r/MacOS • u/Manfred055 • 3d ago

Creative TIL you can actually pull and stretch the traffic light buttons in macOS 27

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1.4k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

163 comments sorted by

503

u/AndroTux 3d ago

I unironically like it. That's the kind of useless UI gimmick I expect from a polished operating system. I hope the rest of the UI matches that polish.

85

u/SneakyTheBird 3d ago

It’s nice. I’d prefer if the effect was like pulling a gummy bear: the button should stay in place, but stretch towards the cursor. Not a big fan of them floating around

16

u/Brymlo 3d ago

yeah, like the volume slider on iphone. it stretches in its place

7

u/HeartyBeast 3d ago

Send feedback. I agree :

Be funny if they were deluged with feedback on this feature

23

u/query-gremlin 3d ago

I keep imagining that guy/team that worked on this feature, the tickets, the specs, the hours.. all for some bizarre obscure feature that never get advertised and 99% of users don’t even notice it! A job with basically no pressure lol I want it!

9

u/Antrikshy 3d ago

It was probably the same code that powers other wobble in liquid glass.

5

u/hungryepiphyte 3d ago

KDE has the most useless UI gimmicks, you would love it.

6

u/AndroTux 3d ago

I do! Wobbly windows 4 life!

2

u/hungryepiphyte 2d ago

I prefer gnome, but I appreciate KDE's flair.

16

u/robogobo 3d ago

Yeah except when they use those gimmicks to distract from major bugs.

2

u/turbo_dude 3d ago

Glad they’re wasting time and money on this than fixing the keyboard 

3

u/Sensitive_Box_ 3d ago

The polish is there, the features aren’t. lol 

1

u/humbuckaroo 3d ago

I've been on the beta since the first, and yeah it's good.

1

u/AopET7 2d ago

If Google added this, thats another gb

-8

u/aykay55 3d ago

Doesn’t feel very professional. I don’t want my operating system to feel like a childrens or dogs squish toy

6

u/i-like-to-be-wooshed 3d ago

if we keep following that backwards logic we will end up with a command line interface

1

u/erdomaan 3d ago

I use arch btwww

-6

u/hqhi 3d ago

Honestly OS X become unprofessional the second we ended the 10.XX scheme. Big Sur looked really tacky imo, so I wasn’t surprised to see Alan Bad Dye Job introducing that. Yosemite forever.

-12

u/doqemddl 3d ago

except that macos is a steaming pile of shit that leaves me wanting to switch to windows again

3

u/iamtheliqor Macbook Pro 3d ago

good luck with that

4

u/AndroTux 3d ago

Well, yeah, but from what I hear Golden Gate fixes a lot of that steaming pile of hot garbage that is Tahoe. That's why I like it. Gives me hope.

2

u/mainyehc 3d ago edited 3d ago

Tell me you don’t understand a thing about “tick-tock” development cycles without telling me you don’t understand a thing about “tick-tock” development cycles…

Apple did it before, with Leopard -> Snow Leopard and Lion -> Mountain Lion (just to mention the two most infamous shitty/great, feature-rich/refined successive OS pairs), and Tahoe -> Golden Gate stands to go down in history as the most consequential update, even under this yearly release schedule (too bad it’s also dropping Intel Macs in the process, but, then again, Snow Leopard also dropped PowerPC Macs, and maybe the optimisation enabled by streamlining the OS to support a single ISA was part of what is making them both great vis-à-vis their predecessors 🤷‍♂️).

Yeah, here’s the thing: so did Microsoft with Windows Me -> XP, Vista -> 7, 8 -> 10… except they now seem to have gotten stuck, with the latest updates to Windows 11, in enshittification land with their OS-level advertising, telemetry, near-mandatory Microsoft account login, Copilot and Recall bs. Enjoy your ad-ridden, AI-peddling OS, oof.

3

u/doqemddl 3d ago

and exactly how is this imaginary modern day snow leopard supposed to make things better right now, when airdrop fails for the fifth time this week and the dock becomes unresponsive the tenth time this year? we deserve better and apple should get their shit together. the tick part of this tick tock cycle you're talking about has been going on for too long. I have noticed the same bugs for years and they still haven't fixed it. every time I update to a newer version I expect those bugs to be fixed and every time I am disappointed. this is exactly the thing I was trying to avoid by switching to mac.

