GoKawiilSeven years after its blockbuster 2019 announcement, SwiftUI was supposed to be the mature, production-grade future of cross-platform UI development on all Apple platforms. Instead, SwiftUI feels like a perpetual beta, even in 2026. In this deep dive, I break down why the initial excitement has given way to deep professional frustration for senior engineers. I analyze the systemic issues with performance and layout predictability, the chaotic state of SwiftUI’s ever-changing data flow, and the frustrating lack of backward compatibility that forces developers into a nightmare of shims and workarounds.
Through real-world examples—including Apple’s own SwiftUI tutorial (which is broken) and a head-to-head performance comparison with UIKit (guess who wins)—I demonstrate how SwiftUI trades precise engineering for an illusion of convenience.
Beyond the code, this video explores a broader, more concerning shift in Cupertino: a transition away from the uncompromising craftsmanship of the original era of Cocoa, Aqua, and Auto Layout toward a modern corporate culture of “good enough” products. If you are tired of making excuses for broken features, fighting layout bugs, and doing Apple’s QA work for them, this perspective is for you.
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Video Transcript
Intro
Okay, let’s get on with it.
This is going to be a longer piece about SwiftUI, what’s wrong with it, and why I don’t believe it’s getting better any time soon. The past seven years haven’t turned SwiftUI into a real, production-grade UI framework: It still suffers from long-standing issues with layout consistency and performance.
But you don’t have to take my word for it; you can see for yourself in Apple’s official, first-party SwiftUI tutorial. Just download the complete demo project at the link below and run it on your Mac.
I’ll get back to this particular case later in this video. But let’s start with a short retrospective.
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