11 ms·

macOS Tahoe windows have different corner radiuses

320 points by robenkleene 7mo ago

nikolay 7mo ago
It keeps annoying me, too. How can their developers not see this?!
- riffraff 7mo ago
  I'm starting to suspect most people at Apple (and Microsoft) just spend time in a browser these days and so they don't notice how the desktop has gone shitty.
  - pjmlp 7mo ago
    I won't be public shaming, but on a .NET podcast I just heard of an internal Microsoft project that took 7 years (!), to become public, it was a plain single Assembly .NET library nothing special (1 DLL).
    - littlecranky67 7mo ago
      Which one?
  - hulitu 7mo ago
    Then why are they rounding windows corners ? Boredom ?
- galad87 7mo ago
  Because that's by design. The windows are meant to have different corner radius, they even explained it at WWDC. Then people forgot and rediscovered it again, like it was some new thing. I am not saying that it's a good idea to have different corner radius, just that it's nothing new.
  - mikae1 7mo ago
    > they even explained it at WWDC Did they explain the reasoning?
    - galad87 7mo ago
      To align the window corner radius to the window close/minimize/resize buttons distance from the edge of the window.
      - nikolay 7mo ago
        I'd rather have my corners perfect and not have the constant eyesore of pixels bleeding from other windows' corners!
      - Karliss 7mo ago
        Except it kind of fails at that too. The window corners seem to be either based on those squircle things or some kind of other varying radii curve which eases out into sides much more gradually than proper circles. The window buttons (close, minimize) the round toolbar buttons anchored to top right corner are based on proper circles. Attempting to center circle in a varying curvature corner results in varying spacing between the circle and corner, which defeats the whole point of why different windows have different corner size (not calling it radius because they are not circles). When the top right corner contains a search field instead of rounded button, that also seems to use varying curvature instead of capsule with proper circles at the ends. Still results in varying spacing between window corner and the toolbar content. And that's just the 2 top corners. Attempts to align top corners result in even bigger mismatch with the rest of the window content. For example calculator -> it has a grid of round buttons. While the window corners might match top bar (as good as they can due to different shapes) the main calculation buttons don't match the corners at all. Similar problem affects many of the popups which have something like confirmation button anchored to bottom right corner. Rounded scrollbar handle - not aligned with bottom left corner size, instead it awkwardly gets cut of by different amount in each program. Menus also have this disease. The non circular corner curve of overall menu shape extends way past the corner of item highlight resulting in varying spacing and making it feel almost like whole menu has bulged out instead of flat sides.
- pjmlp 7mo ago
  Priorities on what tickets to work on, and Apple being proudly underresourced.
- mulmen 7mo ago
  Because they did it on purpose to demonstrate their utter contempt for their users and to show us how wrong we are.
- jiehong 7mo ago
  Yep, it’s just ugly IMO
- hurfdurf 7mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320534
robthebrew 7mo ago
There is a work around if you don't mind lowering the Security settings: https://github.com/aspauldingcode/apple-sharpener https://github.com/aspauldingcode/apple-sharpener
- TheFuzzball 7mo ago
  It's annoying, sure, but it's not worth disabling SIP.
satGuess 7mo ago
I hadn’t noticed this before, but now I can’t unsee it. UI inconsistencies like that tend to stand out once someone points them out.
unselect5917 7mo ago
This is one of those stories that I read and I'm like, "Someone wrote an article about that? I am definitely among my people, but I smell a front end developer."
franciscop 7mo ago
This was one of the very few advantages of moving from Linux => MacOS, that at least most of the software was beautiful and consistent by default. I'm saddened to see that this is not true anymore. Been holding the Tahoe upgrade, and might just keep my macbook air m1 much longer than originally intended because of this.
- mrcarrot 7mo ago
  I've started using Linux recently after not touching a desktop distro for 20-odd years, and I was surprised how good both Gnome and KDE look these days. It certainly doesn't feel like there's a trillion-dollar-company difference between those two and Tahoe.
  - chang1 7mo ago
    Same! I hadn't touched Linux since 2005-06. I've been trying out Niri and Noctalia. I've been pleasantly surprised how close I'm able to get to match most of what I do on a Mac. I haven't had this much fun with computers in years. It has certainly helped with my Tahoe grief.
- eastbound 7mo ago
  Beautiful, it’s nice, but the polished user experience was the ultimate argument. - Raising the lid of the laptop and the base wouldn’t stick and fall off on the desk, - A single-button click, - A Cmd+C to copy and Ctrl+C for the interruption 7 in the terminal, But now you have to configure that, yes, activate the right-click; yes, activate the three-finger click (wtf, 3 fingers); yes, activate the swipe-across-desktops on the magic mouse, all those items were selling points, so they should have studied the best behavior and implemented it by default on all deployments. But that requires studies, aesthetics, and a taste that only Steeve Jobs had, otherwise everything becomes an option. That’s right, I’m going to paraphrase Jobs’ argument against the 1990ies Microsoft: The problem with Apple is they have no taste.
  - ant6n 7mo ago
    What I find confusing and unhelpful is how The Apple OS deals with windows. Say if you have 4 safari windows, 3 excel windows, 5 window word documents and a bunch of terminals spread across a bunch of desktops. To me, I have clearly conceptionalized different work streams into desktops. Apple doesn’t understand and respect that. Firstly, alt-tab doesn’t consider windows, it considers apps. So if you have multiple browser windows or word windows open, you can’t alt-tab between them. It’s totally confusing. So I install an app just to get the normal alt-tab behavior of other OSs, to alt-tab between windows (mine is called alt-tab, and it’s a bit buggy and slow, I think they all are) Next, Apple does not respect the multiple desktop boundary. If I click on the safari icon in the dock, it will switch to some seemingly random safari window in some other desktop. If I close any window, it will also run off to some other window of the same app in some other desktop (who came up with that behavior?) when I dismiss an outlook notification, it will run of to another desktop to look at outlook (actually I think this one is Microsoft’s fault, but Apple could probably do something about this one). The result is that while working, I have trouble staying on the desktop I’m working on, I constantly am getting sent off to some other random desktop, and have to find where I am and where I was. There must be a better, more productive way to manage windows and desktops. (Also what’s up with the autocorrect, I had to retype every instance of “I think” in this message, because it insists it should be “o think”)
postalcoder 7mo ago
This one really bothers me. Whenever maximizing or tiling my windows (which is all the time), I see multiple layers of oddly rounded corners. I think if there's any upside to Tahoe, the grievances may push me into blogging for the first time ever, because I can't keep these to myself. I actually feel sorry for Apple's developers because there's no way you ship software this bad and inconsistent unless you've been handed a terrible design spec from Dye's team. edit: On my screen, three layers' corners https://hcker.news/tahoe-corners.png https://hcker.news/tahoe-corners.png
