A Bite of the Forbidden Fruit

Where did we leave off last time? In talking about macOS, we discovered many different little things signifying a wider rot. Through that exploration, a few consistent themes emerged.

Some of these themes were: don’t mix metaphors, articulate clear directions, and prioritize the human above all. We’ve seen individual symptoms. Time to make it more concrete.

Slowly then suddenly, macOS is facing its total destruction: its absorption into a homogenous & anti-human Apple “ecosystem” it’s alien to. For years now people have feared that Apple will go as far as to merge macOS and iOS, or at least to take us part of the way there through “convergence”; these fears have not yet come true. Many may be inclined to take macOS Tahoe as yet another harbinger of this fate; I see it differently. The truth is that Apple doesn’t have a direction for macOS; they don’t know who it’s for.

First let’s talk about that other fear.

Convergence

For a few years in the early 2010’s, there was a lot of craze around the idea of “convergence”; with the advent of multi-touch-based smartphones and tablets which housed full-fledged computers, people got quite hyped about bringing its innovations back to the personal computer. Take it a step even further and people got quite excited about the idea of one unified experience across all your devices; from the 5-inch screen in your pocket to the 34-inch monitor on your desk, anything and everything would converge.

Convergence is a nice idea, in theory. Imagine the prospect of having the same set of notes, messages, emails, documents, and photos available in the same interface, present on every single one of your devices; not only that, imagine they could even all be the same device! Connect the phone in your pocket to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and watch it become a full-fledged desktop.

Sounds beautiful. I’m fairly open to the idea of convergence, if executed well. However, it’s really, really hard to get convergence right. The trouble any attempt at convergence faces is the massive disparity between touch-based and pointer-and-keyboard-based interfaces, not only in methods of input and output but in their entire philosophies and paradigms.

We looked at this a lot last time in our examination of macOS; some recurring themes were the traditionally file-and-folder-centric, document-oriented model of the desktop PC being juxtaposed with the app-centric model of smartphones, and the tension between paradigms arising from these attempts to mix them.

Keep that in mind as we continue. Past attempts at convergence have felt unnatural simply because they have been — our expectations are broken by interfaces that, for example, use a long-press as a means for right-clicking, because while we expect that from a mobile device, we don’t from our desktop computers.

Past attempts at convergence learned these things the hard way: implementation followed by mass rejection. Perhaps the most famous attempt at convergence is Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform; its arrival on desktop Windows with Windows 8 made the tension between paradigms impossible to miss.

The traditional desktop and the new “Metro-style” apps basically didn’t interact with each other at all. Metro apps always opened in full-screen, as if designed for a tablet, and the desktop, housing all your, you know, windows, became just one more of these full-screen experiences alongside the Metro apps. It was a deeply awkward experience; these UWP apps were also totally crippled in a way that users of desktop software didn’t appreciate. The kind of restrictions placed on UWPs are pretty much akin to those Apple imposes on iOS apps.

Even the most ardent fans of Metro, Windows 8, and UWP will admit just how awkwardly the two metaphors coexisted; even with Windows 10 bringing Metro apps back into the traditional desktop, UWP and the traditional Win32 still feel miles apart. As much as Microsoft needed to modernize their platform, UWP has been a flop.

Of course, Microsoft’s attempt at convergence was far from the only one. Other examples include Ubuntu Touch, Samsung DeX, and ChromeOS’s Android app capability. All of these attempts have felt just as awkward.

When the iPad was released, there was a lot of curiosity, even apprehension, around the direction of the next version of Mac OS X. For many, it seemed clear that Apple, too, would take the road of convergence; a unified platform emerging from the combined forces of iOS and Mac OS X, reuinited sisters.

Apple did indeed take a bite at bringing innovations from iOS to the Mac; it just did it a little differently.

Lion

Before going any further, I’d recommend reading John Siracusa’s Ars Technica review of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. It’s a long but satisfying read; if you can’t be bothered to get through the whole thing, at least get yourself through “Reconsidering Fundamentals” to contextualize what’s coming up.

For those fearing iPadification, Lion certainly did not spare them the worry. Additions like trackpad gestures, Launchpad, and full-screen apps screamed iPad. Those fears weren’t unreasonable. Such changes were indeed scary; the mental models Apple asked Mac users to embrace were novel to desktop users despite their newfound ubiquity on mobile.

