My biggest peeve with macOS Tahoe is the App Launcher redesign.
It seems like a clear regression in usability. By moving from a high-density, full-screen experience to a constrained, scrolling window, they’ve increased the interaction cost for launching apps via the mouse. It feels like a 'unification tax. Sacrificing desktop utility to align with non-Desktop modalilties. Does anyone see a functional upside here, or is this purely aesthetic consistency?
> The removal of Launchpad was an inexplicable blunder.
It wasn't a blunder. It was absolutely intentional to force users to start using the AI component.
I suspect someone probably pointed out no one would use it because launchpad has a better UX, so they removed it and forced the three finger pinch to launch spotlight.
I'm currently using the following to fix it.
- Bug in preferences that disabling show home also disables 3 finger pinch.
- I'm using AppGrid as my new launchpad.
- Using better touch tool to activate launchpad with 3 finger pinch.
They want you to search. I probably have 200 apps on my phone and their automatic categorization is good enough for me. Most common ones I just search anyway.
How do you search for applications you don't remember the name of?
And Apple's categorization is trash, a huge regression. There is absolutely no advantage to anything offered now over Spotlight, which not only allowed FASTER search (because it only searched applications), but allowed you to group applications as you saw fit (which didn't preclude an OPTION to have Apple do it).
It also allowed you to launch several applications faster, because it kept your last-used group open. For example, if I sat down to do some development, I opened my Dev Tools group and could launch the four applications I typically use together with only eight clicks.
That's exactly what I did with Launchpad most of the time. But Launchpad gave you the option of both. Are they also going to take away categorisation in Preferences and force you to search for everything there too?
Exactly, so why would you want to make users scroll through all of them?
Mac OS comes with something like 80 apps out of the box. I have over 200 on my system, and I'm pretty stingy with space. I immediately delete stuff I try and don't like.
So the noobs who know nothing about Spotlight typically come back with some absurd suggestion like "put a shortcut to the Applications folder in your dock."
I was shocked when I first hit this. I'm also confused as to why the settings app constrains the window size but I think it did that in the previous version too - not a justification!
I complained about it to a team mate and he thought it was fine and I was weird for using the app launcher and not cmd-space. Although on Windows I always use win-r to run stuff.
Tahoe UI changes and LG are such a mistake and Apple being Apple will probably just double down on it.
This is a weird one. I think their reasoning was that most people don't use Launchpad, so they integrated it into Spotlight to eliminate redundancy.
I much prefer the new app launcher in Tahoe, but it was created at the expense of Launchpad, which some people actually relied on. I don't know why they couldn't have kept both options.
I don't know why it's so laggy when you open it. First time you open and scroll it jitters and not all app icons are loaded, so they kind of chunk and overlap.
You get worse icon pop-in if you add your app folder with grid view to the dock. These aren't stored on the network, so it's baffling they take so long to load the icons.
> It feels like a 'unification tax. Sacrificing desktop utility to align with non-Desktop modalilties
No. Launchpad is just the iOS springboard brought to Mac, with big icons and folders and pages. When it was added people complained of "iOS-ification".
This time they made a proper, unique Mac equivalent, integrated in Spotlight and built around the keyboard. It's not as good, the window was too small in 26.0, doesn't support uninstallation like Launchpad, but it's definitely less iOS-like.
I think you have it backwards. The new app launcher is unequivocally more like iOS. Like iOS' app launcher it: 1. does not support making your own folders which launchpad had 2. has groups per app type like "Creativity" or "Productivity" which are literally taken verbatim from the iOS app drawer/launcher page. Both designs are obviously inspired by iOS but I don't see it as a mac optimized version at all.
My twins (in high school) and I are building an AI study buddy.The idea is simple. A peer-level “study friend” you can work alongside, ask questions, and stay on track with.
It’s not doing anything ChatGPT or Claude couldn’t do. The goal is packaging it into something that feels a high-schooler would actually want to use when they’re studying.
We are also using this as a weekly project to learn the abstract stuff. Product thinking, design, pricing, marketing, and how to turn a vague idea into something real. Each week the kids prioritize a feature, research it, write up the idea, and then we build (or cut) it together.
