For the first time in 6 years … iOS is actually improving again.
I have high hopes for @johnternus.
I was skeptical a hardware engineer could be the right fit for CEO of Apple. I was especially worried software or branding would get left behind.
But everything seems to be improving exceptionally on all fronts.
Under Tim Cook the iPhone keyboard got worse and even broken from 2020-2022… and then never got fixed. 4 solid years of autocorrect just straight up failing. (This still is the case though it’s gotten better)
But more excitingly, UX features that are actually beneficial are getting added again…!
My keyboard auto suggests copied text with one click now in the auto fill bar. If I just copied text, then navigate to another text box, it suggests paste. That’s so useful and helpful. Prior to this iOS update not a single UX benefit was ever added to iOS in 6 years. Same with search, spotlight search was worsening and fully broke in 2024 and has never worked since then and is finally getting better again in new iOS.
iOS has a long way to go to get back to being a smooth operating system. So many little things have been made worse just due to the nature of how an executive like Tim Cook structures things top-down. For example I don’t know anything about Apple internals but I can guarantee you he set it up so that every individual feature of iOS got it own team; and the teams had to compete for performance based on metrics.
Like [I’m guessing] the camera app got its own team. And they didn’t work together with the other teams for smooth synergy integration; but rather had to fight on various metrics of usage by user and maximize certain bad-target stats.
I am confident something like this was done. There is just no way to possibly explain what we see with the camera app’s degradation otherwise.
The camera app has a flash button. People want to be able to simply toggle flash on or off rapidly. Anyone who has ever used the product knows this. In a real world scenario you go to take a pic, sometimes a moment is passing rapidly, and you realize flash is on and will be awful/awkward/etc to leave on; or vice versa it needs to be on. Either way, any sane UX in the world would have flash button always visible, and you tap it to toggle… Just in a millisecond you can turn flash on or off, ONE click. Instead you have to do like 20 gestures it’s insane. This is surely the result of some bad management decision having teams have to meat bogus usage metrics for some performance review; so the camera team made it so people have to “use” their app “more” to get those metrics up, even at the sake of UX.
The only other explanation is there is an absolute bozo in charge of that team who also refuses to take feedback from others and whom Steve would have fired 300 years ago.
Either way; change is necessary, and so far it seems like necessary change is being implemented across the board. 😇
Hoping he can figure out how to spin up marketing hype and “desire” and aura like Steve used to, because tbh I didn’t even hear about this new iOS 27 version until 2 weeks after it launched… (and I’m an iOS dev!) I’m sure I got tons of email newsletters from Apple but I don’t read email. In the past I never had to go out of my way to know about new Apple stuff… EVERYONE knew… the same way EVERYONE knew about Tesla’s new flying car. Hopefully John can figure out who is the person needed to bring that magic back to Apple.
I have high hopes for @johnternus.
I was skeptical a hardware engineer could be the right fit for CEO of Apple. I was especially worried software or branding would get left behind.
But everything seems to be improving exceptionally on all fronts.
Under Tim Cook the iPhone keyboard got worse and even broken from 2020-2022… and then never got fixed. 4 solid years of autocorrect just straight up failing. (This still is the case though it’s gotten better)
But more excitingly, UX features that are actually beneficial are getting added again…!
My keyboard auto suggests copied text with one click now in the auto fill bar. If I just copied text, then navigate to another text box, it suggests paste. That’s so useful and helpful. Prior to this iOS update not a single UX benefit was ever added to iOS in 6 years. Same with search, spotlight search was worsening and fully broke in 2024 and has never worked since then and is finally getting better again in new iOS.
iOS has a long way to go to get back to being a smooth operating system. So many little things have been made worse just due to the nature of how an executive like Tim Cook structures things top-down. For example I don’t know anything about Apple internals but I can guarantee you he set it up so that every individual feature of iOS got it own team; and the teams had to compete for performance based on metrics.
Like [I’m guessing] the camera app got its own team. And they didn’t work together with the other teams for smooth synergy integration; but rather had to fight on various metrics of usage by user and maximize certain bad-target stats.
I am confident something like this was done. There is just no way to possibly explain what we see with the camera app’s degradation otherwise.
The camera app has a flash button. People want to be able to simply toggle flash on or off rapidly. Anyone who has ever used the product knows this. In a real world scenario you go to take a pic, sometimes a moment is passing rapidly, and you realize flash is on and will be awful/awkward/etc to leave on; or vice versa it needs to be on. Either way, any sane UX in the world would have flash button always visible, and you tap it to toggle… Just in a millisecond you can turn flash on or off, ONE click. Instead you have to do like 20 gestures it’s insane. This is surely the result of some bad management decision having teams have to meat bogus usage metrics for some performance review; so the camera team made it so people have to “use” their app “more” to get those metrics up, even at the sake of UX.
The only other explanation is there is an absolute bozo in charge of that team who also refuses to take feedback from others and whom Steve would have fired 300 years ago.
Either way; change is necessary, and so far it seems like necessary change is being implemented across the board. 😇
Hoping he can figure out how to spin up marketing hype and “desire” and aura like Steve used to, because tbh I didn’t even hear about this new iOS 27 version until 2 weeks after it launched… (and I’m an iOS dev!) I’m sure I got tons of email newsletters from Apple but I don’t read email. In the past I never had to go out of my way to know about new Apple stuff… EVERYONE knew… the same way EVERYONE knew about Tesla’s new flying car. Hopefully John can figure out who is the person needed to bring that magic back to Apple.
Oct 23, 2026 · 10:14 PM UTC
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