Those fears have persisted ever since, and each new release of macOS inches us ever closer to the day of their realization; however, Lion would not be that day. Lion borrowed from iOS, and yet, its goal really was to try to make the Mac better and easier. Crucially, Apple resisted blind imitation. Instead, they spotted the genuine usability enhancements that could be borrowed from iOS and used those to guide the Mac towards a unique vision for the future.

This vision of the future was an experiment, sure. Experiments always attract controversy. Changes would have both lovers and haters. There’d be resistance and adjustments would need to be made. This is standard; every big shift requires these things.

The thing is, Lion didn’t try to erase the Mac. It tried to bring it forward to stand proud alongside iOS. It brought multitouch gestures to the Mac world, but optimized them for trackpads rather than touchscreens, making them fit in to their new home despite their iOS origins. Launchpad became a genuine usability enhancement to novices; keep that in mind, because Launchpad will get a closer look later. As mentioned last time, Mission Control improved Mac window management by elegantly combining Exposé and Spaces into one interface; combined with multitouch gestures, Mission Control has become a sensible and intuitive solution for Mac multitasking.

One of our themes last time was the inherent risk in the mixing of conventions from different paradigms. This will be one of many recurring themes as this series progresses, and we’ll get pretty deep into it. Knowing that, Lion’s path looks risky; however, what it did best well was to take the ideas from iOS and adapt them to the Mac’s conventions and paradigms rather than simply shoehorn the iOS paradigms in.

One of Apple’s greatest usability enhancements in OS X Lion was its overhaul of the document model. You’ve probably guessed by now that documents are going to become a recurring character in this story; knowing that, it’s time to take a brief detour and talk about the macOS document model.

NSDocument

Last time, we talked about the original Mac philosophy of document-centrism over app-centrism, as a goal if not as a reality. Apple, of course, tried to reach these goals through experiments like OpenDoc; ultimately, that particular road was shuttered with Steve Jobs’ return.

Mac OS X, however, had its own document-centric tricks up its sleeve; NeXTSTEP’s NSDocument made its way into the new operating system, giving birth to an entire new generation of document-based Mac apps.

When you create a Mac application in Xcode, you can create it as a “document-based” application. Across various Mac applications, you’re probably used to a lot of niceties that are shared between them in terms of how they deal with files — for example, the titlebar being right-clickable to get a path menu, or the proxy icon you can drag around to move the file or reference it. It’s very convenient. That’s NSDocument working right there. It also provides niceties like the cool zooming animation when you open a file from Finder or close it, and prevents you from opening files twice by accident, etc, etc — overall it just creates a nice, coherent document model shared across Mac applications that work with files.

The app I’m using right now to write this post, Paper, is a great example of an NSDocument app. It’s great. I really appreciate this file-centric model of working. It lets me organize things by what they are related to rather than which app created them.

Of course, NSDocument is no OpenDoc; it doesn’t provide mix-and-matchable cross-application components, but it does make the applications using it feel part of a coherent Mac document model, and provide a lot of conveniences for the users of those applications. Suffice it to say that if my files are going to need individual applications to work with them, I’d rather have them be part of this nice, coherent document model.

In Mac OS X Lion, Apple took a look at the document model and decided it could use some revision. iOS had innovated in this regard with its apps like Notes using a document model that completely hid its internal files from the user, and included a lot of conveniences like autosaving, revision history, etc. Apple correctly concluded that simply imposing this totally different model on Mac OS X wouldn’t work; they instead looked at the parts of it that were true innovations Mac users would appreciate — ideas like autosave and version history — and made them parts of the Lion document model. NSDocument apps, with a little work, became part of this beautiful vision of the future.

Apple’s vision here did not do away with the document at all. It didn’t intentionally subjugate your work to the context of the application the way they would later. It simply tried to take the innovations from iOS that could actually improved how Mac users worked with their documents, and made them part of the Mac document model. And they’re good features! They work well and have become a standard part of the Mac experience. I take them for granted. Apps like my beloved Paper automatically save all my changes and keep track of different versions, and between different Mac apps, the UI for all these features remains the same.

Genuinely, please read the Siracusa Lion review. It goes very in-depth and is quite compelling. It’s really good.

So that’s Lion’s wise approach to convergence. A vision that doesn’t at all center around simply merging the desktop and mobile into one experience, but rather taking the best innovations from mobile and bringing them to the desktop without breaking its fundamental metaphors. If there’s one pattern you’ll notice with all the Lion changes, it’s that they don’t mess with the fundamental metaphors desktop users are used to.

