macOS/iOS 26 are bad enough that I've begun switching to Linux. I preordered a Clicks Communicator and Pebble Round 2. Switching from a Macbook Pro M4 to an Asus ROG Flow Z13 with Debian.

macOS 26.3 updated clang and broke my emscripten workflow.

I tried to unrar a file but the version of unrar provided in homebrew is deprecated because it's no longer signed/blessed. I ended up SFTPing the file to a Linux box, extracting, and bringing it back.

My son wanted to try a Java minecraft app on his iPhone, but it required insane workarounds to enable JIT to get acceptable performance. This isn't a technical limitation, it's put in place specifically to protect Apple's walled garden, and their precious services revenue.

Despite the thousands of dollars spent on these devices, I don't feel like we own them. We can't run code without the platform owner's permission. We are at the mercy of the platform owner, that has been making increasingly worse decisions.

I'm really enjoying trying the available alternatives. My hope is that enough of us get fed up, and develop a thriving ecosystem in the open source world. I'll certainly be contributing back the things I build.

I was fully locked-in to the ecosystem, the phone, the services, the TV, and I am looking for the exits.

I’m starting to parallelize to software which will play well on Linux, and when I’m feeling ready (or miserable enough) I will not be looking back.

The macOS exodus will be like Hemingway’s line about bankruptcy: very slowly and then all at once.

And... it's fine? Am I only using the happy path? Or are people just particularly confident about complaining about Tahoe after seeing everyone else do it.

For sure it has glitches, but as far as I can tell, they're the same glitches that were in Sequoia. (If anyone at Apple is reading this, can you take a glance at your NFS client code? It does like to just hang up occasionally.)

The only major complaint I have is the window resize target, which seems not to line up properly with the actual window corner, since they gave them Very Rounded Corners.

It's also a bit weird that the radius of the VRCs seems to change app to app.

But these are nits. I work on Tahoe every day and it seems fine.

In the past I had problems with network attached Time Machine destinations, but now I have zero trust even in the “native” USB-based method.

I have been writing on/about and using Macs for 25 years, have had a bunch of semi-catastrophic failures with Tahoe (https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2026/02/18/1230) and Time Machine (https://taoofmac.com/space/til/2026/02/01/1630), and I have also been running Fedora daily for four or five years.

Were it not for Apple Silicon, I would probably be running Linux only today. But after Tahoe, I am very, _very_ motivated to accelerate my transition. And, ironically, I can make GNOME look and feel more like what a Mac should feel like than what Tahoe does.

But like I wrote the other day (https://taoofmac.com/space/links/2026/02/26/0806):

> The most likely [outcome] is that they will simply carry on without acknowledging any of it publicly and discreetly patch the most critical issues, because they are still making tons of cash on hardware and services and software quality really hasn’t been a priority in half a decade.

But in a long time I haven't really enjoyed using the mac and I use other systems instead. They got rid of subpixel rendering and now text is blurry on my monitors. The interactions are much more of a chore. Features were removed from Preview and other apps that were better before. I quit using XCode for a few years and couldn't recognize it when I came back. So I use it maybe every 3-4 weeks now. I have no interest in buying another one.

I just don't know why they seem to be going out of their way to make the system unfriendly to existing users.

For one, my network samba shares stay connected and mounted through restarts. I could never make this work reliably on macOS.

File explorer is good. Finder always felt clunky and awkward to use. In addition, certain class of software exists for windows and not for macOS. Like FilePilot, Anything, MusicBee, Foobar2000 (Mac version of the latter is not the same as the windows version).

The biggest issue so far for me is keyboard shortcuts for text editing. Cmd-based movements are great and I have very deep muscle memory by now. I could not find a reliable way to recreate this on windows (I can make the cursor movement work, but some selections don’t work the same).

This is what tells me I'm completely misaligned with Apple's vision of the future.

Why would I want an OS that aspires to prevent me from running perfectly good software that runs very well??? And at a time when even smartphones are starting to run x86 software well!

That's literally the opposite of what I want from a computer. If I have to choose between losing Mac software vs losing x86 software it is much easier to leave Mac software behind.

Having said that, I probably would’ve switched to some version of Linux many years ago if it wasn’t for the lack of business accounting software that was easy to set up. GNUcash isn’t it for me. Switching would’ve saved me a lot of money on subscriptions.

