[HN Gopher] Apple to focus on 'quality and underlying performanc...
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Apple to focus on 'quality and underlying performance' with iOS 27
next year
Author : jb1991
Score : 84 points
Date : 2025-11-23 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5mac.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5mac.com)
| mikequinlan wrote:
| I sure hope that is true.
| BooneJS wrote:
| "Snow Leopard", the original OSX release that focused under the
| hood, returns. I'm glad to hear it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yup. Many folks think Snow Leopard was the bestest release
| ever.
| steve1977 wrote:
| It certainly wasn't the worstest.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Good.
|
| Mac OS has become a richly productive bug farm, lately.
|
| I wonder if they'll ever get around to actually reading their bug
| reports, though...
| thr0waway001 wrote:
| Yeah bro. For the first time I'm seriously considering adopting
| Linux as my personal desktop OS. I already use it at work for
| server stuff. So I'll get by. Maybe I'll miss some of the
| proprietary software, but that list of programs is quickly
| dwindling every year.
|
| At first I held back because of the ecosystem (i.e. still
| really liked iOS. But now that iOS is kinda sucking ass too, it
| makes it a much easier proposition.)
| glitchcrab wrote:
| FWIW, I've been daily driving Linux and an iPhone for almost
| 13 years now and I've never really had any issues with it.
| Maybe it's because I've not experienced some of the
| integration in the ecosystem and so I don't know what I'm
| missing.
|
| I use Firefox as my browser across all devices so I can just
| share tabs via my account, and if I want to share text or
| files then LocalSend works just fine in lieu of Airdrop.
| smcleod wrote:
| I hope they invest some time in macOS, gosh it's become a right
| mess over the last 3-5 major releases - Tahoe is the worst of the
| bunch.
| brikym wrote:
| I'm still calling it liquid ass. The glass theme just makes
| things difficult to read for the sake of fashion.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Tahoe is okay to use if you just use the Reduce Transparency
| accessibility option. The buttons in Finder still look
| ridiculous though. Fisher-Price tier design.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| It is a gimmick, not anything users as a spectrum might find
| favorable. And the sad thing is, that Apple is the only one
| with such a laughing stock of UX/UI.
|
| I am totally annoyed by the animations in Apple Notes. The
| icons have considerable increased in size and everything
| screams what a mess to me: the shadow as part of "the
| experience", partly rounded icons which talk more space than
| rectangles, hidden functions or multi function menus.
|
| There is absolutely no spirit in this update. The animations
| show no variations, always the same most boring ones (the s
| curve in Apple Notes).
|
| Lately I found die settings menu in Safari especially
| disastrous, the tab menu icons when pressed look so
| ridiculous, I lost words.
| roughly wrote:
| > And the sad thing is, that Apple is the only one with
| such a laughing stock of UX/UI.
|
| Oh, give it time. We thought the same when they went flat,
| too.
| gumby271 wrote:
| We thought the same thing, and they made pretty
| significant changes to it based on that pushback. Also
| the flat redesign didn't have basic problems like white
| text on an white background all while Apple is saying
| they spent obscene resources on it.
| emchammer wrote:
| My macOS display is pushing megapixels and with some good
| exceptions it feels like many apps have not much more
| visible information or options than an 80x25 display. This
| is not to trash 80x25 displays which were often very well-
| designed. Some web pages only show a single paragraph at a
| time.
|
| Megapixels.
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| For those of us who want our mobile devices to just be
| there when we need it...thank god there are no new
| animations. I don't need a shot of dopamine every time I
| open the Mail app. I just want to know that I successfully
| pressed the icon. Which is what micro interactions (aka
| small animations) are for. Feedback.
|
| I hope the phone get's even more boring and uninspired next
| go around. Apple can afford to go back to the 'it just
| works' motto.
| gessha wrote:
| I walked through a tech store recently and I saw the new
| iPhones with the liquid gimmick. I opened the camera app on
| one of their pro phones and _it was lagging_. I was
| shocked, I found it mind-boggling. Brand new phone, up to
| date OS, marketing material BS and for it to lag just feels
| unprofessional. I'd understand it if it was a Pinephone or
| whatever but from Apple? My expectations are reaching lower
| and lower depths.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I'd bet you money within 5 years Apple will continue following
| Microsoft (after metro) and try "merging" macOS and iOS
| together into one OS, most likely iOS.
| 1over137 wrote:
| They are already merged really.
| NaomiLehman wrote:
| This is a good thing for the software ecosystem
| gumby271 wrote:
| I'd love to hear how
| wiseowise wrote:
| > This is a good thing for the software ecosystem
|
| That would be the case if they would expand iOS feature set
| to be closer to Mac, and not the other way around.
