Posted by walterbell 12/11/2025
And liquid glass is still ugly and buggy. Apple has become enshitified.
Does no engineer at Apple use iOS or they never face this problem ?
- Random invisible touches and phone calls - BUggy Glass UI - Stupid battery management ..to say the least.
That's in addition to so many dropped frames in the animations that I disabled as many as I could because it was driving me crazy, and to a bunch of word-based buttons becoming confusing icons. I think this has topped 7 for my least-favorite iOS release, and the gap widens by the day. It's terrible.
[EDIT] What it most reminds me of (I was on early Android and have done even more development work on Android over the years than I have for iOS) is Android. The jank, the pile of little confusing UI choices that all add up into an overall off-putting experience. The uncertainty what kind of bad thing might happen when you touch anything. Feels like an above-average 3rd party Android skin, like from Samsung or someone (so, pretty bad). The stuttering animations. No other iOS release has ever felt like Android to me.
For me it's been going downhill since the update that changed the settings app to show apps (even system ones) on a different page. Iwas seriosuly inpressed with the settings app when I first switched to Apple from Android, and now it's terrible.
Meanwhile you still can't freely set the search wngkne for Safari, contacts always forgets my custom labels, camera doesn't allow free control over the flashlight,...
P.S. Typos due to iOS26
I've seen other releases much complained-about online then found them to not bother me much, or even at all, when I upgraded, but this one's an exception. It really is very bad.
Now? All gone. - You can make a call from the text app, but only after you open the conversation, and it's a tiny button in the corner next to the menu. You haven't texted them? Sorry. - You can send a text from the dialer: switch to recent calls view, tap a recent call (the name, not the icon) and you can text that person. You haven't called them recently? Sorry. - Edit a contact from the dialer? Tap a recent call (the icon, not the name) to see their info, then click edit contact. Haven't called them recently? Sorry. - Want to call someone from your starred/favorite contacts? Tap the favorites section to expand it, you get 5 contacts on screen at a time with tiny hard-to-read names - Want to call a frequent contact that doesn't appear in the recent list because of a bunch of incoming calls? Tap the search button, if you're lucky you'll get a nice big target to tap, but more likely they won't show up (this is suggested contacts, not recent or favorite contacts) or they'll be underneath the keyboard. - the view contacts button opens your contacts manager that also doesn't have a view for favorite contacts. - The contacts app can initiate calls and text messages, but the only sort method it has is alphabetical, and it shows every contact you have, including those without phone numbers (you can filter them by tags/groups/account by opening the menu, but not by frequency or information). You also have to open the contact to see the buttons (which include video call; I have no idea what this does, as I have no video calling apps installed) - start a new conversation in messages, there's a prominently placed Gemini button at the top, despite Gemini being disabled in settings.
I would switch to the Samsung dialer and messenger app, but my phone is now a Motorola. Oops. Favorite contacts screen was removed from the dialer a while back for some unknown reason, but the useless voicemail screen remains (this screen doesn't work with either T-Mobile or with Google Voice)
Bonus: I sent pictures from Google voice weekly for the past few years, recently they never get received. (These are jpg screenshots of my work schedule, not giant photos; Google voice is convenient for viewing them myself on my desktop, phone, tablet. And Google voice still can't deal with webp or heic despite such images showing up in the image picker; in these cases the message can't even be sent)
Typing? I'm lucky. I have a nice big tablet, I only use my phone calls for text messages and calls, and for texting, swipe input has far less issues than tapping on the keyboard. Almost everything else goes through my 10" tablet. But yes, autocorrect on Android was also better when it was pure word lists without ML; sure, it was annoying to have to build a user dictionary, but you still have to do that anyways or else rarely used words will eventually get forgotten and names of contacts will eventually never be suggested if your swipe is the least bit off.
Now she's on an iPhone SE (3rd gen), and the UI is a complete shitshow.
F you Apple.
(She also does not want a newer (aka larger) iPhone because they will not fit in her woman's jeans which notoriously have small pockets. Another "F you" from Apple to the consumers.)