I could probably use Obsidian instead of NotePlan with a bit of work; I would just use it on mobile a bit less.

What they did to Watch is much worse than what they did to iPhone and Mac

It might be nice for someone to crowd source a reasonable list of features they need to improve or document. Could get traction.

I also held out for as long as possible using Safari, but I had to switch to Firefox. Every once in a while I forget the reason I switched and try to switch back and then get reminded. I'm currently in a "I can't remember the reason, but I'm too lazy to go find out" phase. I'm also one of those weirdos that liked the Safari compact tabs and I'm sad they removed it.

Every time they fuck something I move the workload over to Linux, not out of enthusiasm or any ideological purity but because I need to do some damn work. Add in the current geopolitical shit show, rising surveillance culture and the constant push for MRR and the whole "ecosystem" idea of computing and cloud becomes quite distasteful and risky.

A monumental moment recently was Reminders which has a horrible bug in it since Tahoe where you are entering several tasks in the scheduled view and you hit enter and carry on typing and it doesn't register the enter until several keypresses later, splitting the last word you typed between two tasks. This is a very very minor but utterly annoying thing which has broken my workflow. I was so fucked off with this happening every day I pulled a sheet of paper out of my printer and just wrote everything on that. And I've been doing that for 4 months now. Reminders is dead. I forget things like I did before, but I get over that.

One day I'll wake up and not use the Mac. The iPad and Apple Watch are already gone.

Other than the dumbing down of the UI and that kind of stuff, Tahoe seems to run fine. Safari seems to have more bugs than usual, though.

Btw isn't Rosetta going to be left but only for gaming and containerisation?

Yes, 28 years later and it’s still awful.

We're in a way worse position now as they rushed out all the comically poor UI updates (Why do I still have 6 different border radiuses, and about 40 different icon packs being used on the default damn applications?) and the half baked AI crap that I've yet to see anyone use.

Personally my guess is the core of the problem is their contempt for the users. The willingness to act directly against the best interest of the users, as this article points out so well, is bewildering. You just have to wonder that a company so large, with so much money and so many resources can be so utterly dysfunctional.

The iPhone, the iPod, the early Macs all demonstrated a profound understanding and care for users. And now? Contempt.

Oh well.

Here's my vector reproduction of the logo for MacAddict's and Guy Kawasaki's "EvangeList", circa 1997 :

https://rezmason.net/evangelist.svg

Hint: This is what happens when you commit to joining any single company's ecosystem. No matter if it's Apple, Microsoft, Google, Commodore, or frickin' IBM. At some point, the beancounters are going to smother what drew you to them in the first place, and find ways to nickel-and-dime you whilst flipping the table on you UX-wise hoping to tap some rich vein of unconverted users to continue the illusion of quarterly growth.

Is this with or without feedback that backing up wasn’t successful?

When yours is the only computer in the meeting that can't load the graphics network share, and you're the graphics expert, your boss will be calling IT and sternly asking why. He/she will learn that the MacOS has known issues with basic file sharing in business networks, among other annoying problems that you keep contacting about, and that Apple will never fix. Your boss will discover that IT recommended that you use a Windows machine, and provided you with viable workflows that meet or exceed all of the needs for your work responsibilities. And that other users don't have these issues when following their guidance. But, you opted for a Mac despite all of that.

Your boss will sigh. They will carry that sigh into how they perceive you. They will bring up how annoying your situation is every time they talk with IT.

I've heard this exact conversation or many other similar conversations 100s of times in my career. I've heard your boss sigh.

Do yourself a favor. If you aren't very technical, don't damage your career over something stupid like which OS you're using. It's the wrong hill to die on.

The M2 and M5 minis I have are the nicest drink coasters I've ever owned.

I have unresolved radars old enough to drive, go to war, or even vote at this point. They used to blame Intel's TB controllers. Guess what? They make their own now and the same fucking issues persist! Enjoy the kernel panics

They got bored of computing. Writing was on the wall when they started producing movies because Hollywood people are cooler than nerds and hey why earn a giant cash pile if not for some execs to have fun with it.

This is a company which hasn't done anything meaningful to innovate since Steve Jobs died.

Yeah I have all Apple gear. It's fine. Whatever. Nicest commodity on the block. But they could have done so much more in the last 15 years.

    For at least 10 years ...
    For several years, ...
    For a few months...
    For several years, ...
    For a year or so, ...
    For several years, ...