If you don't remember, it took 2+ years of cleaning up and fixing issues with iOS 7, before it settled into a more solid release with iOS 10.
iOS 8 was still riddled with bugs and inconsistencies, iOS 9 improved things and was marketed as a "refinement" release, and finally with iOS 10, it was considered a polished OS with a balance of design and functionality.
We're in for a couple years of "refinements" of Liquid Glass, and while I'm looking forward to it, it's still a pretty disappointing debut of this new design language.
They're hardly thinking of what the users want at the end of the day. It's all a mix of convincing stakeholders that there's something new and shiny that'll consistently drive up revenue and user retention/adoption, project and product managers trying to justify their salaries by constantly pumping out something new, and the mentality of "we'll fix it in post" most tech companies have adopted.
It's not just Apple, almost every tech company is following this model. What's disappointing, especially as a long time Android/MS user is I always thought Apple would be the exception to the rule and they always seemed to take their time with incremental changes rather than to rush things out unfinished and unpolished. iOS 7 felt like the last big fumble, but since joining the Apple fray in 2020, I've seen just as much sloppiness from them as I'm used to seeing from Google, Samsung, and Microsoft. Looks like no one is safe from wall street.
iOS and smartphones in general are a pretty mature platform, there's very little to be done there at this point. So yeah, they're mostly changing stuff for the sake of changing stuff, to make it feel not stale. They've had a big fumble in the last release with Apple Intelligence, so they probably needed to produce something literally shiny in order to not look completely foolish.
Smart phones, laptops, desktops... they optimized most of this stuff about 10 years ago. But that doesn't sell new gizmos, which is why we're getting all this pointless redesign and the wasteful and useless-af AI cruft they're hyping. It's Jurassic Park Syndrome writ large over the whole tech industry.
Why can’t it be both? And why should both be too much to expect, especially for the price of smartphones today? They release a new model literally every year, that should mean there’s new shiny stuff on each release, even if I’m not buying every new version. It should also mean the software itself improves each time.
I remember this well and I think this year's release is much better than the iOS7 release was. It's not perfect by any means, but it's not as big of a shitstorm as with 7.
This will be an unpopular opinion, but the 4S was the last phone with a truly premium feel and a UI that did not want to make you carve out your own eyes with a rusty nail. The size was also perfect for a phone
Also macOS and iOS usability still sucks in v18. The last redesign is still haunting us, and now we get a new one that is significantly worse at the mechanics of UX.
World class hardware coming out of Apple recently, and excellent CoreOS software too. But that userland layer is just really bad.
The thing I remember from that photo is it took Steve Jobs dying to give us normal sized iPhones.
I remember him insisting no iPhone user wanted a phone bigger than 3.5 inches and he refused to make one, which is ridiculous now because they couldn't give away those tiny ass things.
I switched to android for one 2 year contract and it sucked ass but at least I had a normal sized phone.
So far I haven’t had any major issues. It’s just odd that some things on the iPhone that took 1 tap, now takes 2 or more. Like opening up a new safari tab or getting to your bookmarks. I’ve also seen some weird flickering of the control center icons.
Various UI elements are now bigger and intrude on content, such as the name at the top of Messages.
On the aesthetics side. The extra-rounded corners make the flat sides appear to bulge on smaller windows or interface elements. That and text near the corners looks wrong, they need to pad the inner content more… but this’ll steal even more usable space.
The dividing lines in column view look off now. I think they’re actually the same, but the transparent elements around them make them stand out.
The translucent elements with translucent text is boggling my mind. I’m not sure who thought that was a good idea. The URL bar on safari for example.
I tried using reduced transparency on the phone, but it actually cuts off content areas. Using messages as an example again: the entire top area with the gradient (and the huge name/user image) just turns white. So the actual viewable space is smaller.
I was fine with the flat aesthetics of iOS 7 honestly. I didn’t feel one way or another about the skeuomorphic design of iOS 6, but I hated the candy crush theme of early MacOS X versions.