- create-username 7mo ago
  “Calm down, Postalcoder. We can vent tonight on our blog”
- torben-friis 7mo ago
  There is so much of that in modern apple. Clear issues caused by a seemingly bright idea, but the idea still pushed forward no matter what. One example that I hate on iOS: the notification/lockscreen curtain is supposed to cover the content as it slides down. That’s what a curtain does, this has been the language for years. Now the curtain is transparent, so it can’t cover the content behind. How does the content disappear then, as you slide the curtain down? … it doesn’t. Icons do a buggy looking animation crashing toward the user and through the screen, and if it’s an app there is just no transition. You can check by sliding the curtain down slowly and then letting go.
  - aucisson_masque 7mo ago
    Yeah I found that surprising too and assumed it was a bug. I see this kind of trend with apple since big sur. It's not new but it's becoming more obvious with every release.
  - merlindru 7mo ago
    > seemingly bright idea i disagree about that one. im not a UX expert by any means but my first impression at WWDC seeing liquid glass was "holy shit, they pulled that off? i know apple would never compromise on legibility, so... how? there are so many situations where this won't work, and they can't exactly control the content that the buttons are overlaid on top of" cue my confusion when it was exactly that: an obviously problematic idea implemented with all the obvious flaws showing up they have largely fixed it now, half a year later, but the liquid glass isn't very liquid anymore. it's frosted. which is fine, but obviously not the original idea they were going for contrasty backgrounds are fundamentally incompatible with legibility
etchalon 7mo ago
This feels like one of those "done for backwards compatibility and we tested not doing it and it was worse" things where everyone assumes incompetence over good-faith trade-offs being driven by release schedules.
- iknowstuff 7mo ago
  Did the radius need changing
  - afandian 7mo ago
    Something needed changing! And the radius was something!
    - duskdozer 7mo ago
      What if they randomized the radius on every launch? A fresh, modern experience every time!
      - afandian 7mo ago
        Make it “on every corner” and we have a deal. (EDIT - and Gemini could create a plausible explanation post-hoc each time)
        agos 7mo ago
        different radius on every corner and we're back in the winamp skin era, not bad!
      - egorfine 7mo ago
        Don't give them ideas
  - etchalon 7mo ago
    Does any new design ever need to be done?
MaxikCZ 7mo ago
Im gonna go against the grain here, so hold your pitchforks please, but I think its better than if it were consistent. Let me explain: The author notices that adding a toolbar changes the radius, and to me it makes sense. If theres a toolbar, I know how much I can cut the corners, because the icons in the toolbar are not gonna be in far corner. At the same time, when I am unsure about what type of content might get cut by the corner, I will reduce the cut slightly to give that content more space. I couldnt care less that one radius is not the same as another, I guess my OCD levels are not that high (yet?). And I say all of this as someone who dislikes the glass design, and especially hates the small, slowly fading in volume/brightness indicators in the corner replacing the mid screen beautiful instant indicator.
- gattilorenz 7mo ago
  So… the moment the Interface Designer in XCode can identify the app only has a single button at the center of a window, the window should be a circle? :)
  - oniony 7mo ago
    No, because circles are not as cool as squircles.
sgt 7mo ago
Maybe this is intentional? Either way, doesn't look bad.
- steve_adams_86 7mo ago
  I suppose that's subjective, because to me it looks distracting and tacky. I want the window chrome to be present, opinionated, yet consistent and plain. This is one of the many Tahoe-isms that violates the latter two. It's visual noise that detracts from one of the most basic utilities of the UI, which is to simply hold my applications in a regular, cohesive, predictable manner. Maybe it shouldn't irritate me, but it's the first time I've encountered it in 30 years. I'm all for change and trying new things, but this doesn't feel like progress.
  - nnwright 7mo ago
    This 100%. I _like_ new features and new UX when it enhances things or makes them easier to work with. That used to be a huge selling point when purchasing a Mac vs PC, genuine thought and consideration had been given to every single interaction and user impact. And then ... Apple lost its way. Now when I get a new Mac I spend the better part of a day turning off as much of the pointless eye candy as I can so that I can focus on the task I'm working on, not the distracting UX conventions. I want a computer, not an iPad with a keyboard. That already exists, and there is a reason I don't have one.
    - steve_adams_86 7mo ago
      > turning off as much of the pointless eye candy as I can so that I can focus on the task I'm working on, not the distracting UX conventions. What's worse too is that the means of reducing this distraction and visual mess are arguably only a trade for a different, often equally (though sometimes even more) poorly implemented interface. The high contrast and reduced transparency modes are not well designed at all in my opinion, and they seem like vague afterthoughts in this transition.
- wahnfrieden 7mo ago
  It is intentional - it was explained at WWDC. And it looks good.
ulbu 7mo ago
read somewhere that maybe they’re preparing for OLED screens
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- ant6n 7mo ago
  How does that argument work?
  - defraudbah 7mo ago
    which will be even worse so you don't get that angry after years of bad design, lol
  - hulitu 7mo ago
    O from OLED is round. That's why they need rounded windows. /s
- Y-bar 7mo ago
  All iPhones since the iPhone X (2017), and not the iPhone SE line, has an OLED display. iPad Pro also has OLED.
  - Reason077 7mo ago
    There's also been rumours of a new high-end OLED MacBook ("Ultra"?) in the works, possibly this year.
- crote 7mo ago
  If it is that crucial, they should add a few pixels of margin around the entire desktop, and randomly shift everything around. Doing only corners and not straight edges, and doing it by a fixed per-app amount, seems a bit silly.
- ulbu 7mo ago
  is there a reason to downvote this?
wahnfrieden 7mo ago
Why should the two window varieties have the same corner radius? There's no design analysis here, only conservatism.
- AlexandrB 7mo ago
  The bottom of windows show have no corner radius at all. For most types of content it sacrifices usable space for UI chrome. It also makes resizing harder and scroll bars ugly.
- hulitu 7mo ago
  Because when they overlap, you want to resize the top one.
nnwright 7mo ago
Mac OS's UX design has been in free fall the last 5-10 years (ever since the "iOS-ify everything" zeitgeist took root). Sincerely hope that they one day revert back, because the current UX is just godawful for any usecase I can imagine.
- Reason077 7mo ago
  I really hope they roll back some of the more obnoxious and pointless aspects of "Liquid Glass" in macOS 27. And the super-rounded window corners are high up on my list. Looks childish, wastes screen space, causes so many little annoyances...
  - aucisson_masque 7mo ago
