Apple Ships iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe 26 With 'Liquid Glass' UI Overhaul (apple.com) 33
Apple released iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and macOS Tahoe 26 today, introducing Liquid Glass, a translucent design language that represents the biggest visual redesign since iOS 7 in 2013. The new interface elements dynamically refract and reflect background content across all three platforms. iOS 26 requires iPhone 11 or later and second-generation iPhone SE or newer. iPadOS 26 runs on the same hardware as iPadOS 18 except the 7th-generation iPad. macOS Tahoe 26 supports all Apple silicon Macs, the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro, 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro, 2020 and later iMac, and 2019 and later Mac Pro. The transparent menu bar on macOS increases perceived display size.
iOS 26's adaptive Lock Screen time display resizes around notifications and Live Activities. Desktop icons, folders, app icons and widgets support light, dark, tinted, and clear appearances across all systems. iOS 26 adds Visual Intelligence for on-screen content analysis through screenshot button combinations. Live Translation operates across Messages, FaceTime and Phone on all platforms, translating text and audio in real-time on-device. The Camera app received streamlined navigation and lens cleaning hints for iPhone 15 and later models.
iPadOS 26 brings Mac-style windowing and multitasking. Apps support free-form placement and menu bars. The Phone app and new Apple Games app arrived on iPad. macOS gained the Phone app through Continuity, including Call Screening and Hold Assist features. Spotlight executes hundreds of actions without opening applications and automatically assigns quick keys to frequent actions. Apple Intelligence expands across all systems. The Shortcuts app gained intelligent actions for text summarization and image generation. The Wallet app tracks orders across platforms, while Apple Music introduced AutoMix for song transitions.
iOS 26's adaptive Lock Screen time display resizes around notifications and Live Activities. Desktop icons, folders, app icons and widgets support light, dark, tinted, and clear appearances across all systems. iOS 26 adds Visual Intelligence for on-screen content analysis through screenshot button combinations. Live Translation operates across Messages, FaceTime and Phone on all platforms, translating text and audio in real-time on-device. The Camera app received streamlined navigation and lens cleaning hints for iPhone 15 and later models.
iPadOS 26 brings Mac-style windowing and multitasking. Apps support free-form placement and menu bars. The Phone app and new Apple Games app arrived on iPad. macOS gained the Phone app through Continuity, including Call Screening and Hold Assist features. Spotlight executes hundreds of actions without opening applications and automatically assigns quick keys to frequent actions. Apple Intelligence expands across all systems. The Shortcuts app gained intelligent actions for text summarization and image generation. The Wallet app tracks orders across platforms, while Apple Music introduced AutoMix for song transitions.
glass, flat round square (Score:1)
Can we just stop changing icon and glass and round and flat evry few years and calling it new and better.
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I mean just make a form with sliders and we decided what we want.
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Can we just stop changing icon and glass and round and flat every few years and calling it new and better.
Also, switching from iPadOS 18 to 26 just felt odd. I know they changed their version style, but it seems unnecessary. So it fits in well with the UI flip-flop.
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Can we just stop changing icon and glass and round and flat evry few years and calling it new and better.
I don’t find liquid glass better (although the iPadOS 26 windowing system is much better), but it isn’t exactly like Apple does this every year, or two, or even three or five. They ran with skodomorphic for 7 iOS versions, then with the flat look for 9 versions. I think we are stuck with liquid glass for around a decade now.
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see i love the flat square UI that's why we just need some buttons and sliders. every body like some a little different.
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see i love the flat square UI
You might consider pinging Redmond to tell them this, I'm sure they'll be thrilled to find out there's at least one person who likes that UI.
New and exciting UI (Score:2)
This is almost as exciting as when Apple added cut and paste to the UI, after telling us it would be impossible to add when the iPhone was released, they pulled off a miracle only a year later.
Re:New and exciting UI -- Troll better. (Score:2)
This is almost as exciting as when Apple added cut and paste to the UI, after telling us it would be impossible to add when the iPhone was released, they pulled off a miracle only a year later.
No, Apple did not say that copy and paste was impossible to add to the iPhone. In fact, they announced the addition of this feature in 2009, which was highly requested by users. Troll better next time.
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"... they announced the addition of this feature in 2009..."
Yeah, a year later.
Other "highly requested" features added after the iPhone was introduced? MMS LOL
Steve Jobs instructed internal development to not support text messaging, since everyone uses email. Fortunately, he was saved from that particular humiliation. It's really a miracle that Apple succeeded at anything considering Jobs's incompetence and sociopathy.