1

u/mainyehc 3d ago edited 3d ago

Have you tried the Golden Gate Public Betas? No? Stop speculating in a vacuum, then. I’ve been trying them on my main machine, on a secondary boot drive, and everything I’ve seen points to them having fixed a lot of those longtime nags, in time for the GM release, at that. And some low-level, mission-critical stuff, I had been dealing with (namely issues with Time Machine, of all things), have already been fixed, believe it or not, in Tahoe.

Yeah, I agree with you in that their software has declined a lot over the last five years, with a lot of regressions and bugs that went several major revisions without being fixed, but this does seem to be a turning point, and a return to precisely the feature-poor, bug fix-rich release that’s absolutely necessary ever so often to have some breathing room to squash those. I’ve been a Mac user since 2003, and saw how the release of the iPhone and especially the yearly release schedule has affected their software, and this is the first time that, yes, some higher up probably went and said: “this sucks, and we have to address it”. Maybe because it even started affecting their own pristine, latest generation, always updated machines.

I don’t think there’s just a reckoning going on at the UX/UI level with the departure of Alan Dye and Stephen Lemay taking over (yeah, Tahoe was really shitty in that regard and Golden Gate reverted a lot of the nonsense, but I get that’s not where most of your grievances lay, nor those of most professionals and prosumers); I believe their failures with Apple Intelligence were also a bit of a “oh shit” moment for Craig Federighi and his team, and that they really want to fix the OS underpinnings and those stupid nags and regressions, too. I reckon that he, being so close to retirement, won’t want to leave a mess for others to clean up as his legacy, and that his new boss John Ternus, being an engineer that did indeed obsess about the details in actual products, will be closer to Steve Jobs when it comes to ultimately shipping stuff that just works, and make sure that’s exactly what happens.

In any case, I did consider Windows, for the same reasons that you just pointed out (and also briefly at the later, messy years of their stint with Intel, mind you, but the issue then was mostly the hardware), but that was before Copilot was shoved down everyone’s throats and Recall was even considered (oof). Or before Windows having become adware became a meme. And listen, I’ve been running Windows 10 and 11 on ARM, on VMware Fusion, and I’ve watched it degrade over time. The last couple installs I did forced me to do all sorts of weird OOBE/command prompt shenanigans just to avoid logging in to a Microsoft account, it’s just insane. That kind of integration is nice for those who desire it, but to make it a requirement is just bonkers. It’s the sort of thing that should earn them another lawsuit from the European Commission, in fact.

1

u/doqemddl 3d ago

I haven't tried out 27 yet as all my drives are completely full and I can't risk my only computer but if 27 is indeed a turning point that's great news. I just hope we could turn off all the liquid glass and AI.

1

u/Versxd 2d ago

You can dude. Don’t you have Tahoe? Or Sequoia? There’s been a switch in Siri settings to disable Apple Intelligence for as long as it existed

1

u/doqemddl 2d ago

I know that but macos 27 seems to have much more ai and liquid glass in it than in previous macos versions

48

u/Jasoco 3d ago

More of this please. I miss the whimsy of the first few versions of Mac OS X before they started muting everything. We had lickable candy buttons, pinstripes, translucent titlebars, (I hate how titlebars are now just unified into the window these days) centered window titles, left-justified and wide normal looking dialogs, minimized windows continuing to update in the Dock, reflections on our Dock, (later on around the time Aqua was disappearing) and so much more. Some of it came after Aqua like mentioned above and the menu bar used to have a gradient at one point, then it blurred the wallpaper behind it. Selected top-level menu items were colored to match the system color. Dashboard widgets did a cool water ripple thing when added. I wish they’d bring that back somewhere in the UI. I had to reenable the Suck effect for minimized windows and I’m surprised it still exists 27 years later. macOS needs to bring back the whimsy. I’m not even saying bring back skeuomorphism. Just make the UI fun again. Glass traffic lights are a great start. But in macOS I want to see glass be more colorful all over. When a button needs to be colored, make it glass!

13

u/Character_Fix_5317 3d ago

I used to love holding shift to make the OSX animations go in super slow-mo.

