I found this to be a very odd and strange rant. The author's three issues with Apple are:
1. Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
2. mac OS26. I totally agree that this is a total fiasco from a design perspective, and liquid glass is unqualified shit. Still, I see Apple at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye.
3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law. I've seen a lot more missives arguing against requiring things like driver's licenses and other government ID, and so it seems like Apple is at least trying to go the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
To emphasize, I'm not apologizing for Apple here. In particular, much has been written about how Apple has lost their way regarding the "it just works" philosophy. But it seems like the author's main beef is against Apple's level of control, and this is just a fundamental difference in Apple's stance that has existed for about 2 decades.
Author here. Thanks for engaging is such gentle way, this is rare these days. Let me address some of your comments and maybe you'll understand my position a bit better even if you don't agree.
> 1.Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog. I wish that apps that went through notarisation would simply run like the ones from the app store without a dialog showing.
> 3. (...) the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
But not everyone has a credit card. Those are not something you're born with or required to have or even required to have them issued from the same country you're living in. That is not the least restrictive, that is a very large assumption. What I would have liked to have seen is them providing you with options: "do you want to use credit card verification? National ID? Passport? Credit check? Etc" and then it is up to each user to decide on their risk profile and what they are okay with.
As of now, my only way to verify it is by literally ordering a credit card from my UK bank when I'm pretty happy with my debit cards already.
I am in the same situation. French citizen living in the UK. I never owned a credit card and I have no use for it.
I can't pass the age-verification. I am 49.
This alone is quite irritating, but the overall developer-hostility of Apple and the quality drift of their software is convincing me to never buy an iOS device again.
And I'll probably not release any software on their platforms either.
French-US citizen living in the UK as well. I am not experiencing this because I refuse to install iOS 26 on my iPhone, and like the OP I am transitioning away from Apple to Linux + GrapheneOS, and about 90% of the way there since I started 6 months ago.
> Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog.
Notarisation is just proof that the app went through an automated malware scan.
Windows, Mac, and Android have all adopted measures intended to warn and attempt to protect users from malware.
As far as age verification goes, this is a restriction being forced on companies by governments.
Apple previously allowed parents to set age restrictions on their children, or not, as they saw fit.
You have to pay apple 150$ annually for the pleasure of notarisation, even if you make open-source apps. Yet you cannot distribute apps outside store on mobile (besides in eu, but not really, but is't topic on its own…).
that's the thing, it is not an option. The only option is credit card, that is what drove me nuts. If it had other options, it would still be bad, but I'd have a way to solve it even if made me angry. Now, the only way to solve this is literally to order a credit card from my bank and then use it. Which is bonkers.
I haven't tested this myself, but verifying with a driver's license should be supported [1]. Anecdotally, I've heard you have to fail the automatic Apple Wallet credit card verification, get to the screen where you're asked to input a credit card manually, and there should be something hidden in a corner that you can click to verify by uploading an ID.
It’s definitely an option in the UK, as I’ve just used it, though it’s not particularly prominent.
If you choose the option to verify with a credit card and scroll down the form, there’s an option to verify another way, which allows you to use your driving license.
> As of now, my only way to verify it is by literally ordering a credit card from my UK bank when I'm pretty happy with my debit cards already.
This is not true. On the screen where it wants you to scan a credit card, tap “Enter details manually”. Scroll down. Tap “Try other methods”. And there, you’ll be offered to scan an ID or your driver’s license.
If you can use a debit card to buy stuff online, then it’s probably a visa or Mastercard, which would qualify as a “credit card” for identity verification.
Before people in other countries started popularizing the term “debit card”, most of my visa and Mastercards were hooked up to take money direct from my bank account, but they were still called credit cards.
I thought it was amusing that you said Apple was a "stupid American company with American values", even though you're actually complaining about a UK law. You do know this isn't a thing in the US, right? Just your country?
you might not be aware, but UK law doesn't actually require Apple to do it. It is targetted at social networks. Even ofcom posted praising Apple for doing it even if they didn't need to. And yes, that law is stupid, but allowing only credit cards as a way to verify an account is also stupid.
Apple has shown a warning on downloaded-from-the-internet apps since Mac OS X Tiger. That's the only reason it's being shown, there is no scary warning that users need to step-through in some basement in System Settings as they would for a non-notarized app. The popup even says "Apple has checked this application for malware". It is the smallest of friction present to get apps to run, as I'd argue that the sandboxing requirement for App Store apps and the need for a sign-in make the App Store a worse experience.
And I say this as someone more or less utterly in the same boat as you. I bought a used Thinkpad last June after seeing the first Tahoe beta. It's clear Apple is not the platform for us anymore.
I don't like the App Store experience and sandboxing either. I just find it almost malicious that they added that dialog even for notarised applications. Notarised applications should show no dialog whatsoever, just like App Store ones. It is these little frictions that move users to App Store apps. How many users saw that, had doubts, and then decided to go back to the "safe" walled garden.
>Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog. I wish that apps that went through notarisation would simply run like the ones from the app store without a dialog showing.
The thing is, Apple has never been about developers, its main thing was to basically sell an image since its inception. A lot of people were excited about the iPhone when it first came out, and then they quickly realized how locked down it was, and how it didn't even have basic copy paste.
Even now, if you look at the AnE in the age of llms, all of it is locked down specifically because its only for Apple to use.
TBH most of these seem like minor complaints. I've been using Apple since system 5 and I don't really see the issues you highlight as valid, they're annoyances to you but they're for other types of user.
>Gatekeeping
It's a one button dialog, hardly the end of the world, and for users like my 80-year-old mother (An Apple user since the Apple II) who rarely needs to stray outside the App store it improves her security. It's not for you, it's for users like her.
They're tightening security because security needs to be tighter. My bugbear is the implementation of privacy and security permissions because I have to walk people through it continually, it makes no sense, but it's hardly a big deal.
>Liquid glass
It makes a lot more visual sense after my upgrade to a 17 Pro from a 13 Pro, but it also ran faster on the 13 pro than the previous edition. I'm not a fan, but I haven't always been a fan of Apple interfaces since the 1980s, I wasn't into the skeuomorphic era, and people love to have a moan.
It took 5 minutes to turn the all the features off on both mac and phone, the only bugbear is the 3D border, and the contacts background (solved by turning on high contrast mode).
It was a big release, they know where the bugs are, and have already said the next release is about bugfixing and streamlining.
>But not everyone has a credit card.
68% of UK adults have one, and there is an option to scan and upload an ID. IRL law is catching up to the internet at last, and as the father of a daughter who got her first dick pic at 12 this is a good thing. It's not for you, it's for her.
You're not always the primary user these features target so you may not see the logic behind them.
The Online Safety Act does not require device manufacturers to enforce age "verification" at the OS level. If Apple had not implemented this, it would still be in compliance with UK law. Apple is displaying anticipatory obedience here, which is the opposite of good citizenship.
Two things stand out from this fiasco:
1. Apple, and those who praise them for what they just did, don't appear to have learnt from history. Anticipatory obedience used to be known as "vorauseilender Gehorsam" during a particularly dark period in the history of a country a few hundred miles southeast of the UK. It was one of the factors enabling the darkness.
2. The UK is a small enough market for Apple to treat it as a test bed. Which it probably is in this case, and which means that removal of anonymity aka "OS-level age verification" is coming to a lot more devices in a lot more countries soon. See also the uncanny coincidence of lots of OECD countries pushing for online age verification at the same time.
Before the iPhone, what was their attempts at that? I remember using OSX a bunch before the iPhone was public, but never remember any of the ways they tried to lock it down, I might have been too young then.
Getting music on an ipod was always a pain unless you bought the music on itunes or ripped a music CD directly with itunes (yes, that was an actual feature. hard to imagine these days).
No simple drag and drop onto a mounted USB drive like all other mp3 players back in the day. Maybe more of a lock-in attempt instead of lock down, but related imo.
You can still rip CDs with Apple Music. In fact, that's the only use I have for that app (I recently lost a hard drive with music and I'm in the process of backing up all my CDs again).
> ripped a music CD directly with itunes (yes, that was an actual feature. hard to imagine these days).
These days? Last week (though WMP). My retired father's old computer died, his new one, no CD slot. Emails me from Australia asking how to rip his CDs for his media player. He's not an audiophile but he's not a technophile (and his blues music collection is sufficiently large that at least one of the blues radio stations in his city will on occasion ask him to borrow something because they don't have it in their library.
Told him to get a USB CD player and a card reader (his media player is on micro/SD).
"locked down" is a vague, moving target. The criticisms of pre-OSX MacOS was that it was an operating system for little babies, and not serious tech enthusiasts and power users. Also they were too expensive, and you can build a PC that is 100000x more powerful for cheaper. This literally hasn't changed.
Are you being sarcastic? This has definitely changed with Apple Silicon.
Looking at hardware value, the M-series are way more competitive than the Intel macs ever were, and if you want to run an LLM locally, they are undefeated.
However, it is quite ironic that while the value of their hardware has sharply increased, their software has become the slop that everyone is complaining about.
Their previous lock-downs were on the hardware level, not offering ISA slots and stuff. The original Mac (then Mac+ and classic) had no expansion slots at all, and they started adding them only later.
ADB ports only finally went away when USB came out. But I do have to give Apple credit, because those fruity-colored iMacs with the hockey puck mouse, that had only USB ports... those are really what got USB to become fully adopted. PCs had USB ports for a while before those came out, but nobody made any peripherals, probably because Windows had really crappy support for it... Once those fruity iMacs were released, then came the flood of USB stuff.
First iPhone was 18 years ago, but yeah it around the time of the first iPhone. IIRC he actually mentioned that because he had already been confronted to Apple’s lockdown before the iPhone. It was a long time ago and I was young, so I don’t remember the details.
I assume they are talking about the "This application was downloaded from the internet" warning, which I also don't like. Requiring dollars for signing and then _still_ showing a warning when someone installs your application seems crappy to me.
Yes, I'm sure. Apple has taken a "walled garden" approach for a very long time now, and there are real, tangible benefits to this approach for end users. There are also real downsides, and if you wanted unfettered installation rights, Linux has existed for at least as long as Apple has limited software installation.
My point is that having both of these options is a good thing, as they both have pros and cons, so people can decide which of those pros and cons are most important to them, and then choose accordingly.
Some of us have watched it ratchet up since the 80’s, when there were no such restrictions. The fact that some people hit a threshold and decide to stop putting up with it isn’t surprising.
I hope the author reports back in a year. Getting off the Apple train appeals to me, the reality of doing so looks bleak.
Full disclosure: I've been in the Apple ecosystem since System 6, worked as an engineer there for 25 years. But I am as frustrated by many of the decisions Apple has made as many people I see posting.
Liquid glass? This too shall pass.
Locked down ecosystem? I imagine the blowback if they unlocked it and people's devices were suddenly being compromised by malware.
I guess I prefer the frying pan to the fire that I feel awaits me if I jump. As I mentioned though, seeing blog posts after the jump will be interesting.
As someone who has moved back and forth between Mac and Linux around 3 or 4 times since 1992, Linux is actually surprisingly reasonable. For laptops, I just buy from Dell, with Ubuntu preloaded, and everything works. (Dell's build quality isn't as good as Apple's, so I usually spend extra for Dell's next-day on-site service.) For workstations, it's usually pretty straightforward to get something that Just Works.
After that, I've got Chrome, Visual Studio Code, Steam and a full suite of command-line tools, which covers my personal essentials. But if you rely heavily on something like Photoshop or the MacOS X Omnifocus application, then you might find much larger holes on the Linux side.
As a matter of principal, I consider myself too old to troubleshoot Linux without getting paid for it. It turns out that I virtually never do that, so I'm pretty happy. Really, buying pre-loaded and fully supported Linux laptops eliminates 80% of the pain, and nearly all of the remaining 20% can be avoided by refusing to get clever.
I was in almost the exact same boat as the author. As a long-time Apple power user, I reached my breaking point about a year ago and finally migrated my workflow to Linux. I’m still letting my iPhone age out, but I’ve already stripped it of all Apple cloud services. Instead, I’ve replaced every stock app with self-hosted alternatives running on my own beefy NAS. If you have the technical overhead to manage your own stack, I highly recommend it, owning your data is a total game-changer for privacy.
Self-hosting UnifiedPush / ntfy drops FCM / Google Play Services as a requirement, extending the usable life of my phone pretty dramatically; the better battery life I get is just a bonus. Apps drop from RAM less-frequently.
The series I'm watching doesn't drop from Netflix. Nor do I juggle which services have seasons 1-3, and 5, and have to play the subscribe'n'cancel dance to watch the full series.
I never deal with radio-edits or censored curse words in music. When I pull up an album, it will be the proper album, not the smeared or changed swear words. This exact issue is what pushed me off Google Play Music.
It was probably a cascade of people but the question is whether we all realize Apple was right or if they just implemented it wrong or if it will just take a year or two to get things dialed in (but still prepared for an AR/VR world) and then we forget it ever happened.
People had the same reaction to iOS 7. They cleaned up some of the excesses over the next few years, and now the same basic concept is what people want Apple to RETURN to. They'll be fine.
I’d still want Apple to return to an iOS 6-like design. Not the super-skeuomorphic stuff, but the regular UI with discernible controls clearly separated from content.
It's a leadership failure. They obviously have a UI/UX dept. Those people want to be considered productive. Hence, they need to force a major redesign every now and then. Without a Steve Jobs like leader, those things will happen due to fundamental laws of corporate bureaucracy.
You remember the funny turn of phrase instead of how bad the reception was in your iPhone 4, and how it ruined the experience of owning it. Because it wasn't that big of a deal in the end.
I had the UK Age verification popup today. It verified immediately based on the age of my Apple account, I didn't have to take any further action. I am much younger than the OP, and probably than their Apple account. I am surprised that this didn't happen for them.
The OP states they've migrated. That might mean that the field on their account database entry might be related to that move. The account is older, but when moving countries I've had to do weird dances to get my Google accounts to accept the new locale, and wouldn't be surprised if their computed account age coincides with me having done that change.
Criticize gatekeeping all you want, but I feel it’s safer to recommend a Mac or iPhone to an older, non-technical person than the equivalent Windows / Android machine.
And I’m still able to install any app I want with minimal fuss.
I’m from the US but reside indefinitely in the UK, and I’ve dodged all this crap (age verification, disabling advanced protection) by simply remaining in the US App Store. It has some downsides like I can’t download the Vodafone UK app but nowadays most apps are available globally.
And herein lies the absurdity of the whole legal framework in the first place. Does it apply to tourists? Residents? Citizens? Citizens traveling abroad?
Yeah, agreed. Gatekeeper is nearly 15 years old now, and has progressively gotten more aggressive, but AFAIK there isn't much new in the past year or two. macOS 26 is bad, but so is Windows 11...so unless you are willing to jump into Linux for desktop, there aren't many other options. And age verification is likely going to be an issue with any platform he chooses - are other companies not using credit card?
All the reporting I’ve seen indicates that he left of his own accord and that Apple was blindsided, indicating that they didn’t even consider getting rid of him.
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
The author is complaining about the fact that there are a myriad of issues with Apple's ecosystem that have built up a level of frustration with their ecosystem where they can no longer tolerate it.
I find it infuriating I have to verify that I am older than 18 when my gmail account is 20+ years old.
Him moving to Android will do them no good as Google will be implementing similar controls in it. I suggest they get a Pixel Phone and install Graphene OS.
Why are you so deeply invested into defending the honor of a massive corporation that's callous to its users? Especially corporation that's supposedly proud of their UX?
> 3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law.
No they don't. They need to grow balls. They pay hefty tax rates in UK. If they would announce they are leaving UK market in 90 days, I bet you would find enough politicians to change the course of this terrible law.
Should Apple be responsible for righting the wrongs of legislation in every country it operates in? I don’t think so. Ideally it would mettle as little as possible, even though they clearly don’t (see right to repair).
Hmm. I don't think the point is that Apple has to "fight". The point is that Apple needs a moral high ground and is willing to completely give up the UK market (which I understand but don't necessarily agree with). I don't see that happening with today's environment, considering that shareholders will happily fire Cook over that.
I think this law is the wrong way about doing what they're trying to do, but I also don't want US corps deciding what is and isn't permissible in our country.
> I also don't want US corps deciding what is and isn't permissible in our country.
Apple might be the wrong company for you then. They're all about corporate control and deciding what is and isn't permissible on their devices. The first time you want to install an app that isn't approved in their app store, this becomes quite apparent.
They can do whatever they want on their devices that is permissible in whatever jurisdiction they're selling into, but they don't get to choose to follow our laws. If we want those changed we'll do it at the ballot box.
I'm not aware of any law or even terms of service that prevents Apple from saying "we don't like your politics, your iPhone has been disabled, account suspended, all iCloud data deleted." I don't think they would suffer any reputation damage either at this point.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few out there who have gotten their Apple account restricted for whatever reason, and didn't have the clout, energy, or mental bandwidth to pursue it loudly and publicly.
Apple paid 304m in taxes on 1200m in profits in the UK. That's ~25% tax rate on profits. It's entirely subjective to say if that's a "pretty hefty" rate or not, but it seems to be pretty standard for G20 countries.
I suspect the UK wouldn't love losing that 304m, but Apple would also probably not enjoy losing the 1200m of profits either.
It's almost like international companies having to deal with legislation in every country they operate in is a more complicated topic than could ever be hashed out in the comment sections of a tech news site...
There's a bizarre trend, especially on HN, of unjustified criticism against Apple. There are so many YC companies committing outright fraud, Palantir is building a surveillance state, a bunch of well known founders and VCs openly promote white supremacist ideology, but you'll never see more vitriol on this forum than someone complaining about the liquid glass UI or app store take rate.
that's because those other things mentioned are quite irrelevant in every day life, but the apple products' quality or bad appstore practices are directly affecting the said complainer on HN.
Personally, I gave Apple many thousands of dollars, and then I had updates forced on me by Apple which made every Apple device I own worse.
One can be angry about things which directly and immediately make their life worse while also being angry about the other evils in the world.
This is surely not a trend, I am sure humans around the world throughout history have been able to criticize one thing even while something far worse is happening.
Macbooks are standard fare for tech workers. Having reached the top of the mountain it should not be a surprise that there are heavy winds. Instead of behaving like custodians of the cathedral we get fast movement with breakage and an emphasis on pursuit of bold aesthetic novelty. If there is any bizarre trend here it is Apple burning billions to give people features they do not want while letting core functionality weaken and fail.
Internet memes and terminal Holy Wars take nearly zero thought, effort or intelligence to post about. Just emotion and hot takes, and you're almost guaranteed a response.
Any system of age verification will fail to satisfy the writer, because it is fundamentally the UK’s fault by requiring such draconian measures. Credit cards don't work ever time, but the other options of using AI or sending your data to a third company who will resell it are also not great.
The only other complaint seems to be liquid glass? It really feels strange because Apple feels on the upswing with their new office and their cheap, repairable mac.
Reading between the lines, the author of the blog post would have gone along with the verification with annoyance if the verification had worked. What seems to have prompted everything is the credit cards failing. The fact that they couldn't use Wallet and then tried manually with all five sort of illustrates that they would have gone along with it.
Edge cases like immigrants in a different land are typically unmet for these things. I remember once trying to re-activate my Google Fi SIM from my home in the UK before I returned to the US and getting a strange error message that didn't allude to the region. I got the rep on the line and they said "You're in the US, right?" and I had to bullshit something about "oh I had my VPN on" and then turned it on so I would like I was in the US and it worked then.
Anyway, there's clearly one cause and the rest is just kitchen sink argumentation.
It’s a brutal faux pas from Apple to consider immigrants an “edge case”. We are a significant group in many countries. (That said - I don’t have any banking products from my country of origin anymore)
I think it's unavoidable to end up triggering these since we're not really that common once it lands up with the specifics. It's rarely "immigrants" as a class but more "people with ID A in country B". I'm an Indian national with permanent residence in the US who lived in the UK. I have bank accounts in all three countries and I really don't expect them to work cross nationally reliably. If anything would, it would have to be the US stuff but I wouldn't count on it.
I mean, I'd consider it important for it to work, but when it doesn't I wouldn't consider it a brutal faux pas so much as a moment of frustration at the kind of engineer who only happy-path builds.
I think this is one of the biggest tragedies from big tech companies. Their automated approaches usually work great for most people, but will be hopelessly broken for edge cases, often with no recourse. This happens all the time with non-standard location histories.
It's also amazing how badly big tech apps will often fail with poor or no internet connection. Clearly a lot of the developers at these companies never leave the cities they live and work in.
Other industries can be just as bad, but it's particularly grating coming from companies that constantly talk about diversity, individual empowerment, and other nice sounding corporate slop.
> it is fundamentally the UK’s fault by requiring such draconian measures
It would appear the UK doesn't:
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
Apple has done this sort of thing before, where they don't like a law, they'll implement some unnecessary and shitty feature, and then say "hey don't blame us, blame your MPs!".
Sometimes Apple's malicious compliance is in service of (or less generously: aligned with) users' interests. I didn't know about the added fees that parent mentioned, so I appreciate them clarifying in this case.
I think Apple's hardware has good to great since the end of the "butterfly" keyboard fiasco, but their software has been in a persistent, slow decline - both in terms of quality and design. So depending on what you look at/care about you could make the case that Apple is getting better or Apple is getting worse.
That covers the good and the bad. The ugly is the increasing presence of ads in Apple software - Maps being the latest example. Something that's going to push me out of the ecosystem eventually. I'm probably ditching Apple Maps for Google Maps this summer, because if I'm going to use an ad-infested product I at least want to get reliable directions out of it.
> The fact that you think American corporation punishing foreign users for their laws is acceptible is sick upon itself.
Not really. I was hoping more large US corps would just not comply and force a big kerfuffle and force the UK government to rethink the OSA and other ridiculous legislation.
So far , anyone telling OFCOM where to shove it (think: 4chan) doesn’t have any kind of operations or presence in the UK , is refusing to pay their fines, denies being under their jurisdiction — and doesn’t seem to care if they get blocked by the whole country.