| vunderba wrote:
| My Mac M1 is effectively permanently locked to Sonoma, and I
| have zero intention of upgrading beyond that. I was pretty
| happy with Monterey, but eventually some apps started requiring
| Sonoma as the min requirement. :(
| paxys wrote:
| Macs make up 8% of Apple's revenue. That entire product line is
| basically a hobby compared to iPhone and its ecosystem.
| wiseowise wrote:
| That's almost 9 billion.
| api wrote:
| They're also what everyone uses to build software for the iOS
| ecosystem.
| gumby271 wrote:
| This defense feels so ridiculous every time I hear it (and
| it's almost always about Apple). People trot it out about
| Airpods too. If Apple is too big to care about this product
| line, we should be enraged, not shrugging or pointing out how
| successful they are.
| lapcat wrote:
| 1) The "0 New Features" Mac OS X 10.6.0 came 22 months after
| 10.5.0, not 12 months
|
| 2) 10.6.0 included significant under-the-hood improvements but
| also brought some truly nasty new bugs and was significantly
| buggier than 10.5.8, released a few weeks prior
|
| 3) 10.6 received 23 months of subsequent minor bug fix updates,
| up to 10.6.8 v1.1
|
| We'd need two Snow Leopards in a row just to match Snow Leopard
| purely in development time, but now there's a lot more
| preexisting technical debt built up after well over a decade of
| annual major releases.
| ValentineC wrote:
| Like every other OS with a billion parts, they fix some moving
| parts while breaking others.
|
| I was on Ventura until I very recently upgraded to Sequoia.
| Three little undocumented changes I noticed:
|
| 1) My Thunderbolt 4 NVMe enclosure was unusable in Ventura and
| would cause Finder to hang. It's usable now.
|
| 2) I could finally connect to my 6Ghz access point with my M2
| MacBook Pro.
|
| 3) I think the HDR brightness transition was also tweaked to be
| a bit less annoying.
|
| I'm skipping Tahoe because it's hot garbage, but I look forward
| to macOS 27.
| eisa01 wrote:
| I'm skipping Tahoe for now as well, but is it safe to upgrade
| my iOS devices to iOS 26? No sync issues or anything with my
| MBP?
| thr0waway001 wrote:
| Fix that freaking keyboard FFS. Seriously. How is it that almost
| 20 years later it's still one of the worst parts of the iOS
| experience.
|
| Also, ditch liquid glass on MacOS. That sh t is so Windows 7. It
| wasn't cool then and it isn't cool now. What the hell are you
| guys doing? Copying Microsoft now? It so, outdated, slow and
| twitchy, makes it hard to read. There's literally no upside to
| it. None. Zip. Nada.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Comparing that abomination to Windows 7 is an insult to Windows
| 7. Microsoft actually used to have good enough,
| usable/functional design back then.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| I bet he meant Vista.
| steve1977 wrote:
| I wish we had Windows 7 today. Either from Microsoft or Apple,
| I would buy it.
| krtkush wrote:
| They need to fix Mac OS first. It's one of the worst OS I have
| ever used - apps keep crashing, random UI/UX glitches and bad
| decisions overall.
|
| I'll probably ditch Mac if this degradation continues.
| alberth wrote:
| Are you primary using electron-based apps, or true native macOS
| apps?
|
| Maybe I'm lucky but I run macOS daily without any problems.
|
| (Yes, there's annoying fit/finish issues in the UI - but no
| issues with stability)
| frizlab wrote:
| Same here (except when switching branch in a repo with Xcode
| open...)
| krtkush wrote:
| I don't think so. There might be some, but definitely not a
| majority.
|
| My biggest complaint is with Firefox - it works fine on my
| older Mac, but crashes on Tahao and only works after a system
| restart.
| wskinner wrote:
| Yes. The impossible to disable system services (photoanalysisd
| and friends) are an abomination of software design.
| vondur wrote:
| I use MacOS daily on different machines and don't have that
| experience. I also manage many Mac's and I don't hear people
| reporting this kind of instability to me.
| tom_ wrote:
| The article says this will apply to macOS as well.
| who-shot-jr wrote:
| Would like to switch to Linux but hardware/laptop options are
| horrible compared to MacBook M series machines.
| fsflover wrote:
| Try M1 or M2 with Asahi Linux.
| piskov wrote:
| I installed omarchy, gave it couple of days.
|
| Well, I will stay on windows with wsl and macos in the
| foreseeable future.
| righthand wrote:
| Then please don't make the leap. Because beyond your specific
| hardware design requirements that are "must be a macbook" there
| is a lot more trade offs you're going to have to make. Letting
| go of your prudeness about what constitutes good and bad
| hardware should be the easiest barrier to cross.
