Phone Updates Used to Be Annoying. The Latest iOS Is Awful

I come from a long line of Luddites. My grandmother special-ordered her Toyota Camry with crank windows because she was convinced it was “one less thing that will break.” My father refused to upgrade our six-CD stereo system even though the eject button wouldn’t open and it could only play the first CD he ever put in it. The Traveling Wilburys Vol.1 was the soundtrack to our family dinners for a decade. As for myself, I only switched to a smartphone in 2013, when it would’ve cost about the same amount to repair my flip phone.

Now I am the same as anyone reading this. My phone is my toy and my toil, the first object I touch upon waking, the spackle to my spare minutes, the inanimate partner in our shared lie, which is that it works for me and not the other way around. Mostly, I accept this. But with the latest iOS, released last week, revolt is in the air.

Tech companies are accustomed to a certain amount of kicking and screaming after foisting new interfaces on the public. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, especially when “all of the people” is in the billions. But ask your friends—or Google or Reddit or Bluesky or ChatGPT—about the operating system update, and you will be swept away in a river of anger. “This is like foundationally bad,” author and musician John Darnielle replied on Bluesky to someone who agreed with his original tweet (about the poor photo-cropping function). One Reddit thread was posted under the headline “New iPhone update made me so overwhelmed, I ended up throwing my phone.” The subsequent post does not specify where the phone was thrown or at whom, but I have some suggestions. One wonders at what point a company’s petrification of obsolescence risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ask yourself: Is this good for the phones? Normally, I’d be curious about the hissy-fit metrics inside Silicon Valley, about when public upset gets severe enough to become private data. But right now, I have my own problems.

I downloaded Apple’s new iOS 26.2 last week because I am a trained circus seal who will press any button presented to me. I came home late from a holiday party, agreed to the latest iOS almost by accident, and woke up to a new world. There’s something very A Thief in the Night about any new operating system, but in this case, the complaints, some witnessed, some personally experienced, are intense. Here is a partial list: the slow speed (every action takes twice as long), the animation of text bubbles, the incongruous mix of sensitivity and imperviousness to touch, the swipes to nowhere, the difficulty posting downloaded photos, the fact that almost nothing is where you left it (search fields, files), the unsolicited status sharing regarding dwindling battery life (“24m to 80%”), the lack of visual contrast, the screenshot fussiness, the requirement that users drive up to a mansion on Long Island and whisper “Fidelio” in order to toggle off the “Liquid Glass” function. You have to admit: It’s a little funny to get a transparency feature from a tech company.

Given my history, I tend to assume most technological snafus are my doing. I’ve tried to wind back what aspects of this iOS I can, assuming the veil of frustration will lift eventually. Ideally, I will not have to mentally downgrade this pricy device to a flip-phone. But in the meantime, the widespread nature of other people’s indignation has given me a perverse sense of community.

Take this battery-life business. I work from home, a privileged charging position. Yet I too have noticed my battery leveling threats. The iOS seems self-aware: The lock screen photo now fades by default, in order to save power. You have to do some toggling if you want to gaze at your kids with the instantaneousness to which you are accustomed. Also, like all of Reddit, I do not take kindly to the idea that the solution to my woes is to turn off my device and turn it back on (have you tried looking for your shoes in the closet?). Or that I should check my storage. Ha! I have a year-old phone with enough storage to choke a horse. This is not because I’m directing independent films. It’s because I like my photos and text exchanges where I like my martinis: in my hand. I’m a writer. Two of my favorite things in this world are transcripts and being right, on the spot.

Alas, my trusty research assistant doesn’t feel so trusty right now. The new iOS is like getting a present from the relative who knows you the least. Except worse because your phone knows you quite well. So when it presents you with the touchscreen version of an ill-fitting, bug-ridden, ugly sweater and says, “I saw this and thought of you,” it creates revulsion and frustration. People don’t enjoy forking over data and dollars in exchange for annoyance, in exchange for having to sound, well, like Luddites.

Historically, Luddites were 19th-century textile workers who eschewed new machinery (partially for financial reasons), thus becoming symbolic of impotent resistance to progress. But is this progress? It doesn’t feel like it. Believe me, there’s no glory in identifying as inept. The modern Luddite is just as impatient as the rest of the population, just as concerned with wanting things to work well or, yes, better. Which makes me think twice about my grandmother and her car. I’m pretty sure the woman knew how to press a button. She didn’t special-order crank windows because it was one less learning curve for her, she ordered them because it was one less learning curve for the machine. She would’ve gone with whatever was sure to work. All she wanted was for the fucking windows to open.

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