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Apple in 2025: The Six Colors Report Card
Jason Snell:
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.)
This is the eleventh year that I’ve presented this survey to my
hand-selected group. They were prompted with 14 different
Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1
(worst) to 5 (best) and optionally provide text commentary per
category.
I still need to polish it up a bit, but per tradition, I’ll publish my own report card shortly. In the meantime, it’s always edifying to read Snell’s summary and the average grades. You’ll never guess which category Apple flunked for 2025. (Spoiler: World Impact.)
Regarding MacOS 26 Tahoe, here are the comments from two Johns:
“Tahoe is the worst user interface update in the history of the
Mac. Every change is either wrongheaded, poorly executed, or both.
The Mac remains usable only because of Tahoe’s lack of ambition:
it mostly alters the appearance and metrics of interface elements
rather than making fundamental changes to the structure of the Mac
UI. Thank goodness for that. The bad ideas embodied in Tahoe
reveal an Apple design team that has abandoned the most basic
principles of human-computer interaction.” —John Siracusa
“Tahoe is the worst regression in the entire history of MacOS.
There are many reasons to prefer MacOS to any of its competition,
but the one that has been the most consistent since System 1 in
1984 is the superiority of its user interface. There is nothing
about Tahoe’s new UI that is better than its predecessor….
Fundamental principles of computer-human interaction — principles
that Apple itself forged over decades — have been completely
ignored.” —John Gruber
Siracusa and I didn’t say a word to each other while writing those comments. (If we had, I’d have switched to “human-computer interaction” from “computer-human interaction”.)
★
Apple, technology, and other stuff
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By
Jason Snell
February 23, 2026 11:22 AM PT
Apple in 2025: The Six Colors report card
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.)
This is the eleventh year that I’ve presented this survey to my hand-selected group. They were prompted with 14 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 (worst) to 5 (best) and optionally provide text commentary per category.
I received 56 replies, with the average results as shown below:
Since most of the survey categories are the same as in previous years, I was able to track the change in my panel’s consensus opinion. The net changes between 2024 and 2025 are displayed below—you’ll note that scores were down in 11 of the 14 categories:
[changes in scores chart]
Read on for category-by-category grades, trends, and select commentary from the panelists. (You can also read the entirety of panelist commentary—all 32,000 words—if you are so inclined. I discuss the results and give some of my own opinions on today’s episode of Upgrade.)
Mac
Grade: B- (average score: 3.5, median score 4, last year: 4.2)
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. The panel lauded Apple silicon’s continued combination of performance and energy efficiency, but cautioned that the chip landscape and product lineup have gotten a bit more messy.
Hardware excellence
- “The biggest compliment I can pay my M4 Pro MacBook Pro is that, apart from the unwieldy name, it’s boring. It’s boring that, unlike my high-powered PC laptop, I don’t need to worry about having a charger on hand. It’s boring that I almost never hear obtrusive fan noise. It’s boring that the screen is beautiful, a perfect size, perfect clarity, perfect contrast, perfect colours, perfect brightness and perfect smoothness.” — Shahid Kamal Ahmad
- “Mac hardware is better than ever, with nearly every current Mac (except the Mac Pro) being a strong performer with no major drawbacks or compromises.” — Marco Arment
“I feel that [the MacBook Air has] become transparent. They work perfectly, do what I need, don’t complain, I rarely hear the fan on my iMac, and they are both sufficient for all the tasks I do.” — Kirk McElhearn
“Apple kept the MacBook Air at a pleasing $999, with a base config of 16 GB RAM. All’s right, if not exciting.” — Shelly Brisbin
“Hardware? Great, steaming ahead. Software? Terrible, steaming pile.” — Charles Arthur
macOS Tahoe controversy
- “Tahoe is the worst user interface update in the history of the Mac. Every change is either wrongheaded, poorly executed, or both. The Mac remains usable only because of Tahoe’s lack of ambition: it mostly alters the appearance and metrics of interface elements rather than making fundamental changes to the structure of the Mac UI. Thank goodness for that. The bad ideas embodied in Tahoe reveal an Apple design team that has abandoned the most basic principles of human-computer interaction.” — John Siracusa
“Tahoe is the worst regression in the entire history of MacOS. There are many reasons to prefer MacOS to any of its competition, but the one that has been the most consistent since System 1 in 1984 is the superiority of its user interface. There is nothing about Tahoe’s new UI that is better than its predecessor…. Fundamental principles of computer-human interaction — principles that Apple itself forged over decades — have been completely ignored.” — John Gruber
“Mac hardware: stunning in a good way. macOS Tahoe: stunning in a bad way.” — Craig Hockenberry
“I am forced to use macOS Tahoe for work, otherwise there is no universe in which I would have it running on even one of my machines.” — Christina Warren
“The hardware is great. I have a 2025 M4 MacBook Air, and it’s great. But it’s running Sequoia and will be for the foreseeable future. It’s not that Tahoe doesn’t provide some great new features, it’s that as a long-time Mac user, I can’t bear to look at it.” — John Moltz
“Liquid Glass doesn’t shine on the Mac, but there’s more to macOS Tahoe to make it worth the upgrade. Spotlight is a lot more powerful, Live Activities are useful, and Shortcuts are more capable.” — Chance Miller
Some loose threads in terms of hardware
- “The M3 Ultra is the latest in a long line of failures when it comes to high-end desktop Mac hardware: late, underwhelming, and fully two generations behind the rest of the Mac line. Meanwhile, the Mac Pro, with its M2 Ultra chip that has lower single-core performance than the two-year-old iPhone 15 Pro, seems well and truly dead.” — John Siracusa
“Mac Pro looks to be abandoned, iMac is getting long in the tooth, and I would love to see a bigger iMac Pro make an appearance.” — Eric Slivka
“Apple’s external displays continue to age, rather ungracefully. Mac users shopping for a display have more options than ever beyond the Apple Store. The Studio Display is too expensive, and the XDR is just… well, there’s a lot going on there. I hope Apple has some new products ready sooner rather than later.” — Stephen Hackett
iPhone
Grade: B+ (average score: 3.9, median score 4, last year: 3.7)
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.
The iPhone 17 lineup
- “This is probably the best year for the iPhone that I can recall. The hardware is basically perfect across the lineup. There’s no duds.” — Casey Liss
“The iPhone 17 line is yet another strong showing from Apple. The vapor chamber in the Pro models addresses one of the few persistent hardware weaknesses of the high-end iPhones. The plain iPhone 17 is one of the best values in years, adopting many formerly Pro-only features.” — John Siracusa
“2025 brought more iPhones than ever, as Apple leaned into differentiation between models. The iPhone Pro and Pro Max were redesigned to maximize the performance of the camera and the silicon inside. The iPhone 17 gained ProMotion and the always-on display, making it the best base iPhone ever.” — Stephen Hackett
The iPhone Air
[...]