Yikes! 18 to 26??? Seriously?

[dreamshark]

Do you have an iPhone?  I do, and have just been compliantly updating my IOS as recommended for the past year or so. Another recommended update rolled out today - and it updated me from IOS 18.something to 26.1!!  What have I missed?

Apparently this is the big one everybody has been waiting for with bated breath - the Liquid Glass Update. Also the "Apple Intelligence" nonsense, but I don't care about that because it doesn't run on iPhone 13. It looks like they have mashed up the User Interface majorly (boo!) but also introduced an infinitude of opportunities for fiddling with your lock screen and wallpaper options, which I admit that I am powerless to resist. 

My iPhone just emerged from a very long update with a cheery Hello! and is sitting there simmering, waiting for me to try to use it. *ulp*   

If you just upgraded your iPhone, let me know what you found - the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

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ETA:  Huh. Changes aren't as big as I expected. I think I actually like the tweaks to the camera and Photos interfaces. The 3D lock screens look cool, but setting home screen wallpaper seems to be broken, so that's kind of a wash. There are apparently sweeping changes to Messages, none of which I understand how to use, but plain old text messages look fine. There's some kind of intrusive new Games App, which seems to be obsessed with tracking every game ever downloaded with my AppleID (90% of which are obsolete toddler games that I was loading onto an old iPad). Disturbingly intrusive and completely useless to me, but at least it's removable (unlike the old Game Center). I'm not sure I even understand what Liquid Glass is, but I don't see much difference anywhere.

Comments

[redbird]

So far, I am relieved that they didn't sneakily turn on "talk to Siri"; I don't think I like the changes to the clock's alarm feature, which made it easier to snooze the alarm, but harder to turn it off); and I think I like "require attention for FaceID" and the fact that it was defaulted to "yes."

[ckd]

Apple raised all their OS version numbers to 26 to get them synced up and on a "year" basis; since releases are in the fall, they're numbered with the following year where the majority of their time as the "current version" will take place. It's really iOS 19 in that sense.

I turned on Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Increase Contrast, which I found made things look better to me. I don't know if the 13 does less of the transparency and layering than the more recent phones like my 15 Pro, so this may not matter as much for you.

[carbonel]

Huh backatcha. My iPhone (3rd gen SE) is indeed at 26.1. but I didn't notice any difference at all. I even missed the upgrade notice this time around. Possibly because my phone is too old for the fancy new features?

[dreamshark]

Certainly too old for the Apple Intelligence stuff (as is mine). But Liquid Glass is not hardware dependent, so if you have anything remotely interesting on your lock screen it should look a little different now. At the very least the digital time display should have a fluid, glassy look. And if you have a photo on your lock screen, be sure to turn on the 3D Spatial effect. It's the new hexagon shaped icon on the customization screen. If you're into that kind of thing you can easily kill a whole day playing with the lock screens. If you want to avoid a proliferation of alternate lock screens, try creating just one with picture shuffle, set to change every time you tap it.