    I wish too but they can't just back up, that would be a very bad sign for investors.
    - blackhaz 7mo ago
      They'll just come up with round displays. Like on PDP-1.
      - GuinansEyebrows 7mo ago
        finally, we can run SPACEWAR on macOS as it was always intended to be run.
    - Towaway69 7mo ago
      Why? What happened to the magic bar? There are many things Apple changed their minds on. I won’t be surprised if there is a rollback in 27 (i’m hoping there will be - else going to buy a retro mac with a magic bar upon no tahoe runs).
      - duskdozer 7mo ago
        They can't frame it as a rollback at least. Have to sync it up with a new OS release or something as the "new" best thing
stein1946 7mo ago
It just seems to me that that Macbook Neo is basically them telling us that come next year they will unify iOS and MacOS and they are testing the waters at the moment. All this version alignment, the blurring of "here is a laptop with A processor and iOS" points to that direction. The errs of Tahoe are basically a result of the rush on that direction
- nashashmi 7mo ago
  I think they have the pathway to merge it right now. But it will cannibalize their sales so they dont want to do that.
- merlindru 7mo ago
  i hope you're wrong. they certainly have seemed to test the waters on many other fronts. the $99/yr notarization fee is now basically required as running unnotarized apps is made hard and scary enough to turn off probably 97% of average users they also briefly took away the ability to disable gatekeeper per terminal command (now back) next they wanna launch a touchscreen macbook, presumably this fall
  - roysting 7mo ago
    I hope they don’t ever do a touchscreen MacBook. They already have every angle of that use case covered far better than the competition; either you get an iPad if you absolutely need to be pawing at a screen, or you have the excellent trackpads that are far and away par excellence. I don’t see how a touch screen on top of also the industry standard for screen quality will in any way improve by having greasy finger trails distorting the tiny pixels. Maybe I’m missing something. How would a touchscreen MacBook improve on something? That being said, based on what I’ve been seeing at Apple, I would not be surprised if they did go down that mediocrity route.
    - ileonichwiesz 7mo ago
      > How would a touchscreen MacBook improve on something? It won’t, but there’s now an entire generation of users who get confused and angry if any kind of display doesn’t react when you poke it with your finger.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
mkzet 7mo ago
I will never upgrade from Sequoia and when I'll have no other options migrate to another laptop!
- marxisttemp 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - bschwindHN 7mo ago
    Why are you shilling so hard for these features?
    - marxisttemp 7mo ago
      Because they’re significant improvements to the way macOS works for power users
    - greenchair 7mo ago
      their username..
      - marxisttemp 7mo ago
        Yes, nothing says Marxism like shilling for the most valuable corporation in history. That's definitely the reason why I'm talking about cool new features in Tahoe.
  - Nekorosu 7mo ago
    Design is much more than that. Also, it’s almost as if you can’t imagine that other users might have needs and preferences different from yours.
  - cpt_sobel 7mo ago
    Just get Raycast for what you mentioned, + much better (the bar is really low tbf) search
nashashmi 7mo ago
The rounded corners is such a key element of apple design. They patented rounded corners on the iphone for precisely this reason. They wanted to trademark this but got a design patent instead. And then samsung notoriously copied this one almost verbatim same radius which pissed off apple.
- dchftcs 7mo ago
  >one almost verbatim same radius which pissed off apple So this is what they decided to do? Use so many different rounded radius variations that competitors don't know which one to copy?
- hulitu 7mo ago
  > The rounded corners is such a key element of apple design. See Windows 11.
  - nashashmi 7mo ago
    Windows corner is a lot sharper/smaller than the apple corner.
donatj 7mo ago
Containers with different contents look different? I don't see the big deal. That seems like a reasonable design choice. Make nice rounded corners when content allows, but rectangle them up as needed? Seems like a nice adaptive design choice. Honestly making different apps slightly more visually identifiable in a sea of sameness doesn't seem like a big deal.
jacobsyc 7mo ago
don't know why this bothers me but apple is losing attention to detail
douglee650 7mo ago
Feels sloppy (is sloppy) but I think the idea is to prioritize OS unification for hardware reasons, and UX across product suite — devices can share data, apps, screens, everything.
- iainmerrick 7mo ago
  I'm seeing a lot of comments here about macOS/iOS unification, but I think people are getting worked up about nothing. What do macOS window styles have to do with iOS? iOS (mostly) doesn't have windows! What does the MacBook Neo have to do with iOS, other than coincidentally using some of the same components? Maybe Apple decided to make a cheaper Mac because they thought people might want to buy a cheaper Mac. They are trying to use a common design language across all their devices, sure. But you would hardly expect them to do the opposite! They might try to make a hybrid tablet/laptop or something at some point, sure, but none of their current moves point inevitably in that direction. Except maybe for software notarization, but that has nothing to do with window corners or cheaper laptops.
zer0zzz 7mo ago
I actually really like that certain windows have a different corner radius. It wraps around the chrome of the app properly. If you made it this far, know I am totally messing with you. It really is unnerving.
blackhaz 7mo ago
Apple is no longer about Jobs' "simplicity as the ultimate sophistication". It feels like a bunch of kids with no proper design education competing for the security of their salaries. Apple is dead without Steve. The company has no focal point. They're running solely on the inertia from Mac OS X and the first generations of the iPhone.
- interpol_p 7mo ago
  That's a pretty extreme take. I've been using the Mac since about 2001. I like Tahoe and a well designed Tahoe app can look really nice on the platform. There are bugs, inconsistencies and other issues, but it doesn't feel that different than many previous macOS / OS X releases
  - mpalmer 7mo ago
    You've been a Mac user since the original candy iMacs and you don't see the company design ethos slipping in the last five years?
ai-calcium 7mo ago
Finally, the update we've all been waiting for
iainmerrick 7mo ago
I dislike Tahoe too, but this particular thing is not new. I just did an image search for "classic macos" and one of the first hits was from https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os. Look at those System 1 screenshots, from 42(!) years ago -- round corners on Puzzle and Calculator, square corners on Note Pad and Control Panel! No consistency at all, isn't it infuriating?
- afandian 7mo ago
  Puzzle and Calculator were Desk Accessories (DAs), a special kind of app. Some cool details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_accessory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_accessory Like Tahoe, it was deliberate and there's an explanation for the difference. But I do wonder if people at the time felt the same way.
  - iainmerrick 7mo ago
