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I absolutely loathe iOS 26
- Thread starter profmjh
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But boring is fine for a UI, which is just an interface. Do people sit in their car, stare at the dashboard, and ponder changing their car because they're bored of the same old knobs and dials? Nope, they just drive the thing. If they want extras, they add them.
There's a distinction we should keep in mind between the UI and the functions iOS provides. Functions are going to come and go, depending on technological advances and changes. But in the interface is just an entry point to those. The interface itself should evolve with each iteration into something better, as series of small steps – which are easily reversible. But that's not what has happened here.
Yup not even going to sniff this until 26.1. Sticking with 18 for now.
You're gonna be in for a shock whenever you upgrade; might as well get it over and done with 😁
I was having the same issue where I couldn’t stretch down the clock size. Even with setting the default apple font. Today I tried it again by putting it into customize mode and then tapped on the screen and suddenly the tab to pull down showed up….really strange out of no where
and now I have an oversized clock on my lock screen 
lol
You know what, I could believe that this is the effect of some kind of monkey's paw. Question becomes who wasted a wish on making iOS interesting?
It doesn’t to me. I like this update.
People wanted options. They got them. This comment is a perfect example of notmplease 100% of the people all the time.
I just use the mail application and didn’t analyze the buttons. I figured out what to do in the blink of an eye.
I don’t find that.
Some people ask for changes and some just expect them to happen with each new iteration of iOS.
Proof or conjecture?
No it hasn’t. But ymmv.
And we need to stop shaming the masochists for their neurodiversity!
It's hilarious how off this thing is.
Smart to make the clock barely readable. Kudos
Smart to make the clock barely readable. Kudos
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I agree with you. But have you read all the complaining online on how the GUI was "stale" and Apple was not "innovating"?
By now, it's a glass rectangle with buttons. How much change do you want?
The 20th anniversary of the iPhone is coming up. This new design language maybe part of the anniversary edition. Love or not, it’s here to stay for a few years.
Yea, its lots of complaining going on, both that they don't innovate and sometimes seem to innovate, but not in the direction that people want. I'm a bit oldschool and like a clean GUI. And a clean GUI generally means that its fast cuz you don't need that much GPU power to run animations or glossy animations...
BUT.....I have to say after using iOS26 on a few devices that it isn't as bad as I thought. Sure the old man in me want it to be as clean as iOS 18. But I can live with this and as I see it I don't have much of an option.
It does seem to run fine on older devices too so Apple has done a good job.
And on the topic innovation. If people scratched a bit more on the surface rather than moaning, read about all the news the OS has and compare to other versions, most would agree that there is loads of innovation going on.
I mean, iOS 7 looking pretty tempting right now
Yep... they stole Call Screening from the Pixel (but it's not as good). And they stole Circle to Search from the Pixel (but it's not as good). And.... ummm... they brought back a missing button in Photos? Bursting with innovation!
Agree, I immediately downgraded back to iOS 18. Liquid glass is objectively ugly and tacky.
The “Who took ideas from who” is a meme at this point.
Love it! It's pretty amusing to me how intolerant people are. It's just a GUI - and there's so much more to iOS 26 past the visuals..
Oh well, there are obviously many people who really don't like it. With that in mind, it would be great if Apple offered two or three distinctive visual styles to choose from. I'd love a minimalist option, simple and super fast. But I've enjoyed Liquid Glass just fine; it works and has some entertainment value.
Oh well, there are obviously many people who really don't like it. With that in mind, it would be great if Apple offered two or three distinctive visual styles to choose from. I'd love a minimalist option, simple and super fast. But I've enjoyed Liquid Glass just fine; it works and has some entertainment value.
That's the whole enchilada on a device like this.
Intolerant? Just a GUI?
The User Interface is the mechanism in how we the users interact with the device. If the gui is hard to read, hard to navigate, lacking in ways that makes the user struggle to do tasks that were otherwise easy or simple in the prior version, that's not intolerant. That's poor design.
Back during the pre-osx times, there was something called the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). Clearly Apple forgot about that, as having monochromatic transparent icons is harder to use then opaque colored ones.
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.” — Steve Jobs 1997
Do you think this is a good customer experience?
I appreciate all the different opinions on the GUI. However, I find I am speaking to my devices more often -- to give instructions and ask questions, so I am interested in voice recognition and voice control of the OS and apps. I find dictation and voice recognition seems to work pretty well in MacOS but not so great in iOS. How is this functionality in the new system?
Only explanation I can think of without reading pages of text is: this implementation of the design language is going to be one of many unifying strokes for an OS that is going to be geared more toward Augmented Reality, than on-screen. I'd want to see through the icons if I was wearing this and trying to navigate the real world. This, isn't that device, so it feels like a real 'miss'.
That said, I disliked it on my phone and find the usability to be greatly reduced. I rolled back to 18.7.
Unifying an OS to the point where it's inappropriate for some of the devices using it is ... totally insane.
(not saying you made that call... referring to Apple here)
Honestly, at the point of having monochromatic transparent icons, they might as well just give me a text list like the Minimal Phone & Light Phone. It would be more usable and a better use of space.
Captured these today.
Unapologetically stunning.
Unapologetically stunning.