This one really bothers me. Whenever maximizing or tiling my windows (which is all the time), I see multiple layers of oddly rounded corners.

I think if there's any upside to Tahoe, the grievances may push me into blogging for the first time ever, because I can't keep these to myself.

I actually feel sorry for Apple's developers because there's no way you ship software this bad and inconsistent unless you've been handed a terrible design spec from Dye's team.

edit: On my screen, three layers' corners https://hcker.news/tahoe-corners.png

Mac OS's UX design has been in free fall the last 5-10 years (ever since the "iOS-ify everything" zeitgeist took root). Sincerely hope that they one day revert back, because the current UX is just godawful for any usecase I can imagine.

The justification by Apple is that it keeps the concentricity between window corner and the red/green/yellow window controls. Which, as you may notice, it does.

It's wrong though, because the window is the higher element in the hierarchy (container) and should not be affected by what is inside. It creates a larger inconsistency than the "consistency" it supposedly brings.

This was one of the very few advantages of moving from Linux => MacOS, that at least most of the software was beautiful and consistent by default. I'm saddened to see that this is not true anymore. Been holding the Tahoe upgrade, and might just keep my macbook air m1 much longer than originally intended because of this.

It just seems to me that that Macbook Neo is basically them telling us that come next year they will unify iOS and MacOS and they are testing the waters at the moment.

All this version alignment, the blurring of "here is a laptop with A processor and iOS" points to that direction.

The errs of Tahoe are basically a result of the rush on that direction

Apple is no longer about Jobs' "simplicity as the ultimate sophistication". It feels like a bunch of kids with no proper design education competing for the security of their salaries. Apple is dead without Steve. The company has no focal point. They're running solely on the inertia from Mac OS X and the first generations of the iPhone.

It is difficult to put into words how much I dislike macos 26. I held out on upgrading for a long time since there were so many horror stories, but to my surprise both iOS and ipadOS 26 aren’t really any different than 18. Maybe because you don’t really do any proper work on it? The graphical differences aren’t anything major when the apps fill the whole viewport anyway.

But macOS? Good lord. I can only hope 27 will unfuck things somewhat, there are so many small annoyances and all of them add to a constant sense of unhappiness throughout the day. I’m really tempted to downgrade back to Sequoia. At least the M4 will be good enough for years if this truly is the new path Apple will take.

This is an issue on Linux too, especially when Wayland is used and applications are responsible for drawing their own chrome. Ugh.

HOWEVER, due to the open nature of the platform, you can install an extension to clean this up. Now, all my windows have identical corner radii, strokes, shadows etc. My Linux desktop is, surprisingly, more consistent now than macOS in this regard.

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/7048/rounded-window-c...

The rounded corners is such a key element of apple design. They patented rounded corners on the iphone for precisely this reason. They wanted to trademark this but got a design patent instead. And then samsung notoriously copied this one almost verbatim same radius which pissed off apple.

This specific design decision makes so little sense, really curious on how it got approved. It's not an accident or a miss, since the variable radius got quite heavily promoted during WWDC.

Hopeful they don't wait 7 years to change stance.

Here's a controversial take. It doesn't bother me at all.

Today when cropping an image in Preview.app on Tahoe I ran into an issue where you can't use the bottom of the crop selection rectangle because the rounded corner of the window blocks it.

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There is a work around if you don't mind lowering the Security settings: https://github.com/aspauldingcode/apple-sharpener

Feels sloppy (is sloppy) but I think the idea is to prioritize OS unification for hardware reasons, and UX across product suite — devices can share data, apps, screens, everything.

I know a lot of people have brought up the corner radius but the left aligned title is such a weird step backwards.

On iOS, there are four little white corners beneath my keyboard when im typing on HN. Because HW & SW didnt coordinate on the size of the keyboard rounding vs the new iPhone 17.

Just so, so sloppy. I'm supposed to trust a multi trillion dollar company with my privacy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

don't know why this bothers me but apple is losing attention to detail

The only question remains, why our community (programmers and scientists) continues funding this completely voluntarily?

I hadn’t noticed this before, but now I can’t unsee it. UI inconsistencies like that tend to stand out once someone points them out.

They missed some other type of windows like Activity Monitor graphs. Those are even sharper corners!

This is driving me crazy for some time. Worst with Calendar. (don't looook)

It keeps annoying me, too. How can their developers not see this?!

A few weeks ago I was thinking about starting https://theghostofsteve.com, where users can come and post their experiences about about Apple devices in 2026. Users would like/dislike with "its genius" or "its shit".

The assumption being that the majority of reactions would be "its shit."

I will never upgrade from Sequoia and when I'll have no other options migrate to another laptop!

Sequoia is the new Snow Leopard

As jarring as "radiuses"? I guess not.

This article's timeline is mostly accurate, but contains a few inaccuracies:

- Unified toolbar and titlebar dates from much earlier... it was 10.4, not 10.7.

- The brushed metal look was supposed to be applied to "appliance-like" apps as opposed to "document-like" apps... But Apple was never able to stick to that rule themselves.

There are a few design ideas that always turn out to be bad when implemented, but which designers seem to have to learn the hard way. Transparency is the biggest one, but I guess so is excessive rounding now.

Finally, the update we've all been waiting for

The rounded corners are dumb in general. When you maximise the window, you have rounded corners meaning you see the background behind them near the menu bar and bottom. Because the screen has no rounded corners.

When you maximise, make it have straight corners (at the very least at the top), this is just ridiculous

This feels like one of those "done for backwards compatibility and we tested not doing it and it was worse" things where everyone assumes incompetence over good-faith trade-offs being driven by release schedules.

I dislike Tahoe too, but this particular thing is not new.

I just did an image search for "classic macos" and one of the first hits was from https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os. Look at those System 1 screenshots, from 42(!) years ago -- round corners on Puzzle and Calculator, square corners on Note Pad and Control Panel! No consistency at all, isn't it infuriating?

FYI I just published a follow-up, "The evolution of Mac app window corners": https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2026/3/4.html

I actually really like that certain windows have a different corner radius. It wraps around the chrome of the app properly.

If you made it this far, know I am totally messing with you. It really is unnerving.

[dead]

Why should the two window varieties have the same corner radius? There's no design analysis here, only conservatism.

read somewhere that maybe they’re preparing for OLED screens

Im gonna go against the grain here, so hold your pitchforks please, but I think its better than if it were consistent. Let me explain:

The author notices that adding a toolbar changes the radius, and to me it makes sense. If theres a toolbar, I know how much I can cut the corners, because the icons in the toolbar are not gonna be in far corner. At the same time, when I am unsure about what type of content might get cut by the corner, I will reduce the cut slightly to give that content more space.

I couldnt care less that one radius is not the same as another, I guess my OCD levels are not that high (yet?).

And I say all of this as someone who dislikes the glass design, and especially hates the small, slowly fading in volume/brightness indicators in the corner replacing the mid screen beautiful instant indicator.

Containers with different contents look different?

I don't see the big deal. That seems like a reasonable design choice. Make nice rounded corners when content allows, but rectangle them up as needed?

Seems like a nice adaptive design choice.

Honestly making different apps slightly more visually identifiable in a sea of sameness doesn't seem like a big deal.

Maybe this is intentional? Either way, doesn't look bad.

This is one of those stories that I read and I'm like, "Someone wrote an article about that? I am definitely among my people, but I smell a front end developer."