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I have only been able to play with iOS 26 so far a little bit in the simulator, and so far it seems fine. To me it feels like after a couple months I will likel

I have only been able to play with iOS 26 so far a little bit in the simulator, and so far it seems fine. To me it feels like after a couple months I will likely forget that a change was made (which TBH I think is a good thing, unlike when Windows has tried to make a change and never completes...). However there is one thing that I wanted to comment on here: > I’ve said this before, but Apple is forcing third party devs to be in service of Apple. The guidelines and rules are meant to sublimate the brands of the third party, and replace it with Apple. Personally one of the things that drives me insane is when an app tries to be special and have its own design language (looking at you Google) on my iOS device. The OS has an established design language and really should be used for most applications. I understand wanting to have a brand identity but too many apps take this too far that just lead to a clunky experience.

rickdeckard 1y ago
> The OS has an established design language and really should be used for most applications. This is a valid point. The other side of the story is that the iOS ecosystem is a marketplace where merchants offer goods and services, including Apple themselves. Apple increasingly wants to decide how you present your brand, to the point that the only brand-language Apple allows on its devices is its own. I think it's reasonable that merchants in this marketplace feel the increased pressure to work less on creating and refining their own identity and more on normalizing their offer like it could come directly from Apple, at their own expense and financial risk.
- wtallis 1y ago
  On a phone, it can be tempting for an app developer to approach design as if their app is temporarily taking over the phone and transforming the entire device into the custom gadget your app embodies, since the app's UI will be filling almost the entire screen. On a desktop, it's more obvious that an app should instead strive to coexist alongside (literally) other apps and the rest of the OS. But in either case, ignoring the platform's established design language and UI conventions is still wrong, and not taking advantage of the user's preexisting knowledge about how to use their device is a wasted opportunity at best, insulting at worst. If the only reason for doing so is that you are placing your "brand identity" over actual usability and insist that your app look and feel the same on any device regardless of context, that's at the insulting hubris end of the spectrum. Given how widespread that problem is, it seems entirely appropriate and deserved for app developers to feel pressure from Apple (or any other OS vendor) to put more effort into conforming. We as users shouldn't want any app ecosystem to fragment into the mid-2000s WWW full of Flash UIs with zero accessibility.
  - eviks 1y ago
    > ignoring the platform's established design language and UI conventions is still wrong, and not taking advantage of the user's preexisting knowledge about how to use their device is a wasted opportunity at best, insulting at worst. What valuable preexisting knowledge is ignored if you make your button text readable instead of being blurred with the glassy background?
    - wtallis 1y ago
      Consider the simple case on a desktop OS of how to arrange the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons on a dialog box. For an experienced user of the platform, it doesn't actually matter at all how legible your button labels are, you're going to cause problems if they're in the wrong place. The platform conventions when used properly allow the user to entirely skip reading those button labels. Obviously, if Apple's committed to taking their UI in the direction of illegibility again, then deviating from their new recommendations may be worthwhile. But the UI design should start by complying with platform conventions, and only break those to the smallest extent necessary, with good reason (which doesn't usually include anything about your app's brand identity). And hopefully, Apple can speed-run the kind of changes they did over the first several years of OS X as they toned down the initial excesses of the Aqua design.
      - dwaite 1y ago
        Or that on Apple platforms, you are not supposed to use "OK" as a button, but rather the action it is going to perform (e.g. "Delete"). Using non-standard labelling _and_ putting buttons in their non-standard order is a real issue. Not to mention that on some platforms the position of the buttons may be specific to localization, e.g. they may switch order if the user's language is set to Hebrew. On Mac, the coloring indicates which action is triggered by default with the keyboard - one of the first things to go if you stylize the UI yourself. These and all the other inconsistencies add up until you have something like the iOS Youtube app, where IMHO the UI is just complete nonsense. Just because you are full screen doesn't mean you can redefine fundamentals about how information is laid out or what taps are supposed to do.
      - 1y ago
WorldMaker 1y ago
Another data point here is how many people have Android setups or very complex iOS shortcuts that already do what Apple is trying to do with the tinting of third-party icons. "Everything meshes with my chosen wallpaper" is a common aesthetic interest, that the article author dismisses because they don't care about it and mostly don't notice their own wallpaper, but if you look at certain subreddits and "Life Hacks" forums you'll find lots of people with heavily customized Android icon themes or deeply complex configuration of iOS shortcuts to aesthetically align everything they want on their home screen. Sure, it's not earth shattering and the very definition of a nice-to-have that isn't hurting anyone in its absence, but it's also the sort of thing that enough people want to do the hard way that it seems nice to add an easy way to do it, too (and maybe more people will appreciate it than will take the hard way to it).
eviks 1y ago
> The OS has an established design language and really should be used for most applications. Not if it's a bad design language. > just lead to a clunky experience. So no different than following the bad defaults

