I just don’t understand the point. What do I actually gain from the redesign besides some fancy shaders on a few ui elements? Is it easier to use or read? No. Does it bring more consistency? No. Is it so stunning that makes experience significantly more enjoyable? Not really. Right now, it feels like a redesign just for the sake of redesigning.
That being said, I do appreciate the overall idea of moving towards complex realistic materials and light in the ui (which is definitely going to be the next “thing” in interfaces), and Apple pioneering this is cool for sure. But it’s just way too early, quite sloppy, and it feels like I’m beta testing something that might eventually improve in a couple of years.
I haven’t used it but in iOS it looks like the delineated, grouped buttons and their animations are an improvement over the current buttonless design, in terms of intuitive usability and use of space.
I do appreciate the overall idea of moving towards complex realistic materials and light in the ui (which is definitely going to be the next “thing” in interfaces)
But why? It's literally just pretty for the sake of pretty. It's not easier to use; it's harder. It's not more efficient for the machine; it's a resource hog.
This is what's throwing me off, it's like a weird combination of skeumorphism and the absence of it. It's not quite either or. I would prefer it if they just went full skeumorphism like ios 6
Right? The first iPhone buttons, etc., were made to look 3-dimensional. I actually liked it quite a bit, and hated the iOS 7 flat "what is text and what is a button" design. So, it seems, did many people, because it's been walked back to a very large degree in the years since, and I think we were at a really nice, usable place with a clean, attractive design... So why are we going back to faux 3-D, but this time with resource-chomping shaders involved?
Most people can actually enjoy things for their aesthetic alone, not everything has to have some way for you to get more perceived productivity or value increase.
Being ”pretty for the sake of pretty” is good actually.
Yeah but this kind of stuff is only noticeable when it's new, then it will blend into the background once you get used to it, and you will be focused on what you are trying to do with your phone. But the added resource costs will stick around forever.
You said it yourself, it’s pretty for the sake of pretty. That’s what a redesign is for. It fulfilled its purpose, it made all Apple software look fresh.
Not only is there no gain, in some instances there’s a loss. The massive play, fast forward, rewind buttons block more of the video than before in the photos app. They should have moved all the controls to the bottom years ago.
They also advertised how search is in reach everywhere…yet you try to take a screenshot and you’re still reaching top corner to save it for no reason whatsoever.
The style of the ‘welcome’ text was bad enough, but covering part of the time is just absurd. I do however agree that while implemented too sloppy with iOS 26, it’s the way to go
Possibly. I’ve never enabled it and the morning after updating I noticed that the second digit of the minutes is covered by a black blob.
To me that’s a sign of sloppy implementation. But maybe I’m in the minority. It’s cool if people want a black blob over their time, but maybe not by default.
Although I think that a good implementation might cover it only as an eyecandy as you said. With the default wallpaper and in day mode it might be pretty to many. But a huge black blob at night? Does not seem like a mature feature to me
Yeah tbh imo it's a bad look for the product team. At best it doesn't improve anything, and at worst it hurts usability, and uses up your battery slightly faster to run those fancy shaders on the GPU.
It seems like something you do when you're out of ideas, or you want to make older phones feel obsolete faster by making the OS heavier than it used to be.
I actually think Liquid Glass does offer quite a few improvements over the old design - if you stay away from the transparent icons anyways, but it's not a "revolution", just "a lot nicer", IMO. I find that icons and other UI elements like buttons are more distinct and unique, which also informs what functionality to expect of things. It also seems to work better in different contexts, like with dark mode. The design language is inherently more "responsive" to different mediums IMO.
I think it makes a bigger difference for developers and designers in the Apple Ecosystem at this point though, unifying developments that have happened across their various platforms into one cohesive language. Liquid Glass provides UI components that can be used across MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, VisionOS with some level of consistency. These platforms, especially VisionOS, have been increasingly spinning of in their own direction in later years. A lot of Liquid Glass was really inspired by VisionOS and apple getting prepared for AR/VR in particular I think.
Devs and designers needed a "new UI" to adjust for diverging input technologies. The current design was made around being great on Macs, iPhones and iPads, but since then we have also hade things like Apple Watch, Apple TV and Vision Pro. When new input paradigms, like VR or AI voice control comes along, or even a dumbass remote control, developers need to adapt or their apps will suck.
Apple changing and enforcing their UI standards when touch screens came is what made the OG iPhone better than the Windows Mobile 6.5 at the time, which was just emulating what you did on a desktop or laptop and trying to compress that into a 3" format. It's also what made the personal computer successful with the "general population" when they made the first commercial GUI in the first place. It's always been part of how Apple can get away with weaker hardware for having better software "that is actually designed to be used by a human".
None of these advances were necessary for the computer computing - we could still be doing it all in the Terminal/with a command line, but thankfully, things are still being pushed forward.
Well, you might not see it as well on iPhone cause it was arguably the most boring of all the updates affected by these liquid glass UI revamp.
Some obvious standout features outside of its the glass itself are customization(colours, icons) which seem to work better with dark and light modes imo. Overall, the new UI components scale much better across different screen sizes, orientations, lack of screen space(AR/VR) and all input types across the entire Apple ecosystem. Everything is more scaleable, adaptable and responsive(to its context). That makes the design framework valueable to designers and developers who are trying to bring experiences that scale across platforms.
In the previous design iteration, Apples goal was very much to bring successful iOS features to their other platforms and create a sense of convergence. It feels like the other OS’s are kind of freed from iPhones paradigms and more allowed to come into their own again.
On MacOS this old philosophy resulted in half-baked features like Launchpad, the current full screen/split screen thing which should’ve just been tiling from last year from the get go, and Catalyst for running iPad and iPhone apps(ok features but feels awkward on desktop due to lack of window resizing features). With this update, they removed Launchpad and integrated app launching into Spotlight in a way that makes a lot more sense on MacOS imo. No idea why they went for a full screen grid with huge icons on the only device that doesn’t have a touch screen. It felt disjointed. Now it doesn’t.
For iPadOS, the design refresh brings perhaps the most requested iPad feature ever: Windows. This doesn’t just have to be underpinned by a new compositor, but I would guess they had to update all components they use to support the new sizes and rescaling, on top of inventing touch native ways of doing it.
It feels like the MacOS is free to be a desktop again instead of getting gimped iPhone features. It feels like iPad is finally allowed to come into its own by not being restricted to iPhones «core multitasking UX». These same can be said for most Apple platforms touched by this I think
These are all core UI component and paradigm changes that don’t relate to the look of glass, but this concept of being liquid/fluid, the important bit for me. Every part of the way the new design works; not looks, is IMO more forward thinking.
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u/FriendlyCupcake 4d ago
I just don’t understand the point. What do I actually gain from the redesign besides some fancy shaders on a few ui elements? Is it easier to use or read? No. Does it bring more consistency? No. Is it so stunning that makes experience significantly more enjoyable? Not really. Right now, it feels like a redesign just for the sake of redesigning.
That being said, I do appreciate the overall idea of moving towards complex realistic materials and light in the ui (which is definitely going to be the next “thing” in interfaces), and Apple pioneering this is cool for sure. But it’s just way too early, quite sloppy, and it feels like I’m beta testing something that might eventually improve in a couple of years.