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After living with Apple’s 27.0 OSs since launch, I have some more annoyances to get off my chest. This time, it’s all about how tabs and menus have gotten worse. I’ve already ranted about the Liquid Glass material in general, but these two design changes in particular have really been grinding my gears. I’ll reiterate that Apple’s latest OSs look substantially nicer to me than the previous set… but that only makes these setbacks more glaring. Also, many of these issues aren’t nearly as bad in light mode — but I use dark mode exclusively on all platforms. Apple offers this appearance setting, so I think it’s fair to criticize them when it’s not holding up. First up, let’s talk tab bars. I think these looked awful in the original Liquid Glass redesign, and in 27.0 they look even worse. Below is an example of three tab bars from Safari in macOS. All of them are in dark mode. The top example is from macOS 26 with the “clear” Liquid Glass setting, the middle is macOS 27 with the default (mid-slider) version of Liquid Glass, and the bottom is macOS 27 with Liquid Glass at its most tinted. In each, the middle tab is selected (though I think the word “tab” is being quite generous to these globs). In macOS 26, there was practically no difference between the clear and tinted versions of tabs. Similarly, the clearest and default/middle tabs in macOS 27 are effectively the same. Because of this, I’m leaving out the redundant examples. Even though I still think it’s ugly, I vastly prefer the macOS 26 version of these three options. It offers the most contrast, and it makes more sense in dark mode: the background is darker and the foreground of the active tab is lighter. The middle example is what tabs look like in the default (mid-slider) version of Liquid Glass in macOS 27. There’s now only a very faint outline around the active tab, and practically no difference in background colours. To me, this is unreasonably subtle. The effect is even worse when there are a lot of tabs open. Lastly, there’s macOS 27 with the fully tinted Liquid Glass setting. It’s better, but it still looks less correct to me than the tab design from macOS 26. It’s difficult to put into words how much I loathe the look of this new tab bar design. I don’t mind the more “bubbly” look of Liquid Glass throughout the 27 OSs for the most part. It gives UI elements more dimension than in the 26 OSs. But it doesn’t work for tabs. Because the bubbly look is inside a trough, the active tab’s glass effect ends up looking like a blur on the top and bottom. This reduces contrast further and makes the active tab harder for me to pick out. Even in dark mode with full tint, I find the active tab less visually clear than in 26’s clear mode. Now, I’m sure there are at least a few people reading who don’t see what the fuss is about. If that’s you, I assure you that the difference is more stark when you’re not comparing things side by side. It’s not impossible for me to pick out the active tab, but I think it’s trickier than it needs to be! But, if you still don’t believe me, here’s a little experiment. Which of these do you think is most legible? The text/background colours in the above image are based on the foreground/background colours used in the tab bar instances above. First is clear in macOS 26, then the default from macOS 27, then fully tinted in macOS 27. I think they’re all pretty awful, but I prefer the macOS 26 clear version. Again, this is because I’m using dark mode. In dark mode, light text appears on a darker background. Similarly, active UI elements have a lighter background than their surrounding elements. I’m sure there are counter-examples, but this is how just about everything else works in Apple’s own apps! It should be noted that Safari uses the system default tab bar design. I also see this design in Apple’s Terminal app, in Pixelmator Pro, and elsewhere. I don’t use Xcode daily anymore, but you’ll also find them there — though in true Xcode fashion, they’re ever so slightly nonstandard and also don’t respect your tint setting. Below is a screenshot of Xcode using my current settings of dark mode with fully tinted Liquid Glass. Up next: menus. Below is an image showing four versions of the same menu in macOS. Top left is macOS 26 clear, top right is macOS 26 tinted, bottom left is macOS 27 default (mid-slider), and bottom right is macOS 27 fully tinted. It’s a similar story here. In macOS 26’s dark mode, I had no problem with system menus even when Liquid Glass was set to clear. In macOS 27, even in the fully tinted mode, the menus have much lower contrast. They also now lose all of Liquid Glass’s refractive effects when at their most tinted. I think this is less of an issue than the tab design changes, but it’s still a downgrade. Again, I’m certain many people don’t care about this. Some might wonder why I’m not turning on accessibility settings to help with these things, if they bother me so much. I’ve flirted with this (especially the “Increase Contrast” setting), but those settings have many knock-on effects. 