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What do you guys make of Linus' 30 day iPhone assessment? More about iOS 18 really

thadoggfather

thadoggfather

macrumors P6
Original poster
Oct 1, 2007
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I can't speak from android perspective since I haven't had one since the Nexus days, but I do agree with most of his criticisms here. Even though I'm floored with my battery life on 16+, I think iOS 18 is a little rough around the edges from a UX experience and 'change for change sake' stuff. Some nice improvements too, but not everything is meaningful and re-arranging things doesn't necessarily make them better (for menus buried in menus). Bugs haven't been nearly as bad as his, but still the occasional random ugly thing where I'm wondering: why?

or how did this get to this point? Even understanding nothing is perfect and software is always an iterative, in flux thing to some degree.
 
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Couldn’t agree more. There should be an option to choose which iOS UI you want. Just use a nice, stable phone for a long time without being bothered with changes for the sake of changes.
 
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I recently reverted my iPhone 13 mini to 17 from 18, and the photos app for me is markedly superior.
its snappier, its more intuitive, I get less lost.

The iOS 18 one, while could be great for intelligent curation and has some shadow of potential, ends up barely dabbling in it while ultimately foregoing the basics.

And yes, I've moved 'most recent' or whatever to the top of the chain in 'edit mode' at the bottom.

I also hate how slow the animation speeds are and have always taken issue with this. Let me control the factor of speed, the apps are already loaded in RAM and ready to go. It truly is the bottleneck in practice all too often. I use cowabunga lite on my iPhone 13 mini to speed up animations, and it's glorious. it feels snappier than my newest 2024 iPhone with just that little tweak. It was always one of my favorite jailbreak customizations in the past. But I grant that this has never been an option even on iOS versions before 18

And even if its somehow been addressed to not have menus in menus in CC for subsequent iOS 18 updates, how they thought to nest basic wifi/airplane/bluetooth toggles in a miniscule menu folder that everyone is so muscle memory reliant on - is an example of change for change sake IMO.

The animations just randomly get clunky on basic iOS UI animations, and it's wild to me for a device that has A18 in it.

And having an 'apps' section in Settings - they now treat stock apps on same level as App Store apps - fine that's a nice gesture. but ultimately everyone is used to being able to hop into mail from the main settings menus, not from multiple layers in. The big forehead at the top of Settings explaining the purpose of settings, seems bizarre too. And nobody is really fooled - Apple will always prioritize their own stuff before that of others. It's an empty gesture as far as I can tell in practice.


Nobody is even really all that excited about AI stuff, vague value prop 2 weeks away from Xmas and that's the marquee software feature.

And now we're stuck with most of the same basic design decisions until almost a year from now when the next phones and major IOS bump comes out. Because courage
 
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rappr said:
Because when Apple doesn’t change things, people claim they are stagnant and boring. They really can’t win.
Click to expand...

Sure they can (IMO)

Change alone is fine as long as it is done correctly.

But change for sake of / being 1 step forward and a few back subjectively for some changes isn’t the way. A change should be an improvement whether small or large without concessions. Especially immediately
Coming from what people already take for granted

iOS 18 isn’t a dramatically different release from iOS 17 ironically feature wise imo it’s just clunky where they switch things up. To the point where it adds up and sticks out where it happens. Not with everything mind you

The dark mode and colored icon ability is nice as is no icon labels for example. I prefer being able to freely align icons how I want. But moving them around is a disaster. It was easier with the locked grid. Fortunately I have my configuration set up but it’s not a great experience to get there.

And chunky animations when buttery animations have been the relative standard stands out.

Also the navigation for colored tint / dark icons that isn’t all that intuitive just one of those things you play with and learn to accept. Lock Screen / Home Screen wallpaper customization from wallpaper perspective is atrocious imo. That’s really
Taken a swan dive in feel over the years though perhaps that’s not specific to iOS 18 since came before that

Same with nested control center stuff. It’s not as clean an experience as control center has been for years boring as it has been

The average person notices it it’s not even subtle it’s actually jarring when it crops up even to someone who has zero familiarity with how software or technology “should feel”

This is all subjective but I really related to this video haha

I’m open to disagreements as well perhaps this is the golden era of Apple software and I just don’t see it / am too much a pessimist on this one. It’s possible

I don’t hate iOS 18 just some awkward design decisions that don’t make sense / wouldn’t be what the average person would think is the way or intuitive and the lack of polish with random chonk is what annoys me the most.

It’s also far from the buggiest new major release but I’m just sick of the same old crap seems they never learn their lessons on obvious low hanging fruit situations
 
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Linus is correct on most things. iOS is unintuitive in places. And there are bugs, oh so many bugs.
And how is it that in 2024 on a premium iPhone when I am in safari and want to swipe up to change safari tabs, it drops a frame rate and stutters. That’s a lack of quality control.
Why can’t Apple slow down the race for new features every year and just refine iOS. They could really do with some.
 
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azam1 said:
Linus is correct on most things. iOS is unintuitive in places. And there are bugs, oh so many bugs.
And how is it that in 2024 on a premium iPhone when I am in safari and want to swipe up to change safari tabs, it drops a frame rate and stutters. That’s a lack of quality control.
Why can’t Apple slow down the race for new features every year and just refine iOS. They could really do with some.
Click to expand...

It’s amazing how often I see that chunky animation sliding up within safari tabs on iOS 18 but not really at all in iOS 17

Like a screwed up graphics driver over basic UI renderings or something
Something
 
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I'm at "preparing to update" on 18.1.1, from 17.7 on my 15PM. Maybe I should've read this thread before I finally committed 😂. This is the longest I've held out on an iOS update.
 
iosuser said:
I'm at "preparing to update" on 18.1.1, from 17.7 on my 15PM. Maybe I should've read this thread before I finally committed 😂. This is the longest I've held out on an iOS update.
Click to expand...
I've been on iOS 18 from day 1 and it's been pretty solid for me. Not experiencing many bugs on my 15 PM.
 
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