7 macOS 27 Golden Gate features I love (non-AI)
▼ Summary
– Apple Intelligence and Siri AI dominated this year’s WWDC, but the conference also focused on new parental controls and platform improvements.
– The author is testing the first beta of macOS 27 Golden Gate on an M1 MacBook Air, the oldest supported hardware without Intel compatibility.
– Platform improvements include fit-and-finish changes to boost responsiveness and address common user complaints.
– A key UI change in macOS Golden Gate is a slider in Appearance settings for fine-grained control over Liquid Glass opacity, replacing the previous binary toggle.
– The article notes that these are early beta screenshots, and later betas will more closely resemble the final OS version released in the fall.
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference this year has been dominated by talk of Apple Intelligence and Siri AI, and for good reason. The delays surrounding the AI-powered Siri have become the central question on everyone’s lips when an Apple executive steps to the mic. But behind that headline-grabbing narrative lies a broader story. Apple actually outlined three major focus areas during its keynote this week. The first is AI. The second is a long-overdue overhaul of parental controls, which looks promising to this parent of a six-year-old whose iPad I only reluctantly connect to the internet. The third is what Apple calls “platform improvements,” a broad category of fit-and-finish changes aimed at boosting system responsiveness and finally addressing a stack of common user complaints.
I’ve been running the first beta of macOS 27 Golden Gate on an M1 MacBook Air, which is now the oldest and slowest hardware Apple supports after dropping Intel compatibility. Drawing from Apple’s densely packed wall-of-features slide, here are a few non-AI highlights from the platform improvements column that I’m most excited about, plus one thing I still wish they’d add. Keep in mind these are early beta screenshots, and things will continue to shift as Apple releases more updates. Later betas, especially those after the public beta in July, will more closely resemble the final OS we see in the fall.
Liquid Glass and other UI changes
Apple isn’t backing away from Liquid Glass in macOS Golden Gate, but it is dialing back the effect in several places and returning to a more Big Sur-inspired design in a few critical spots. The most notable change is a new slider in the Appearance settings that gives users fine-grained control over Liquid Glass opacity. This replaces the binary “Clear/Tinted” toggle that arrived in the macOS 26.1 release. Better still, this slider is now part of the macOS setup flow, so users can choose their preferred look the moment they upgrade their operating system or unbox a new Mac.
(Source: Ars Technica)