    That led me to https://www.folklore.org/Desk_Ornaments.html https://www.folklore.org/Desk_Ornaments.html which is a very fun read. Interesting to note that the UI style of the DAs is actually not consistent at all, some have round corners and some don't. I particularly like this Bill Atkinson tidbit at the end: Bill Atkinson complained to me that it was a mistake to allow users to specify their own desktop patterns, because it was harder to make a nice one than it looked, and led directly to ugly desktops. [...] So he made MacPaint allocate a window that was the size of the screen when it started up, and filled it with the standard 50% gray pattern, making his own desktop covering up the real one, thus protecting the poor users from their rash esthetic blunders, at least within the friendly confines of MacPaint. (He was totally right, making your own desktop patterns was fun but the standard checkerbard was far and away the best choice.)
- bestham 7mo ago
  “Well actually” in System 1 and later Classic macOS the puzzle and the calculator are ”Desk Accessories” that is applications that can run simultaneously as other apps, even though the operating system does not support multitasking. The rounded corners are there to distinguish them from the current running application.
tomovo 7mo ago
The justification by Apple is that it keeps the concentricity between window corner and the red/green/yellow window controls. Which, as you may notice, it does. It's wrong though, because the window is the higher element in the hierarchy (container) and should not be affected by what is inside. It creates a larger inconsistency than the "consistency" it supposedly brings.
- WillAdams 7mo ago
  Agreed. A better solution would be to adjust the sizing/placement of the window controls (and allow the hit area to include the original placement maybe?).
- lapcat 7mo ago
  Here's a Finder window screenshot from Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah: https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/10-0-Cheetah-Applications.png https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/10-0-Cheeta... Notice two things: 1) The window chrome with traffic lights and title is entirely separate from the toolbar, not unified with the toolbar. 2) The top of the window is rounded, but the bottom of the window is not! I think the old design was superior for several reasons, one of which is that it made the windows much easier to drag around the screen. In any case, though, even if there's an argument about concentricity and window controls, it makes no sense that the bottom of the window has the same corner radius as the top when the toolbar is only at the top.
  - steve1977 7mo ago
    IIRC, you could even "roll up" the window into the top window chrome, with that transparent pill button on the right.
  - create-username 7mo ago
    It’s a great desktop environment. I wish I could install it. I’m trying to install the CDE on a parallel’s FreeBSD VM but it doesn’t relaunch after rebooting it.
- trymas 7mo ago
revolvingthrow 7mo ago
It is difficult to put into words how much I dislike macos 26. I held out on upgrading for a long time since there were so many horror stories, but to my surprise both iOS and ipadOS 26 aren’t really any different than 18. Maybe because you don’t really do any proper work on it? The graphical differences aren’t anything major when the apps fill the whole viewport anyway. But macOS? Good lord. I can only hope 27 will unfuck things somewhat, there are so many small annoyances and all of them add to a constant sense of unhappiness throughout the day. I’m really tempted to downgrade back to Sequoia. At least the M4 will be good enough for years if this truly is the new path Apple will take.
mft_ 7mo ago
[dead]
whywhywhywhy 7mo ago
I know a lot of people have brought up the corner radius but the left aligned title is such a weird step backwards.
mohsen1 7mo ago
They missed some other type of windows like Activity Monitor graphs. Those are even sharper corners!
pi-err 7mo ago
This specific design decision makes so little sense, really curious on how it got approved. It's not an accident or a miss, since the variable radius got quite heavily promoted during WWDC. Hopeful they don't wait 7 years to change stance.
iamcalledrob 7mo ago
This is an issue on Linux too, especially when Wayland is used and applications are responsible for drawing their own chrome. Ugh. HOWEVER, due to the open nature of the platform, you can install an extension to clean this up. Now, all my windows have identical corner radii, strokes, shadows etc. My Linux desktop is, surprisingly, more consistent now than macOS in this regard. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/7048/rounded-window-corners-reborn/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/7048/rounded-window-c...
kombine 7mo ago
The only question remains, why our community (programmers and scientists) continues funding this completely voluntarily?
mfld 7mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
Synaesthesia 7mo ago
Today when cropping an image in Preview.app on Tahoe I ran into an issue where you can't use the bottom of the crop selection rectangle because the rounded corner of the window blocks it.
- traeregan 7mo ago
  Pinch (or CMD + minus) zoom out slightly as a workaround.
  - Synaesthesia 7mo ago
    Yeah I came right. Just a minor annoyance. I'm one of the people who actually mostly likes Tahoe. Funny to see how new versions of MacOS always get piled on, in such a groupthink manner. For me personally, once in used to the new UI, going back seems crude.
hooch 7mo ago
Sequoia is the new Snow Leopard
gnarlouse 7mo ago
A few weeks ago I was thinking about starting https://theghostofsteve.com https://theghostofsteve.com, where users can come and post their experiences about about Apple devices in 2026. Users would like/dislike with "its genius" or "its shit". The assumption being that the majority of reactions would be "its shit."
gnarlouse 7mo ago
On iOS, there are four little white corners beneath my keyboard when im typing on HN. Because HW & SW didnt coordinate on the size of the keyboard rounding vs the new iPhone 17. Just so, so sloppy. I'm supposed to trust a multi trillion dollar company with my privacy?
kaizenb 7mo ago
This is driving me crazy for some time. Worst with Calendar. (don't looook)
mhb 7mo ago
As jarring as "radiuses"? I guess not.
lapcat 7mo ago
FYI I just published a follow-up, "The evolution of Mac app window corners": https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/3/4.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/3/4.html
unconed 7mo ago
This article's timeline is mostly accurate, but contains a few inaccuracies: - Unified toolbar and titlebar dates from much earlier... it was 10.4, not 10.7. - The brushed metal look was supposed to be applied to "appliance-like" apps as opposed to "document-like" apps... But Apple was never able to stick to that rule themselves. There are a few design ideas that always turn out to be bad when implemented, but which designers seem to have to learn the hard way. Transparency is the biggest one, but I guess so is excessive rounding now.
nxpnsv 7mo ago
Here's a controversial take. It doesn't bother me at all.
moi2388 7mo ago
The rounded corners are dumb in general. When you maximise the window, you have rounded corners meaning you see the background behind them near the menu bar and bottom. Because the screen has no rounded corners. When you maximise, make it have straight corners (at the very least at the top), this is just ridiculous
oompydoompy74 7mo ago
I’ve come around to Tahoe. Liquid Glass isn’t my favorite, but the tinted appearance setting largely fixes most of my gripes. I suspect this will become the default. They just need to keep tweaking and it will be fine. Most users that don’t lurk on tech forums really enjoy the look.

