I am refusing to upgrade to Tahoe or iOS 26

519 words, 3 minutes.

I don’t mind admitting, I am an unashamed Apple fan. Having bought my first iPod in 2003, followed in early 2004 with my first Mac. I’ve been using macOS as my ‘daily driver’ ever since.

But with iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, I’ve become quite disillusioned with Apple’s approach to OS ‘improvements’. There was nothing better over iOS 17 nor over Sonoma. Adding nonsense like ‘Image Playground’ and the utter dog’s dinner that is the Photos app are not my idea of improvements. Siri seems to get worse over time, and Apple Intelligence got turned off almost immediately.

Now they’ve really jumped the shark¹.

The Liquid Glass UI is a mess, especially on Tahoe. With some positively amateur UX mistakes like not being able to grab the corners of a window to resize it 🤦‍♂️

Unfortunately, my wife’s phone automatically upgraded to iOS 26. Here’s one example of terrible user experience, in the camera app.

On iOS 18 it’s clear to see that one ‘rotates’ the mode selector — the other modes fade off to the sides, as if one is looking at a rounded control, side on.

On iOS 26 the signifier suggests there are only two modes, yet in actual fact the ‘rotate’ behaviour is the same. Your automatic reaction is likely to be to press each option, and wonder where the heck the portrait mode and other options went.

What were they thinking? How did this stuff get out of the door?

They can put the annoying little red dot on system settings all they like, but I am not upgrading. And I wish they’d stop pushing Apple News. It’s junk, I don’t want it.

In fact, this is pushing me to find alternatives to everything iCloud, to prepare for the day they make everything bad enough for me to ditch 20 years of Apple use for alternatives.

The thing is, all of this just makes me sad, not angry. Apple used to be more or less the only player in an increasingly rubbish tech industry who used design as a discipline to produce better software. In a world where other software companies thought it sensible to scroll content by pulling the bar down, versus scrolling the actual content, Apple has generally got UX right (let’s ignore the terrible magic mouse design problem)

When long-term Apple fan journalists are refusing to upgrade too, Apple should be seriously taking notice.

I joked last week that it would make more sense if we found out that the team behind redesigning the UI for MacOS 26 Tahoe was hired by Meta not a month ago, but an entire year ago, and secretly sabotaged their work to make the Mac look clownish and amateur. More and more I’m wondering if the joke’s on us and it actually happened that way. It’s like MacOS, once the crown jewel of computer human interface design, has been vandalized.

Biting.

UPDATE 11-Feb-26: It looks like some clever folks have identified ways to stop macOS nagging to upgrade. I’ve just run this, and it works a treat.