Literally every change made in iOS 26 feels like a downgrade to me. This is the first time I have ever considered downgrading iOS.
They are certainly overwhelmed by the problems caused by the terrible visual design, which does not accomplish its stated goals and usually is a very large setback compared to what we had previously.
The glass effects are fancy, but in a HUGE percentage of places the transparency makes things worse.
A lot of the animation/liviness, the “liquid” part of “Liquid Glass”, is very nice and welcome.
My problems are almost all from:
1. difficulty reading/using things since the background shows through unnecessarily and makes things hard to read
2. iOS fighting to change the color of things to keep up with the background during scrolling, all for the stupid effect I just complained about
3. far more wasted space by pulling away from the edges of the screen leaving less useful area
I’ve seen people theorize it will all be great and make sense when some future iPhone with a true edge to edge screen launches.
Great. My new phone was made manifestly worse to help the experience of a phone that I can’t even buy yet. If it exists at all. And that’s why this design is the way it is.
I don’t know how they saved this. Other than just getting rid of some of the fundamental concepts. But they’re gonna have to tone a lot of stuff WAY down in the next few years to try and get this back to usable.
I’m sure we’ll all get used to it. Just like we got used to a lot of the problems that the iOS 7 redesign brought.
But that doesn’t mean we’re actually moving forward and getting better. We seem to be finding new ways to get worse.
You can look at screenshots of OS X 10.4 or 10.6 and they’re incredibly easy to read. They have good information density. You know what the controls are and things haven’t been hidden like scroll bars.
Yeah there were excesses with iOS 6 and below. And the pixel perfect layout stuff was never going to be viable long-term as phones kept changing size every year or two.
But you could tell what was a button and what wasn’t. You knew if something was just text or a field you could edit. We’ve lost that.
Similarly I’m not a Windows fan. I used it for decades but I’m happier with the way the Mac works. I’ve used Linux, the various GUIs are fine and just like Windows I could live with them. But the Mac works better for me.
So as they destroy both platforms I’m stuck with nowhere to go. It’s not like Windows is getting better.
Though I would probably go to Linux first, just for the Unix guts.
That made a world of difference for me.
This could be significant improvement if Apple let us choose the transparency percentage.
I’ve used only iPhones as my main devices since the iPhone 3G but instead of getting a 17 Pro I’ve bought a Pixel 9 Pro and will switch my main mobile to GrapheneOS.
Siri was broken for me for the first few days but suddenly began working again! That was frustrating, but I'm happy it's back. I have no clue what fixed it because it wasn't a software update.
But you can turn that stuff off. They may try to trick you so you have to remain somewhat vigilant. But I don’t think they ever absolutely force you to upgrade.
At a certain part they stop signing the OS. At that point because it doesn’t have the cryptographic signature you can’t install it at all and your only choice is something newer.
With point releases or security updates that tends to be pretty fast because they don’t want people downgrading to something vulnerable. When going from iOS X to iOS X + 1 grace period is usually longer before they stop that.
And, of course, if you try and install an iOS 26 backup on the phone that you just moved back to 18… you’re just gonna be on 26 again. So you better make sure you have the right back up.
I downgraded about 10 minutes after trying iOS 26. Sorry to all who missed the window.
It’s only when you’re already on iOS 26 that you can’t downgrade anymore.