| rjh29 wrote:
| I have used Thinkpads for over a decade and I don't feel like
| I'm missing out on anything. I can't imagine any scenario where
| a MacBook M chip would be required to be productive, it feels
| like a weird hill to die on.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Extremely noisy, flimsy keyboard, atrocious touchpad, rip-my-
| eyes out display.
| rjh29 wrote:
| ThinkPad T14s is silent, keyboard is known as one of the
| best across all laptops even if it has got thinner.
| Trackpoint is there for a reason. The display I will grant
| you, it is not as amazing as Apple's. But I'm using my
| laptop to code not watch movies.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Battery life is not remotely competitive
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Apple won't quite launch 'zero new features' like they claimed
| with OS X Snow Leopard back in 2009, however. According to
| Gurman, Apple still plans to release a number of new AI features
| with iOS 27, so the company doesn't continue to fall behind in
| the AI race._
|
| Goddamit.
|
| Zero new features is clean. It's communicable. It lets Cook, as
| he departs, harken back to quintessential Jobs. It will sell
| phones. It will sell Macs. And it implies perfection in a way
| only Apple, historically, has been able to nail and sell.
|
| Nobody is buying an incremental iPhone or Mac because Siri
| recovered from lobotomy. The decision to water down zero new
| features with a douse of Giannandrea reeks of office politics.
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| The number one priority must surely be fixing the keyboard,
| besides the horrible UX?
|
| Millions are having problems for years so it's not just me,
| honestly thought i was "getting old" but no incredible amount of
| threads and now this on YT with 1 mil views:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo
|
| Wild typing on a 3210 was less stressful for me.
| javier2 wrote:
| I thought I was just incapable of learning. I find it so
| difficult to write on my ios keyboard.
| wiseowise wrote:
| This is what 400k salary, 12 rounds of leetcode, system design
| and circus dancing interviews gets you, apparently.
| firecall wrote:
| Oh wow!
|
| I thought it was just me!
| skwee357 wrote:
| I through I'm just getting stupider and stupider with each day.
| I even started to reset my iOS keyboard autocorrect dictionary
| or whatever-magic-learning they do to fix this, but eventually
| will still mistype words.
|
| Thank you for this video, it really made me feel that I'm not
| alone in this struggle of typing.
| louthy wrote:
| Finally, confirmation that I'm not going mad! I remember when I
| got my first iPhone, back in the day, and demoing to a friend
| how it was almost impossible to misspell something when typing
| fast. That is just not the case now. Typing performance has got
| worse and worse.
|
| Just typing out this comment has been infuriating.
| MBCook wrote:
| Start by kicking out Cook, MASSIVELY toning down Liquid Glass,
| fixing the Mac to look more Mac like, and stop shoving ads in my
| face.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| I'm an outsider to the big tech companies so I don't know how it
| looks on the inside, but I have thoughts and maybe it will spur
| some discussion.
|
| I've heard it said that there is manager culture, push to ship
| new features to pad resumes, etc. So you have these teams
| building new projects/products and some of it is a miss. There's
| an escalation path from outside and inside that allows for radars
| to be filed for major issues. I remember tracking one when I got
| the original iPhone SE they had a bug in the bluetooth stack that
| made handsfree calls sound all full of static for the first
| release or two after launch. We all know bluetooth is a pain and
| they handled fixing this well. I assume logically with most
| projects you expect to field lots of bugs early on at launch and
| then you take resources off once it's been live for a bit and the
| problem reports slow down. Then it's just debt or not important
| and how does it ever get handled?
|
| With Apple, there are little ongoing bugs I would like to file, I
| have submitted on-device feedbacks before but it feels like
| sending into a black hole. Here is a simple bug, very easy to
| describe: Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Flash for Alerts
| (enable it). It flashes the camera light when you get a
| notification so you can visually see alerts while the phone is
| silent and not in a pocket. This works on its own, but if you are
| using the camera light as flashlight and people begin to message
| you, it will flash and turn the flashlight off. It should
| remember the state of the flashlight before it flashes but it
| doesn't and turns it off each time. This is not a new regression.
|
| I guess I write this comment because we have these large
| companies lots of resources, some unique divisions like Google's
| Project Zero; but are there any non-project tied teams inside
| these companies that deal specifically with 'tech debt' and
| company internal interoperability issues and can pad resumes with
| that? We knew US gov had 18F, thinking of a division that fixes
| issues between the teams that might not usually talk.
