Conclusion
If there’s an elephant in the room with this review, it’s the vocal group of very online Mac users who decided early in the beta period that macOS Tahoe is garbage. Try as I may to put myself in their shoes, I just don’t get it. Liquid Glass isn’t perfect, but it’s not the visual and legibility disaster some have made it out to be. Nor have I run into show-stopping bugs or an unusual number of smaller glitches. I’ve spent over three months moving between Tahoe and Sequoia daily, and what stands out to me isn’t the differences between the two versions of the operating system; it’s their similarities.
That’s not to say there aren’t meaningful new features and design differences between Sequoia and Tahoe. Of course there are. But they’re neither drastic nor bad for that matter.
Instead, what I see in macOS Tahoe is a careful balance that is successful more often than not. I’ve chronicled where I think Tahoe’s design and feature set fall short, but when you look at it in its totality, this is an excellent update, and one that Apple has been inching towards since macOS Catalina.
macOS used to be an outlier in Apple’s product lineup in terms of both design and features. That’s largely changed – and to the Mac’s benefit. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that since Apple aligned macOS more closely with iOS and iPadOS and adopted Apple silicon, the Mac’s sales are up significantly over the past two decades.
Nor do I think that this transition has been at the expense of the ever-shifting definition of what it means to be a “pro” user. I don’t use Xcode every day, but I do plenty of what I consider to be “pro” video and audio work, automate tasks with scripts, and run a business from my Mac. And in my experience, Tahoe has made my work life easier, not harder, with features like the improvements to Spotlight, Shortcuts automations, and tighter integration with the iPhone.
I opened this review talking about balance, which is exceedingly hard to achieve in software design, especially with something like macOS, where you’re designing for everyone from grade school kids using their first computers to seasoned developers who have decades of experience with the Mac’s foundational systems. I think Apple has achieved that with all of the caveats that come with any software release.
Liquid Glass on the Mac is not the visual affront that some have made it out to be. I think it gets in the way in certain apps, but by and large, it strikes a more measured, sensible balance in the Mac’s system apps. As a result, it’s never struck me as a distraction or an impediment.
And while the controversy and hot takes swirl around Liquid Glass, nobody should lose sight of updates to features like Spotlight, the menu bar, and Shortcuts. Spotlight has taken a quantum leap forward in productivity this year, with a deep set of keyboard-driven features that will speed up your day-to-day work immediately, and the menu bar has never been so customizable, which can really be said for the Mac in general. Plus, for all of its continued shortcomings, automations take Shortcuts further than just about any other single update could have.
Last year, I struggled with Sequoia. A lot of that release was pinned on Apple Intelligence features that I didn’t find very useful. This year’s Apple Intelligence features are more thoughtful and meaningful, from Live Translation in Messages, Phone, and FaceTime to access to Apple’s LLMs via Shortcuts. It’s a shift in focus that makes Tahoe more useful instead of just different.
At the end of the day, I’m excited to be writing this last paragraph, not just because I’m glad to complete this review (which I am), but because the first thing I’m going to do now is install Tahoe on the Macs I’ve been using as Sequoia reference machines. Now, I can finally install Tahoe everywhere and get away from my desk. I can’t think of a better endorsement of an OS update than that. I highly recommend giving Tahoe a try and judging the changes for yourself.
