I did the upgrade from v18.7.2 to v26.2 overnight during my sleep. I woke up, tried, and don’t like it already. It feels slower. I cannot seem to turn off the visual effects (fades, animations, etc.) though. My home screen is too bright in dark mode! I checked accessiblity and display settings (e.g., liquid glass’ tinted), but still annoyed. Are there anywhere else to look to disable more? :(
For disabling some types of animations see the tips here (iOS & Mac):
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I did all those except Dim Flashing Lights On. That’s only for video though. I rarely see flashing lights in videos and doesn’t bother me, but I rarely watch videos on iPhones.
Exactly!
(>10char)
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Better than 2025, at the very least.
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It is no more design but styling, like American cars of the sixties !
Ah, but those huge tailfins, particularly on Chrysler subsidiaries’ (I’m thing of you, Dodge and Plymouth) should have featured rudders (think aircraft tails), then they would have been design features…. and helped steer those boats in heavy crosswinds.
My father had one of those beasts, an early 60s Plymouth Grand Prix, and they were so heavy and so low that I never felt any crosswinds when driving it. The tail fins stuck out so far that one of them hit a parking meter when I was pulling out of a parking space. It never struck me as a sensible design. And from all I’m hearing, I will avoid Liquid Glass as long as possible.
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Same, but Sonoma on my M1s and iOS 18 on my iPads. I hope my old iPhone lives forever, because a new one will have iOS26 or later.
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The weirdest user interface change I have seen on my iPhone is the selection of different photo formats (Photo, Portrait, Spatial, etc). It just does not seen natural to change the selection by sliding your finger.
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100% It is so hard to use it now.
Tahoe excoriated:
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My employer just pushed out mandatory macOS 26 upgrade to March 2026. I’m thankful.
I’m hoping they push it all the way to next WWDC
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Liquid Glass is important because iOS and MacOS are merging. Liquid Glass unifies the look. The new revision numbering unifies all releases. All of Apple operating systems will get more unified. That’s good.
The aesthetics not so much. Porthole icons are damn silly. Things are hard to read. Parts of the interface are just confusing.
I remember in iOS 7 when Apple went from their very Skeuomorphic design to their flat design, there was a lot of pushback because it was a big change. But there were problems with Apple’s UI that developed. This included the layers where certain items would be a layer over another, but the UI just implemented it weird. Plus we got the feeling Apple was paying more attention to aesthetics than user interface. The most ridiculous was the reel to reel tape image when playing a podcast. In the end, the flatter design worked better.
I’m not so sure about Liquid Glass at this point. Apple needs to concentrate how it works more than neato stuff they can make it do. The interface needed a revamp because of the merging of all the various operating systems into a single core. They all need to look more alike and work more alike. Users go from Macs to iPads to iPhones and back to Macs. A more unified OS makes this an easier task.
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Nobody likes a yea-sayer, so I’ll chime in just once more to say that although I haven’t upgraded from Mac OS Sequoia for many of the reasons listed here, I enjoy iOS 26 and iPadOS 26. Although my eyes are aging, the only modification to the default appearance and accessibility settings I’ve made is to specify the Tinted version of Liquid Glass. On the whole, I like the changes to the interface, although I still have to remember some of the new methods for using the built-in apps. Although I can’t bring to mind examples, my overall impression is that having to learn those new methods is offset by other improvements.
I’ve got absolutely no doubt that Mac OS 27 will be worth upgrading to and that most power users’ peeves about the Liquid Glass interface will go the way of the butterfly keyboard.
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Wherever Apple thought they were going, they have gone completely off the rails. The whole company is now strapped to a conveyor belt that is powered exclusively by visions of greater and greater profits. The board of directors serves only the shareholders, who will never stop demanding lower costs and higher profits.This way of doing business is a one-way ticket to nowhere. Apple just doesn’t know it yet.
I am far from convinced that a user interface that works well on a 6.1-inch iPhone is suitable for an 11-inch iPad—much less a laptop, an iMac. etc.
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I’ve been planning on buying a Mac Studio in 2026 (my first Apple Silicon Mac); and I figured I’d wait until Apple release a 2026 version of the Studio before buying.
However, any new 2026 Mac Studio (or 2026 Mac, period) will require macOS 26 Tahoe) or later; while buying the 2025 Mac Studio in the next few months would allow me to run Sequoia on it for a few years if needed (depending on how long it takes Apple to deal with the problems described here and elsewhere).
The 2025 Mac Studio easily has all the horsepower I’ll need for many years to come. I buy a new Mac every 5-8 years, and thus buy Macs on the high end, so they don’t become obsolete anytime soon. So the lack of whatever oomph that Apple adds to the 2026 Mac Studio shouldn’t affect me much one way or another.
Opinions?
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Are you sure this is the case? I’d assume any new Mac will come installed with Tahoe and Apple are notoriously pedantic about disallowing the install of any older version of the OS.
FWIW I don’t think Tahoe is bad overall, I just don’t like some of the GUI changes. I’m sure (hoping) they will be tuned down a bit in the future. I wouldn’t see being forced to run Tahoe as a reason not to buy a new machine.
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I chose to get an M4 MBP rather than wait for the M5 specifically because I wanted to stay on macOS 15.
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Yes and no. Downgrading is often a challenge. You pretty much need to do it from recovery mode and wipe the drive. And if you want to retain your data, you may not be able to use Migration Assistant - it will insist on a version of macOS equal to or greater than your backup.
But in a case like this, where we’re talking about a newly purchased device, it shouldn’t be that bad. You should be able to go back to the earliest version that shipped with the hardware. For a 2025 Studio, that would be macOS 15.3. And migration should be fine as long as you’re not migrating from a macOS 26 backup.
There should be two ways to do this.
The first way is to download the installer package (or use Mr. Macintosh if you want a specific sub-version) and use the createinstallmedia script to make a bootable flash drive. Then boot that drive and use it to wipe your Mac and install the version you want.
The second way is to download an IPSW firmware image and use DFU mode and Configurator or the Finder (from another Mac) to restore it from that image file.
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Thank you, David. That’s the method I’d been planning on — glad to have the confirmation. I created a bootable flash drive of the latest Sequoia release from Mr. Macintosh (along with the other 5 macOS versions that precede it).
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