Why does macOS get worse and worse with every iteration?

Author: erics, Posted April 25th, 2026 at 7:53:13am

Why does macOS get worse and worse with every iteration? I have been using macOS since 1985, and it gets worse every year we lose features things break, and all quality has gone out the window. Discuss this

ChatGPT 5.5 says:

You are not imagining it. A lot of long-time Mac users feel this because the direction of the platform has changed fundamentally.

You started with a machine where the operating system was the product. The Mac interface was the point. Consistency, discoverability, direct manipulation, menu clarity, and “it just works” were central design values. Today, macOS is only one part of a much larger Apple ecosystem: iPhone, iPad, Watch, iCloud, services, privacy infrastructure, security frameworks, developer constraints, AI features, subscription tie-ins, continuity features, and visual design consistency across devices. That changes the priorities.

The frustrating part is that many changes are not obvious improvements for serious desktop users.

A few things are happening at once.

Apple keeps simplifying the visible interface while making the underlying system more complex. Settings get renamed, moved, flattened, or hidden. Long-standing controls disappear or become less precise. Features that used to be explicit become “automatic,” which is infuriating when the automatic behavior is wrong. Power users lose knobs; casual users get a cleaner-looking interface; nobody really gets a simpler system.

macOS is now heavily influenced by iOS design. That means more rounded panels, more hidden controls, more icon-only buttons, more gesture assumptions, more “friendly” abstractions, and less traditional desktop density. This is why toolbars feel harder to scan, icons look too similar, contrast is reduced, and previously obvious affordances now require hunting. On a phone, sparse iconography can work. On a multi-window desktop used for real work, it often feels like visual mush.

Security has also made the system feel worse, even when the intent is valid. System Integrity Protection, notarization, privacy prompts, Full Disk Access, network permissions, background item warnings, login item controls, sandboxing, extension restrictions, and Gatekeeper all exist for defensible reasons. But the user experience is often terrible. Instead of feeling protected, the experienced user feels blocked by their own machine.

The old Mac philosophy was: “The computer serves the user.”

The modern Apple philosophy often feels more like: “The device participates in a managed ecosystem.”

That is a very different relationship.

Quality also feels worse because Apple ships more features across more platforms on a yearly cadence. The old Mac OS did not have to synchronize behavior with iPhone, iPad, Watch, iCloud, Messages, FaceTime, Photos, Continuity, Handoff, AirDrop, Universal Control, Apple ID, App Store policy, enterprise MDM, and privacy infrastructure. The surface area is enormous. Annual releases encourage visible changes even when stability would be the better gift.

Then there is the “death by tiny regressions” problem. One release breaks a setting. Another changes a toolbar. Another hides a feature. Another makes a previously instant action laggy. Another adds animation where none was needed. Another renames a familiar preference. Another makes icons monochrome. Each change can be defended in isolation. Together, over years, they create the sense that the machine is slowly being taken away from the person who knows how to use it.

For someone like you, who has used Macs for decades, the problem is sharper because you remember when the system rewarded mastery. You learned the machine, and that knowledge compounded. Today, Apple sometimes invalidates that knowledge. Menus move. Preference panes disappear. Utilities are redesigned. Behavior changes without a clear reason. The expert user pays a tax every year.

There is also a cultural shift inside software generally. Modern product design often values novelty, visual coherence, and ecosystem alignment over repair, stability, and respect for established workflows. “Cleaner” often means fewer labels. “Modern” often means lower information density. “Secure” often means less control. “Simplified” often means less discoverable. “Consistent across devices” often means the desktop gets dragged toward the phone.

The most maddening part is that macOS is still, in many ways, the best desktop environment available. The hardware is excellent. The Unix foundation is powerful. The font rendering, display handling, color management, power efficiency, trackpad integration, app ecosystem, and general polish can still be superb. That is what makes the decline so irritating. It is not junk. It is a brilliant system that keeps sanding off the things that made expert users love it.

My blunt read:

Apple has not forgotten how to make good software. Apple has decided that the highest-priority user is no longer the long-time desktop power user.

The Mac is now designed around a broader, less technical, ecosystem-centered customer. That customer wants sync, security, continuity, pleasant visuals, and low-friction defaults. You want precision, stability, discoverability, durable workflows, and control. Those goals overlap, but they are not the same.

The result is that every year you get more integration but less agency.

That is why it feels worse.

Not because every individual release is catastrophic, but because the long-term trend is away from the Mac as a professional, user-controlled desktop environment and toward the Mac as one polished endpoint in Apple’s managed universe.

The practical answer is probably not to abandon macOS, because for your work it still gives you a strong Unix workstation with excellent hardware. But the sane survival strategy is to make your own stable layer on top of it:

Use Terminal, shell scripts, Homebrew, Perl, vim, Rectangle, your own aliases, your own documented fixes, and a curated set of utilities. Avoid adopting Apple’s newest workflow unless it clearly helps. Delay major upgrades. Keep installers and backups. Turn off as many “helpful” features as possible. Treat each macOS release less like an upgrade and more like a hostile migration that must be tested.

That sounds cynical, but for a serious long-time user, it is realistic.

The Mac is still good. But it is no longer being designed primarily for people who know exactly what they are doing.

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