Apple’s problem isn’t that it’s “getting uglier”—it’s that it’s becoming systematically harder to use
I used to find it hard to define my attitude toward Apple.
On the one hand, I really did enjoy for a long time that “it’s good to use by default” experience: the hardware, the system, the interactions, the animations, the ecosystem—over many years it felt like a very well run-in machine. You might not love every feature, but most of the time it was at least smooth, stable, and complete.
But in the past few years, especially after this latest round of system updates, I’ve felt more and more strongly that: Apple’s real problem isn’t simply aesthetic drift, nor is it just getting one or two features wrong—it’s that it has started to continuously create friction across a large number of high-frequency details.
In the past, when people complained about Apple, it was often “closed,” “expensive,” “arrogant.” Now what I want to complain about more is: how can it not even hold on to the most basic sense of being easy to use anymore?
1. The most dangerous signal: even consistency is starting to fall apart within the same system
I’ve always thought one of Apple’s most valuable capabilities isn’t how strong any single feature is, but the consistency of its overall experience:
- Interfaces made by the same company usually look like they were made by the same company
- Windows, controls, hierarchy, corner radii, spacing on the same device are usually a unified language
- You don’t need to “understand the design mock”—you just feel like it’s natural, complete, and nothing’s off
But now, that sense of unity is loosening.
Some interface details give me a very strange feeling: clearly it’s the same Mac, the same system, yet different windows feel like they were stitched together by two teams, from two eras, or even under two different aesthetic standards.
It sounds like nitpicking, but heavy users will understand: once a system-level product loses consistency, what you feel isn’t “a bit ugly,” but that no one is watching the fundamentals anymore.
2. For high-frequency features like Photos, turning 1 step into 3 is stealing your life
When people discuss system updates, they like to stare at the “big features.”
I, on the contrary, care more and more about the most everyday actions:
- Open Photos to find the screenshot I just took
- Casually search for an email
- Move something between files and devices
- Notifications disappearing in sync across multiple devices
- Search for an app, a setting, a contact
These actions don’t look like a big deal, but they happen dozens or hundreds of times a day.
And here’s the issue: once these actions go from 1 step to 2 steps or 3 steps—and happen to get moved into the hardest-to-reach finger area—that irritation compounds day by day.
This isn’t “users not adapting to the new design.” This is classic ergonomics regression.
For me, the most unbearable kind of change is taking a flow that was basically muscle memory, and turning it into:
- Tap an entry point first
- Then move the content out of an occluded area
- Only then can you tap what you actually wanted to tap
This isn’t innovation. This is adding a tax on high-frequency operations.
3. Apple is pushing users into the arms of third-party tools
A pretty painful reality is: quite a few built-in Apple capabilities today aren’t just “good enough,” but “avoid them if you can.”
For example, in these areas, the real choices I see around me are increasingly consistent:
- Global launcher/search: just use Raycast
- Email: avoid the native Mail if possible
- File syncing: once AirDrop drops the ball, immediately switch to Dropbox / links / other sync solutions
- Complex development workflows: the native tools are often just “you have to use them,” not “you want to use them”
The most awkward part is: this isn’t because third parties are “flashier,” but because they are more reliable, faster, and smoother to use.
If a platform company’s most core system capabilities start losing steadily to third parties in niche positions, that means the problem is no longer a single-point bug—it’s that product judgment is continually drifting off target.
4. The scariest bugs aren’t the big ones—they’re the ones that “obviously should’ve been fixed long ago”
What truly drains trust has never been those rare, complex, hard-to-reproduce major failures.
What drains trust most are things like:
- Clearly common, yet left unfixed for a long time
- Clearly impacts high-frequency experience, yet has no priority
- Clearly looks like a rough edge that could be handled within one release, yet drags on for years
This feeling makes you increasingly doubt: do the people making the product really use what they make heavily?
A few very typical pitfalls that all fall into “you can run into them every day”:
- Spotlight/system search isn’t always reliable; many people default to other launchers
- AirDrop is magical in theory, but in reality often feels like drawing cards from a gacha
- Notifications don’t reliably disappear in sync across phone, watch, and computer
- Basic components like Finder sometimes can’t even reliably remember window size and state
- Little things like text selection, window resizing, hotspot connections stay in that “not unusable, but annoying” state for a long time
Individually, none of these seems worth slamming the table over; but once they stack up, you can clearly feel: the system is consuming you, rather than serving you.
5. One of Apple’s biggest problems: it increasingly feels like it “knows it can’t lose”
My strongest dissatisfaction with Apple right now may not be any particular interface, nor any particular bug, but an increasingly obvious corporate vibe: entitlement.
Entitled to think users will keep putting up with it.