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And don't forget about 3rd party apps, which Apple explained couldn't be allowed on a phone because of security issues that could expose the cellular network. That took two years, though. Funny how everyone else could allow 3rd party apps...because cellular functions are firewalled in hardware and those risks do not exist.
Fortunately, Apple provided "web apps" that looked like native apps, allegedly, and we all know how good Apple's web browser was at the time since they would not support Flash.
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That isn't necessarily true. A lot of lower-end phones ran the cellular stack on the same CPU as the phone UI and lacked a full memory management unit. Qualcomm BREW phones still managed to have third-party apps with that kind of setup. It was true for the iPhone, though.
Just installed Sequoia (Score:3)
I depend on FireWire audio interfaces, so everything from Tahoe on is dead to me for the foreseeable future.
My problem is that I don't do audio recording often enough to justify spending the thousands of dollars it would cost to buy all new hardware, but I do it often enough that I can't upgrade my operating system and lose the capability. It's that really annoying middle ground that Apple really doesn't support well, though to be fair, I've gotten thirteen years out of it after Apple stopped shipping built-in FireWire ports, so I guess that's not too horrible. :-)
I tried getting off of FireWire a long time ago, precisely because I suspected that this would eventually happen. But to keep costs down, my plan was to buy a MOTU LP32 ADAT-to-AVB bridge so that I could keep using 16 inputs from my existing interfaces and supplement that with a MOTU Stage-B16. The problem is, the LP32 has been on permanent back-order for about two years now, with no sign of things improving.
I'm also a late adopter after lots of bad experiences, so I just downloaded Sequoia so that at least I won't be stuck on Sonoma forever. I'm hoping that by the time they stop shipping security updates for Sequoia, either MOTU will have the LP32 available again, someone will have figured out a way to get IOFireWireFamily to build and run on later OSes, or I will have found some other low-cost solution for a large number of inputs. Not holding my breath, though, on any of the above.
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OWC makes a Thunderbolt 3 dock that has a FW800 port, that might do the job for you. Although avoiding Liquid Gas is probably a sound decision anyway.
Getting Thunderbolt ports isn't the problem; Apple's Thunderbolt-to-FireWire hardware does that, too. Without FireWire device family support in the kernel, FireWire hardware can't be used, period.
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Could you hook the hardware up to a Linux system and then get that data to your applications some other way? Looks like Linux still has firewire support, and you can connect to pipewire with ffado [pipewire.org].
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Could you hook the hardware up to a Linux system and then get that data to your applications some other way? Looks like Linux still has firewire support, and you can connect to pipewire with ffado [pipewire.org].
Ostensibly, yes, I could. I could even use an ancient Mac Mini with a built-in FireWire port to do that. But at some point, the level of hackiness becomes high enough that you're spending all your time dealing with things not working, and that's almost worse than it not working at all. :-)
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What model of mac do you have ? I doubt any mac models with firewire ports are supported by tahoe.
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What model of mac do you have ? I doubt any mac models with firewire ports are supported by tahoe.
M1 Max MacBook Pro. The setup involves a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter chained to a Thunderbolt 2 to FireWire 800 adapter, which in turn is chained to a FireWire 800 to 400 adapter, which is then connected by a cable to the device. It's dongles all the way down.
If it didn't work they wouldn't do it (Score:3)
The fresh coat of paint works on people even if it's just a rehash from the past. You see the new UI on a shiny Mac in the store or you boot up your PC and it looks different after the upgrade and you feel "oh wow, shiny, things are different".
We're fickle and if they don't people will switch to something else shinier.
How many people used the XP ugly blue UI even when that was a literal skin over the same Win95 UI and functionally was worse in every way?
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How many people used the XP ugly blue UI even when that was a literal skin over the same Win95 UI and functionally was worse in every way?
What was functionally worse about the XP fisher-price skin? It didn't change any behavior, only appearance.
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It ate more screen pixels in a time when display real estate was limited for no functional improvement. It just looked "nicer", at least to me was why I immediately always set it to classic.
Hello Vista! (Score:4, Funny)
Battery (Score:2)
"introducing Liquid Glass"
Great. More shiny sh*t to run down my battery.
Already made my life better. (Score:2)
Wrong build (Score:1)
Looks like they shipped with the UI that a designer proposed as a joke. I'm not laughing.
What, no new Emojis (Score:2)
Just finished the Tahoe upgrade (Score:2)
I just completed the update for macOS, the UI change isn't nearly as jarring as I was led to believe. The added borderlines for some of the monotoned apps (like Messages) are actually a good touch.
I'll save the phone upgrade for later...
WTF happened to ios 19-25? (Score:2)
I think that I am running ios18.x now on my phone.
We're going straight to 26 now?
Fuck it, we're doing five blades!