Apple should offer a Pro version of macOS - a separate SKU for pros and prosumers who demand more from their tools.
I started on Windows on 3.11 and spent nearly two decades on it: 95 through XP was the peak (stable, extensible, it got out of your way). Then Vista happened, then the slow drift toward consumer mediocrity, and Mountain Lion was the way out. I switched in 2012 and didn’t look back.
I switched because the hardware was exceptional and the software matched it - purposeful and fast. Skeuomorphic design gets mocked now but it was honest- every surface told you what it did.
That Mac seemingly no longer exists.
Liquid Glass is the most visible symptom - decorative noise that communicates nothing and adds nothing. Nearly a year in, it still isn’t working - Apple has already confirmed a “slight redesign” for macOS 27 to address complaints. The inconsistent border rounding makes it worse: exaggerated, inconsistent across apps, and in Tahoe it actively broke window resizing - 75% of the corner area now falls outside the clickable range. Aesthetic signalling that undermines the tools it’s supposed to serve.
Omarchy - a minimal, opinionated Linux desktop by DHH, now adopted company-wide at 37signals - is picking up serious traction from programmers and designers who care about the work. DHH and Jason Fried don’t chase trends. In a recent interview, DHH was explicit: Apple has gone soft, and he’s mourning the loss of the company he once respected. 37signals also has its own history with Apple - their HEY email app was nearly removed from the App Store over Apple’s 30% cut demands. This isn’t people experimenting: they shipped it company-wide.
The irony is that Apple has never been better positioned for pro creatives.
The M-series hardware has been a genuine return to form. John Ternus - mechanical engineer, 25 years at Apple, becomes CEO on 1st September - isn’t just a hardware promotion. He personally lobbied Craig Federighi to build iPadOS because he saw that sharing iOS was holding the iPad back. He understood the hardware well enough to know the software needed to be different. He took over Apple’s design teams late last year.
Then there’s Apple Creator Studio. That’s Apple looking directly at Adobe and deciding to compete. Good. Adobe’s apps are bloated, incoherent, and treat telemetry as a feature. I dislike it enough to run a Windows VM with Winutil just to keep Adobe binaries off my main machine. Apple has the tools, the hardware, the distribution, and now apparently the appetite.
The timing has never been better. A Pro SKU - less visual noise, performance over aesthetics, defaults that assume competence - isn’t a stripped-down OS. It’s a focused one.
Apple tiers everything else by user. The OS is the obvious next step. Ternus knows it.
