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Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
- lnrd 1y agoA deep dive on how this new material works, way more advanced than how it looks from screenshots.
- deafpolygon 1y agoI must be in the minority, but I love the design.
- LexGray 1y agoI like it a lot. More rarely used elements are now out of the way and muscle memory works well for the remaining buttons. I think the UI is far more fun and usable than I remember Vista being.
- larrysalibra 1y agoI was skeptical at first but like it a lot after trying out the betas. It's all very intuitive if you've used visionOS before and the potential readability problems aren't really an issue in practice.
- sampton 1y agoI hope they can tweak the design for finder because the current beta looks bad.
- BinaryMachine 1y agoEh I am still not convinced that this will be good UI. I wish they would have put a one 1px white border around the glass UI button elements or something small like this to enhance it just a little better. I will have to use it to really get a feeling... Also that switch toggle shown in the video looks weird its so satisfying turning on/off a switch UI element without anything else interfering with such a simple concept. I have liked MacOS UI upgrades over the years though, I am glad we don't use the brushed metal anymore :)
- Barbing 1y agoIt is funny, when they showed how easy to ignore all the Apple TV menus would be, all I could think was my consistent opines to various elderly TV users who I’ve complained to about smart TV/TV app menus. “I just want the ugliest, highest-contrast menus possible, with everything labeled in large font“
- cyode 1y ago> ...floating forms that nest neatly in the rounded curves of modern devices. These clearly defined shapes feel easy to tap and are designed to relate to the natural geometry of our fingers... This reminds me for some reason of my preferred answer to the Microsoft interview question "Why are manholes round?" A: Because the average cross-section of a human being is roughly circular.
- deaddodo 1y agoThat answer would be akin to someone asking “why is the sun round?” and answering with “it’s roughly the optimal shape for viewing the totality of the sun”.
- dylan604 1y agoIs that the real reason? I had always heard that a round hole prevents the cover from being able to fall back in the hole
- derefr 1y agoFrom the perspective of "design the manhole cover first", the reason is that manhole covers aren't just round — they're (very subtle) domes. A dome is: 1. the best shape for taking stress from very heavy trucks putting all their weight on them without the manhole itself gradually bowing, and 2. is best at transferring that stress equally into the manhole wall (cast concrete cylinder) itself. (A square manhole + manhole cover would disperse force unfairly, potentially gradually cracking the manhole walls / requiring stronger walls. A flat circular manhole would disperse force upon the center of the manhole equally onto the manhole walls, allowing for lower-material-cost manhole walls. A domed manhole cover additionally disperses force from most points on the dome equally into the manhole walls — important, as vehicles won't necessarily be driving over the exact center of the manhole!) ...but really, this is the wrong direction to work in. The original reason manhole covers are round, is simply that the walls of a manhole are best made round, for the same reason drink cans and barrels are best made round: a closed cylinder is great at taking compressive force from a lid above; passing it through as soft, equal tensile force through its walls without buckling strain; and then turning that force back into an equal compressive force on the floor / subsurface. Most manholes are generally small closed cylinders acting as maintenance areas for nearby pipes, with the pipes coming in through the sides of the manhole walls, and the concrete bottom floor of the manhole resting upon compacted earth. In this situation, any shape for the manhole other than a cylinder — if driven over for years/decades by cars — would gradually pound the uneven force acting upon the manhole's floor into the earth below, unevenly accelerating soil subsidence. Eventually, you've created a sinkhole below the road, right outside the manhole wall on one side.
- yesbut 1y agoApple just announced their new keyboard: https://imgur.com/b9n5862 https://imgur.com/b9n5862
- nofunsir 1y agoI fundamentally disagree with many of their reasonings. e.g. tinting the so-called "Content Layer" instead of all the buttons, or demanding "steady state" to be "visually quiet", which is highly subjective. They are optimizing for sheep content vacuums, I mean users, and obedient developers. As a user, I want color back on my GD buttons! Also, I don't trust anyone who would wear those outfits.
- iTokio 1y agoI’ve been using it for 2 days now, and the first thing I noticed is that readability took a hit. My background is a mid tone warm photo, not dark or light, icons got a white foreground that’s very hard to read against their translucent background. The second thing I noticed, is that when I’m scrolling a webpage, icons now switch color randomly (according to the bg dominant color) and that’s distracting. The last thing, is that my phone is getting warmer and scrolling has become less fluid, choppy. And that’s on the 16 Pro Max. What I like the most about this design though, is that it become invisible and let you focus on what you are reading, watching. Perfect to focus on content, but the user interface has become sometimes unreadable and when you need to interact with it, put the flashlight in a hurry, you are scanning through instead of instantly recognizing stuff. But maybe that’s just new habits to make.
