A Requiem That Never Lands.
They say macOS is dead. Again.
Dmitry Yarygin
The headlines roll in like cold rain on cracked pavement: another “objective” postmortem penned by someone whose workflow hiccuped after a system update. Settings got shuffled. A shell script threw an error. The Dock looked funny. Version 1 of the update is unstable. And just like that, the obituaries start printing.
But I’ve seen this movie before. Hell, I’ve lived it.
They said Apple was dying in ’85 when Lisa flopped. Repeated it in ’97 when Jobs returned to a company bleeding cash. They said it when Mac OS X dropped Aqua like a neon fever dream. And again, when the M1 chip rewrote the rules. Every time Apple evolves, someone grabs a typewriter and starts carving epitaphs.
Here’s the truth, no trench coat required: macOS isn’t dying. It’s adapting. And adaptation is messy.
Yes, things move. Sometimes, it's like a three-legged monster with one eye. Tahoe (v26.x) has its issues; v01 always does. Eventually, the wrinkles get ironed out. Chaos settles into stability. Some power users feel like they’re navigating a haunted house with the lights off. But under the hood? You’ve got a Unix-based OS running on silicon that leaves Intel in the dust. You’ve got sandboxed apps, SIP, and a secure enclave that makes most desktop platforms look like open windows in a storm. You’ve got Shortcuts, SwiftUI, and a Terminal that still hums like a jazz saxophone in a back alley. To name a few.
You want to talk about death? Death is stagnation. Death is refusing to change because someone liked how things looked in 2012. Death is clinging to old stuff, because that’s where you feel safe. That’s like holding onto a lost lover, ignoring the fact that the world moved on.
MacOS isn’t perfect. It’s opinionated. Sometimes it hides things you wish were exposed. Sometimes it exposes things you wish were buried. But it’s alive. And it remains one of the most secure, stable, and forward-looking public, commercial operating systems available.
And it’s not like we don’t have choices. I feel at home with MacOS. It’s a cover that keeps me warm on cold nights. It works predictably, with a logic that doesn’t get in my way. It might not be your POV, but that’s OK.
So next time someone hands you an eulogy for MacOS, check the timestamp. Odds are, it’s just another ghost story from someone who couldn’t find the new Bluetooth menu.