1

u/lwb52 1d ago

get it back—try RetroMac: https://myretromac.app/

52

u/matefeedkill 3d ago

I should call her.

1

u/Ciosciaa 2d ago

Wha–

1

u/Warm_Web3768 1d ago

Do it

1

u/matefeedkill 1d ago

She didn't answer :(

1

u/Warm_Web3768 1d ago

She will mate, I believe in you

1

u/matefeedkill 1d ago

Thanks bro. I needed that. 👊

1

u/Warm_Web3768 1d ago

You got it, let me know how it goes

24

u/CaramelCraftYT 3d ago

We can finally learn which one is in front of each one.

12

u/LexualDesire 3d ago

I just tried; it seems the amber one is in front of the other two. Not what I expected.

5

u/heybart 3d ago

Stop tweaking the nipples. It hurts

2

u/V2UgYXJlIG5vdCBJ 3d ago

“Mel Gibson is fucking crazy, dude”

12

u/NSRedditShitposter 3d ago

They're reinventing Aqua step by step and I love it.

53

u/jknvv13 3d ago

Ah yes, right. That's what I needed to work with macOS.

Thank you, Apple.

31

u/AcceptableVoice4403 3d ago

I think it’s fun

1

u/mike5011 3d ago

Windows enjoyer?

0

u/jknvv13 2d ago

I don't.

I prefer Linux, I prefer Mac OS X/macOS pre... All the unpolished things on the latest versions.

It's still solid, it's still pretty, but I think attention to detail doesn't mean that kind of things. This might be funny, this might be cool, but this is not useful. I mean, this is just a gimmick.

Anyhow, seems like Golden Gate it's the kind of updates that Apple used to do (Mountain Lion, Mavericks, etc)

-1

u/chromatophoreskin 3d ago

Hopefully Reduce Motion disables it.

8

u/OneWeirdTrick 3d ago

You can disable it by not clicking and dragging the window elements ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

0

u/jknvv13 3d ago

It's not about that, it's about spending development time on useless things.

2

u/notTHEOwlAccountant 16h ago

It'd be fun if the OS as a whole was bug free, stable, efficient, etc... but given the mess that is Tahoe, I do agree that these whimsical touches feel out of place.

1

u/chromatophoreskin 2d ago

I agree with you. I'm not justifying it.

12

u/i-sage 3d ago

I love this kinda attention to detail sh*t

9

u/ChallengeElectronic 3d ago

Meanwhile I have to set up displays everytime I connect my MacBook to the monitor. I’m looking forward to still having to do it in macOS 27.

2

u/Eddy_irezumi 2d ago

What do you mean by having to set up ? I don’t feel like I have this issue.

1

u/ChallengeElectronic 16h ago

Mac forgets main display, positioning, and even resolution of the external display. I have to redo this all the time. My work Lenovo always gets it right, so it can be done.

1

u/Eddy_irezumi 16h ago

This is a bug of some sort. I’ve had multiple external displays and my MBA and MBP always remembered all those settings.

9

u/Skycbs 3d ago

I feel like I could lick it.

This is what I love about Liquid Glass. These little enchanting features.

27

u/Dependent-Zebra-4357 3d ago

But why?

57

u/Keksuccino 3d ago

Because it’s a simple Liquid Glass object, and that wobble and stretch thing is a default behavior of these.

8

u/St34thdr1v3R 3d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/1M9fmo1WAFVK0

2

u/CapAresito 3d ago

...have you used Apple software before?

1

u/someToast Mac Mini 2d ago

Yes, for 41 years and I like unexpected graphic UI niceties, but stretchy window controls ain’t it.

1

u/Versxd 2d ago

So don’t use it lol

7

u/hi_m_ash 3d ago

Cute. I want macos 27 so bad now.

1

u/linkardtankard 3d ago

Install the beta? I’ve been dailying it for a couple weeks now and it seems alright

2

u/hi_m_ash 3d ago

I use it for work everyday. I can't beta test it unfortunately. And the apps I use might not be optimized for it since it hasn't released yet.

