2025 Six Colors Apple Report Card
Jason Snell (complete commentary):
It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple. The whole idea here is to get a broad sense of sentiment—the “vibe in the room”—regarding the past year. (And by looking at previous survey results, we can even see how that sentiment has drifted over the course of an entire decade.)
[…]
After a few years of relative stability, the Mac has now given back all the goodwill it earned from our panel with the release of Apple silicon Macs. The issue wasn’t on the hardware side: There was wide agreement that Apple is at the top of its Mac hardware game. But macOS 26 Tahoe was condemned as a disastrous OS release, due to its half-baked visual design that hurt the Mac’s usability.
[…]
It was a very good year for iPhone hardware, which helped drive this score up from last year. The iPhone 17 line-up earned a lot of praise, including the base iPhone 17, for adding a bunch of features previously seen only on pro iPhones. The iPhone 17 Pro got a lot of love, too, while the response to the iPhone Air was more polarizing. Of course, the new Liquid Glass design on iOS 26 also came in for a lot of criticism, though many panelists praised it. Generally, iOS is considered the place where Liquid Glass shines best, even if some panelists felt that was damning with the faintest of praise.
[…]
A lot of praise was for iPadOS 26’s new windowing system, in which Apple seems to have figured out how to balance the iPad with a desire among some users for Mac-style window management. Some panelists who said they had drifted away from the iPad reported coming back into its gravitational pull. But as always, some skepticism remains about the iPad’s very reason for being.
Here are my responses:
Mac: 3 The M4 MacBook Pro with nanotexture display is one of my favorite Macs ever. The M4 MacBook Air was a great update, with more RAM and a lower price. The Mac Studio finally got an update, though the M3 Ultra chip is now two generations behind the M5 in the baby MacBook Pro released the same year. Nothing seems to be happening with iMac or Mac Pro. Overall, I’m down on macOS Tahoe due to the Liquid Glass design and large number of bugs. I do like that AutoFill can now work in third-party browsers. The new Spotlight seems like a big improvement, though I continue to prefer LaunchBar.
iPhone: 2 Processor, battery, camera improvements, and Ceramic Shield 2 in iPhone 17 (and 17 Pro) are nice, but I just find it hard to get excited about iPhone these days. The camera improvement I want to see, reverting to a deeper depth of field, will probably never happen. As with the Mac, iPhone is let down by the new software. I guess I like the new Camera app, and I like CarPlay widgets (though they need more font controls), but most of the other changes that I notice day-to-day are either neutral or regressions. Liquid Glass is maddening. Apple also set a bad precedent in preventing newer iPhones from updating to iOS 18.7.3, thus forcing them to update to iOS 26 to get security updates.
iPad: 4 Putting Liquid Glass aside—which is admittedly hard to do—iPadOS 26 is the biggest improvement in a long time. Multitasking works much better now. I still do not find it a very compelling platform, though. More than 99% of what I do is better on my Mac, my iPhone, or my Kindle. But if you like iPad, this was a good year.
Wearables: 3, Apple Watch: 4, Vision Pro: 1 Live Translation seems magical, though I’ve not used it myself yet. I’m concerned that AirPods Pro 3 seems to have issues with fit and static. I really like the Apple Watch SE 3. Vision Pro made few visible advancements this year and seems like it needs to be rethought or cancelled.
Home: 2 My HomePod continues to not work well for Siri or music. The smart outlet that I installed last year no longer works reliably. The Home app is still frustrating.
Apple TV: 3 It continues to work OK, but I don’t think any of the changes this year really improved my experience. I’m still not very happy with the software or the remote.
Services: 2 iMessage and Siri still work poorly for me. Apple Pay and the rest of iCloud are OK, with most apps that sync having occasional hiccups. The other services don’t interest me except in that their existence seems to be warping Apple’s product design decisions.
Hardware Reliability: 5 My family’s hardware has been solid this year (not counting the ever-present USB problems), and I don’t recall any major issues reported elsewhere. I remain a bit on edge because if a Mac’s SSD fails, the Mac can no longer even be used with external storage, and my experience with AppleCare has not been great.