I don’t think much of that is true for Apple, even though there isn’t even a so called law they’re even following. They’re just doing the opposite and rolling over and pre emptively complying with OFCOM. We’re going to have to look elsewhere for resistance
I’ve had it with Apple and there’s nothing they can do that would salvage my perception of them or make it any worse than it already is. So this company is a bunch of boot lickers on top of everything else that sucks about them, the only reason I’ll ever buy another Mac is if Linux can ever be installed on something beyond the m1/m2 processor.
Fuck Apple as a company, nice hardware— but a trash Fisher Price operating system that they somehow just managed to make even worse than it already was.
I was hoping someone like Musk (who is temperamental) would tell them to spin on it (I know people here don't like him). Politicians tend to use Twitter, so they would be directly affected.
The benefit of KF and 4chan telling them to stick it, is that it creates a precedent where most sites outside the UK can just ignore them. I think both KF and 4chan are going to the US courts to get the matter decided IIRC they are suing the Ofcom in the US. I've not bothered checking up on the case because the guy that runs KF is massive dick and I don't want to listen to updates from him.
In the UK More people have passports than have credit cards, the assumption otherwise is precisely the culture-clash that the article is complaining about.
The space allocated for "Apple has lost their way" has been maxed out for decades, so it bears stressing that this time is different. This Liquid Glass debacle has disillusioned everyone from hardcore Apple fans to normal people who otherwise don't follow tech.
Once the dust settles, this will be a case study for decades to come. Apple threw their hard-won reputational gains off a cliff for _nothing_.
My non-techie friends either barely notice Liquid Glass or go "ooo this is nice!". It has annoyed me on occasion, but I barely notice it any more. Much ado about nothing.
My non techie friends all hate it. I don’t think there is a single Apple user I talk to regularly that hasn’t complained about it, or ask me why it is that way (being the resident tech person for some).
And besides a few odd posts on x, I haven’t heard anyone techy speak positively about it.
Maybe I’m the one in a bubble, but I’m seriously considering switching from Apple as a lifelong Apple user, largely because of the UI changes (Liquid Glass et al), so I don’t think the complaints about it are overblown.
I do think the glass effects do look great in certain areas, like pulling down Notification Center. But I find LG for the most part to be change for the sake of it. Small things like replacing the Cancel & Confirm/Done prompts with larger X or checkmark icons bother me. They take up more space on screen, and honestly they don't always translate well. There are some cases where a checkmark has taken the place of "Done" and I have felt genuine confusion on how to get out of the editing mode or options screen.
Personally I’m not a fan of the glass effect, but yeah what bothers me more are all the changes around it. The terrible jelly nav bars, the text distortion, the massive buttons with overly rounded corners, the awful switches and sliders, not to mention the design inconsistency through any given OS, let alone across them.
Personally I bundle it all up into “Liquid Glass et al”, but the glass effects are the least of the issues for me. I could maybe get over an ugly design; design is subjective after all. But iOS 26 is just disfunctionally bad design (imho)
Like I'm not a fan but the ecosystem is convenient if you can afford it and liquid glass is fine? I haven't heard a single person complain about it IRL It's not a big design that I got hyped for like iOS 6 but it's fine
I have the vision pro, mbp m4, ip15 pro max, apple watch ultra 2, studio display (2026), 2 official keyboards, 2 magic trackpads, ipad (4th gen), 3 homepod 2, 5 homepod mini, airpod pro 3 (I keep buying new airpod pros every time they come out because the improvements are really good).
I'm fine liquid glass and I use their products like.. 20 hours a day?
My personal experiences are the opposite of this. I have people in my life who are gen Z, millenials, and gen X who are befuddled by it.
We also have data to show people dislike this. Google Trends shows the largest spikes ever for "how to switch to android", "iphone revert update", "iphone fix battery", and "iphone slow", all only after the release of Liquid Glass (and particularly the increased tactics to get people to update starting in September).
I held off on upgrading because I heard how much people hated it. I bought the new XDR display last week and finally had to upgrade for it to work properly and... it's totally fine? I'm not sure what the big deal is. It's way more annoying on iOS than it is on macOS.
Yeah I couldn't care less for liquid glass but it's not as horrible as people make it out to be. The amount of hate is irrational. New Coke vibes if you heard of new coke.
I don't understand the fuss around liquid glass. I've been using Apple stuff since before OS X and this just feels like another redesign; I understand that there are some accessibility issues (that I thought Apple had at least partially addressed) but I don't have any problems using it. In fact, I kinda like it. It feels like many people latched onto an extremely negative narrative early on, and can't let go of it.
I have much more of a problem with the terrible window management on the mac and ipad OSs. Not being able to snap and resize windows to the edges of the screen, like every other standard window manager that exists, is insane (I know they added some version of this recently, but unsurprisingly it sucks). And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky. They completely ruined the cmd-space search in their most recent major release. They need to get their house in order.
If you're going to say Apple's reputational hit from Tahoe, and Tahoe's many problems, are merely narrative-driven, you need to at least provide support for that. For example:
- why the added transparency effects don't present accessibility/usability issues, despite what users report
- why the corner radius change (among other UI changes), including its absurd size and broken handle detection actually aren't a big deal (even though every other window toolkit NOT swiftui has to be updated for it)
- why it's okay that they added useless icons to menus that add visual clutter and violate of their own design standards
- why Rosetta is going away, even though so many things still depend on it
The bigger issue is that Tahoe was a frivolous cosmetic update with only a few actual improvements, despite all of macOS's bugs that haven't been fixed over the years. That's a long list, from broken keyboard shortcuts in most their newer apps (and System Settings) to persistent Airplay compatibility problems.
Why is Apple's hardware getting objective better over the years while the possible software gains are squandered year after year?
I am talking about "liquid glass", which I understand to refer to the recent design language updates that include the much-bemoaned transparent/translucent design elements. I will repeat that I simply have not experienced myself having a negative reaction to these changes, even if you include corner radius changes and what you call "visual clutter" under the umbrella of "liquid glass"; I hardly noticed the former and didn't notice the latter at all. As for accessibility issues, I explicitly called them out in my comment.
Re: the rest of your comment, it seems like a real stretch to suggest that any of the following (quoting you) are within the scope of "liquid glass":
* Dropping Rosetta.
* Broken keyboard shortcuts in most their newer apps (and System Settings).
* Persistent Airplay compatibility problems.
* Other bugs that haven't been fixed over the years.
* Possible software gains being squandered year after year.
I clearly articulated in my comment that I have other problems with the current state of mac OS, so I'm not sure why you're implying that I'm claiming all the issues mentioned in your post are in the scope of "liquid glass" and therefore mainly narrative-driven.
It suggests to me that you didn't really read my comment before composing your reply.
> And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky.
It appears you do indeed understand the fuss around Liquid Glass :)
The way I see it, "Liquid Glass" is used as a catch-all term to refer to all the UI changes across Apple's 2026 slate of user interfaces.
For one example, the annoying Apple Watch fitness app changes are "Liquid Glass" in my book because it exists only to show off the new wobbling refracting buttons,. The loss of performance and battery life is reasonably assumed to be tied to new Liquid Glass shaders Apple aspires to run 120 times a second on the phone.
The menu icons are really annoying, especially because some apps don't have them, and everything looks off-kilter. Finder sidebar morphing as the window resizes, also annoying.
But you're right, it's still usable, unlike the window management.
Lucky for me i convinced my boss to buy me a PC about a month after they forced the Tahoe update on my old work MBP
The Apple universe seems to be
a place where sentiment is driven by tastemakers and small-group consensus, not the mass of actual customers. So it doesn’t need to be a dominant complaint to have a big effect.
The griping I read about Liquid Glass is from the unhip nerds on HN (like me). I don’t actually know what the industrial designers and graphic artists in their Soho lofts think. I asked an exec designer that I know IRL and got a shrug.
There are many things which are worse which cannot be configured. I can't get my battery life back, I can't get a version of Apple Maps which doesn't crash on launch back, I can't get my framerate back. I can't even get a refund for this $1200 phone.
I think people are using "liquid glass" as a blanket term that includes other changes in iOS 26, like completely breaking message delivery with the world's dumbest spam filter, aggressively waking some people up in the middle of the night, siri somehow getting even worse, breaking the incoming call state machine (again), bluetooth regressions, regressions to their (already poor) UI accessibility, and so on.
Those other things add up and are definitely noticed by non-tech users that don't care that things like the alarm UI are massively regressed.
Apple has gone from 68k to ppc to intel to arm. The look of their desktop has changed so much over the years that showing a screen shot instantly tells you roughly the date it was taken. A graphical change at this point isn't moving the needle significantly.
The reality is that Windows 11 continues to get worse. I was an embedded Linux dev for 15 years, and even I don't really want Linux on my desktop. Apple has better build quality, long support periods, simplified updates, and for the most part just works. My personal computer is just an appliance and a means to an ends, Apple still is the best of many bad choices.
The liquid glass debacle seems minor compared to the crappy keyboard debacle five or ten years ago and that didn't really hurt them in the long run.
I don't have a Mac but my tablet and phone are both running liquid glass and it's... fine. I lost my favorite Sudoku app (Enjoy Sudoku) when they updated and for me that's the worst thing about it.
I think on forums like this that tend to have a lot of Apple fans and haters, the impact of UI changes is overblown. Normies mostly don't care. They notice the change when it happens and then two days later they have already forgotten what the UI used to be.
I've been using Apple since 1995 on System 7.5 then through OSX to MacOS & iOS. MacOS/iOS/iPadOS 26 and Liquid Glass do not bother me one bit. I rather still enjoy using my devices running these operating systems and think that the interface is great. I also know i am not the only one.
Apple fans bemoaned the Settings menu changing from a grid to a list, or the battery getting a skeumorphic icon, but that doesn't really matter.
The Liquid Glass stuff was forced on users in ways their other OS updates weren't, and it has caused serious performance, stability, and usability problems throughout the entire OS.
I'm happy with it. My non-techie partner is happy (or more like "I don't care") with it. All my non-techie friends and family don't give a flying f*. I just think this site has recurrent issues with all redesigns and no, this time is no different.
I think this sums up the disconnect between the devotees (I’ve been on Mac since 2005 or so, just long enough to buy the last PowerPC after a decade of Windows) and any corporation. I am not a devotee of any particular OS’ church but Apple’s market cap suggests there was a whole lotta nothing they got in return. I am a firm believer in the way European football fans see their clubs as belonging to them, but the reality with any brand is their loyalty is to money, not you.
As someone who was inspired to buy their first Apple laptop by the "send all other UNIX boxes to /dev/null" ad I feel like Apple is already done and we are just catching the last remaining tail of that legacy.
Seems underlying features such as kerberos, NFS, auto mount and others are just bit rotting by now and its a matter of time before MacOS becomes Windows 8.
What keeps me in the Appleverse is the hardware, and the software that Just Works with the hardware (I find that "Just Works" has been rapidly eroding in general, but naturally it still handles the hardware well). The alternatives are Linux on much worse hardware, or the non-starter that is Windows on anything whatsoever.
I'm told ThinkPads are getting to parity and have primo Linux support, but barring accident, my M3 MBP will probably last me a decade. Another reason I prefer Apple hardware.
HP Zbook G1a (Ryzen AI max+ 395) is getting closer and has an M.2 SSD slot. But Macbooks undeniably have better battery life (touchpad, sound and display). I selected this over Macbook because I value linux and openness more. But it's true Apple managed to make some really good devices with apple silicon and the competition has a hard time catching up.
Before apple silicon, I was making fun of apple fanboys as CPU specs were mostly bad and it didn't make sense for the price. Apple silicon changed that. And it doesn't look like it will change very soon, sadly. I would like to see more really viably alternatives.
Yeah Apple's hardware team still has the sauce. As someone who will not buy Apple products, I do have to give kudos where they're due. Their software is an ever-evolving dumpster fire. I just wish their hardware was friendly to Linux. And no, herculean reverse engineering efforts that will always be behind on feature parity and efficiency, do not count (impressive and respectable though it may be). I would totally buy a MacBook if running MacOS wasn't a requirement for it be fully capable.
Apple Silicon was as potent a crack as SSDs and Chrome (both immense steps up from what we had before). I nearly left the Apple ecosystem but the M chips pulled me back...
The third point in this article is what really gets me. The credit card culture in Canada and the US is just insane to me, coming from a European point of view. You can get by without credit cards in Europe, and most of my family only has one for traveling abroad. So sure, they can use their credit card if they really have to, but it’s not a good default, as many others won’t even have credit cards. (And within EU, traveling without one is still fine for the most part).
You can get by just fine in the US without a credit card too. At least if you have a debit card (which can pretend to be a credit card in most situations). We were actually unscored by the credit bureaus for several years when we didn't own a house.
You may be able to get by in the US without a credit card, but every purchase will literally cost you 2-5% more if you aren't making smart use of them.
I find Apple's refusal to patch iOS18 (other than for very old devices that do not support 26) to be more objectionable. I have a 13 mini and everything I've read says not to upgrade to 26. Yet Apple won't issue patches for known security issues that are actively being exploited in the wild? That's crazy.
They're not making those updates available to all devices on iOS18. For example, the update from yesterday is just for iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR. As Ars reports, they are not issuing security patches for any devices that "can" run iOS 26, no matter how lousy that experience would be.
> Apple also released a few other security-focused updates for older operating systems. The iOS and iPadOS 18.7.7 updates are available for the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR, as well as the 7th-gen iPad, all devices that don’t support iOS or iPadOS 26. At this point, if you’re using a device that can be upgraded to version 26, Apple is no longer releasing iOS 18 updates for your phone or tablet. [1]
Any age verification should come with an OAUTH style government run API. The idea being you verify your ID with the government, and the service that required age verification gets back a true or false for does this user meet this age requirement. That way the amount of data shared is kept to a minimum.
The UK, and Brazil who passed a similar law, 'cheated' by just forcing private companies to figure it out.
No, this is an absolutely terrible idea. You're suggesting a giant, centralized, government-run data silo, with all of your online activity tied to your real-world ID. This is far worse for privacy than any data broker, it's hard to even compare.
Honestly I'd rather have private companies figure it out. Then at least you'll get multiple options, including from privacy-first companies. But that still sucks, and my preference strongly goes towards OS-level Age Indication. Just as effective in practice, 100% private and offline.
>No, this is an absolutely terrible idea. You're suggesting a giant, centralized, government-run data silo, with all of your online activity tied to your real-world ID. This is far worse for privacy than any data broker, it's hard to even compare.
Not all your online activity, even if they kept logs it would be something like 'this site asked for age verification, we said yes'.
So they would have a list of sites, if they stored them and were allowed to store them. Which is something they can get from your ISP regardless.
It could be used for bad sure, lots of things can. In my perfect world this wouldn't exist at all like it hasn't for 30+ years. But putting the burden on private companies was always going to create other avenues for issues.
Companies may get multiple options but you and I and Joe average are going to have to submit PII to several vendors chosen by someone else, exactly like the credit bureau system but without the regulations they have to follow.
The fact that the powers-that-be need to understand but choose not to is that what they want is literally impossible, even with mandatory government blood screenings to access computers. Anything short of requiring identification per POST is inadequate. This whole thing is a fools' errand and we must not give any ground.
Doesn't that exist in the U.S. already? DOGE worked to create the "one big, beautiful database" and now the federal government is buying information about citizens from data brokers.
Ironic that Brazil government tends to pay lip service to digital sovereignty while forcing their own citizens to handle their data to Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel.
Wrong, because then that government knows exactly what services you have accessed. It's a huge and extremely dangerous privacy violation. The real solution to the age verification problem is not to have one. The Internet has existed for over 30 years without it; it's solution to a problem that does not exist.
I don't think they meant literally Oauth but instead that you can get a verification request from the party that needs your age verified, get it signed by the government, and then send the assertion back to the relying party. It's not necessary for the government to send the signed verification request directly to Pornhub. It's not even necessary for the government to sign the assertion itself. A trusted device (like most consumer phones) could store the identity locally after government verification and then sign assertions itself after biometric or PIN verification, which is what most proposals look like.
> The UK, and Brazil who passed a similar law, 'cheated' by just forcing private companies to figure it out.
At least on the Brazilian case, it's outright illegal for a private company to implement the thing you are describing. So, if the government doesn't provide the service, there isn't much for them to figure out.
Fuck that. California's way is the absolute maximum that should be done: When accounts get created on an operating system, allow the user to provide a completely unproven age. Then that age should be the only age check.
If the goal really is to just help parents prevent their kids from accessing inappropriate material, that's plenty. Anything else, and you're admitting the real goal is Big Brother style surveillance.
If the US had this, Trump would definitely be using it right now to send ICE to arrest people that said mean things about him on social media, didn't drop out of college, didn't bribe him enough, etc.
I bought a cheap, used iPhone SE3 because I needed to Facetime relatives.
I learned quickly that "Find My" was far superior in remote tracking of airtag-equivalents, and switched some of my convertible tags to their network.
I flew out of O'Hare last month, and there were advertisements all over the airport announcing that Illinois id/drivers license import into Apple Wallet, so I did it, and that works.
Supposedly, passports can be imported. I haven't been able to make that work, even after a few hours on the phone with Apple.
I also added a new CTA Ventra card, and I lost my ATM card while out of the country and instantly added a new one to Apple Wallet.
Apple devices allow biometrics to be disabled for unlocking the phone. That is an important requirement for me to use these features.
I would never, ever trust Google with any of these things. Ever.
That being said, if I want to run a torrent client on my phone, I should be able to do so. Apple will never allow that.
If I want a Bourne/POSIX shell, I should be able run one. Apple will never allow that [AFAIK].
There are important reasons that Apple products will never, ever be my primary communication devices.
Currently, one is a surveillance company that is motivated to abuse my privacy in every possible way, in order to target ads (and, conceivably, Gemini). The other, currently, is a hardware company that's dipped it's toes in advertising and is motivated to sell me devices and services.
If, at some point, they converge, I will trust Apple as little as I trust Google, but it's absurd to pretend they're the same thing, today or to "what if" yourself into knots.
Google is absolutely an evil company, head to toe, that is aligned against you. Trusting them with anything is almost as stupid as trusting Meta.
> Google is absolutely an evil company, head to toe, that is aligned against you. Trusting them with anything is almost as stupid as trusting Meta.
You should never really trust a business with your information. At the end of the day all they care about is making money and most customers have no interest in the business making more money, so you're never really in alignment.
I trust a business to do it's business - I don't believe Apple is going to try to build a massive database of everything I do online, because that is not its business. I do believe Google has a vested interest in knowing everything I do online because that is how it makes money.
Thinking they're the same, or will do the same things, or playing slippery slope games is really silly and/or a complete waste of time and energy.
Neither Google nor Apple have any real accountability at play. The same mechanisms that demand Google to surveil users are being accepted by Apple too. The "ad business" canard is (and always was) a distraction.
> The "ad business" canard is (and always was) a distraction.
Your position is that Google has not and does not differentially acquire data on its users (and non-users) because... Apple has shared some data with the feds? Is that a serious position?
Your position is that Apple meaningfully differentiates itself by copying Google's worst behavior? Lemming logic does not apply, Apple and Google can't blame each other for assenting to warrantless surveillance.
To add on... No ability to firewall their iOS devices leaves use of the network vulnerable. Siri and other unkillable daemons always running. My favorite is when the cpu fan "stopped working" on an old A1278 after an update. Turns out that was just a change in the fan profile so the machine would cook first before the fan would wheeze out a puff of effort.
They have just done the same to me. I spent nearly two hours on the phone with Apple support before I find they will not accept a UK passport as valid ID. They will only accept the national ID card that I also don’t have. I don’t have or want a credit card. I’m 65 so me being now unable to verify my age is embarrassing and insulting. And the way Apple messed me about earlier has put me off them now. I won’t buy another product or service from them ever again.
Credit card usage is a small fraction of debit card usage. This is very different to the USA where there are more credit card transactions than debit card ones.
You can have a debit card in your own name when you're under 18, but not a credit card, meaning credit is a proxy for age but debit isn't. It's the same in the UK and the US.
I've been using Mac for 15+ years now. I thought I would hate Glass so I avoided installing it across my ipad, phone, etc. But it was forced on my on my work laptop. Overall I don't notice the difference. There's nothing that outrages me, but I do find the changes useless.
Mate. None of the companies is worth such stress. I feel rage in you. It is just a tool. You choose what works best. That's it. No need to overthink it.
A smartphone is a tool that is all but required for modern life, it gets it's hooks into every detail of your life, and you have very little choice in providers, features, and functions. It makes a lot less sense to not care like this.
Not the person to whom you're responding, but for me, some of the heavy hitters:
- Real-time weather alerts (I spend a lot of time in a naked Jeep in the summer, it's helpful to know when rain is imminent)
- Work-related authentication
- Audiobooks
- High quality, always available camera with quick editing and instant sharing capabilities
- GPS tracking when I'm exploring
- Find restaurants, museums, hotels when I'm traveling
- Pay for nearly anything (credit cards are useful but more time-consuming, and pulling them out frequently is a minor friction point that I'm grateful to leave behind)
That's curious. What do you mean by /almost/ impossible? Slightly more inconvenient / would have to visit a branch one time?
In the UK card readers are still widely supported by traditional banks. As is SMS for one time codes. People who think fintech banks are the only ones that exist might have a warped view on reality of course
I wish they'd just show some backbone and refuse to implement age verification.
If this means they would need to geofence + start disabling devices to the extent required by law, good. The laws will immediately be repealed.
The whole platform is a smoldering fire at this point, so nothing in the article is particularly surprising. I've hit 10x as many bugs as the user mentioned. Liquid glass (as bad as it is!) barely makes the top 10 daily issues I have with iOS 26. In any other release, it'd be #1.
Maybe "Flood the zone" should be the word of the year for 2026?
In a world of mature systems and tangled dependencies, we’ve moved from an era of aspiration to an era of mtiigation. Choosing, whether it s a political candidate or an operating system or ecosystem is no longer a vote of confidence in something wonderful, but feels like a defensive maneuver to find the least worst option among a sea of downsides.
Maybe, I feel that the simpler something is, the easier it is to be something awesome. For example, a TRMNL eink display, just takes a screenshot and puts it on an eink display, and it's awesome. It just does one thing really really well.