1 But honestly, I don’t think accessibility settings should be required to have a reasonable amount of contrast in a design system. Maybe Apple disagrees, but I really hope more dark mode tweaks are coming. The “Increase Contrast” setting is under System Settings -> Accessibility -> Display -> Increase Contrast. Interestingly, you can use this setting along with the clearest version of Liquid Glass to almost get back to how things looked in macOS 26’s version of tinted. However, it adds contrast-y lines around many UI elements that I find extremely distracting. It also alters colours on some elements to, strangely, make them less contrast-y. It feels unevenly applied and poorly implemented in several apps. ↩
I really enjoy John Gruber’s podcast The Talk Show. However, I’ve noticed that it’s been a while since it was in my feed. I decided to chart previous episode dates to check some of my assumptions about release frequency. Cutting to the chase, here’s a link to The Talk Show Timeline. You can click/tap on days to get a pinned tooltip, which lets you link out to a particular day’s episode. I’ve tried to make this work well on mobile devices, but you’ll likely find it works best on desktop. A note about this: Gruber has mentioned in the past that there has been a personal situation that he’s been working through. He’s also mentioned something to this effect on the podcast at points, but hasn’t gone into detail. I don’t need to know more than has been said, and I just hope things are alright. I’ve read Gruber’s site since 2002 1 and listened to his podcasts since 2007. In that time, I’ve learned that he operates on his own timeline… and has a penchant for procrastination. No shade here! He’s set himself up with a work situation that I envy. I also don’t want to seem grumpy about the lack of podcast episodes; I’m just trying to understand how this current break compares to those in the past. Because it was easiest, and because it would answer my immediate questions, I only looked at the current iteration of The Talk Show. Happily, there’s a single page which lists all the episodes. It had a tiny bit of data weirdness, 2 but I was able to turn this into a JSON file with the details I cared about. With that, I used the calendar heatmap chart in Apache ECharts to display the episodes over time. Some things I noticed: While it’s been a while (29 days) since the last episode (on August 10), this isn’t unheard of. The average is about 12 days between episodes, but there have been 6 other times when the episode gap has been at least this long. The longest gap was 62 days between December 24, 2024 and February 24, 2025. There’s exactly one day with two episodes: July 19, 2014. It was “Cat Pictures” with Marco Arment, which got split into two “sides”. Here’s a link to side 1, and here’s side 2. I mentioned procrastination: 73% of episodes take place on the 16th of a month or later. 28% of episodes take place on either the last or second-last day of the month. Again, no shade! It’s something I chuckle about whenever I notice it. At the current rate, this year is about in line with output going back to 2023. While it has been a while since a new episode dropped, it’s not out of whack statistically. Anyway, this was a Labour Day project that was mostly for my own amusement. I expect there will likely be a new episode of The Talk Show some time fairly soon after tomorrow’s Apple event. I also don’t know if I’ll keep this chart up to date… though it’s not terribly onerous to do now, so who knows. I found Daring Fireball because I was researching the purchase of my first Mac around this time. It wasn’t until October of 2002, but I ended up buying one of the machines he wrote about in his first post that August. ↩ The following dates don’t match the main format: Sunday 30 November, 2025 Mon, 24 Feb 2020 16:05:34 EDT Tuesday 31 December 2019 Tuesday, June 25 2019 Sat, 16 Mar 2019 19:43:49 EDT Wednesday 31 December 2014 Monday, 30 Jun 2014 ↩
I mostly use my web stats service because I get a lizard-brain kick from watching numbers go up, but it also provides some fun insights. For example, it’s how I found out about bubbles.town. At first I thought this might be a Mastodon instance. I get a lot of referral traffic from Mastodon, but each instance has its own URL. You can guess at mas.to, but dice.camp doesn’t provide many clues. Bubbles, as it’s known, is a very nice service. It aggregates a curated list of indie blogs. People can sign up and vote for posts they enjoy, but they can’t submit new articles. Authentication and comments are both handled using Fediverse technologies. In my case, I was able to log in via my Mastodon instance. The idea is to highlight cool indie writers around the web. I love this sort of thing so very much. Anyway, this is all to say that you should check out Bubbles. Seeing a blog-based reaction to one of my posts on the service filled my heart with immense joy.
