by Bogdanp on 10/23/25, 7:05 PM with 531 comments
by timmg on 10/23/25, 7:41 PM
There was one that was about all the annoying security pop-ups Windows (used to?) have. (FWIW, it starts here: https://youtu.be/qfv6Ah_MVJU?t=230 .)
Lately I've gotten so many of these popups on Mac that it both annoys and amuses the hell out of me. "Die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain", I guess.
But, man, Apple hardware still rocks. Can't deny that.
by lastofthemojito on 10/23/25, 7:49 PM
It reminds me of stories I've heard about the Cold War and how Soviet scientists and engineers had very little exchange or trade with the West, but made wristwatches and cameras and manned rockets, almost in a parallel universe. These things coexisted in time with the Western stuff, but little to nothing in the supply chain was shared; these artifacts were essentially from a separate world.
That's how it felt as a Mac user in the 80s and 90s. In the early days you couldn't swap a mouse between a Mac and an IBM PC, much less a hard drive or printer. And most software was written pretty much from the ground up for a single platform as well.
And I remember often thinking how much that sucked. My sister had that cool game that ran on her DOS machine at college, or heck, she just had a file on a floppy disk but I couldn't read it on my Mac.
Now so much has been standardized - everything is USB or Wifi or Bluetooth or HTML or REST. Chrom(ium|e) or Firefox render pages the same on Mac or Windows or Linux. Connect any keyboard or webcam or whatever via USB. Share files between platforms with no issues. Electron apps run anywhere.
These days it feels like Mac developers (even inside of Apple) are no longer a continent away from other developers. Coding skills are probably more transferable these days, so there's probably more turnover in the Apple development ranks. There's certainly more influence from web design and mobile design rather than a small number of very opinionated people saying "this is how a Macintosh application should work".
And I guess that's ok. As a positive I don't have the cross-platform woes anymore. And perhaps the price to be paid is that the Mac platform is less cohesive and more cosmopolitan (in the sense that it draws influence, sometimes messily, from all over).
by alsetmusic on 10/23/25, 7:59 PM
Culture flows top-down. Cook is about growth, progressively flowing toward growth at any cost. It’s not a mystery why things are as they are at Apple.
by FredPret on 10/23/25, 7:20 PM
Instead, they should have stayed on the Straigth and Narrow of Quality - where they were for many years - where you move up to computing paradise by having fewer features but more time spent perfecting them.
by combyn8tor on 10/23/25, 8:41 PM
- When an iPad is presented to you to enter your parent code to unlock an app, the name of the app isn't shown as the pin prompt is over the top of the app/time to unlock details.
- It's not possible to set screen time restrictions for Safari.
- If apps are not allowed to be installed, app updates stop. I have to allow app installations, install updates, then block app installations again.
- Setting downtime hours just doesn't seem to work. Block apps from 6pm - 11.59pm? Kid gets locked out of their iPad at school for the whole day.
- Most of the syncing between settings on a computer to the target iPads appear to be broken completely. If an iPad is in downtime, and the scheduled downtime time changes, it does not take the iPad out of downtime.
- Downtime doesn't allow multi-day hour settings. For instance, try setting downtime from 8pm - 8am.
- Popups in the screen time settings of MacOS have no visual indication that there is more beneath what can be seen. There is no scrollbar. You have to swipe/scroll on every popup to see if there are more settings hidden out of view.
- No granular downtime controls for websites. You can block Safari, or you can not block Safari.
Edit: Oh I almost forgot this nifty little bug reported back in 2023: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255049918?sortBy=rank
Screentime randomly shows you a warning about being an administrator... no probs you just need to select another account and then re-select the one you want and it'll go away.
by tveyben on 10/24/25, 9:00 PM
Probably just to make it slick looking (fluent)…
- BUT that’s completely non-effective as it allows for the cursor to be positioned on top of a single letter in >10 different positions.
So when you’re editing you are having a much more difficult time placing the cursor just between the two letters you want.
I noticed it when using some app the had disabled this stupid feature and it was just so much more effective to do mybediting as the cursor jumped to the position BETWEEN the letters in stead of FLOATING ALL OVER.
It’s nice on slides when presenting a new fancy feature, but completely useless for s ‘professional’ (focused) user.
