Summary

Gruber reports on two MacOS developments pulling in opposite directions. Safari in MacOS 26.4 now properly respects the hidden preference to hide menu item icons, a welcome fix he takes as evidence of internal Apple allies who share his distaste for the cluttered Tahoe UI. Meanwhile, Apple has closed the device management profile loophole that let Sequoia users block persistent Tahoe upgrade prompts. He offers a workaround: enrolling in the Sequoia public beta program to suppress Tahoe notifications, noting he'd rather risk a beta update than be forced into Tahoe.

Key Insight

Apple simultaneously shows signs of internal dissent against Tahoe's UI choices while closing the doors users found to avoid the upgrade entirely.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 3

  I am delighted to report that that's fixed in MacOS 26.4.

• 6

  I take it as a sign that there's a contingent within Apple (or least within the Safari team) that dislikes these menu item icons enough to notice that Safari wasn't previously recognizing this preference setting.

• 5

  I further take it as a sign that within Apple's engineering ranks, the existence of this defaults setting is widely known.

• 4

  Keep hope alive.

• 3

  The 90-day 'deferral' period to block the Tahoe update prompts was supposed to be from the date the Tahoe major release (26.0) was released, not from the most recent minor release.

• 7

  I'd rather risk inadvertently installing a public beta of 15.8 Sequoia than inadvertently 'upgrading' to Tahoe.

Tone

opinionated