Jason Snell at Six Colors releases the site’s eleventh “report card” on the state of Apple. It’s rather damning:

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. […]

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. […]

The net changes between 2024 and 2025 are displayed below—you’ll note that scores were down in 11 of the 14 categories.

My takeaways from this year’s report:

• Apple’s software quality has taken a sharp downturn, especially macOS 26 Tahoe. Some of that is Liquid Glass, but, on Mac especially, it’s the slow erosion of Apple’s vaunted “usability.”
• Mac hardware continues to be best-in-class, but is struggling to overcome its software weakness.
• iPhone continues to putter along, improving incrementally each year, with a notable rise in satisfaction coming from the base iPhone 17.
• iPad saw a marked improvement after a few years of decline, driven primarily by ultra-high-end hardware and the introduction of useful and usable multitasking support in iPadOS 26.
• Services is buoyed by the strong television fare on Apple TV streaming, but tied down by the high pricing and constant upsell.
• The relationship with developers is as bad as it’s been in a decade, driven by Apple’s unwillingness to cede any control of its App Store, the company’s ongoing fights with regulators across the world, and the icy reception to Liquid Glass.
• Apple’s “leave the world better than we found it” ethos sustained a massive—potentially unrecoverable—blow this year, primarily from Tim Cook’s obsequiousness toward and appeasement of the current administration.

On that last category (“Apple’s Impact on the World”), here’s Snell’s summary:

This year, the bottom fell out. Tim Cook’s relationship with the Trump administration dominated the discussion. Panelists overwhelmingly condemned what they described as obsequious behavior — the gold-plated plaque, the Mar-a-Lago dinners, the inaugural donation — as a betrayal of Apple’s stated values on human rights, the environment, and social responsibility. Several panelists noted that Apple had quietly deprioritized environmental commitments and removed the ICEBlock app from the App Store. A few acknowledged the difficulty of Apple’s position as a multi-trillion-dollar company navigating an unpredictable administration, but most argued that Apple was obliged to take a stronger stand.

I could handle the imperfect software, the Services toll, and even the regulatory malfeasance, but Apple’s stature as the one company I could trust to always do what’s right has been forever tainted.