alt Hacker NewsmacOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess
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I don't know, there are definitely some rough edges (particularly with the menu bar for some reason - big rewrite there?), but overall I'm quite happy with Golden Gate. "Buggy mess" is some serious hyperbole.
Of the issues they report:
- The centering bugs seem... not very important.
- The Mac User Guide looks fine to me. Shows "for macOS 27."
- Network app?
- Why are you looking at the Mission Control app icon at 20x zoom? And in any case, doesn't it seem reasonable to simplify the traffic light design to a flat circle for an icon that will be displayed very small 99.9% of the time?
- Firefox bugs are bugs in Firefox. (I also keep experiencing the stuck menu bug, but again, Firefox bug.)
- "You can find references to NeXTSTEP, the ancestor of macOS, in its UI!" No, that's not what that means.
- "I have a folder open in the Dock. If I click on another folder, shouldn't that then open?" Yes, and it does.
- The rest, sure.
Yesterday, I tried to fill out a PDF on a MacOS laptop. It was very rough.
I've been a longtime Linux user, but one of the nice things about MacOS is that it comes out of the box with software for common file formats. I remember being a bit happy to skip the step where I search "best pdf editor linux".
This was true in 2022, when I started using MacOS. Around that time, people were complaining about a battery icon that was too skeumorphic or something, which is so trite in comparison to the avalanche of problems today.
But, geeze, it's rough to edit a PDF on MacOS today. The built-in PDF editor has a weird flow to add text (rather than clicking where you want to place the text, you click a button which summons a box with the text "Text" in an arbitrary position on your PDF). You have to click and drag the Text textbox to the position you want it to be in.
Every part of the UI is broken, though. You have to discover this by clicking (all icons, no text), you have to move the textbox by finding the 1px wide click-and-drag target (on a high-DPI display!), and sometimes, the text simply disappears and deletes itself, in a way no amount of cmd+Z (undo) can fix.
It's very frustrating and crazy-making, but the amount of time it took to fill out one page of a PDF precludes me from wanting to take the effort to document it in this way.
So, I very very much appreciate this author for sharing a few of the million papercuts of MacOS. It is really hard to imagine someone being proud of putting this product out.
Mission Control is unusable in macOS 27. Shortcuts to switch spaces stop working (Dock must be killed to get them to work again), there is a padding between spaces thumbnails and the top of the screen so it's no longer possible to just easily move the mouse at the top to select one, windows rearrange randomly when one is clicked, full screen app spaces breaks each time you try to use them, animations are wonky and you can't reenter mission control while some animations are running, etc…
I've been running Golden Gate since the first beta was released in June. I've generally been very happy with it. I think it'll take a couple years to unwind the Alan Dye era, but Golden Gate is a significant improvement over macOS 26
This is a bad faith article. The feel of a "buggy mess" is different from what the author described. Every OS is going to have bugs. On top of that, I cannot reproduce a lot of these issues. It's clear the OP is using multiple third party utilities to manage things like the menubar. Try turn them off and complaining.
I feel like the author wanted to write a post like one of those about Tahoe (menu bar, corner dragging), but the stuff they wrote about was all very "who cares"?
Golden Gate has reversed many of Tahoe's regressions and further updates will continue to do so.
> This one just irks me. Show me one oval camera lens anywhere in the world. I'm waiting.
What gets me is people saying macOs 26 -> 27 is an improvement. Maybe so. But Sequoia -> 26 -> 27 is still a noticeable downgrade. So is it really an improvement: making something much worse and then slightly improving it?
While generally happy with the speed improvements it brought, I can't back question the presence of testers on Apple side. Sure they are a small niche company (/s) but they can do better. Major example, desktop switching shortcuts are borked after device comes up from sleep! >https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1whtmc3/macos_27_mis...
Apple is extremely lucky to have users like this who still work tirelessly to find and report these types of problems. They would do well to listen.