320 points by robenkleene 7mo ago

nikolay 7mo ago

It keeps annoying me, too. How can their developers not see this?!

riffraff 7mo ago
I'm starting to suspect most people at Apple (and Microsoft) just spend time in a browser these days and so they don't notice how the desktop has gone shitty.
- pjmlp 7mo ago
  I won't be public shaming, but on a .NET podcast I just heard of an internal Microsoft project that took 7 years (!), to become public, it was a plain single Assembly .NET library nothing special (1 DLL).
  - littlecranky67 7mo ago
    Which one?
- hulitu 7mo ago
  Then why are they rounding windows corners ? Boredom ?
galad87 7mo ago
Because that's by design. The windows are meant to have different corner radius, they even explained it at WWDC. Then people forgot and rediscovered it again, like it was some new thing. I am not saying that it's a good idea to have different corner radius, just that it's nothing new.
- mikae1 7mo ago
  > they even explained it at WWDC Did they explain the reasoning?
  - galad87 7mo ago
    To align the window corner radius to the window close/minimize/resize buttons distance from the edge of the window.
    - nikolay 7mo ago
      I'd rather have my corners perfect and not have the constant eyesore of pixels bleeding from other windows' corners!
    - Karliss 7mo ago
      Except it kind of fails at that too. The window corners seem to be either based on those squircle things or some kind of other varying radii curve which eases out into sides much more gradually than proper circles. The window buttons (close, minimize) the round toolbar buttons anchored to top right corner are based on proper circles. Attempting to center circle in a varying curvature corner results in varying spacing between the circle and corner, which defeats the whole point of why different windows have different corner size (not calling it radius because they are not circles). When the top right corner contains a search field instead of rounded button, that also seems to use varying curvature instead of capsule with proper circles at the ends. Still results in varying spacing between window corner and the toolbar content. And that's just the 2 top corners. Attempts to align top corners result in even bigger mismatch with the rest of the window content. For example calculator -> it has a grid of round buttons. While the window corners might match top bar (as good as they can due to different shapes) the main calculation buttons don't match the corners at all. Similar problem affects many of the popups which have something like confirmation button anchored to bottom right corner. Rounded scrollbar handle - not aligned with bottom left corner size, instead it awkwardly gets cut of by different amount in each program. Menus also have this disease. The non circular corner curve of overall menu shape extends way past the corner of item highlight resulting in varying spacing and making it feel almost like whole menu has bulged out instead of flat sides.
pjmlp 7mo ago
Priorities on what tickets to work on, and Apple being proudly underresourced.
mulmen 7mo ago
Because they did it on purpose to demonstrate their utter contempt for their users and to show us how wrong we are.
jiehong 7mo ago
Yep, it’s just ugly IMO
hurfdurf 7mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47320534

robthebrew 7mo ago

There is a work around if you don't mind lowering the Security settings: https://github.com/aspauldingcode/apple-sharpener https://github.com/aspauldingcode/apple-sharpener

TheFuzzball 7mo ago
It's annoying, sure, but it's not worth disabling SIP.

satGuess 7mo ago

I hadn’t noticed this before, but now I can’t unsee it. UI inconsistencies like that tend to stand out once someone points them out.

unselect5917 7mo ago

This is one of those stories that I read and I'm like, "Someone wrote an article about that? I am definitely among my people, but I smell a front end developer."

franciscop 7mo ago

This was one of the very few advantages of moving from Linux => MacOS, that at least most of the software was beautiful and consistent by default. I'm saddened to see that this is not true anymore. Been holding the Tahoe upgrade, and might just keep my macbook air m1 much longer than originally intended because of this.

mrcarrot 7mo ago
I've started using Linux recently after not touching a desktop distro for 20-odd years, and I was surprised how good both Gnome and KDE look these days. It certainly doesn't feel like there's a trillion-dollar-company difference between those two and Tahoe.
- chang1 7mo ago
  Same! I hadn't touched Linux since 2005-06. I've been trying out Niri and Noctalia. I've been pleasantly surprised how close I'm able to get to match most of what I do on a Mac. I haven't had this much fun with computers in years. It has certainly helped with my Tahoe grief.
eastbound 7mo ago
Beautiful, it’s nice, but the polished user experience was the ultimate argument. - Raising the lid of the laptop and the base wouldn’t stick and fall off on the desk, - A single-button click, - A Cmd+C to copy and Ctrl+C for the interruption 7 in the terminal, But now you have to configure that, yes, activate the right-click; yes, activate the three-finger click (wtf, 3 fingers); yes, activate the swipe-across-desktops on the magic mouse, all those items were selling points, so they should have studied the best behavior and implemented it by default on all deployments. But that requires studies, aesthetics, and a taste that only Steeve Jobs had, otherwise everything becomes an option. That’s right, I’m going to paraphrase Jobs’ argument against the 1990ies Microsoft: The problem with Apple is they have no taste.
- ant6n 7mo ago
  What I find confusing and unhelpful is how The Apple OS deals with windows. Say if you have 4 safari windows, 3 excel windows, 5 window word documents and a bunch of terminals spread across a bunch of desktops. To me, I have clearly conceptionalized different work streams into desktops. Apple doesn’t understand and respect that. Firstly, alt-tab doesn’t consider windows, it considers apps. So if you have multiple browser windows or word windows open, you can’t alt-tab between them. It’s totally confusing. So I install an app just to get the normal alt-tab behavior of other OSs, to alt-tab between windows (mine is called alt-tab, and it’s a bit buggy and slow, I think they all are) Next, Apple does not respect the multiple desktop boundary. If I click on the safari icon in the dock, it will switch to some seemingly random safari window in some other desktop. If I close any window, it will also run off to some other window of the same app in some other desktop (who came up with that behavior?) when I dismiss an outlook notification, it will run of to another desktop to look at outlook (actually I think this one is Microsoft’s fault, but Apple could probably do something about this one). The result is that while working, I have trouble staying on the desktop I’m working on, I constantly am getting sent off to some other random desktop, and have to find where I am and where I was. There must be a better, more productive way to manage windows and desktops. (Also what’s up with the autocorrect, I had to retype every instance of “I think” in this message, because it insists it should be “o think”)

