There definitely is something weird with Tahoe permission system. I was trying to learn Swift and after a couple keystrokes, the banner asking for the permission to access other's app data pops up without fail. Making it almost impossible to use Swift Playground. And it's been like that for a couple months now.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/808758

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/811796

The System Settings panel for TCC permissions has been fucked since Ventura. It never reflects reality properly and won't show managed settings either (like those granted or denyed outright by a configuration profile). So users have no idea that Firefox can't access their microphone because their device administrator explicitly denied that. The redesign of System Preferences should have raised far more alarm bells than it did, and it did raise a fuck ton of alarm bells that something utterly broken is happening in Cupertino. Along the same line as the another comment in here said, it's just that some amateur is following the "wrong rules". Like, oh, we have to have the macOS settings app look and work exactly like iOS', despite being a far more complex system with a lot more legacy components.

I am literally writing a bug report right now for 26.2, because on my Mac, for whatever reason, running tccutil reset All on com.apple.Terminal isn't removing Full Disk Access. It removes everything else (screen recording, specific folder domain access, but not FDA).

> screwed up access permissions

Bane of my existence. I have wasted so much time on various apps not having some access they need.

I did try that amongst other things. Launching Ableton via Terminal also brought up the microphone permission pop-up...for the Terminal app. One has to wonder if a System that regularly "forgets" permissions is even secure at all.

No, Liquid Glass was stunted from its conception. Any UI designer worth his salt could have pointed out the legibility issues immediately.

The fact that no one (in power) saw a problem with Liquid Glass shows that Jobs was right, that letting the MBAs take the power never works out. And he was wrong for appointing Cook. Remember that Jobs made MacBooks "expensive" (no more expensive or even cheaper than a Vaio or Portege) because he wanted to make great devices with a great UX and UI, which needed a certain level of investment. Jobs loved his users. Cook only loves his shareholders.

> software update atoning for their UI sins

But how would they do that without scrapping the whole version?

Their marketing for this year heavily relies on liquid glass but if they remove the shiny stuff, it’s not very pretty, it’s just functional. Functional is what people with work to do appreciate, marketing people will want the shiny back now that it was introduced.

> Yeah I'm hopeful that they spend the next software update atoning for their UI sins.

I have heard Liquid Glass was in development for two years, so I see no hope of them spending all that money over again. Nevermind all the developers who have redesigned apps for IOS26.

They could just re-release IOS 18, but that would piss me off as a developer.

This is why I left the Apple Ecosystem last month, I see no hope.

The bug with the outlined windows really threw me back a decade. It's exactly how a bad KDE MacOS rice looked back then lol

For whatever reason, apps need to request the microphone permission first to show up in the settings menu. For other permissions you can drag/drop the application into the settings window, but not for the microphone permission.

It recently made the rounds on HN with discussion[1].

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46256834

What you are describing is a symptom of a system already in the process of breaking. The "OG Hacker Mentality" is a thing of the past, corporations are run by executives looking at money, maybe at shareholders but never at users. Most companies have internal processes with complexity comparable to government processes and outsourcing/using a SaaS for everything is just what managers do to get a short term win and thereby a promotion. UI/UX design on the other hand has to be done by a small group, with a very thought out concept and lots of freedom and no financial pressure. However, executives see UI/UX developers as glorified icon-generators. They are already talking about doing UI/UX design with AI. Tell me, when has an AI ever cared for usability?

A UI/UX Dev has two choices in 2026: 1. Try to execute their own vision and get shot down into burnout by management 2. Just make everything look shiny and modern, create demos that look great and get promoted

Exactly. The whole permissions system, while nice in theory, just does not work in practice most of the time. Apple needs to understand, that unifying experience across mobile/desktop is neither possible nor the right thing to do.

I guess they only work on Apple Silicon software by now and only do the absolute minimum on Intel/AMD support. It's getting phased out anyway next update, which is also a shame for a machine that 5 years ago cost more than a pretty great car.

Liquid Glass is horrible on my iPhone SE 2020. Slow and looks weird on the smaller screen. I tried to turn most effects off but it still is just worse in every way

Most MacOS major versions slow down older (but perfectly competent) hardware ("hehe whoopsie daisy")

It's sluggish on a 2023 M3 Pro!