I’ve been using Photoshop since the mid-90s. First at school, with Photoshop 3, then through work. I bought my first boxed copy of CS2 in 2005, then upgraded to CS5 in 2010. I subscribed to Photoshop Creative Cloud on day one. Today, I uninstalled it. I hope I never have to use Adobe software ever again. Photoshop used to be a joy to use. Whenever I got access to an upgraded version, I’d always have fun exploring the new features. I got really good at using it. When Adobe launched the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop in 2013, I signed up immediately. The subscription meant I would always have an up-to-date Photoshop, and I loved the idea that new features would be rolled out more frequently. But over time things started getting worse. Slowly at first, but then much more quickly. Originally, the Creative Cloud app was native and relatively useful. I wasn’t ever excited to open it, but I certainly didn’t mind having it installed. At some point, it became a terrible web-based app. Over time it felt slower and more broken. One thing I loved as part of the Creative Cloud subscription was the Creative Cloud Synced Files service. Basically, it was Adobe’s version of DropBox. I used it all the time to share screenshots and samples of in-progress work. Then, in 2023, Adobe announced they’d be discontinuing the service. There was so much pushback that they delayed the service’s retirement for a year. It makes sense, it was a nice feature of the subscription plan and businesses had come to rely on it. This was the first time I started questioning my Creative Cloud subscription. Out of curiosity, I looked around at the available options. I played with Pixelmator Pro, Acorn, and Affinity Photo. They were all fine, but I couldn’t let Photoshop go. I just knew it too well. But I also started realizing how little I was using it. I used to do a lot of traditional web development. In days of yore, this involved getting Photoshop mockups from designers. Those images needed slicing into pieces that you’d use to build a site or an app. But I hadn’t gotten a Photoshop document from a client in years. The PSD had been replaced with Sketch files, then with links to Figma documents. I still used Photoshop to touch up images, but that really didn’t use much of its power. The only thing holding me to the product was familiarity. Then I started to notice some real quality issues. For some reason that I still don’t understand, my copy of Photoshop stopped updating. I didn’t notice for a while, but eventually I stumbled upon the release notes and saw that I was something like nine months behind. I was able to fix this by forcing the Creative Cloud app to reload its settings using Command + Option + R, at which point I could update. Then, a few months later, Photoshop updates started getting stuck. I’d start an update, but it would spin for hours but never complete. I was able to fix this by uninstalling Photoshop using the Creative Cloud app, then re-installing it… but I had to do this more than once. Soon after that, every new Photoshop update would reset my preferences to the defaults. I’d need to take 5 or so minutes to re-apply my settings every time. A little while later, Adobe started silently updating my /etc/hosts file for license verification purposes. As posited in that link above, the Creative Cloud app now felt like malware to me. But that wasn’t all, Photoshop itself had started feeling terrible. There was now an annoying welcome screen that would re-appear for me whenever I didn’t have an image open. There was an option to disable it, but the option was reset every time I relaunched Photoshop for a couple of releases. Then Adobe decided to replace almost all of Photoshop’s native UI controls with web-based ones. This was the final straw. I’m sure some of these issues were special cases for me. Something that got stuck somewhere, maybe. I’m a developer, so maybe my tooling was interfering with something? Only: every time I ran into an issue, I’d see dozens of people complaining about the same thing on the Adobe support forums. It really felt like Photoshop and the Creative Cloud app had grown into blobs of pain that Adobe no longer knew how to properly maintain. As this was happening, Apple had released their Creator Studio service. For the same price as my Creative Cloud Photography plan, I could get an updated version of Pixelmator Pro, plus a bunch of other great apps. I’ve since signed up and haven’t looked back. But Adobe wasn’t done with me yet. It