This article made me increasingly angry as I read, and by the end, I could only chuckle in frustration. I never expected to see every textbook design flaw perfectly exemplified in Apple’s latest operating systems.
In my view, the three major systems Apple launched last year—iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS Tahoe—all feel like they’ve placed a sheet of liquid glass over what is essentially a system-level interaction and design hell.
My most immediate impression of iOS 26 is that its initial version felt exceptionally crude. While iOS 7 and iOS 11 also felt unpolished due to their extensive redesigns, in actual use, iOS 26’s roughness feels unprecedented (I have an iPod running iOS 7.0.4 and an iPhone X on iOS 11). Beyond the endless bugs, the system’s UI and rounded corners are chaotic and inconsistent. That said, the stability improved considerably by version 26.2, which is commendable.
Back in 2013, Jony Ive’s bold push for flat design defined the iOS 7–9 era. The ultra-thin fonts created a light, visually pleasing aesthetic, but poor readability became a major point of criticism. Apple gradually increased font weight in response, which somewhat compromised the elegance but genuinely improved legibility.
Now, with iOS 26, the combination of ultra-bold SF fonts and the liquid glass effect, along with the weakening or outright removal of separators between options, has successfully made readability an unreliable puzzle once again.
iPadOS 26 claims to unlock productivity with freely adjustable windows—on the surface, at least.
Now the iPad gives you three choices: either use Stage Manager and multi-window mode to boost productivity, or stick to simple mode without split-screen.
But once you remove the keyboard and mouse, the split-screen and Slide Over interactions designed specifically for touch suddenly disappear.
What used to be straightforward dragging and switching now requires additional adjustments due to the “free” window sizing (Slide Over has returned, but it’s more cumbersome than before). In split-screen mode, the increased rounded corners between windows sacrifice a significant amount of full-screen display area.
Also, while adding macOS-style traffic-light buttons and the menu bar seems nice, the interface elements—smaller than a pinky finger—seem to whisper: “Touch experience isn’t important here; keyboard and mouse are.” If productivity plus portability is the goal, why not just buy a MacBook Air?
As an ordinary user, in everyday scenarios, what affects us most isn’t window size, but how intuitive and convenient the operations are. To this day, I still don’t understand why Apple didn’t keep the simple and elegant old split-screen logic as an optional mode.
macOS Tahoe takes the principle of “neglecting what should be refined, over-polishing what shouldn’t” to a whole new level. As the symbol of productivity, the Mac’s system has been made shockingly chaotic—a messy UI battlefield, not to mention the still inconsistent rounded corners across windows…
At the 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen, Steve Jobs once said, “Our design goal is to make products intuitively obvious.”
For years, Apple indeed set precedents and profoundly influenced design language across the industry.
But this latest iteration of the “Apple style”? I can’t bring myself to agree. I don’t hope to see a future dominated by this kind of visual-first design language.
If anything, I’m inclined to think that this time, Apple has simply walked onto its own narrow bridge.