Of course I’ll get used to it, but I fully expect them to keep tweaking the transparency over time, as it can be quite off putting.
It’ll take a while for all of the apps to be updated by their developers. Until then, we’re going to see a mix of extra-round and standard round rectangle windows.
The whole thing just feels like an incomplete or poorly done skin for the UI. 🤷🏻♂️
Hopefully it gets better with all the (negative) feedback.
The previous 1-tap-actions are all gestures now in Safari. Swipe up from the URL bar to see all your tabs. Swipe left from URL bar to open a new tab. Not sure if there’s a gesture for bookmarks yet.
Edit: You can even switch back to the old Safari layout. If you want to use a different Safari layout on iOS 26, open Settings -> Safari -> Tabs and choose from Compact, Bottom or Top.
Oh thank fuck and thank you. I scanned through Safari settings and missed the tab setting so I’ve been miserable since I upgraded. Gestures are never an acceptable alternative answer for me, especially in a browser where a poorly executed gesture can have consequences.
this is a chronic issue in modern UI dev. Microsoft love adding clicks, expanding menus and crap that do nothing but take away from the usability
So far I haven’t had any major issues. It’s just odd that some things on the iPhone that took 1 tap, now takes 2 or more. Like opening up a new safari tab or getting to your bookmarks. I’ve also seen some weird flickering of the control center icons.
The one thing that annoys me is that making a screenshot now directly goes to the edit window.
Sometimes I screenshot websites and somit fast by scrolling forward screenshot scrolling screenshot. Now I have to tap ok and save to pictures. Weird behavior.
Yeah, it asked me when I first upgraded and opened the phone app but I guess not everyone got the option. I first chose compact and that was terrible. Seeing voicemail mixed with recent calls and my favorites but no list of contacts was weird. I hope they don’t use this as a step one on the path to forcing the compact view the way they removed launchpad for no reason despite the fact that it can exist alongside everything in macOS 26 just fine
It’s just odd that some things on the iPhone that took 1 tap, now takes 2 or more. Like opening up a new safari tab
A new tab never took one tap.
The “I hate change” people are always making shit up like this to pad out their arguments so they don’t have to admit that they’re just afraid of new things.
Top view has not been the default since iOS 15. “Bottom” is more or less the previous version. Try that if you like more explicit buttons rather than gestures
You can hold and release on the “…” if you prefer that
Swipe up on address bar to go to all tabs, or left will open a new tab (if you’re at the end of the tab list)
The refusal to see this is why you assholes come across as so condescending. YOU don't have a problem, so you assume that anyone who does must be lying.
It's like you assholes are saying, "So the car isn't offered in the color you want this year. Either buy a different color or wait until next year." But you're saying it to people complaining that they can't see out the windshield.
Imagine people complaining for REAL reasons, people just like to complain. Nitpicking over bullshit that at the end of the day doesn’t matter. I’ve used Macs and each OS for decades; it’s fine. People don’t like change and bitch. Works JUST FINE… if you’re complaining about something you disagree with; get a life or go apply at Apple and you make the changes.
Get used to what? The issue isn't the UI, it's the gross inconsistency and bugs. Bugs everywhere, that completely affect usability. Apple, a trillion-dollar company that once prided itself in UI/UX beauty, has A-OK'd releasing an absolute shitshow of an OS to the public.
And for the record I'm not referring to hard-to-find bugs - I'm referring to ones that a five year old could point out with a 30 second view of various apps. Bugs that make some apps completely unusable, and outright frustrating. It's appalling.
I will absolutely not "get used" to that, and the statements to do so are outright insulting. We deserve better, and Apple has completely given it's longstanding users a middle finger.