turned out that my subscription, which had been going since 2013, was on an “Annual Paid Monthly” plan. Even though I was getting billed monthly, I couldn’t actually cancel any time I wanted. I had sort of remembered this being a thing when I signed up, but had long since forgotten about it. Anyway, the one-month window to cancel without a termination fee recently arrived, and I got around to cancelling today. Cancelling required me to log into my Adobe account on the web. No problem, I thought. I had set up Adobe Authenticator, and had used it dozens of times to log in before. This time, however, the authenticator app needed me to log in. To log into the authenticator app, the app asked me to use the app to authenticate the app. Sorry? This was, of course, impossible. Eventually I figured out that I could use an alternative method to log into the app, so I could then use the app to authenticate my web session. This felt bone-headed, but whatever. I then received the following email. There’s nothing hidden here, this is the full contents of the message. At this point, though, I was actually able to start the cancellation process. The first screen of the cancellation flow looked like this: Here’s what it looked like after selecting things: I guess no one at Adobe uses dark mode? Anyway, the next 3 steps included Adobe begging me not to cancel, and even offering me three free months. This process had not convinced me I’d be happier staying. But even after completing the cancellation, I wasn’t done. I now wanted to uninstall everything. The Photoshop part of this was easy enough using the uninstaller app in the /Applications/Adobe Photoshop/ folder. The Creative Cloud app was more stubborn. There was also a link to an uninstaller for it in the /Applications/Adobe Creative Cloud/ folder… but running it failed with the error: Couldn’t uninstall Creative Cloud for desktop. You still have Creative Cloud applications installed on your computer that require it. Weird. The only other “app” I had installed was Camera Raw, which was just a plugin. There was also no way to uninstall it inside of the Creative Cloud app. I was able to find the plugin in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Plug-Ins/CC/File Formats/. Deleting it and relaunching the Creative Cloud app showed that it was now no longer installed. I tried running the Creative Cloud uninstaller again, but I got the same error. This time I tried the “Repair” option, offered as part of the uninstaller, but that also failed. So I then tried the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool… but this failed, too. At this point I was really annoyed, so I decided to manually remove things. I do not recommend doing this yourself, but here’s a general list of the stuff I got rid of: Under /Applications/: all the Adobe folders Under /Applications/Utilities/: all the Adobe folders The /Library/Application Support/Adobe and ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe directories, as well as any com.adobe.* files Under /Library/Preferences/ and ~/Library/Preferences/ all the Adobe* and com.adobe.* files Under /Library/Caches/ and ~/Library/Caches/ any Adobe* directories Under /Library/LaunchAgents/, /Library/LaunchDaemons/, and ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ directories: all the com.adobe.* files Under /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools: all com.adobe.* files Under /Users/Shared: all Adobe* directories Let me reiterate: you should not follow my lead here. I likely missed some things, and it’s very easy to mess things up by deleting system files. I offer no support if you decide to follow these steps. Again, it’s quite possible that there’s something weird going on with my machine or my installation… but I swear I never did anything but use the Creative Cloud app to manage things. I expect Adobe to be able to clean up their mess if they’re going to install files all over the friggin’ place. Anyway, all this said, I’m still slightly sad to be rid of Photoshop. Pixelmator Pro suits my current needs, but there are definitely things I will miss from Photoshop. Pixelmator Pro’s UI is a bit of a Liquid Glass nightmare, but it’s a massive improvement in terms of software quality. I’m extremely happy that it doesn’t strew zillions of files across my computer. I’m also pretty certain it will be much easier to unsubscribe from if I decide to do so in the future. So long, Photoshop. I’ll remember the old days fondly, but you are well past your prime.
