(From macOS 26.3 (work in progress) - #8 by November_Sierra)
Look like they did a lot of fixing of Safari.
And it appears to be faster, plus it plays better with Google services: I can actually use Google Meet (it would just buffer or hang forever) including the bells and whistles like background effects. I can also edit the details of a YouTube channel. (I haven’t been able to customize a YouTube channel in Safari in like forever.)
Not seeing any major difference in my testing - but I suppose my codebase has so much darn stuff in there for working around Safari glitches, I can’t be sure what is fixed/not with my own projects >.<
Some of the CSS: Grid improvements are very overdue…
I’m really saddened that the next software releases will likely go toward excluding the OS versions older than number 26. Since security updates will continue for years, it’s a shame we will be forced to adopt this thing by our most beloved software.
Sequoia is really a great OS. At this point, it is one of those precious things that one should hold dear for as long as possible.
Paolo
Unfortunately, it’s apparent at this point in time that Tahoe will find itself in 27.x or 28.x. The worst part is that Apple keeps aggressively pushing this upgrade to users who will be arbitrarily stranded on 26 until their machines fall apart.
Lots of kernel stuff:
Lots of Webkitty uodates:
As predicted earlier, sadly:
“Apple clearly needs to refine the experience for Mac users and make the software feel more polished. I’m told the company is preparing what people internally consider to be a ‘slight redesign’ for macOS 27. With the next update, Apple aims to address the shadows and transparency quirks.” Source: macOS 27: Two More Changes Leaked Ahead of WWDC Next Month - MacRumors
Tough luck for those users who got nagged into installing 26 and can’t update further to the actual finished version (27). Would have been better to leave them stranded on 15, to be honest.
It seems that Apple “refined” some of Tahoe’s worst interface sins in favor of actual usability. Which is good.
I still feel bad for those users who gave in to the constant nudging, or upgraded accidentally, and are now stuck with Tahoe. Basically everyone using Intel machines (the last ones sold by Apple in June of 2023, three years ago! THREE!!!). Which is bad.
Definitely looking forward to the update.
While I sympathise on some level with Intel users, anyone who bought an Intel-based Mac 3 years ago did this to themselves. It was never a secret that the Intel Macs were done and dusted (and even 3-years ago, the M-series were significantly faster).
For folks who upgraded older machines… you’re using seriously old hardware and should probably upgraded hardware anyway purely for security reasons.
They also had almost eight times less maximum RAM (192 GB vs. 1.5 TB), no matter how much you were willing to pay.
That’s extremely niche, though - and even then, for the sort of money involved in stacking out any Mac with that much RAM, 30 seconds of research would’ve avoided any heartache now. There’s no “surprise! Apple have dropped support!”. This has been documented & known about since the first M1 rolled out in 2020.
Isn’t buying a Mac Pro, too?
Dropping support after three years is a surprise in my book. I know that the last transition (to Intel) would be considered “brutal” in comparison by today’s standards, but that’s the point:
There is a different expectation today. Based on Apple’s practice for two decades after that. If anything, I’d expect to get the usual treatment or even longer support[1] for a maxed out $50k+ machine, certainly not less, say, three years.
Of course, when we two years before heard the words “… continue to support and release new versions of MacOS for Intel-based Macs for years to come. … In fact, we have some new Intel-based Macs in the pipeline that we’re really excited about.” – we all knew what that actually meant.
It was at around the same time when toilet paper was occasionally… rare and valuable. I only mention that because one day a politician in my area stated, in a well-meaning attempt to discourage hoarding: “Don’t worry, there’s no shortage anymore!” That aged really well. Took about two hours.
Three years, or even five, is straight forward planned obsolescence. Let’s be real here. Apple sells hardware. That’s a way better business model than turning the customer into a product, for sure. But it’s not an incentive to keep already sold hardware alive for too long. Everything else is blah blah.
major OS releases ↩︎
MacOS 26.6 released today. “Something happened under the hood” cos my Lulu and other apps from Objective-See went berserk with notifications about this or that permissions being changed, things trying to connect and all sorts of stuff. That all never happened before.
Lulu (a free/open source alternative to Little Snitch) was updated twice today.
Scrivener works just fine.
