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I absolutely loathe iOS 26

maflynn said:
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?
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I loved the HIG, what a great start to a solid design/engineer company

Yah, mine is just fine. I think it's great you're upset and want better changes ahead! Whatever drives better roadmaps is something I can get on board with

I really just don't have much of an issue with it, and no - I don't use translucent icons. I fatten them up and get rid of app names, and it's quite viewable and usable

It there room for improvements? Are some of those obvious? Yep, I'd say so.. but it's not a big deal. I love great design, and can imagine better ways to do things.. but this works just fine, and it's nice to have a change
 
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I7guy said:
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.
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My thought exactly. 26 is uneven and flawed, but it might be the only path to having an OS that matches the “all glass” Twentieth Anniversary iPhone.
 
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Maybe not a hot take but ... out of the recent handful iOS upgrades this one seems to me to be the least buggy that I can remember, lol. (Not a compliment - usually very buggy).
 
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bevsb2 said:
I just downloaded it to my iPad and can't see anything that bothers me yet.
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I like iPad OS 26 so far. Being able to have multiple windows open and resizing windows etc. More like Mac OS. It is like Apple is trying to merge iOS and Mac OS. I haven't had any issues but I think that I installed iPad OS 26 a couple of days ago.
 
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klasma said:
The problem with Reduce Transparency in iOS 26 is that it also reduces contrast (even with Increase Contrast activated). Instead of black or dark gray text/symbols on white-ish background you get them on a grayish background. So while Reduce Transparency makes for a uniform background instead of color blotches, it can still decrease legibility instead of increasing it.
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Yep
I ended up disabling reduce transparency , it's even worse lol
 
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Pooneil said:
I like iPad OS 26 so far. Being able to have multiple windows open and resizing windows etc. More like Mac OS. It is like Apple is trying to merge iOS and Mac OS. I haven't had any issues but I think that I installed iPad OS 26 a couple of days ago.
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No thank you on "iPad more like a Mac".

I like my iPads to be very distinctly iPads.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
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.

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This has been my lock screen and only home screen for several months.

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On another note, Has anyone with an iPhone on iOS 26 had problems with the phone syncing with their car or Apple CarPlay. I have a 2025 Toyota that uses a Toyota app to tell me if the doors are locked, tire pressure, and that sort of thing. Have there been any reports of problems syncing with your car or using Apple Car Play? I have a new iPhone 17 coming in about two weeks. My current phone is still on iOS 18.7 but I will have to install iOS 26 when the new phone arrives.
 
Pooneil said:
On another note, Has anyone with an iPhone on iOS 26 had problems with the phone syncing with their car or Apple CarPlay. I have a 2025 Toyota that uses a Toyota app to tell me if the doors are locked, tire pressure, and that sort of thing. Have there been any reports of problems syncing with your car or using Apple Car Play? I have a new iPhone 17 coming in about two weeks. My current phone is still on iOS 18.7 but I will have to install iOS 26 when the new phone arrives.
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I haven't had any issues with the VW app on iOS 26 but I have had lots of issues with the car play mapping in the vehicle itself. Countless occasions where I enter an address I'd like to go to and I get a message that the server isn't responding. Way more issues than iOS 18 ever had.

The fun of iOS 26 has worn off over the past couple months of playing with it. Apple needs to let people choose if they want glass or the regular.
 
DR3MCLAREN said:
I haven't had any issues with the VW app on iOS 26 but I have had lots of issues with the car play mapping in the vehicle itself. Countless occasions where I enter an address I'd like to go to and I get a message that the server isn't responding. Way more issues than iOS 18 ever had.

The fun of iOS 26 has worn off over the past couple months of playing with it. Apple needs to let people choose if they want glass or the regular.
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Thank you for the feedback. Does Apple Music work okay?? I assume that you are talking about Apple Maps that gives you the server error message?
 
Pooneil said:
Thank you for the feedback. Does Apple Music work okay?? I assume that you are talking about Apple Maps that gives you the server error message?
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Yep, Apple Maps. Music works fine but honestly I don't use it much. 99% of the time I'm using Pocket Casts which works fine also.
 
I think everyone who has upgraded to 26 has seen how things start to overlap and become unreadable at the top of the screen. I took these screenshots in this very thread. It looks even worse in real life due to the Dynamic Island also playing a part in completely blocking out content.

I also don’t care for the omnipresent Search Bar and other buttons at the bottom hovering over content. I prefer the way Notes and other apps in 18 did things where there was a distinct separation of content and controls/search.

I’m hopeful Apple refines iOS over the coming months/years.

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orsev said:
I think it's likely you could load 18.7 onto it? I don't know, but it's worth a shot. I just put 26 on my 15PM and it's not that bad. I'll let the 16 update overnight.
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Why would iOS 18 support Center stage front camera?
 
@matzoek I don’t know if it would, all I was saying was it was worth a try.. Worst case finder wont sign the firmware and you have to use 26! I’m getting on with it fine so have no need to test when the new phone turns up :)
 
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Yeah, I’ve tried it and rolled back immediately. It sucks. It’s horrible it terms of design and horrible in terms of quality at the same time.

There was absolutely no good reason for this update, apart from Apple pretending they are doing “innovation” every single year
 
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Some of my ongoing irritants include the fuzzy app icons; all my frequent use apple icons live on the first page, and it is like I have a vision issue?!

The translucent clock on my wall paper is much harder to read as it so desperately tries to vary the shading; just let me have a solid color, please.

And, contact cards for people having small white font and app icons on solid backgrounds, like soft yellow, pink, peach, light blue, ... - which is a color it picks up from the custom memoji's backgrounds. I have to squint each time to see what is what .... Who thought that was a great idea, on anything but solid black or maybe some very deep colors?
 
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My biggest issue with ios 26 is those crappy shimmering edges on folders, the really bad aliasing all over the place and the general bugginess of it. I loved IOS when it changed to IOS 7 and was later gradually refined.

Hopefully IOS26 will become less hot garbage in a couple of releases. But the amount of UI bugs littered all over the place is poor going, it truly feels like a beta or test.
 
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boxrick said:
My biggest issue with ios 26 is those crappy shimmering edges on folders, the really bad aliasing all over the place and the general bugginess of it. I loved IOS when it changed to IOS 7 and was later gradually refined.

Hopefully IOS26 will become less hot garbage in a couple of releases. But the amount of UI bugs littered all over the place is poor going, it truly feels like a beta or test.
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The aliasing on MacOS is even worse if you can believe it. It's 2025, these screens have insanely high resolution, I'm not sure what the excuse is. Performance savings?
 
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