{"id":198659,"date":"2025-12-18T17:16:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T17:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/198659\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T17:16:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T17:16:15","slug":"phone-updates-used-to-be-annoying-ios-26-is-awful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/198659\/","title":{"rendered":"Phone Updates Used to Be Annoying. iOS 26 Is Awful"},"content":{"rendered":"

I come from a long line of Luddites. My grandmother special-ordered her Toyota Camry with crank windows because she was convinced it was \u201cone less thing that will break.\u201d My father refused to upgrade our six-CD stereo system even though the eject button wouldn\u2019t 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\u2019ve cost about the same amount to repair my flip phone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> update, released last week, revolt is in the air.<\/p>\n

I came home late from a holiday party, agreed to the latest iOS almost by accident, and woke up to a new world.<\/p>\n

Tech companies<\/a> are accustomed to a certain amount of kicking and screaming after foisting new interfaces on the public. You can\u2019t please all of the people all of the time, especially when \u201call of the people\u201d is in the billions. But ask your friends\u2014or Google or Reddit<\/a> or Bluesky<\/a> or ChatGPT\u2014about the operating system update, and you will be swept away in a river of anger. \u201cThis is like foundationally bad,\u201d author and musician John Darnielle replied on Bluesky<\/a> to someone who agreed with his original tweet (about the poor photo-cropping function). One Reddit thread<\/a> was posted under the headline \u201cNew iPhone update made me so overwhelmed, I ended up throwing my phone.\u201d 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\u2019s petrification of obsolescence risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ask yourself: Is this good for the phones? Normally, I\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n

I downloaded Apple\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 (\u201c24m to 80%\u201d), the lack of visual contrast, the screenshot fussiness, the requirement that users drive up to a mansion on Long Island and whisper \u201cFidelio\u201d in order to toggle off the \u201cLiquid Glass\u201d function. You have to admit: It\u2019s a little funny to get a transparency feature from a tech company.<\/p>\n

Given my history, I tend to assume most technological snafus are my doing. I\u2019ve 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\u2019s indignation has given me a perverse sense of community.<\/p>\n

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\u2019m directing independent films. It\u2019s because I like my photos and text exchanges where I like my martinis: in my hand. I\u2019m a writer. Two of my favorite things in this world are transcripts and being right, on the spot.<\/p>\n

You have to admit: It\u2019s a little funny to get a transparency feature from a tech company.<\/p>\n

Alas, my trusty research assistant doesn\u2019t 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, \u201cI saw this and thought of you,\u201d it creates revulsion and frustration. People don\u2019t enjoy forking over data and dollars in exchange for annoyance, in exchange for having to sound, well, like Luddites.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t feel like it. Believe me, there\u2019s 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\u2019m pretty sure the woman knew how to press a button. She didn\u2019t 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\u2019ve gone with whatever was sure to work. All she wanted was for the fucking windows to open.<\/p>\n

What Say You?
Let us know what you think about this article in the comments below. Alternatively, you can submit a letter to the editor at mail@wired.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I come from a long line of Luddites. My grandmother special-ordered her Toyota Camry with crank windows because…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[936,61,6931,4178,60,35376,12558,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-198659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-apple","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ios","11":"tag-iphone","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-longreads","14":"tag-phone","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}