postalcoder 7mo ago

This one really bothers me. Whenever maximizing or tiling my windows (which is all the time), I see multiple layers of oddly rounded corners. I think if there's any upside to Tahoe, the grievances may push me into blogging for the first time ever, because I can't keep these to myself. I actually feel sorry for Apple's developers because there's no way you ship software this bad and inconsistent unless you've been handed a terrible design spec from Dye's team. edit: On my screen, three layers' corners https://hcker.news/tahoe-corners.png https://hcker.news/tahoe-corners.png

create-username 7mo ago
“Calm down, Postalcoder. We can vent tonight on our blog”
torben-friis 7mo ago
There is so much of that in modern apple. Clear issues caused by a seemingly bright idea, but the idea still pushed forward no matter what. One example that I hate on iOS: the notification/lockscreen curtain is supposed to cover the content as it slides down. That’s what a curtain does, this has been the language for years. Now the curtain is transparent, so it can’t cover the content behind. How does the content disappear then, as you slide the curtain down? … it doesn’t. Icons do a buggy looking animation crashing toward the user and through the screen, and if it’s an app there is just no transition. You can check by sliding the curtain down slowly and then letting go.
- aucisson_masque 7mo ago
  Yeah I found that surprising too and assumed it was a bug. I see this kind of trend with apple since big sur. It's not new but it's becoming more obvious with every release.
- merlindru 7mo ago
  > seemingly bright idea i disagree about that one. im not a UX expert by any means but my first impression at WWDC seeing liquid glass was "holy shit, they pulled that off? i know apple would never compromise on legibility, so... how? there are so many situations where this won't work, and they can't exactly control the content that the buttons are overlaid on top of" cue my confusion when it was exactly that: an obviously problematic idea implemented with all the obvious flaws showing up they have largely fixed it now, half a year later, but the liquid glass isn't very liquid anymore. it's frosted. which is fine, but obviously not the original idea they were going for contrasty backgrounds are fundamentally incompatible with legibility

etchalon 7mo ago

This feels like one of those "done for backwards compatibility and we tested not doing it and it was worse" things where everyone assumes incompetence over good-faith trade-offs being driven by release schedules.

iknowstuff 7mo ago
Did the radius need changing
- afandian 7mo ago
  Something needed changing! And the radius was something!
  - duskdozer 7mo ago
    What if they randomized the radius on every launch? A fresh, modern experience every time!
    - afandian 7mo ago
      Make it “on every corner” and we have a deal. (EDIT - and Gemini could create a plausible explanation post-hoc each time)
      - agos 7mo ago
        different radius on every corner and we're back in the winamp skin era, not bad!
    - egorfine 7mo ago
      Don't give them ideas
- etchalon 7mo ago
  Does any new design ever need to be done?

MaxikCZ 7mo ago

Im gonna go against the grain here, so hold your pitchforks please, but I think its better than if it were consistent. Let me explain: The author notices that adding a toolbar changes the radius, and to me it makes sense. If theres a toolbar, I know how much I can cut the corners, because the icons in the toolbar are not gonna be in far corner. At the same time, when I am unsure about what type of content might get cut by the corner, I will reduce the cut slightly to give that content more space. I couldnt care less that one radius is not the same as another, I guess my OCD levels are not that high (yet?). And I say all of this as someone who dislikes the glass design, and especially hates the small, slowly fading in volume/brightness indicators in the corner replacing the mid screen beautiful instant indicator.

gattilorenz 7mo ago
So… the moment the Interface Designer in XCode can identify the app only has a single button at the center of a window, the window should be a circle? :)
- oniony 7mo ago
  No, because circles are not as cool as squircles.

sgt 7mo ago

Maybe this is intentional? Either way, doesn't look bad.

steve_adams_86 7mo ago
I suppose that's subjective, because to me it looks distracting and tacky. I want the window chrome to be present, opinionated, yet consistent and plain. This is one of the many Tahoe-isms that violates the latter two. It's visual noise that detracts from one of the most basic utilities of the UI, which is to simply hold my applications in a regular, cohesive, predictable manner. Maybe it shouldn't irritate me, but it's the first time I've encountered it in 30 years. I'm all for change and trying new things, but this doesn't feel like progress.
- nnwright 7mo ago
  This 100%. I _like_ new features and new UX when it enhances things or makes them easier to work with. That used to be a huge selling point when purchasing a Mac vs PC, genuine thought and consideration had been given to every single interaction and user impact. And then ... Apple lost its way. Now when I get a new Mac I spend the better part of a day turning off as much of the pointless eye candy as I can so that I can focus on the task I'm working on, not the distracting UX conventions. I want a computer, not an iPad with a keyboard. That already exists, and there is a reason I don't have one.
  - steve_adams_86 7mo ago
    > turning off as much of the pointless eye candy as I can so that I can focus on the task I'm working on, not the distracting UX conventions. What's worse too is that the means of reducing this distraction and visual mess are arguably only a trade for a different, often equally (though sometimes even more) poorly implemented interface. The high contrast and reduced transparency modes are not well designed at all in my opinion, and they seem like vague afterthoughts in this transition.
wahnfrieden 7mo ago
It is intentional - it was explained at WWDC. And it looks good.

ulbu 7mo ago

read somewhere that maybe they’re preparing for OLED screens

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
ant6n 7mo ago
How does that argument work?
- defraudbah 7mo ago
  which will be even worse so you don't get that angry after years of bad design, lol
- hulitu 7mo ago
  O from OLED is round. That's why they need rounded windows. /s
Y-bar 7mo ago
All iPhones since the iPhone X (2017), and not the iPhone SE line, has an OLED display. iPad Pro also has OLED.
- Reason077 7mo ago
  There's also been rumours of a new high-end OLED MacBook ("Ultra"?) in the works, possibly this year.
crote 7mo ago
If it is that crucial, they should add a few pixels of margin around the entire desktop, and randomly shift everything around. Doing only corners and not straight edges, and doing it by a fixed per-app amount, seems a bit silly.
ulbu 7mo ago
is there a reason to downvote this?

wahnfrieden 7mo ago

Why should the two window varieties have the same corner radius? There's no design analysis here, only conservatism.

AlexandrB 7mo ago
The bottom of windows show have no corner radius at all. For most types of content it sacrifices usable space for UI chrome. It also makes resizing harder and scroll bars ugly.
hulitu 7mo ago
Because when they overlap, you want to resize the top one.

nnwright 7mo ago

Mac OS's UX design has been in free fall the last 5-10 years (ever since the "iOS-ify everything" zeitgeist took root). Sincerely hope that they one day revert back, because the current UX is just godawful for any usecase I can imagine.