The author of this article is basically me when I’m bored, just trying to find some problems to complain about
My understanding is that Apple has this culture of we must ship things by this date no matter what. They really should slow down and make sure things are fully baked before they get out to the final RC.
Golden Gate works pretty well so far for me.
This one really bugs me. Could be my setup (have a few Menu-bar utilities). Anyway... I do Finder Searches a lot to find files in the current directory or system-wide using either find by file name or file contains. Get a list of files fine in response. Then close the search, and my Finder window is blank. Have to click to another folder in the Sidebar, then back to my original folder to get the full folder contents to show. All previous OS versions returned back to list all the files.
Also not a bug, but a bad recession ihmo. I always used to have Finder>Show-Hidden-Files option on. Now it is always off, and one must Cmd+Shift+. to show hidden files each time one opens a directory. Why take that option away ??
If anyone has insights about what might be causing my blank "after search" window, and/or a way to make show hidden files the default please advise. Thx, NSC
The golden rule with MacOS is never update before February, or after August.
I waited until Aug 31 before updating to MacOS 26, a new record for me. I very much hope 27 will be ready to go by Feb 1.
My favourite bug so far is using Cmd+Tab to quick switch apps when you have two monitors puts the list of apps up on a random display each time.
It’s keeping my neck muscles in shape trying to find it each time that’s for sure.
I have been avoiding new macOS versions since I tried Tahoe and hated it. Still on Sequoia.
I don't know if I'll ever upgrade to Golden Gate, and this blog post isn't giving me confidence.
> When using the Colours window, if you're the sort of person who uses its built-in eyedropper tool to choose a colour from the wheel (rather than simply clicking on it directly), then congratulations: doing that hangs the entire system, and you've got no choice but to force a restart.
I cannot reproduce this on 27. I think writers should undertake some degree of wider research before making strong, universal claims.
There are so many new bugs…
Safari Developer Tools freezes the app.
Even though I’ve disabled the Siri AI tools, they still show up everywhere for some reason.
The main menu bar sometimes gets darker.
Apple Mail keeps formatting my emails in ways I don’t like (bullet lists, etc.).
Apple Mail Smart Mailboxes are broken if you have multiple Macs.
The list goes on…
In related news, Apple’s new CEO wants products launched faster while reducing headcount. That can only push quality in one direction.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/09/29/apple-to-launch-product...
I couldn't reproduce the Color Picker bug mentioned at the end.
Just one small thing to add about the Color Picker: I think it's a good example of how native UI apps have changed over the last decade.
The macOS Color Picker is nice. The idea is to have a single color picker for the whole system. It's extensible, so apps can add their own custom pickers (for example, an OKLCH picker), and you can reuse your palettes across applications.
Sounds great! But most of the applications where you might care about those features (customization, sharing your color schemes, etc.) don't work with the native Color Picker: Figma, Adobe apps, all Electron-based apps, and so on. So the Color Picker's features are useless. That component of the system is exactly the same as it was when I got my first Mac in 2007.
There are multiple nice native features that apps don't use; over time, they become forgotten and barely maintained.
I don't know what the solution is, but at some point, I think Apple should take frameworks like Tauri or Electron into account and build integrations for developers who use them. I know the integrations exists (they are the native APIs), and it's the developers' responsibility to use them, but that's not happening, and it ends up affecting the UX.
It's too slow. Safari crashes too often. But the rather bigger mess for me has been iOS 27 (on my 17) – slowness and the battery drain. Goodness, what have I done on my phone thaat made it into a proper before and after scenario. I had to disable my mission corner hot corner it was so broken. It amazes me how a trillion dollar company manages to break their already broken OS even further. I guess the reason is they know it isn't going to matter. The good hint is the hordes of people (even on hn) finding it necessary to post their polite (of course!) and subtle rebuttals in the form of "been using <certain Apple product> for the last <certain period>, couldn't be happier)".
