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I don’t use beta on my iPhone but I do install beta on IPad Pro which is my test bed. I am planning to install it this weekend and see how it goes. Report on how it was with your Mac OS 26
Unfortunately macOS 26 will have to wait until late August, I have to many urgent deadlines to risk running a beta OS on my Mac.

I look forward to hearing how it goes on your iPad.
 
and so it begins.
rest assured that when that flat design came out, people were saying the same thing about the previous design.
The grass will always be greener, no matter what.
seven years from now you’ll be saying “I miss liquid glass, can we go back?”
See I don't remember this at all.

Windows Phone 7 was smooth as butter on its initial release. 8 was a brilliant follow-up. It made everything else look hideously dated.

Android Lollipop was a huge effort by Google to codify and homogenise design in Android which up to that point was frankly a mess. It came with cool new devices like the Moto 360.

iOS7 was the redesign iOS needed to not only keep up with the pack but also move away from some of the skeuomorphosm that had started to become a little silly. Finally the software inside the iPhone 4 matched the hardware on the outside.

The general reaction to flat design across the board was pretty damn positive.
 
Good news for you, you can still go back to ios18 since ios26 is just a beta at the moment.
I’ve done just that, today! Glad I made backups. I feel “right at home” again. It’s a much simpler and easy to read UI compared to the glass.

The glass to me currently feels like Apple is shoving it everywhere they possibly can, even if it leads to things being less readable as a consequence. I’ll definitely consider installing it again once the final version is out and I can see how they’ve tweaked it.
 
I wish in iOS 26 they ditched the carousel app switcher. it's a massive waste of space and too slow. They should do it the way the iPad does it, just show me a bunch of apps.

On the 16 PM, they can easily fit eight app windows on the screen. Would be a hell of a lot more efficient.
 
I would prefer Apple bring back the App Switcher from iOS 8 rather than keep the current one that has been in use since iOS 9.
 
I would prefer Apple bring back the App Switcher from iOS 8 rather than keep the current one that has been in use since iOS 9.
My hot take is that I preferred the iOS 4-6 App Switcher over any of the recent ones. It was so fast to tap what you wanted, and nothing moved in a way you didn't expect.
 
This (and Tahoe) is one of the first betas I've skipped in years.

iOS 18 and MacOS Sequoia are running so well for me (iPhone 11 and M4 MBP respectively) that I'm waiting for the betas to progress a bit further before jumping in.

However, I know from experience that after I get over the initial shock (eurgh, this is awful, why did I uprade?) that a few weeks later both iOS 18 and Sequoia will look old fashioned and I'll be happy with the new look.
I've just installed beta 3 over 18.5 on my iPhone 11.

I guess I missed all the excitement as it's all been toned down in this beta it seems, and it's not too different to iOS 18.

I quite like it, although I'm not fussed either way so it seems (to me) like change for the sake of change. What a waste of developer time :)
 
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