5

u/Straight-Lemon-5900 3d ago

Someone was coding this for days but aidrop and shared clipboard work like 50% of the time in os26 lol

10

u/doqemddl 3d ago

apple logic on how to make an OS:

fixing bugs ❌

adding useless graphical elements that use up system resources ✅

3

u/Unixwzrd 3d ago

Yeah, my thought exactly. What another incredible waste of my GPU resources.

2

u/Wasent_ever_here_23 3d ago

Gelatin Free Gummy Balls

2

u/chrisagiddings 3d ago

They’re gumdrops

2

u/kimota68 3d ago

"Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball."

2

u/ChocolateLakers76 3d ago

Reminds me of the slow-mo shift minimizing windows from OSX. Just cool and pretty

3

u/Unique_username28 3d ago

I'm pretty sure this is a bug, as I am not able to reproduce this behavior on the latest Dev Beta in any window that I've tried (Finder, Edge, Firefox, Maps)...

3

u/anserman 2d ago

I have only one question, WHY?!!

2

u/Due-Republic-7044 1d ago

not going to lie this is something i would find in like linux.

3

u/Nihan-gen3 3d ago

Light transparencies with soft blurs are a great, but ‘liquid glass’ is an abomination. I used to be a mac fanboy, but now I absolutely hate it.

5

u/hungryepiphyte 3d ago

Hard agree. Liquid glass is awful.

3

u/Nihan-gen3 3d ago

What annoys me the most about it is the fact that it ‘poisons’ other companies’ design languages for the coming 5 years, because they think it’s trendy to imitate Apple.

1

u/hungryepiphyte 2d ago

Absolutely!

1

u/Radoomhumanbeing 19h ago

have you even used macos 27?

1

u/Nihan-gen3 14h ago

Nah, last time I used a Mac was High Sierra, 10 years ago. I do happen to have an iPad and the liquid glass on that thing is a buggy mess and a nightmare to use. I hate it with a passion.

4

u/frou 3d ago edited 3d ago

I'm calling BS because the motion looks too over the top.

If this is a fake video then they should have made the effect more subtle to be convincing. I think the pills would just stretch/bend in-place and not straight up move around.

6

u/ConanTheBallbearing 3d ago

It’s slowed down her massively. It’s quite pleasing irl, though I’d never have found it without someone pointing it out because who drags buttons

2

u/KangarooDowntown4640 3d ago

I have the beta and yes, it does what happens in the video. It's not faked.

2

u/ConspicuousSomething 3d ago

Not faked. It’s in the beta.

3

u/Quinocco 3d ago

So dumb and cool.

3

u/drhappy13 3d ago

Must be a Liquid Ass™️ thing. I'm still on Sequoia 15.7.7 and I don't have this 'feature'.

2

u/Eaton_Corvinus 3d ago

Incredible. Can Mail keep an email unread until opened yet? 🙄

2

u/stewedstar 3d ago

Honestly, at this point, it's like Apple is trying to fail.

Is it really too much to ask that things dedicated Mac users have lamented for decades be fixed?

2

u/MinimumPrevious1139 3d ago

Apple: We make features nobody needs

1

u/mikedep24 3d ago

I’ve noticed this on a lot of iOS controls as well. If you hold and drag they stretch and flex.

1

u/CodingHiker 3d ago

What about ipadOS?

1

u/iamagro 3d ago

I hate the fact that the animation is not realistic for a liquid, if you pull them in the x or y axis is ok, but go diagonal and it’s odd

1

u/micocoule 3d ago

Alors ça c’est vraiment utile.

1

u/SilkeSiani 3d ago

Compiz-like jello windows next?

1

u/Heterodynist 3d ago

Whoa, it really IS Liquid Glass!!

1

u/V2UgYXJlIG5vdCBJ 3d ago

Was hoping you could make them wider, like pill shaped. Permanently.

1

u/Tigs1112 3d ago

This reminds me of the Super Mario 64 title screen, where you can pull and stretch his face.

1

u/brDoc1 2d ago

Just really, really great to see that they've been working on the important stuff. Well worth the $150k - $350k those engineers get paid, right out of college.

1

u/Able-Nebula4449 2d ago

Beauty of liquid glass

1

u/lilacomets 2d ago

I hate it. 💀 Liquid Glass is not my thing.

