Don’t upgrade every year. Wait a few years and you’ll be able to notice the improvements more clearly.
Always find it hilarious when people throw around the "ecosystem" line.The ecosystem is now greater than the phones and OS.
While I was later to iPhone (starting at 4) than the OP, things are a lot more convoluted now.
And probably none of us have truly "started over" - we have 15+ years of content, settings, and Apple Account stuff layered in, coupled with dozens of apps - many 1GB+ in local file size - hitting the network nonstop...
But much of Apple's revenue is tied up in iPhone, so they better figure it out.
I have no problem with iOS 18 on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. It's actually better than iOS 17 was.
p.s. - people missed BlackBerry and Palm/Treo.
I had an Android company phone for 4 years and it mostly sat on my desk.
I love Android, but this is just the same hyperbole that could have been said for Android 14 and Android 13. It will also probably slide into place for Android 16. Most every Android feature bullet point lately has been about folding phones or AI. Very light on new features since the big Material You splash. I'm not hating on Android, but it is a very slow-moving evolution and makes for very boring keynotes. Apple takes big leaps that people love or hate, but it is always entertaining.android 15 has taken it to another level.
Very light on features but get this... They dedicated an entire OS upgrade to mainly bug fixing and optimisation. Crazy concept
I love Android, but this is just the same hyperbole that could have been said for Android 14 and Android 13. It will also probably slide into place for Android 16. Most every Android feature bullet point lately has been about folding phones or AI. Very light on new features since the big Material You splash. I'm not hating on Android, but it is a very slow-moving evolution and makes for very boring keynotes. Apple takes big leaps that people love or hate, but it is always entertaining.
What else are you supposed to do with a rectangle?Because there's almost nothing that can be added to smartphones, so it makes sense to focus on stability and fixes.
Also name me one "big leap" Apple have made since Jobs passed? "Inventing" ChatGPT and augmented reality don't count. All they've done for the last few years is backport old Android features and make new attempts at locking people onto their devices.
Eliminate it.What else are you supposed to do with a rectangle?
Same, I used the photos app in both beta and release and it was the same, absolutely awful. I reverted back to 17.7, and am learning synology photos or immich because it's going to be exactly like that in subsequent ios releases.I haven’t used android since like 2012, but I can full agree that ios18 is TERRIBLE. Glitchy and crashy. It’s awful
Photos app has been utterly destroyed. I’m considering going to Synology photos app full time for photo viewing and what not. Cancel my iCloud subscription. It’s brutal
iOS 18 is still in “public beta”, hence, please expect various issues for now. There is no return to the old days. As the increase cpu and cheaper hardware, the software (os and apps) tend to ignore their lean & efficient codes. This happened to (almost) every software company. Personally, I always keep my Apple devices 1-2 minor versions behind. I also avoid installing until the major version reached .3 or .4.Dear all,
I have owned every iPhone since 2007 and appreciated the simplicity and stability they provided in real-life use. As a journalist and reviewer for a popular mobile innovation magazine back in early 2000s, I have tested over 160 phones with different operating systems incl. Java, Symbian, Bada, Windows, Android etc. and iOS always stood out as something truly special. It was a system you could rely on for functionality, organization, smoothness, perfection, and beauty.
The same applied to all the Macs, MacBook Pros, iPads, Apple Watches, Apple TVs, and other products I've had at home since the 90s. I loved Apple for this and recommended its products to all my friends who were looking for quality, speed, and technology that just works.
Whether I was simply scrolling through news, listening to music, or playing heavy games, iOS was always a model of perfection - no lags, no crashes, no issues - especially compared to Android. In the well-known battle between these systems, there was always a clear winner for me.
I’ve been comparing iOS and Android since Donut 1.6, and today, with the release of Vanilla Ice Cream 15, I’ve seen how both have evolved. I’ve tried every Samsung Galaxy and other top-tier phones, always hoping to see Android improve on its lags, freezes, and crashes while offering an alternative with interesting design features that iPhones didn't have.
