By Dan Moren
The Back Page: Liquidity crisis
After a long summer of discontent, Apple released its latest operating system updates earlier this month, and the result has been RAGE! PANIC! RIOTING IN THE STREETS!
Wait, sorry, just checked, apparently that’s… Portland? That can’t be right.
The frustration over Liquid Glass has now reportedly reached fever pitch, hitting the point where users cannot accomplish the simplest of daily tasks, due to their simmering levels of anger. “Have you noticed the text on this button is misaligned by two pixels?” said one user. “I can’t even bring myself to click it, I’m so annoyed.”
While it may be tempting to gloss over these incidents1, the broad impact can’t be overstated: users driven to distraction have caused, by some accounts, a 47 percent drop in the US’s GDP since the new operating systems’ release, and the number of people admitted to emergency rooms for trips, falls, and walking into traffic while swearing at their phone is at an all-time high.
“I’ve been trying to copy this file over to my cloud drive, which should only take a minute, but then I noticed that the menu bar is transparent, and now it’s been an entire hour,” said a user, who asked that we not use their name because they were actually kind of embarrassed their boss would find out about it. Another user, staring at the non-Euclidean geometry of the new disk icons, was heard to mutter that they were “loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours” before cackling and running out into the night.
Complaints of Apple’s standards slipping are, of course, nothing new; the earliest date back to 1977’s debut of the Apple II when die-hard customers registered their displeasure with the new device’s enclosure. “I preferred my hand-hewn wooden cases,” read one missive, no doubt nailed to a bulletin board somewhere. “Typical Apple, upcharging you by putting it in a box you don’t even want!”
As to proposed fixes for the current quagmire, outspoken users have made a variety of suggestions, including a return to building user interfaces out of classic materials like brushed metal. “They went from titanium back to aluminum on the iPhone 17 Pro,” one pointed out. “What was wrong with classic pinstripes?” said noted Mac commentator Sean Fuber.2 “I still miss licking my interface,” said a third user mournfully. “It’s just never been the same since they got rid of CRTs.”
Unfortunately, it’s unclear whether or not these issues will be fixed. In response to a query, Apple merely replied with a picture of Tim Cook looking stoic. As we know, the company tends to leave its software looking the same forever, which is why we’re all still using two-bit graphics and command lines to this very day.
Still, it’s unclear when this level of ire directed at Apple’s newest releases will abate. Traditionally, such vitriol has been reserved for the release of new iPad hardware, which is being let down by the tablet’s software, but this year’s release of iPadOS 26 actually seems to have mitigated the longest-standing complaints. But experts suggested that the imminent release of a new model Apple TV with no real new features but the same exorbitant price tag could help draw some of the attention away from Liquid Glass.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]