|
| The most dysfunctional large company at this time seems to be
| Microsoft and I could write a whole series on how the most basic
| things are broken (stuff like Share icon for photos only trying
| to share using Windows Mail and not Outlook). Or the fact that
| IMAP was broken on the Android Outlook client from August until
| the past week (it's almost fixed can delete mail again, just
| can't move it automatically to trash, has to be permanently
| deleted). And you just _feel_ the different divisions across
| platforms don 't talk to each other and the consumer slop is
| separate from the paying business stuff and that's split between
| the Outlook and chromium Outlook, and that's all a totally
| different thing than the Sharepoint/Teams stuff. But also the
| mandate of god says Copilot must be everywhere and if you are
| using classic outlook on monthly channel you must accept your
| lord and savior Copilot into your Outlook life and there's not a
| current way to turn it off (officially).
|
| With Apple and quality: They do appear to still be doing 'the
| good stuff under the hood' most don't pay attention to. I look at
| their iPhone Air, people confused as to who it's made for,
| fashion item or whatever I heard in another thread. But I am
| laser focused on connectivity/modem stuff, before I had the RCS
| issue the last time I walked into an Apple store was to look at
| the 16e, not to buy it (I have a 15 pro) but because I'm happy to
| see another modem vendor on the market that might know what they
| are doing. The Air is an evolution of this, it will eventually go
| into flagships when it's ready. This is the good stuff under the
| hood, besides the increased margin for Apple at not having to pay
| Qualcomm... there is room for improvement. I guess sub-6
| performance is looking much better. I know something that was
| noticed awhile back is Mediatek seems to have much better latency
| than Qualcomm modems, but they don't really have flagship modems
| in handsets in the US market, just in AP stuff like the T-Mobile
| Home Internet (where I've had units with both Qualcomm and
| Mediatek and can say the latter wins). Would really want to know
| how Apple compares to it.
| maffyoo wrote:
| my 83 year old mother was able to use (almost) all the features
| of iOS when she first got an iPhone, in 2012. It genuinely
| changed her life and meant she could participate in a world I
| dont think she ever expected to be comfortable in. She tried and
| failed to use a PC for years. Local library lessons, family time
| (and patience) etc, but she always needed support. the iPhone as
| different, it was simple to use with familiar user interactions
| with every app. Roll forwards to 2025, gradually bit by
| unnecessary bit bells, whistles and complexity has bled in from
| every angle. Last week I did a FaceTime call with her to help her
| log in to an app on her phone. She can do it fine on her iPad
| that hasn't been updated. this was like going back to her PC days
| - too complicated and giving her features she didn't ask for, or
| need.
|
| what was it Steve Jobs said?
|
| "If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a
| better copier or a better computer -- so what? When you have a
| monopoly market share, the company is not any more successful. So
| the people that can make the company more successful are sales
| and marketing people. And they end up running the companies. And
| the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums.
| And the companies forget what it means to make great products.
| Sort of the product sensibility and the product genius that
| brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by
| people running these companies who have no conception of a good
| product versus a bad product."
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Holy shit so I will have to put up with iOS 26's abysmal
| performance for almost a year? Nooo... this thing visibly and
| painfully struggles to keep up even on a brand-new iPhone 17. I
| was hoping for iOS 26 point releases fixing most of the
| garbage... sigh
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Why do they even need to release a major version every year?
| Whats the point?
|
| For the hardware, i get it, but the OS doesnt really drive sales,
| and if you have the pressure of releasing new amazing features
| every year then maintenance and bugs get left behind, and you end
| up in the situation that we have now...
| rckt wrote:
| This is amazing. Once a company that built its reputation on
| quality and performance wants to focus on that. iOS became a
| parody of itself. 26 feels like a cheap knockoff of an iOS.
| Hundreds of people get paid to enshitify experience for millions
| of users. That's incredible. And then they simply say that yeah
| you know it's time to work on quality and performance. Isn't it
| what always had to be there in the first place? Ridiculous.
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| I don't usually complain about UX issues because I'm not bothered
| by small things. I can't recall having a problem with ios before
| ios26, when the screenshot tool stopped showing the screenshot
| after you took one. Instead it would automatically save it to the
| gallery, which is not what I wanted.
|
| The workaround for this bug was to lock and unlock the screen.
| Not the worst thing, but it indicated a shocking lack of give-a-
| fuck in Cupertino. This is one of the most basic flows, which
| they shipped in a broken state.
| lossolo wrote:
| Apple hardware is great, but the software has become complete
| garbage.
|
| On my Apple Watch I have regularly occurring hiccups where the
| whole UI freezes, especially when I go into training mode to pick
| an exercise. On my iPhone, after the liquid glass update, I get a
| noticeable slowdown and stuttering FPS when moving from the
| widgets screen to the first page and in other parts of UI. I'm
| afraid to upgrade my MacBook to the new OS, so I don't.
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