More in technology
Harry threw me off course in episode 48 of Traction Heroes. At first, I thought was reading from a book about mind mapping. Soon, it became clear it was about something else: how to define a clear vision for a team or organization. Visions are notoriously hard to articulate. Drawing a picture — especially a picture of the whole forest, plus the trees — can help. The passage Harry read from Cameron Herold’s Vivid Vision explores this idea: So to visualize something a little more tangible, think about a tree trunk in the earth, inner core with its branches stretching out into the sky. Each of those branches contains twigs extend further out. The mind map works in a similar way, a core that branches out into smaller components. Now, apply this to the world of business. As the leader of an organization, you’re firmly planted at the center, and the various areas that contribute to the business branch out: marketing, sales, engineering, and so forth. With that in place, build off that by describing those branches in about three or four bullet points each. In other words, describe what your marketing looks like and sales and so on until you’ve captured every idea. Remember too that among the branches of your business, you want to consider every aspect of the organization: the vibe, informal codes of conduct, the fiscal environment, the scenery, all of that. Deliberately leave out numbers and data. Get a feel for the place. When you step out of your time machine three years from now and walk around the office, what’s happening? What can you say that is typical of the business three years from now? The mind map is an initial foray into the vivid vision and will act as an outline for the rough draft that you, the leader, will then write. I’ve sketched diagrams before when outlining articles, workshops, and presentations, never in service of aligning around a company’s vision. Harry’s done it several times and found it easier than trying to write it out. Seems useful — check out our conversation for more: Traction Heroes episode 48: Visions
Sharing a few data points because some people did not expect these drives to last that long.
I'm 100% for banning social media for children. I would even extend it to banning it all together in its current form. But I am also against the methods for enforcement. The problem with banning social media for one group and not another is that you have to differentiate the different groups somehow. And right now, in an age where information and personal data means everything, there are several entities that are salivating to get this data. I've written before about all the problems that come from uploading sensitive data online. It doesn't even matter if they delete the data afterward, as long as the data goes through the wire in the first place, there is a chance for a leak. What appears to be the same simple request "please verify your identity", becomes fundamentally different when mediated by technology. The question isn't whether these digital systems will be compromised, but when. And unlike that movie theater clerk who can't perfectly recall my birthdate minutes after seeing it, computers have perfect memory. They store, copy, backup, and transmit our most sensitive information through networks we don't control, to companies we've never heard of, under policies we'll never read. When kids are not allowed to use social media, it's the adult who pays the price. It's the adult who has to prove that they are not children. They have to risk uploading their government ID to a third party, or biometric data that may be saved and backed up forever. I reject this method. I also reject the method where I have to provide my age to the operating system. No system should compel me to provide personal data in order to use it. Especially if this feature is intended to provide the information to a third party. And what happens if I don't provide this information to my freebsd machine? Or worse, what if I provide false information? Am I going to get punished? How does that protect children in any way? Breaking news: Grown up arrested when OS reported forged identity in his laptop. One question I asked myself was what happens when a minor circumvents the ban. What are the consequences? At least in Australia, a country that has implemented a social media ban for those under 16, there are no consequences. The law places legal responsibility on platforms, not children or parents, and it currently applies to Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube. This almost sounds reasonable. Why should you care, if it becomes facebook responsibility when you don't even own a facebook account? But there is always a caveat. When facebook becomes a tool your school uses to communicate with parents. When Google classroom is the service students use to do their homework. When you are required to login on a system to receive government service. You may not care about a particular social media, but they raise the bar for every other entrant in the game. Every website frequented by a large number of people inherently become social media, and demand data you didn't need to provide before. Technology is not a magical thing that can just solve every problem. It is especially weak when it comes to social problems. However, society can use technology to solve their problems. The responsibility of children falls onto their parents. And there are great tools for parents that their kids access on their devices.