Reason077 7mo ago
I really hope they roll back some of the more obnoxious and pointless aspects of "Liquid Glass" in macOS 27. And the super-rounded window corners are high up on my list. Looks childish, wastes screen space, causes so many little annoyances...
- aucisson_masque 7mo ago
  I wish too but they can't just back up, that would be a very bad sign for investors.
  - blackhaz 7mo ago
    They'll just come up with round displays. Like on PDP-1.
    - GuinansEyebrows 7mo ago
      finally, we can run SPACEWAR on macOS as it was always intended to be run.
  - Towaway69 7mo ago
    Why? What happened to the magic bar? There are many things Apple changed their minds on. I won’t be surprised if there is a rollback in 27 (i’m hoping there will be - else going to buy a retro mac with a magic bar upon no tahoe runs).
    - duskdozer 7mo ago
      They can't frame it as a rollback at least. Have to sync it up with a new OS release or something as the "new" best thing

stein1946 7mo ago

It just seems to me that that Macbook Neo is basically them telling us that come next year they will unify iOS and MacOS and they are testing the waters at the moment. All this version alignment, the blurring of "here is a laptop with A processor and iOS" points to that direction. The errs of Tahoe are basically a result of the rush on that direction

nashashmi 7mo ago
I think they have the pathway to merge it right now. But it will cannibalize their sales so they dont want to do that.
merlindru 7mo ago
i hope you're wrong. they certainly have seemed to test the waters on many other fronts. the $99/yr notarization fee is now basically required as running unnotarized apps is made hard and scary enough to turn off probably 97% of average users they also briefly took away the ability to disable gatekeeper per terminal command (now back) next they wanna launch a touchscreen macbook, presumably this fall
- roysting 7mo ago
  I hope they don’t ever do a touchscreen MacBook. They already have every angle of that use case covered far better than the competition; either you get an iPad if you absolutely need to be pawing at a screen, or you have the excellent trackpads that are far and away par excellence. I don’t see how a touch screen on top of also the industry standard for screen quality will in any way improve by having greasy finger trails distorting the tiny pixels. Maybe I’m missing something. How would a touchscreen MacBook improve on something? That being said, based on what I’ve been seeing at Apple, I would not be surprised if they did go down that mediocrity route.
  - ileonichwiesz 7mo ago
    > How would a touchscreen MacBook improve on something? It won’t, but there’s now an entire generation of users who get confused and angry if any kind of display doesn’t react when you poke it with your finger.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

mkzet 7mo ago

I will never upgrade from Sequoia and when I'll have no other options migrate to another laptop!

marxisttemp 7mo ago
[flagged]
- bschwindHN 7mo ago
  Why are you shilling so hard for these features?
  - marxisttemp 7mo ago
    Because they’re significant improvements to the way macOS works for power users
  - greenchair 7mo ago
    their username..
    - marxisttemp 7mo ago
      Yes, nothing says Marxism like shilling for the most valuable corporation in history. That's definitely the reason why I'm talking about cool new features in Tahoe.
- Nekorosu 7mo ago
  Design is much more than that. Also, it’s almost as if you can’t imagine that other users might have needs and preferences different from yours.
- cpt_sobel 7mo ago
  Just get Raycast for what you mentioned, + much better (the bar is really low tbf) search

nashashmi 7mo ago

The rounded corners is such a key element of apple design. They patented rounded corners on the iphone for precisely this reason. They wanted to trademark this but got a design patent instead. And then samsung notoriously copied this one almost verbatim same radius which pissed off apple.

dchftcs 7mo ago
>one almost verbatim same radius which pissed off apple So this is what they decided to do? Use so many different rounded radius variations that competitors don't know which one to copy?
hulitu 7mo ago
> The rounded corners is such a key element of apple design. See Windows 11.
- nashashmi 7mo ago
  Windows corner is a lot sharper/smaller than the apple corner.

donatj 7mo ago

Containers with different contents look different? I don't see the big deal. That seems like a reasonable design choice. Make nice rounded corners when content allows, but rectangle them up as needed? Seems like a nice adaptive design choice. Honestly making different apps slightly more visually identifiable in a sea of sameness doesn't seem like a big deal.

jacobsyc 7mo ago

don't know why this bothers me but apple is losing attention to detail

douglee650 7mo ago

Feels sloppy (is sloppy) but I think the idea is to prioritize OS unification for hardware reasons, and UX across product suite — devices can share data, apps, screens, everything.

iainmerrick 7mo ago
I'm seeing a lot of comments here about macOS/iOS unification, but I think people are getting worked up about nothing. What do macOS window styles have to do with iOS? iOS (mostly) doesn't have windows! What does the MacBook Neo have to do with iOS, other than coincidentally using some of the same components? Maybe Apple decided to make a cheaper Mac because they thought people might want to buy a cheaper Mac. They are trying to use a common design language across all their devices, sure. But you would hardly expect them to do the opposite! They might try to make a hybrid tablet/laptop or something at some point, sure, but none of their current moves point inevitably in that direction. Except maybe for software notarization, but that has nothing to do with window corners or cheaper laptops.

zer0zzz 7mo ago

I actually really like that certain windows have a different corner radius. It wraps around the chrome of the app properly. If you made it this far, know I am totally messing with you. It really is unnerving.

blackhaz 7mo ago

Apple is no longer about Jobs' "simplicity as the ultimate sophistication". It feels like a bunch of kids with no proper design education competing for the security of their salaries. Apple is dead without Steve. The company has no focal point. They're running solely on the inertia from Mac OS X and the first generations of the iPhone.

interpol_p 7mo ago
That's a pretty extreme take. I've been using the Mac since about 2001. I like Tahoe and a well designed Tahoe app can look really nice on the platform. There are bugs, inconsistencies and other issues, but it doesn't feel that different than many previous macOS / OS X releases
- mpalmer 7mo ago
  You've been a Mac user since the original candy iMacs and you don't see the company design ethos slipping in the last five years?

ai-calcium 7mo ago

Finally, the update we've all been waiting for

iainmerrick 7mo ago

I dislike Tahoe too, but this particular thing is not new. I just did an image search for "classic macos" and one of the first hits was from https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os. Look at those System 1 screenshots, from 42(!) years ago -- round corners on Puzzle and Calculator, square corners on Note Pad and Control Panel! No consistency at all, isn't it infuriating?