- int_19h 1y agoThere's a reason why Win7 dialed transparency down from Vista.
- Kwpolska 1y ago[citation needed] Vista had a black taskbar with some transparency, 7 made it glass. If you maximised a window on Vista, the maximised window's border became dark (black/with an accent colour tint) and opaque, the taskbar and sidebar went opaque as well. 7 got rid of that.
- steve_adams_86 1y agoI agree with everything you said here. Most of it transfers to macOS as well. Readability took less of a hit, thankfully. Some of the work appears so shoddy that I wonder if it was done by code mods or something. The Passwords app on macOS looks bizarrely cluttered and cramped, with all kinds of bad artifacts when you resize the window. I know it's a beta, but it's so bad that I really wonder if a human looked at it for more than a minute before they shipped it out.
- whycome 1y agoBattery seems to be taking a hit (maybe anecdotal). And scrolling is sluggish at times for sure. And also getting warm device (15 pro max). The sluggishness might not be due to the hour/transparency. There seems to be some kind of lazy loading that’s going on with icons. I’m not sure if that’s new. The transparency is a mess. I can’t believe how far backwards this is. Trying to visually pick out icons is harder. Icons without transparency have this weird edge enhancement effect going on like a bad photoshop filter. I seem to be having a bunch of new web issues. Popups aren’t handled as well. And there are weird refresh issues when zooming on web pages.
- janalsncm 1y agoI am trying it out and aside from being unpolished it’s also slower. My phone used to be buttery smooth. No longer.
- plorkyeran 1y agoEarly iOS betas are always very slow. On top of things just being unoptimized, they have a lot of extra diagnostic logging enabled.
- Gigachad 1y agoApple probably made a mistake by making the developer betas public. So many morons installing them now and crying that it’s buggy.
- basisword 1y agoThey have the public betas (available to anyone) but this is a developer beta and requires a developer account (albeit you don't need to pay the $99 anymore). They should probably put it behind the $99 barrier again. It astounds me that people on a site like HN can install a developer beta and then act shocked that it's not 'buttery smooth'. Companies either need to educate people or make it difficult to access beta software again.
- Gigachad 1y agoDoesn’t look like you require anything. I don’t have a developer account and I can select the developer betas on my MacBook and iPad.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nomel 1y agoI suspect you can disable it with the "reduce transparency" option in the accessibility menu, until it gets out of beta.
- jes5199 1y agoso this did all this transparency stuff without it being the run up to the launch of a new augmented-reality device? I don't understand what they are thinking.
- ErneX 1y agoThey want a common design language across all their current devices and the devices we don’t know about yet. https://omc345.substack.com/p/from-skeuomorphic-to-liquid-glass https://omc345.substack.com/p/from-skeuomorphic-to-liquid-gl... Edit: added a link.
- seydor 1y agoWe have 'instinctive visual cues' for depth and light coming from above, hence why button gradients are so immediately effective,because our visual system recognizes it in milliseconds. we don't have "instictive visual cues" for refraction and lensing , that's why we are confused about underwater distances . That's why magnifying glasses make us dizzy. I just can't believe this is coming from apple.
- nomel 1y agoHow is this wrong? Our visual system is optimized, rather extremely, for understanding 3d scenes under the simple perspective model that our eyes are based on: x' = (x * f) / z Outside of that 99.999% experience norm, that are brains are so used to, is disconnect and discomfort. If you've ever put on a new pair of glasses, with a different prescription, you'll understand exactly what he's talking about: depth offset and dizziness. The disconnect is why refraction and lensing is interesting to look at: the model your eyes are used to seeing, for the world behind the thing, is not normal.
- seydor 1y agothe fact that it's surprising does not make it a visual cue. A cue to what? I am not aware of any psychophysics study that says we have perception of droplets or lens transformations (in contrast to shadows , gradients etc that are well studied). There also doesn't seem to be an evolutionary reason for it because the natural world does not have lenses and glass. And UIs are usually based on intuitive features.