(Apparently the 12 and 13 mini had about 5% of iPhone market share in the year they were released [0]. Does that mean they were profitable for Apple? I don't know, but given how many phones Apple sells, I believe that even 5% iPhone market share would be profitable)
0. https://www.rickyspears.com/tech/the-rise-and-fall-of-apples...
Still using my 12 Mini on iOS 18 - I won't go without a fight.
- As mentioned, keyboard input is offensively broken. Whiffed inputs, the entire text selection/cursor manipulation model sucks (not being able to select in the middle of a word is inexcusable unless you have Stockholm syndrome for the bandaids), the cursor manipulation is broken, keyboard gets stuck open or closed, etc. etc. I'm convinced the input design for this phone is a CIA psyop designed to drive you to madness so they can recruit you as a sleeper cell.
- Passcode inputs are also broken. Trying to enter your passcode at easily achievable speeds results in dropped inputs.
- Above point wouldn't be a big deal if it weren't for fingerprint scanning being given up for Face ID, which is complete dogshit that constantly fails-to-passcode trying and failing to scan my ceiling, or my face when it's against a pillow in the morning. It's also completely worthless when I'm unable to fully point my face at the phone (working on vehicles or in some other enclosed area) or am trying to use the phone completely off of muscle memory.
- The gesture navigation system is a fundamentally bad idea. I'm an average-sized man and reaching over to the left hand side of the screen to make back inputs requires me to shift my fingers on the back of the phone just to make the reach for the input. This is on a base-model iPhone 16, which is already a touch too large for many hands to deal with this input system. The hitboxes for navigation inputs are too small and many of the inputs are often shared with actions in apps, resulting in taking all sorts of actions you didn't want to. Android style 3-button navigation at the bottom of the screen solved this many years ago. As an aside, the 60 FPS screen on an $800 phone as a "fuck you" push to upgrade to an even fatter pig of a phone that suffers even more from the bad navigation is funny.
- The GPS is fucked up, at least on the iPhone 16. It takes forever to find its bearing, after which it usually holds onto it until losing its mind again at the most inconvenient time. The only phone I've seen with a worse GPS is a Unihertz Jelly. Being in the same league as a $150 niche night market special is shameful.
- I have a frustrating number of calls get dropped. I don't know exactly where this issue comes from but it's noticeable, I run into it a couple times a week. My previous S24 on the same carrier never dropped calls under the same circumstances, so I know not having this issue is possible.
- The flashlight implementation sucks. Being able to tap it off with screen input is incredibly frustrating when I'm fumbling around trying to do something in the dark. And of course, it turns the screen on so you can make this accidental input every time you turn the flashlight on with the assignable side button. Being able to adjust the brightness is something I've never found any use for and mostly just serves to annoy me when I accidentally turn it down with another unintended input, but maybe somebody somewhere gives a shit about this, I guess.
- The split notification/settings menu is incredibly annoying. The settings menu is already a reach on the smallest mainline models, the notifications menu basically requires whole-hand movement. 20% of the space in the notifications menu is taken up by a fuckoff huge clock that you can't configure the size of. The lack of notification icons results in me having to actually unlock the phone and check things instead of just being able to know at a glance (I know they wanted to distance themselves from the roached Android notification tray look but I don't care).
- Liquid Glass looks like shit. So does a lot of the rest of the phone but I don't really hold some moron designer's bad visual taste against a product unless it affects the usability of the product. And of course, it affects the usability of the product. I actually laughed out loud having a literally unreadable lockscreen clock after the iOS 26 update, with the factory-provided moon background to add a little more salt to the wound. It reads poorly and is tacky to boot.
- This is pretty minor but the constant nags about iCloud are very funny. These assholes just couldn't resist hounding you for 99 cents more after you bought their $800 fuckup. It's like getting nagged about a Sirius XM subscription in a Lamborghini.
Individual points may be taken care of, but the disease is terminal. The iPhone's success at this point is driven by network effects, marketing, and its posturing as a premium product. Grown adults have an emotional attachment to the brand and the lifestyle statement. Android vendors are aping this stuff now. The memories of quality software and the ability to recognize it is being actively erased from the collective memory. Hoping that any of this is going to change at this point is just pissing in the wind.