Apple swore that iOS 26’s new “Liquid Glass” design would refract light, blur backgrounds, and unify the look of every iPhone, iPad, and CarPlay dashboard—but after just a week with the developer beta, critics are already calling it the boldest mis-step since the flat-icon revolt of iOS 7. Reviewers at The Verge love the shimmering depth yet slam the Control Center for feeling like a chaotic sticker-pack slapped over your wallpaper, making sliders and toggles “almost unusable.” Over on MacRumors’ beta threads, veteran testers brand the glassy overlay “rough,” begging Apple for an opacity slider before launch. Even notification banners—now neon outlines floating in translucent fog—vanish completely on bright lock-screen images, a readability fail TechCrunch calls “too hard to read… even in Apple’s own promo shots.”
Apple crams six different app icons into one mushy ‘Morning Summary’ blob, then blurs it into oblivion. It’s like a smoothie of dopamine hits—Instagram pulp, Pinterest sprinkles—served in a fogged-up mason jar you can barely see through.
Credit: @merterdir
Icon Intensity: -90 % – Icons fade harder than Snap streaks after finals week.
Usability? Ghosted. Literally—you can see straight through to the wallpaper, but not to the app you need.
Retro-Future Mish-Mash: Left side screams 2025 minimalism; right side screams “found on Pinterest, 2009.”Somehow Apple merged both and skipped the part where you can actually tap things accurately.
Early testers say iOS 26 looks like a futuristic art-project … and handles like one, too.
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