I’m aware that the title of this article could be viewed as clickbait. Sorry about that. It is, however, a very sincere snapshot of how I’m currently feeling about the Mac and Mac OS platform.

Ever since the misguided visual redesign of Mac OS when it transitioned from 10.15 Catalina to 11 Big Sur, and the questionable UI choices embedded in such redesign, I’ve been disheartened to see my favourite environment for work and leisure enter a downward spiral. And while engineering-minded folks like Howard Oakley have been praising certain security-related underpinnings of the latest three versions of Mac OS, I simply feel they’re over-engineered solutions that make things needlessly more intricate for the end user. I’m not going into details here not because I don’t know what I’m talking about, but because, more pragmatically, the list of examples would constitute an article on its own, and would definitely exceed the scope and focus of this piece.

Before you think I’m going to say things like Apple can’t innovate any more, again, no. It’s not that. I actually quite like most of what Apple is doing with the Mac, hardware-wise. The problem is I just can’t stand the software anymore. The problem is that I feel there is a troubling ungluing going on between Mac hardware and Mac OS, a substantial difference in quality between the two components, that doesn’t make me feel what I used to feel in previous versions of Mac OS X: seamless integration.

I think it all stems from Apple’s desire to simplify things for themselves, architecture-wise — Apple Silicon is quite innovative in bringing the advantages of iOS devices to Macs (performance + power efficiency). The terrible decision, in my view, has been to also want to bring the iOS look and feel to the Mac. It was unnecessary, it has broken so many tried-and-true Mac interface guidelines, and it has delivered a massive blow to the whole operating system’s identity. Just to make the Mac what, more fashionable?

The new System Settings and Stage Manager in Mac OS Ventura, to put it bluntly, are a fucking joke. They look and feel like implementation attempts you would see in an early beta release of Mac OS X, to be quickly scrapped or rectified in a subsequent release. And they sadly mirror the way Apple software & UI engineers think about this stuff. And this, in turn, sadly mirrors what Apple seems to prioritise when it comes to Mac OS. Instead of working on new ways to make the system more powerful, more versatile, taking advantage of the unbelievable performance of the M‑class processors, they’re retouching — and terribly so — certain parts of the system in a way that’s little more than cosmetic. And they’re fixing or adding to what was never broken: multitasking. To me, Stage Manager is as useful and practical an addition to Mac OS as putting a USB numeric keypad inside the packaging of a new MacBook Pro.

With this (and more) in mind, you can see how difficult and painful upgrading to a new Mac becomes for me. On the one hand, the hardware is great and so is the performance. On the other, getting a new Mac today means it comes with Ventura or Monterey preinstalled, which is unfortunate, and of course there is no downgrade path.

I still haven’t decided if my next Mac is going to be a laptop or desktop machine. If I choose desktop, I may bite the bullet and go for a Mac Studio, which should be future-proof enough for my needs. As a laptop solution, the M1 MacBook Air is what I find most appealing at the moment. Not only for the excellent price/performance ratio, but also because the M1 Air’s display doesn’t feature the stupid notch of the M2 Air and the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros. And it’s a model that originally came with Big Sur which, while still not being my favourite Mac OS version, at least it’s not Ventura, and I’m not forced to live with it from the start. Yes, you heard me well: I have no intention to go past Big Sur, unless some specific work-related reasons ultimately force my hand. 

But why? — If you’ve read this far, you should have understood it by now, but in case I haven’t been clear enough: I loathe what Apple is doing with Mac OS now. The visuals, the UI… I simply don’t enjoy it. I tolerate it. Whenever I need to test a Mac OS app that has system requirements higher than Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra or 10.14 Mojave, and I switch to my 2015 13-inch retina MacBook Pro with a more up-to-date Mac OS version, my session doesn’t last one minute more than it needs to. It’s the same feeling an Apple fanboy would feel if they were forced to use Windows at work.

But what about security? Are you sure you want to stay on an older version of Mac OS? — Thankfully I’m tech-savvy enough to know what I’m doing. The two Macs I use most are still on High Sierra and Mojave, and haven’t received security updates in quite a while. I haven’t had any security-related problem whatsoever. Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t care about security. I’m simply sharing what I’m doing, my choices, and my preferences. As it is, I currently much prefer to work and have fun in an operating system environment (High Sierra and Mojave) I love and enjoy using. An environment in which I am fast and productive. An environment which still reflects good UI and usability decisions that make it consistent, predictable, and a pleasure to use. And at the moment, I’m honestly more concerned by third-party apps dropping support of these older system versions rather than vague security threats. And if the worst happens, well, I’ll shoulder the consequences of my decision.

You’re weird / averse to change / just don’t get it — Feel free to think so. I’m not trying to convince anybody that my personal preferences are the way to go. But the point I’ve been repeatedly trying to present here and on social media in recent years is that Apple has done a profound disservice to Mac OS. In a misguided effort to ‘modernise’ it, they have made it more disjointed, more brittle, buggier, with baffling UI regressions that have often made me wonder whether there’s still a conductor on this Mac OS train(wreck). The decrease in overall quality is worrisome enough, but I also keep feeling a lack of focus and direction that keeps Mac OS functionally stagnant.

And as a result I, as a long-time Mac user, feel a bit left to my own devices — pun intended. Mac OS is a platform that’s deserving of going from mature to exceptional at this point. Yet I feel that the software tools Apple wants me to use today are getting worse and shallower, created or modified according to an equally shallower design concept that prioritises eye-candy over pretty much anything else. And pretty, ‘designer’ tools are great to showcase, not so great for those who need to use them for several hours every day and clash against their puzzling quirks. Then we wonder why so many people are nostalgic about Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I’m sure that, if a hypothetical ‘super-patch’ could be issued to bring Snow Leopard up-to-date with regard to Internet protocols and the like, many would gladly go back to use it. The fact that it could still be used to do 95% of the things a Mac does today should tell you enough about how much Mac OS has truly evolved in the past eleven years or so.

When I say that my next Mac might be the last, in the end, it means that unless Mac OS starts getting better — a process that would require making a few steps back and a serious course-correction — I don’t plan to invest more in this platform. That trepidation and sinking feeling of What are they going to break this time? every time the WWDC’s date approaches, has been wearing me down in the past few years. What one should feel, instead, is: Apple got this. I’m in good hands. I see no reason not to upgrade straight away. And I haven’t felt this in a long time.

Still, don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying I’m dumping the Mac and switching to Windows or Linux. I had stopped being Mac-only circa 2016 anyway. I’ve already been using Windows (and some Linux distro) with other hardware for a while now. What I plan to do is simply to get one more Mac that is new enough to ‘keep me in the loop’ for a while longer, while I keep using the Macs I have with the Mac OS releases I prefer working in. After that, I’ll keep investing in the Mac only if I find that Apple is moving in a direction I feel more compatible with and more in tune with my needs. In the tech world, we don’t owe loyalty to anyone. 

My next Mac might be the last was first published by Riccardo Mori on Morrick.me on 24 October 2022.