Our stack is Claude Code, TypeScript, React and it's hosted on Cloudflare Pages for frontend + Workers for API.
No login or credit card required to try this out. We welcome your feedback.
One way or other, the cat is out of the bag and there is no going back. Remember Napster. Even if Open AI/ChatGPT is taken down, however unlikely, there is no slowing down the innovation that is about to transform our lives. This moment in time feels like early 2000s when Web 1.0 became real to masses and suddenly everyone had a use for web. We are at precipice of the next big technology cycle, and this is showing all the classical symptoms of incumbents fighting the inevitable disruption
If they succeed in freezing AI development there will be no APIs like OpenAI is offering. It'll be all closed doors. Huge Benefit for those with access, rest of humanity basically plebs.
> One way or other, the cat is out of the bag and there is no going back.
As long as ChatGPT and GPT-4 is available as an API, the cat has been tethered by its owner and can be put back into the bag.
> This moment in time feels like early 2000s when Web 1.0 became real to masses and suddenly everyone had a use for web.
Where 90% of startups have just went out of business. Even if they are emerging, the big tech conglomerates will just out pace them before they could attempt to challenge them.
> We are at precipice of the next big technology cycle, and this is showing all the classical symptoms of incumbents fighting the inevitable disruption
They said that about FSD as well, IoT, etc. Yet none of that was trusted enough to 'take off'.
There is something in the way which separates the legitimate use-cases from the grifters and it is called 'Regulation and compliance', which eliminates the majority of short-term grifts just like the AI hype of LLMs on everything.
The American technology companies are looking increasingly vulnerable especially internationally. Tech companies are the new wave of American mega corporations. I wonder how the mega corporation of past managed to navigate these challenges? Did US government play any role in protecting the US companies? If so, what drove it, more business friendly Washington, more effective lobbying, or something else?
It's $160M in a country with 600M phones, where 97% of those are Android. Obviously Google doesn't want fines to be public (to avoid encouraging others), but it's not that much money in the greater context.
This is interesting new thinking coming from FTC. The whole concept of "dominant intermediaries" seems to focus on the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook. Can't wait to see how FTC takes this forward.
It’s not that simple. Twitter has business, operations, and employees in India. Twitter can choose to stop doing business in India. This decision will hurt both Twitter and Indian economy. It’s not in the interest of both parties to keep escalating.
Pressuring social media companies seems to an interesting developing trend. India and Russia both took actions against social media companies in the past few days. Florida passed local laws protecting politicians. Over the past 6 months Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al proved themselves to be competent in monitoring and banning unwanted content. I will not be surprised that each country will create laws and pressure the tech companies to comply. After all, the veneer of ToS compliance is a thin match against local laws. If a government can justify their actions in the local courts, the only options the tech companies have would be to either comply or leave the country. Even Apple chose compliance with the local laws in China. See - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...
On one side, a lot of people chastise these actions because they seem unfair and oppressive. On the other hand, people applauded companies censoring the conservative movements on the USA during its last election.
As someone in an external 3td party country, its interesting to see te double standard some of the USA society applies to these type of issues.
This is why we as users should choose our platforms carefully. This spat between Roku and Google is ultimately all about $$$ generated with 'monetizing' our habits and data. Ad infested platforms like Roku will continually try and push for larger share of the pie. Whereas, Google will continue pushing for more data. They both will win. Win at our expense. Not thanks, I would rather stay with my Apple TV and have a modicum of control over my privacy, even though it's more expensive piece of hardware to buy.
Camp Century was nuclear power research base in Greenland and was a cover-up for a Project Iceworm whose end goal was to install a vast network of nuclear missile launch sites under the Greenland ice sheet. This video shows the audacity of this project in 1960 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28NYczAuXl4). It was ultimately abandoned as ice conditions were not as stable as initially projected. Nuclear waste and Biohazard created by this site has become an environmental concern with the melting of the ice sheet.
It seems like a clear regression in usability. By moving from a high-density, full-screen experience to a constrained, scrolling window, they’ve increased the interaction cost for launching apps via the mouse. It feels like a 'unification tax. Sacrificing desktop utility to align with non-Desktop modalilties. Does anyone see a functional upside here, or is this purely aesthetic consistency?