The moment you move to something that runs your TV, runs your smart speaker, is the phone in your pocket, is your computer, you end up with some really great features and unfortunately a series of trade offs.
I'm not sure that it means you should dump everything, but that you should try to make things simpler and decentralized.
> Credit cards are not documents. Many people don’t have them. Apple don’t provide any other way to verify your age because they are a stupid American company with American values in which you’re just as human as your credit score.
UK passed age verification law and people still find a way to blame the US.
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
While Ofcom hasn't required it yet, they have indicated that they very much plan to[1]. Apple is pretty clearly getting out ahead of this, and simultaneously removing the burden of compliance off all of the relevant app developers (which seems in line with their overall privacy stance - I'm more inclined to trust Apple with my ID than I am some social network)
That mentions app stores, but I can't see anything about device-level age-verification there.
Also, does Ofcom have the power under the Online Safety Act to mandate app-store verification (or device-level verification, for that matter)? Or would it require secondary, or even primary, legislation?
It's not about some American cultural attachment to credit cards. It's another classic Apple frustration move where they make the experience worse for their users in the hopes they'll blame someone else like the UK govt. They do the same thing with green bubbles.
What are you talking about, have you tried to exist in America without a credit score? It absolutely is an American principle, just because it's not explicitly stated in the constitution doesn't mean it's not true.
> First it attempted to check my Apple Wallet, it failed even though I have five cards in it and am able to use the App Store fine.
> Then it moved onto wanting me to manually add a card to verify myself. It failed with all my five cards. Four were debit cards, and one was a credit card from another country, cause you know I am an immigrant who has accounts still in my own original birth place.
I kind of prefer Credit Card over anything else if I have to do it. I give out my CC pretty regularly already so not much new PII to lose there. But it does sound like Apple has bugs to work out.
Yes. The point in the post is that it's very American to assume that every adult has a credit card. I'm in my thirties and I never had nor plan to have a credit card. I always have had only debit cards. In countries I've been raised and lived it's a sign of a poverty and total dependency on the bank with additional tax on your living, not an everyday tool like Americans perceive it.
Debit cards can be given to an underage, so I suppose they don't accept it for this reason.
In the UK, having a credit card is an overwhelmingly good move even if you never use the facility for credit. You can set up a direct debit to pay it off in full every month, making it effectively a debit card, but you get what are known as Section 75 protections on all purchases. So if you’re buying online and the firm goes bust (or you for any other reason don’t receive your goods), the credit card firm has to compensate you in full. For this reason I always make larger online purchases on credit card.
For many, obtaining a credit card just for the purposes of age verification, and not using it for shopping, feels easier than giving away their legal identifying information to a random third party.
In the US you're usually inundated with offers to open a credit card (often pre-approved) right in your mailbox. Even if you're a poor recent immigrant, or something.
Probably, but making a non-used CC just for using your own phone sound a bit weird, don't you think?
And I don't criticize US way of living here, but Apple is an international company and could do better adjusting to local cultural habits. But maybe they just punish people for this stupid law in the first place which is totally understandable.
Banks are subject to much more scrutiny (regulations, audits) than a random company. Or maybe even a highly established company which you'd rather not give your identity to, something like Pornhub.
You must live in an especially civilized place to be able to get by without a credit score. I wish I could close all my cards, but doing so would harm the score since card count and age are part of it.
Credit cards are a sign of poverty? Now that's a hot take.
I feel in Europe having a credit card means the complete opposite, only "rich" people have credit cards.
I have a credit card, I use it, I pay it off every month. Why am I seen as poor just because I have a credit card? It's just a tool.
It spares me from needing to maintain a 10000$ emergency fund in my checking account.
And in post-soviet countries you blink and you owe 15+% interest. I know many people who couldn't meet basic needs and pay a never-ending percentage. Or forgot to close the debt and lost more than ever gained from this tool in one payment. So people who can pay from their pocket just pay from it instead of endlessly tracking the grace period and counting the money.
I don't imply that's the same everywhere. Also probably depends on a local regulation and interest rates.
Also people here don't generally like to owe to somebody, that feels insecure.
At least in the UK it would be entirely legal for companies to use account age as a proxy for verifying you're over the age of 18. If your Apple account is over 18 then you probably are as well.
None of these corporations are going to have their CEO / CTO / CFO go to Jail, face the huge fines or get kicked out of the UK for you.
4chan, KiwiFarms etc. can stick a middle finger up at the UK because tbh they probably don't have that many UK users and have nothing there for the British Government to go after, the best they can do is probably nab the owner if they ever land on UK soil.
Apple could’ve opted to use the same (open, portable, privacy respecting) mechanism the euID architecture offers for such cases but of course Apple doesn’t do privacy, portable or open.
Right, Apple is a US company, with typical US culture, and they always try to "follow the letter of the law but not the spirit" when it comes to privacy and also when it comes to the age checks. In this particular case, they seem to have implemented the check in the worst possible way too, even the account age is above the age limit, what's hard to figure out here?
Is it surprising that people blame the company and the culture that fostered it, instead of the country that is trying to "protect itself", regardless of how misdirected that "protect itself" is?
> even the account age is above the age limit, what's hard to figure out here?
I have a gmail thats old enough to drink anywhere in the world, and never used it for youtube, accidentally opened youtube, they asked me for my age. At some point, I think its okay to just use account age instead of even asking.
This is honestly why I've been getting deeper into Linux and self-hosting since early COVID. As much as I've loved my M1 Pro MBP, Apple's OS decisions - and my career expectation to always be on the latest version of OSes/software to help vet organizational migrations - have basically killed my enthusiasm for their kit. The hardware is phenomenal; the software does not spark joy.
And if I'm being frank, my time with Linux (Debian 13 on an N100 NUC w/ Docker) has really opened my eyes to just how excessive modern compute is, specifically to power increasingly bogged-down operating systems and woefully inefficient software. The N100 sips energy while happily transcoding 4K video streams on Jellyfin, running my IRC server for friends to hop off Discord, reverse proxying my entire home network, letting me stream game nights via Owncast, host some image board shitposts for various friend groups, host my RSS Aggregator, and still yawns with 75% excess capacity left over.
I'll still have a Mac because that's what my family uses (if they want free tech support from me, that is), and I'll still have my Windows gaming PC, but I'm already drafting up cyberdeck plans for my first primary Linux box, with just a CLI to get me by. Realizing I don't actually need ten cores and 32GB of RAM and a hefty GPU to do daily work is pretty damn revelatory - and shows how grotesque mass-market software and OSes have become in the name of marketing cycles and advertising dollars.
I was pleasantly surprised by the age verification. "Based on the age of your Apple account you are verified as being at least 18 years old". Done. Tempus fugit.
30 days later they canceled the ABM company account and deleted all the associated users along with the Apple ID which I used to log into a testing device, which now became a fairly expensive paperweight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47516266
Article says his account is 25 years old, but I guess the laws don't care about such metadata.
But OT: it makes me realize my Yahoo Mail account is turning 30 this year, because in 1997 Yahoo wanted to compete with Hotmail and I thought "Having a @yahoo.com email, that's a very good nerd badge!". Nowadays the ridicule is deserved, and they've silently lost all my mail from 1990s...
I didn't know what a MNT Pocket Reform and wow! Rockchip, 20 cm wide keyboard, ix ethernet connector, 4 hour advertised runtime, 2 inches thick and costs more than a macbook. You really have to suffer to stick it to the man!
To the Apple users that are completely fed up with Apple: Stop talking us to death. Just switch already. Send us a follow up post in 6-12 months letting us know how it goes for you.
Wow, that age verification is wild. We need to fight this here in the U.S. If my cell phone starts requiring gov't id and credit/debit cards for verification... god help me...
Absolutely agreed about the gatekeeping — just as example, you cannot even update your MacOS without being online unless you create a full USB Installer.
For your particular situation, presuming your hardware supports it, you can use MrMacintosh guides [0] to downgrade your OS from Tahoe — I recommend the latest Sequoia installer — all officially downloaded via Apple links.
When you move to Android, I'd definitely recommend getting a Pixel for GrapheneOS. It's really highly polished and most things should just work once you press the button to enable sandboxed Google Play.
Also curious what Linux distro and desktop you're going to. Flatpak makes it matter a lot less these days, so long as the base stays pretty current.
I been considering Fairphone cause I want to support smaller vendors and also because it is repairable.
As for Linux distros. The MNT Pocket Reform comes with Debian and I plan to leave it at that even though Debian is not my favourite. I will use Niri and Noctalia with it. I plan to make use of whatever Debian package but if it is too old for my taste, I'll look for AppImages and Flatpaks as needed. I got a Surface Go 1 running exactly that setup but with Fedora and works really well for me.
Want to use KDE Connect to link whatever Android I get with the laptop.
Fairphone is a mess software-wise though, both stock or with /e/OS. Ancient kernels, old firmware bundles with many known CVEs, way behind on regular AOSP updates (which are needed for fixes for vulnerabilities not marked high or critical). They only do the minimal ASB patching most of the time. Hardware security is similarly bad, e.g. the Fairphone 6 does not have a secure enclave but relies on TrustZone which runs on the same CPU as the main OS.
Also, it seems relevant to mention that the software is mostly maintained by a Chinese company (T2Mobile), which might be relevant depending on your threat assessments.
For security/software updates it's pretty much:
GrapheneOS > iOS > Pixel OS >> Samsung flagships >> pretty much everyone else.
Nice, I've standardized on Debian/KDE for most of my devices. Honestly, I recommend switching the repos to Testing and, in your case, using the edge kernel from Armbian. You'll have a much more performant and stable desktop, in my opinion. Flatpaks from there when available, and you should be golden :)
The forced age verification shocks me. It shouldn't, given how much it's been in the news, but my poor naive Millennial sensibilities still feel it's part of some dystopian nightmare that I saw in some Michael Bay sci-fi once, not my present reality.
Your phone, which you own, updated during the night, and now demands you tell it who you are through a credit card, which you may not have, or you're locked out of features. On your phone. This is outrageous.
We can jump ship -- for now -- but it's only a matter of time before these laws cover every kind of Internet access, if they remain unchecked.
Just to add a little bit of context, when I hit the same problem today the flow offered me the option to scan my driving license or 'national id card' (whatever that is - we don't have those in the UK)
So despite the claims in the article, it's not credit card centric.
However, they did not accept my passport as a scannable ID, and so luckily I had a credit card somewhere that I have used recently for a single large purchase otherwise I'd be stuffed, as I don't drive
I read about the new age check nonsense just before 26.4 downloaded, fortunately. I turned off automatic updates and so I guess I have a little time to get out of the apple ecosystem. I'm thinking GrapheneOS on Pixel 10. This is absolutely not required by UK law, apple just seems to enjoy the taste of government boot.
> Even though my software is packaged and notarised as per their requirements, they still show my users a dialog box confirming they want to run my app, something they do not for apps installed through their walled garden. This is just friction to punish developers outside their store. I am very tired of it.
Does them quitting Apple mean they're going to stop supporting MacOS users?
> It will take me a while before I can fully migrate away... I’m gonna throw all of them away... I purchased a MNT Pocket Reform. It will take them a while to assemble and send it to me... I am considering getting a Fairphone Gen 6...
Honestly it sounds like Apple is far from lost here, but I'm excited to see updates on how the transition is, if it ever does happen.
For the UK people among us: What happens if you just don't verify your age? Do you not get access to adult things? What if you use a VPN? Will civil disobedience lead to any punishment or just inconvenience? What it's like to live with these invasive laws?
Great timing too to ditch MacOS. Just instilled Fedora Asahi Remix 43 on may MacBook Pro M2, and both KDE and Gnome work great. So happy to be liberated form the increasingly sloppy Apple OS.
We just got fucked by this today. My 22 year old daughter doesn't have a driving license or a credit card but does have a passport and it didn't work. She's now got a kids phone. I haven't tried the 20 year old yet who is in the same situation...
They have 5 days to unfuck this or I'm literally rolling out Pixels + Graphene to the family.
Phones can read biometric information from passports and identity cards just fine. Why didn't you think of a personal ID document as the first step to prove ID?
the law in the UK doesn't require any of that. It didn't even required Apple to do it. Ofcom is praising Apple for doing it even though it was not required. Social Networks need to do it.
That depends on if you live in a jurisdiction that lives or dies by free speech, and if it considers code speech[0]. Forcing you to implement age verification is effectively forcing you to speak things you don't want to say, which isn't free speech.
This UK law does not apply to OSes. It applies to online platforms. The author ran into this problem because using the iPhone required an Apple account, which could be used for something that the law applies to, but Apple didn't want to implement lazy verification and instead required verification up front.
I sympathize with the author's feelings in general, but also hope he directs some of the frustration towards his government for forcing the whole age verification scam (let alone everything else that is being broken in that particular jurisdiction)
nitpick: just changed my monitor to a UWQHD one. The text on this blog occupies 1/6 of the screen, 5/6 of white. If i only use half the screen for the broswer, it would be 1/3 and 2/2. Still too much white space for me.
Anyway: Not sure why fairphone. While i like the concept it's still an android phone, eos is not much better than lineage.
If i had to change today i would go again for a Pixel 8A (or a series 10) and graphene. But if the OP can wait and see, next year we should get replaceable batteries everywhere because EU, and maybe wait and see whatever motorola is cooking for graphene.
Or check out the pinephone and go full linux.. i guess, when i'll have some spare cash to throw away..
> Even though my software is packaged and notarised as per their requirements, they still show my users a dialog box confirming they want to run my app, something they do not for apps installed through their walled garden. This is just friction to punish developers outside their store. I am very tired of it.
Indeed. I'm honestly impressed that he lasted this long. My first "I'm very displeased moment" was when Java became a second-class citizen on macos. I was a Java dev at that time and had written some non-trivial apps. They weren't native perfect, but they were close enough that my highly-Apple-fan relatives didn't realize they weren't "native" until I told them. The write-once-run-anywhere dream of desktop UI software (without getting into Qt) was there in a very real way for me. I ran it on my windows machine at work, and my mac laptop and linux desktop at home. The hoops at that point were nothing compared to what they are now, and it began souring me.
For me the final straw was when I got the latest macbook pro with the latest mac monitor (all from Apple mind you) and yet there was a horrific bug that about half the time when you plugged in to the monitor, the laptop screen shut off and would never come back on until you did a hard reboot (holding the power button). That was never supposed to be possible since it was Apple hardware/software controlled top to bottom, the original promise of the vertical integration and one of the reasons we accepted the heavy lack of cross-platform compatiblity.
A little before that I used to put my macbook on the nightstand and listen to podcasts at night to fall asleep. I would dim the screen to off and have the volume at low levels. Apple rolled out a software update that suddenly caused the screen to kick on at FULL BRIGHTNESS after about 5 to 10 minutes (when the screensaver would have normally kicked in), while I'm sleeping in a completely dark room. It was so bright that it would wake me up. That bug was there for years, and myabe still is (I replaced it with a Linux laptop).
My user experience on macs was never close to bug-free, and was frankly worse than almost everything else out there. It took me a while to figure that out though.
The last straw for me was around 2009. I was in college minoring and interning in media production. Invested pretty heavily in Final Cut, which was long in the tooth, and hoping for better I/O in Macbooks to support better ingest. That was when Apple announced the following:
- Final Cut X. Its first incarnation was a huge slap in the face for features and workflow. They completely cut a large swathe of the rest of Final Cut studio, and knew they were shipping shit with the new pricing.
- The first Unibody Macbook came out. Very little could be upgraded, the keyboard was a leap backward, and all they had for I/O was a half-baked USB3. It's usage for pro video workflows was severely hobbled compared to the last generation.
- Mac OS Lion came out, which was when it started showing signs of user hostility. Power-user features were getting locked down or removed, the app store was being pushed harder, and it was consuming more base resources for the privilege. The tend was clear that advanced users were no longer welcome in Apple land.
These things made me change majors back to computing, and a full return to Linux. I've never regretted that.
totally valid to call out apple for issues, but for most folks already accustomed to apple's walled garden, the grass is not greener on the other side
For instance, I've had a ton of issues with Airpods Max so I moved over to the Sony WH-1000XM6, and they do a much worse job sharing connections between multiple devices to the point where I have to reset them constantly to get sound to reliably play from both my phone & computer.
Same for moving to macOS to linux - the issues on add up to the point where the papercuts from macOS are still worth it.
I am all for voting with your dollar - but it sounds like maybe this user doesn't realize how bad it is out there right now for the grievances he listed.
I don't hate iOS 26 as much as I thought I would but macOS 26 has been a disaster. I'm staying with Sequoia for as long as I can. Hopefully Apple will fix this mess in macOS 27 or 28.
I see the arguments are mostly attempts to needle the individual points. But it's clear the writer has reached a personal tipping point; the last straw as it were. Some of us gave up Apple over lesser offenses years ago.
I have FP6 with eOS, it's fine and works well. One thing that I can't do is use my phone to pay, e.g. Apple Pay.
You can't install Google Wallet - it does not work, but also defeats degoogle mindset. There were curve company that people seem to have used in the past, but seems like the company was sold to someone and now it's dead. So I have to use physical card like a boomer.
---
My story is similar, somehow my air managed to update to 26' (maybe I just clicked that stupid notification window button to make it go away). I will keep my opinions on glass to myself.
Facts are: docker broke again, app launcher is whatever the hell it is, firewall with started messing up with my dns blacklists. I know you can somewhat fix it, but nixos/asahi on m2 with hyprland gives me a workflow that is superior. I just won't go back. AeroSpace just can't match.
Then the credit cards... I have my original store country elsewhere. I've then moved a few times and changed banks. Now, apple does not like my card. It won't accept it. That's it. Nothing you can do about that. And I couldn't really change the country because I have had some subscriptions and I had to wait until they expire. Meanwhile, apple killed my apple subscription I lost Music, I lost cloud storage, I lost some backups.
The thing that incredibly pissed me off is that as soon as my apple subscription got cancelled I could not even see my music library in the app. It would just prompt me with "gotta subscribe buddy" screen, which I can't.
And yes, the hardware is very good. I love my m2. But the whole software part is becoming messier and messier and I don't want to deal with it anymore.
Apple has gone from a company with a long term vision of the future and their part in it to a quarterly financial report gradient climber. This is what happens to every company when it loses it's founder(s). They have enough money and market influence to be a problem for all of us for the next 30 years or so.
I'm saying that a functioning company that reaches a certain size can stop being good at what it does and start buying market position and market share.
For example, I don't believe Apple is more efficient at designing processors than most processor companies, I think they have had some luck in that they adopted a strategy for mobile that ended up delivering a CPU with high performance (this is roughly the same story as Intel Core 20 years ago). They are able to deliver a CPU that is at the top but not dramatically faster than their competitors not because they are so 'good at' designing processors, but because they steer a very large percentage of the total CPU R&D budget of the entire world. They can buy anyone who is innovative, and generally that means eliminating them rather than incorporating them.
Gatekeeping is trivially turned off by those who won't footgun themselves by dragging literal garbage from the Internet into their system. It is a good feature for most macOS users. They only care about your verification woes a tiniest bit, if at all. They need a walled garden, Apple gives one to them, it's a product-market fit, while power users are given a reasonable off-ramp.
The other issues are more serious, especially macOS 25, but again, how much of that deeply affects the vast majority of actual paying customers who buy Macbooks? As long as Apple learned their lesson and will do another one of those bugfix OS releases they've done before, no long lasting harm done.
Using credit cards for age verification is certainly dumb, but age verification is coming and most people see the need for it. You can disagree that there is a need for it (entirely different discussion), but you must acknowledge the broad support for it at least.
Apple bothers me less than Microsoft. At least Apple has been consistent. "Our hardware, our software"... while Microsoft plays all these games. At the end of the day, there's never been a solution for people who care about this stuff other than Linux.
This new age verification is such bullshit, I don't even live in the UK any more yet have to be subject to that bullshit because Apple (and a bunch of other companies) can't comprehend the concept that people might want to change which country they live in.
Can't use my expired provisional license to confirm my age.
Can't use my Croatian ID to confirm my age.
Can't use a credit card, because I never have had nor do I ever want to have a credit card.
Don't you have the concept of debit cards in your country? In mine, if you have a savings account and an atm card, that card can be used in any context that a credit card can be used.
I tried using a debit card, it will not let me progress. The issue is a debit card can be issued to anyone, including those under 18. So that then becomes a useless age verification.
the specific complaints are fair (gatekeeper friction, tahoe/liquid glass, the UK age check thing) but I always wonder who these "X just lost me" posts are for. Apple doesn't care. They care about churn numbers, not individual blog posts.
also like... credit card as age verification isn't an Apple invention, Google and Meta does the same thing. And "your account region should match where you live" has been the rule forever. If you were running a cross-region account that whole time you were basically on borrowed time. Sucks when it finally breaks but it was never really supported.
idk, as a "here's the stuff that finally pushed me over" post it's fine. the "$BIGCO just lost me" framing is what makes it eye-roll-y. they didn't lose you, you left. there's a difference and it matters because one implies they should care.
>Credit cards are not documents. Many people don’t have them. Apple don’t provide any other way to verify your age because they are a stupid American company with American values in which you’re just as human as your credit score.
This is the way ID verification is going in the USA and the reasons for it seem clear. A human person is only useful to a corporation if they have money to give the corporation. If you don't have provable money, either through a third party corporate payment service willing to pay for you sometime later (a credit card) or by giving a corporation your login details to your bank account (ie, Plaid), then you're not a human.
It clear what a bot is now: anything that doesn't have provable money.
I think it's also related to the fact that the US and the UK don't have ID documents the way that a lot of EU countries have and many people don't have passports, so the only other way left that has an API and is checking periodically that you are who you claim is your bank before giving you a fresh credit card
I think it’s a lot simpler than that. Verifying a credit card is probably the easiest and cheapest reliable method to verify identity.
If you look at it this way: they’re trying to identify somebody, and they don’t want to do a massive amount of work in house. Do you go to a company that verifies identity? Or… you can use credit cards as a proxy for identity. Most of your users already have them.