- oharapj 1y agoNot saying this makes the ui good but it should go without saying that the natural world has water which acts as a lens. Also, of course we have perception of droplets. What we don’t have is an intuitive understanding of how light interacts with droplets. I suspect that Apple are trying to leverage this lack of intuition to make their ui interesting to look at in an evergreen way. New backgrounds mean new interesting interactions. I’m not confident that they’ve succeeded or that that’s actually a good goal to have though. I have it on my iPhone 13 and personally I find it annoying to parse, and I feel relief when I go back to traditional apps untouched by the update like Google Maps
- Inviz 1y agoI think the fact that it supports colored glass, and it has 2 variants, and it promotes dimming layer - says that current implementation is probably not the end of the story
- qwertox 1y agoWhen they care more about the words than the usability.
- kgdinesh 1y agoWill this design change take a hit on the base iPad? I'm looking to get one and wondering if I should get the M3 air instead?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- osigurdson 1y agoI thought the glass effect on Windows Vista was pretty good 15-20 years ago but eventually disappeared. I'm sure this will be much better since Apple are far better than anyone else at design. Of course, I use Linux most of the time and crack open my MacBook once a week at most so I won't benefit from it much.
- wetpaws 1y ago[dead]
- _cenw 1y agoLinux got plenty of good glass effects. Kvantum for instance.
- osigurdson 1y agoI doubt it would be as cohesive as what Apple would do - they are paying legions of top designers to think about every pixel. If it comes super well designed out of the box I appreciate it but I don't care enough to bother tweaking anything. I've tried various plug-ins in Gnome but all pretty amateur compared to what Apple is doing. Of course, I'll stick to Linux as I want to develop in the same environment that my code will be running in production. The other aspects matter far less to me.
- wetpaws 1y ago[dead]
- mvkel 1y agoI think I know what happened. The A-squad design team left Apple 15 years ago. The B-squad left 5 years ago. What remains is a sea of Gen Z designers who weren't yet alive when the foggy glass of Windows Vista seemed like a good idea. Meanwhile, the talent wars are raging, with every AI company offering 7-figure salaries to the best of Apple's prodigies. Apple is now the old guard. They're no longer cool, and as a public company, cost controls are too stringent; they can't pay as much. What is Apple to do? They can give the designers a sense of ownership. It's not a question of how (un)qualified the team is; it's a retention play. Is the design good? The A and B squads would say no. But this is the best Apple can do these days to keep critical talent engaged. They'll burn a cycle re-learning fundamental lessons in accessibility, retain talent, and cling to the hope that next year they'll have a midwit Siri than can book a flight with a decent looking UI.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- matusp 1y agoI like to observe how organization affects how a company operates. As soon as you create a department, that department will start to generate reasons why it should remain being a department, as a sort of self preservation instinct. If you establish a design department, they will start planning complete redesigns sooner or later -- they need to have something going on to justify their existence. When I see this type of redesign, I can't help but wonder whether it is something that was cooked so that the design department can have a place at the table. As a tangent, HR departments are very often affected by this as well. As soon as you have large enough HR, they will start generating ideas about how to waste other teams time. They have to justify their existence by organizing some events, trainings, activities, even if they actively harm the bottom line.
- ngrilly 1y agoAgreed. But what is the alternative? No departments at all? Everybody belonging to one giant single team?
- ajam1507 1y agoUIs should be function first. That doesn't mean it can't be beautiful, but usability (and readability) should be the focus, with design being a way to turn a useful one into a beautiful one. It seems like they have started at the wrong end, trying to make their design language functional.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rkagerer 1y agoThis point is so salient. It's all just candy. Neat eye candy, granted. I'm glad so much emphasis went into legibility, and that accessibility variants are baked in. But I'd still love a modern device with very basic UI. Palm had it nailed, and I had no beef with the basic shapes of Windows 3.11 or colored squares of the NT/XP eras. Buttons, window edges and other controls you can readily distinguish that simply stay out of your way when you don't need them. No need for every pixel to scream out "look at me" when you trail your finger over it.
- sixothree 1y agoIt's pretty clear one of the goals is for content to be first, not the function. OS controls are secondary to what is being displayed. They want them to go away. And I am all for it. After a few days of this new OS, I really like it. It takes a day to train your eyes, but that happens with literally every version of the operating system. But once you do it is so nice for all of the function to just get out of the way.
- tevon 1y agoI’ve been using the beta on both iPad and iPhone for the last couple days and I have to say I quite like it. I find the interactions intuitive, and the rearrangement of the UI (placement of buttons and such) better than prior versions. I was concerned about readability, but has not been an issue at all. There are some awkward portions, but seems like something that can be worked out.
