"100% usable" is an exaggeration that doesn't describe Apple's Liquid Glass. iOS 26 is still very rough and it's still not in a release-appropriate state.
Just for one instance, bug I ran into a few hours ago (persisting in 26.3!) is that, sometimes, you can't even open the lock screen. It just wiggles.
The performance continues to be very poor, rendering far below the 120fps target that iOS 18 hit consistently. This persists with 26.3.
It’s been fine for me, I have been running since 26 beta 2 on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I have noticed zero bugs, it’s been perfectly usable with only two design decisions that I dislike, but are minor.
On Mac, the corner handle grab change was a miss but doesn’t affect me much because I don’t do much window resizing.
On my iPad, the fly in and fly out animation for the App Library doesn’t necessarily follow your swipe direction.
I’ve never seen a lock screen wiggle, my guess that might be related to debris or finger moisture more than the OS
There are 10 iPhones in my immediate family orbit, all running 26 (Including an iPhone 12 Pro). Users ranging from their early teens to 90 and I am the one they call when there is any tech issues.
No one is complaining. Not too bad for an inconsistent and broken release.
That is nice for your family, but we have opposite experiences, my anecdata is just the opposite. Plenty of people are complaining. It's not always the most salient topic given current events (I'm in the United States) but it's just kind of like when Windows 11 or Windows 8 released.
> Just for one instance, bug I ran into a few hours ago (persisting in 26.3!) is that, sometimes, you can't even open the lock screen. It just wiggles.
Even if true, which I haven't experienced, that doesn't sound like a problem with glass.
> The performance continues to be very poor, rendering far below the 120fps target that iOS 18 hit consistently. This persists with 26.3.
Do you realize how tiny of a minority you are in to complain about this, much less even notice it?
It is true, and it's a problem that only started with iOS 26.
I'm not in a minority, this is something that's a new and common complaint among iPhone users. The performance of iOS 26 is very bad.
Look at the huge recent spike in "iPhone battery problems" in Google Trends shortly after iOS 26 released, hitting its highest-ever in January 2026. The last peak was in 2011.
> I'm not in a minority, this is something that's a new and common complaint among iPhone users.
This statement lacks perspective. Currently, there are 1.6 billion iphone users worldwide. People who make any complaints about iphone are already in a tiny minority.
Remember in the past, Apple got away with purposely slowing down old models with very little backlash. I dont know, maybe they still do that. So saying "its a common complaint" is completely missing the forest for the trees.
It's about 60% as usable. Weird and distracting jiggling makes it hard to target where the button will be.
Also the placement of buttons and functionality is completely scattered around the UIs, which severely reduces usability. What do all the mystery meat buttons do now? One has to relearn all the UX. There's a ton of improvement needed, it's about first-draft level quality.
Dark mode UI elements are almost invisible too, frequently.
It has a "my first redesign project" feel everywhere. On macOS I upgraded right away and it was a huge downgrade on performance. On iPhone I waited until 26.2, and merely had to suffer far lower usability.
That's a great question to a very vague subjective estimate! To me it means that about 60% of the interactions are as usable as the prior version. About 40% of actions I undertake on my phone cause a visceral "ugh this sucks now" reaction.
I find some parts of Liquid Glass to be an improvement over the previous flat style that lasted far too long. A lot of it seems really well thought out.
On mobile that is.
On larger screens with desktops and overlapping windows it looks kind of bad. Not unusable, just annoying. I am hoping this will change as more apps update their design.
Indeed, based on all the “look at that, you can’t even read xyz” screenshots around release time I thought it will be really bad. Upgraded and…it’s fine. After a week you don’t notice anything and the old OS will look dated. Just like every design change and any product that causes a lot of noise in the first week.
Performance of iOS 26 on some iPhones isn't great. Sure, a lot of people complain because they don't like change, but we shouldn't ignore the performance issues and poor legibility on some elements. Those are valid complaints.
Agreed that there are more rough edges on Mac, but even then, I've been using Tahoe for months now and it's been fine. I hear podcasters saying that they're just skipping the entire Tahoe cycle and waiting until this fall's OS and I just don't get it.
It’s been perfectly fine for me too. I don’t understand the folks tossing it so much hate…I have to think for them it’s more about subjective style complaint than objective complaints. Operationally my Mac experience hasn’t changed.
Within an hour of using it, I honestly stopped noticing the differences.
I am a newer iPhone user (2 years now) and I am of the same opinion as you. I see so many people crying foul, that their phone is now unusable, but I’m just hear going “eh it’s uglier” and continuing. Curious what OP thinks is fundamentally broken.
Now I have heard about issues on MacOS and things but not really anything around the phone.
Something I've heard from someone that owns an iPhone 16 Pro is that animations are (were?) laggy sometimes. I was also looking at some pictures on an iPhone the other day (unsure about the model, maybe 14?) and it felt like it was dropping some frames while switching apps.
So while it may not be fundamentally broken, it's the type of stuff that would annoy me a lot if I used an iPhone. I never expect to go from a smooth experience to a low-end Android phone experience after a software update.
MacOS... I've avoided upgrading my M4 Max MBP so far after upgrading the M1 Air we have at home. It's just not as smooth as before, even with reduced transparency.