OS Quality: 1, Apple Apps: 2 Most of the old bugs are still there, and the new OS releases brought new ones. Will this ever get better? Apple just seems lost. This year, I want to highlight how unreliable Screen Time is. I also experienced new issues where the “d” key sometimes doesn’t work on my Mac (with any keyboard) and my Apple Watch wouldn’t charge with third-party chargers. Nearly all of Apple’s Mac apps feel like they need attention, but I don’t really wish for that because recent revisions—like the Contacts app in Tahoe—tend to be regressions. I keep being tempted to switch away from Safari—the reliability, performance, and compatibility are subpar—but am sticking with it for now because I prefer its user interface.
Developer Relations: 2 The same old issues with the App Store, documentation, the schedule, and bug reporting. Apple needs a turnaround. Swift has not taken over the world. It continues to get new features without really feeling mature. Swift Concurrency is now officially approachable, but the complexity remains, and Apple has not convinced the community that this approach is actually an improvement. Flagship frameworks like SwiftUI and SwiftData continue to disappoint. On the plus side, there is finally a roadmap for improving the type checker.
Apple’s Impact in the World: No vote We tend to focus on hardware and software, and sometimes Apple’s interactions with various governments, but its customer account policies are an increasingly important area. These days, much of our devices’ functionality relies on services tied to your Apple Account. The account holds your purchases, your data (cloud storage and backups), and it’s the key to even being able to use certain features. It’s incredibly important, yet as we saw this year with the story of Paris Buttfield-Addison, your account can be taken away through no fault of your own and with no recourse save from running to the press. This is completely unacceptable. Apple should revise its procedures so that this sort of thing can never happen again, and it should audit its software to make sure that as much of it as possible does not require an account. One particular area of concern is passkeys. Years after their introduction, Apple finally shipped credential exchange, but it turns out that users still don’t have control over their data. You can’t export your passkeys for offline storage and later reimport into the Passwords app. Even if you have a full backup of your Mac, you can’t restore it and access your passkeys unless you have access to your Apple Account. If your Apple Account is working, your data is stored in iCloud, but it’s not really backed up because you can’t access historical versions. A sync bug will just wipe it out everywhere. If, as Apple says, passkeys are the future, they need to be implemented in a way that serves and protects users, rather than locking their data into a cloud of questionable reliability and which they could lose access to at any moment simply for trying to redeem a gift card.
• • •
For the fourth year in a row, Hardware Reliability topped the list, followed by the iPhone, iPad, and Services categories. On the other end of the spectrum, the Vision Pro and Developer Relations continued to dwell at the bottom[…]
[…]
Perhaps most troubling is that of the 14 categories, scores dropped in 11. Apple’s Impact on the World category suffered the largest decline, falling a full point to an F grade—a precipitous drop driven by Tim Cook’s obsequious relationship with the Trump administration. The controversial Liquid Glass design in macOS 26 Tahoe also drew heavy criticism, dragging the Mac’s score down by 0.7 points despite uniform praise for the hardware. The main bright spots were the iPhone (up 0.2 points thanks to the well-received iPhone 17 lineup) and iPad (up 0.2 points due to iPadOS 26’s new windowing system).
[…]
The panelists’ commentary was especially pointed this year. John Siracusa called Tahoe “the worst user interface update in the history of the Mac,” while John Gruber said, “There is nothing about Tahoe’s new UI that is better than its predecessor.”
I am somewhat impressed by the breadth of Apple’s current offerings as I consider all the ways they are failing me, and I cannot help but wonder if it is that breadth that is contributing to the unreliability of this software. Or perhaps it is the company’s annual treadmill. There was a time when remaining on an older major version of an operating system or some piece of software meant you traded the excitement of new features for the predictability of stability. That trade-off no longer exists; software-as-a-service means an older version is just old, not necessarily more reliable.
[…]
What I expect out of the software I use is a level of quality I simply do not see. I do not think I have a very high bar. The bugs in the big paragraph above are not preferences or odd use cases. They are problems with the fundamentals of the operating system and first-party apps. I do not have unreasonable expectations for how things should work, only that they ought to work as described and marketed. But complaints of this sort have echoed for over a decade and it seems to me that many core issues remain unaddressed.
