Hi everyone,
I'm using a 2020 MacBook Pro, the last Intel model before Apple switched to Apple Silicon, and I'm wondering if anyone else is seeing the same thing—or if these bugs from hell are still showing up on newer Macs as well.
At this point I'm frustrated enough that I'm seriously considering going back to Windows, which is something I never thought I'd say.
Up until recently, the infamous Safari "Not Responding" issue only happened occasionally for me, mostly on ChatGPT when conversations became very long. Annoying, but manageable.
The real problem is that somewhere in the last few VS Code releases, the editor has become almost completely unusable when working with moderately large files. Small files are fine, but once a file reaches a certain size, things fall apart.
The issue is so severe that simply editing a single character can completely break VoiceOver responsiveness.
Honestly, that's unacceptable. If a code editor can't reliably work with a screen reader, that's a pretty compelling reason to walk away from the platform altogether.
So I'm curious:
Has anyone else noticed VoiceOver behaving strangely lately around large amounts of text, whether in web pages or web-based applications? Or is this more likely to be my aging Intel hardware finally waving the white flag?
That brings me to another point.
My five-year-old, €3000 MacBook Pro has gradually evolved into something between a workstation and an annoying roommate. Meanwhile, my ugly plastic HP laptop from 2014, running JAWS, happily handles VS Code, ChatGPT, and pretty much anything I throw at it. It wheezes a little, complains about its aging knees, and then just gets on with the job.
The contrast is becoming harder and harder to ignore.
I'm genuinely angry at Apple right now, and what annoys me even more is the feeling that Apple doesn't really care. It's starting to resemble one of those toxic love-hate relationships where you keep hoping things will improve because you remember how good things used to be.
So what are people doing these days?
Are you buying another €3000 Mac and hoping for the best?
Are some of you looking at Windows again? Maybe even considering the new NVIDIA Spark systems?
And for those of you testing the latest macOS betas: how is VoiceOver behaving? Has responsiveness improved? Are these large-text issues getting better, worse, or simply being ignored?
Unfortunately I can't test the betas myself, so I'd really appreciate hearing your experiences and overall impressions.
Right now I'm trying to figure out whether my next computer should be another Mac—or whether it's finally time to accept that the platform I've loved for years is no longer the best option for me.
Thanks for reading my rant.
By DPC, 21 June, 2026
Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Comments
Honestly, go full on windows
I still keep my m2pro mac around for my own reasons, mainly cause it's depreciated fast and it's a decent backup computer with virtually full day battery life.
Beyond the fact that my college cs degree is full windows because of .net (the new dotnet core fortunately)but with winform and mssql server and localdb, the mac accessibility experience is nothing short of abysmal, whether you are on intel or apple silicon. And I have heard the same thing from most blind devs in the workplace that I know, mac is a necessary pain only if you are doing apple platform development, beyond that it's simply not worth the constant stress and hopeless fighting with feedback in the void.
And no, in the 3 years I have not found it enough to recommend to other people and in fact I am actively discouraging blind people of getting one even in music, classical music with sheets,, musescore, relying heavily on braille, etc.
Some people will tell you otherwise but they are either not using anything meaningful to see themselves the cracks of voiceover, and / or don't know how good software is supposed to be, especially in the AT space, beyond the functionality and design difference of interacting, ect, which have always been a non issue for me, but just how the accessibility infrastructure is so broken on a fundamental level... and so on. You can read my big history of comments here to understand my position and opinion better.
This is my honest advice, from somebody who lives 30% in terminal for personal dev stuff.
The decision is yours at the end of the day though.
As for the betas, I installed GG for 5 days, realised that nothing meaningful has changed, and thanks to time machine I'm back on tahoe and will only bother updating (if ever) if I have a legitimate reason to do so.
I am no longer doing unpaid lost labor for apple.
The experience has taught me a lot, like how fighting for real usable accessibility is an ongoing battle and that no blind individuals should ever take it for granted as apple has taught me so well, one platform very polished compared to the neglected decade of the other...
And man if you have intel, just save some money and get windows on bootcamp! Battery life issue is factually easy to solve. (I know nothing about it but gemini told me that my recommendation is terrible due to thermal throtteling issues? but anyways)
I have not tested VSCode on mac with large files because, well, I am just a junior student :) so can't reproduce.
Suggestion
Have you contacted VS Code's developers or Apple? I know doing so is sometimes just yelling into the abiss though...
As for me I'm not a developer, but I know how frustrating accessibility issues can be. You could try on a more powerful Mac, or maybe there's a Visual Studio Code plug-in out there to remedy the issue. VS Code is open-source, so hopefully someone else has done the work to fix it already.
NVDA
If you do go the Windows route, I would highly encourage you to use the NVDA screen reader. There is a nice VS add-on which makes life much easier for developers.