- mrtksn 1y agoI think I'm convinced with liquid glass design, the issues highlighted by the users in the beta release IMHO are a result of rushing it out for WWDC. It appears that they didn't have enough time to polish the UI to comply with the principles described in this video. For example the designer in this video says no glass over glass but the control center and the lock screen are glass over glass. It looks cluttered and the legibility is horrible, as predicted by the designers here. They probably just compiled the old UI with the new liquid glass framework without going through the design considerations that are required by the new system. By the time of the release, it will look great if Apple doesn't shy away from letting their developers re-work everything. What I wonder now is, why hadn't that happen already? Don't the internal developers have access to the new design and the people behind it until the last moment? If the designers of Liquid Glass and the designers of the locks screen and the control center have talked, they would have known the principles described in the WWDC video and avoid all that.
- flohofwoe 1y agoTbh, I get strong flat-earther vibes from that video ;) E.g. trying to justify a stupid base assumptiom with pseudo-science. I predict that in 2..5 years Apple will go back to regular opaque UI elements with a slight 3D hint to separate items that can be interacted with from non-interactive items. Windows users might be lucky when Microsoft skips that fashion cycle by saying "been there, done that".
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago> Windows users might be lucky when Microsoft skips that fashion cycle by saying "been there, done that". Given Microsoft’s track record, I’d expect worse, not better. Metro might’ve looked good on phones, but the desktop incarnation was pretty ugly (it was basically Windows 1.0 with antialiasing) compared to Aero. It would be completely on brand for them to do something like ditch their current reasonably nice looking Fluent in favor of something hideous and then stubbornly try to make it work without changes for the next decade before finally relenting.
- throwaway290 1y ago
- 2809 1y ago[flagged]
- travisgriggs 1y ago7:44 "These liquid glass elements form a distinct functional layer for controls and navigation..." Hala fricking luah. I think. This sums up--without under bus throwing--what I have loathed about the last 10ish years of "flat design" hell. I wonder if there will be some issues with what happens when elements are not clearly differentiable from from "controls and navigation" and "everything else"? But just recognizing that flat design is a lossy compression of useful information, has me on board, at least to hope this works well.
- noisy_boy 1y agoI mean the idea itself isn't terrible; maybe the glass just needs to have some colour to provide background. Maybe "live glass" instead that knows the context in which it is and applies the right amount of tint of the most appropriate colour based on what's underneath it.
- wpm 1y agoWhat if they just picked a color? Maybe a light blue? Like the light blue of a pool or a tropical beach? Or a graphite grey? Oh wait we had that already.
- ricardobeat 1y ago> Maybe "live glass" instead that knows the context in which it is and applies the right amount of tint of the most appropriate colour based on what's underneath it. That’s precisely what it does, only in grayscale
- noisy_boy 1y agoMaybe making it all grayscale wasn't a great idea because that allows colours to bleed through. Or maybe in pursuit of the liquid glass purity, they misjudged the amount of tint needed.
- russellbeattie 1y agoThe most important thing about this new design is that it differentiates itself from Android. Not super important in the U.S. where iPhone lock-in is pretty endemic, but for the markets where there is competition, this bit of eye candy will make a big difference. Usability is secondary. The directive from on high was probably about creating a more visually distinctive UI which takes advantage of Apple hardware, thus making it harder to emulate. Think of the next YouTube review comparing devices. Liquid glass will stand out, regardless of its user experience.
- Kwpolska 1y agoNon-Apple flagships have powerful GPUs too. They could clone Liquid Glass easily, and I would expect some chinesium manufacturers to do so next year. If it would work as well as it does in the beta, you're right it would stand out, but in the negative sense.
- omnee 1y agoI agree with your reasoning, but I would add that customers also want to be easily distinguished from using an Android or a different device. Apple has long recognised the importance of this sign value and is acting accordingly.
- khurs 1y agoApple and Androids relationship I would say is known and stable. I suspect they are more worried about HarmonyOS phones in China and other markets as Huawei are fierce competition. “Calculations based on data from the government-affiliated China Academy of Information and Communications Technology showed that April shipments of foreign-branded phones in China rose to 3.52 million units from 3.50 million a year earlier. Apple has faced increased competition from domestic rivals in China and has resorted to price cuts to stay competitive. Chinese e-commerce platforms were offering discounts of up to 2,530 yuan ($351) on Apple's latest iPhone 16 models in May.“ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/apples-iphone-sales-capture-top-spot-chinese-market-may-counterpoint-research-2025-06-13/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/apples-iphone-sales-capt...
