I freaking hate liquid-glass UI Apple has "forced" onto us. No freaking way to disable it. I hate it so much.
I, for one, prefer Apple products because they sweat the small stuff more than the other options, and when they have put in effort to make things worse it's kind of infuriating.
I do a bit of desktop Linux work too, and it's OK, but hard to complain when it's all open source volunteer work! Windows is so terrible that I wouldn't even know where to start. What's the point? There's nobody at Microsoft that even gives a damn.
Apple was actually last to the party on that. Linux had virtual desktops for years at that point, and Windows had them as well through Microsoft PowerToys. I’m pretty sure I was running it on Windows 2000.
In the end you’ll spend a significant amount of your time trying to “get back” to where you just where (that alt-tab, a possible savior for this in all other OSs, doesn’t work at all on Mac just adds to the UX mess)
In the end though I just feel like it's extra cognitive load to have to think about two different shortcuts to do what is in many ways the same thing.
Say, I've got two browser windows open and a code editor open. I'm wanting to flip through the browser windows to check on things while I work in the code editor. In reality I'm just wanting to juggle the three windows, but depending on if I'm wanting to go from browser to browser it's a different shortcut than if I'm wanting to go from editor to browser. And there's a good chance I'll then need to swap from editor to browser, then issue a different shortcut to go from that browser to the other. When I could have just hit the same shortcut twice.
I've just never really encountered a situation where I've felt like it added something, but I'm constantly having cases where its more annoying.
The 40-year-deep-history Mac answer to workflows like that with a small working set with frequent cross-app-one-to-other-switching IMO is mouse-based navigation + spatial partially-overlapping windows, but this seems to be an extremely foreign concept to Windows/*nix users that grew up on full-screen-maximize or tiling. So I don't think is particularly likely to be adopted by anyone who doesn't already have it burned into their brains at this point. :) There's a lot of these old Mac bones still baked into the OS (e.g. if you have a folder on your desktop, and double click it, and move it, then close it, it'll open to the location you moved it to next time. And that memory is separate from that for another folder on your desktop. Though some of the follow-on behaviors have changed (opening folders in already-open windows used to behave similarly, opening new windows by default).
The 20-year-history version is my own personal lord and savior: Exposé hot corners.
Spaces and no-mouse navigation are still in many ways comparative afterthoughts to mouse-based/spatial workflows. Though as someone with 30+ year of Mac muscle memories in my head, the switching-windows-vs-switching-app concept and awareness of "where" I am relative to it is pretty embedded.
The whole window arranging so you can click on them doesn't help you when you have multiple desktops, close some terminal, and jump to some other terminal three desktops away. Like, arranging windows so you see some part of it always, just so you can click on it to switch back and forth between windows feels like a horrible workaround for broken alt-tab behavior. But there's additional levels of weirdnesses that just make using Apple frustrating and scary, like it's constantly throwing random curve balls. It just reeks disorganization. Which is really unfortunate - 10 years ago or so (when witcher task switcher still worked) I really enjoyed working mac. Back then I was mostly coding in the same windows I guess. Nowadays it's business work, and it's just a pain.
I get that that behaviour shouldn’t just be changed but I would appreciate it if there were another key combination that would allow cycling through all windows of an app.
Expose + Cmd-tab/Cmd-backtick being separated == a gap that Linux/Windows have somehow never managed to close in 20+ years now.
The quantity of requests for how to disable Liquid Glass on Apple Discussions is staggering. [2]
[1]https://www.macrumors.com/2026/06/09/macos-golden-gate-liqui...
This eventually becomes awkwardly precise complaints about information density and general change; but the underlying issue is I want to go fast and the system says no
On the Mac side, it’s a toss up between the platinum interface of Mac OS 8/9 and Mac OS X Tiger. With that said, I have a work-issued MacBook Pro running Golden Gate as my daily driver, and Liquid Glass is alright. It’s not what I’d prefer if I had a choice, but it’s not a dramatic departure from previous versions of macOS. A Cheetah or Puma Mac OS X user should be able to navigate Golden Gate with ease, mostly.
I've been on the lookout for a good condition G3 beige desktop, that was my first ever computer that was "mine" and I really want one just for the sentimental value.