For many years, starting in 2007, iOS updates brought new features while remaining stable, smooth, and lag-free. Every year I bought the new iPhone, and since 2019, I’ve opted for the iPhone Pro.
This year, I got the iPhone 16 Pro with iOS 18, and for the first time in my long experience of living without lags, performance issues, freezes, and crashes, I am truly disappointed. There has been an insane drop in multiple layers of quality, simplicity, reliability, and stability in iOS. iOS 18 feels like Android Eclair to me. It’s as if we've gone back more than 10 years to an unstable system, with constant freezes, unresponsive buttons, screens that don't react, crashing apps, poorly optimized standard apps, and terrible lags everywhere.
Take the Photos app, for example. Once a beautifully organized space for media that I used multiple times every hour, it’s been updated into something completely illogical and unacceptable.
At a team event last week, we had multiple iPhones 16 and 16 Pro running iOS 18. We took pictures, and when we wanted to view them, the app only displayed tiny images, and we couldn’t rotate them nor do anything without restarting the phone — experiencing lags that had never occurred before. This was not an isolated issue with just my device. I have dozens of such examples, and I won’t even go into the bizarre camera button placement or the software, which feels like a bad joke.
The overall performance of iOS 18 is terrible. Nothing feels like an iPhone anymore - nothing is smooth, and there are constant lags and slowdowns. Apps don’t display properly, and the experience is far below what I’ve come to expect.
I don’t know if others feel the same way about iOS 18, but for me, I am now eagerly awaiting iOS 19 and the iPhone 17, whether Air or not.
I hope to see Apple return to the right direction, or this may be my last year using iOS, which, shockingly, now feels worse than Android 💔
Best Regards,
Loyal Apple customer and fan since the 90s
My spouse is having the same issue with DND going through while she's working. I don't know how to stop it or change it.Haha, my reaction to my iPhone 16 Pro vs. the old iPhone 8 that I had is directly opposite of yours. I was reluctant to pop for the $$$ cuz, well, the iPhone 8 made calls pretty much just fine, and I liked the Home button and touch ID. But I've found the 16 Pro to be just a dream to use by comparison, and everything (well almost everything) is light-years ahead of the old (at least) iOS the 8 was limited to using.
Only problem I have with my system now, which includes the latest Ultra watche(s cuz Wife has same as me) is that the Do Not Disturb (Focus) is letting alerts get thru in the dead-of-night. I will readily admit that at least so far I've found the Focus options and settings to be completely impenetrable. C'mon Apple, do better.
I also have a set of Airpod Pro 2nd gen in a box that I'm almost afraid to open. Way WAY too many settings in too many different places...
You can be a iphone user with a PC, or a mac user with a android (or other phone system), i don't know if it would "expell" you from macrumor churchDear all,
I have owned every iPhone since 2007 and appreciated the simplicity and stability they provided in real-life use. As a journalist and reviewer for a popular mobile innovation magazine back in early 2000s, I have tested over 160 phones with different operating systems incl. Java, Symbian, Bada, Windows, Android etc. and iOS always stood out as something truly special. It was a system you could rely on for functionality, organization, smoothness, perfection, and beauty.
[....]
Loyal Apple customer and fan since the 90s
I agree with you. I remember a year around that timeframe where the best windows laptop was a macbook pro with boot camp. I loved that 2008 - 2015 line of macbook pros...You can be a iphone user with a PC, or a mac user with a android (or other phone system), i don't know if it would "expell" you from macrumor church
as you said, 90s and 00s years were the best periods, as a kid the IT/computing and devices really at the user's service. Now it's not a device problem, but much more a services ******tment, as some people says.
thats why, to leave out a bit android (that i hate), hackers did better than BSD teams (while iOS/macos is partly-freebsd-based, with mach and xnu):
in addition, for me (and lot of apple fanboys) the SJ era is huge better than apple now, as ex engineers (serlet, tevanian, hullot) were just doing good work, until the beginning of the 2010 (and now disaster for lot of details)
my 12 cents.
Not always…Steve was realistic and what he demostrated and promised in keynotes was not only delivered on time but exceeded expectations by far.