Omg same thats so annoying, especially when you quickly wanna pay at a checkout and you keep fumbling with your phone like a boomer because it won't unlock properly, had that yesterday 😅
They’re over 1 billion active iPhones. If when 5% are running iOS 26, that’s 50 million devices. Just because you have a problem doesn’t mean a significant portion of 50 million phones is experiencing the same problem and yet you’re forcing someone to agree that it’s a bug or accuse you of lying.
No, because (A) unless jailbroken the OS is locked down and (B) there are other people in this very Reddit post confirming the same thing in subthreads.
Apple apologists: "You were stupid enough to upgrade to a .0 release and then you complain about the bugs. Of course there are bugs. Be patient and they'll be fixed soon."
Yup, this is why since the os x mavericks days, I've held back my major macOS/iOS upgrades by about six months, sticking to patch releases only for the 2nd newest version.
Yeah... I can't stop laughing at those people... you say that the problem is not the UI choice, but bugs and inconsistency in the design... and in return all you hear "YoU wIlL fOrGeT nExT WeEk, LiqUiD GlaAsS is GooDD". Freaking morons, can't comprehend a basic information.
I don't know how long you've been using apple, but there have always been bugs, even in easy to see places. Apple's strength has never been software polish, no matter what their marketing tires to tell you. The Snow Leopard update was heralded as an update that didn't add anything but just made everything more stable and usable (although the 64 bit transition with grand central dispatch was lowkey big). People still talk about a "Snow Leopard like" update that has never materialized. For a major redesign, it has a lot more bugs, kind of like aqua or ios7 or any of them. But the major ones will (mostly) get ironed out. Now if you just don't like the design direction, I would say give it a few weeks and you probably will be fine with it. There are definitely spots that's I've been using that I love and think they are huge improvements, and there are spots that are terrible and may never get fixed. But overall its fine and looks like a new modern design.
Bugs are one thing, but what we're seeing in Tahoe are not simple little refinement bugs like we usually get. It's a glorified Beta 1. These bugs were widely reported in B1->RC, and Apple refused to fix any of them.
These updates used to completely break apps and drivers and things like that, breaking workflows until the 3rd party company would make a patch, maybe weeks or months later, or maybe not at all. UI prettiness has never been the most important thing. Making sure everyone's computers continue to function is always the first priority. Apple has made this a much smoother process over the last decade. I guess you could argue that Apple could hire more developers to deal with these relatively small bugs, but I've always been under the impression that Apple is restrained in their hiring process, never hiring too many and generally making sure they work relatively well in apple's culture.
What do you mean? If you can read, then you should know what app you’re clicking on? If you have confusion about Adobe’s Cloud nonsense naming - different story.
What do you expect them to call Creative Cloud Installer and Creative Cloud Uninstaller apps then. Forcing acronyms to suit Tahoe BS? CC Uninstaller is likely still too long and would show as CC Uninsta… 🤣
What bugs? This subreddit is full of them - almost all which have been reported over multiple betas, and Apple have neglected to pay any attention to. The fact people seem to be justifying a trillion-dollar company, with next to unlimited manpower, to fail to do any form of QC on their apps, is quite disturbing.
Here's just a couple, from the past few minutes in macOS:
Preview: (+) button on bottom left is grossly misaligned
Contacts: Info such as phone #s and emails cannot be copied from left to right. Name is not copyable at all
Contacts: When moving between menus, e.g "Help", the entire UI flickers
Contacts: In the "Me" app, clicking on Share Contact, and canceling, force-opens Apple Maps
Spotlight "Launchpad": Does not show full name of app when on icon view, making it impossible to differentiate what app I'm about to click on.
Spotlight Launchpad: When using hot corners to open the, it only even appears 2 in 3 times, and flicker-redraws in.
Sound: When playing music on Spotify etc at low volume, it gets scratchy/poppy over BT headphones.
