Apple's iOS 27 update will prioritize cleaning up the operating system's internals, with engineers making changes that could result in better battery life, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The…
Apple's iOS 27 update will prioritize cleaning up the operating system's internals, with engineers making changes that could result in better battery life, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
The effort is said to be similar to what Apple did with its Snow Leopard Mac update years ago, and will involve removing old code, rewriting existing features, and subtly upgrading apps to improve their performance.
The result should hopefully be a "snappier, more responsive" OS, says Gurman. Apple is also reportedly planning some interface tweaks, but nothing as dramatic as the Liquid Glass overhaul introduced with iOS 26, which will likely comfort some users.
Code-named "Rave" internally, iOS 27 will also include efficiency improvements that Apple hopes will translate into tangible battery gains for users, says Gurman. However, it's unclear whether Apple would market those improvements or simply let users discover them on their own.
Gurman says getting the software into good shape is especially important as Apple prepares to launch new device categories, including a touchscreen MacBook Pro and its first foldable iPhone, both of which are expected in the second half of 2026.
The cleanup effort comes alongside Apple's other major iOS 27 priority of improving its AI capabilities. The revamped, chatbot-style Siri that Apple announced in June 2024 has been repeatedly delayed, and some of its features are now expected to arrive in iOS 27 rather than iOS 26, reports Gurman.
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Literally all I want from Apple is a year (or multiple) spent laser focused tackling tech debt and improving software performance.
By Someone1234 2026-02-1615:509 reply Yep; and all Apple fans ever say is "report feedback!!!" but what is the point when seemingly Apple never gets to their backlog of bugs/broken features? I mean, sure, some big stuff gets fixed, but there is a lot of stuff broken going on years they haven't even touched.
Feedback is more or less a black hole, for the most part. It's rarely paid attention to by a human, and is treated like telemetry. If you want something fixed, it needs to get into the press or go viral.
By trogdor 2026-02-1623:03 I’m sure there are countless examples to the contrary, but I recently submitted feedback regarding an issue that I was experiencing in Final Cut Pro. Within a week, a member of the Final Cut Pro team contacted me and asked for a copy of my video editing files so they could replicate the issue. I sent them the files, they confirmed the issue, and the issue was fixed in the next release.
I was very pleasantly surprised.
By joshstrange 2026-02-1618:481 reply > Yep; and all Apple fans ever say is "report feedback!!!"
I'm trying not fall into "No True Scotsman" but... It should be common knowledge at this point that Apple Feedback is a blackhole of despair. "Please attach a sample project" seems to be the go-to, even for things were that makes no sense. Same with attaching debug/diagnostic logs. I understand the value of all of those things but even people who have jumped through all the hoops get ghosted and/or their issue is never addressed.
Currently I would not waste my time on Feedback and it's sad because even if Apple reverses course it will take a lot to get the people who they should most want creating Feedbacks to create them.
I'm gonna be guilty of whataboutism but is there any remotely large company out there that isn't a black hole of despair when it comes to feedback?
By Someone1234 2026-02-1619:001 reply Microsoft, kinda-sorta, does something when a feedback item gets enough votes on this:
https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/forum/ad198462...
By chihuahua 2026-02-1620:29 LOL I'm amazed that's still up and running; I created the backend for this using Dynamics 365 in 2021.
By astrange 2026-02-1619:54 Those are probably anonymous employee accounts not fans. I don't know if anyone would be enough of a power user fan to tell someone to file a bug report.
By m463 2026-02-1616:56 I just madly click on "I Have This Problem Too"
By port11 2026-02-1618:17 I’ve reported a few things, none of it got fixed or acknowledged. Providing video evidence too!
By crossroadsguy 2026-02-1618:22 You don’t even know whether it goes somewhere because you don’t even get a proper ack.
By Redoubts 2026-02-1620:00 Honestly the best way to get stuff fixed is to work there, and report shit directly to PMs/BRB while living on the dailies.
Short of that yeah, everything is a black hole :/
By draw_down 2026-02-1616:24 [dead]
I care more about numerous bugs than I do about performance, to be honest. I'm starting to to regret not switching to Android last time I was upgrading my phone. Even if it is the same bugfest, at least I wouldn't have paid premium for the priveledge of using a device that "just doesn't work"
I need three new phones in close future for the family and I think I will go with Google Pixels and GrapheneOS. There is foldable phone available! It’s cheaper, I can deduct phones in full in the same year since the phones are <800€ before taxes (relevant probably only in Germany). And imho Apple’s premium promise is gone with glass design. Too many small errors.
By 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2026-02-1617:59 Graphene has been good to me, after I turned off the "Apps just updated" and "Apps are up to date already" notification spam
By ch4s3 2026-02-1617:03 Yeah, the latest update has nearly crippled my phone. Half the time when I unlock it the app icons just don't appear.
