I can't believe what I'm about to type, simply because it's such an insane and egregious bit of deceipt. It's just what I wrote in the title.

I know a lot of Apple users, myself included, have strong opinions about Apple's very sudden change in human interface standards, and would prefer not to be on Liquid Glass. Since September of 2025, Apple has been changing longstanding norms about how they push updates to our devices, to try and raise adoption rates for Liquid Glass. A lot of us, myself included, believe Apple has been acting deceptively there.

If you, like me, have been trying to stay off Liquid Glass on any of your devices, you should know that Apple recently pushed a new update for iOS 18 users. The update has the iOS 18 icon, but an "Update to iOS 26" label, and then a fuller page which explains that the update will install iOS 18.7.8, not 26.5.

To put it simply, it's a dirty lie. Apple lied about the software that was installed. As far as I know, this is something they've never done before. This is even worse than Microsoft's "press X to upgrade to Windows 10" trickery from a decade ago.