Several things I like about macOS 27 Golden Gate that have nothing to do with AI

Comparing three window corners, from hardest to softest. On the bottom of the stack is macOS 15 Sequoia; on the top of the stack is the rounded macOS 26 Tahoe styling. The new corners in macOS 27 Golden Gate split the difference.

Credit:

Andrew Cunningham

Golden Gate also removes most of the little SF Symbols glyphs from next to menu items. As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber highlights, Apple’s updated Human Interface Guidelines for its new OSes now say that the Tahoe-era design is the wrong way to do it, and that icons for menu bar items should be used “sparingly and with purpose.”

I tend to think that most of the gripes about Tahoe and Liquid Glass were overblown, but Apple does seem to have addressed many of the specific, substantive criticisms I’ve either seen repeated by others or that I’ve made myself. Collectively, I suspect they’ll mostly satisfy the “I refuse to upgrade because of Liquid Glass” people.

External display support

Golden Gate makes a couple of changes to improve the Mac’s support for external displays. Most concretely, it’s adding native support for 5K ultrawide displays (Apple didn’t define an exact resolution, but panels like this Dell Ultrasharp model run at 5120 by 2160). This is likely to vary somewhat based on the Mac you’re using; M1, M2, and M3 series Macs that top out at 60 Hz on regular 16:9 5K monitors will probably still be capped at 60 Hz.

Appls also says Macs will do a better job of remembering how windows were positioned on multi-monitor displays, useful for laptop owners who regularly dock and undock their systems to one or more external displays.

A new battery menu bar icon that displays its percentage inside the icon to save space.

Credit:

Andrew Cunningham

I like menu bar icons, and for the ones I interact with most often (particularly Bluetooth and audio controls), I prefer to keep them visible in the menu bar and save myself the trip to the Control Center.

There are two menu bar icon changes I’ve noticed and liked so far. First, there’s an icon that indicates when your Mac is connected to Ethernet. Before, only your Wi-Fi connectivity would show up in the menu bar. This is a small thing, but people want it often enough that third-party solutions exist.

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