rickdeckard 1y ago

> The OS has an established design language and really should be used for most applications. This is a valid point. The other side of the story is that the iOS ecosystem is a marketplace where merchants offer goods and services, including Apple themselves. Apple increasingly wants to decide how you present your brand, to the point that the only brand-language Apple allows on its devices is its own. I think it's reasonable that merchants in this marketplace feel the increased pressure to work less on creating and refining their own identity and more on normalizing their offer like it could come directly from Apple, at their own expense and financial risk.

wtallis 1y ago
On a phone, it can be tempting for an app developer to approach design as if their app is temporarily taking over the phone and transforming the entire device into the custom gadget your app embodies, since the app's UI will be filling almost the entire screen. On a desktop, it's more obvious that an app should instead strive to coexist alongside (literally) other apps and the rest of the OS. But in either case, ignoring the platform's established design language and UI conventions is still wrong, and not taking advantage of the user's preexisting knowledge about how to use their device is a wasted opportunity at best, insulting at worst. If the only reason for doing so is that you are placing your "brand identity" over actual usability and insist that your app look and feel the same on any device regardless of context, that's at the insulting hubris end of the spectrum. Given how widespread that problem is, it seems entirely appropriate and deserved for app developers to feel pressure from Apple (or any other OS vendor) to put more effort into conforming. We as users shouldn't want any app ecosystem to fragment into the mid-2000s WWW full of Flash UIs with zero accessibility.
- eviks 1y ago
  > ignoring the platform's established design language and UI conventions is still wrong, and not taking advantage of the user's preexisting knowledge about how to use their device is a wasted opportunity at best, insulting at worst. What valuable preexisting knowledge is ignored if you make your button text readable instead of being blurred with the glassy background?
  - wtallis 1y ago
    Consider the simple case on a desktop OS of how to arrange the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons on a dialog box. For an experienced user of the platform, it doesn't actually matter at all how legible your button labels are, you're going to cause problems if they're in the wrong place. The platform conventions when used properly allow the user to entirely skip reading those button labels. Obviously, if Apple's committed to taking their UI in the direction of illegibility again, then deviating from their new recommendations may be worthwhile. But the UI design should start by complying with platform conventions, and only break those to the smallest extent necessary, with good reason (which doesn't usually include anything about your app's brand identity). And hopefully, Apple can speed-run the kind of changes they did over the first several years of OS X as they toned down the initial excesses of the Aqua design.
    - dwaite 1y ago
      Or that on Apple platforms, you are not supposed to use "OK" as a button, but rather the action it is going to perform (e.g. "Delete"). Using non-standard labelling _and_ putting buttons in their non-standard order is a real issue. Not to mention that on some platforms the position of the buttons may be specific to localization, e.g. they may switch order if the user's language is set to Hebrew. On Mac, the coloring indicates which action is triggered by default with the keyboard - one of the first things to go if you stylize the UI yourself. These and all the other inconsistencies add up until you have something like the iOS Youtube app, where IMHO the UI is just complete nonsense. Just because you are full screen doesn't mean you can redefine fundamentals about how information is laid out or what taps are supposed to do.
    - 1y ago

WorldMaker 1y ago

Another data point here is how many people have Android setups or very complex iOS shortcuts that already do what Apple is trying to do with the tinting of third-party icons. "Everything meshes with my chosen wallpaper" is a common aesthetic interest, that the article author dismisses because they don't care about it and mostly don't notice their own wallpaper, but if you look at certain subreddits and "Life Hacks" forums you'll find lots of people with heavily customized Android icon themes or deeply complex configuration of iOS shortcuts to aesthetically align everything they want on their home screen. Sure, it's not earth shattering and the very definition of a nice-to-have that isn't hurting anyone in its absence, but it's also the sort of thing that enough people want to do the hard way that it seems nice to add an easy way to do it, too (and maybe more people will appreciate it than will take the hard way to it).

eviks 1y ago

> The OS has an established design language and really should be used for most applications. Not if it's a bad design language. > just lead to a clunky experience. So no different than following the bad defaults