Entitled to think developers can’t leave it.
Entitled to think the commission, rules, restrictions, reviews, and interpretive authority should all belong to it.
That mindset reflects directly in the product:
- Not transparent enough
- Not self-reflective enough
- Not willing enough to admit “yes, we really did a poor job here”
- Not willing enough to put genuinely valuable—but not pretty—fixes and patches at a higher priority
Once a company starts thinking “we won’t lose anyway,” its products can easily slide from pursuing excellence into running on managerial inertia.
6. The App Store commission logic increasingly looks like a platform tax, not a service fee
I’ve always felt that if a platform provides distribution, review, hosting, and payment capabilities, charging money is of course reasonable.
But the issue is: this pricing structure now often looks less like “charging for services,” and more like “charging because you can’t live without me.”
Especially when you see real small developers, content creators, and indie teams having to shoulder a large platform cut for digital subscriptions, in-app purchases, membership systems—it’s hard not to feel like the thing has warped.
Even more ironic: big companies, strong service-type products, and non-standard digital transaction scenarios often have more ways to bypass it, play games, negotiate, or delay—so the ones truly crushed by platform rules are instead the most vulnerable layer.
This directly harms ecosystem vitality.
A platform uses developers to prosper itself, while squeezing the weakest group of developers the hardest—this isn’t long-termism, it’s eating the foundation.
7. From a developer’s perspective, Apple also increasingly feels less like “the people who understand software best”
Beyond everyday user experience, another layer of disappointment I have with Apple now is that increasingly strong “don’t question, don’t be transparent, just do what I say” vibe on the developer side.
In recent years I’ve felt more and more strongly that many of Apple’s problems aren’t unknown—it’s that it’s not willing enough to admit them, not willing enough to fix them openly, and not willing enough to give people who truly understand the problems more say.
This shows up directly in a few places:
- The developer tools themselves don’t give the feeling of being “carefully polished by the people who understand development best”
- Many issues persist for a long time, as if internally everyone assumes people will just endure them
- External communication is overly restrained—so restrained it’s almost aphasic—and rarely makes people feel “yes, we know we did poorly here, and we will fix it”
If a platform can’t even increasingly persuade its own developers, its software quality will sooner or later backfire onto ordinary users.
Because a clumsy toolchain, sluggish feedback mechanisms, and excessive internal opacity won’t stay confined to developer circles—in the end, they will inevitably become the increasingly awkward system in users’ hands.
8. Even more awkward in the AI era: Apple is still holding itself back, while others are charging ahead
There’s also a very real issue: in the past, many of Apple’s shortcomings could be covered up by its advantage in “overall completeness.”
But the AI era has raised the bar.
Now more and more experience problems, software shortcomings, and tool gaps can be patched faster, routed around by more agile teams, and quickly filled in by third parties.
In other words, Apple’s old rhythm of “you have no choice, so you can only wait for me to do it slowly” is failing.
If system search is bad, there are alternatives.
If email is bad, there are alternatives.
If file transfer is unstable, there are alternatives.
If development tools are bloated, there are alternatives.
If the intelligent assistant experience is mediocre, there are alternatives.
Even more awkward: this AI wave should have been the best time to prove a platform company’s software capability, but Apple often gives the impression of:
- Big talk
- Neat naming
- Very Apple packaging
- But when it comes down to actual experience, there isn’t that overwhelming feeling of “this is obviously more reliable than everyone else”
This is where Apple really should be nervous:
The gap isn’t “narrowing”—in many places it’s already been matched, or even bypassed.
9. The most awkward part: I still admit Apple is still very strong in many ways
That’s what’s so annoying.
I don’t want to crudely say “Apple is finished.” That wouldn’t be honest.
Its chips, industrial design of the whole machine, many underlying capabilities, and some experiences in professional workflows are still very strong. In some key scenarios, it’s still the better choice.
And precisely because of that, this “angry at it for not living up to its potential” feeling is even stronger today.
Not because it was bad to begin with, so it keeps being bad.
But because it clearly has the ability to do it well, yet it increasingly drops the ball in the places it most shouldn’t.
Ending
My real feelings about Apple right now can probably be summarized in one sentence:
What’s most regrettable isn’t that it’s no longer innovating—it’s that it’s starting not to care about the details that once made it great.
When the most common high-frequency actions on a platform start getting slower, more annoying, and less stable;
when users increasingly rely on third parties to patch the native experience;
when developers increasingly see platform rules as obstacles rather than support;
when the company increasingly feels like “you can’t get away anyway”;
then the problem is no longer something a keynote can save.
I really hope it’s not continuing to become an Apple where “the hardware is still strong, but the software increasingly feels like it’s just making do.”
That would be such a waste.