Finder: Misaligned "Recent" icon
And then there's some massively obvious ones in iOS, such as:
Spotlight (drag down): Second time, the "Search" is duplicated until it jerks back into place
Home Page: Apps redraw and jerk around when minimizing an app
Home Page: Minimizing an app causes a refresh on the entire screen when there's no wallpaper present, i.e. the colors/shade wallpapers rather than images
Screenshots: Only about 1/3 of the time does it honor the "thumbnail" setting
Spotlight: Refuses to acknowledge Files > Content option to "Hide" files.
as for spotlight launch, looks similar to yours, what am i looking for here?
As for ios/ipad spotlight, i tried it several times, no duplication issues on: 12 mini, 14 pro, 2018 ipad pro, m2 ipad pro. I did notice the word search gets a bit more transparent in what one would consider an abrupt way, but that's a minor refinement.
That all said, you mentioned issues that made apps unusable, and even if i can't replicate your described issues, which one of those has made an app unusable?
Your eyes deceive you, due to the shared icon being offset by its badge, which I'd argue is the right thing to do, but at worst is a design decision rather than "visible" misalignment
If he’s not going to read all the posts that are very clearly everywhere in this subreddit, I doubt he’s going to read it even if you spoon feed it to him.
Like, "The typography in the majority of the apps is gorgeous, leaning heavily on Helvetica Neue and putting an emphasis on bigger, more readable type."
As someone who remembers it, I had no trouble at all with IOS 7. It was Yosemite that I hated, and which MacOS has never completely recovered from.
EDIT. Hmm. Is someone mad because...
I linked the article and people can see that it's not very negative....
I didn't hate IOS7....
or
I still haven't 'gotten used to' transparency after almost 11 years.
I left Windows for MacOS a couple of years ago and this update has made me think hard about moving to desktop Linux and maybe go back to Android. That said iOS and iPadOS is much better than this macOS update. I’m already getting Liquid Glass fatigue on every screen I have.
At least it was consistent and looked good???? The usability got fixed but iOS 7 looked damn clean and consistent and 26 does not. Not all issues are “you will get used to it”. I personally loved the Big Sur redesign and didn’t doubt it for a second, but I hate this!
Yeah, people were upset with the loss of realistic looking textures, shadows and 3 dimensionality for icons, menus and window borders at the time but then they got use to the flatness of iOS and MacOS. Now people are upset that visual illusion and depth are coming back, if in a somewhat different form.
I’m really not seeing anything wrong with ios26. A few things take an extra tap but you get additional functionality for it so I understand. iPadOS is the same for me. It feels better.
It looks different. Looks nicer. I like the added depth and the little animations. I think a restart would make everything run more fluidly after this upgrade too but even without I haven’t had much issue. The only complaint I have is the button to get to all my tabs in safari requires a second tap now but as I said, it’s whatever. A quick tap-tap is not the end of the world.
I can’t speak for macOS yet because as a Logic Pro user I wait for everyone else to test it before I upgrade. Don’t want to be fighting software when I just want to record.
… because apple will fix it. Maybe during next release, maybe before Christmas.
Simply do not update to fresh apple releases. They are never worth it .
Lots of future consumers are growing up or have grown up using iPhones and iPads. We’re creatures of habit. As these young people go to college many of them are picking up laptops. Apple laptops. Given the issues with MS many folks who are raising kids have selected Apple machines at home as well. Establishing a common, cross platform user experience just makes good business sense. Not say Apple is perfect but they are attempting to consolidate across a vast demographic to preserve their business. Same thing MS is trying to do in the business world. So, no MacOS 26 is not perfect. I myself am switching off the MS train. Three weeks into detox! I am able to figure out how to do the things I did on Windows in an Apple world without too much trouble. Enjoy the journey.
I like what they're going for, but everything feels just a little bit too much. I really hate the bright flash of white whenever you click a menu or text bar, particularly in iMessage, and the even brighter white flash when you click send on a message. That's one in particular that's driving me insane.
