Conclusion

It’s hard to be optimistic and positive about Apple these days, for reasons that are pretty obvious. But I like to remember two things when trying to do my job and covering this company’s products: there are people who work at Apple who may also disagree with some of their CEO’s political moves, and they still have to get their jobs done with passion and care; and Apple is serving billions of users who rely on the company’s computers to stay in touch with friends and family, be productive, and create memories.

I try to keep in mind that I still write about and for those people. CEOs come and go; hopefully, people’s work has a more lasting impact over the long arc of time.

Novelty and nostalgia coexist in iOS and iPadOS 26. With Liquid Glass, Apple is betting heavily on the concept of “new”, and, in the process, they’re trying to tell a more cohesive UI story across their platforms. With iPadOS 26, the company is intentionally embracing the past: after more than a decade of multitasking experiments, the iPad is coming home and realizing that, after all, nothing beats good, old-fashioned windowing.

There’s a thought I keep coming back to after three months spent testing iOS and iPadOS 26: I don’t think these two approaches are mutually exclusive. I think it’s a sign of maturity in Apple’s software team that they can embrace and celebrate the past while still daring to take a leap toward new ideas. Liquid Glass is such a leap, and while it’s not perfectly polished and will require plenty of refinements over time, I’d rather see Apple take big, imperfect swings than stand still and relish their status quo. The path to irrelevance is paved with many such companies.

A lot of folks in our community like to say that Apple “should have a Snow Leopard year again”. Besides being historically inaccurate, I don’t think many of them truly believe that, either. Plus, the majority of iPhone customers – the ones who do not read these reviews – would not appreciate it. We’re people, and we naturally gravitate towards “new”. Like it or not, we constantly seek it. There’s nothing wrong in accepting that.

I have a feeling that Liquid Glass and iPadOS 26 are ushering us into a new era for Apple’s software – one that is more fluid, where the lines between phones and tablets, tablets and laptops, and wearables and AI are less demarcated.

An era where – hopefully – Apple will be unafraid to lean into their past while walking boldly toward the future.