PS yes I recall those old Apple adds - saw them when they were brand new and Apple was a better details oriented company (I miss those days….)
by dgfl on 10/23/25, 7:44 PM
But nonetheless, there’s so many more bugs and visual glitches. Battery life is still unstable and feels markedly worse than before. Safari looks cool, but UI buttons being on top of content is foolish for the reasons highlighted in this article. Overall, it’s just much more visually inconsistent than before. And the glass effect on app icons looks blurry until you get 5cm away from the screen and really pay attention to the icons. I definitely won’t be upgrading my Mac any time soon.
I just wish we would get away from this annual upgrade cycle and just polish the OS for a while. We don’t need 1 trillion “features”, especially when they increase the complexity of the user experience. MacOS in general did this very well, ever since I switched I’ve been very impressed at how much you can accomplish with the default app in macOS, all while looking cleaner and leaner than windows software. No new feature is even close to that balance of power and UI simplicity anymore.
by ayaros on 10/23/25, 7:41 PM
lol
Apple is burning their remaining goodwill among longtime customers, myself included. It's sad to see. Next WWDC, they need to be incredibly transparent about how they plan to fix these issues and get their house in order. If they aren't capable of accepting feedback after this public excoriation, I don't have high hopes for their future.
by afandian on 10/23/25, 8:25 PM
And no, you don't know better than me about this cool feature.
by pmarreck on 10/23/25, 7:46 PM
2) There is still no solution for this annoying-as-hell UI problem that I documented years ago on Medium: https://medium.com/@pmarreck/the-most-annoying-ui-problem-r3...
3) I had to buy Superwhisper (which is a nice product, but works a little janky due to how iOS handles keyboard extensions) because Siri's voice dictation is so abysmally worse than literally every other option right now, and has been for years. WTF, Apple?
Hey Tim, I love the Vision Pro too (I own one) but maybe get your head out of that for a bit and polish up the engineering on the rest of your lines!
by 9x39 on 10/23/25, 7:37 PM
There's little problems that keep accumulating, like the camera app opening up and only showing black until restarting it, at which point I've missed the candid opportunity.
I'm not going anywhere, it's still the right mix of just-works across their ecosystem for me, but dang, the focus does feel different, and it's not about our experience using Apple.
[1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256140468?sortBy=rank
by lunias on 10/24/25, 2:54 PM
Steve Wozniak left Apple in 1985 because he felt the company was no longer an engineering-led one and missed the fun of creating things rather than dealing with management.
by barrell on 10/23/25, 7:47 PM
There’s no way I’m (ever) upgrading to Tahoe, I’m just going to hold out as long as possible and hope Omarchy gets as stable and feature rich as possible in the time being.
No idea what to do about the mobile situation - I can’t see myself realistically ever using android. Switching off of iCloud and Apple Music would also be pretty tough, although I’ve seen some private clouds lately that were compelling.
I just wish there was a more Linux-minded less-Google oriented mobile operating system
by this_user on 10/23/25, 7:24 PM
by Yizahi on 10/23/25, 8:16 PM
This means that author never considered checking how it looks on any other non-Apple OS. Meanwhile Apple has a setting, which is enabled by default, to artificially make a pseudo-bold font out of normal font: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23553486
by rwmj on 10/23/25, 7:17 PM
by madmountaingoat on 10/23/25, 7:36 PM
by ebbi on 10/24/25, 6:58 AM
Don't get me wrong, I also enjoy and benefit from returns from the sharemarket. But I think there are downsides to it, and you can clearly see it here, with Apple. A company that was an underdog, and didn't really need to worry too much about the share price because anything they did at that time was attracting customers at a smaller scale, but it was still growth. Now at the size that they are, they have to lose their soul to keep the growth happening.
It's sad, but it's also the reality. Netflix for example - once tweeting "Love is sharing a password" now resorting to stopping this.