Credit cards require no additional infrastructure, no additional corporate approval, no additional expenses, and no additional auditing. It’s good enough for the company and who cares if it’s good enough for the users.
Corporate greed is a massive problem, but you’re giving people too much credit to assume they have some kind of grand conspiracy for every decision. That requires far too much intelligence.
Corporate laziness is a far better explanation for this one.
And even better for companies: banks and credit card companies are completely unaccountable entities who've established they're willing to put up with 10000 false positives to block one false negative. They don't even have to get it right. And getting it wrong won't result in bad press or anything actionable for anyone. We're just ending up in a system where a good fraction of people are declared not people forever.
> A human person is only useful to a corporation if they have money to give the corporation.
This is spot on.
This is the same tactic used by the affiliate marketers back in the day to qualify leads - Free book, just pay for shipping! Or, get this e-book for just $1 (so we can upsell you a $97 product later)
Point taken that Apple hardware isn't ideal anymore, but of course the problem is neither is Windows or Chrome OS. I can switch myself over to Linux now easily enough, but what about the rest of the family? Kids need their tablets with their shows downloaded, so good luck doing that without a chrome tablet or an iPad.
If he's pissed at this, imagine how pissed he'll become when he enters the ridiculous Android ecosystem.
Anyway, he's free to choose whatever, but I have to nitpick here:
1. macOS 26 - a fiasco? Come on. A lot of like the liquid glass. On macOS I hardly notice it, but on iOS is actually beautiful to me. Also a long time macOS user, since 2003 btw. You can always dampen it using accessibility settings.
2. Age verification ? First time I've heard of it. Also on latest iOS. But then I'm also not in the UK.
3. "Interfaces built with AppKit or SwiftUI that rendered perfect, are now overlapping controls and clipping stuff. They have no consistency at all in terms of icons, placement, corners…". I'm all for constructive criticism. But where are you seeing this? I've got 8-9 apps open and none are inconsistent in my view. I'm picky about these things too. Genuinely I'd like to know.
Agree the icons are unnecessary and silly. Apple should know better.
The corners haven't bothered me much, I like seeing a bit of a gap down there, and I haven't had issues dragging it but that could be because I'm using a regular USB mouse and not a trackpad.
I've been a macOS user (or OS X rather back then) since 2003. It was truly a blessing to finally get a proper UNIX™ on the desktop. I was on Linux in the 7-8 year period before that.
Everything after Snow Leopard has been downhill in my opinion :3 macOS still my favourite unix but it started feeling is no longer my unix anymore, I'm just a glorified tennant.
Can the Apple Store help people with verifications? This seems like a reasonable backup technique plus gets people in the store where they can spend money.
You’ll be back. Have you tried Windows 11 lately? Want an exercise in self-restraint not plowing yours fist through your monitor? Use Windows. Microsoft as Steve Jobs said has no taste. They hire the cheapest international engineers who take zero accountability and perfection in their work. Everything is just, that will do. Good enough.
Author is going to Linux, which has really gotten smooth in the last few years. I've been able to hand it to tech illiterate friends and not once get a tech support call. Everything you might need has a working, polished implementation. Give it a try sometime :)
The laptops seem... crazy enough. And what you get for your buck is even less than with normal PC manufacturers, let alone Apple. You get CPU that is slow for a phone. For 1300 USD.
On the other hand I have a weird urge to buy one and use as a daily.
author here. Yeah, they make their laptops by hand in their lil shop in Berlin, low volumes makes things more expensive. I get it you can get a lot more performance per buck elsewhere, but I want to support a company that creates open hardware and open source software. Also it is the most repairable and upgraded laptop in the world atm.
The gatekeeping, the age identification issues are both "real problems", that compound, from the same root.
Anonymity allows one to behave in ways they would not "in public", with your neighbors, or co workers (for the most part). Be that building malware, or kids doing things they should not, and the people and business that take advantage of that.
I don't think the UK law is a good one, but when major companies continuously fail at their social responsibility I understand why people want the government to step in. I don't think the friction apple creates is a great user experience but it is better than the old approach that ended up with systems riddled with malware and spyware because normal users don't think like the folks who built technology.
Could the law have been written better: sure. "More control" over their Childs devices would have been the way. Is there a solution to the friction with apple... maybe but I'm not sure it would be that much of an improvement (its purpose IS to slow you down).
I'm in the same boat, but only because of the age verification thing.
I was never an Apple maximalist to begin with, I just have an iPhone and use a Mac at work because I have to (and will continue to), but I just turned off auto-updates on my iPhone and will never buy a new Apple device.
Frankly I don't believe the author. They'll stick around. They know it. I know it. Apple knows it. If the bullshit of the past 10 years weren't enough then nothing will be enough to chase you away. You'll buy the next shiny iPhone, you'll buy the next Macbook Pro, you'll buy the next iWatch. We all know it.
I think it’s fine. It definitely needs some polish and there are other, unrelated changes like the big round corners that I dislike, but Liquid Glass itself is just… different. And appearance aside, I genuinely like some of the updated UI patterns, such as making buttons look like things you can interact with instead of undifferentiated text.
It’s OK to dislike glass, of course. I’m not saying doubters are wrong. A lot of it, though, feels like piling on to sound like one of the cool kid skeptics.
At this point I am pretty sure it's the loud vocal minority that hates it. Vast majority is either indifferent or actually likes it (but liking something doesn't sell).
I've seen far more non-design-obsessed people (normals) complaining about it, but in the end i think the better question is why? What possible purpose does this serve other than key-jangling? It is a distraction for most people and a waste of screen space and probably gpu cycles, why are we shading and filtering on every frame on every window and modal? Just render the pane and put the fries in the bag.
The waste of screen space is the big one for me. It feels like every company is racing to dumb down their products and fill their UI with whitespace instead of using that space for controls or content. My bank just redesigned their website and now even checking the balance of a few accounts + credit cards requires scrolling on a 1080p display. Ridiculous.
I think the vast majority's friction points with liquid glass come from the other changes, like the redesign of Messages and the calling functionality.
its not super bad, but it needs a lot of refinement (especially on iPad and mac), and also its a performance hog (or at least iOS26 is a performance hog) so they have a lot of work to do imo
I loved Liquid Glass too. It gave a refreshing look from the UI that I was seeing for quite some years. It drew the line that separated itself from rest of the competitors UI wise. It felt good, I don't much remember the older UI of iOS now, every now and then when checking for compatibility with older versions, I test through older UI and it feels very awkward.
Another nail in the coffin, but the author fails to realize that the only viable answer here is to move towards relying on your smartphone as little as possible. You can get a fairphone, or whatever, but will anything in the real world (outside of old fashioned websites) actually talk to the thing?
I agree with this as well. The only things I really need on my "smartphone" are a browser, mail client (offline that does IMAP), organic maps, whatsapp and obviously a phone. I can do everything else some other way without too much inconvenience.
Edit: wow are people really that tied to their technology? You're fucked if anything worse happens geopolitically than is happening today.
Can we all just agree that cyber criminals suck? Especially if you are a legit developer who wants to offer useful apps to the world?
Don't get me wrong, I can't stand surveillance, and I think age verification is virtue signaling and will have very little affect on actual cyber crime. We need a better way to stop online abuse.
But certificates, GateKeeper, app certification, app stores etc. are all supposed to mitigate serious harm from bad actors.
We need to get much better at security in general if we want to have nice things.
The worst cybercriminals are allowed on the app store. Facebook and Google are two obvious examples.
Even if avoid installing their apps, take a look at all the third-party data harvesting malware that iOS apps bundle. You'll find you have plenty of stuff installed from them, and even worse actors.
Linux doesn't have any of this developer certification bullshit, and it has (almost) none of these issues.
How exactly are you turning my comment into defending Facebook and Google? If that's how it comes off then I believe it is being misinterpreted.
I would also argue that Linux does have it - at least in Ubuntu it does with snaps. And package maintainers do a lot of unseen, thankless work as well.
As a developer, I do not like having to deal with certificates. But the few times I have seen them prevent serious problems, I was glad they were there.
These "breaking up with Apple" stories pop up from time to time here. Cracks me up because they all follow the same pattern:
"I'm done with Apple. I've been a Mac user since since $EARLY_YEAR. I loved using $OLD_APPLE_HARDWARE to work on $VARIOUS_INTERESTING_PROJECTS. I fondly recall $FORMATIVE_APPLE_MEMORY.
But they've gone too far. $NEW_APPLE_ENSHITTIFICATION is the last straw, I can't do this any more. This will be hard because $REASONS. But I'm going to adopt $PLATFORM because it's the right thing to do."
Most of them mention Steve Jobs but this one didn't actually.
What is it that bothers you about this type of discussion? For myself I just switched back to Android after a decade of iOS so I'm always interested in what it was that was the last straw for others.
(for me it was interop issues around wearables and trackers; I want to use chipolo and a pebble watch and not feel punished every day for going out of the ecosystem)
It doesn't bother me at all -- in my post, I said it cracks me up. They all have their reasons for breaking up with Apple. FYI I'm not an Apple guy myself.
CarPlay being actively dangerous if you use it for GPS navigation and someone dares to call you, so the call prompt blocks the entire screen until you either accept or reject the call, was my last straw.
Sure, shit UX and UI is a hassle, but at least it was somewhat consistent. But that the UX department have completely left the building so they're enabling UX that puts people in real life danger? That's the stop I get off at.
"X decides to not use products from Y after longstanding loyalty, because Z"
This is a so generic template that you cannot criticize a post for matching it. It'd be like criticize a story for matching "X happens to Y, leading to Y doing Z which leads to a (happy|unhappy) ending"
The problem is that when they start using $PLATFORM, they realize that it can't do many of the things that they've taken for granted since $EARLY_YEAR.
Apple has to do age verification because of dumb laws, but they decided to do age verification in a dumb way.
The author tried to go along with the age verification system with five different cards and failed five times. For an account that's older than the legal age that would need to be verified in the first place, mind you.
There are many ways to do age verification, most of them bad, but that's why most companies complying with these laws use multiple methods.
nevermind the apologist. his paycheck is paid by people that have capitulated to the same bullshit. and you know what they say about people learning lessons whom have a financial incentive not to.
Indeed. There has been zero political opposition to these laws. Apple isn’t going to pay the fines on our behalf, so we need to get organizing if we don’t like this.
ah, yeah; I guess organization looks like complete capitulation and then commenting on the effect elsewhere with a sturdy shrug "whatcha gonna do? we're all just so powerless". fighting the good fight.
ah, cool! great to have such a loyal ally that snark and cynicism wilts their enthusiasm to such an extent. how would we ever get rid of age verification laws without your "dropped at the first sign of someone not being nice to me" supportive commentary and shrugs?
It will only get worse. The bureaucracy has taken over at these companies. Contrarian viewpoints are severely punished, and you need contrarians to speak up when things suck.
I find it so odd to have such an extreme response to Apple all-of-the-sudden. Like they've been so great all of these years and only just now you're deciding to make such an extreme switch that you're going to choose the worst possible hardware imaginable because you can't even stomach buying a decent GNU/Linux laptop from Dell or Lenovo or Framework or System76? Jeeze. That little puny 8GB ARM laptop you're choosing instead is going to be painfully slow compared to whatever Mac you're coming from. At least check out the System76 laptops - some I do believe come fully open-source with Coreboot if that's all-of-the-sudden so important to you.
I found this to be a very odd and strange rant. The author's three issues with Apple are:
1. Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
2. mac OS26. I totally agree that this is a total fiasco from a design perspective, and liquid glass is unqualified shit. Still, I see Apple at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye.
3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law. I've seen a lot more missives arguing against requiring things like driver's licenses and other government ID, and so it seems like Apple is at least trying to go the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
To emphasize, I'm not apologizing for Apple here. In particular, much has been written about how Apple has lost their way regarding the "it just works" philosophy. But it seems like the author's main beef is against Apple's level of control, and this is just a fundamental difference in Apple's stance that has existed for about 2 decades.
Author here. Thanks for engaging is such gentle way, this is rare these days. Let me address some of your comments and maybe you'll understand my position a bit better even if you don't agree.
> 1.Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog. I wish that apps that went through notarisation would simply run like the ones from the app store without a dialog showing.
> 3. (...) the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
But not everyone has a credit card. Those are not something you're born with or required to have or even required to have them issued from the same country you're living in. That is not the least restrictive, that is a very large assumption. What I would have liked to have seen is them providing you with options: "do you want to use credit card verification? National ID? Passport? Credit check? Etc" and then it is up to each user to decide on their risk profile and what they are okay with.
As of now, my only way to verify it is by literally ordering a credit card from my UK bank when I'm pretty happy with my debit cards already.
I am in the same situation. French citizen living in the UK. I never owned a credit card and I have no use for it.
I can't pass the age-verification. I am 49. This alone is quite irritating, but the overall developer-hostility of Apple and the quality drift of their software is convincing me to never buy an iOS device again.
And I'll probably not release any software on their platforms either.
French-US citizen living in the UK as well. I am not experiencing this because I refuse to install iOS 26 on my iPhone, and like the OP I am transitioning away from Apple to Linux + GrapheneOS, and about 90% of the way there since I started 6 months ago.
> Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog.
Notarisation is just proof that the app went through an automated malware scan.
Windows, Mac, and Android have all adopted measures intended to warn and attempt to protect users from malware.
As far as age verification goes, this is a restriction being forced on companies by governments.
Apple previously allowed parents to set age restrictions on their children, or not, as they saw fit.
You have to pay apple 150$ annually for the pleasure of notarisation, even if you make open-source apps. Yet you cannot distribute apps outside store on mobile (besides in eu, but not really, but is't topic on its own…).
Have you tried pricing an extended validation code signing certificate needed to get around Windows SmartScreen?
Notarised apps are still handled differently and made harder to run than apps from the AppStore
Just like Windows SmartScreen and now the new requirements for Android.
macOS copying Windows and Android is not a consolation in 2026.
Are you ruling out sending a photo of your driving license?
It's absolutely nuts that you have to. But it's an option?
that's the thing, it is not an option. The only option is credit card, that is what drove me nuts. If it had other options, it would still be bad, but I'd have a way to solve it even if made me angry. Now, the only way to solve this is literally to order a credit card from my bank and then use it. Which is bonkers.
I haven't tested this myself, but verifying with a driver's license should be supported [1]. Anecdotally, I've heard you have to fail the automatic Apple Wallet credit card verification, get to the screen where you're asked to input a credit card manually, and there should be something hidden in a corner that you can click to verify by uploading an ID.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1s2n1yc/psa_apple_h...
It’s definitely an option in the UK, as I’ve just used it, though it’s not particularly prominent.
If you choose the option to verify with a credit card and scroll down the form, there’s an option to verify another way, which allows you to use your driving license.
Ah, I assumed from this page that it was an option: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/125662
Apparently it depends on the requirements of your local government.
> Depending on your country or region, different options might be available to confirm that you're an adult.
> As of now, my only way to verify it is by literally ordering a credit card from my UK bank when I'm pretty happy with my debit cards already.
This is not true. On the screen where it wants you to scan a credit card, tap “Enter details manually”. Scroll down. Tap “Try other methods”. And there, you’ll be offered to scan an ID or your driver’s license.
If you can use a debit card to buy stuff online, then it’s probably a visa or Mastercard, which would qualify as a “credit card” for identity verification.
Before people in other countries started popularizing the term “debit card”, most of my visa and Mastercards were hooked up to take money direct from my bank account, but they were still called credit cards.
I thought it was amusing that you said Apple was a "stupid American company with American values", even though you're actually complaining about a UK law. You do know this isn't a thing in the US, right? Just your country?
you might not be aware, but UK law doesn't actually require Apple to do it. It is targetted at social networks. Even ofcom posted praising Apple for doing it even if they didn't need to. And yes, that law is stupid, but allowing only credit cards as a way to verify an account is also stupid.
Apple has shown a warning on downloaded-from-the-internet apps since Mac OS X Tiger. That's the only reason it's being shown, there is no scary warning that users need to step-through in some basement in System Settings as they would for a non-notarized app. The popup even says "Apple has checked this application for malware". It is the smallest of friction present to get apps to run, as I'd argue that the sandboxing requirement for App Store apps and the need for a sign-in make the App Store a worse experience.
And I say this as someone more or less utterly in the same boat as you. I bought a used Thinkpad last June after seeing the first Tahoe beta. It's clear Apple is not the platform for us anymore.
I don't like the App Store experience and sandboxing either. I just find it almost malicious that they added that dialog even for notarised applications. Notarised applications should show no dialog whatsoever, just like App Store ones. It is these little frictions that move users to App Store apps. How many users saw that, had doubts, and then decided to go back to the "safe" walled garden.
>Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog. I wish that apps that went through notarisation would simply run like the ones from the app store without a dialog showing.
The thing is, Apple has never been about developers, its main thing was to basically sell an image since its inception. A lot of people were excited about the iPhone when it first came out, and then they quickly realized how locked down it was, and how it didn't even have basic copy paste.
Even now, if you look at the AnE in the age of llms, all of it is locked down specifically because its only for Apple to use.
TBH most of these seem like minor complaints. I've been using Apple since system 5 and I don't really see the issues you highlight as valid, they're annoyances to you but they're for other types of user.
>Gatekeeping
It's a one button dialog, hardly the end of the world, and for users like my 80-year-old mother (An Apple user since the Apple II) who rarely needs to stray outside the App store it improves her security. It's not for you, it's for users like her.
They're tightening security because security needs to be tighter. My bugbear is the implementation of privacy and security permissions because I have to walk people through it continually, it makes no sense, but it's hardly a big deal.
>Liquid glass
It makes a lot more visual sense after my upgrade to a 17 Pro from a 13 Pro, but it also ran faster on the 13 pro than the previous edition. I'm not a fan, but I haven't always been a fan of Apple interfaces since the 1980s, I wasn't into the skeuomorphic era, and people love to have a moan.
It took 5 minutes to turn the all the features off on both mac and phone, the only bugbear is the 3D border, and the contacts background (solved by turning on high contrast mode).
It was a big release, they know where the bugs are, and have already said the next release is about bugfixing and streamlining.
>But not everyone has a credit card.
68% of UK adults have one, and there is an option to scan and upload an ID. IRL law is catching up to the internet at last, and as the father of a daughter who got her first dick pic at 12 this is a good thing. It's not for you, it's for her.
You're not always the primary user these features target so you may not see the logic behind them.
I'm sorry to break it to you but Apple scanning credit cards will not stop your daughter or me or anyone else getting dick pics
> but Apple needs to follow UK law
The Online Safety Act does not require device manufacturers to enforce age "verification" at the OS level. If Apple had not implemented this, it would still be in compliance with UK law. Apple is displaying anticipatory obedience here, which is the opposite of good citizenship.
Two things stand out from this fiasco:
1. Apple, and those who praise them for what they just did, don't appear to have learnt from history. Anticipatory obedience used to be known as "vorauseilender Gehorsam" during a particularly dark period in the history of a country a few hundred miles southeast of the UK. It was one of the factors enabling the darkness.
2. The UK is a small enough market for Apple to treat it as a test bed. Which it probably is in this case, and which means that removal of anonymity aka "OS-level age verification" is coming to a lot more devices in a lot more countries soon. See also the uncanny coincidence of lots of OECD countries pushing for online age verification at the same time.
> If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you
Author started at System 8. They didn't start locking things down until the iPhone.
> They didn't start locking things down until the iPhone.
They sure have tried since forever though. My uncle complained about Apple for this very reason ~20y ago…
Before the iPhone, what was their attempts at that? I remember using OSX a bunch before the iPhone was public, but never remember any of the ways they tried to lock it down, I might have been too young then.
Getting music on an ipod was always a pain unless you bought the music on itunes or ripped a music CD directly with itunes (yes, that was an actual feature. hard to imagine these days).
No simple drag and drop onto a mounted USB drive like all other mp3 players back in the day. Maybe more of a lock-in attempt instead of lock down, but related imo.
Anything you dropped into your computer's MP3 directory would sync to your iPod. It didn't matter where you got the music from.
The restriction was that an iPod would only sync tracks from one computer at a time, which was a demand of the music rights holders.
You can still rip CDs with Apple Music. In fact, that's the only use I have for that app (I recently lost a hard drive with music and I'm in the process of backing up all my CDs again).
> ripped a music CD directly with itunes (yes, that was an actual feature. hard to imagine these days).
These days? Last week (though WMP). My retired father's old computer died, his new one, no CD slot. Emails me from Australia asking how to rip his CDs for his media player. He's not an audiophile but he's not a technophile (and his blues music collection is sufficiently large that at least one of the blues radio stations in his city will on occasion ask him to borrow something because they don't have it in their library.
Told him to get a USB CD player and a card reader (his media player is on micro/SD).
"locked down" is a vague, moving target. The criticisms of pre-OSX MacOS was that it was an operating system for little babies, and not serious tech enthusiasts and power users. Also they were too expensive, and you can build a PC that is 100000x more powerful for cheaper. This literally hasn't changed.
Are you being sarcastic? This has definitely changed with Apple Silicon. Looking at hardware value, the M-series are way more competitive than the Intel macs ever were, and if you want to run an LLM locally, they are undefeated.
However, it is quite ironic that while the value of their hardware has sharply increased, their software has become the slop that everyone is complaining about.
Uh where’s the cheaper MacBook neo that is 100000x more powerful?
So you think people are building their own laptops?
it’s sarcasm
Their previous lock-downs were on the hardware level, not offering ISA slots and stuff. The original Mac (then Mac+ and classic) had no expansion slots at all, and they started adding them only later.
ADB ports only finally went away when USB came out. But I do have to give Apple credit, because those fruity-colored iMacs with the hockey puck mouse, that had only USB ports... those are really what got USB to become fully adopted. PCs had USB ports for a while before those came out, but nobody made any peripherals, probably because Windows had really crappy support for it... Once those fruity iMacs were released, then came the flood of USB stuff.
Exactly. After the Apple II, it was a post-Woz world. There’s a reason Apple owns so many patents on proprietary types of screws...
wasn't that about when the iphone came out?