Lion is emphatically not Apple’s original sin. It borrows from iOS, yes; but it shows no desire to subsume macOS and turn it into a simple extension of Apple’s mobile platform. That would come later. We’ll sketch out how we got there slowly.

Now, we’ve looked at document models again. It’s gonna be a recurring theme so I hope you payed attention. Next, of course, is iPads, again. If Lion proved Apple still understood what a computer was for, the iPad will prove they’ve forgotten.

The Sin

Last time I said iPads are general-purpose computers that don’t allow their users to perform general-purpose computation. What, exactly, should a computer be, and what should a computer do? These are important questions, especially when considering that Apple has been trying to position the iPad as being able to replace your computer for a while now. It offers a simplified world, awesome hardware, less worrying, a cool, fluid touchscreen interface, and nowadays, keyboard, trackpad, and stylus input. When it comes to input methods, the touchscreen and Apple Pencil add two things which Apple simply refuses to add to the Mac. These are capable devices! They’re great!

Apple really wants to position them as a computer. But that’s a sin; they leave it crippled in such a way that they can never really serve as a computer. And for that, I’m going to turn it over to my friend Roscoe who has already written a brilliant essay on this subject: What’s a computer?

It’s good and hits at the tension quite well. It correctly identifies the nature of Apple’s control over the iPad software and user experience. But is security really Apple’s motivation here? No; it’s a much greater sin than that. There are tastes that once tasted are too delightful to give up. And Apple has had a taste of something just like that.

Short of something truly radical happening, the iPad is forever trapped in this world of being positioned as a computer that can’t compute. And this is insidious and harmful; it slowly shifts control of computers away from the humans actually using them to the powerful corporations controlling software distribution.

What cripples iPads is not even the lack of Mac-like multitasking. Roscoe correctly notes that despite iPadOS 26 bringing these features to the iPad, it’s still a fundamentally crippled device. Try to write any code on an iPad, to name one creative task, and you’ll find yourself at a complete loss. It’s a model that deprioritizes this kind of creation; it becomes a secret knowledge that you’re not really supposed to have.

iPads hide core functionality away from you and expect you to live within their world — a veneer used to placate the “consumer” without exposing the true complexity underneath at all. I won’t spend too much time covering this since chances are you already know exactly what I’m talking about. The hidden filesystem, the lack of system extensibility, the inability to run any sort of executable not approved by Apple’s monopolistic App Store; you get the idea. Now, Apple will of course claim this is simplicity for your own protection — who wants users messing up their own devices or, worse still, malware running rampant? I would contend that there are ways to technologically limit the risk of these harms without seizing control away from users — i.e. capability-based security — but we don’t need to get into details; the point is that Apple’s restriction of your access to the internal complexity is a conscious choice not driven by outside constraints.

Companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft frame this as an attempt to shield their users from complexity. The reality is that complexity isn’t something users need to be shielded from like this; rather, access to the full functionality of a system they own grants users power. The power to modify the computer to whatever usecase is needed — you know, the basic promise of a general-purpose personal computer — is what’s locked away when you don’t have access to that functionality. This is incredibly harmful because it locks the users of these products into the role of passive consumers. And that, of course, ends up being good for the profits of certain large tech companies due to the nature of the attention economy. And money from things like in-app purchases all flows back to the king of the App Store — Apple.

It’s all power and control for a few capitalists. A great sin! And an addictive one, once you’re hooked on it. What other power can Apple and its buddies consolidate by continuing to trap you in the cycle of consumption? A lack of any agency will naturally lead to the conditioning of users to not be able to use any agency they do have; that increases the need for — and thus the power of — the big tech companies actually controlling the products you nominally own.

Apple has embraced this model of computation completely and apparently now believes it to be a good thing. We’ll strike at the heart of this disease soon, but first let’s understand the symptoms of that embrace.

The Vision

In 2023, Apple announced the Vision Pro — framing it not as a “VR headset”, but rather as a “spatial computer”. They boldly claim on the Vision Pro’s landing page that “The era of spatial computing is here”.

I guess we should figure out what they expect this era to look like. Surely the natural thing to do for personal computing into these new horizons would be to take an existing computing environment and “spatial”-ize it; imagine a Mac, but in a 3D environment! When I think “spatial computer”, what comes to mind is our existing computing environments — with all the freedoms of access to filesystems, running your own executables, and, you know, not being siloed off into a fake “simplicity” — with all the supposed new benefits of having access to this third dimension.