afandian 7mo ago
Puzzle and Calculator were Desk Accessories (DAs), a special kind of app. Some cool details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_accessory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desk_accessory Like Tahoe, it was deliberate and there's an explanation for the difference. But I do wonder if people at the time felt the same way.
- iainmerrick 7mo ago
  That led me to https://www.folklore.org/Desk_Ornaments.html https://www.folklore.org/Desk_Ornaments.html which is a very fun read. Interesting to note that the UI style of the DAs is actually not consistent at all, some have round corners and some don't. I particularly like this Bill Atkinson tidbit at the end: Bill Atkinson complained to me that it was a mistake to allow users to specify their own desktop patterns, because it was harder to make a nice one than it looked, and led directly to ugly desktops. [...] So he made MacPaint allocate a window that was the size of the screen when it started up, and filled it with the standard 50% gray pattern, making his own desktop covering up the real one, thus protecting the poor users from their rash esthetic blunders, at least within the friendly confines of MacPaint. (He was totally right, making your own desktop patterns was fun but the standard checkerbard was far and away the best choice.)
bestham 7mo ago
“Well actually” in System 1 and later Classic macOS the puzzle and the calculator are ”Desk Accessories” that is applications that can run simultaneously as other apps, even though the operating system does not support multitasking. The rounded corners are there to distinguish them from the current running application.

tomovo 7mo ago

The justification by Apple is that it keeps the concentricity between window corner and the red/green/yellow window controls. Which, as you may notice, it does. It's wrong though, because the window is the higher element in the hierarchy (container) and should not be affected by what is inside. It creates a larger inconsistency than the "consistency" it supposedly brings.

WillAdams 7mo ago
Agreed. A better solution would be to adjust the sizing/placement of the window controls (and allow the hit area to include the original placement maybe?).
lapcat 7mo ago
Here's a Finder window screenshot from Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah: https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/10-0-Cheetah-Applications.png https://512pixels.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/10-0-Cheeta... Notice two things: 1) The window chrome with traffic lights and title is entirely separate from the toolbar, not unified with the toolbar. 2) The top of the window is rounded, but the bottom of the window is not! I think the old design was superior for several reasons, one of which is that it made the windows much easier to drag around the screen. In any case, though, even if there's an argument about concentricity and window controls, it makes no sense that the bottom of the window has the same corner radius as the top when the toolbar is only at the top.
- steve1977 7mo ago
  IIRC, you could even "roll up" the window into the top window chrome, with that transparent pill button on the right.
- create-username 7mo ago
  It’s a great desktop environment. I wish I could install it. I’m trying to install the CDE on a parallel’s FreeBSD VM but it doesn’t relaunch after rebooting it.
trymas 7mo ago

revolvingthrow 7mo ago

It is difficult to put into words how much I dislike macos 26. I held out on upgrading for a long time since there were so many horror stories, but to my surprise both iOS and ipadOS 26 aren’t really any different than 18. Maybe because you don’t really do any proper work on it? The graphical differences aren’t anything major when the apps fill the whole viewport anyway. But macOS? Good lord. I can only hope 27 will unfuck things somewhat, there are so many small annoyances and all of them add to a constant sense of unhappiness throughout the day. I’m really tempted to downgrade back to Sequoia. At least the M4 will be good enough for years if this truly is the new path Apple will take.

mft_ 7mo ago

[dead]

whywhywhywhy 7mo ago

I know a lot of people have brought up the corner radius but the left aligned title is such a weird step backwards.

mohsen1 7mo ago

They missed some other type of windows like Activity Monitor graphs. Those are even sharper corners!

pi-err 7mo ago

This specific design decision makes so little sense, really curious on how it got approved. It's not an accident or a miss, since the variable radius got quite heavily promoted during WWDC. Hopeful they don't wait 7 years to change stance.

iamcalledrob 7mo ago

This is an issue on Linux too, especially when Wayland is used and applications are responsible for drawing their own chrome. Ugh. HOWEVER, due to the open nature of the platform, you can install an extension to clean this up. Now, all my windows have identical corner radii, strokes, shadows etc. My Linux desktop is, surprisingly, more consistent now than macOS in this regard. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/7048/rounded-window-corners-reborn/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/7048/rounded-window-c...

kombine 7mo ago

The only question remains, why our community (programmers and scientists) continues funding this completely voluntarily?

mfld 7mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

Synaesthesia 7mo ago

Today when cropping an image in Preview.app on Tahoe I ran into an issue where you can't use the bottom of the crop selection rectangle because the rounded corner of the window blocks it.

traeregan 7mo ago
Pinch (or CMD + minus) zoom out slightly as a workaround.
- Synaesthesia 7mo ago
  Yeah I came right. Just a minor annoyance. I'm one of the people who actually mostly likes Tahoe. Funny to see how new versions of MacOS always get piled on, in such a groupthink manner. For me personally, once in used to the new UI, going back seems crude.

hooch 7mo ago

Sequoia is the new Snow Leopard

gnarlouse 7mo ago

A few weeks ago I was thinking about starting https://theghostofsteve.com https://theghostofsteve.com, where users can come and post their experiences about about Apple devices in 2026. Users would like/dislike with "its genius" or "its shit". The assumption being that the majority of reactions would be "its shit."

gnarlouse 7mo ago

On iOS, there are four little white corners beneath my keyboard when im typing on HN. Because HW & SW didnt coordinate on the size of the keyboard rounding vs the new iPhone 17. Just so, so sloppy. I'm supposed to trust a multi trillion dollar company with my privacy?

kaizenb 7mo ago

This is driving me crazy for some time. Worst with Calendar. (don't looook)

mhb 7mo ago

As jarring as "radiuses"? I guess not.

lapcat 7mo ago

FYI I just published a follow-up, "The evolution of Mac app window corners": https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/3/4.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/3/4.html

unconed 7mo ago

This article's timeline is mostly accurate, but contains a few inaccuracies: - Unified toolbar and titlebar dates from much earlier... it was 10.4, not 10.7. - The brushed metal look was supposed to be applied to "appliance-like" apps as opposed to "document-like" apps... But Apple was never able to stick to that rule themselves. There are a few design ideas that always turn out to be bad when implemented, but which designers seem to have to learn the hard way. Transparency is the biggest one, but I guess so is excessive rounding now.

nxpnsv 7mo ago

Here's a controversial take. It doesn't bother me at all.

moi2388 7mo ago

The rounded corners are dumb in general. When you maximise the window, you have rounded corners meaning you see the background behind them near the menu bar and bottom. Because the screen has no rounded corners. When you maximise, make it have straight corners (at the very least at the top), this is just ridiculous

oompydoompy74 7mo ago

I’ve come around to Tahoe. Liquid Glass isn’t my favorite, but the tinted appearance setting largely fixes most of my gripes. I suspect this will become the default. They just need to keep tweaking and it will be fine. Most users that don’t lurk on tech forums really enjoy the look.