This is Technology Bytes, episode 128 for August 17, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So this week, Apple released beta 6 of all of their operating systems, and because I’m on that train, I installed it just because that’s what I’m doing.
So far, the betas have worked fairly well for me.
I’ve mentioned in previous episodes where there were some issues that I had with it.
But I just wanted to touch base on this latest one that came out.
So one of the things, obviously, Liquid Glass is the big part of the upgrade to the OS 26 across the board.
And for a minute, and I think it was beta 4, they kind of went to what people were calling frosted glass.
Well, they kind of went backwards, not backwards, but they went back to more of the glass type of interface.
And I really enjoy it.
I like what it does.
I like how it looks.
It doesn’t bother me.
I know that there are little things here or there that people complain about, and it’s fine.
But beta 4, I didn’t like because it was just frosted glass.
I didn’t see that change that they mentioned at WWDC.
So I’m really glad that they’re settling in on this Liquid Glass effect that will be given to the general public, not just the public beta, but released in its full form in probably not too distant future.
So that is good.
I like what it looks like.
People are going to have to get used to it because it is quite different.
The other thing that I noticed is that the battery life is starting to get vastly better.
When you’re on the beta, it’s often a battery drain because Apple has not optimized for that.
They recognize that when they release this fully that battery is important.
And even in that initial release when it comes out version 0 or however you want to look at it, OS 26.0, the batteries are going to drain faster than normal until the operating system gets up to speed and has done all the changes that it needs to go through depending on what device it’s on.
But I’ve noticed that now I don’t have to plug in my iPad quite as quickly.
My phone lasts about the same as it was.
My watch is lasting all day long where just a week ago I was having to plug it in at lunchtime just to get through the balance of my day.
And so it’s good to see that.
It also means we’re approaching full release.
And then the stability is also getting better.
Little idiosyncrasies that I was having with Wi-Fi and with connectivity here or there are starting to disappear.
And the stability is getting to a point where I don’t even really know that I’m on the beta anymore because there’s nothing that is beta-ish, if that’s the way you want to look at it.
And so what does that say to me?
Well, what it says to me is that we are getting close to final release.
And some people have said something about maybe September 9th or somewhere in that realm or week or something like that.
And so we are very close.
I mean, we’re less than a month away.
I assume…
I didn’t look it up.
I don’t know how many betas we went to in iOS 18 before we got the official release.
But 6 might have been the biggest number we got to.
I feel like we’re probably going to get to a 7, but probably not an 8 in the iOS or all the OS 26s that we have.
And what the changes we’ll see from now till full release will be very minor.
And so it’s just going to be polished, make it a little better, make it a little more stable, help the battery life.
So I think I’m pretty excited for the full release only because then I can start to talk my family into putting it on their devices, some of the things that I really can’t test and messages in other places because my entire family’s not on the 26 version of the operating system will happen.
But I’ll have to push my wife, I think, to put the new operating system on her devices only because she won’t be paying any attention, not because she doesn’t want to, but because it’s not important to her.
But it will be fun when we’re all back on the same version of the software, all the things that I’ve enjoyed, and then some of the things that I have not been able to enjoy that require everyone I interact with in the family to have that version of the operating system so we can do all those fun little things of interactions between each other.
So that’s Beta 6, and I like it.
I think it’s getting very stable.
I like where they’re landing with the liquid glass and looking forward to more of you and my family as well using that full release version of the software.
That is all I have for today.
If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytesatmarigfamily.com.
That’s M-E-A-R-I-G family.com.
And bytes is B-Y-T-E-S.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
