If it were implemented as intended, it would just be very ugly, slower, and a waste of battery life. But a lot of it is really just broken. In the past hour, I saw a number of funny glitches. The funny glitches are better than the glitches where things crash or hang.
On MacOS, it even requires running terminal commands at startup to fix performance regressions.
This is hitting people who aren't tech-savvy particularly hard, and it makes my position as a security advocate ("always update your devices!") hard to maintain. For most people, not updating their devices means they have more reliability and consistency in their devices, because of things like this.
The one good thing with iOS 26 is that Apple reverted their destructive redesign of the iOS 18 Photos app. Maybe they can be hurt enough to revert the destructive redesigns throughout iOS 26.
I hope to some day read a book describing what's been happening at Apple these past few years. It's safe to assume not a single person at Apple thought this was ready to release, and yet it did. This has to be the result of some serious dysfunction as-of-yet not known to the public.
This is hitting people who aren't tech-savvy particularly hard
I don't really see it among family and friends. My parents who are not very technical mostly went shrug, it looks a bit different and went on with their lives. The only family member who said anything about it was our daughter, who likes it a lot.
Agree that Photos is much-improved.
Personally I am not really a fan of liquid glass. On the Mac, I don't notice it much. On the iPhone I find it more noticeable, the primary thing I'm annoyed by is the overlay with video play controls (macOS too). I would rather have seen them invest time into fixing existing issues than a redesign (e.g. why can I not configure Headphone Accommodations on the Mac for AirPods Max, but I can on the iPhone).
Just from my anecdata, I know someone whose dad stopped responding to voicemails since he was confused by the new app, and another person whose parents both using iPhone SEs (2020 / 2022 version) who also really don't like it. (They upgraded because I'm always talking about software updates- feels bad.)
On MacOS, it even requires running terminal commands at startup to fix performance regressions.
This is hitting people who aren't tech-savvy particularly hard, and it makes my position as a security advocate ("always update your devices!") hard to maintain. For most people, not updating their devices means they have more reliability and consistency in their devices, because of things like this.
The one good thing with iOS 26 is that Apple reverted their destructive redesign of the iOS 18 Photos app. Maybe they can be hurt enough to revert the destructive redesigns throughout iOS 26.
I hope to some day read a book describing what's been happening at Apple these past few years. It's safe to assume not a single person at Apple thought this was ready to release, and yet it did. This has to be the result of some serious dysfunction as-of-yet not known to the public.