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You were wrong to even attempt to share design language across platforms. You should make your applications good native citizens if you have any respect for you

You were wrong to even attempt to share design language across platforms. You should make your applications good native citizens if you have any respect for your users, because yours isn’t the only software they use.

tuckerman 1y ago
I think this depends on the context. If the only way I interact with a service is a single app then I want that app to blend into my phone. I don't care if the Uber app on Android and iOS are the same, I only see one of them. If I have to use a service on many different platforms, I sometimes prefer having a consistent design language, e.g. I like that Slack has a consistent sidebar interface everywhere. I want to go from the browser to tablet to phone and not have anything in a different spot.
bigyabai 1y ago
> You should make your applications good native citizens It's time to retire this dead meme. The most successful SAASes in the world are just websites that people pay for hand-over-fist regardless of what OS they use. Netflix doesn't use Liquid Glass, Spotify doesn't bother. Google Docs isn't going to inherit it and probably neither will Office 365. Websites online by-and-large won't adopt this design either. The ideal of everyone taking the time to make a sexy native UI is appealing. But it's never going to fully be realized, especially when OEMs resist basic A11Y obligations and insist on battery-draining eye candy.
- mckn1ght 1y ago
  > taking the time to make a sexy native UI It takes much more time to make your own custom UI, and then fix it every major update that breaks it somehow. You can get a nice looking UI by just using stock components with minimal configuration and then you basically get platform UI refreshes for free.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    If you're starting from the perspective of a native app developer, you're absolutely correct. However, most startups are going to be websites/Electron/CEF apps. It's much easier and cheaper to write-once-ship-everywhere with an ugly React UI than it is to jump through the hoops of writing special-snowflake versions for every OS under the sun. It's basically negligent to insist on native apps, if profitability is your goal. I love native interfaces too, but the staunch belief in businesses being a "good native citizen" is a dead meme. It's cart-before-horse logic, we don't ever see anyone commit to the idea and reap real rewards. Native platforms punish you for playing by the rules.
    - eschaton 1y ago
      It depends who your application is for. You obviously think building an application is about maximizing your profit, and your users are just a means to achieve that. If you were approaching your application from a “what’s best for my users” angle you might make different choices.
      - bicx 1y ago
        If you are running a business with limited funding (which is most businesses), then your primary need is to seek profit in a world where profit is often never achieved at all. Otherwise, your business ceases to exist, along with your app. Sometimes that does mean emphasis on strong design, which I’d argue means delivering a great experience to your users rather than a native or non-native design choice. Other times, you’re serving a demographic that doesn’t care so much about that, and your focus is on functionality above all.
      - Zababa 1y ago
        What's best for the users is often more "having the web app and app being the same" than "having it be different on every platform".
SebastianKra 1y ago
On desktop that ship has sailed. Maybe 2 of my regularly used apps have a native design. UIs have converged enough that the experience is acceptable I guess. And as a devolper, why in the world would I want to write my app for a locked-in ecosystem with a now shitty design-system.
- int_19h 1y ago
  It hasn't fully done so on the desktop when you consider macOS. E.g. if you ship a macOS app which has the main menu bar inside the window (or missing entirely) instead of using the system menu bar, it will look very jarring and users will rightly complain.
bicx 1y ago
That’s a pretty bold statement. Look at the most popular apps, and you will see across Android and iOS that the designs across platforms are more similar than they are different. We only have 2 engineers right now, but we still maintain clean native implementations for navigation, interactions, and areas where native UI excels. Neither our Android or iOS apps appear as if we just copy-pasted from one platform to the other. Both Android and iOS had been leaning into flat design for years, so it was easy to adapt the same design language for our brand across both. Not so with this return of skeuomorphic design.
miffy900 1y ago
I think this idealism reveals a naive viewpoint about what users really care about. They care that apps work - that they do what they're supposed to and do it fast or efficiently. Not even Microsoft makes apps for their own platform that are native apps (example Teams, the new Outlook), and they service millions of users. Indeed, if you look at Microsoft's UI over the years, they are inconsistent as hell (all of the Office apps throughout the years is a good example), but so long as performance, functionality and usability hasn't suffered too much, users are OK with non-native apps that do not appear native. Another example is iTunes on Windows - looks nothing like a native Windows app. There's also the fact that having control over your own apps UI/design language is better over the long term. What if Apple decides to ditch this liquid glass for something else years in the future? They ditched their own design language in iOS7, and now with iOS26 they've done it again. And the basis for UI redesigns as wide ranging as this are almost entirely nonsensical. Does liquid glass suddenly improve usability by whatever percent? Nope - I guarantee Apple does NOT interrogate or benchmark their UI designs in the same way as NN Group does. Usability is actually hurt by the fact users need to re-learn basic interactions, and existing ones are now slower. Is overall performance improved over the previous version? Absolutely not - performance metrics such as battery life and UI responsiveness have regressed with the over use of visual effects like translucency and minute pixel manipulations. Why bother following changes to a design language when they are not based on real reasoning backed up by actual data or solid logic, and they end up regressing performance to an even worse state? Why should any app vendor be obligated to follow what are ultimately arbitrary and whimsical changes? Redesigns such as this result in literally more work for the sake of it, zero net improvements and whole lot of wasted effort, all for what? Just to look different for a while, until the next redesign?
- BeFlatXIII 1y ago
  > They ditched their own design language in iOS7, and now with iOS26 they've done it again. They ditched their 30-pin dock with the iPhone 5, and then chucked Lightning in favor of USB-C with the iPhone 15.
kevinsync 1y ago
I grew up with stuff like Kai's Power Goo [0] so it doesn't bother me at all when developers step out of the box and bring a wacky UI! [0] https://youtu.be/xt06OSIQ0PE?t=266 https://youtu.be/xt06OSIQ0PE?t=266
leptons 1y ago
As a developer, I don't care what Apple or Google's "design language" whims are today. If someone can't figure out how to use a well designed app, no matter the "design language", a fancy skin isn't going to fix that.
kstenerud 1y ago
The trend over the past decade has been towards multiplatform frameworks, mostly with React Native, but more recently Flutter, KMP, and even Swift multiplatform. And here's the thing: The Apple users who actually care about this are in the minority. You just get an outsized sampling of them on HN because they tend to be techies as well.
shantara 1y ago
Our large commercial apps were certified to pass the WCAG accessibility requirements, which we need to comply with for legal reasons. If we did’t enable the compatibility flag and opt out of the glass altogether, this would have meant massive breakages and regressions, which would require the designer and developer time to fix, and the financial burden of having to go through the certification process again. And all because of Apple’s whims and zero benefits for our customers or our developers. Why would we blindly choose to follow Apple’s missteps instead of having our own design system and standards?
Zababa 1y ago
I don't think that's true. First line of respect is good UI/UX, second line of respect is being fast/not being slow, third might be being coherent with the rest of the apps on that platform.