- travisgriggs 1y agoI see some "it's just Aero all over again" comments. Isn't this a common Apple schtick though? Doing something that others have done already, but doing it more comprehensively, executing it better? I'm sure this isn't perfect yet. But watching the video, I certainly felt like a more holistic approach went into this than what Microsoft tried years ago. Time will tell whether the design teams goals will have the reach to actually matter in the wider breadth of Apple's execution of it.
- ivape 1y agoLiquid Glass looks awesome, people are just piling on.
- matsemann 1y agoNo one is denying that it looks cool. The problem is how it affects UX.
- ivape 1y agoThey ran tons of a/b testing on user groups. I can tell you it feels fresh to me which is very necessary with aesthetics (fashion). Their main operating principle I believe is that they have acclimatized users to the position and flow of the UI for over a decade. At that point, you can embellish the UI. If I skinned HN to anything you would still be totally intimate with where things are so long as I didn’t put yellow on light blue or something wild like that.
- ashwinsundar 1y agoA/B testing doesn’t work if the actual answer is C I don’t want my computer (which I use for work) to be a fashion statement. I stare at the UI all day, every day. My opinion matters just as much as any designer’s.
- ivape 1y ago
- thunderbat3982 1y agoI am not a UI designer. I am no expert here. Like many of us, my initial reaction is to criticize because it feels like they asked ChatGPT to create the script for this demo video with a lot of filler words. It's exhausting parsing all the "connecting to the physical world" phrases just to understand they added refraction between UI elements. I wish someone would just speak these new things to me straightly. However, I can't pass over that Apple's Design team is top-notch. They absolutely take the little polishes to the highest degree they can. A lot of it doesn't look necessary. We clown on Apple but comparing the iPhone UI to Android, there are just many less visual glitches and jagged edges on iPhone. Apple is known for its polish. A lot of it looks like repeating the visual eye candy of the past that people quickly grew tired of. To me this looks like they're bridging the gap to running the UI as a full 3-dimensional physics sandbox. They talk about how the new glass surfaces are broken into 4 layers that adapt to each other. I think this is cool how this works mechanically, but I know this will be hardly be legible to most users. I'll have to train myself to get used to it. I do prefer flatter, more minimal designs with less complexity. I think the future is the UI going from 2d elements to 3d elements. I think scrollbars and buttons and such will be defined as full material objects in 3d space in the future with inherent weight and inertia, etc. I know as an outsider I'm probably naive that this is already so in some ways. Right now most UI elements are 2d materials emulating 3d ones. I do think we've moved up to the point where our less powerful devices like watches and phones can handle running a 3d physics sandbox all the time, and sipping power while they do. This is the precursor to 3-dimentional physics-based UIs. It's sort of a joke but I do expect ray-traced shadows in the future/soon. Much less static assets, many more materials. MMW~
- popalchemist 1y agoIs this video a real human or is it an AI rendering? Either way, there is something uncanny about his speech, gaze, and hand gestures.
- fnord77 1y agoIn 3 years when apple goes back to a readable design, they will get high praise.
- edhelas 1y agoButterfly keyboard "revolution" heard your :D
- hnlmorg 1y agoAs an Apple user myself, I still find it really hard to watch official Apple presentations because they’re so full of stupid adjectives that make their products sound like divine intervention when in reality they were just built to look “cool”. I mean, I get the need to promote things in a favourable light. But Apples language sets off my “bullshit detectors” with every sentence they utter. It’s no wonder they polarise people like a religious cult.
- bergfest 1y agoA little tongue-in-cheek speech was fine when done live on stage. But I certainly don’t enjoy their prerecorded videos anymore.
- timzaman 1y agoCringe
- hermitcrab 1y agoThe real question for me - what will my Qt-based Mac apps look like on macOS 26? Are existing controls going to be broken? Am I going to have to get every icon re-done? Apple are not exactly known for putting any effort into backward compatibility.
- grishka 1y agoGUIs made with cross-platform toolkits, the kinds that do their own rendering on a blank canvas instead of using system controls, always looked like ass on macOS, so nothing new here.
- hermitcrab 1y agoIIRC Qt does it's own render on Windows and Mac, but uses the Mac rendering for Mac. Generally i think the Qt controls look fine on Mac. But it never quite seems to get the spacing and layout correct.
- grishka 1y agoNo, in my own experience, Qt apps have a very distinct "something is off" feeling to them. Because they implement everything from scratch, some of the subtle behaviors from AppKit-provided controls are just not there, despite Qt trying hard to skin them to mimic the real thing. Qt also implements some controls that just can't exist in an AppKit app, like tabs with icons, or those Windows-like toolbars. Popup menus clearly look non-native since Big Sur. And so on.