By pixelready 2026-02-1620:32 100% this. I honestly can’t remember the last major feature of MacOS / iOS that didn’t feel like a solution searching for a problem, while I was bombarded by weird little bugs and semi-fail states in core functionality. At this point I experience daily at least once:
- iOS keyboard doesn’t appear when it should - iOS keyboard button press detection and autocorrect have degraded badly - UI Layers are missing, misaligned, or stacked in such a way that I can’t actually interact with the element I need to proceed - mystery Internet slowdowns that resolve only after a restart - security misbehavior such as refusing to allow a usb device I’ve already approved (MacOS resets approval of my main USB hub every update for some reason)
By Herring 2026-02-1620:43 Software bloat is not a failure for Apple. It is a mechanism that drives the hardware upgrade cycle.
By gannonburgett 2026-02-1615:551 reply We need another Snow Leopard era.
Snow Leopard was incredibly buggy on release. Spending time on "tech debt and software performance" adds more bugs because all aggressive changes cause regressions.
The reason it worked is that it was a long release cycle with a lot of minor updates.
By sillywalk 2026-02-1623:26 > Snow Leopard was incredibly buggy on release
More on that here:
The myth and reality of Mac OS X Snow Leopard (November 13 2023)
By dgxyz 2026-02-1615:50 I want them to have invested in this already so we don't have this miserable shit to deal with.
By postexitus 2026-02-1615:056 reply Just drop the liquid glass farce and you will save 5% battery life already.
ios 27 being ios 26 minus liquid glass is literally the only thing I want from the next ios version.
Same with macOS. I'm sticking with Sequoia, but don't know what to do if macOS 27 turns out to be just as ugly as Tahoe.
By sturza 2026-02-1615:32 I'm sticking with Sonoma as long as they still provide security updates, then i go +1, hoping to skip the whole liquid glass phase.
By joezydeco 2026-02-1616:10 I'd even settle for it being on a switch, call it "minimal UI" or something, but I have a feeling that Apple doesn't work like that. It's burn-the-boats, we're going all in on Glass and there's no going back.
By bubblewand 2026-02-1615:322 reply I would like them to also fix all the weird rendering bugs they introduced in Safari.
Though maybe those are also liquid glass’ fault.
By hshdhdhj4444 2026-02-1617:49 Safari is literally unusable on some websites.
So, for example, since the toolbar at the bottom is not a separate interface but hovers over the rendered page, if the page has a button or link that only sits at the bottom of the page, it can literally be impossible to click it because the hovering toolbar will cover it. I’ve come across 2 websites in the past week itself where I had to switch to mobile Firefox to actually do something.
By TheDong 2026-02-1616:08 Yeah, because chrome is required to use -safari- webkit too, apple won't allow alternative browsers on the app store.
Except in the EU, but they don't allow it globally so no sane company is going to invest time into building a browser for iOS while apple is intentionally region-locking the ability to install them.
So yeah, on iOS, rendering bugs on Chrome are quite often apple's fault, and the Chrome team can't fix em.
By jtbaker 2026-02-1615:37 this would make me so happy!
I wonder if anybody at Apple is bold enough to lose face over this, given that there‘s a leadership shuffle underway.
There's no need to lose face to the vast majority of their customers, who don't read tech blogs or know who Siracusa is.
They can just boldy advance forwarded in a rearward direction and claim whatever they want about it. They've done it multiple times - every new iPhone and iOS has looked "the best and newest" and made the last one that looked the best and newest look old-hat.
By _diyar 2026-02-1618:03 > … or know who Siracusa is.
Succinctly put.
You’re right that they’ve done that before. But I only remember Jobs and Ive doing it, and they have a reality distortion field.
By joshuat 2026-02-1616:54 They owned their mistake of removing all ports and function keys from MacBook Pros, so there is a chance. That being said, the UI degradation of macOS has been a slow but persistent march for about a decade now, and I don't imagine it will change now.
By lou1306 2026-02-1615:32 They might manage to pin it all on Alan Dye, who recently jumped ship to Meta.
People keep blaming Alan Dye as if he was the only one responsible.
Federighi—who's in charge of implementing this and was busy praising it on stage—is completely blameless. As are all other managers big and small at Apple.
> and was busy praising it on stage
I mean, yeah, if you were picked to present "on stage" (when was the last time a stage was actually involved???) then of course you're going to be a team player and read the script enthusiastically. It's not like Federighi is going to present something "and now, here's the thing that I argued against doing, but was shouted down in all the meetings so here's this thing I don't like and you shouldn't feel obliged to like it either"
> I mean, yeah, if you were picked to present "on stage"
Ah yes. Federighi, the VP of Platform Development, literally responsible for the development of iOS and MacOs "was picked", and had no power to say no to the overwhelming power of the all-powerful head of design Alan Dye.
> but was shouted down in all the meetings
So, VP of Platforms was shouted down by whom exactly?
But sure, let's keep telling everyone that it was only Alan Dye who was responsible for Liquid Glass.
BTW I remind you it was the same Federighi who introduced the awful design changes in the MacOS a few years ago proudly presenting the new settings app and saying that everything will be meticulously designed in the final version (was it Sonoma? Can't remember).
You've taken the wrong interpretation from what I was being somewhat snide about. I don't know the Apple hierarchy and who is actually responsible for what. The point was that anyone presenting for Apple is going to come across as having drunk the kool-aid, otherwise, they would not have been picked.