Sequoia was the Snow Leopard of the 2020s. Going from that high to the lows of tahoe or golden gate is a real and jarring downgrade.
definitive proof that apple's engineers are using GNOME workstations internally: now MacOS system apps look like any software created using that garbage pile called libadwaita.
I'll be real I'm not going to argue with the author but having had to use Windows 11 now for the last few months, these bugs seems like a polished castle compared to the state of the windows desktop.
Can Golden Gate really be considered a fix release for Tahoe with its massive AI updates?
The mis-alignment trope is well established, be it in the corners or at the center, but there are bigger design sins:
- wastefully large "zero KB" text to signal nothing
- poor text legibility due too light of a gray color - if you don't want people to read that text, don't add it! Or hide behind some tooltip or something
- tiny font size with a lot of space wasted, that's bigger than small margins
- the useless brightness of persistent window controls, they are way too common and unimportant, especially for keyboard users that never even click on then
> I know my machine's getting old, but does it really need a second to load in the Profiles menu when I open a new Firefox window?
I don't see how age matters here for such primitive low cost operations, so no, it should be instant on a machine older than yours
> Sometimes the search bar in System Settings simply refuses to work.
This continues to be a very frequently highlighted epic fail across various Apple platforms. I wonder, is there any substantive explanation on why it's so bad for so long?
> Perhaps there's hope yet. Snow Leopard had nearly two years of refinements to achieve the level of polish and stability its name has become synonymous with today.
Not really, it's more like it has years of memory loss leading to a bunch of bugs like in this blog to be forgotten and the marketing tag taken over. So definitely there is hope, just wait a decade...
Where are the bugs that aren't just annoying UI/UX nitpicks that we can skip to hit the release date?
Golden Gate is one of the first MacOS releases with more of an enterprise focus. There's a lot under the hood that will be massive to support power users, IT admins, and the like. I'd save the complaints for massive failures in networking configuration or permissions management or anything like that, not button alignment.
The most glaring regression in macOS 27 for me is random audio popping/crackling in the Spotify client, otherwise it's mostly fine tbh.
It's such an obvious issue that I'm wondering whether I'm the only one experiencing it or whether Apple users just don't use Spotify or whether Spotify simply doesn't test on macOS (and as such I have no idea where even to write a ticket, the macOS Feedback app doesn't even have a category for problems in non-Apple applications).
This isn't a new bug, it was present in MacOS Tahoe, but what happened to the tabs in the Maps app? The View menu still has Show Tab Bar and Show All Tabs itms, but they are always greyed-out. Cmd-T doesn't open a new tab, as was the case before Tahoe. (I count this as a bug in that the UI seems inconsistent with the function.) If anyone knows how to regain access to tabs, I'd love to hear it.
It still isn't apparent to me why Apple decided to take their otherwise logical and fine UI, and create Liquid Glass. I guess somebody got a nice new title and bonus, though?
Did they fix the bug where the toolbar of applications would either get stuck open or disappear while in full screen mode, requiring them to be moved to the desktop before returned to fullscreen?
This is certainly where the expectation to pay premium doesn't match the actual product.
For 99.9% of us, these mean nothing. This article is pretentious.
Classic Apple fans hyperfixating on things that do not matter. Misguided critiques like this are why Apple fans have such a bad reputation.
These problems look to me like the result of writing N implementations of X, rather than 1 common X shared by all the apps.
> Here's a fun fact: You can find references to NeXTSTEP, the ancestor of macOS, in its UI! You're not supposed to, mind.
This confused me; the NS prefix has been part of OSX since the beginning. I get that it shouldn’t have been shown but it’s hardly some deep secret
I’m not in any way aware of how macOS is architected, but aren’t all these inconsistencies (like different app icons, different menu styles, different window corners etc) pointing to bad code design? There should be one shared source of truth for what needs to be consistent.
Opens with a reference to Snow Leopard, I miss it to this day.