- hermitcrab 1y agoI work mainly on Windows and am probably a lot less sensitive to these differences that you are. Cross-platform apps are always a compromise.
- trippsydrippsy 1y ago[dead]
- DavidPiper 1y agoI don't want to be a hater, I've been an Apple fan for a long time. I'm hopeful they can finish strong and get this redesign over the high quality bar by the time it leaves beta. But this video diminishes that hope for me. Almost everything they describe as advantages (primarily the fluid motion features) can be done without making the controls see-through. Everything else seems to be a straight-up degradation in quality. It all feels totally over-engineered. Also, if you'll allow me to old-man-yells-at-cloud for a moment: > The motion of liquids is something we all have an intuitive feel for Ignoring that they're highlighting literal bubbles at that point in the video (famously not liquid, except at the bottom of the ocean), liquid is also famously hard to simulate well. It's literally the least intuitive form of matter. > Tinting helps legibility and contrast I want my controls to be legible always! Tinting should draw my attention or trigger a mental pathway (e.g. "red for dangerous operation"), not be the core thing that makes a component legible against its background. > Here is a button that is using a solid fill instead of tinting. As you can tell [sic] it is completely opaque and breaks the visual character of Liquid Glass [also sic, there's no liquid glass in the shot yet]. But notice when it starts using the new tinting. All of a sudden it feels more transparent and more grounded in its environment. No it doesn't! It literally appears more detached from it which is why it looks better and THE WHOLE POINT OF TINTING that you just described. I love the look and feel of this tinting example, but you just made it seem like you got to a good place by total accident. I really want to believe y'all know what you're doing this time around.
- noisy_boy 1y agoWhat I am curious about is that isn't there a team or group in Apple with a keen eye for UX that are independent of the designing teams, sort of dogfood these changes over a period and have the authority to initiate corrections/fixes? Sort of like UX QA but with actual powers?
- Ylpertnodi 1y agoOr, the public?
- noisy_boy 1y agosure but I also said: > have the authority to initiate corrections/fixes
- apexalpha 1y agoThis is the first time that I truly don't like what Apple has done with the UI. Honestly there have been things where I had to give it some time, and maybe this design will grow on me too. Lord knows Apple puts a lot of resources into this. But still it looks so Windows Vista...
- pfortuny 1y agoHonest question: are the app icons going to be monochrome? If so, then paint me baffled.
- thorio 1y agoMy first thought was: This seems like a very logical next step in order to prepare for future broader market adoption of AR applications and AR glasses. Being a sceptic about the latter at first I must say, I wish the technology would finally allow having a "normal" pair of glasses with high resolution, no cable attached, AR overlay screens.
- hershey890 1y agoDitto. It seems Apple is preparing their users for the same UI that would be present on AR Glasses. Rumor has it they ran an internal poll on whether their employees would purchase AI glasses which is their first step when developing a new product.
- thorio 1y agoInteresting point. So if that really might be the way forward in mind when developing liquid glass, I think they did a pretty good job. Curious to see how this works in more complex UIs - I'd expect, that it has to play along with a very reduced number of visible UI components in sight.
- zerr 1y agoI often think that the quality of the product goes against employment incentives. Nobody gets promoted for preserving the good product. Employees get measured of how many changes they make.
- rkagerer 1y agoSomehow I've always considered controls that float over your content to be a bit of a UI design cop-out. They often get slapped on top willy-nilly, and wind up blocking something below - either from view, or from interaction with another tool. While I recognize Apple's approach here tries to mitigate that complaint... I still appreciate when designers craft a distinct space for my buttons/menus/controls to live, treat those non-content pixels as precious screen real estate, keep them tight, and make clever use of layout within it across different tasks.
- jeroenhd 1y agoThis is my biggest problem with UI designs like this. There are lots of rules to follow, or the design looks like a cluttered mess. Having seen what UI atrocities Material Design has allowed amateur app developers to bring to market, I hope Apple makes these new UI elements difficult to mess up, because unless they're making the UI libraries good by default, apps are going to get messy for a few years.
- sixothree 1y agoI'm not seeing controls moved around much. So this argument really applies to older versions of iOS as well. Maybe that was the point? Either way, I sort of agree. It's less than ideal, but if you're going to be doing it at least do it in a way that looks good. And boy do I think this looks good. After a few days I can only say that complaining is so wrong. Previous versions of iOS were hard to use. I am finding this cleaner and easier to use. I very much don't want to go back.