There's just no contentment in the sharemarket.
by anechouapechou on 10/23/25, 7:40 PM
by jm4 on 10/23/25, 7:27 PM
I don't use a Mac anymore, but I do use an iPhone. This is the worst version of iOS I can recall. Everything is low contrast and more difficult to see. The colors look washed out. The icons look blurry. In my opinion, Liquid Glass is a total bust. I don't know what these people are thinking. Times have certainly changed.
by Pfhortune on 10/23/25, 8:45 PM
by heavyset_go on 10/23/25, 8:56 PM
macOS is essentially an iCloud client and sales funnel these days, it's clear that's all that Apple sees it as.
by comboy on 10/23/25, 7:41 PM
It's fascinating to me because that's the single thing which every user goes through. It's the main branch and not some obscure some edge case. How do you do testing that you miss that?
by whirlwin on 10/23/25, 7:42 PM
by Rover222 on 10/23/25, 7:19 PM
by sohrob on 10/23/25, 11:57 PM
by martinclayton on 10/23/25, 8:04 PM
by ruralfam on 10/23/25, 7:29 PM
by duxup on 10/24/25, 12:52 PM
These articles sometimes confused me until someone on HN had a quote:
"MacOS has never been worse, but the distance between MacOS and Windows has never been greater."
So I see these articles and I ... I'm really happy in MacOS land.
by morshu9001 on 10/23/25, 11:44 PM
Apple priorities: Emoji and emoji accessories, realistic glass physics, battery life, new kinds of ports, iCloud subscriptions, rearrange system preferences, iTunes delenda est
I'm just glad as a SWE the Mac still covers my workload
by hnlmorg on 10/23/25, 8:10 PM
In the 90s Apple was in worse shape. They couldn’t even compete with Windows 9x for stability. There were memes about how MacOS needed just as many reformats as Windows 98.
The problem isn’t Apples attention to detail, it’s that people hold Apple to a higher standard. But in reality they’re just as fallible as every other software company.
by eviks on 10/23/25, 7:39 PM
You outgrew this myth, congratulations!
> Look, I've got nothing but respect for the perfectly lovely humans who work at Apple. Several are classmates from university, or people I had the pleasure of working with before at different companies. But I rather suspect what's happened here is that some project manager ... convince Tim
But haven't outgrown this one yet, well, maybe in another 8 years...
by dinkelberg on 10/23/25, 10:48 PM
by HardwareLust on 10/24/25, 1:28 PM
by rifty on 10/24/25, 5:46 AM
A lot of people will disagree that Apple had great attention to detail before because of the things they choose not to focus on. But I think what was counter arguable before is that they were meeting their own internal vision with a high expectation for quality, and that that vision covered every part of the experience. The counter argument doesn't feel as valid today.
by yilugurlu on 10/23/25, 8:30 PM
I tend to ignore these kinds of things, but sometimes applications are unresponsive, lose focus, and iOS apps don't show the keyboard, etc. so I cannot take it anymore.
I wanted to open a file from the Files app on iPad, a PDF. It opened the Preview app, but it couldn't allow me to scroll through the file. I tried to close it, but, back button goes to the Preview app, not to the Files. Then closed the app, and from the Files, but again it kept opening this separate app, instead of the in-app PDF viewer, and I guess I have never seen a malfunctioning state or application flows in default iOS apps ever.
The new reminders app is a joke. It has weird things that randomly jump from date selection to time selection, and sometimes select random dates.
It's like, they did, `claude new-reminder-app.md --dangerously-skip-permissions`, and "is it working? working! release it!" I know (hope) it's not the case, but, since the last few weeks, it feels it's like that.
by morshu9001 on 10/23/25, 7:42 PM
On the bright side, Apple Silicon is amazing, and it seems like Apple decided in 2021 to make the MBP good again like it was in 2015.
by giancarlostoro on 10/23/25, 8:09 PM
by karel-3d on 10/23/25, 7:29 PM
ironically I don't really mind the new design language, whatever, if the damned thing worked.
by FuriouslyAdrift on 10/23/25, 10:58 PM
When they moved production to Foxconn, Quanta, and Pegatron then the quality went up...
by reliabilityguy on 10/23/25, 7:35 PM
by Beestie on 10/24/25, 12:34 PM
by roncesvalles on 10/24/25, 6:02 AM
by cestith on 10/23/25, 9:10 PM
It was pancreatic cancer IIRC.
by redbell on 10/23/25, 7:51 PM
by nixpulvis on 10/24/25, 12:26 AM
Sometimes you need the Jobs at the top of it all telling people it's not working well and they need to get their shit together.
