I have intentionally withheld updating my daily drivers to iOS 26 because of Liquid Glass. But if I had to pick between two evils - diminishing UX quality and shoving AI into every corner where no one asked for it - I’d still pick Liquid Glass.
And I love it! The ocr/vision models are a literal life saver here. Translating websites in Safari? Even text in images gets translated, super convenient! The only gripe i have is that it tries to be smart and tries to detect addresses, phone numbers. If the address or phone number is part of a text it is nearly impossible to copy the whole text since the phone number gets prioritised over the text (so you can only copy or call the number… )
A small nitpick: the translation and data detectors pre-date Apple Intelligence.
I do indeed love these features. They have definitely had some regressions in the data detectors over the past few years. I assume that they only test these automatically in “ideal” contexts that don’t account for real life. Not sure. They used to be more reliable.
They absolutely are. And you can turn them off. My comment is more about the technology industry’s general insistence on shoving AI down your throat whether or not it’s useful, usable, or desired.
I’m hopeful that whatever combination of factors at Apple prevent that from happening remain. Otherwise I’ll have to start considering GrapheneOS and defaulting to my Debian-based MacBook.
