MacOS 26 actually has some really great new features around Spotlight, from actions to clipboard history, and the heretofore-underloved Control Center has been really improved (and is clearly being positioned as the new solution to the plague of ever-increasing menu bar icons). There are improvements to Shortcuts automation. And, for nerds (hi), Terminal finally got 24-bit color and support for Powerline fonts.

I see a lot of "ugh, Tahoe is just the iOS-ification of macOS" on HN, which, on the surface, I get -- the visual changes by and large make things worse, and ironically I think they're actually not as good as the changes on iOS. But the Mac got stuff that the iPad didn't, and there's still a lot you can't do on the iPad that you can on the Mac. I don't think the two are merging any time soon, even if they're becoming more visually similar. (Actually, I don't think the two will ever merge, strictly speaking, but that's another post.)