debonbon said:

I will resist updating till I’m forced if the released version looks like this. Horrible choice.

Apple never points a gun at your head and says you need to update software.

NEVER.

You are free to run the original software that your device shipped with.

Moreover there are mitigations in the Accessibility settings that can reduce the amount of "eye candy" that any Apple OS delivers. This is not specific for Apple's "26" operating systems, they have been around for years.

It's clear that Apple senior management has come to the forlorn conclusion that the more ambitious use cases for Apple Intelligence aren't reliable enough for everyday use by Joe Consumer yet. They vaguely mentioned it "coming in 2026" but that could easily be Q4 2026 in iOS 27.2.

There's a growing consensus that LLMs (from all producers) don't have any reasoning capabilities. It's becoming more evident where LLMs fall short and have more limited usage cases that originally hoped for.

Apple can't release an LLM-powered Siri AI chat assistant that's only as good as ChatGPT or Claude. There's no differentiation no value add. The main benefit from Apple in that case would be privacy but Joe Consumer wants something that works better. So Apple needs to deliver both of functionality AND privacy. And building the AI model for that is hard especially if Apple is ethically sourcing data (i.e., licensing/paying content creators rather than stealing it).

There is also more talk these days of "model collapse." My guess is that Apple is very wary of this problem. We're already seeing some evidence that today's newer consumer-facing LLM models aren't really much better that those from just 12-18 months ago in overall performance except for a handful of edge cases (like programming).

In the long run, it's better for Apple to be cautious about its AI approach and prioritize reliability, accuracy and privacy over being Headline Of The Week. I really don't need another AI chatbot assistant that's wrong 40% of the time or one that suggests eating rocks or using glue as a pizza topping. That's just a wasted effort because it forces the end user to double- or triple-check everything (not just the blatantly wrong answers).

Consumer facing AI still has a handful of useful features. Some of the basic spell/grammar checking and basic message composition seems to be adequate. It's good at dealing with math and physics homework (it won't make you smarter at either subject). On iOS 18, Image Cleanup does a passable job as an integrated, on-device service. Yes, there are third party tools that do this. Yes, a Photoshop wizard can do this. But I'm not sure how trustworthy third-party tools are (in terms of privacy) and like many, I'm no Photoshop wizard.

Anyhow, I expect little new developments until WWDC 2026. I think what we saw in yesterday's keynote is all we're going to see for another 51 weeks. There will be new hardware before then but it's likely that they won't have any stunning new functionality.

At this point it's more important to me that Apple protects user privacy and security over fancy new features. I'll wait for those when they are fully baked with privacy and security at the forefront.

Disclaimer: I plan on installing iOS 26, iPadOS 26, Mac OS 26 around 9-10 months after they debut so not until June 2026 at the earliest. This is my usual M.O. I'm still on iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and Mac OS Sonoma. At this point, there's a chance I'm going to skip iOS 18 and Mac OS Sequoia (I skipped Crapalina).

cajunreb said:

So, within a year, Apple didn't promise AI-new Siri, decided to overhaul its UI, and have it ready for WWDC 25 to distract from the overpromising of AI-New Siri stuff. I mean, do you think they came up with the idea for this UI overhaul and created it in less than a year? 

That doesn't make sense. First of all the engineers working on Siri and Apple Intelligence aren't the same ones who work on UI elements of Apple's various operating systems. The latter is probably the domain of Core UI teams (for each platform OS) following the guidelines provided by Alan Dye (VP of Design). That's right, there are engineers who work on things like buttons, menu pulldown animations, progress menus, alert bubbles, animated backgrounds, etc. Hell, even the Spinning Beachball of Death was programmed by someone.

It's likely that this Liquid Glass refresh has been in the works for several years. Remember that many of its elements debuted in visionOS so it's not like it was an afterthought at the end of 2024. Most likely Apple used visionOS as a test case for the new design because VR user interfaces inherently benefit greatly from passthrough visuals.

It's not like Apple senior management writes down a bunch of ideas, tosses them into a fishbowl and pulls out a few during some beer bust in December to decide which features should be in the upcoming operating systems. Almost all of this stuff is planned years ahead of time. It's not like they say "Hey, let's give it to the interns and see what they come with."

cdarlington1 said:

Been using it for a day. Ugly AF. Yuk.

While I am still on iOS 17 and have no plans to upgrade to iOS 26 (iPadOS 26 or Mac OS 26 Tahoe) in the near future, I suggest you try reducing transparency effects to see if it makes a difference. On all flavors of Apple's iOS, iPadOS, Mac OS, it can be toggled on here:

System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Reduce Transparency

I enabled this setting many, many years ago on all of my Apple devices.

Another related setting on the same panel is Increase Contrast. I have this enabled on my iPhone and iPad but not on my Mac. Both of these options make the display a little more utilitarian, gets rid of some of the "eye candy" effects.

You are free to try out other settings as well in an effort to reduce the "glass" effects.

I also have Reduce Motion enabled which also cleans up the UI a little bit.

sirbryan said:

Ditto. I cut my teeth on HyperCard on a Mac SE in middle and high school.  I had the fortune of meeting him outside of the Mosconi Center during WWDC a few years ago, where he was showing a few of us an app he was working on that was related to his photography.

That app is PhotoCard. There was a paid option to have a hardcopy/deadtrees photocard printed and snail mailed to the recipient. Not sure if that service is still functional. The free e-mail delivery version still works (I just tried it).

There used to be a "lite" version of the PhotoCard app, not sure what the differences were but I think the Lite version only had e-mail delivery, maybe it also had lower resolution, added a watermark, or something else.

Bill was an excellent nature photographer -- particularly landscapes -- before the genre became completely commodified.

Godspeed, Bill.