The real reason adoption is slow is that the update is opt-in. Normal people have their phone set up to automatically update, and it works fine as-is.
The only reason I have iOS 26 is because I bothered to go in the Software Update page and saw it was released.
To be honest though, *OS 26 is the worst update yet overall, lots of crashes and the UI changes are not great. If there was an option to go back to the old UI I would use it…
I was a big fan of the original Need For Speed for the same reason, the driving over large scenery levels was the whole point. The technology wasn’t quite there yet but I have fond memories of the first game on PC.
I mostly got it back with Test Drive Unlimited, which featured an entire drivable island (Hawaii I believe?) and you could free roam as much as you wanted between races. One of the races was of course an entire tour of the island and took one hour (and it was not that easy), it was awesome! TDU2 was total garbage, they forgot about the driving, the model was broken. They instead focused on the whole “influencer” garbage, it was really bad.
Recently Forza Horizon 3 recaptured that feeling perfectly, free roaming around Australia. It is easily the best game of the series. The newer entries were less interesting since they turned the game into a FOMO fest (lots of timed weekly exclusives and no game ending). Still, I am looking very much forward to FH6 to roam around Japan, but considering the locale I don’t think we will be able to skip the tuning scene this time.