- slmjkdbtl 1y agoi really don't want to waste my phone's cpu on pure visual effects that damages readability
- Naru41 1y agoThis style of simulating faux-realistic materials (such as glass or aluminum) on the screen looks dated and cheesy now -- (Windows engineering team 2012) https://web.archive.org/web/20120614042824/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/18/creating-the-windows-8-user-experience.aspx#:%7E:text=This%20style%20of%20simulating%20faux%2Drealistic%20materials%20(such%20as%20glass%20or%20aluminum https://web.archive.org/web/20120614042824/http://blogs.msdn...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Shadowmist 1y agoSince they are using Metal and not OpenGl they should take Gl out of the name.
- AJ007 1y agoThis should be the top comment.
- crazygringo 1y agoTook me a second. Well done.
- f_allwein 1y agoOne thing I haven’t heard yet about Liquid Glass: Glass is good for looking through it. So an OS based on this could be ideal for Extended Reality. Having iOS resemble visionOS more might be a step towards using iPhones as XR devices. Could we then potentially see a fancy Apple version of Google cardboard in the future, where you use your iPhone as an AR device as well…?
- VikRubenfeld 1y agoLiquid Glass takes too many brain cycles for the user. It takes too much cognitive attention to watch all its changes and wait until buttons are ready to click. I don't want to waste a lot of attention "appreciating" Apple's new UI. I just want to get stuff done.
- raspyberr 1y agoI don't think it's a particularly hard concept to grasp what's happening here. UI elements above content stop you seeing it. Apple has tried to make them both see through so that you screen feels bigger and stand out so that you can actually interact with the UI effectively. Some images/demos look good. Some look horrible. Time will tell.
- WhitneyLand 1y agoIf someone at Apple said I want communicate in a natural way on video and not really go into TED talk mode would they get in trouble?
- deergomoo 1y agoSeriously why does seemingly every presenter from Tim Cook right down to the engineers in the tech-specific sessions speak with the exact same uncanny delivery in these videos? It's incredibly off-putting and sends my brain immediately into "you are being marketed at" mode.
- SwiftyBug 1y agoI was thinking the same thing. This communication style is outdated. All I see is an attempt of mimicking Steve Job's style in keynotes. But that looked natural on him somehow.
- deergomoo 1y agoFor all his faults, Jobs always sold the idea that he really thought the stuff he was showing was the coolest thing ever. There was at the very least an illusion of pride and excitement, even if it wasn't always genuine. He'd crack jokes, make off-hand remarks, and wasn't afraid to mention competitor's products. Modern Apple presentations are just like being read some marketing materials. It's very disingenuous.
- wpm 1y agoI always think of the first Power Mac G5 introduction when after 5 slides of CPU block diagrams, talking all kinds of technical details, he gets to “And it has Massive Branch Prediction Logic…which I dunno…it predicts branches!” with a sly shrug.
- SwiftyBug 1y agohahaha This is hilarious. Here it is if anyone wants to see it: https://youtu.be/iwsn27J_tlo?si=E4JsQFJQD8u3O8zE&t=229 https://youtu.be/iwsn27J_tlo?si=E4JsQFJQD8u3O8zE&t=229
- nkrisc 1y agoIncredible - difficult to see by design. What an age we live in where a design showcase video frame Apple proudly shows off UX worst-practices. I'll have some of whatever they're smoking, must be good shit. This whole thing is almost indistinguishable from satire. 17:03 - what I thought was finally something sensible turned out to be their example of something bad! Hopefully I'll be able to find the settings to turn this off - if it's not too invisible.
- TheJoeMan 1y agoAs an app developer, I think the more frosted look without the toy wiggle interactions in the “accessibility” demos were the best. I don’t have KPI’s, but I wonder how a “checkout” button that can be almost half clicked / played with but not triggered will tank flow-thru.
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- mholm 1y agoIt's interesting that they say in their own design guidelines to avoid glass-on-glass, then use it for the control center, to obvious detriment.
- user____name 1y agoAny time a new visual effect comes around people overuse it, then after a while it gets toned down and usability improves, then a new trend emerges and the cycle repeats.