At the end of the day, I don't care who was/wasn't responsible for any of the decisions. I have no say in the matter, and unless you're part of the management at Apple, neither do you. Lots of people wrote the code to make whatever debacle has happened. They all have skin in the game.
By troupo 2026-02-1617:56 > I don't know the Apple hierarchy and who is actually responsible for what.
Alan Dye was Vice President of Human Interface Design
Federighi is Senior Vice President Software Engineering. Only Tim Cook and God are above him: https://www.apple.com/leadership/craig-federighi/
I mean, you're supposed to know at least some basic facts to engage in a conversation about this, right? He wasn't "picked to present"
> The point was that anyone presenting for Apple is going to come across as having drunk the kool-aid, otherwise, they would not have been picked.
You've missed my point entirely.
Again: it wasn't just Alan Dye reapinsible for Liquid Glass. People keep pretending only Dye was responsible for it.
By Someone1234 2026-02-1615:153 reply But what if I want my iPhone to look like Windows Vista?
By data-ottawa 2026-02-1615:481 reply I actually liked how Vista looked, but it had a lot of artificial sheen that Liquid Glass doesn’t have.
Looks were never Vista’s problem.
By Hamuko 2026-02-1616:15 I don't remember my Vista installation being this illegible.
By ch4s3 2026-02-1617:05 Windows 98 Phone when?
By joshstrange 2026-02-1618:54 I would like nothing more but the goodwill (what little is left) that would be burnt with the developers who updated their apps to use Liquid Glass might be more than Apple can handle.
Best bet and to move as quickly as possible to tone it down, fix the bugs, and get someone who actually likes macOS in charge(clearly the people in charge hate it, why else would they treat it so badly). The System Settings app was the canary in the coal mine (yes, I'm sure there even better canaries but it's the first that comes to mind), whoever let that out the door should have already been reprimanded but instead Apple doubled down and created the trash heap that is Tahoe.
By newsclues 2026-02-1616:11 I don't think they can or will change something that drastic right away, but I'd wager that there is at least one team, rethinking it.
Maybe a year or two of bug fixing updates, while they entirely refresh liquid glass?
Seems like a BIG job.
I like this site, and would love to love it. But the unrelenting refusal to participate in new things simply because they're new is incredibly disappointing. There's nothing wrong with Liquid Glass. There's nothing wrong with an llm. Half of this site could just be a bot complaining.
By array_key_first 2026-02-1623:32 There's a lot of things wrong with liquid glass. The problem isn't that nobody has valid complaints. It's that you, and others, read those valid complaints and then just literally pretend they don't exist. Frankly, I don't even know how you manage to achieve this level of cognitive dishonesty without stepping back and seriously considering your life and purpose.
Yes, liquid glass does actually have problems. It has performance problems. It can be a big distraction, and some people believe UI whitespace shouldn't detract from the main content. It has huge legibility problems. Sometimes text straight up cannot be read. It has predictability problems. Stuff moves around when it shouldn't, text magically changes colors based on heuristics, which throws users off.
And that's not an exhaustive list.
By Espressosaurus 2026-02-1617:24 UX regressions are bad, and liquid glass is worse than Microsoft’s Metro nonsense for usability.
Transparency is not a good user experience when you’re trying to read detailed text.
By jenoer 2026-02-1617:22 Personally, the icon and widget edges constantly moving around when moving the phone even slightly in any direction got on my nerves so bad that I had to disable Motion completely (the only fix for it). This unfortunately also downgraded a lot of other UI components/interactions as well.
It did give me a battery boost though, so at least there's that.
By postexitus 2026-02-1617:51 I don't care when somebody doesn't like aesthetics or look and feel of a new theme. It is subjective. Giving people an option to turn it off is kind. But Liquid Glass is usability terror. Just bring up the onscreen controls when you are playing video and compare that with what it was before. What is incredibly disappointing is people like you who defends new things just because they are new without paying any attention to usability, ergonomics or -sadly- performance. There is nothing good about Liquid Glass. Half of this site could just be a bot complaining.
By pavel_lishin 2026-02-1615:064 reply Hey, maybe they'll fix the keyboard, too, and then that guy won't have to switch to Android for two years!
By ASalazarMX 2026-02-1619:30 They keyboard is bad, yes, but the text selection is maddening! It used to be that double or long tapping a word was enough to highlight it and retype it, now you never know if that will select a word, statement, or whole paragraph, and there's nothing you can do to change that. Even trying to hit the cursor handles at both ends of the selection can become an exercise in frustration.
I've lost count of how many times I've ended retyping a whole statement instead of trying to fix a single autocorrected word.
Apple is becoming the Bethesda of OSs, promising to fix their bugs to maybe extend battery life, when the UX has fundamental flaws.
By eknkc 2026-02-1616:54 A keyboard fix is the only thing I want at this point. It is comically bad.
By pavel_lishin 2026-02-1618:21 I hate how much of it I understand.
By s3p 2026-02-1617:06 I love that we all see the same content on HN. Maybe he will start vibecoding and get hired by OpenAI afterward.