by oogabooga13 on 10/24/25, 2:25 AM
by methuselah_in on 10/23/25, 7:33 PM
by ergonaught on 10/23/25, 10:02 PM
He already covered this: https://youtu.be/K1WrHH-WtaA?si=tHrGBNmLlIfp4NSv
by al_borland on 10/23/25, 8:39 PM
These days it feels like various teams are responsible for their part and they are managing toward a delivery date. As long as they check the box that the feature is there... ship it. There is likely not anyone around to throw the product in a fish tank if it isn't up to par.
by Modified3019 on 10/23/25, 10:01 PM
These are all things which have been broken for years.
by skeptrune on 10/24/25, 7:37 AM
by ortusdux on 10/23/25, 7:22 PM
The companies forget how to make great products. The product sensibility and product genius that brought them to this monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product vs. a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts about wanting to help the costumers.”
- Steve Jobs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs:_The_Lost_Interview
by jasonjmcghee on 10/23/25, 7:33 PM
Everything seems to be lazily done now - by that I mean, a modal pops-up and then it resizes to fit the content. Never seen this before.
Or, you open settings (settings!) and it's not ready to use until a full second later because things need to pop in and shift.
And it's animated- with animation time, so you just have to wait for the transitions to finish.
And "reduce motion" removes visual feedback of moving things (e.g. closing apps) so I find it entirely unusable.
And as others have noted the performance is completely unacceptable. I have a 16 pro and things are slow... And forget "low battery mode" - it's now awful.
I'm not doing anything weird and keep like all apps closed and things off when I don't use them and battery life is significantly worse. (Noticed the same on M4 + Tahoe, upgraded at the same time)
Very disappointed and I very much regret upgrading.
by apricot13 on 10/24/25, 1:37 AM
I just want Safari to work again. The rest I'll wait. I'm checking for software updates daily. it's gotten so bad that I looked up how to report bugs to Apple but I can't submit screenshots!?
I'll settle for just being able to enter data into a form in Safari without needing to reload the whole page.
just to add I had to cut this comment, reload the page, paste it in in order to be able to submit it
by comrade1234 on 10/23/25, 7:29 PM
I think we're stuck with the notch forever on iPhones. Even if apple uses an on-screen fingerprint reader in the future like a billion phones already do they're not going to go back from the face scanner. The only thing that will work is if the face scanner can read from behind the display.
by just-the-wrk on 10/24/25, 12:28 AM
I buy more stock every time one of these articles comes out, because the quiet part is 'Apple is still the best, and I can elevate my brand by criticizing it'
by cmckn on 10/23/25, 7:36 PM
For several years, there's been an issue with audio message recording in iMessage. Prior to iOS 26, it would silently fail; the recording would "begin" but no audio would be captured. This would happen 3, 4, even 5 times in a row before it would actually record audio.
Apple is clearly aware of the issue, because in iOS 26 the failure is no longer silent. Now, you'll get feedback that "Recording isn't available right now". Yet the incidence is...exactly the same. You might have to try 5 times before you're actually able to record a message.
It's simply infuriating, and it makes no sense to a user why this would be happening. Apple owns the entire stack, down to the hardware. Just fix the fucking bug!
by praptak on 10/23/25, 7:33 PM
In this case the inefficiency was attention to detail but in other companies it might be something else.
by game_the0ry on 10/23/25, 10:59 PM
by nonfamous on 10/23/25, 9:29 PM
Just one example: I was excited by the idea of having two apps on screen at the same time: there are two I like to look at side-by-side all the time. But one of them (an iPhone app) randomly decides to switch to landscape mode, making the layout unusable. More generally, the window controls keep getting activated unexpectedly by taps when I use full-screen apps like games, resulting in the window reverting to not-full-screen. So I guess I'll just have to turn that feature off until it's actually usable.
by mandrade2 on 10/24/25, 2:51 PM
by 8200_unit on 10/23/25, 7:47 PM
by JanSt on 10/23/25, 10:33 PM
1) battery warning above tabs in browser with no x to close it
2) WebKit bugs that make inputs and visual diverge so you have to click under the input to hit it
3) flickering email app when it’s opened
by ahmeneeroe-v2 on 10/23/25, 7:24 PM
by qoez on 10/23/25, 7:37 PM
by mathgradthrow on 10/23/25, 7:36 PM
by bhk on 10/23/25, 9:41 PM
by thom on 10/23/25, 7:44 PM
by a-dub on 10/23/25, 9:56 PM
oddly, kde plasma is more pleasing and consistent.
