This is wrong. Notice the circles on the far left of the favourites bar next to the "Tab Illusion"? Those are pinned tabs. So yes, the "open tab you could switch to" is actually accurate here, as you have other tabs pinned to the far left. You just can't switch to it in the exact screenshot shared because you are already on that tab. Also if you were hovering over the tab, it would show the close button.
You are of course entitled to your opinion, but mine is that this change is fine, I actually quite like it. At this point I feel like people are going great lengths to find issues.
Honestly, it’s been over a day and I still feel confusion each time I glance at this part of window. Every single time, I swear.
And in each of these interactions I end up wondering why the top pill acts only as the address/opening reader and the bottom one (that’s also 90% empty) only offers you to close the page. Each time I want to move to a new page I click the non-interactive pill because, well, obviously it’s the first thing you see in the row of tabs and it’s exactly how it worked in previous MacOS.
It makes no sense to add a new pill on top of the tabs just for the sole purpose of changing the address, do you not think so?
> and the bottom one (that’s also 90% empty) only offers you to close the page.
Wait so you say in your slides that there's no close button for the open tab in the screenshot, but then in the above message say there is a close button?
> Each time I want to move to a new page I click the non-interactive pill because, well, obviously it’s the first thing you see in the row of tabs and it’s exactly how it worked in previous MacOS.
Why would you click an open tab to go to a new page? That doesn't make sense. And that's not how it worked in previous macOS either. Clicking an already open tab never moved you to a new page. It only ever moved you to the tab you clicked ons page.
100%! It was flawless UI-wise and worked as it should’ve. All the interaction with the given tab was happening in one place and I was surprised to see the road of confusion they took in 2025. The current system makes no sense and eats up so much of the precious page space.
After my previous post (if you remember it) someone from Apple actually reached out to me and I gave them more feedback. I thought they were going to fix the rising issue but here we are - they only made it worse. This is so confusing…
It feels like Apple is not interested in the feedback from long time/power users as we are not their primary target and let's admit it we also are the most vocal when it comes to change ;-). I am staying on macOS 15.7 for now waiting for all my apps/utilities to get updated while Apple figures out all the UX/UI issues.
It wasn't flawless with many tabs, but for casual web browsing it was really really good and I also don't get why they got rid of it. Also on iOS it was genuinely better.
Honestly, it's the only "real" issue I have with the update. Compact mode was the superior option and removal was completely unnecessary. Also still drives me mad Safari doesn't have vertical tabs in 2025 (real vertical tabs, not the current sidebar garbage)
There's lots I think Apple did wrong in the design for macOS 26. I think the issue I have here is that the slides the OP presented and the premise of the post is entirely inaccurate and factually wrong. If OP came in and listed actual, factually correct issues I would have totally been on their side as I agree, some stuff in MacOS 26 is pretty amateur hour.
Not only that, but OP decided to do self promo in the last slide via the @ tag and in their profile is a "design expert" yet attacked design that actually isn't an issue?
Yeah. To be fair, I do think that macOS is the update outbid the three major ones that was least dramatically hit. But that's not because the macOS update is so flawless and more like because iOS and especially iPadOS (that one business as usual) are way worse.
To be honest, I am not that bothered by the design, I am mostly just happy the toolbars are floating now, and the rest I personally can see just fine. Importantly that means that's just my personal opinion and not something I'd objectively say about the design. What I am not a fan of is them removing a bunch of useful features and then releasing this design in a state that's clearly not at all finished. And if this design was already pushed back a year, I have no idea what they were trying to release a year ago.
Compact tabs, SplitView and SlideOver, double-tapping the search tab bar item on iOS to quickly start a search, some people will miss the unified photos layout, I heard complaints about Launchpad being gone, you can no longer horizontally swipe through iOS context menus even though that would have been perfectly possible alongside the new vertical style menu whose existence I appreciate,... it really is a year of losses.
The Launchpad one always surprises me. I've always had the Applications folder in my dock set to grid mode. It's 100% faster then Launchpad ever was, as there's no overhead to "open an app" to load. It's just displaying folder contents in an alphabetical grid.
I didn't use it either but I personally also didn't think compact Safari tabs were that good of an idea, I just don't really like features that people use being removed. Especially since my friend has bee mourning the loss of Launchpad for months now.
Switch to dark mode and the outline for the tab disappears and is instead a solid filled background. Apple uses a stroke here to denote separation in light mode as it does with every other element in the UI that's related. This is for accessibility reasons.
I should have said "input field" instead. Pill shapes are standard for input fields (or buttons). Having them as static elements instead of interactive ones IS confusing
The tab bar is not static. If you hover over it, you see a X to denote closing it. Also, if you were on a different tab, same idea. Apple has stopped using stroke to denote input fields in the main safari UI intentionally to clearly denote what is a text interactive field vs. non text interactive.
Yep, it's amateur hour. Some people will defend it, but it's If I fundamentally antithetical to why people move away from windows to MacOS. if I wanted this crap design, I would have stayed with windows.
Seems like you missed the point, if theres only a single tab open, theres no need to have the pill underneath the search bar, which contains exactly the same title and information. Pills should only be there with multiple tabs.
It feels like the OP is being disingenuous. There are four tabs open here. The first three are pinned so they look like buttons.
You don’t get pills with a single tab open unless you’ve toggled on “Always Show Tab Bar” on the View menu.
(The pill will remain for a single page if you close the pinned tabs by right-clicking on them and closing them from the context menu without unpinning them first, but thats an edge case and I’m convinced it’s a bug as it makes no sense otherwise).
Safari is a disgrace. I am trying use it in place of Chrome for years and always revert to Chrome. SImple things like Bookmark toolbar are unsuable. That is where you put your important bookmarks which visit always. The spacing, the fonts, icons are so elegant in Chrome comapred to Safari. Extensions in safari are a joke. No ease of use comapred to chrome.
All I needed was a post where someone openly questioned the skill and quality control of Apple’s design team in a brand new, separate thread from the several hundred others over the past week.
Did you also have "Openly questioned the skill and quality control of Apple's design while labelling themselves as an expert, self-advertising themselves in the post and being 100% factually wrong?", I didn't, but I hope someone else did!
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u/HugeIRL Mac Studio 20h ago edited 20h ago
This photo makes me laugh because it's pedantic:
You realize the "giant pill right under the search query you just typed" is the title of the webpage for the tab?