At WWDC, Apple announced its new Liquid Glass design language, which is coming to all of its devices, including Macs. I’ve been tinkering with the macOS Tahoe 26 developer beta on the M4 MacBook Air for about a day. So far, the aesthetic changes range from slick to slightly overwrought, but the new Spotlight search features are nifty and useful.
There are new touches of glassy transparency all over macOS 26, including the Dock, Finder, widgets, and built-in apps. It’s more subtle than on the iPhone, mostly because the Mac’s much larger screen real estate makes the Liquid Glass elements more like accents than whatever this mess is supposed to be. I’m not very fond of it just yet, but maybe it will grow on me, like UI changes tend to.
The Dock now has a frosted background that’s more translucent than Sequoia’s flatter design. The hazy, frozen glass aesthetic also extends to widgets, like the calendar and weather, and drop-down menus — though the latter have much higher opacity. The pop-ups for volume and brightness now use this distorted glass look as well, though they’ve moved to the top-right corner of the screen instead of being centered above the dock. Frankly, they’re ugly, and I find their new elongated horizontal look strange and out of place.
Surprisingly, the Menu Bar at the top of the screen is now invisible, so it no longer masks the screen’s notch cutout with a dark gray bar. At first I found this slightly jarring, but I adjusted to it quickly, just as I did the first time I saw a notched MacBook. It became mostly innocuous with even a bright wallpaper showing its borders. (If you really hate it you can enable “Reduce transparency” in the accessibility menu, bringing back the filled-in Menu Bar and killing pretty much all of Tahoe’s other transparent effects.) The one cool thing the invisible Menu Bar enables is a new animation: when you three-finger swipe up for Mission Control, a glass pane descends from the top and distorts the view of the wallpaper underneath. It’s a kitschy flourish, but it’s one of the few effects in Tahoe that tickles me.
1/3
Widgets now live on the desktop instead of requiring a swipe-over of the Notification Center, allowing you to populate your desktop with lots of glanceable info like an iPad home screen if you choose. Open a Finder window and you see more of Tahoe’s rounded design, with the sidebar now looking like its own tall, oval-ish nested window. Dark mode and light mode show some differences here, with light mode flattening the Finder windows quite a bit more than its darker version, which looks more glassy to me.
The theme controls that launched with iOS 18 are now in macOS. Opening the Appearance menu lets you change Tahoe’s overall looks (light, dark, and auto), highlight colors, and icon and widget styles. The right (or wrong) combination of these settings can dramatically change macOS’s looks, from minimalist to garish.
1/5
More exciting for power users are the changes to Spotlight that make it much easier to operate your Mac by keyboard alone. Spotlight search now gives you shortcuts to finding files, launching apps, performing actions, and accessing clipboard history. Pressing Command and Space calls up Spotlight as it always has, but now if you hover over the search bar with the mouse you’re shown four icons for those new functions, with each offering a handy keyboard shortcut.
Now this is spotlighting: by pressing Command and either number 1, 2, 3, or 4 keys you can get quick access to Apps, Files, Shortcuts, and Clipboard. Then, you can type out whatever you’re searching for or trying to do. The Apps drawer can act as a mini categorized launcher. Files puts suggestions and recents at the top. Shortcuts allows you to type out functions you’d like your Mac to do via compatible apps. Clipboard is a reverse chronological history of the most recent stuff you copied.
I really like the ability to set custom quick key commands. For example, I set “M” to be the quick key for a message, and “TM” to set a timer. Each of those actions requires typing out some part of the prompt, like the number of minutes in your timer or the contents of a message and the recipient. But if you like to use lots of hotkeys and navigating around an app with the Tab and Alt keys you’re likely to feel right at home.
Several readers were quick to comment that this is Apple “sherlocking” Raycast. Raycast is a much more customizable and expansive Spotlight alternative. It can do math and unit conversions, set timers, has its own appendable clipboard history, and a bunch more, and it also supports third-party extensions. While the changes in macOS Tahoe let Spotlight encroach on some of the things Raycast can do, it’s not quite as expansive. At least, not yet. Raycast is a power-user tool, and it could take Apple some time and a lot more development to win over those users.
I’ve been using the first Tahoe developer beta for about a day. There will be plenty more to learn about macOS Tahoe as developers continue using it in its current beta form and Apple delivers more updates. The public beta isn’t coming until sometime next month, and it’s possible that Apple will push out some sizable changes and UI tweaks even before then.
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#MacOS #Tahoe #handson #Spotlight #Liquid #Glass
![Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Apple-John-Ternus-Tim-Cook_Full-Bleed-Image.jpg.xlarge_2x.jpg?w=680 "Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook")
![Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Apple-John-Ternus-Tim-Cook_Full-Bleed-Image.jpg.xlarge_2x.jpg?w=680&ssl=1 "Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook")
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