On iPhone, iOS 27 removes an effect I cared about: the lighting on glass no longer shifts as you tilt the phone. To me, that is a real step backward in design.
Last year at WWDC26, Apple made a big deal of the Liquid Glass design in iOS 26. As I see it, the whole point of glass is that it simulates how real glass catches light, and above all how that light moves as you change the angle of the phone. The release version of iOS 27, which shipped in September 2026, took that away.
Glass buttons are easier to see than before, but there is less and less of the glass effect itself. At this point it looks less like glass and more like plastic.
iOS 27 is also supposed to start up faster. As far as I can tell, much of that speed comes from cutting a lot of animations. I had assumed it came from optimizing the code, so that was disappointing.
When I got home today, my Mac hit a black screen: the cursor was there, but nothing else would display.
I used to think Apple had simply stopped innovating as much, but was still a company that could make its own products close to perfect. I’m less sure of that now. How does a company that keeps abandoning its own design make great products? How does a company that can’t guarantee the quality of its products still earn so much praise? And how does a company whose support and repair staff can do nothing but give scripted replies keep selling so well?