tuckerman 1y ago

I think this depends on the context. If the only way I interact with a service is a single app then I want that app to blend into my phone. I don't care if the Uber app on Android and iOS are the same, I only see one of them. If I have to use a service on many different platforms, I sometimes prefer having a consistent design language, e.g. I like that Slack has a consistent sidebar interface everywhere. I want to go from the browser to tablet to phone and not have anything in a different spot.

bigyabai 1y ago

> You should make your applications good native citizens It's time to retire this dead meme. The most successful SAASes in the world are just websites that people pay for hand-over-fist regardless of what OS they use. Netflix doesn't use Liquid Glass, Spotify doesn't bother. Google Docs isn't going to inherit it and probably neither will Office 365. Websites online by-and-large won't adopt this design either. The ideal of everyone taking the time to make a sexy native UI is appealing. But it's never going to fully be realized, especially when OEMs resist basic A11Y obligations and insist on battery-draining eye candy.

mckn1ght 1y ago
> taking the time to make a sexy native UI It takes much more time to make your own custom UI, and then fix it every major update that breaks it somehow. You can get a nice looking UI by just using stock components with minimal configuration and then you basically get platform UI refreshes for free.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  If you're starting from the perspective of a native app developer, you're absolutely correct. However, most startups are going to be websites/Electron/CEF apps. It's much easier and cheaper to write-once-ship-everywhere with an ugly React UI than it is to jump through the hoops of writing special-snowflake versions for every OS under the sun. It's basically negligent to insist on native apps, if profitability is your goal. I love native interfaces too, but the staunch belief in businesses being a "good native citizen" is a dead meme. It's cart-before-horse logic, we don't ever see anyone commit to the idea and reap real rewards. Native platforms punish you for playing by the rules.
  - eschaton 1y ago
    It depends who your application is for. You obviously think building an application is about maximizing your profit, and your users are just a means to achieve that. If you were approaching your application from a “what’s best for my users” angle you might make different choices.
    - bicx 1y ago
      If you are running a business with limited funding (which is most businesses), then your primary need is to seek profit in a world where profit is often never achieved at all. Otherwise, your business ceases to exist, along with your app. Sometimes that does mean emphasis on strong design, which I’d argue means delivering a great experience to your users rather than a native or non-native design choice. Other times, you’re serving a demographic that doesn’t care so much about that, and your focus is on functionality above all.
    - Zababa 1y ago
      What's best for the users is often more "having the web app and app being the same" than "having it be different on every platform".

