Apple Releases Its OS 27 Updates ⇥ sixcolors.com

Apple is very excited about all its software updates, naturally, but I am particularly appreciative of MacOS 27. While it does not hit the thoughtful design highs of the pre-Yosemite era, Apple has corrected a bunch of problems it introduced in last year’s Tahoe release and, as a matter of fact, from the past decade of releases.

Jason Snell, Six Colors:

The fact that there are more design changes in macOS than any of Apple’s other 27 updates speaks volumes about how broken many of the Tahoe design decisions were. Apple describes the design as “even more refined,” because in Apple marketing-speak, broken features are never remedied or fixed—past features are just improved. The truth is, Apple has rolled back numerous missteps and made changes to others to mitigate the issues they caused.

I will go further: if you crank up the opacity of Liquid Glass under System Settings, Appearance, it is a downright promising visual interface language. Yes, I still have criticisms — of course I do — but these changes have made me feel excited for MacOS from a design perspective in a way I have not for years. Or maybe this is just such a relief from Tahoe that I am deluding myself. Either way, thumbs up.

Snell:

The Shortcuts app, the cornerstone of Apple’s cross-platform automation technologies, gets a notable upgrade during this cycle. Most of it is probably due to the needs of Describe a Shortcut, a remarkable new feature that lets you input some text and then watch as your device converts it into a Shortcut.

There is a similar function for making Safari Extensions, which I have not yet tried. I have tried the Shortcuts implementation a few times, though, and I love it because I am awful at making Shortcuts the old-fashioned way. This new version is so much less intimidating as a starting point.

I have to say, though, I was a little bit annoyed when I asked for a shortcut that validated my Markdown reference links. I now have one that works way better than the one I used to use, but instead of being an AppleScript or a shell script, it basically offloads the instructions I typed to a cloud A.I. model after adding a text input action. So, less intimidating, but it is now sometimes the case that a Shortcut is impenetrable magic on the business end. It would be better if it prioritized building local scripts because then, at least, I could learn something.

iOS 27 is pretty good, too. I feel a little bad every time I give Apple’s software quality two points out of a possible five in the annual Six Colors report card. It is only because I know Apple ought to be doing better. My experience with these releases has been far from perfect and there are still longstanding and embarrassing bugs I run into daily. But they seem more reliable and dependable than Apple’s operating systems have felt for years, though all I really know are MacOS and iOS.