Worth it or stay away?

I put it on my ipad and it seems all right. I'm leery of putting it on my 16 Pro due to all the battery drain issues I was seeing on Reddit. It looks like nightmode is visibly terrible though.

Everything I'm seeing says stay away from it

Updated my 13 pro last night. I like the look. No issues as far as I can tell

Updated 16 pro yesterday evening. No issues so far.

I took the leap. I like it.

I've been doing the betas for a while and it's been fine but nothing groundbreaking.

Does it have all the AI stuff that was promised a year ago? Or is that just a lost cause at this point?

I honestly have no interest in AI, but that was their biggest selling point last year to sell the 16 which clearly blew up in their faces. I haven't seen a bunch of commercials showcasing features that didnt exist so far this round, so hopefully they're moving on to something worth talking about. I bought my 16 pro last year in spite of AI, and because I couldn't wait to upgrade my 11 any longer, and was actually happy that those "features" were delayed.

Bring back the Nokia dumb phone.

Yeah that apple intelligence thing was a huge flop.

I installed it yesterday b/c people said it did a better job with handling spam / fraud calls. I have the option selected to silence Verizon detected spam callers, but I still get a ton of calls from "probable spam", so not sure if that is working as advertised. No issues with the ios though.

When they launched that they said back then they were just providing the foundation and actual AI features would come later.

However, I've never really seen anything else on it and 26 seems to be sweeping AI under the rug again since they've been pushing this liquid glass UI as the primary feature for 26. That seems like a huge nothing burger.

Regardless, there is not much else they can do with this form factor. It's maxed. All they can really do is tweak the margins with it.

Their next big move will have to copy Samsung and do one of those flip smart phones to create any kind of splash.

Phat32 said:

---

Liquid Glass is awful

---

It looks like an android iOS launcher from the 2010s. So many instances of lack of attention to detail that are very un-Apple, too. Corner radius not matching, weird pop in, uncentered text, etc. They should have sat on this for another year.

No issues here, but there are always special people out there who will complain about something.

Not great, not awful. Will take some getting used to.

We have received 2 notices from software app vendors stating that their apps have issues and not to upgrade our iPads to iOS 26 yet....FYI

I've updated my personal laptop/cell/ipad & work laptop. No issues so far. I don't even really know what the new features are.

As far as Liquid Glass...my attitude is "whatever". It's just a laptop/cell/ipad. As long as I can get my work done, all's good.

We went from iOS 18 to 26?

Jason_Roofer said:

---

We went from iOS 18 to 26?

---

Apple jumped from iOS 18 directly to iOS 26 as a marketing decision to align the operating system version number with the upcoming calendar year, 2026. Instead of releasing iOS 19, Apple skipped straight to iOS 26, which is the name given to the new operating system that was recently released and brings new features like the Liquid Glass design to the Lock Screen and Home Screen.

I like it. Just upgraded.

I've been on the beta.

Spatial lock screen is goated.

I've been on the dev betas. Surprisingly stable after the 2nd build.

You'll hate the Liquid Glass for a few days and then it'll grow on you. As a developer, the somewhat big thing underneath is the access to the on-device AI model. It's not great, but a step in the right direction to have some disconnect from putting your private information on a ChatGPT server.

I upgraded this morning. The only thing I hate so far is the way to access bookmarks in Safari. Either two taps (three little dots then Bookmarks button, or hold and drag up). Also there's a tiny difference at the top of Safari that TexAgs may have to adjust its top bar. Still getting used to it…

Glad to help, I wasn't liking how it handled tabs either. I also didn't know you can pinch a Safari window to switch to an all tabs view.

Thank you!!

Just learned this myself because I couldn't figure out where the hell my tabs went or that there was options other than compact. I left it at contact and am trying pinching. Lol.

I put it on my iPhone 12 b/c I broke my old apple watch and needed a new one. Ordered the SE3 watch and didn't realize I had to have iOS26 for it to work or I'd have gotten an older one off Swappa.

It's been fine, had to delete my car from the phone Carplay and delete the phone out of the car b/c it was not responding on the car touch screen. Once I reset it it seems to work fine. Although the screen seems to want to display what it thinks I want instead of what I really want. Like it splits the Carplay screen up into multiple views, which is just confusing/cluttered. I just want one (like if I'm in podcasts, just show that, not Podcasts, phone and maps)

I don't see any battery issues. Usually during the weekends I use it more and it drains faster. Didn't seem any worse on Sat or Sun than a normal weekend. I did find a video online on suggested settings to reduce some of the battery drain and mostly followed that.

My only question is does Apple employ some of the dumbest people on the planet? The whole fiasco with photos on iOS18 and now with i26 they changed it again. With 18.xx at least you could modify it to make it a lot like the old photos, but this one you have to make a bunch of changes to make it similar to the user modified iOS18.xx version. I mean, after the huge outcry over them screwing up a native ap, you'd think they'd have learned their lesson and left it alone. I shouldn't have to go online to see how to fix an app to make it useable. Idiots.

I'm trying to decide if it's worth the hassle to downgrade back to 18.7, return the SE3 and find an older watch on Swappa.

This is why I wait. I'm staying on 18.7 until we get 1-2 patches.

It's a tad buggy but it's not all that bad or different to me. Maybe just don't use ios18 fully enough to notice. Lol.

You can switch your views on CarPlay, the main screen is split by default but you can adjust that a bit. Then if you go into an app it should show just that app.