SebastianKra 1y ago

On desktop that ship has sailed. Maybe 2 of my regularly used apps have a native design. UIs have converged enough that the experience is acceptable I guess. And as a devolper, why in the world would I want to write my app for a locked-in ecosystem with a now shitty design-system.

int_19h 1y ago
It hasn't fully done so on the desktop when you consider macOS. E.g. if you ship a macOS app which has the main menu bar inside the window (or missing entirely) instead of using the system menu bar, it will look very jarring and users will rightly complain.

bicx 1y ago

That’s a pretty bold statement. Look at the most popular apps, and you will see across Android and iOS that the designs across platforms are more similar than they are different. We only have 2 engineers right now, but we still maintain clean native implementations for navigation, interactions, and areas where native UI excels. Neither our Android or iOS apps appear as if we just copy-pasted from one platform to the other. Both Android and iOS had been leaning into flat design for years, so it was easy to adapt the same design language for our brand across both. Not so with this return of skeuomorphic design.

miffy900 1y ago

I think this idealism reveals a naive viewpoint about what users really care about. They care that apps work - that they do what they're supposed to and do it fast or efficiently. Not even Microsoft makes apps for their own platform that are native apps (example Teams, the new Outlook), and they service millions of users. Indeed, if you look at Microsoft's UI over the years, they are inconsistent as hell (all of the Office apps throughout the years is a good example), but so long as performance, functionality and usability hasn't suffered too much, users are OK with non-native apps that do not appear native. Another example is iTunes on Windows - looks nothing like a native Windows app. There's also the fact that having control over your own apps UI/design language is better over the long term. What if Apple decides to ditch this liquid glass for something else years in the future? They ditched their own design language in iOS7, and now with iOS26 they've done it again. And the basis for UI redesigns as wide ranging as this are almost entirely nonsensical. Does liquid glass suddenly improve usability by whatever percent? Nope - I guarantee Apple does NOT interrogate or benchmark their UI designs in the same way as NN Group does. Usability is actually hurt by the fact users need to re-learn basic interactions, and existing ones are now slower. Is overall performance improved over the previous version? Absolutely not - performance metrics such as battery life and UI responsiveness have regressed with the over use of visual effects like translucency and minute pixel manipulations. Why bother following changes to a design language when they are not based on real reasoning backed up by actual data or solid logic, and they end up regressing performance to an even worse state? Why should any app vendor be obligated to follow what are ultimately arbitrary and whimsical changes? Redesigns such as this result in literally more work for the sake of it, zero net improvements and whole lot of wasted effort, all for what? Just to look different for a while, until the next redesign?

BeFlatXIII 1y ago
> They ditched their own design language in iOS7, and now with iOS26 they've done it again. They ditched their 30-pin dock with the iPhone 5, and then chucked Lightning in favor of USB-C with the iPhone 15.

kevinsync 1y ago

I grew up with stuff like Kai's Power Goo [0] so it doesn't bother me at all when developers step out of the box and bring a wacky UI! [0] https://youtu.be/xt06OSIQ0PE?t=266 https://youtu.be/xt06OSIQ0PE?t=266

leptons 1y ago

As a developer, I don't care what Apple or Google's "design language" whims are today. If someone can't figure out how to use a well designed app, no matter the "design language", a fancy skin isn't going to fix that.

kstenerud 1y ago

The trend over the past decade has been towards multiplatform frameworks, mostly with React Native, but more recently Flutter, KMP, and even Swift multiplatform. And here's the thing: The Apple users who actually care about this are in the minority. You just get an outsized sampling of them on HN because they tend to be techies as well.

shantara 1y ago

Our large commercial apps were certified to pass the WCAG accessibility requirements, which we need to comply with for legal reasons. If we did’t enable the compatibility flag and opt out of the glass altogether, this would have meant massive breakages and regressions, which would require the designer and developer time to fix, and the financial burden of having to go through the certification process again. And all because of Apple’s whims and zero benefits for our customers or our developers. Why would we blindly choose to follow Apple’s missteps instead of having our own design system and standards?

Zababa 1y ago

I don't think that's true. First line of respect is good UI/UX, second line of respect is being fast/not being slow, third might be being coherent with the rest of the apps on that platform.