- niklasbuschmann 1y agoI think this would look much better if the blur radius / strength would be increased
- thomascountz 1y agoI think this looks neat and I think it is a set of sensible design rules for AR and transparent (i.e. just-a-pane-of-glass) devices. The contrast issues are an issue for discovery, but by now, maybe design norms for standard apps mean we've reduced ourselves to controls with only symbols, and sometimes even just color, without text. Meaning, perhaps location, shape, and tactility will be more important than legibility. However, this probably only works in extreme cases; where the ubiquity of the interface means users already know what to expect. This does not work for innovative designs or new things. Think, the "send" button in chat, email, messaging apps. It's often blue/green and located near the text input. Maybe an oblong jelly bubble near a textbox is clear enough in most cases. That said, that concept does remind me of eco-friendly toilets in Europe with two buttons for flushing: one is larger than the other, and one uses more water than the other , but I always forget which is which. A large button using more water makes sense, but so does a large button signaling the one you should use most often (i.e. the one that uses less water). There's something I use everyday, something with immediate feedback, something I've tried to learn, but something I haven't gotten quite right.
- user____name 1y agoThis year it's been 25 years since the introduction of OSX and its Aqua theme. I wonder if that was a driving factor here, to have the next generation aqua interface.
- robertclaus 1y agoGiven that Apple has really smart people, I assume this design was the right answer to whatever actual problem they were set. My guess - someone noticed a small cohort of potential new users that want this; and the company prioritized the marginal user over the core user base. Maybe there's a cohort of VR users not on iOS yet?
- briian 1y agoI feel sorry for Steve Jobs
- bird0861 1y agoThis just looks like Android launchers of the past 10+ years. I'm remembering also Windows Longhorn leaks and Sun's Project Looking Glass. Ironic Apple gets good at hardware and then can't even build a UI or AI.
- bluescrn 1y agoShader-based refraction/blur/chromatic aberration seems to be generating a lot of hype, but it’s stuff that game developers have been doing for decades. The bigger news is draggable, resizable windows in iPadOS 26. That’s quite an upgrade.
- etempleton 1y agoThe Tahoe beta implementation is incredibly rough. Because it is trying to simulate diffused glass layers apps have a kind of low resolution look to them and certain UX elements just do not work at all with odd spacing and gaps because of different sized rounded corners. Where the UX works is where the implementations are the most minimal. It will get better before launch, but I worry the concept is a bit half baked.
- dbg31415 1y agoI really can’t stand these augmented-voice videos. I get that they’re meant to sound polished or stylized, but to me it just comes off as creepy and distracting. Whatever processing or autotune effect they’re using strips the humanity out of the voice and gives it this artificial vibe — like a personified LinkedIn post. What could be an interesting technical walkthrough ends up feeling more like a spammy marketing pitch than a real person sharing insights. Maybe there’s an audience for that kind of aesthetic — especially among people who grew up immersed in highly produced digital media — but I’d much rather hear someone’s actual voice, imperfections and all. That rawness is what makes content engaging and authentic. When everything is filtered and synthetic, it’s hard to connect with the speaker or take the message seriously. (Maybe that’s why Apple has had to change spokes models every two minutes since Jobs.) Honestly, I wish people would stop overproducing everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy was using a green screen too — for no good reason! It just adds to the weird, artificial feeling.
- whytaka 1y agoTwo problems from what I've seen so far: 1. Browser navigation overlapping website viewport in iOS Safari. What is the real height of the viewport? 2. Floating side panel on macOS: necessitates needless extension the app body. Also, the App close button is in the side panel, which is floating IN the app body. This seems like a betrayal of their so called structure philosophy.
- osigurdson 1y agoI'm not a designer but, while I like the glass effect, I don't think the icons (1:42) really look that good. They are overly black / white and have harsh looking edges. Not horrible, but not optimal either imo.
- vvilliamperez 1y agoThey could be priming users for a transparent interface, like a transparent iPhone. Or glasses.
- dimal 1y agoSubtext: If you’re not under 30, with great eyesight, fuck you. If you’re neurodivergent, fuck you. If you just want to use your technology to do useful things and don’t need to be “delighted” by every button press and interaction, fuck you. I don’t see how this won’t disable a lot of people. It’s cruel. The section where they talk about how it adapts to different situations so that it still shows the top layer information did not inspire hope. I’m autistic and I have a hard time picking out signal from a noisy background easily. In the demo, it’s as if the icons are constantly dancing (delightfully, no doubt) but the information is lost. For those that say that Apple always has accessibility settings where you can lessen effects like this, that’s not enough. We’re techies. We know about fiddling with settings. A lot of people won’t know. A lot of people that will be affected by this won’t consider themselves disabled, so they don’t even know the word “accessibility”. It’ll just subtly make every interaction with their technology more difficult and more stressful.
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- grishka 1y agoLooking at this, they demonstrate everything on iOS, while macOS seems to be an afterthought. This is sad.