Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons
license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary
on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the
entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/


                   Apple in 2025: The Six Colors Report Card

   Adam Engst

   It's that time of year again'Jason Snell of Six Colors has released his
   annual [1]Apple Report C[2]ard, which compiles rankings from scores
   submitted by 56 Apple-focused writers, editors, developers, podcasters,
   and other professionals, including yours truly.

   For the fourth year in a row, Hardware Reliability topped the list,
   followed by the iPhone, iPad, and Services categories. On the other end
   of the spectrum, the Vision Pro and Developer Relations continued to
   dwell at the bottom, where they were joined by Apple's Impact on the
   World, which received the lowest score in the survey's eleven-year
   history.

   Perhaps most troubling is that of the 14 categories, scores dropped in
   11. Apple's Impact on the World category suffered the largest decline,
   falling a full point to an F grade'a precipitous drop driven by Tim
   Cook's obsequious relationship with the Trump administration. The
   controversial Liquid Glass design in macOS 26 Tahoe also drew heavy
   criticism, dragging the Mac's score down by 0.7 points despite uniform
   praise for the hardware. The main bright spots were the iPhone (up 0.2
   points thanks to the well-received iPhone 17 lineup) and iPad (up 0.2
   points due to iPadOS 26's new windowing system).

   The panelists' commentary was especially pointed this year. John
   Siracusa called Tahoe 'the worst user interface update in the history
   of the Mac,' while John Gruber said, 'There is nothing about Tahoe's
   new UI that is better than its predecessor.' For the world impact
   category, Brent Simmons summed up the sentiment: 'Apple once had a
   reputation as an ethical and humane big tech company'and that
   reputation helped the world by showing that it was possible to be that
   and to be successful. That reputation is gone, and that example is now
   gone too.'

   For Jason's category-by-category summary with additional charts and
   select quotes, check out [3]the full report. Those who want to wallow
   in the details can read [4]32,000 words of unfiltered commentary from
   the panelists.

   [5]Read original article

References

   Visible links
   1. https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/02/2025reportcard/
   2. https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/02/2025reportcard/
   3. https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/02/2025reportcard/
   4. https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/02/2025reportcardcommentary/
   5. https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/02/2025reportcard/

   Hidden links:
   6. https://tidbits.com/uploads/2026/02/2025-report-card-averages.png
   7. https://tidbits.com/uploads/2026/02/2025-report-card-changes.png

.