Apple's new Liquid Glass interface launched in iOS 26 has caused huge controversy, and now the company is believed to have finally found a new balance between feature updates and performance optimization.
The interface visually emphasizes light and shadow, reflection and refraction effects. Apple executives have said that this is to make the software "more expressive and responsive", but users have complained on multiple platforms that it brings significant performance degradation. Faced with negative feedback, Apple did not give up on this direction. Instead, it asked the engineering and development teams to "go back to the drawing board" and carefully sort out which effects needed to be adjusted, deleted, or rewritten. This was considered a system-level "make-up lesson" that came late but eventually arrived.
Previous reports have stated that Liquid Glass will not be deprecated, but will continue to receive incremental improvements in the coming years, and this update is just the first step in a long-term optimization plan. At this year's WWDC 2026, Apple announced a total of 262 fixes and improvements for its various platform systems, including "CPU scheduler optimization" that is considered a key performance change. It is speculated that Apple's initial list of improvement projects may be far more than these, but some content was cut off due to insufficient priority. The source of all this points to the chain reaction caused by the initial UI overhaul.
In the author's opinion, this round of unified optimization of iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, tvOS 27, visionOS 27 and homeOS 27 can be regarded as a "disguised apology" from Apple to users, admitting that the company has been blindly pursuing interfaces and new features in the past few years, but has not solved performance and stability problems in a timely manner. The article pointed out that Apple rarely admits its mistakes publicly, and now chooses to focus on optimization of all operating systems. To some extent, it is using actions to respond to previously ignored performance and experience feedback.
Based on this, the author judges that Apple is likely to form a new pattern in the rhythm of software updates in the future: alternating between functional updates and optimization updates. This year has already been a year focused on optimization, so in next year’s iOS 28, iPadOS 28, macOS 28 and other versions, it is expected that the focus will be refocused on new functions and features, while investment in underlying optimization will be relatively reduced. This is considered to be completely different from the previous approach of "adding new features year after year, frequently changing the UI but rarely paying attention to user feedback". It marks Apple's realization that if the basic experience is not up to standard, no matter how many visual effects and new features are added, it will be difficult to win reputation.
The article quoted user feedback as saying that an M1 Pro version of MacBook Pro user said that the performance of the current macOS 27 Golden Gate developer beta in daily use is even better than the stable version of macOS Tahoe, and the "overall lag" that was complained about in the past has been significantly alleviated. In the author's opinion, this is a specific case where Apple's current round of optimization has taken effect, and it also provides realistic support for its rhythm of "optimizing first, then talking about new features". At the same time, iOS 27 still supports the iPhone 11, which has been released for nearly seven years. It is regarded as Apple's goodwill to users of old devices, so that "old models can also share the optimization results."
The article finally points out that if 2026 is Apple's year at the software level, then if competitors want to keep up, they may have to adopt a similar "alternating function and optimization" approach in their update strategy. The author also raised a question and invited readers to vote: Should Apple continue to adhere to the rotation model of "one year for functions and one year for optimization"? Some people believe that this is to achieve a balance between experience and innovation, while others advocate that Apple should put optimization first in the long term and reduce major interface and function changes.