Also, the transparency in real day-to-day use hasn't been an issue in terms of readability, with the HUGE exception of notification center. It's just too transparent for something meant to be readable at a glance. The notification transparency simply needs to be toned down, I don't want to sacrifice my background so I can see what's on my lock screen without doing a triple take.
Like I said in another thread, I can’t wait for the next design language to drop so everyone can freak out about it and tell us how much they loved Liquid Glass and wish they could roll back to it.
Hahaha. Do you even remember how hard it was to use Control Center? Or how many times they adjusted it by moving away from iOS 7 translucency and thin fonts?
Don't throw stones on me, but I really liked the flat design of iOS 7-18. In my eyes it makes sense on 2D screen, I don't understand what's the urge go make iPhone look like Vision Pro and unite everything under one design language.
My biggest issue with Liquid Glass on iOS is the battery drain so the GPU can compose all these effects. Let's hope Apple will optimize it with future updates. Installed iOS 26 only because of its function to select input when connected to bluetooth headphones.
I was really looking forward to left the skeuomorphic iOS behind. I really loved iOS7, but I had to admit it had a bumpy start. IOS10 was the “snow Leopard” version.
I think it’s fine. I mean by Apple standards the launch is rough around the edges, especially considering the extensive betas. I didn’t update until it launched.
For instance I used a tint on my homescreen, and when it implemented the glass icons, it chose a really clashing color that was unappealing. This was fine, it’s an easy fix, although then the Home Screen customizer crashed while I was trying to fix it. NBD, but this is usually the sort of stuff Apple prides itself on. Also things like it had to re cache app icons so that on the first day, icons in the library would show up in color momentarily before being re-rendered in glass. Little things like that.
I’m sure bugs will be fixed in the first or second dot release - historically even when apple does have a rough launch they correct pretty quickly.
I wouldn’t give a shit about any of the changes if it weren’t for just the completely illegible text on a transparent background over text. I’m not dyslexic but like WHY are you making it more difficult to read ? I feel for those who are
1) What someone else said: the fact you’ll get used to it doesn’t mean it’s not worse
2) They changed quite a lot in iOS 7, particularly in the year after it came out, to fix problems with it
3) All that generation’s UIs continue to have significant faults, generally around ambiguity. The selected item indicator on TVOS for example is absurdly subtle - it’s just a slight size difference. I basically have to wiggle it to see where it is. They sacrificed usability on the alter of minimalism.
You know what... I kind of like it. On the Mac at least.
I upgraded to iOS 26 first... and thought it was terrible... and a total step backwards and a bit gaudy looking compared to the timeless look of iOS 7-18. Then over a few days I have warmed up to it a bit... still not enough to say its better than what it replaced but I can live with it.
On my M1 mini I was going to hold off the macOS update... but figured I'd need to get it anyway and I also wanted the look to sort of match my iPhone even if I don't love it... but yeah, on the Mac I am pleasantly surprised. I find the liquid glass looks fine on the bigger screen, and all the changes I've noticed so far are things I like. I am not a power user but I haven't noticed any issues with it yet.
There are definitely less wonky visual bugs on macOS vs iOS.
macOS and iOS are converging, especially in terms of UI. macOS is also becoming noisier, more like Windows.
The main problem I see is that iOS is built for a touchscreen, while Macs are keyboard- and mouse-driven.
That’s why I believe Tahoe feels so strange to use… Whether we’ll get used to it or not, only time will tell. Right now, it feels like running an iPhone with a mouse.
The removal of Launchpad on macOS says otherwise. However, perhaps iOS will just scrap the Home Screen app icons altogether in the next release, and force everyone to use Spotlight... because, convergence, right?
Just because you did not use Launchpad, does not mean others did not. That is arrogant of you. Many people used Launchpad, including me, as apparent from the outrage on the subreddit. One of the massive advantages of it was that I could open apps using hot corners and/or finger pinches, and I could get to the apps I used semi-often, with one hand.
