For me, Safari sometimes randomly refuses to execute the search for the terms I entered: at that point I need to bring the search bar back up -> search terms are gone -> x -> bring search bar back up -> search terms are back there -> enter
I wish they stopped adding features, especially useless UI “improvements” and AI stuff nobody asks for, and focused on making the system rock solid as we’re used to.
There are so many obvious bugs in recent iOS. My favorite is the one where the carrier / wifi / clock / battery "status line" will blur to unreadability, and then ... never unblur. Kill apps, lock and unlock phone, change status line settings (like "show battery percentage")... Nope. Need to reboot the device.
Ever since switching to iOS 26, on an iPhone 16 Pro that is now only ~14 months old:
- The iPhone lockscreen does not consistently swipe away after unlocking. It just keeps stuck.
- The iphone no longer automatically connects to my Apple TV. The remote takes a second to load, and this happens each time I navigate back to the TV remote app.
- Alarms and timers do not work. I have had to set up a separate physical alarm.
- Podcasts keep crashing, and resetting to 1x speed.
- Internet connection completely drops, and only recovers once I completely reboot my phone.
- My phone starts to overheat with no discernible cause. I sometimes wake up with my phone so hot that it's almost painful.
- Once, while charging, my phone dropped to 16% battery from 85%. According to the Battery Usage chart, the Weather app (which I had not opened) used 83% of the battery in the background.
This is on top of the completely ruined, battery-killing interface.
These are all problems that cropped up since iOS 26. I had a few complaints about rough edges or missing features in iOS, but this is honestly mind boggling. Software engineering is very hard, but Apple seemed to have had a decent system.
Recently, a mandatory iOS 26.2 update hit and I had numerous messages from non-techie friends about it (who I believe had it installed over iOS 18).
There must be deep systemic problems at Apple that allowed them to destroy so much so quickly. I just hope it's not decades before we can read about the 2020s in a memoir or book.
There's no secret. This is how every single corporation operates these days. Employees chase and managers reward KPIs, real value be damned. The new game is do only what makes you look good. Anything else, bugs and all, can be a "fast follow" after shipping, which of course everyone knows is a thinly veiled way to make sure you never have to do said thing. "Promotion driven development" is real.
It's the countless little things. Like my iPhone stops playing any kind of audio if I plug it in with one charging cable but not the other. I get reminded about calendar events AFTER the event. The quality control is embarrassingly bad.
Yes, they ruined my 16e. Picking up a $400 pixel today and slapping GrapheneOS on it because the duopoly of phone software is horrific. Bugs vs spyware.
Today I'm trying my best no to scream at someone because we have a logging function (yep, a custom log function) that is writing to a file. The logging function open and closes the file on each call.
