I have been a Mac user since the classic mac days. I waited in line for the first iPhone.<p>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.<p>macOS 26.3 updated clang and broke my emscripten workflow.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

This is going to be remembered as a comical fumble, in my view.<p>I was fully locked-in to the ecosystem, the phone, the services, the TV, and I am <i>looking for the exits.</i><p>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.<p>The macOS exodus will be like Hemingway’s line about bankruptcy: very slowly and then all at once.

My partner’s iMac recently died (seemingly the Radeon graphics card had failed, which is not uncommon on 2017 model). It was frustrating to find out that Time Machine was not operational for 8 last months. It was always connected. There were zero indications of any issues. It just stopped backing up at some point. The disk had enough space.<p>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've been running Tahoe since 26.2, after cowardly skipping 0 and 1.<p>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.<p>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.)<p>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.<p>It's also a bit weird that the radius of the VRCs seems to change app to app.<p>But these are nits. I work on Tahoe every day and it seems fine.

Coincidentally, I had to leave macOS for a Windows 11 pc about a month ago and it’s… fine. There are absurd bugs and ux decisions, but I honestly think there are different but equally bad aspects of macOS. On the other hand, some of the things in windows land are just nicer.<p>For one, my network samba shares stay connected and mounted through restarts. I could never make this work reliably on macOS.<p>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).<p>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).

I was a big Mac user. I had a IIcx and an LC, and I evangelized it even when apple stock was $0.95 and the wolves were at the door. I couldn't afford a PowerMac at the time, but I generally used them at the university when I could. I had a desk lamp iMac, then bought the first big screen iMac, which lasted me quite a while. I really liked everything up to Snow Leopard, probably a little beyond that, too.<p>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.<p>I just don't know why they seem to be going out of their way to make the system unfriendly to existing users.

I genuinely view Time Machine as abandonware at this stage, Apple haven't really invested in it for many years and I would recommend a lot of other third party backup solutions first.

> Even ignoring bugs and design changes, in which way does it serve users to phase out Rosetta 2, which in a container-heavy world is more or less required for developers due to the ecosystem of ARM64 Linux containers being nowhere near as widespread as for AMD x86-64 ones, and which keeps many applications runnable that otherwise wouldn't be?<p>This is what tells me I'm completely misaligned with Apple's vision of the future.<p>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 <i>smartphones</i> are starting to run x86 software well!<p>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.

Every time I see a comment on the state of Tahoe I look wearily at my current install of Sequoia. I'll have to update at some point. But I'll hold out as long as I can...

I have been feeling the same way _for years now_, and am writing this on this machine: <a href="https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/11/05/2200" rel="nofollow">https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/11/05/2200</a> - an Intel MacBook Air running Fedora Silverblue.<p>I have been writing on/about and using Macs for 25 years, have had a bunch of semi-catastrophic failures with Tahoe (<a href="https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2026/02/18/1230" rel="nofollow">https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2026/02/18/1230</a>) and Time Machine (<a href="https://taoofmac.com/space/til/2026/02/01/1630" rel="nofollow">https://taoofmac.com/space/til/2026/02/01/1630</a>), and I have also been running Fedora daily for four or five years.<p>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.<p>But like I wrote the other day (<a href="https://taoofmac.com/space/links/2026/02/26/0806" rel="nofollow">https://taoofmac.com/space/links/2026/02/26/0806</a>):<p>> 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.

Part of my focus to begin this year has been identifying cross platform replacements for any Apple native apps I still use, with a preference for open source and self hosted (where possible). The one I can't seem to fully kick is Apple Reminders, but I've been able to replace pretty much everything else.

Tahoe has this really cool clipboard history feature that just does not work on my work laptop. Maybe some corporate keep-me-safe-ware is preventing it from working but my third-party app, Maccy, has no problem at all, so I guess it's just Apple being Apple these days.<p>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.

I’m in a camp where Tahoe is just ugly, but worked fine on my mac and with my usage and devices. On the other hand, iOS 26 is so incredibly bad. Anything from anti-user choices, UI glitches, to keyboard… it’s tiring. It might be the one where I’m pushed to a different OS for the first time. I doubt Apple can fix itself in the near future, with the leadership they have.

This has been the first year in a very long time that I’ve thought about leaving macOS. They seem to have lost the plot on software and documentation.<p>It might be nice for someone to crowd source a reasonable list of features they need to improve or document. Could get traction.

Apart from the mess it caused for iPhone and Mac, my watch upgraded last night to 26 flavor. I am not kidding - I can't see anything on the screen now before coffee. Watch has become completely useless for my early morning eyes.<p>What they did to Watch is much worse than what they did to iPhone and Mac

Apple needs a 50% purge in headcount. Yes, they have so much money they don't need to but the organizational bloat there is on another level. The issues brought up in the article have been going on for decades and the right people are needed to address these things.

TBH I plan downgrade i.e. recovery. I wanted Tahoe because apparently it contains Rosetta with x86-64-v3 support but more I need it in my work, so home computer will be reinstated.<p>Btw isn't Rosetta going to be left but only for gaming and containerisation?

Yeah this resonates with me. Every single point.<p>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.<p>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.<p>One day I'll wake up and not use the Mac. The iPad and Apple Watch are already gone.

Each version has had its share of quirks.<p>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.

Apple hasn't been able to ship software in decades.<p>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.<p>This is a company which hasn't done anything meaningful to innovate since Steve Jobs died.<p>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.

Another issue I wanted to rant about is sleep. My last three desktop macs (Mac mini i7, iMac 5k, Mac Studio M2 Max) would with 50% probability wake up seconds after clicking “Sleep”. I have gotten used to having to do a “double sleep” routine.

Time to switch.

Writing has been on the wall for some time now. It's completely unsuitable for serious work, or serious play. I had a massive rant written but it isn't worth it. Fuck em<p>The M2 and M5 minis I have are the nicest drink coasters I've ever owned.<p>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

Complaining about Finder being awful like it’s 1998.<p>Yes, 28 years later and it’s still awful.

it's the year of the Linux desktop, again ;)

Tahoe introduced some changes to the windowing code that badly disrupted my DisplayPort device that was rock solid on Sequoia. I ended up switching to a new device as a workaround. Window memory use (I have a lot of virtual desktops and extra screens) is much higher and there's a peristent bug where taking a screenshot with CleanShot somehow resets the DisplayPort driver and everything flips out for a minute and it has to rediscover the external monitors. Infuriating.

"Tog... Now, that's a name I haven't heard in a long time... A long time."

The first 6 paragraphs of this post start like this:<p><pre><code> For at least 10 years ... For several years, ... For a few months... For several years, ... For a year or so, ... For several years, ...</code></pre>