appleOS 26
The public betas for Apple’s various operating systems are now out now, which will gradually make their way to many of the the 2.35 billion active iPhones, iPads, Macs and other Apple devices reports as active, starting in the Autumn.
I haven’t quite dared to try any of them in person yet, but from what I’ve observed this year’s operating system releases are generally positive.
The new Liquid Glass UI theme is a welcome change, recalling the early days of Aqua when Apple crafted inventive, whimsical interfaces. Those were certainly fun times, but it’s important to remember it was a different era and Apple had far fewer customers. Early versions of Mac OS X also ran painfully slowly in part because of their fancy user interface. I’m hoping Liquid Glass won’t suffer the same performance issues, especially on older devices. I’m also aware of the legibility issues some beta testers are reporting, but I’m confident these will be ironed out before it rolls out in September.
The AI improvements are minor and there seems to be less focus on Apple Intelligence as a brand. I’m not sure why AI needed its own brand name really. It struck me that the likley reason for this seperation was because it was built by a different team within Apple, rather than it making sense from a user’s perepctive. Some of the new AI features do look interesting however: being able to call Apple’s models from within Shortcuts, and 3rd parties being able to utlise local LLMs (thus not requriing an internet connection) is huge. The problem is that the only devices to support this are relativly recent ones: 2023’s iPhone Pro line and 2025’s iPhone lineup. Even the base iPad which you can buy brand new from Apple today does not support local AI models. This means most apps will either have to make their AI powered features optional, ensure there is a server-side backup in place, or restrict their market to those on the latest devices. Since many apps are cross platform anyway, I think most developers will go with option 1 or 2.
The iPad has received the most substantial update, with full windowing support now available. I have no complaints about this, and can’t wait to try it out. I was particularly pleased to see that it will work even on the iPad mini and the 2020 iPad Air. While many people will now finally be able to harness the device’s powerful hardware, I still think the iPad’s biggest drawback is that it can only run software from the App Store. There are so many great apps like Visual Studio Code and Chrome that are not there for commercial or Apple’s policy reasons.
The fact that windowing is not available on the iPhone is also curious. When Apple split iOS and iPadOS into separate brands a few years ago, the reaction was mostly positive; finally, the iPad was getting the attention it deserved. But thinking about it now, I have to wonder if the reason was to reduce any expectation that features added to the iPad would also appear on the iPhone. At this point, with Apple Silicon, Apple is essentially selling its customers the same computer three or four times with only minor differences. They have different-sized screens, some have a keyboard attached and others rely on a touchscreen. Some have a better camera, and built in cellular. The core of the devices, even the operating system, near enough identical. if you own a recent iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch – you’ve bought the same computer multiple times. The iPhone’s Apple A18 chip has a similar level of performance to the Mac’s M1 chip, which is still a ridiulasly fast chip. There is no reason why an iPhone could not become a laptop or full desktop simply by plugging it into the a keyboard and monitor. In decades past, mobile phones lagged far behind desktop PCs in terms of performance, but today most people could use their phone as a desktop PC or laptop: the chip is powerful enough and there is ample memory. What’s holding this back is not the “free market” or a lack of demand, but, I suspect, Apple’s preference to continue selling us multiple devices. In this respect, the distinction between device classes is more a marketing one than a technical one.
Overall, I think the ’26 releases should be exciting, even if I wish Apple would embrace change product category perspective a bit more. Would today’s Apple of 2025 have released the iPhone in 2007 when the iPod was still king? I’m not so sure.