See also:
Previously:
Update (2026-03-03): See also:
- Jason Anthony Guy
- Stephen Hackett
- Upgrade
- John Gruber
- Federico Viticci
- Steven Aquino
- John Gruber (Mastodon)
- Kieran Healy
- The Talk Show
- Rui Carmo
- Bicycle For Your Mind
9 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
As usual I mostly agree with your views. I especially like that you chose to abstain from the world impact section, and chose instead to focus on actual otherwise uncategorized real problems Apple needs to address, rather than the obvious target so many others went for and which goes without saying. Identity is a huge problem that so few are even aware of as a concept, and those that are mostly just exploit it for business or criminal gain. Really needs more attention.
Does the “d” issue happen when you log into a different user account? (spin up a one-off “guest” account if you don’t already have one)
If not, this can probably be fixed by dumping the right preferences ~/library/preferences file. Personally, I’d just dump all com.apple.* files, getting a Mac back to one’s personal preferences isn’t as big a lift as it sounds like.
@someone The lowest rating is 1. I do like the HomePod as an AirPlay speaker. And it’s useful for talking to Siri even though Siri leaves a lot to be desired (and is part of the separate Services rating).
Re-reading, I see that I forgot to specify that part of the reason for my lower iPhone rating this year is that it seems like the keyboard has gotten a lot worse.
@Eric I’ll try to remember to test that, but I’m not sure how it could be a preferences issue since restarting fixes it.
No real surprises in any of the scores or commentaries given on SixColors or by you, Michael. I do agree with the Passkeys observation, even in keychain can I export all my passwords in plain text if I want to. It at least gives me the idea of independence. Being fully dependent on Apple for my Passkeys means I won't use them.
On the iPhone front, I'm sure the current lineup is great. I (and I know many others) really miss a 'mini' variant leaving me with no clear upgrade path beyond my current iPhone 13 mini.
The hardware is great, as mentioned. My M1 air with 8GB still does everything I need it to and I can see my M4 iMac lasting for many, many years (toddler permitting)
Software wise I'm trying to weather out the storm by not upgrading to 26 in the hope something better comes after. If not, then Sequoia it is.
I use as close to zero of Apple's services as I can. I tried Apple Music twice and both times it messed up my music library. A third time is a big fat no. I don't use passkeys because of what you wrote. I've turned off iCloud Drive because it deleted a Numbers spreadsheet for reasons I can't fathom. Completely blank. I had a non-Apple backup, fortunately, but that still cost time and frustration. Sadly life today requires a smart phone so I can't run the risk that iCloud will have a bad day and lock me out so I stick to the bare minimum needed to run the phone.
My gf has a Samsung Android phone and based on having to support that I can only say that IMO Android is a worse experience with unintuitive GUIs and settings. Plus apps can change global settings affecting other apps.
I'm still on Sequoia on all of my Macs and 18.7 on my iPhone and iPad because of the sh*t show that is iOS 26. Apple really needs a product person at the helm. Cook may have been great at logistics and finance but he's shown that he doesn't understand software or services.
So the only good thing left from Apple is basically the hardware. Well that's great because Apple is mostly only designing it and not making it, their supplier do and they are the one who improved overtime, not Apple.
Everything that Apple fully does in house aka software and services is crap...
It sucks that Apple's software quality has fallen so far, but yeah I'd give it a 1 as well. It's really annoying, though, because other OSes probably rate a 0, so we're kind of stuck in the best possible OS which isn't great. I am holding off as long as I can updating to macOS Tahoe and iOS 26, because they seem absolutely atrocious. Services being a 2 seems a good score as well -- half of the "services" that Apple offers are terrible, and the only 2 "services" I have right now are iTunes Match ($25/yr) and an AppleCare+ subscription that happened to come with my used Mac that I've renewed a couple times and have never used. (I guess I use iMessage and iCloud too which work decently for me, but I limit my usage as much as possible.)
All of Apple's other services seem a complete and utter waste of money, and it really really sucks that Tim Apple has focused so much on that; though a lot of the other criticism of Cook (and lack of criticism of Jobs) is kinda silly, Tim relentlessly focusing on shareholder value (and thus services) is an undeniable, terrible result of his tenure. (And him being obsequious to the current administration is even worse.)
I didn't realize that passkeys couldn't ever be saved locally and reimported! That... maybe kinda violates the CCPA and the GDPR? Surely passkeys would have to be included in the downloaded data that the CCPA/GDPR require, and thus you would be able to get at them somehow (however clumsily)?
