Apple dropped iOS 26 yesterday and I've been using it for about 18 hours. The big headline feature is "Liquid Glass" - their fancy name for making every interface element look like it's covered in frosted glass. It's either gorgeous or absolutely hideous, depending on your tolerance for translucent UI elements.
I updated my iPhone 15 Pro around noon yesterday. First thing I noticed? Everything looks wet. Buttons, menus, notifications - they all have this frosted glass effect that Apple claims "reflects and refracts its surroundings." In practice, it looks like someone sneezed on my screen.
This is clearly Apple trying to bring Vision Pro design language to regular phones. Problem is, spatial interfaces work great when you're looking through actual glass. On a flat screen, it just makes text harder to read.
They jumped from iOS 18.7 straight to iOS 26.0, which confused the hell out of me until I realized they're syncing version numbers with the year. iOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26. Makes sense from a marketing perspective, I guess. Less sense from literally any other perspective.
The call screening feature is actually fucking brilliant though. When spam calls come in, iOS asks the caller to state their name and reason for calling before your phone even rings. You see a live transcript and can jump in whenever you want. I've gotten three spam calls since yesterday and haven't answered a single one because the transcripts were obviously garbage.
There's also "Hold Assist" that waits on hold for customer service and pings you when a human picks up. I tested it with my insurance company's 45-minute wait time. Worked perfectly, though it felt weird having Siri hold for me while I went back to coding.
Apple Intelligence got some minor updates. Live Translation works in Messages and FaceTime now, which is handy if you work with international teams. Visual Intelligence can screenshot your screen and ask ChatGPT about it, which feels like overkill for most use cases.
The Genmoji thing lets you combine multiple emoji now. Asked it for "dog wearing sunglasses driving a Tesla" and got exactly that. My team Slack is now full of increasingly ridiculous combinations.
Here's where the Liquid Glass design becomes a real problem - readability. Text disappears against certain backgrounds, especially in dark mode. The frosted effects make it harder to tell what's clickable and what isn't. I've accidentally tapped static text thinking it was a button at least six times today.
Apple's already saying they'll "refine the visual design" in future updates. Translation: they shipped this knowing it has usability problems and hoping people would get used to it.
The useful stuff buried under the aesthetic changes:
- Call screening (worth the update alone)
- Preview app for PDF editing (finally)
- Better spam filtering in Messages
- Simplified Camera interface with fewer visible buttons
- Photos app tabs are back (thank god)
The Camera simplification is actually nice. Instead of having 47 buttons visible at once, most controls are hidden until you need them. Takes some getting used to, but feels cleaner.
Should you update? If you can deal with everything looking like it's made of jello, yes. Call screening alone saves me probably 10 minutes of spam calls per day. Just prepare for the visual assault of translucent everything.
The Liquid Glass design will either grow on you or make you want to throw your phone. I'm three days in and still not sure which camp I'm in. It's definitely Apple's most polarizing interface change since they killed the home button.