by taminka on 10/23/25, 7:36 PM
by sharts on 10/24/25, 12:12 PM
This thing is laggy…on my brand new 17 Pro. Why not just make the entire OS an electron app at this point?
by indigodaddy on 10/23/25, 7:45 PM
Fucking inexcusable that MacOS metal support for external monitors has been finicky and unstable since the very beginning, and they never resolved that (but at least external monitors were DETECTED, then somewhere in Sequoia things went completely south)-- and now it just seems to be completely broken. There are countless Reddit threads. Why can't the Apple engineering braintrust figure this out??
by thomassmith65 on 10/24/25, 2:59 AM
by mentalgear on 10/23/25, 7:39 PM
by emchammer on 10/23/25, 7:43 PM
by iamdamian on 10/23/25, 7:41 PM
by anon191928 on 10/23/25, 9:17 PM
by prometheus76 on 10/23/25, 8:29 PM
by gitt67887yt7bg on 10/24/25, 8:31 AM
by amelius on 10/23/25, 10:35 PM
My Apple monitor has USB ports on the back side. Sigh.
My mouse had a charger cable on the bottom. Sigh.
My keyboard has no dedicated copy and paste keys. Sigh.
My keyboard has no dedicated undo and redo keys. Sigh.
At one point I had to start iTunes to update my OS. Sigh.
Really, the next time someone says Apple nails UX I am just going to cry.
by rcarmo on 10/23/25, 7:24 PM
by ZeroConcerns on 10/23/25, 7:20 PM
I mean, some people are just impossible to please!
by haunter on 10/23/25, 7:41 PM
https://media.nngroup.com/media/editor/2025/10/06/1-messages...
by maz29 on 10/23/25, 7:17 PM
by x3n0ph3n3 on 10/23/25, 7:16 PM
by makerofthings on 10/23/25, 7:29 PM
by ribs on 10/24/25, 1:57 AM
And then there's the bugs. What software is more consistently buggy than Apple software?
by rglover on 10/24/25, 1:04 AM
by tantalor on 10/23/25, 7:40 PM
by theodric on 10/23/25, 10:16 PM
Steve truly is dead.
[1] https://cdn.social.linux.pizza/system/media_attachments/file...
by ant6n on 10/23/25, 9:59 PM
Kind of bizarre that they are destroyed their reputation for software perfection.
by zsoltkacsandi on 10/23/25, 9:46 PM
It is terrible, does not anything visually or funcionally to the Apple experience.
by busymom0 on 10/23/25, 9:13 PM
by hirvi74 on 10/23/25, 8:48 PM
I really haven't had many problems, and I actually like some of the features. Sure, the UI/UX is not perfect from the start, but there hasn't been anything I have been unable to accomplish because of the new OS. The liquid glass can even be nice with certain backgrounds too.
This is just my hypothesis, but I have noticed that a lot of the people that have been complaining about macOS have been using 3rd party applications for a in their workflow. If I am not mistaken, there were issues with many Electron apps in the beginning. On macOS, I mainly Apple's apps or I'm deep in the command line. So, perhaps I have been fortunate to avoid many of the UI/UX features that many have faced?
by garbagecoder on 10/23/25, 8:33 PM
And to be honest, it never really existed. It was more that everything else was cheaply manufactured garbage.
by snitzr on 10/23/25, 8:32 PM
by ChrisArchitect on 10/23/25, 7:45 PM
by surgical_fire on 10/23/25, 7:44 PM
In my mind it is synonymous with style over substance. Bad software packaged in a user hostile interface, sitting atop shitty hardware that looks sleek and fashionable.
It doesn't matter anyway. It's fashionable enough that it will keep selling.
by constantcrying on 10/23/25, 7:44 PM
The one thing that really changed is that every single company looked at Apple and saw something worth copying. Now there are dozens of phone makers, all seeking to emulate Apples success, putting effort into UI, polishing and design. This wasn't the case a decade ago. Just compare the circus bizarre design choice of Android Lollipop (either Stock or with manufacturer/user added layers on top) to iOS 7.
