Tahoe and Liquid Glass™ solidified for me the idea that Apple completely dropped the ball when it comes to design. Clearly they needed an a-hole in charge, Jobs would've crucified a few people.
It's painful to see the decay, update after update, into a more confusing, cluttered, and tacky experience.
> ..Jobs would've crucified a few people
And rightfully so. Tahoe is not just a step back, but it throws away so many good design elements that have been there for ages - and for no good reason.
I really hope they revert most of the design changes in macOS 27. I don't mind the Liquid Glass - the other changes they made to expose/highlight Liquid Glass are the real issue.
IMO we reached peak design in 2013 with Mavericks.
Yeah, but I doubt that would change much; the amount of damage done would be difficult to roll back. What do you think Apple is going to do for the next macOS: "Look we told you to design all these extra icons last year. Guess what, this year we want you to remove them."
I just can't imagine that happening. This is the fundamental thing that is wrong with this. They had the OSes in beta for a few months, barely listened to feedback, and now we're stuck with the damage. For how many more OS iterations?
I really wish they had at least macOS in a different cycle than iOS (and with the idiotic year version names, they've brazenly signed themselves up for the yearly schedules.) I really couldn't care less about what damage they do to iOS after iOS 7, but I still haven't upgraded to Tahoe and I won't do so until they roll this design back entirely...which I don't see happening.
Maybe I'm just pessimistic about Apple at this point but I feel like no amount of criticism is going to change their design trajectory now, unless it affects their bottom-line.