On MacOS, it even requires running terminal commands at startup to fix performance regressions.

This is hitting people who aren't tech-savvy particularly hard, and it makes my position as a security advocate ("always update your devices!") hard to maintain. For most people, not updating their devices means they have more reliability and consistency in their devices, because of things like this.

The one good thing with iOS 26 is that Apple reverted their destructive redesign of the iOS 18 Photos app. Maybe they can be hurt enough to revert the destructive redesigns throughout iOS 26.

I hope to some day read a book describing what's been happening at Apple these past few years. It's safe to assume not a single person at Apple thought this was ready to release, and yet it did. This has to be the result of some serious dysfunction as-of-yet not known to the public.