Liquid Glass is a poorly thought out idea that was poorly executed, but it is really just a distraction so we all spend our time bickering about clear icons and don't realize that iOS 26 doesn't have that much that is new. Call screening is a nice to have, but the call features, ease of use, and actual implementation are still way behind Pixel. A lame ripoff of circle to search that is too fiddly for its own good. And an AI battery setting that no one has really tested to see how it improves anything and probably doesn't mitigate the extra battery drain this glass is creating. That's about it. It's one of the worst OSes Apple has launched for actual features.
And we are also too distracted by all this Vista design language to hold Apple to their earlier promises they still haven't delivered. We still haven't gotten the features of Apple Intelligence that iOS 18 promised. And the ones that did come out were very poor quality compared to what other AI can do. Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, and others are iterating so fast and Apple hasn't even improved the initial features they launched with 18.1 and 18.2. Their AI photo erasing is the worst, their writing tools are the worst, and they still haven't demoed their More Personal Siri.
I know the UI stuff is still jank, but I really want them to move on already because they have much bigger problems they should be working on.