First iPhone was 18 years ago, but yeah it around the time of the first iPhone. IIRC he actually mentioned that because he had already been confronted to Apple’s lockdown before the iPhone. It was a long time ago and I was young, so I don’t remember the details.
There was a decade between them.
My uncle shouts at cats and thinks the CIA have an implant in his fillings, but I'm not claiming that as proof on HN.
What's odd and strange about this? Author clearly specifies this at the start:
> To summarise for yous there are three main issues for me and the last one happened today and is what pushed me through the threshold.
The compounding led to this, not that individual issues existed (and have been a problem) for a while.
When I got the prompt it just said "your account age is old enough to prove your age" and didn't ask for any further info.
> Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now
Are you sure you're not apologising for Apple?
I assume they are talking about the "This application was downloaded from the internet" warning, which I also don't like. Requiring dollars for signing and then _still_ showing a warning when someone installs your application seems crappy to me.
Yes, I'm sure. Apple has taken a "walled garden" approach for a very long time now, and there are real, tangible benefits to this approach for end users. There are also real downsides, and if you wanted unfettered installation rights, Linux has existed for at least as long as Apple has limited software installation.
My point is that having both of these options is a good thing, as they both have pros and cons, so people can decide which of those pros and cons are most important to them, and then choose accordingly.
Would you be surprised that your sports car uses a lot of fuel and get mad about it? It was sort of the deal when you bought it.
Apple isn't shy about its gatekeepy behaviour, and some people believe that it's why Apples ecosystem is subjectively nicer than the Microsoft one.
Some of us have watched it ratchet up since the 80’s, when there were no such restrictions. The fact that some people hit a threshold and decide to stop putting up with it isn’t surprising.
Indeed. For many of us it's a feature, not a bug.
> Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now
The point is this person has been dealing with Gatekeeper for a long time but all of sudden it’s a deal breaker?
"This man was in the abusive relationship for so ling and suddenly he's leaving?"
I hope the author reports back in a year. Getting off the Apple train appeals to me, the reality of doing so looks bleak.
Full disclosure: I've been in the Apple ecosystem since System 6, worked as an engineer there for 25 years. But I am as frustrated by many of the decisions Apple has made as many people I see posting.
Liquid glass? This too shall pass.
Locked down ecosystem? I imagine the blowback if they unlocked it and people's devices were suddenly being compromised by malware.
I guess I prefer the frying pan to the fire that I feel awaits me if I jump. As I mentioned though, seeing blog posts after the jump will be interesting.
As someone who has moved back and forth between Mac and Linux around 3 or 4 times since 1992, Linux is actually surprisingly reasonable. For laptops, I just buy from Dell, with Ubuntu preloaded, and everything works. (Dell's build quality isn't as good as Apple's, so I usually spend extra for Dell's next-day on-site service.) For workstations, it's usually pretty straightforward to get something that Just Works.
After that, I've got Chrome, Visual Studio Code, Steam and a full suite of command-line tools, which covers my personal essentials. But if you rely heavily on something like Photoshop or the MacOS X Omnifocus application, then you might find much larger holes on the Linux side.
As a matter of principal, I consider myself too old to troubleshoot Linux without getting paid for it. It turns out that I virtually never do that, so I'm pretty happy. Really, buying pre-loaded and fully supported Linux laptops eliminates 80% of the pain, and nearly all of the remaining 20% can be avoided by refusing to get clever.
I was in almost the exact same boat as the author. As a long-time Apple power user, I reached my breaking point about a year ago and finally migrated my workflow to Linux. I’m still letting my iPhone age out, but I’ve already stripped it of all Apple cloud services. Instead, I’ve replaced every stock app with self-hosted alternatives running on my own beefy NAS. If you have the technical overhead to manage your own stack, I highly recommend it, owning your data is a total game-changer for privacy.
What real world improvement has owning your data made to you besides increasing the friction for a lot of things?
Self-hosting UnifiedPush / ntfy drops FCM / Google Play Services as a requirement, extending the usable life of my phone pretty dramatically; the better battery life I get is just a bonus. Apps drop from RAM less-frequently.
The series I'm watching doesn't drop from Netflix. Nor do I juggle which services have seasons 1-3, and 5, and have to play the subscribe'n'cancel dance to watch the full series.
I never deal with radio-edits or censored curse words in music. When I pull up an album, it will be the proper album, not the smeared or changed swear words. This exact issue is what pushed me off Google Play Music.
What real world improvement has been made by allowing your data to be mined?
Keeping my photos in Apple's cloud?
Peace of mind in case my house burns down, ha ha.
I use offsite backups for that very scenario - From nextcloud (private) to https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage.
I don't think it's just those three issues. Those are just the three final drops in the bucket.
Maybe the author was aware of all this, but with "Apple Just Lost Me" they wanted to say that this is the straw that broke the camel's back.
I struggle to believe that Liquid Glass was one person's fault.
It was probably a cascade of people but the question is whether we all realize Apple was right or if they just implemented it wrong or if it will just take a year or two to get things dialed in (but still prepared for an AR/VR world) and then we forget it ever happened.
People had the same reaction to iOS 7. They cleaned up some of the excesses over the next few years, and now the same basic concept is what people want Apple to RETURN to. They'll be fine.
I’d still want Apple to return to an iOS 6-like design. Not the super-skeuomorphic stuff, but the regular UI with discernible controls clearly separated from content.
It's a leadership failure. They obviously have a UI/UX dept. Those people want to be considered productive. Hence, they need to force a major redesign every now and then. Without a Steve Jobs like leader, those things will happen due to fundamental laws of corporate bureaucracy.
> It's a leadership failure. They obviously have a UI/UX dept. Those people want to be considered productive.
They had a guy who had no UI/UX experience leading the UI/UX team. He left for Meta thank goodness [1].
[1]: “Alan Dye Leaves Apple for Meta, Replaced by Longtime Designer Stephen Lemay” — https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-dye-leaves...
Stephen Lemay reportedly was a driving force behind Liquid Glass: https://www.macrumors.com/2026/03/15/ios-27-macos-27-no-majo...
Most people have forgotten Antennagate or the iPhone 4 fiasco. You're probably correct that people won't remember this in 2028
Because folks don’t continuously talk about something that happened 14-years ago on a device that’s been off the market for nearly as long?
I hear the phrase "you're holding it wrong" said sarcastically all the time, people remember antennagate
You remember the funny turn of phrase instead of how bad the reception was in your iPhone 4, and how it ruined the experience of owning it. Because it wasn't that big of a deal in the end.
I had the UK Age verification popup today. It verified immediately based on the age of my Apple account, I didn't have to take any further action. I am much younger than the OP, and probably than their Apple account. I am surprised that this didn't happen for them.
The OP states they've migrated. That might mean that the field on their account database entry might be related to that move. The account is older, but when moving countries I've had to do weird dances to get my Google accounts to accept the new locale, and wouldn't be surprised if their computed account age coincides with me having done that change.
Criticize gatekeeping all you want, but I feel it’s safer to recommend a Mac or iPhone to an older, non-technical person than the equivalent Windows / Android machine.
And I’m still able to install any app I want with minimal fuss.
I’m from the US but reside indefinitely in the UK, and I’ve dodged all this crap (age verification, disabling advanced protection) by simply remaining in the US App Store. It has some downsides like I can’t download the Vodafone UK app but nowadays most apps are available globally.
And herein lies the absurdity of the whole legal framework in the first place. Does it apply to tourists? Residents? Citizens? Citizens traveling abroad?
Someone changed their mind about something they've been putting up with, it's as simple as that.
The boiling frog thing is a myth - most frogs realize the water's too hot at some point, and jump out.
Yeah, agreed. Gatekeeper is nearly 15 years old now, and has progressively gotten more aggressive, but AFAIK there isn't much new in the past year or two. macOS 26 is bad, but so is Windows 11...so unless you are willing to jump into Linux for desktop, there aren't many other options. And age verification is likely going to be an issue with any platform he chooses - are other companies not using credit card?
> getting rid of Alan Dye.
All the reporting I’ve seen indicates that he left of his own accord and that Apple was blindsided, indicating that they didn’t even consider getting rid of him.
> at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye.
Alan Dye left of his own volition to Meta. I 100% believe he would still be there if he had not left.
> but Apple needs to follow UK law
And the UK law doesn't ask for device-level age verification.
To counter your downvoters:
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
-- https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
Yep, this applies to social media companies, not iOS or the App store.
The author is complaining about the fact that there are a myriad of issues with Apple's ecosystem that have built up a level of frustration with their ecosystem where they can no longer tolerate it.
I find it infuriating I have to verify that I am older than 18 when my gmail account is 20+ years old.
Him moving to Android will do them no good as Google will be implementing similar controls in it. I suggest they get a Pixel Phone and install Graphene OS.
I guess it's written for people who never had to Apple, cause it just repeated reasons I'd never touch those products.
Why are you so deeply invested into defending the honor of a massive corporation that's callous to its users? Especially corporation that's supposedly proud of their UX?
> 3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law.
No they don't. They need to grow balls. They pay hefty tax rates in UK. If they would announce they are leaving UK market in 90 days, I bet you would find enough politicians to change the course of this terrible law.
Why is it a US corporation’s job to unfuck UK laws? If they did get involved, you’d blast them for meddling.
Corporations don’t belong to a single jurisdiction.
Should Apple be responsible for righting the wrongs of legislation in every country it operates in? I don’t think so. Ideally it would mettle as little as possible, even though they clearly don’t (see right to repair).
Hmm. I don't think the point is that Apple has to "fight". The point is that Apple needs a moral high ground and is willing to completely give up the UK market (which I understand but don't necessarily agree with). I don't see that happening with today's environment, considering that shareholders will happily fire Cook over that.
I think this law is the wrong way about doing what they're trying to do, but I also don't want US corps deciding what is and isn't permissible in our country.
> I also don't want US corps deciding what is and isn't permissible in our country.
Apple might be the wrong company for you then. They're all about corporate control and deciding what is and isn't permissible on their devices. The first time you want to install an app that isn't approved in their app store, this becomes quite apparent.
They can do whatever they want on their devices that is permissible in whatever jurisdiction they're selling into, but they don't get to choose to follow our laws. If we want those changed we'll do it at the ballot box.
Since there is no law requiring what they are doing, what now?
I feel like comprehension is lacking here.
1. The original comment was about Apple using their power to influence UK law.
2. That is bad, don't do that Apple.
3. If they want to do other things not legislated against they are free to do so.
I'm not aware of any law or even terms of service that prevents Apple from saying "we don't like your politics, your iPhone has been disabled, account suspended, all iCloud data deleted." I don't think they would suffer any reputation damage either at this point.
You don't think Apple would suffer any reputational damage if they deleted millions of peoples cherished memories and important work notes/emails?
Also there would be many lawsuits arising from this.
Millions of people stay on Apple's happy path.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few out there who have gotten their Apple account restricted for whatever reason, and didn't have the clout, energy, or mental bandwidth to pursue it loudly and publicly.
> They pay hefty tax rates in UK.
Are you sure?
Apple paid 304m in taxes on 1200m in profits in the UK. That's ~25% tax rate on profits. It's entirely subjective to say if that's a "pretty hefty" rate or not, but it seems to be pretty standard for G20 countries.
I suspect the UK wouldn't love losing that 304m, but Apple would also probably not enjoy losing the 1200m of profits either.
It's almost like international companies having to deal with legislation in every country they operate in is a more complicated topic than could ever be hashed out in the comment sections of a tech news site...
https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2025/07/apples-uk-tax-b...
There's a bizarre trend, especially on HN, of unjustified criticism against Apple. There are so many YC companies committing outright fraud, Palantir is building a surveillance state, a bunch of well known founders and VCs openly promote white supremacist ideology, but you'll never see more vitriol on this forum than someone complaining about the liquid glass UI or app store take rate.
Apple holds itself to higher standards, thus its critics hold it to a higher standard than the ghouls at Palantir.
That's why I like Apple so much.
that's because those other things mentioned are quite irrelevant in every day life, but the apple products' quality or bad appstore practices are directly affecting the said complainer on HN.
Several things can be wrong at the same time.
Personally, I gave Apple many thousands of dollars, and then I had updates forced on me by Apple which made every Apple device I own worse.
One can be angry about things which directly and immediately make their life worse while also being angry about the other evils in the world.
This is surely not a trend, I am sure humans around the world throughout history have been able to criticize one thing even while something far worse is happening.
Maybe he doesn't live in the US?
Macbooks are standard fare for tech workers. Having reached the top of the mountain it should not be a surprise that there are heavy winds. Instead of behaving like custodians of the cathedral we get fast movement with breakage and an emphasis on pursuit of bold aesthetic novelty. If there is any bizarre trend here it is Apple burning billions to give people features they do not want while letting core functionality weaken and fail.
Our choice of phone isn't between Apple and Palantir but between Apple and Android. The criticism comes from the fact that the other option is better.
Internet memes and terminal Holy Wars take nearly zero thought, effort or intelligence to post about. Just emotion and hot takes, and you're almost guaranteed a response.
This comment is pure whataboutism
Someone has to play the thankless role of defending the multibillion dollar corporation.
Any system of age verification will fail to satisfy the writer, because it is fundamentally the UK’s fault by requiring such draconian measures. Credit cards don't work ever time, but the other options of using AI or sending your data to a third company who will resell it are also not great.
The only other complaint seems to be liquid glass? It really feels strange because Apple feels on the upswing with their new office and their cheap, repairable mac.
Reading between the lines, the author of the blog post would have gone along with the verification with annoyance if the verification had worked. What seems to have prompted everything is the credit cards failing. The fact that they couldn't use Wallet and then tried manually with all five sort of illustrates that they would have gone along with it.
Edge cases like immigrants in a different land are typically unmet for these things. I remember once trying to re-activate my Google Fi SIM from my home in the UK before I returned to the US and getting a strange error message that didn't allude to the region. I got the rep on the line and they said "You're in the US, right?" and I had to bullshit something about "oh I had my VPN on" and then turned it on so I would like I was in the US and it worked then.
Anyway, there's clearly one cause and the rest is just kitchen sink argumentation.
> Edge cases like immigrants in a different land
It’s a brutal faux pas from Apple to consider immigrants an “edge case”. We are a significant group in many countries. (That said - I don’t have any banking products from my country of origin anymore)
I think it's unavoidable to end up triggering these since we're not really that common once it lands up with the specifics. It's rarely "immigrants" as a class but more "people with ID A in country B". I'm an Indian national with permanent residence in the US who lived in the UK. I have bank accounts in all three countries and I really don't expect them to work cross nationally reliably. If anything would, it would have to be the US stuff but I wouldn't count on it.
I mean, I'd consider it important for it to work, but when it doesn't I wouldn't consider it a brutal faux pas so much as a moment of frustration at the kind of engineer who only happy-path builds.
I think this is one of the biggest tragedies from big tech companies. Their automated approaches usually work great for most people, but will be hopelessly broken for edge cases, often with no recourse. This happens all the time with non-standard location histories.
It's also amazing how badly big tech apps will often fail with poor or no internet connection. Clearly a lot of the developers at these companies never leave the cities they live and work in.
Other industries can be just as bad, but it's particularly grating coming from companies that constantly talk about diversity, individual empowerment, and other nice sounding corporate slop.
> it is fundamentally the UK’s fault by requiring such draconian measures
It would appear the UK doesn't:
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
-- https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
Apple has done this sort of thing before, where they don't like a law, they'll implement some unnecessary and shitty feature, and then say "hey don't blame us, blame your MPs!".
Sounds like you're talking about Apple disabling Advanced Data Protection in the UK? https://support.apple.com/en-us/122234
Weird take to shift the blame to Apple for that.
No, Apple adding fees "to comply with the DMA" because "EU made us do it":
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/26/app-store-eu-rule-chang...
Interesting, I would not have expected calling Apple out for their malicious compliance practices would be controversial.
Sometimes Apple's malicious compliance is in service of (or less generously: aligned with) users' interests. I didn't know about the added fees that parent mentioned, so I appreciate them clarifying in this case.
If there's one thing humans manage to do well, it's to make small, random decisions we made in the past an integral part of our identity.
Just wanted to say, with all seriousness, this is one of the most insightful comments I've read in a very long time.
I'm glad you liked my semi-offhand comment! I will now make "HN influencer" part of my identity :P.
I think Apple's hardware has good to great since the end of the "butterfly" keyboard fiasco, but their software has been in a persistent, slow decline - both in terms of quality and design. So depending on what you look at/care about you could make the case that Apple is getting better or Apple is getting worse.
That covers the good and the bad. The ugly is the increasing presence of ads in Apple software - Maps being the latest example. Something that's going to push me out of the ecosystem eventually. I'm probably ditching Apple Maps for Google Maps this summer, because if I'm going to use an ad-infested product I at least want to get reliable directions out of it.
Tapping a UK passport to your phone works just fine for ETA apps and it would work just fine for Apple as well.
The fact that you think American corporation punishing foreign users for their laws is acceptible is sick upon itself.
> The fact that you think American corporation punishing foreign users for their laws is acceptible is sick upon itself.
Not really. I was hoping more large US corps would just not comply and force a big kerfuffle and force the UK government to rethink the OSA and other ridiculous legislation.
So far , anyone telling OFCOM where to shove it (think: 4chan) doesn’t have any kind of operations or presence in the UK , is refusing to pay their fines, denies being under their jurisdiction — and doesn’t seem to care if they get blocked by the whole country.
I don’t think much of that is true for Apple, even though there isn’t even a so called law they’re even following. They’re just doing the opposite and rolling over and pre emptively complying with OFCOM. We’re going to have to look elsewhere for resistance
I’ve had it with Apple and there’s nothing they can do that would salvage my perception of them or make it any worse than it already is. So this company is a bunch of boot lickers on top of everything else that sucks about them, the only reason I’ll ever buy another Mac is if Linux can ever be installed on something beyond the m1/m2 processor.
Fuck Apple as a company, nice hardware— but a trash Fisher Price operating system that they somehow just managed to make even worse than it already was.
I was hoping someone like Musk (who is temperamental) would tell them to spin on it (I know people here don't like him). Politicians tend to use Twitter, so they would be directly affected.
The benefit of KF and 4chan telling them to stick it, is that it creates a precedent where most sites outside the UK can just ignore them. I think both KF and 4chan are going to the US courts to get the matter decided IIRC they are suing the Ofcom in the US. I've not bothered checking up on the case because the guy that runs KF is massive dick and I don't want to listen to updates from him.
How many people have a passport vs a credit card? If you travel a lot, sure, but some folks never leave their hometown.
In the UK More people have passports than have credit cards, the assumption otherwise is precisely the culture-clash that the article is complaining about.
In the UK? Over 85% of people have a passport.
More Brits have passports (86.5% [1]) than credit cards (64% [2]).
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populati...
[2] https://www.money.co.uk/credit-cards/credit-card-statistics
UK, California and Brazil, no?
California's law requires that the OS ask the user for their age, and accept the response as-is without doing any verification.
Terry Gilliam's Brazil, California, and geographic Brazil, yes.
The space allocated for "Apple has lost their way" has been maxed out for decades, so it bears stressing that this time is different. This Liquid Glass debacle has disillusioned everyone from hardcore Apple fans to normal people who otherwise don't follow tech.
Once the dust settles, this will be a case study for decades to come. Apple threw their hard-won reputational gains off a cliff for _nothing_.
My non-techie friends either barely notice Liquid Glass or go "ooo this is nice!". It has annoyed me on occasion, but I barely notice it any more. Much ado about nothing.
My non techie friends all hate it. I don’t think there is a single Apple user I talk to regularly that hasn’t complained about it, or ask me why it is that way (being the resident tech person for some).
And besides a few odd posts on x, I haven’t heard anyone techy speak positively about it.
Maybe I’m the one in a bubble, but I’m seriously considering switching from Apple as a lifelong Apple user, largely because of the UI changes (Liquid Glass et al), so I don’t think the complaints about it are overblown.
I do think the glass effects do look great in certain areas, like pulling down Notification Center. But I find LG for the most part to be change for the sake of it. Small things like replacing the Cancel & Confirm/Done prompts with larger X or checkmark icons bother me. They take up more space on screen, and honestly they don't always translate well. There are some cases where a checkmark has taken the place of "Done" and I have felt genuine confusion on how to get out of the editing mode or options screen.
Personally I’m not a fan of the glass effect, but yeah what bothers me more are all the changes around it. The terrible jelly nav bars, the text distortion, the massive buttons with overly rounded corners, the awful switches and sliders, not to mention the design inconsistency through any given OS, let alone across them.
Personally I bundle it all up into “Liquid Glass et al”, but the glass effects are the least of the issues for me. I could maybe get over an ugly design; design is subjective after all. But iOS 26 is just disfunctionally bad design (imho)
Like I'm not a fan but the ecosystem is convenient if you can afford it and liquid glass is fine? I haven't heard a single person complain about it IRL It's not a big design that I got hyped for like iOS 6 but it's fine
I have the vision pro, mbp m4, ip15 pro max, apple watch ultra 2, studio display (2026), 2 official keyboards, 2 magic trackpads, ipad (4th gen), 3 homepod 2, 5 homepod mini, airpod pro 3 (I keep buying new airpod pros every time they come out because the improvements are really good).
I'm fine liquid glass and I use their products like.. 20 hours a day?
My kid just updated their phone recently and came in to show me. They thought it looked pretty cool.
Which is to say, we all have our own bubbles.
My personal experiences are the opposite of this. I have people in my life who are gen Z, millenials, and gen X who are befuddled by it.
We also have data to show people dislike this. Google Trends shows the largest spikes ever for "how to switch to android", "iphone revert update", "iphone fix battery", and "iphone slow", all only after the release of Liquid Glass (and particularly the increased tactics to get people to update starting in September).
I held off on upgrading because I heard how much people hated it. I bought the new XDR display last week and finally had to upgrade for it to work properly and... it's totally fine? I'm not sure what the big deal is. It's way more annoying on iOS than it is on macOS.
I would not even have noticed it if not for visiting this website. It's possibly worse on iOS than on MacOS, but I don't have an iPhone.
Now, if I was developing software for MacOS and it broke all my UIs, I would be at least as irritated as the author.