Now, I don’t actually know what all these supposed new benefits are; I don’t know what’s so special about spatial, primarily because it doesn’t have much to do with how I personally use my computer. But ignoring that, let’s assume it does add something, and that on the whole, it’s a net positive to add spatial capabilities to a computer, in terms of power the user has access to. Okay, a cool product! Maybe spatial computing is the natural next step in where personal computing is headed.

That’s how it should go; but, of course, instead, the Vision Pro is a glorified iPad strapped to your face. This is concerning, because it means Apple’s vision ( wink ) for this supposed next era of “spatial computing” is one in which users have less power than our current era. It’s a transposition of the weakened, powerless model of consumption-centric devices like phones, tablets, TVs, smartwatches, etc etc etc, onto the existing world of the personal computer, a safe haven of freedom and power.

If Apple so clearly thinks that the future of computing will be so consumption-centric that they’ll declare the “era of spatial computing” will replace our existing computing era, while also making that new spatial computing era so consumption-centric, then what’s next for the one remaining powerful personal computing platform in Apple’s lineup?

Anyone hoping the Mac will remain a safe haven will be sorely disappointed.

I promise I am trying to keep this essay focused, so I think it’s time to talk about macOS 26 Tahoe itself.

Tahoe

First things first, we need to cover some well-trod-on ground. After WWDC ’25, every major source of commentary noted two themes in Apple’s updates to each of their platforms.

Tahoe, and its companion operating systems, represented a rapid acceleration of existing trends within the Apple ecosystem. Notably, Apple moved all its operating systems to a shared, year-based versioning scheme; together, all its platforms are now unified under version number 26. The other major change was in the design language; for the first time, platforms with previously disparate if similar design languages were unified under Liquid Glass.

For further evidence of Apple’s goals here, one need only look at the other changes announced at WWDC ’25. As discussed above, Apple brought more of a Mac-like veneer to the iPad, further drawing the two together; and the one new app introduced to macOS, Journal, was another direct port from iPadOS. The one major API announced was the Foundation Models Framework, simultaneously coming to all Apple OSes.

So, with WWDC ’25, Apple aimed to consolidate many pieces of its operating system; but to what end?

Liquid Glass

Apple’s unification of its platforms’ design languages has an obvious intent behind it, the same intent as that behind the version numbering shift. If all platforms share the same design language, then apps developed for one platform could look and behave roughly the same when ported to others!

Last post, I talked a lot about Catalyst and the invasion of foreign platform norms onto macOS. Those norms wouldn’t be so foreign anymore if they were shared across all platforms, would they? One could even envision — perhaps if all those platforms shared versioning schemes and APIs — that perhaps it’s not even a set of norms shared across different platforms but rather a platform in itself.

Before diving further into this theme, I will give you my brief, qualitative assessment of Liquid Glass, the design language, itself. While in general I’m inclined to like skeuomorphism, I think Liquid Glass badly misapplies it. To me, skeuomorphism is only useful when it actually mimics the behavior of something analogous in the real world.

So why glass? We don’t exactly have Control Centers and menus made of liquidy glass in the real world — so what is this skeuomorphism for? To look pretty? That is far too subjective of a criterion to base a design language that people will actually have to use on. I don’t even think it looks that pretty! To a good amount of people, the eye candy of transparency, refraction, and glossiness is actually distracting and even illegible. Stuff like floating sidebars — and imaginary content behind them — does nothing but add more confusion and clutter to the interface.

Liquid Glass on the Mac, in particular, also simply feels like an imitation of its iOS counterpart without even including any of the cool stuff like menus collapsing into buttons and whatnot. It’s a purely visual refresh to make it look more like iOS that serves no other discernible purpose.

Journal

I don’t have a lot more to say about Tahoe specifically, but I do think it’s worth noting the other major user-facing addition because it highlights many of the same trends.

The Journal app that now comes preinstalled with macOS Tahoe comes directly from the iPad and looks, works, and feels pretty much the same. This is an app that, in theory, should be encouraging reflection and creativity, right?