These visual UI problems which are showing some sloppiness in the UI is much better than macOS 26 and honestly I really like Golden Gate for more efficiency and the fact that Siri actually works now and can replace a great deal of things I usually would have googled.
Is it safe to assume at this point that GNU and the kernel accept AI code but there is quality control compared to private companies ? What I am hearing (and what friends talk about) is that with AI everyone is hooked on quantity while quality has taken a back seat. I would assume that the quantity and features don't bother free software much so they can take their own sweet time with these things.
I've had a random annoying bug where a mysterious window with no controls and no menu bar presence appears on top of all of my apps with seemingly no origin, rhyme, or reason, and I can't do anything to get rid of it except restart. It looks suspiciously like one of the "do you want to allow this accessory to connect" dialog boxes but it doesn't have any text. It's really mystifying.
I hoped this update would've made my Mac more stable from the last release, and while maybe the performance is better, I feel like issues like this do randomly occur.
This post prompted me to try my pet long-standing bug, where you have Dock auto-hiding on, show it, mouse away, mouse back before the sliding animation is finished, and see what happens. Previously the animation would just finish and it wouldn't show again, but in Golden Gate it does. Praise be. I did respond to an Apple survey a little while back and mentioned this one so maybe it got through...
> Bugs are elsewhere in the system, too. Sometimes the search bar in System Settings simply refuses to work.
Yep, I've run into this and issues where clicking the search results or normal sidebar items in settings do nothing. Even after killing and restarting Settings.
Golden Gate is better than Tahoe IMHO but only slightly. I hope they circle back to the myriad of bugs/UI issues they introduced.
It surely is the worst release based on my experience.
* bluetooth keyboard suddenly very laggy * mission control spaces shortcuts
Can't believe they made this glaring oversight.
I’ve been having some weird issues since upgrading that I haven’t been able to pinpoint if it’s the apps or the OS.
New since upgrading:
- In telegram messages get stuck sending and the app has to be force quit - Discord doesn’t pick up audio device changes until the app is restarted - Soundsource has crashed a few times if I change my AirPods out. - Selecting a screenshot area is laggy when dragging the selection box
I haven't noticed any bigger bugs (Apart from search in System Settings still not working), the main annoyance is the Siri bubble showing up next to text fields.
Considering how badly Microsoft is f*king up Windows, I’ll stick with MacOS, BSD, and OpenSuse as desktop systems, thanks.
Hell, I have just three systems left which are Windows. One is a bare-bones system purely for travel convenience, another is an accounting system for a workflow that cannot (yet!) be translated to another platform, and the third being my Visual Studio / MSSQL dev platform for traditional windows apps (yes, I still support some absolutely ancient VB stuff). None of which I want to virtualize, for various reasons that include physical location.
I’m usually upgrading my Mac OS major version around x.2.2
Anything prior to that is anything goes, in my experience.
I don’t understand why System Settings search is such a dumpster fire. It’s up to a couple thousand (probably overestimating) fixed text labels. Even when it’s not bugging out, half or more of deeper labels simply can’t be found even if you enter the exact string; and by deeper I mean simply not top level categories. Who the hell thought this sorry ass search is okay to ship and keep it that way after this many years? I swear even Windows’ settings search is more capable.
Aren't we supposed to be living in a world of accelerated software abundance because of AI?
Apple positioned themselves as hardware company but continue to sell us ads and locked in software.
If they are open their platform wildly, the open source community will help, but Apple closes platform, close mind.
Reports like this make it sound like there aren't serious flaws and bugs in MacOS. The things he's listing are trivialities.
I started writing a list of UX and software bugs in Mac OS, but honestly, I don't have the energy or time, there are so many. Mac OS has become an absolute travesty of an OS.
It’s been a strict improvement on my computers, which isn’t to say that the author isn’t having problems, just that theirs (or mine!) isn’t the universal experience.
And they’ve finally fixed some annoying, long-endured audio bugs: https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2026/09/24/macos-27-fixes-mul...