Yes, the thing people notice is the keyboard not working.
Supposedly iOS 26.4 out yesterday fixes that. I certainly hope so.
Yeah I couldn't care less for liquid glass but it's not as horrible as people make it out to be. The amount of hate is irrational. New Coke vibes if you heard of new coke.
Oh allright, your few imaginary friends are the gold standard for the world now?
I don't understand the fuss around liquid glass. I've been using Apple stuff since before OS X and this just feels like another redesign; I understand that there are some accessibility issues (that I thought Apple had at least partially addressed) but I don't have any problems using it. In fact, I kinda like it. It feels like many people latched onto an extremely negative narrative early on, and can't let go of it.
I have much more of a problem with the terrible window management on the mac and ipad OSs. Not being able to snap and resize windows to the edges of the screen, like every other standard window manager that exists, is insane (I know they added some version of this recently, but unsurprisingly it sucks). And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky. They completely ruined the cmd-space search in their most recent major release. They need to get their house in order.
If you're going to say Apple's reputational hit from Tahoe, and Tahoe's many problems, are merely narrative-driven, you need to at least provide support for that. For example:
- why the added transparency effects don't present accessibility/usability issues, despite what users report
- why the corner radius change (among other UI changes), including its absurd size and broken handle detection actually aren't a big deal (even though every other window toolkit NOT swiftui has to be updated for it)
- why it's okay that they added useless icons to menus that add visual clutter and violate of their own design standards
- why Rosetta is going away, even though so many things still depend on it
The bigger issue is that Tahoe was a frivolous cosmetic update with only a few actual improvements, despite all of macOS's bugs that haven't been fixed over the years. That's a long list, from broken keyboard shortcuts in most their newer apps (and System Settings) to persistent Airplay compatibility problems.
Why is Apple's hardware getting objective better over the years while the possible software gains are squandered year after year?
I am talking about "liquid glass", which I understand to refer to the recent design language updates that include the much-bemoaned transparent/translucent design elements. I will repeat that I simply have not experienced myself having a negative reaction to these changes, even if you include corner radius changes and what you call "visual clutter" under the umbrella of "liquid glass"; I hardly noticed the former and didn't notice the latter at all. As for accessibility issues, I explicitly called them out in my comment.
Re: the rest of your comment, it seems like a real stretch to suggest that any of the following (quoting you) are within the scope of "liquid glass":
* Dropping Rosetta.
* Broken keyboard shortcuts in most their newer apps (and System Settings).
* Persistent Airplay compatibility problems.
* Other bugs that haven't been fixed over the years.
* Possible software gains being squandered year after year.
I clearly articulated in my comment that I have other problems with the current state of mac OS, so I'm not sure why you're implying that I'm claiming all the issues mentioned in your post are in the scope of "liquid glass" and therefore mainly narrative-driven.
It suggests to me that you didn't really read my comment before composing your reply.
> And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky.
It appears you do indeed understand the fuss around Liquid Glass :)
The way I see it, "Liquid Glass" is used as a catch-all term to refer to all the UI changes across Apple's 2026 slate of user interfaces.
For one example, the annoying Apple Watch fitness app changes are "Liquid Glass" in my book because it exists only to show off the new wobbling refracting buttons,. The loss of performance and battery life is reasonably assumed to be tied to new Liquid Glass shaders Apple aspires to run 120 times a second on the phone.
I generally felt this way about macOS before "liquid glass" launched, so no, I don't think so.
The menu icons are really annoying, especially because some apps don't have them, and everything looks off-kilter. Finder sidebar morphing as the window resizes, also annoying.
But you're right, it's still usable, unlike the window management.
Lucky for me i convinced my boss to buy me a PC about a month after they forced the Tahoe update on my old work MBP
You're far overstating the effect it has had.
The Apple universe seems to be a place where sentiment is driven by tastemakers and small-group consensus, not the mass of actual customers. So it doesn’t need to be a dominant complaint to have a big effect.
The griping I read about Liquid Glass is from the unhip nerds on HN (like me). I don’t actually know what the industrial designers and graphic artists in their Soho lofts think. I asked an exec designer that I know IRL and got a shrug.
Yeah. The vast majority of people simply don't give a flying shit, and many haven't really even noticed.
Also most of the stuff people complain about is easily changed in settings (transparency, etc...).
There are many things which are worse which cannot be configured. I can't get my battery life back, I can't get a version of Apple Maps which doesn't crash on launch back, I can't get my framerate back. I can't even get a refund for this $1200 phone.
That's fair, by "everyone" it's probably only several million people.
Other than that, I stand by my statement exactly. This is very bad.
I think people are using "liquid glass" as a blanket term that includes other changes in iOS 26, like completely breaking message delivery with the world's dumbest spam filter, aggressively waking some people up in the middle of the night, siri somehow getting even worse, breaking the incoming call state machine (again), bluetooth regressions, regressions to their (already poor) UI accessibility, and so on.
Those other things add up and are definitely noticed by non-tech users that don't care that things like the alarm UI are massively regressed.
Are you from the future? Because on the current timeline it's much too early to tell if it's overstated or understated.
Apple has gone from 68k to ppc to intel to arm. The look of their desktop has changed so much over the years that showing a screen shot instantly tells you roughly the date it was taken. A graphical change at this point isn't moving the needle significantly.
The reality is that Windows 11 continues to get worse. I was an embedded Linux dev for 15 years, and even I don't really want Linux on my desktop. Apple has better build quality, long support periods, simplified updates, and for the most part just works. My personal computer is just an appliance and a means to an ends, Apple still is the best of many bad choices.
The liquid glass debacle seems minor compared to the crappy keyboard debacle five or ten years ago and that didn't really hurt them in the long run.
I don't have a Mac but my tablet and phone are both running liquid glass and it's... fine. I lost my favorite Sudoku app (Enjoy Sudoku) when they updated and for me that's the worst thing about it.
I think on forums like this that tend to have a lot of Apple fans and haters, the impact of UI changes is overblown. Normies mostly don't care. They notice the change when it happens and then two days later they have already forgotten what the UI used to be.
I've been using Apple since 1995 on System 7.5 then through OSX to MacOS & iOS. MacOS/iOS/iPadOS 26 and Liquid Glass do not bother me one bit. I rather still enjoy using my devices running these operating systems and think that the interface is great. I also know i am not the only one.
Likewise, on macs since OS7, don't care at all. People might as well be comparing the tread on their car's tyres
I've heard this every UI update for the past 20 years.
That's why I emphasized this is different.
Apple fans bemoaned the Settings menu changing from a grid to a list, or the battery getting a skeumorphic icon, but that doesn't really matter.
The Liquid Glass stuff was forced on users in ways their other OS updates weren't, and it has caused serious performance, stability, and usability problems throughout the entire OS.
I'm happy with it. My non-techie partner is happy (or more like "I don't care") with it. All my non-techie friends and family don't give a flying f*. I just think this site has recurrent issues with all redesigns and no, this time is no different.
I think this sums up the disconnect between the devotees (I’ve been on Mac since 2005 or so, just long enough to buy the last PowerPC after a decade of Windows) and any corporation. I am not a devotee of any particular OS’ church but Apple’s market cap suggests there was a whole lotta nothing they got in return. I am a firm believer in the way European football fans see their clubs as belonging to them, but the reality with any brand is their loyalty is to money, not you.
As someone who was inspired to buy their first Apple laptop by the "send all other UNIX boxes to /dev/null" ad I feel like Apple is already done and we are just catching the last remaining tail of that legacy.
Seems underlying features such as kerberos, NFS, auto mount and others are just bit rotting by now and its a matter of time before MacOS becomes Windows 8.
Those features also have a shrinking user base over time, so they get less resources and attention.
Liquid Glass is fine now. I mean I don’t like it but I’m used to it.
It was very very bad during the beta though
> threw their hard-won reputational gains off a cliff for _nothing_
I imagine some executive’s ego was spared by not telling them their idea was bad. Priceless.
What keeps me in the Appleverse is the hardware, and the software that Just Works with the hardware (I find that "Just Works" has been rapidly eroding in general, but naturally it still handles the hardware well). The alternatives are Linux on much worse hardware, or the non-starter that is Windows on anything whatsoever.
I'm told ThinkPads are getting to parity and have primo Linux support, but barring accident, my M3 MBP will probably last me a decade. Another reason I prefer Apple hardware.
Almost any Linux distro will work find with any Thinkpad and has done so for almost two decades now.
HP Zbook G1a (Ryzen AI max+ 395) is getting closer and has an M.2 SSD slot. But Macbooks undeniably have better battery life (touchpad, sound and display). I selected this over Macbook because I value linux and openness more. But it's true Apple managed to make some really good devices with apple silicon and the competition has a hard time catching up.
Before apple silicon, I was making fun of apple fanboys as CPU specs were mostly bad and it didn't make sense for the price. Apple silicon changed that. And it doesn't look like it will change very soon, sadly. I would like to see more really viably alternatives.
Yeah Apple's hardware team still has the sauce. As someone who will not buy Apple products, I do have to give kudos where they're due. Their software is an ever-evolving dumpster fire. I just wish their hardware was friendly to Linux. And no, herculean reverse engineering efforts that will always be behind on feature parity and efficiency, do not count (impressive and respectable though it may be). I would totally buy a MacBook if running MacOS wasn't a requirement for it be fully capable.
I switched as a heavy Linux user to a MacBook because of this reason.
1. Battery is better than any other laptop out there
2. Touchpad is better than any other laptop out there. I don't even use a mouse anymore
3. Sound is better than any other laptop out there.
There is no other laptop that comes even close to this hardware.
Linux runs well on M2 (and hopefully also M3 in the future)
If you're OK with it draining 3% battery per hour when you close the lid, sure.
https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m2/
still too many missing bits for me.
Apple Silicon was as potent a crack as SSDs and Chrome (both immense steps up from what we had before). I nearly left the Apple ecosystem but the M chips pulled me back...
The third point in this article is what really gets me. The credit card culture in Canada and the US is just insane to me, coming from a European point of view. You can get by without credit cards in Europe, and most of my family only has one for traveling abroad. So sure, they can use their credit card if they really have to, but it’s not a good default, as many others won’t even have credit cards. (And within EU, traveling without one is still fine for the most part).
You can get by just fine in the US without a credit card too. At least if you have a debit card (which can pretend to be a credit card in most situations). We were actually unscored by the credit bureaus for several years when we didn't own a house.
You may be able to get by in the US without a credit card, but every purchase will literally cost you 2-5% more if you aren't making smart use of them.
These days in a lot of places it is the other way around- using a credit card costs a 3% surcharge over cash.
I feel like this is regional, because I keep hearing it but I never run into these places.
I find that many online payments require CC. And yeah credit score is the other issue.
I find Apple's refusal to patch iOS18 (other than for very old devices that do not support 26) to be more objectionable. I have a 13 mini and everything I've read says not to upgrade to 26. Yet Apple won't issue patches for known security issues that are actively being exploited in the wild? That's crazy.
Other than the one from yesterday? https://support.apple.com/en-us/126793
Or last month? https://support.apple.com/en-us/126347
Or December? https://support.apple.com/en-us/125885
Or November? https://support.apple.com/en-us/125633
Or September? https://support.apple.com/en-us/125327
My dude, I don't know how much more patching you want.
They're not making those updates available to all devices on iOS18. For example, the update from yesterday is just for iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR. As Ars reports, they are not issuing security patches for any devices that "can" run iOS 26, no matter how lousy that experience would be.
> Apple also released a few other security-focused updates for older operating systems. The iOS and iPadOS 18.7.7 updates are available for the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR, as well as the 7th-gen iPad, all devices that don’t support iOS or iPadOS 26. At this point, if you’re using a device that can be upgraded to version 26, Apple is no longer releasing iOS 18 updates for your phone or tablet. [1]
1: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/apple-releases-ios-i...
Any age verification should come with an OAUTH style government run API. The idea being you verify your ID with the government, and the service that required age verification gets back a true or false for does this user meet this age requirement. That way the amount of data shared is kept to a minimum.
The UK, and Brazil who passed a similar law, 'cheated' by just forcing private companies to figure it out.
No, this is an absolutely terrible idea. You're suggesting a giant, centralized, government-run data silo, with all of your online activity tied to your real-world ID. This is far worse for privacy than any data broker, it's hard to even compare.
Honestly I'd rather have private companies figure it out. Then at least you'll get multiple options, including from privacy-first companies. But that still sucks, and my preference strongly goes towards OS-level Age Indication. Just as effective in practice, 100% private and offline.
>No, this is an absolutely terrible idea. You're suggesting a giant, centralized, government-run data silo, with all of your online activity tied to your real-world ID. This is far worse for privacy than any data broker, it's hard to even compare.
Not all your online activity, even if they kept logs it would be something like 'this site asked for age verification, we said yes'.
So they would have a list of sites, if they stored them and were allowed to store them. Which is something they can get from your ISP regardless.
It could be used for bad sure, lots of things can. In my perfect world this wouldn't exist at all like it hasn't for 30+ years. But putting the burden on private companies was always going to create other avenues for issues.
As someone from the UK, do you honestly believe the UK government would be happy with just "true or false" data?
Companies may get multiple options but you and I and Joe average are going to have to submit PII to several vendors chosen by someone else, exactly like the credit bureau system but without the regulations they have to follow.
The fact that the powers-that-be need to understand but choose not to is that what they want is literally impossible, even with mandatory government blood screenings to access computers. Anything short of requiring identification per POST is inadequate. This whole thing is a fools' errand and we must not give any ground.
Doesn't that exist in the U.S. already? DOGE worked to create the "one big, beautiful database" and now the federal government is buying information about citizens from data brokers.
The EU is already implementing this in the best way it's ever going to be implemented:
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-ver...
I really don't like this perfect law enforcement future, but this EU initiative is about the best design one can have.
Almost. Their apps will only work on Apple and Google-controlled phones.
There are no plans to allow separate, standard AOSP attestation methods for Android. Google's crooked* Play Integrity will be the only one.
*crooked because it confirms Android 8 are safe and with full integrity, even when they're rooted, full of malware and present spoofed certificate.
Their reference apps only work on those phones, but these aren't required: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-andro...
The user of Play Integrity can choose to just block Android 8.
Really? Ugh, that's terrible. Teaches me to hope.
Ironic that Brazil government tends to pay lip service to digital sovereignty while forcing their own citizens to handle their data to Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel.
Wrong, because then that government knows exactly what services you have accessed. It's a huge and extremely dangerous privacy violation. The real solution to the age verification problem is not to have one. The Internet has existed for over 30 years without it; it's solution to a problem that does not exist.
Now your government knows you are a registered user of PornHub.
It will be fun when (not if) the database is leaked.
I don't think they meant literally Oauth but instead that you can get a verification request from the party that needs your age verified, get it signed by the government, and then send the assertion back to the relying party. It's not necessary for the government to send the signed verification request directly to Pornhub. It's not even necessary for the government to sign the assertion itself. A trusted device (like most consumer phones) could store the identity locally after government verification and then sign assertions itself after biometric or PIN verification, which is what most proposals look like.
I am not holding my breath.
> The UK, and Brazil who passed a similar law, 'cheated' by just forcing private companies to figure it out.
At least on the Brazilian case, it's outright illegal for a private company to implement the thing you are describing. So, if the government doesn't provide the service, there isn't much for them to figure out.
UK Gov sometimes likes to do things in very awkward ways, against any sort of worldly grain established. See the covid app.
However my Apple ID verified me based on my account age, I didn't need to provide anything.
Some kind of Digital ID?
The UK government proposed that and was met by the usual resistance to it.
Fuck that. California's way is the absolute maximum that should be done: When accounts get created on an operating system, allow the user to provide a completely unproven age. Then that age should be the only age check.
If the goal really is to just help parents prevent their kids from accessing inappropriate material, that's plenty. Anything else, and you're admitting the real goal is Big Brother style surveillance.
In EU we have EIDAS, at least in some countries. It works. But mostly just for actual citizens.
If the US had this, Trump would definitely be using it right now to send ICE to arrest people that said mean things about him on social media, didn't drop out of college, didn't bribe him enough, etc.
I bought a cheap, used iPhone SE3 because I needed to Facetime relatives.
I learned quickly that "Find My" was far superior in remote tracking of airtag-equivalents, and switched some of my convertible tags to their network.
I flew out of O'Hare last month, and there were advertisements all over the airport announcing that Illinois id/drivers license import into Apple Wallet, so I did it, and that works.
Supposedly, passports can be imported. I haven't been able to make that work, even after a few hours on the phone with Apple.
I also added a new CTA Ventra card, and I lost my ATM card while out of the country and instantly added a new one to Apple Wallet.
Apple devices allow biometrics to be disabled for unlocking the phone. That is an important requirement for me to use these features.
I would never, ever trust Google with any of these things. Ever.
That being said, if I want to run a torrent client on my phone, I should be able to do so. Apple will never allow that.
If I want a Bourne/POSIX shell, I should be able run one. Apple will never allow that [AFAIK].
There are important reasons that Apple products will never, ever be my primary communication devices.
> I would never, ever trust Google with any of these things. Ever.
Why do you trust Apple with them? What guarantees Apple will not do evil?
There are no guarantees, but if I need a digital ID, then this is the best solution.
Currently, one is a surveillance company that is motivated to abuse my privacy in every possible way, in order to target ads (and, conceivably, Gemini). The other, currently, is a hardware company that's dipped it's toes in advertising and is motivated to sell me devices and services.
If, at some point, they converge, I will trust Apple as little as I trust Google, but it's absurd to pretend they're the same thing, today or to "what if" yourself into knots.
Google is absolutely an evil company, head to toe, that is aligned against you. Trusting them with anything is almost as stupid as trusting Meta.
> Google is absolutely an evil company, head to toe, that is aligned against you. Trusting them with anything is almost as stupid as trusting Meta.
You should never really trust a business with your information. At the end of the day all they care about is making money and most customers have no interest in the business making more money, so you're never really in alignment.
I trust a business to do it's business - I don't believe Apple is going to try to build a massive database of everything I do online, because that is not its business. I do believe Google has a vested interest in knowing everything I do online because that is how it makes money.
Thinking they're the same, or will do the same things, or playing slippery slope games is really silly and/or a complete waste of time and energy.
> but it's absurd to pretend they're the same thing, today or to "what if" yourself into knots.
It's not absurd whatsoever. Apple and Google are oftentimes asked to make the exact same concessions, and in many cases (see: push notification backdoor) they do exactly the same thing: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
Neither Google nor Apple have any real accountability at play. The same mechanisms that demand Google to surveil users are being accepted by Apple too. The "ad business" canard is (and always was) a distraction.
> The "ad business" canard is (and always was) a distraction.
Your position is that Google has not and does not differentially acquire data on its users (and non-users) because... Apple has shared some data with the feds? Is that a serious position?
Your position is that Apple meaningfully differentiates itself by copying Google's worst behavior? Lemming logic does not apply, Apple and Google can't blame each other for assenting to warrantless surveillance.
To add on... No ability to firewall their iOS devices leaves use of the network vulnerable. Siri and other unkillable daemons always running. My favorite is when the cpu fan "stopped working" on an old A1278 after an update. Turns out that was just a change in the fan profile so the machine would cook first before the fan would wheeze out a puff of effort.
> That being said, if I want to run a torrent client on my phone, I should be able to do so. Apple will never allow that.
> If I want a Bourne/POSIX shell, I should be able run one. Apple will never allow that [AFAIK].
I believe you can accomplish the latter (via an emulator) with “ish”, and then use that to accomplish the former (with e.g. rtorrent)
I have that loaded on my phone, but look at /proc/version.
Depending on your definition of shell there are some: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/a-shell/id1473805438
You traded convenience for control. That is how all these big companies lock you in.
They have just done the same to me. I spent nearly two hours on the phone with Apple support before I find they will not accept a UK passport as valid ID. They will only accept the national ID card that I also don’t have. I don’t have or want a credit card. I’m 65 so me being now unable to verify my age is embarrassing and insulting. And the way Apple messed me about earlier has put me off them now. I won’t buy another product or service from them ever again.
It's particularly culturally deaf to try to verify with literally "credit cards".
In the UK most people use debit cards instead for most things.
https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/data-and-research/data/card-spe...
Credit card usage is a small fraction of debit card usage. This is very different to the USA where there are more credit card transactions than debit card ones.
You can have a debit card in your own name when you're under 18, but not a credit card, meaning credit is a proxy for age but debit isn't. It's the same in the UK and the US.
(They also accept an ID scan.)
A good proportion of people have the credit card even if they don't use them. 65% of adults have a credit card in the UK.
https://www.merchantsavvy.co.uk/uk-credit-card-statistics/
I've been using Mac for 15+ years now. I thought I would hate Glass so I avoided installing it across my ipad, phone, etc. But it was forced on my on my work laptop. Overall I don't notice the difference. There's nothing that outrages me, but I do find the changes useless.
Mate. None of the companies is worth such stress. I feel rage in you. It is just a tool. You choose what works best. That's it. No need to overthink it.
A smartphone is a tool that is all but required for modern life, it gets it's hooks into every detail of your life, and you have very little choice in providers, features, and functions. It makes a lot less sense to not care like this.
What can't you do without a smartphone in the UK or wherever you live? Specifically a smartphone, not just a phone number for SMS + calls.
Not the person to whom you're responding, but for me, some of the heavy hitters:
- Real-time weather alerts (I spend a lot of time in a naked Jeep in the summer, it's helpful to know when rain is imminent)
- Work-related authentication
- Audiobooks
- High quality, always available camera with quick editing and instant sharing capabilities
- GPS tracking when I'm exploring
- Find restaurants, museums, hotels when I'm traveling
- Pay for nearly anything (credit cards are useful but more time-consuming, and pulling them out frequently is a minor friction point that I'm grateful to leave behind)
Although I do agree with some that you listed, I think that many do have alternatives:
- Audiobooks can be listened on other devices besides smartphones
- A dedicated camera is a very good option for taking high-quality photos fast, but I do agree that instant sharing is not a possibility
- GPS tracking is available on many watches, even non-Smartwatches like the ones Garmin designs
- You can pay with a credit / debit card via NFC - just as fast as with a smartphone
- You can find restaurants and other places through maps, tourism centers, etc. Or there's a option for researching where to go before heading out
none of these are required, aside from the work example.
