods while my wife is watching some show on the apple tv. It will still randomly connect to my airpods when my wife never tries to connect them.

Apple is quickly becoming a trash company and we're seeing the effects of an industry writ large when you only hire leetcode monkeys.