In practice, it’s another siloed app which encourages you to lock your thoughts within its confines, somewhere in some magical hidden database, with the option of syncing through Apple’s controlled iCloud service. Journal is just a continuation of the same trend of Apple bringing iOS-paradigm apps into the Mac world and encouraging you to lock yourself into siloes.

The Apple that thoughtfully brought innovations from iOS to the Mac document model is gone. NSDocument is nowhere to be seen in the paradigm Apple now encourages; instead, hidden, iCloud-backed databases are the norm for any app which isn’t solely for consumption.

macOS, in this world, becomes simply another deployment target for Apple apps. And that leads us to Apple’s real goal.

The Apple Platform

If there’s one trend among all of the things we’ve discussed so far, it’s direction. macOS increasingly lacks an independent direction; Apple doesn’t know who it’s for or what it’s meant to be. Without much of an independent role of its own, it simply follows the direction of whichever other platform Apple has decided to give its focus to at any point. Spoiler: it’s usually iOS.

Is Apple simply planning to merge macOS with iPadOS? Do all these signs point towards convergence? I don’t think so. Rather, I think Apple is trying to create a platform identity independent of any single operating system — a platform identity that, under the veneer of empowering creatives, really subordinates everything to a paradigm of siloed, consumption-focused apps.

What is the common thread between shared version numbers, Liquid Glass, and cross-platform apps? They all homogenize Apple’s various operating systems while preserving their nominal independence; after all, tvOS is still for TVs, iPadOS for iPads, and macOS for Macs. But they can all run the same apps, namely, the ones developed for iOS, and they will look mostly similar on all of these operating systems thanks to a shared design language. And they even all have the same version number!

It’s almost like there’s a single Apple Platform — an abstract target to which apps centered not around autonomy but around control can be deployed, and each kind of device, be it Mac, Vision Pro, iPad, TV, Watch, iPhone, or any other — is simply a window into that vast world of consumption.

Your computer is just a passive kiosk into their world. There is no utopian vision of convergence here. Just further removal from the actual creation and manipulation of software and media.

The Vision Pro, in Apple’s mind, is the computing paradigm of the future — centered around software distributed through their centralized app store that stores all information in its siloed world.

And that’s Apple’s real face — a business centered around turning its various devices into kiosks of passivity all peering into the same manufactured world.

Apple, we see your real face and it’s ugly as sin. It’s time to put you in your place, cause you’re rotten within.

Rotten Apple

I don’t think you’re ready for the takedown.

(okay, okay, i’m sorry for being cringe. it will happen again.)

After experimenting with various innovations in Lion — trying to craft a cohesive direction for the Mac and its future — how has Apple ended up here? What is the source of this pervasive rot that threatens to consume the whole fruit?

Some would attribute it to the death of Steve Jobs. I think that’s oversimplifying things and slips too much into the realm of deifying him without looking at larger factors.

In my opinion, the greatest factor in this shift is the rise of the iPhone. Never before had Apple ever controlled a market and had power over it the way they have with the iPhone; Macs always used to be tiny players amidst a Windows world, and thus Apple had to really maintain a sense of loyalty through carefully building a community.

That community centered around an ethos of enabling creativity and art. Macs and their software were beautifully crafted, document-based tools to allow people to create things that were impossible before widespread personal computing.

The iPhone emphasized a different modality. It’s a lot easier to consume than create on an iPhone, giving a rise to its nature as a celestial jukebox — a viewport into pre-prepared software and media meant to be consumed, not created. Now Apple has seen how profitable that is — cuts on subscriptions like Netflix and Spotify when purchased through their App Store, and sale of their own media-consumption subscriptions like TV+, naturally have them seeking to expand this paradigm to encompass their whole ecosystem.

Onwards

This is a pretty bleak moment for technology and society. The walls are closing in around us with every passing day. Not only is passivity the norm in the Apple ecosystem, but other ecosystems, like Android, continue to impose new restrictions on software installation. Centralized social media is controlled by the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Encrypted apps like Signal face attacks from governments worldwide. Generative AI continues to reduce opportunities for creatives (I feel like I have a pretty nuanced position on this one I’ll expand on at some point, but the reality right now is kind of bleak).

Things don’t look great, needless to say. But I don’t think doom and gloom is a productive outlook. By looking to the past and present, we can build on existing efforts to reach something better.

Now that I’ve got doomerism out of my system, I hope with the coming new year I can outline more perspectives and pathways to improve this situation. Like everything else, these efforts are, and must continue to be, a work in progress.