Summary

Gruber's 2025 Apple Report Card delivers a mixed verdict, with iPhone hardware earning top marks while macOS 26 Tahoe's Liquid Glass redesign draws his harshest criticism as the worst UI regression in Mac history. He praises iPhone 17 Pro and the remarkably thin iPhone Air, gives iPadOS its most exciting release ever for finally embracing windowed multitasking, and lauds Apple Watch SE 3 as outstanding value. However, he assigns Apple an F for social and societal impact, condemning Tim Cook's obsequious engagement with the Trump 2.0 administration, and would give Apple Intelligence a standalone F grade. The overall picture is of a company whose hardware excellence increasingly contrasts with software design missteps and institutional timidity.

Key Insight

Apple's hardware excellence continues to mask deepening problems in software design direction, developer relations, and institutional courage under political pressure.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 9

  Tahoe, though, is the worst regression in the entire history of MacOS.

• 8

  There is nothing about Tahoe's new UI — the Mac's implementation of the Liquid Glass concept Apple has applied across all its OSes — that is better than its predecessor, MacOS 15 Sequoia. Nothing.

• 7

  Fundamental principles of human-computer interaction — principles that Apple itself forged over decades — have been completely ignored.

• 4

  No one comes close to Apple at making very small, powerful computers that don't really seem like computers at all.

• 6

  I can't think of any area where Apple's attitude more clearly seems to be that 'good enough' is good enough.

• 6

  Apple TV 4K really is so much better than any competing set-top box, but it also still falls so far short of 'insanely great'.

• 9

  It was obsequious complicity with a regime that is clearly destined for historical infamy.

• 7

  Apple's goal should be for developer relations to be so good that developers look for excuses to create software exclusively for Apple's platforms. The opposite is happening.

Tone

critical, opinionated, detailed