Like GP, I despise the new design. I'll say the old design was pretty peak design. Windows looked like windows. Buttons like buttons. With accessibility tweaks (for transparency and borders) I could make it very, very usable.
This new thing is a crime against UI. Every icon now sits in a circle, and takes up % more room as a result. Because … it's pretty? It isn't pretty.
I upgraded my laptop thinking I was going to develop an app and that I'd need to be on the latest design. I ended up developing a TUI so I needn't have bothered. Every time I see my partner's laptop, still on Sequoia, I shed a little tear.
Depends on how accurate you need to be. How fast/confident you can be at hitting with a finger can easily drop off a cliff.
This is likely true for casual users, but for veterans this is a skill issue. My touchpad accuracy/speed more than matches most folks touchscreen accuracy/speed.
Skilled users can make the reach and the motion one. You don't need to stabilize your palm on the rest to use the trackpad. Same way I don't need to use F and J for the keyboard (and kinda wish I could remove those annoying bumps)
I am moving my finger on my touchpad to move the pointer to more or less match what I am reading. I am always close to a Reply button or a vote one. There is no point reaching for the screen with my hand and touching those links. Furthermore they are way too small to be pressed with a finger. They are probably too small for a pointer too, but that's another issue.
Hoever, when I open an empty tab, type new in the URL bar and FF completes it to the URL of this site, and I press return, I usually end up with a Login link in the top right. If I reload the page (ctrl-r) I am logged in. For some reason either FF is not sending the session cookie or HN is not doing what it should on a cold session. This is also another issue (sorry) but let's say that I want to login. My pointer is far away from the login link. My fingers are not on the touchpad. Is it faster to move my right hand towards myself, touch the touchpad, slide the pointer to the link or moving that very same index finger to the link and touch it? My laptop does not have a touchscreen but when I used a tablet with a mouse and a keyboard I reached for the screen many times. Of course a mouse is less efficient than a touchpad, except for games, but I also miss the touchscreen sometimes.
And I would use if to press the reply button below this line I am typing. Let's see where the pointer ended up while I was typing... At the top right corner. Moving it to Reply and clicking is slower than touching the screen.
I do that too. I tend to "park" my cursor near where I am looking, or near where I anticipate clicking next.
> let's say that I want to login. My pointer is far away from the login link. My fingers are not on the touchpad. Is it faster to move my right hand towards myself, touch the touchpad, slide the pointer to the link or moving that very same index finger to the link and touch it?
Entirely depends on your relative proficiencies and preferences, I suppose.
When I had a touchscreen, I used it with a trackpad and a trackball. All three input devices had utility to me, so why not? These days I sometimes use a laser mouse rather than trackball, but same story (though my MacBook doesn't have touch now). I always prefer trackpad to scroll wheel for scrolling, for hopefully obvious reasons (range of motion and precision are both way better). I do know I got use out of the touchscreen even though I can't think of a hard rule for it. It's probably just nice to have on a case-by-case basis.
Personally I would not use the touchscreen very often, but I would use it sometimes to press buttons and maybe even to scroll. Maybe the resize handle in the bottom right corner of the text area I am writing now is a large enough target for a finger. On a laptop: raise a finger, drag and go back to the keys? Probably. With a desktop computer with a keyboard far away from the screen? Well, the mouse is also far away from the hands so who knows.
I never have a real use case for a mouse but sometimes I follow a link from HN to a game in which a mouse would be better than a touchpad: move move move click click move click is great with a mouse and terrible with touchpad of all kinds. My mouse is in a drawer somewhere.
I am a fan of touchpads with physical buttons. I think that only HP is selling them anymore, on very few ZBook models (maybe a 16 Fury?) and Lenovo still has them in laptops with their stick in the middle of the keyboard. However the Lenovo buttons are at the top of the touchpad, where the thumb rests if the index finger operates the stick. The thumb rests below the touchpad when operating the touchpad.
Thinkpad fans will tell me that those buttons are close to the space bar, were thumbs rest all the time and they are right. Their little stick is very conveniently placed but I never manager to operate it as efficiently as a touchpad, which required zero training. My old ZBook has both the stick and the touchpad and two rows of 3 buttons, and I've never learned to move the pointer with the stick, both Windows and Linux.