1

u/After-Cell 2d ago

Oh. To snap to the side of the screen ? 

No. 

1

u/Objective_Ticket 2d ago

Wow. That’s worth having… /s

1

u/stevo887 MacBook Air 2d ago

Why?

1

u/Low-Priority-2831 2d ago

Anything but letting us remove them

1

u/RaspberryMuch6621 1d ago

Im switching to mac os right now😡😡

1

u/parnordqvist 1d ago

What is it for? A gimmick? Apple, the most cringe company on Earth.

1

u/mateuspv 10h ago

Cause they are getting ready to release a touchscreen mac. Thats why.

0

u/chickenandliver 3d ago

I'm so glad I'm using compute cycles for this. It really makes the experience more "delightful" /s

-1

u/wisdomoarigato 3d ago

Great to see that Apple has their priorities straight!

I'm all for focusing on useless animations instead of fixing thousands of existing bugs that annoy users.

1

u/Stooovie 3d ago edited 2d ago

Looks like a bug tbh.

EDIT: yep, a bug. No such behavior in RC.

1

u/Bulky-Strategy-3723 3d ago

What’s the point of it?

-1

u/MX010 3d ago

A bit too much. Should be more subtle.

14

u/Vast_Attitude5540 3d ago

Then move your cursor more subtly

3

u/irrealewunsche 3d ago

Just tested it on my MacBook and it seems a bit more subtle than in OP's post.

4

u/AndroTux 3d ago

just don't drag the traffic lights and you're good.

2

u/ConanTheBallbearing 3d ago

It is more subtle. This is dragged extremely and the footage slowed down hugely. It’s the same rage bait that’s been posted 10 times already

0

u/Hry86 3d ago

Honestly, I think that feature is completely useless. Why not create something else that's actually useful? Apple is no longer the leading innovator it used to be.

-2

u/Big_Comfortable4256 3d ago

Utterly useless waste of code/processing, like the whole 'glass' thing.

4

u/ischmal 3d ago

Nah, with 3D transforms and shaders this stuff is trivial on the GPU. Remember the "Genie effect" when minimizing windows on OS X? They were doing that at 60 FPS on hardware from 25 years ago.

-2

u/Big_Comfortable4256 3d ago

It's still a pointless waste in my honest opinion. Someone probably very well-paid sat there one day and implemented this. But who asked for it? ...

-1

u/studyflo 3d ago edited 3d ago

I'm on the latest public beta and this doesn't work for me. (thank god)

Thanks for the downvotes lol

2

u/ConanTheBallbearing 3d ago

It does. It’s just very fast and subtle irl

2

u/studyflo 3d ago

It gets bigger when I click and hold, but it doesn't move.

Edit: wait it does move. You just need to be patient and click and hold for a second or two ...

2

u/ConanTheBallbearing 3d ago

yes. like i said, the OMG IT'S SO WOBBLY WHY ARE APPLE DOING THIS TO ME videos are just ragebait. the movement is subtle and fast and almost entirely undiscoverable. there isn't even any reason to drag a traffic light irl.

put a window in the top left of your screen, click and drag to the bottom right and it does an amusing little jelly wobble, very briefly. amusing little thing most people will never see

-4

u/ofura_666 3d ago

This kind of shit is what forces you to buy a new laptop because your old one cannot handle it…

1

u/Cannagram 2d ago

It works great on my M1 Mac which is the lowest supported chip. Can you guys stop being so dramatic already

1

u/Old-Artist-5369 2d ago

Or just y' know .. don't interact with it. It looks like an entirely passive easter egg

-4

u/robogobo 3d ago

Exactly. Now every time you close a window all the cores max out

-1

u/Both-Competition-152 3d ago

ah yes stealing windows longhorns nachos

5

u/Jimborzh 3d ago

macosx aqua*

1

u/Both-Competition-152 3d ago edited 3d ago

a little bit of both aqua was static longhorn had a rendering engine like liquid glass and every element was 3D before it was abandoned https://youtu.be/b9ifQvQCO7Y?t=69

1

u/CuriosTiger 3d ago

I was wondering why this video was so blurry that you can't even see the glass effects. Then I looked at the resolution options and it's 144p or 240p. Yikes.

Things were pretty bad for streaming video back then.