You just find a phone useful
Required would be “I can’t participate in society without a phone”, eg not being able to get healthcare or pay for things w/o a phone
Banks. Always banks. It is almost impossible to have a physical access token in my country.
That's curious. What do you mean by /almost/ impossible? Slightly more inconvenient / would have to visit a branch one time?
In the UK card readers are still widely supported by traditional banks. As is SMS for one time codes. People who think fintech banks are the only ones that exist might have a warped view on reality of course
This adds nothing to the conversation other than to dismiss the post entirely.
"don't worry about itt, brooo"
I wish they'd just show some backbone and refuse to implement age verification.
If this means they would need to geofence + start disabling devices to the extent required by law, good. The laws will immediately be repealed.
The whole platform is a smoldering fire at this point, so nothing in the article is particularly surprising. I've hit 10x as many bugs as the user mentioned. Liquid glass (as bad as it is!) barely makes the top 10 daily issues I have with iOS 26. In any other release, it'd be #1.
Maybe "Flood the zone" should be the word of the year for 2026?
>> show some backbone and refuse to implement age verification
refused whom? they weren't required to do it, it was a law for messenger apps only
In a world of mature systems and tangled dependencies, we’ve moved from an era of aspiration to an era of mtiigation. Choosing, whether it s a political candidate or an operating system or ecosystem is no longer a vote of confidence in something wonderful, but feels like a defensive maneuver to find the least worst option among a sea of downsides.
This is roughly the point where we should throw things out and begin again. We need to evolve. Again. Perhaps some sort of re-evolution.
Maybe, I feel that the simpler something is, the easier it is to be something awesome. For example, a TRMNL eink display, just takes a screenshot and puts it on an eink display, and it's awesome. It just does one thing really really well.
The moment you move to something that runs your TV, runs your smart speaker, is the phone in your pocket, is your computer, you end up with some really great features and unfortunately a series of trade offs.
I'm not sure that it means you should dump everything, but that you should try to make things simpler and decentralized.
> Credit cards are not documents. Many people don’t have them. Apple don’t provide any other way to verify your age because they are a stupid American company with American values in which you’re just as human as your credit score.
UK passed age verification law and people still find a way to blame the US.
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
While Ofcom hasn't required it yet, they have indicated that they very much plan to[1]. Apple is pretty clearly getting out ahead of this, and simultaneously removing the burden of compliance off all of the relevant app developers (which seems in line with their overall privacy stance - I'm more inclined to trust Apple with my ID than I am some social network)
[1]: https://www.rpclegal.com/snapshots/consumer/winter-2025/ofco...
Removing friction from a process that damages privacy is not a positive.
Passing a law that damages privacy is a negative. Complying with the law is an imperative. So mitigating harm from the law seems like a positive.
It's also not a net negative, if that process is going to be mandatory
That mentions app stores, but I can't see anything about device-level age-verification there.
Also, does Ofcom have the power under the Online Safety Act to mandate app-store verification (or device-level verification, for that matter)? Or would it require secondary, or even primary, legislation?
It's not about some American cultural attachment to credit cards. It's another classic Apple frustration move where they make the experience worse for their users in the hopes they'll blame someone else like the UK govt. They do the same thing with green bubbles.
It's more out of convenience that credit card is used.
There isn't some American principle that human = credit score. Americans just don't want their government ID required to do basic things.
See discord age verification controversy.
What are you talking about, have you tried to exist in America without a credit score? It absolutely is an American principle, just because it's not explicitly stated in the constitution doesn't mean it's not true.
We need to start calling it identity verification. Because that's what it is, anything that requires you to hand over an ID or credit card.
"Age" verification was a wonderful trojan horse that has fooled a lot of people.
there are laws that make sense that are based on age and not identity, so it's more "camel's nose under the tent" than trojan horse
You conveniently left this part out:
> First it attempted to check my Apple Wallet, it failed even though I have five cards in it and am able to use the App Store fine.
> Then it moved onto wanting me to manually add a card to verify myself. It failed with all my five cards. Four were debit cards, and one was a credit card from another country, cause you know I am an immigrant who has accounts still in my own original birth place.
His complaints are that Apple only supports credit cards for age verification. Please read more carefully.
I kind of prefer Credit Card over anything else if I have to do it. I give out my CC pretty regularly already so not much new PII to lose there. But it does sound like Apple has bugs to work out.
Yes. The point in the post is that it's very American to assume that every adult has a credit card. I'm in my thirties and I never had nor plan to have a credit card. I always have had only debit cards. In countries I've been raised and lived it's a sign of a poverty and total dependency on the bank with additional tax on your living, not an everyday tool like Americans perceive it.
Debit cards can be given to an underage, so I suppose they don't accept it for this reason.
In the UK, having a credit card is an overwhelmingly good move even if you never use the facility for credit. You can set up a direct debit to pay it off in full every month, making it effectively a debit card, but you get what are known as Section 75 protections on all purchases. So if you’re buying online and the firm goes bust (or you for any other reason don’t receive your goods), the credit card firm has to compensate you in full. For this reason I always make larger online purchases on credit card.
For many, obtaining a credit card just for the purposes of age verification, and not using it for shopping, feels easier than giving away their legal identifying information to a random third party.
In the US you're usually inundated with offers to open a credit card (often pre-approved) right in your mailbox. Even if you're a poor recent immigrant, or something.
Probably, but making a non-used CC just for using your own phone sound a bit weird, don't you think?
And I don't criticize US way of living here, but Apple is an international company and could do better adjusting to local cultural habits. But maybe they just punish people for this stupid law in the first place which is totally understandable.
Is the credit card issuer not a random third party?
Banks are subject to much more scrutiny (regulations, audits) than a random company. Or maybe even a highly established company which you'd rather not give your identity to, something like Pornhub.
20% of Americans don’t have a credit card
You must live in an especially civilized place to be able to get by without a credit score. I wish I could close all my cards, but doing so would harm the score since card count and age are part of it.
Credit cards are a sign of poverty? Now that's a hot take.
I feel in Europe having a credit card means the complete opposite, only "rich" people have credit cards.
I have a credit card, I use it, I pay it off every month. Why am I seen as poor just because I have a credit card? It's just a tool. It spares me from needing to maintain a 10000$ emergency fund in my checking account.
And in post-soviet countries you blink and you owe 15+% interest. I know many people who couldn't meet basic needs and pay a never-ending percentage. Or forgot to close the debt and lost more than ever gained from this tool in one payment. So people who can pay from their pocket just pay from it instead of endlessly tracking the grace period and counting the money.
I don't imply that's the same everywhere. Also probably depends on a local regulation and interest rates.
Also people here don't generally like to owe to somebody, that feels insecure.
What process are other companies using?
Amazon Developer sent me an email about this recently. They supported:
* Passport
* Identity Card
* Driver's License
It rejected my Driver's License and I gave up after that.
At least in the UK it would be entirely legal for companies to use account age as a proxy for verifying you're over the age of 18. If your Apple account is over 18 then you probably are as well.
Apple verified my account that very way this morning!
"My shepherd pokes me with a stick, but it's the tree's fault that this stick is so sharp".
A law can be bad and its implementation can be worse.
They were expected to fight the evil, not to join.
None of these corporations are going to have their CEO / CTO / CFO go to Jail, face the huge fines or get kicked out of the UK for you.
4chan, KiwiFarms etc. can stick a middle finger up at the UK because tbh they probably don't have that many UK users and have nothing there for the British Government to go after, the best they can do is probably nab the owner if they ever land on UK soil.
The credit score line is just about the stupidest thing I've read in a long time. Some people desperately need to get off mainstream social media.
Apple could’ve opted to use the same (open, portable, privacy respecting) mechanism the euID architecture offers for such cases but of course Apple doesn’t do privacy, portable or open.
Right, Apple is a US company, with typical US culture, and they always try to "follow the letter of the law but not the spirit" when it comes to privacy and also when it comes to the age checks. In this particular case, they seem to have implemented the check in the worst possible way too, even the account age is above the age limit, what's hard to figure out here?
Is it surprising that people blame the company and the culture that fostered it, instead of the country that is trying to "protect itself", regardless of how misdirected that "protect itself" is?
> even the account age is above the age limit, what's hard to figure out here?
I have a gmail thats old enough to drink anywhere in the world, and never used it for youtube, accidentally opened youtube, they asked me for my age. At some point, I think its okay to just use account age instead of even asking.
> At some point, I think its okay to just use account age instead of even asking
Bet you there’s already a thriving grey market for old accounts with organic history.
People going that route dont care about filling a DOB on an account.
This is honestly why I've been getting deeper into Linux and self-hosting since early COVID. As much as I've loved my M1 Pro MBP, Apple's OS decisions - and my career expectation to always be on the latest version of OSes/software to help vet organizational migrations - have basically killed my enthusiasm for their kit. The hardware is phenomenal; the software does not spark joy.
And if I'm being frank, my time with Linux (Debian 13 on an N100 NUC w/ Docker) has really opened my eyes to just how excessive modern compute is, specifically to power increasingly bogged-down operating systems and woefully inefficient software. The N100 sips energy while happily transcoding 4K video streams on Jellyfin, running my IRC server for friends to hop off Discord, reverse proxying my entire home network, letting me stream game nights via Owncast, host some image board shitposts for various friend groups, host my RSS Aggregator, and still yawns with 75% excess capacity left over.
I'll still have a Mac because that's what my family uses (if they want free tech support from me, that is), and I'll still have my Windows gaming PC, but I'm already drafting up cyberdeck plans for my first primary Linux box, with just a CLI to get me by. Realizing I don't actually need ten cores and 32GB of RAM and a hefty GPU to do daily work is pretty damn revelatory - and shows how grotesque mass-market software and OSes have become in the name of marketing cycles and advertising dollars.
I was pleasantly surprised by the age verification. "Based on the age of your Apple account you are verified as being at least 18 years old". Done. Tempus fugit.
Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47504112
30 days later they canceled the ABM company account and deleted all the associated users along with the Apple ID which I used to log into a testing device, which now became a fairly expensive paperweight: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47516266
Article says his account is 25 years old, but I guess the laws don't care about such metadata.
But OT: it makes me realize my Yahoo Mail account is turning 30 this year, because in 1997 Yahoo wanted to compete with Hotmail and I thought "Having a @yahoo.com email, that's a very good nerd badge!". Nowadays the ridicule is deserved, and they've silently lost all my mail from 1990s...
Emotionally and somewhat rationally I side with the author.
The sad story is, that I would rather go caveman mode than use MS Windows.
In other words: Apple’s complacency will be left unpunished since there has never been a worse situation for an alternative.
I see none. None at all.
Apple is the new Windows XP for me. It is as crappy as it gets, but compared to any alternative it still leads by a fair margin.
Apple before the glossy crap was the amount of boring beauty, I loved to work with on a daily basis. Decent visuals without any distractions.
Glossy suddenly put me over the edge and I am glad to get a discount for mainly using the devices as business machines.
Otherwise: luxurious rot.
I didn't know what a MNT Pocket Reform and wow! Rockchip, 20 cm wide keyboard, ix ethernet connector, 4 hour advertised runtime, 2 inches thick and costs more than a macbook. You really have to suffer to stick it to the man!
To the Apple users that are completely fed up with Apple: Stop talking us to death. Just switch already. Send us a follow up post in 6-12 months letting us know how it goes for you.
Wow, that age verification is wild. We need to fight this here in the U.S. If my cell phone starts requiring gov't id and credit/debit cards for verification... god help me...
Age verification is just a way to finally tell advertisers you're not an AI, so they can stop wasting money on purchasing AI-flooded-views.
Change my mmind
Author here, didn't realise this was posted on this site. AMA.
I have used and owned Apple products since 1992.
Absolutely agreed about the gatekeeping — just as example, you cannot even update your MacOS without being online unless you create a full USB Installer.
For your particular situation, presuming your hardware supports it, you can use MrMacintosh guides [0] to downgrade your OS from Tahoe — I recommend the latest Sequoia installer — all officially downloaded via Apple links.
[0] <http://www.mrmacintosh.com>
I further recommend blocking *.apple.com & *.icloud.com (and many more hosts) using a PiHole (so simple, so necessary).
When you move to Android, I'd definitely recommend getting a Pixel for GrapheneOS. It's really highly polished and most things should just work once you press the button to enable sandboxed Google Play.
Also curious what Linux distro and desktop you're going to. Flatpak makes it matter a lot less these days, so long as the base stays pretty current.
I been considering Fairphone cause I want to support smaller vendors and also because it is repairable.
As for Linux distros. The MNT Pocket Reform comes with Debian and I plan to leave it at that even though Debian is not my favourite. I will use Niri and Noctalia with it. I plan to make use of whatever Debian package but if it is too old for my taste, I'll look for AppImages and Flatpaks as needed. I got a Surface Go 1 running exactly that setup but with Fedora and works really well for me.
Want to use KDE Connect to link whatever Android I get with the laptop.
Fairphone is a mess software-wise though, both stock or with /e/OS. Ancient kernels, old firmware bundles with many known CVEs, way behind on regular AOSP updates (which are needed for fixes for vulnerabilities not marked high or critical). They only do the minimal ASB patching most of the time. Hardware security is similarly bad, e.g. the Fairphone 6 does not have a secure enclave but relies on TrustZone which runs on the same CPU as the main OS.
Also, it seems relevant to mention that the software is mostly maintained by a Chinese company (T2Mobile), which might be relevant depending on your threat assessments.
For security/software updates it's pretty much:
GrapheneOS > iOS > Pixel OS >> Samsung flagships >> pretty much everyone else.
Nice, I've standardized on Debian/KDE for most of my devices. Honestly, I recommend switching the repos to Testing and, in your case, using the edge kernel from Armbian. You'll have a much more performant and stable desktop, in my opinion. Flatpaks from there when available, and you should be golden :)
The forced age verification shocks me. It shouldn't, given how much it's been in the news, but my poor naive Millennial sensibilities still feel it's part of some dystopian nightmare that I saw in some Michael Bay sci-fi once, not my present reality.
Your phone, which you own, updated during the night, and now demands you tell it who you are through a credit card, which you may not have, or you're locked out of features. On your phone. This is outrageous.
We can jump ship -- for now -- but it's only a matter of time before these laws cover every kind of Internet access, if they remain unchecked.
Just to add a little bit of context, when I hit the same problem today the flow offered me the option to scan my driving license or 'national id card' (whatever that is - we don't have those in the UK)
So despite the claims in the article, it's not credit card centric.
However, they did not accept my passport as a scannable ID, and so luckily I had a credit card somewhere that I have used recently for a single large purchase otherwise I'd be stuffed, as I don't drive
I read about the new age check nonsense just before 26.4 downloaded, fortunately. I turned off automatic updates and so I guess I have a little time to get out of the apple ecosystem. I'm thinking GrapheneOS on Pixel 10. This is absolutely not required by UK law, apple just seems to enjoy the taste of government boot.
> Even though my software is packaged and notarised as per their requirements, they still show my users a dialog box confirming they want to run my app, something they do not for apps installed through their walled garden. This is just friction to punish developers outside their store. I am very tired of it.
Does them quitting Apple mean they're going to stop supporting MacOS users?
> It will take me a while before I can fully migrate away... I’m gonna throw all of them away... I purchased a MNT Pocket Reform. It will take them a while to assemble and send it to me... I am considering getting a Fairphone Gen 6...
Honestly it sounds like Apple is far from lost here, but I'm excited to see updates on how the transition is, if it ever does happen.
For the UK people among us: What happens if you just don't verify your age? Do you not get access to adult things? What if you use a VPN? Will civil disobedience lead to any punishment or just inconvenience? What it's like to live with these invasive laws?
I wanted to ask exactly same question: fellow UK citizens, do your iphones become bricks if you fail to verify your age or what?
Great timing too to ditch MacOS. Just instilled Fedora Asahi Remix 43 on may MacBook Pro M2, and both KDE and Gnome work great. So happy to be liberated form the increasingly sloppy Apple OS.
https://asahilinux.org/fedora/
We just got fucked by this today. My 22 year old daughter doesn't have a driving license or a credit card but does have a passport and it didn't work. She's now got a kids phone. I haven't tried the 20 year old yet who is in the same situation...
They have 5 days to unfuck this or I'm literally rolling out Pixels + Graphene to the family.
Exit plan for the Mac is a Linux desktop.
Could you emit a virtual credit card for them that you then cancel after the verification is done?
What "unfucking" looks like though? The law is mandated in the UK. What other way of age verification would work better for them?
That is a possibility but it's a stupid verification method as not everyone has credit cards. It's just cheap for the vendor.
Unfucking looks like a "look what the UK government policy is causing" PR disaster and a rollback and consultation.
Edit: I suspect this might happen when MPs start getting upgraded...
Phones can read biometric information from passports and identity cards just fine. Why didn't you think of a personal ID document as the first step to prove ID?
If a passport isn't working then their age verification is broken, full stop.
You are aware that the law applies to Linux desktops and will likely be included in a system update soon?
the law in the UK doesn't require any of that. It didn't even required Apple to do it. Ofcom is praising Apple for doing it even though it was not required. Social Networks need to do it.
You do realise I am free to modify it or pick a distribution so that isn't the case too?
How long till that’s illegal?
This situation is being treated like a bad business decision. It’s not. It’s a new set of laws. It’s bigger than just Apple.
That depends on if you live in a jurisdiction that lives or dies by free speech, and if it considers code speech[0]. Forcing you to implement age verification is effectively forcing you to speak things you don't want to say, which isn't free speech.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junger_v._Daley
It's not really bigger than Apple. They could just say "no", and the UK could just go offline until they fixed their laws.
Pretty sure it’s California that’s got the OS law
You'd be surprised at how often I do illegal stuff.
This UK law does not apply to OSes. It applies to online platforms. The author ran into this problem because using the iPhone required an Apple account, which could be used for something that the law applies to, but Apple didn't want to implement lazy verification and instead required verification up front.
This seems like a rational approach as opposed to say, calling Apple support.
I'm monitoring other discussions about this elsewhere. Apple support cannot help at the moment. They are "aware of the issue".
Sorry but I don't want there to be an issue full stop.
I sympathize with the author's feelings in general, but also hope he directs some of the frustration towards his government for forcing the whole age verification scam (let alone everything else that is being broken in that particular jurisdiction)
nitpick: just changed my monitor to a UWQHD one. The text on this blog occupies 1/6 of the screen, 5/6 of white. If i only use half the screen for the broswer, it would be 1/3 and 2/2. Still too much white space for me.
Anyway: Not sure why fairphone. While i like the concept it's still an android phone, eos is not much better than lineage. If i had to change today i would go again for a Pixel 8A (or a series 10) and graphene. But if the OP can wait and see, next year we should get replaceable batteries everywhere because EU, and maybe wait and see whatever motorola is cooking for graphene. Or check out the pinephone and go full linux.. i guess, when i'll have some spare cash to throw away..
> Even though my software is packaged and notarised as per their requirements, they still show my users a dialog box confirming they want to run my app, something they do not for apps installed through their walled garden. This is just friction to punish developers outside their store. I am very tired of it.
Indeed. I'm honestly impressed that he lasted this long. My first "I'm very displeased moment" was when Java became a second-class citizen on macos. I was a Java dev at that time and had written some non-trivial apps. They weren't native perfect, but they were close enough that my highly-Apple-fan relatives didn't realize they weren't "native" until I told them. The write-once-run-anywhere dream of desktop UI software (without getting into Qt) was there in a very real way for me. I ran it on my windows machine at work, and my mac laptop and linux desktop at home. The hoops at that point were nothing compared to what they are now, and it began souring me.
For me the final straw was when I got the latest macbook pro with the latest mac monitor (all from Apple mind you) and yet there was a horrific bug that about half the time when you plugged in to the monitor, the laptop screen shut off and would never come back on until you did a hard reboot (holding the power button). That was never supposed to be possible since it was Apple hardware/software controlled top to bottom, the original promise of the vertical integration and one of the reasons we accepted the heavy lack of cross-platform compatiblity.
A little before that I used to put my macbook on the nightstand and listen to podcasts at night to fall asleep. I would dim the screen to off and have the volume at low levels. Apple rolled out a software update that suddenly caused the screen to kick on at FULL BRIGHTNESS after about 5 to 10 minutes (when the screensaver would have normally kicked in), while I'm sleeping in a completely dark room. It was so bright that it would wake me up. That bug was there for years, and myabe still is (I replaced it with a Linux laptop).
My user experience on macs was never close to bug-free, and was frankly worse than almost everything else out there. It took me a while to figure that out though.
The last straw for me was around 2009. I was in college minoring and interning in media production. Invested pretty heavily in Final Cut, which was long in the tooth, and hoping for better I/O in Macbooks to support better ingest. That was when Apple announced the following:
- Final Cut X. Its first incarnation was a huge slap in the face for features and workflow. They completely cut a large swathe of the rest of Final Cut studio, and knew they were shipping shit with the new pricing.
- The first Unibody Macbook came out. Very little could be upgraded, the keyboard was a leap backward, and all they had for I/O was a half-baked USB3. It's usage for pro video workflows was severely hobbled compared to the last generation.
- Mac OS Lion came out, which was when it started showing signs of user hostility. Power-user features were getting locked down or removed, the app store was being pushed harder, and it was consuming more base resources for the privilege. The tend was clear that advanced users were no longer welcome in Apple land.
These things made me change majors back to computing, and a full return to Linux. I've never regretted that.
totally valid to call out apple for issues, but for most folks already accustomed to apple's walled garden, the grass is not greener on the other side
For instance, I've had a ton of issues with Airpods Max so I moved over to the Sony WH-1000XM6, and they do a much worse job sharing connections between multiple devices to the point where I have to reset them constantly to get sound to reliably play from both my phone & computer.
Same for moving to macOS to linux - the issues on add up to the point where the papercuts from macOS are still worth it.
> Gatekeeper
"curl -LsSf https://acme.tld/install.sh | sh" and "xattr -c" ?