This weekend I ran the marathon of The Hague. I gave everything, and the result was 3 hours and 40 minutes. I am satisfied, because I know there was really nothing more in it. Tired legs, maximum heart rate, and still no collapse. It is beautiful that you can look for the limit like that. But the most important part of this marathon did not happen on the road. It happened in the weeks before, at home, looking out of the window. Two marathons in four weeks Four weeks earlier I ran Köln. Two days before the start my body was fighting a virus. I slept extra, stopped working and switched the computers off. The next afternoon I wrote: "the body is winning, energy is flowing through the veins again". Köln became 3:48:27. The Hague went better in every way. The extra experience made it possible to operate longer at the maximum: eating, drinking and the mental side were better than ever. I understand very well now what makes the performance. And it is not only the training. The Hague, 1 November 2026, just before the start Work as a long run At the end of October I wrote something less cheerful in my notes. Not only sport, but work too had taken on the character of a long run. Steady, long, without an end in sight. More than ever before, the balance tipped to the negative: no sparkling fun, warmth or pleasure. "It really is a marathon. I am physically, and mentally, ready for rest." That is the trap of a pace you can hold: you can hold it so long that you forget you are running. The answer was not to stop. It was to stay pragmatic, limit the loss of energy, and focus on the things we want to influence. And nothing more. Room to breathe On 15 October I did something different. The phone on "do not disturb" and out of reach. Questions about the jam supply and the invoices came in, all very important, for later. Reachable for emergencies, but there was no emergency. I wrote: "The best in me comes up when there is room. This is not running away or hiding. It is a necessary pause to breathe." Three days later, on a Sunday, I tried a whole day with zero screen time. A small experiment to feel where we still depend on it. Physical things stood out more: clutter, dust. Conversations with the children were easier, because I had so much more bandwidth to ask good questions. And I simply looked out of the window. I thought about my body, about the fast food of the day before, and about how little I really need. A green, orange or red light would be enough. The Sunday without screen time: wood, a plant by the window, daylight on the table That light exists now. The home screen of Contact, the software I work with every day, is one dot. Green means: all is well, nothing is waiting for me. It took a Sunday without screens to see that one dot was enough. The home screen of Contact: one green dot, nothing is waiting Why a window works Looking out of the window is not doing nothing. In 1984 Roger Ulrich published a small study in Science. Patients recovering from the same operation, in the same hospital, were given a room with a view of trees or a view of a brick wall. The ones looking at trees went home sooner, 7.96 days against 8.70, and needed fewer strong painkillers. A view, nothing more. There is a name for designing with that in mind: biophilic design. Daylight, plants, wood, a view and a place to retreat to. I only learned the word properly this autumn, while building levendkantoor.nl for Martin Cuypers, a client in Venray, not far from home. Their page on what biophilic design is puts it in three layers: nature in the space, nature as a reference, nature as an experience. Reading it, I recognised my own Sunday. Wood under my hands, a plant by the window, daylight on the table. Nothing to buy. Just noticing. As is, not add-on The morning after The Hague I wrote down the conclusion. The gym is no longer "nice to have". We are making it an integral part again, on days that keep the impact on working hours small. The goal: a strong physical base, not as an add-on, but as is. Next year I want to break 3:30, and that can only happen if we make everything stronger, in all dimensions: strength training, sprints, and longer runs at low intensity, around 130 beats per minute. An hour on the treadmill, then a round on the machines Last week I ran an hour on a treadmill, followed by a round on the machines. I loved it. An hour on such a thing asks for a different mindset, and that is exactly the point. Like the window and the green dot, it is not something extra on top of the work. It is what my work stands on, the foundation for thinking. I wrote about running before, in Marathon and in Run Nicely. This time the lesson is not in the legs. Conclusion Two marathons in four weeks taught me more about work than about running. The pace you can hold is not enough. You also need room: a morning without a phone, a Sunday without screens, a view of something alive. The best in me comes up when there is room, and that room is not a reward for after the finish. It is part of the training. There is one more race on the calendar this year, purely to finish, at a slower and conscious pace. First recover. And look out of the window a bit more, ha! The best part of a finish: celebrating with friends!