Now Apple is no longer particularly unique, in many regards. And I believe that they were absolutely aware of that and desired to continue being a defining force, instead of being "one of many". It's not that Apple has changed, it is that it hasn't and now desires to force through change.
by LeoPanthera on 10/23/25, 7:43 PM
I'm not trying to excuse Apple, but this article attempts to paint the impression that every issue is connected in some kind of serial incompetence, but that simply isn't the case.
by malux85 on 10/23/25, 7:16 PM
by mnls on 10/23/25, 7:55 PM
I don’t think that there is going back for Apple, the company is already too enshittified to get back to a company with a vision. They got drowned by AI, the releases and features are subpar to competition. I do care about detail when I’m buying premium products and Apple just doesn’t cut it any more.
by yalogin on 10/24/25, 12:34 AM
by Philadelphia on 10/23/25, 8:35 PM
by mrguyorama on 10/23/25, 7:58 PM
Apple built a phone that would bend in pockets because they used flimsy aluminum without enough internal structure, something they should have had ample experience to avoid from the exact same thing happening to tons of iPods.
Apple insisted on developing a moronic keyboard implementation to save less than a mm of "thickness" that was prone to stupid failure modes and the only possible repair was to replace the entire top half of the laptop. They also refused to acknowledge this design failure for years.
Apple built a cell phone that would disrupt normal antenna function when you hold it like a cell phone.
Apple has multiple generations of laptops that couldn't manage their heat to the point that buying the more expensive CPU option would decrease your performance.
Adding to the above, Apple has a long long history of this, from various generations of macbook that would cook themselves from GPU heat that they again, refused to acknowledge, all the way to the Apple 3 computer which had no heat management at all.
Apple outright lies in marketing graphics about M series chip performance which is just childish when those chips are genuinely performant, and unmatchable (especially at release) in terms of performance per watt, they just aren't the fastest possible chips on the market for general computing.
Apple makes repair impossible. Even their own stores can only "repair" by replacing most of the machine.
Apple spent a significant amount of time grounding their laptops through the user, despite a grounding lug existing on charging brick. This is just weird
Apple WiFi for a while was weirdly incompatible, and my previous 2015 macbook would inexplicably not connect to the same wireless router that any other product could connect to, or would fail to maintain it's connection. I had to build a stupid little script to run occasionally to refresh DHCP
Apple had a constant issue with their sound software that inexplicably adds pops to your sound output at high CPU load or other stupid reasons, that they basically don't acknowledge and therefore do not provide troubleshooting or remedies.
Apple was so obsessed with "thinness" that they built smartphones with so poorly specced batteries that after a couple years of normal use, those batteries, despite reporting acceptable capacity, could not keep up with current demands and the phones would be unusable. Apple's response to this was not to let people know what was going on and direct them to a cheap battery replacement, but to silently update software to bottleneck the CPU so hard that it could not draw too much current to hurt the battery. The underpowered batteries were a design flaw.
Apple software quality is abysmal. From things like "just hit enter a bunch to log in as root" to "we put a web request to our servers in the hot path of launching an app so bad internet slows your entire machine down"
Apple prevents you from using your "Pro" iPad that costs like a thousand bucks and includes their premier chip for anything other than app store garbage and some specialty versions of productivity apps.
Apple has plenty of failures, bungles, poor choices, missteps, etc. Apple has plenty of history building trash and bad products.
The only "detail" apple paid "attention" to was that if you set yourself up as a lifestyle brand, there's an entire segment of the market that will just pretend you are magically superior and never fail and downplay objective history and defend a 50% profit premium on commodity hardware and just keep buying no matter what.
by iamshs on 10/23/25, 11:04 PM
by t0lo on 10/23/25, 10:39 PM
by aquir on 10/23/25, 7:22 PM
by whatever1 on 10/23/25, 7:42 PM
When they release a new feature it needs to be everywhere. That happens every September. The cadence has not changed, but the scope since Apple was just making MacOS has been multiplied.
You can 10X your staff, but the coordination under 10X velocity will suffer.
