Android and ios are basically indistinguishable to me at this point

Seriously?

Look, the one is taking and exploiting nearly all of your data, while giving you 10.000 different well hidden opt out options, the other is taking all of your data for granted while telling you it is for your best and nobody else should have it, and promising they are never ever gonna exploit it, swear with fingers crossed... hm... OK you are right.

i meant more like the ux, but yea also that stuff

I need to buy three immediately!

Gives me iOS 7 vibes.

I like it in theory, but in some of the examples they provided on https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-introduces-a-delightful-and-elegant-new-software-design/, reading text isn't the easiest with all the colors and blurs everywhere.

Lol

I use both every day. Pixel 9 Pro XL (personal) and an iPhone 12 (work). Plus my own M1 iPad Pro.

They're not even fucking close.

Almost everything in that list of new features sounds negative to me. A few are neutral, and one might be positive depending on how it’s implemented (having the phone monitor a phone call while sitting on hold). Pretty disappointing, Tim Apple.

The announcement also marks a change in how Apple signifies its major updates to iOS. Under the previous marketing scheme, this year’s major release would have been iOS 19 — the direct follow-up to iOS 18. But now, Apple’s big iOS updates will be numbered based on the year following their introduction

Well that's interesting. I was certain The Verge was trying to be funny. But this tracks, now Apple has Biggest Number.

Edit: This has to be a joke. Who the fuck thought this up? I can't take this seriously...

Samsung has been doing that with their Galaxy for a while.

it's not that unusual, lots of software is named by the date. i think it makes a lot of sense especailly for apple, now they don't have a different release number for all their different platforms.

I'm sorry if it's a dumb question, but didn't Microsoft already do this with Vista and Win 7? And I'm pretty sure transparency has been a thing on Android for a good while now:-?

Frutiger Aero.

I honestly don't even know why I'm paying attention to Apple at this point, I think it's like digging my nail into a freshly scarred-over cut, just to tease that sting out a bit. It's the only way in which they have ever contributed to my feeling alive.

Also not a fan of the critical UI elements being popped out into floating islands, very easy to accidentally hit underlying page content when there's effectively zero padding around controls (on touch devices, as the ad companies have discovered by making the × icons smaller and smaller).

I only "follow" because whatever Apple does gets broadcast by every media outlet in existence. Also Google started blindly following Apple design since they killed my beloved blob emojis.

The blob emojis were one of their best features, that's so true! I kid you not, every single time I've used Slack for work, for every single company which used it, someone had already uploaded the blobs! I really didn't understand that move, the current Smile emoji looks psychotic.

It's not a matter of biggest number, it's a matter of consistency.

They have five operating systems, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, visionOS.

So currently we have macOS 15, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, watchOS 11 & visionOS 2. That's absolute confusion. Do I have the latest version? Dropping support for an older version, how many years ago was that?

A version number should convey useful information, and the year it was released is useful information. Especially when major updates come every year.

Edit: I forgot tvOS, also version 18. So six operating systems.

Vista called and wants it’s ugly back

reading text isn’t the easiest with all the colors and blurs everywhere

Agreed - I like the look of these things in an abstract sense, but it makes the text really hard to read. I assume hope there's a way to disable it in accessibility settings.

Yes, but Samsung went from S10 to S20 -> 21 -> 22, etc. That move made sense. And even skipping the Note 6 for the (ill-fated) Note 7 made sense as that was just a single number skipped.

iOS 18 -> iOS 26 makes absolutely no sense. Maybe wait until iOS 20, then release iOS 30? IDK, but this is Apple we're talking about. Sense was never in the cards.