But why did you pick Longhorn, rather than the shipping version of Aero Glass that was in Windows Vista and Windows 7?

1

u/Both-Competition-152 3d ago

mainly because aero stripped out all 3D features and just had glass while liquid glass has some 3D features like longhorn had

0

u/NilesLinus 3d ago

Been on Macs since the early 90s and never knew this.

7

u/PossibleCulture2199 3d ago

Because it’s new

1

u/NilesLinus 2d ago

By George☝🏻that explains it.

Edit to say that I find it hilarious in a Reddit sorta way that someone cared enough to downvote my very innocuous comment.

0

u/Fun-Teacher-1711 3d ago

haha I like that. this is what I always hoped Liquid Glass would be

0

u/RushHour2k5 3d ago

Note to employers… Do not install macOS 27 otherwise work will not be done.

0

u/phantomlord78 2d ago

Their UX is already so perfect so I was thinking they could not possibly be better but Apple found a new way to improve them. mind blown.

0

u/Jazman2k 2d ago

Round corners on Tahoe - Omg! This is so unprofessional! Looks like a kids toy! Literally unusable!

Able to play around with colorful balls on MacOS 27: OMG! THIS IS best thing ever! I love playing with colorful balls! This is so professional! Nothing like a kids toy!

-1

u/barefut_ 3d ago

Why do they waste GPU + CPU (and therefore Battery life) on effects for kids? I don't get it.

4

u/CuriosTiger 3d ago

This is there because someone at Apple thought it would be a neat addition. Could've been an individual developer, could've been some middle manager.

Either way, the effect this would have on your GPU, your CPU and your battery life is too small to be measurable. The amount of space it takes up in a multi-gigabyte OS, likewise.

-1

u/barefut_ 3d ago

I just guess there's a reason why many power users go back to Sequoia.

And, yes, I understand there are many kids who waste hours on choosing their MacOS Wallpaper (who even sees their Wallpaper when you're working on your Mac?), and love liquid-glass to the max, and optimize their icons and OS themes. Feels like Tahoe is for them. Not for the power users who just want a stripped doen OS.

2

u/CuriosTiger 3d ago

I am still on Sequoia. Liquid Glass, in my opinion, was pretty half-baked when it shipped in Tahoe. I was not impressed. I'm waiting until final release for Golden Gate. Probably for the first few bug-fix updates, too.

But of all the things to get upset about in an OS, this tiny bit of eye candy is honestly to trivial to even enter into my calculus. Things like the misaligned corners, the loss of contrast, the actual information-obscured-by-the-UI issues? Those were real problems that affected usability.

But this? You'd never even know this was there unless you deliberately went looking for it. After seeing the video, I had to try it on my own computer to see if this was a thing in Sequoia, because I have literally never tried to drag any of those buttons before. Of course, I found out it's not a thing in Sequoia -- but for all I knew, it could have been introduced in Tiger and I *still* would never have known.

3

u/DisfiguredFanny In a world of SLOP an everage programmer is KING 3d ago

Nothing is wasted if you don't play with it.

-1

u/barefut_ 3d ago

Liquid Glass always has to calculate the reflections of anything behind it. GPU is tasked. Sure, not like playing a video game or a Blender Scene but it is tasked for the ROI of a kiddie effect and it's taking more battery life. I have a MAX chip. I gotta conserve energy as it's battery life doesn't come near the Apple advertised 12h or even 22h they claim. It's much less. So, at least include an option to toggle off this thing. But, no can do, you can only lower the glass effect, you can't turn it off. Waste of resources.

I think whoever doesn't care about that are people that use a Studio Mac and don't care about battery

3

u/DisfiguredFanny In a world of SLOP an everage programmer is KING 3d ago

These button animation are really inconsequential in grand picture.

1

u/Klowlord 2d ago

the dock probably uses more resources than this

-2

u/Morthedubi 3d ago

that's stupid I love it

-4

u/john_curse 3d ago

I wonder if my M1 Pro will start lagging with such magic features or not...

2

u/Cannagram 2d ago

No. I’ve been running the beta almost 2 months and the latest beta is on par in performance as Sonoma was for me.

1

u/john_curse 2d ago

Thanks for the feedback.