Far from ideal and safe but it's still a very common pattern.
I am all for voting with your dollar - but it sounds like maybe this user doesn't realize how bad it is out there right now for the grievances he listed.
> Bear in mind, I am 45 years old. I have an Apple account for 25 years, the age of my personal account alone should already verify my age.
Someone make it make sense.
Yeah, sure, I'll ditch my Apple Silicon MBP and switch to MNT Pocket Reform for all my computing. So I don't have ugly Liquid Glass.
You know what's funny? Even China doesn't do OS verification and block everybody from every website by default.
Luckily, the author will face no frustrations with Ubuntu or whatever Linux OS they migrate to. Flawless UX. Zero compromises.
It's really gotten better in the last few years. Try a spin of Fedora sometime to see the latest polish.
I have been an active user for almost 30 years. You can tell by my comment.
Oh, sorry, I misread your comment as sarcasm.
For anyone that is bothered by the glass effect…
-Accessibility options
-Display & Text Size
-Turn on “Reduce Transparency”
I forgot glass was even a thing as I immediately turned it on day one.
It makes it less distracting, but doesn't fix the broken layouts.
after about 10+ years in the Apple ecosystem, I'm completely done, my next machine is linux and my next phone is android.
I believe Android will be blocking installations from outside Google play except through adb
How does this credit card thing even work? Are they just assuming if you have a credit card you must be an adult??
I don't hate iOS 26 as much as I thought I would but macOS 26 has been a disaster. I'm staying with Sequoia for as long as I can. Hopefully Apple will fix this mess in macOS 27 or 28.
I doubt they will. I suspect the rumours of a touch screen MacBook are likely true and that's the reason for the shitshow that is Tahoe's UI.
Who knows. They're already reverting some stuff. In macOS 26.4.1 (released today) they've added a setting to rollback the obnoxious tabs in Safari.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/16/macos-tahoe-26-4-compac...
I see the arguments are mostly attempts to needle the individual points. But it's clear the writer has reached a personal tipping point; the last straw as it were. Some of us gave up Apple over lesser offenses years ago.
I have FP6 with eOS, it's fine and works well. One thing that I can't do is use my phone to pay, e.g. Apple Pay.
You can't install Google Wallet - it does not work, but also defeats degoogle mindset. There were curve company that people seem to have used in the past, but seems like the company was sold to someone and now it's dead. So I have to use physical card like a boomer.
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My story is similar, somehow my air managed to update to 26' (maybe I just clicked that stupid notification window button to make it go away). I will keep my opinions on glass to myself.
Facts are: docker broke again, app launcher is whatever the hell it is, firewall with started messing up with my dns blacklists. I know you can somewhat fix it, but nixos/asahi on m2 with hyprland gives me a workflow that is superior. I just won't go back. AeroSpace just can't match.
Then the credit cards... I have my original store country elsewhere. I've then moved a few times and changed banks. Now, apple does not like my card. It won't accept it. That's it. Nothing you can do about that. And I couldn't really change the country because I have had some subscriptions and I had to wait until they expire. Meanwhile, apple killed my apple subscription I lost Music, I lost cloud storage, I lost some backups.
The thing that incredibly pissed me off is that as soon as my apple subscription got cancelled I could not even see my music library in the app. It would just prompt me with "gotta subscribe buddy" screen, which I can't.
And yes, the hardware is very good. I love my m2. But the whole software part is becoming messier and messier and I don't want to deal with it anymore.
Apple has gone from a company with a long term vision of the future and their part in it to a quarterly financial report gradient climber. This is what happens to every company when it loses it's founder(s). They have enough money and market influence to be a problem for all of us for the next 30 years or so.
Jobs died 15 years ago. So your predicting 45 years after the death of a founder a company loses influence.
If it's large enough.
I'm saying that a functioning company that reaches a certain size can stop being good at what it does and start buying market position and market share.
For example, I don't believe Apple is more efficient at designing processors than most processor companies, I think they have had some luck in that they adopted a strategy for mobile that ended up delivering a CPU with high performance (this is roughly the same story as Intel Core 20 years ago). They are able to deliver a CPU that is at the top but not dramatically faster than their competitors not because they are so 'good at' designing processors, but because they steer a very large percentage of the total CPU R&D budget of the entire world. They can buy anyone who is innovative, and generally that means eliminating them rather than incorporating them.
This isn’t an airport, you don’t need to announce your departure.
Just send me a message when you've landed.
(Enjoyed your phrasing here.)
Gatekeeping is trivially turned off by those who won't footgun themselves by dragging literal garbage from the Internet into their system. It is a good feature for most macOS users. They only care about your verification woes a tiniest bit, if at all. They need a walled garden, Apple gives one to them, it's a product-market fit, while power users are given a reasonable off-ramp.
The other issues are more serious, especially macOS 25, but again, how much of that deeply affects the vast majority of actual paying customers who buy Macbooks? As long as Apple learned their lesson and will do another one of those bugfix OS releases they've done before, no long lasting harm done.
Using credit cards for age verification is certainly dumb, but age verification is coming and most people see the need for it. You can disagree that there is a need for it (entirely different discussion), but you must acknowledge the broad support for it at least.
Apple bothers me less than Microsoft. At least Apple has been consistent. "Our hardware, our software"... while Microsoft plays all these games. At the end of the day, there's never been a solution for people who care about this stuff other than Linux.
Linux is a pretty good choice these days, and requires you to sacrifice nothing in terms of functionality :)
This new age verification is such bullshit, I don't even live in the UK any more yet have to be subject to that bullshit because Apple (and a bunch of other companies) can't comprehend the concept that people might want to change which country they live in.
Can't use my expired provisional license to confirm my age.
Can't use my Croatian ID to confirm my age.
Can't use a credit card, because I never have had nor do I ever want to have a credit card.
So I'm fucked.
Don't you have the concept of debit cards in your country? In mine, if you have a savings account and an atm card, that card can be used in any context that a credit card can be used.
I tried using a debit card, it will not let me progress. The issue is a debit card can be issued to anyone, including those under 18. So that then becomes a useless age verification.
the specific complaints are fair (gatekeeper friction, tahoe/liquid glass, the UK age check thing) but I always wonder who these "X just lost me" posts are for. Apple doesn't care. They care about churn numbers, not individual blog posts. also like... credit card as age verification isn't an Apple invention, Google and Meta does the same thing. And "your account region should match where you live" has been the rule forever. If you were running a cross-region account that whole time you were basically on borrowed time. Sucks when it finally breaks but it was never really supported. idk, as a "here's the stuff that finally pushed me over" post it's fine. the "$BIGCO just lost me" framing is what makes it eye-roll-y. they didn't lose you, you left. there's a difference and it matters because one implies they should care.
For anyone at Apple: your company is on fire. You’re making too much money to notice but Apple is literally on fire.
This problem is everywhere in your products and it’s clear the passion for high quality work is gone from the company.
Apple will not survive at luxury prices and Google level service.
>Credit cards are not documents. Many people don’t have them. Apple don’t provide any other way to verify your age because they are a stupid American company with American values in which you’re just as human as your credit score.
This is the way ID verification is going in the USA and the reasons for it seem clear. A human person is only useful to a corporation if they have money to give the corporation. If you don't have provable money, either through a third party corporate payment service willing to pay for you sometime later (a credit card) or by giving a corporation your login details to your bank account (ie, Plaid), then you're not a human.
It clear what a bot is now: anything that doesn't have provable money.
I think it's also related to the fact that the US and the UK don't have ID documents the way that a lot of EU countries have and many people don't have passports, so the only other way left that has an API and is checking periodically that you are who you claim is your bank before giving you a fresh credit card
I think it’s a lot simpler than that. Verifying a credit card is probably the easiest and cheapest reliable method to verify identity.
If you look at it this way: they’re trying to identify somebody, and they don’t want to do a massive amount of work in house. Do you go to a company that verifies identity? Or… you can use credit cards as a proxy for identity. Most of your users already have them.
Credit cards require no additional infrastructure, no additional corporate approval, no additional expenses, and no additional auditing. It’s good enough for the company and who cares if it’s good enough for the users.
Corporate greed is a massive problem, but you’re giving people too much credit to assume they have some kind of grand conspiracy for every decision. That requires far too much intelligence.
Corporate laziness is a far better explanation for this one.
And even better for companies: banks and credit card companies are completely unaccountable entities who've established they're willing to put up with 10000 false positives to block one false negative. They don't even have to get it right. And getting it wrong won't result in bad press or anything actionable for anyone. We're just ending up in a system where a good fraction of people are declared not people forever.
> A human person is only useful to a corporation if they have money to give the corporation.
This is spot on. This is the same tactic used by the affiliate marketers back in the day to qualify leads - Free book, just pay for shipping! Or, get this e-book for just $1 (so we can upsell you a $97 product later)
Building on the incredible success of MacOS 26 Tahoe, I can hardly wait for MacOS 27 Tehran.
Sounds like a lot of their problem boils down to them living in a nanny surveillance state.
Pray tell, to what utopia should we move?
Point taken that Apple hardware isn't ideal anymore, but of course the problem is neither is Windows or Chrome OS. I can switch myself over to Linux now easily enough, but what about the rest of the family? Kids need their tablets with their shows downloaded, so good luck doing that without a chrome tablet or an iPad.
Haha, a fanboi got what he deserves. That's for feeding the evil with your money, for caving in to unfair demands. In your face!
If he's pissed at this, imagine how pissed he'll become when he enters the ridiculous Android ecosystem.
Anyway, he's free to choose whatever, but I have to nitpick here:
1. macOS 26 - a fiasco? Come on. A lot of like the liquid glass. On macOS I hardly notice it, but on iOS is actually beautiful to me. Also a long time macOS user, since 2003 btw. You can always dampen it using accessibility settings.
2. Age verification ? First time I've heard of it. Also on latest iOS. But then I'm also not in the UK.
3. "Interfaces built with AppKit or SwiftUI that rendered perfect, are now overlapping controls and clipping stuff. They have no consistency at all in terms of icons, placement, corners…". I'm all for constructive criticism. But where are you seeing this? I've got 8-9 apps open and none are inconsistent in my view. I'm picky about these things too. Genuinely I'd like to know.
I'm the author, some of the tahoe issues can be seen in:
https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/
https://noheger.at/blog/2026/01/11/the-struggle-of-resizing-...
there are a lot more, but I don't have the links handy.
Agree the icons are unnecessary and silly. Apple should know better.
The corners haven't bothered me much, I like seeing a bit of a gap down there, and I haven't had issues dragging it but that could be because I'm using a regular USB mouse and not a trackpad.
I've been a macOS user (or OS X rather back then) since 2003. It was truly a blessing to finally get a proper UNIX™ on the desktop. I was on Linux in the 7-8 year period before that.
Everything after Snow Leopard has been downhill in my opinion :3 macOS still my favourite unix but it started feeling is no longer my unix anymore, I'm just a glorified tennant.
My favorite was Mojave. Ran it way too long and I was 3-4 releases behind. Second fave was Panther, the good ol' days.
Never did much System 8 etc but we had it in school on one of the Mac labs.
I wish Nvidia would drop a Linux laptop so we could all have a 3rd option.
I know, this exists in some form or another, eg Dell, but meh.
And I know Jony Ive / Altman are working on something but Altman, uhg.
Can the Apple Store help people with verifications? This seems like a reasonable backup technique plus gets people in the store where they can spend money.
You’ll be back. Have you tried Windows 11 lately? Want an exercise in self-restraint not plowing yours fist through your monitor? Use Windows. Microsoft as Steve Jobs said has no taste. They hire the cheapest international engineers who take zero accountability and perfection in their work. Everything is just, that will do. Good enough.
Author is going to Linux, which has really gotten smooth in the last few years. I've been able to hand it to tech illiterate friends and not once get a tech support call. Everything you might need has a working, polished implementation. Give it a try sometime :)
I’m using Windows 11 and prefer it to current macOS by quite a margin. But OP is moving to Linux, so it doesn’t matter either way.
The article did not say anywhere that Windows is even under consideration, so your criticism doesn't apply.
I'm asking genuinely, how is this top of HN? The comments seem to indicate that HN overall doesn't find this article to be valuable at its face.
Seems to happen a lot with "ragequitting" posts. I feel like I could write "Microsoft Just Lost Me" and it could get to the top.
A lot of people agree with the sentiment and therefore upvote it, but don’t bother engaging in the comments.
Because possible voted it to the top. You don't have to agree, but it helps to understand.
I didn't know MNT existed
https://shop.mntre.com/
The laptops seem... crazy enough. And what you get for your buck is even less than with normal PC manufacturers, let alone Apple. You get CPU that is slow for a phone. For 1300 USD.
On the other hand I have a weird urge to buy one and use as a daily.
author here. Yeah, they make their laptops by hand in their lil shop in Berlin, low volumes makes things more expensive. I get it you can get a lot more performance per buck elsewhere, but I want to support a company that creates open hardware and open source software. Also it is the most repairable and upgraded laptop in the world atm.
unfortunately I don't have 1000 eur to just throw around at experiments that look cool. but... it looks cool.
The gatekeeping, the age identification issues are both "real problems", that compound, from the same root.
Anonymity allows one to behave in ways they would not "in public", with your neighbors, or co workers (for the most part). Be that building malware, or kids doing things they should not, and the people and business that take advantage of that.
I don't think the UK law is a good one, but when major companies continuously fail at their social responsibility I understand why people want the government to step in. I don't think the friction apple creates is a great user experience but it is better than the old approach that ended up with systems riddled with malware and spyware because normal users don't think like the folks who built technology.
Could the law have been written better: sure. "More control" over their Childs devices would have been the way. Is there a solution to the friction with apple... maybe but I'm not sure it would be that much of an improvement (its purpose IS to slow you down).
I'm in the same boat, but only because of the age verification thing.
I was never an Apple maximalist to begin with, I just have an iPhone and use a Mac at work because I have to (and will continue to), but I just turned off auto-updates on my iPhone and will never buy a new Apple device.
Frankly I don't believe the author. They'll stick around. They know it. I know it. Apple knows it. If the bullshit of the past 10 years weren't enough then nothing will be enough to chase you away. You'll buy the next shiny iPhone, you'll buy the next Macbook Pro, you'll buy the next iWatch. We all know it.
I like liquid glass. I liked it since the first betas i tried. Am i the only one
I think it’s fine. It definitely needs some polish and there are other, unrelated changes like the big round corners that I dislike, but Liquid Glass itself is just… different. And appearance aside, I genuinely like some of the updated UI patterns, such as making buttons look like things you can interact with instead of undifferentiated text.
It’s OK to dislike glass, of course. I’m not saying doubters are wrong. A lot of it, though, feels like piling on to sound like one of the cool kid skeptics.
At this point I am pretty sure it's the loud vocal minority that hates it. Vast majority is either indifferent or actually likes it (but liking something doesn't sell).
I've seen far more non-design-obsessed people (normals) complaining about it, but in the end i think the better question is why? What possible purpose does this serve other than key-jangling? It is a distraction for most people and a waste of screen space and probably gpu cycles, why are we shading and filtering on every frame on every window and modal? Just render the pane and put the fries in the bag.
The waste of screen space is the big one for me. It feels like every company is racing to dumb down their products and fill their UI with whitespace instead of using that space for controls or content. My bank just redesigned their website and now even checking the balance of a few accounts + credit cards requires scrolling on a 1080p display. Ridiculous.
People who like it aren't vocal, agreed. I think this works for every outrage wave we experience online. Something to keep in mind.
I think the vast majority's friction points with liquid glass come from the other changes, like the redesign of Messages and the calling functionality.
Genuine question: what do you not like about those? I haven't seen anything in either of those that I actively disliked.
I didn’t like it at first. Now it doesn’t bother me.
its not super bad, but it needs a lot of refinement (especially on iPad and mac), and also its a performance hog (or at least iOS26 is a performance hog) so they have a lot of work to do imo
No. I kinda like it. I can understand people’s dislike for it though.
same, but 'apple threw it all away for nothing' seems extreme.
I loved Liquid Glass too. It gave a refreshing look from the UI that I was seeing for quite some years. It drew the line that separated itself from rest of the competitors UI wise. It felt good, I don't much remember the older UI of iOS now, every now and then when checking for compatibility with older versions, I test through older UI and it feels very awkward.
I like it as well, although it was and is very buggy in certain instances.
There are problems with it but I think the complaints are overblown.
I was sure I’d hate it. But I actually think it’s pretty good
Yeah, it has pretty much all gone to shit.
Another nail in the coffin, but the author fails to realize that the only viable answer here is to move towards relying on your smartphone as little as possible. You can get a fairphone, or whatever, but will anything in the real world (outside of old fashioned websites) actually talk to the thing?
I agree with this as well. The only things I really need on my "smartphone" are a browser, mail client (offline that does IMAP), organic maps, whatsapp and obviously a phone. I can do everything else some other way without too much inconvenience.
Edit: wow are people really that tied to their technology? You're fucked if anything worse happens geopolitically than is happening today.
author here, the post was mostly about desktop. I don't rely on my phone much but I need it to work as expected when needed.
Thanks for the correction. I latched onto the phone parts, and maybe too hastily.
Can we all just agree that cyber criminals suck? Especially if you are a legit developer who wants to offer useful apps to the world?
Don't get me wrong, I can't stand surveillance, and I think age verification is virtue signaling and will have very little affect on actual cyber crime. We need a better way to stop online abuse.
But certificates, GateKeeper, app certification, app stores etc. are all supposed to mitigate serious harm from bad actors.
We need to get much better at security in general if we want to have nice things.
The worst cybercriminals are allowed on the app store. Facebook and Google are two obvious examples.
Even if avoid installing their apps, take a look at all the third-party data harvesting malware that iOS apps bundle. You'll find you have plenty of stuff installed from them, and even worse actors.
Linux doesn't have any of this developer certification bullshit, and it has (almost) none of these issues.
How exactly are you turning my comment into defending Facebook and Google? If that's how it comes off then I believe it is being misinterpreted.
I would also argue that Linux does have it - at least in Ubuntu it does with snaps. And package maintainers do a lot of unseen, thankless work as well.
As a developer, I do not like having to deal with certificates. But the few times I have seen them prevent serious problems, I was glad they were there.
These "breaking up with Apple" stories pop up from time to time here. Cracks me up because they all follow the same pattern:
"I'm done with Apple. I've been a Mac user since since $EARLY_YEAR. I loved using $OLD_APPLE_HARDWARE to work on $VARIOUS_INTERESTING_PROJECTS. I fondly recall $FORMATIVE_APPLE_MEMORY.
But they've gone too far. $NEW_APPLE_ENSHITTIFICATION is the last straw, I can't do this any more. This will be hard because $REASONS. But I'm going to adopt $PLATFORM because it's the right thing to do."
Most of them mention Steve Jobs but this one didn't actually.
What is it that bothers you about this type of discussion? For myself I just switched back to Android after a decade of iOS so I'm always interested in what it was that was the last straw for others.
(for me it was interop issues around wearables and trackers; I want to use chipolo and a pebble watch and not feel punished every day for going out of the ecosystem)
It doesn't bother me at all -- in my post, I said it cracks me up. They all have their reasons for breaking up with Apple. FYI I'm not an Apple guy myself.
> what it was that was the last straw for others
CarPlay being actively dangerous if you use it for GPS navigation and someone dares to call you, so the call prompt blocks the entire screen until you either accept or reject the call, was my last straw.
Sure, shit UX and UI is a hassle, but at least it was somewhat consistent. But that the UX department have completely left the building so they're enabling UX that puts people in real life danger? That's the stop I get off at.
"X decides to not use products from Y after longstanding loyalty, because Z"
This is a so generic template that you cannot criticize a post for matching it. It'd be like criticize a story for matching "X happens to Y, leading to Y doing Z which leads to a (happy|unhappy) ending"
The problem is that when they start using $PLATFORM, they realize that it can't do many of the things that they've taken for granted since $EARLY_YEAR.
Wow, this seems to have hit a nerve, based on the early downvotes.
Age verification has been put into law across the world over the last year. Apple doesn’t have a choice.
Apple has to do age verification because of dumb laws, but they decided to do age verification in a dumb way.
The author tried to go along with the age verification system with five different cards and failed five times. For an account that's older than the legal age that would need to be verified in the first place, mind you.
There are many ways to do age verification, most of them bad, but that's why most companies complying with these laws use multiple methods.
nevermind the apologist. his paycheck is paid by people that have capitulated to the same bullshit. and you know what they say about people learning lessons whom have a financial incentive not to.
Indeed. There has been zero political opposition to these laws. Apple isn’t going to pay the fines on our behalf, so we need to get organizing if we don’t like this.
ah, yeah; I guess organization looks like complete capitulation and then commenting on the effect elsewhere with a sturdy shrug "whatcha gonna do? we're all just so powerless". fighting the good fight.
I’ve never felt so motivated to fight on your behalf
ah, cool! great to have such a loyal ally that snark and cynicism wilts their enthusiasm to such an extent. how would we ever get rid of age verification laws without your "dropped at the first sign of someone not being nice to me" supportive commentary and shrugs?
They certainly have more choices than implementing in this manner, and can choose to not implement it as well.
Absolving Apple of responsibility gives more than they deserve.
They actually have very few choices, and they had only a few months to get it done. Just like the rest of us.
Worst part about liquid glass changes is that it was probably rushed so they could cover for lack of AI features that they promised a year ago
It will only get worse. The bureaucracy has taken over at these companies. Contrarian viewpoints are severely punished, and you need contrarians to speak up when things suck.
I find it so odd to have such an extreme response to Apple all-of-the-sudden. Like they've been so great all of these years and only just now you're deciding to make such an extreme switch that you're going to choose the worst possible hardware imaginable because you can't even stomach buying a decent GNU/Linux laptop from Dell or Lenovo or Framework or System76? Jeeze. That little puny 8GB ARM laptop you're choosing instead is going to be painfully slow compared to whatever Mac you're coming from. At least check out the System76 laptops - some I do believe come fully open-source with Coreboot if that's all-of-the-sudden so important to you.
So you expected them to provide insurance which you hadn’t purchased?