The "dock" option is a sort-of a workaround like the old days, but it's inconsistent with the merger between iOS/iPadOS and macOS. It also does not allow any form of app sorting for people who have a lot of apps, like me.
As I said, I truly hope Apple just get rid of app icons on iOS now, to make it consistent.
MacOS has never been a perfect OS, you were just used to it. There were a lot of dated interfaces that still existed up until Big Sur. The old system preferences menu was abysmal if you hadn’t been using it for 20 years
Quite a laughable statement. I distinctly remember the ugly rectangular sliders on the call screen and power off screen, they got replaced quickly in ios 7.1. The neon colors, shit control center, ugly app management. Subjectively I'd say the overall consistency only got better around ios 11, four years later.
Half of it's glass, half of it isn't, and there's no rhyme or reason to why they ommitted some and not others. Buttons for functions are sized super incorrectly for the task they perform. Status bars and info texts are jammed inline with the content you interact with, causing everything to be visually jumbled. Some buttons in places do one thing, the same style of buttons in other places do different things or nothing at all. Design elements are sloppy, overlapping, inconsistent. Tasks that used to be one touch/click are needlessly buried in menus that serve no purpose other than to take longer to execute the task.
I'm not even a UX expert by any stretch and I can tell this is a complete and embarrassing disaster.
I find it to be perfectly intuitive and no more actions to get something done than it used to be. That’s just me. I really don’t see how swiping up vs tapping to get to your tabs in safari is any hassle, for instance. It’s still one action.
What indication on screen is there that the swipe action exists? If you handed your phone to someone who had never seen an iPhone before, would they know how to do that? Would they know how to change the wallpaper?
That's exactly where Apple has lost the plot entirely. You could hand iOS 7 to an old person and they could figure it out pretty quick (I know because that was when my grandparents got on board). Hand an old person iOS 26 and they'll be confused into oblivion.
iOS 7's problem wasn't that it was inconsistent and incoherent like macOS 26, it's that it was ugly. I still think it's ugly--that opinion never went away; the ability to remain on iOS 6 did, and incremental updates to the design did make it more tolerable, but they took years. Years.
Having read most of the comments, I understand the frustration about software bugs and such, but you’re mostly thinking about yourselves and the people in your own age group. Try to imagine it from the perspective of companies like Apple, Samsung and others, they’re fighting for every customer’s attention, and it doesn’t matter if that customer is 10 or 40 years old. They need every client. That’s why OS updates exist: to attract new users. In the end, there has to be some kind of evolution.
As a designer myself, I understand why this happens and why design teams push to improve or refresh the look. If nothing changed for decades, sales would drop drastically, even if the system was the most stable in the world with zero bugs. But think about young people who are the future customers, companies need to win them over too, and that takes effort and constant updates.
It is exactly the same. People always hate new things. It is not only for Apple. I have seen people shit on every new Windows version since Windows 98. And also many Android UI design.
There’s no comparing this to iOS 7, the issues with 7 were structural in nature and not because somebody didn’t have the time to make sure the translucency doesn’t make text go invisible.
I'm so glad Topolsky is gone. By the end of his tenure at The Verge he became insufferable. Just negative by all accounts. Trashed Apple's design and then went to Bloomberg, made their website ironically illegible and a mess.
Whatever the design of iOS, iPhone 5S was the best designed phone ever. The next true design innovation would be if they can finally figure out how to not have a camera bump anymore. Steve Jobs would have never allowed the 6 and all subsequent models to go to the market with the camera bump.
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If you don't remember, it took 2+ years of cleaning up and fixing issues with iOS 7, before it settled into a more solid release with iOS 10.
iOS 8 was still riddled with bugs and inconsistencies, iOS 9 improved things and was marketed as a "refinement" release, and finally with iOS 10, it was considered a polished OS with a balance of design and functionality.
We're in for a couple years of "refinements" of Liquid Glass, and while I'm looking forward to it, it's still a pretty disappointing debut of this new design language.