Again, I think what people see as "getting rid of desktop design patterns" in macOS is mostly aesthetic. Mac apps remain Mac apps, they retain all the aspects of their interfaces that make them Mac apps.
More evidence in the way iPadOS 26 adopts certain aspects of the macOS interface, but does them in an iPadOS-oriented way that you wouldn't really say the two OS are converging, more that they're doing really weird impressions of each other — but underneath the grease paint, the same actors as always remain, each with their strengths.
(In saying that, System Settings is an abomination)
Have you seen the settings in the new Xcode? This iPad-ass crap keeps infesting various apps.
Overall, the current Apple seems to be very scared to lay things out in two dimensions. Every new UI they build and almost every old UI they redesign is just a sad vertical stack of stuff.
The combined title bars and toolbars that were introduced in Big Sur are not an aesthetic change. It's a very visible downgrade. Tahoe further downgrades that by removing the bottom border of that top bar.
> such as Launch Pad (which emulates the iPadOS home screen) being replaced by a more generic list of apps using the same interface as Spotlight
That is a welcome change. But that's about the only one. They also made the alerts denser, reverting part of the Big Sur redesign, but, again, because they are so afraid of horizontal layout, the icon is just awkwardly above the text instead of to the left.
We have until 2030!
That said, if macOS continues to receive such shoddy treatment from its design team, I may not be using macOS by then to even care if it's going out the door. I may already be gone.
