Apple Just Added More Frost To Its Liquid Glass Design (theverge.com) 43
Following a week of X and YouTube complaints, Apple has further reduced the transparency of its Liquid Glass design in the latest iOS 26 developer beta, making navigation bars, buttons, and tabs more opaque to improve readability. The Verge reports: "iOS 26 beta 3 completely nerfs Liquid Glass," AppleTrack developer Sam Kohl says in a post on X. "It looks so much cheaper now and feels like Apple is backtracking on their original vision." Others ask Apple to "stop ruining" Liquid Glass and call the new design a "step backwards." Some users in the beta found that the transparency level can vary depending on the app they're using.
This is still just a developer beta, so it's likely that Apple will continue to make tweaks before it releases iOS 26 to the public in September.
This is still just a developer beta, so it's likely that Apple will continue to make tweaks before it releases iOS 26 to the public in September.
Stop ruining Liquid Glass? (Score:1)
You fancy pants whiners don't stop crying about non functional user interface features and we'll just move you all onto Motif [wikipedia.org].
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Joke's on you, I've been using Motif since 1992. Well, FVWM made to look similar to CDE with Motif window decorations. Easy to grab and resize windows. Everything is very clear and has a purpose. It's unlike the Windows 11 (or earlier 10) system I'm forced to use at work, where it's not plainly obvious which window has focus, and clicking outside a window can annoyingly still have an effect on said window.
And don't get me started on this transparency crap. Just because you can do something doesn't mean
Deck chairs on the titanic (Score:3)
Apple still makes the best looking hardware though, haven't lost their design mojo there.
Re:Deck chairs on the titanic (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand objection to skeuomorphism really. Apple and Microsoft has lost cite of their own design language though. If you are going to not base your UI on real world analogs, a valid choice now that we have a large population of "digital natives" you probably don't want to confuse expectations by trying to mimic the appearance of real materials.
It all just ends up looking strange an unnatural. I remember everyone turned on Areo when they got Vista or Win7 for about a week, because it was "wizbang wow the computer can look like this!" but after using it for a bit you realized that it really just made things objectively worse. Harder to read, you really could not 'see thru things' it was just UI handles bars etc and those generally ended up just overlapping the same elements on whatever was behind unless maybe you had a really huge display in which case you could just partition it anyway.
"liquid glass" on iOS is the same. It is more difficult to see and quickly understand the UI elements. Is that a visual divider or a text entry field? Honestly if you were not already familiar with iOS layout form past version could you tell? I really think if I did not "know better" looking at the current "search bar" I'd think it was a label and be looking for the box below it to enter some text. You have these rather out of place colored app icons and widgets on top of this 'glass surface' it just seems strange and honestly rather ugly.
If you are not doing skeuomorphism, than please leave the faux materials and surfaces behind as well, if you want to make things look like glass, brushed aluminum, wood or whatever then embrace that language and make the UI relate-able. Liquid glass SUCKS, its "we are not trying to make the UI look like anything except when we are". Isnt design language its just inconsistency.
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What does 'list cite' mean?
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I don't know, but I think you may have lost sight of the word "lost."
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lost cite is on my list i lost sight of.
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I don't understand objection to skeuomorphism really. Apple and Microsoft has lost cite of their own design language though. If you are going to not base your UI on real world analogs, a valid choice now that we have a large population of "digital natives" you probably don't want to confuse expectations by trying to mimic the appearance of real materials.
I agree. Though I remember at the time one of the explanations was that simpler, flatter designers were more manageable for scalable display sizes, resolutions, DPIs, etc. I'm not sure I entirely buy that.
Ultimately I think it came down to a pissing contest between Apple personalities after Jobs was gone. Jobs was the dictator with a vision who kept all the other creatives in line. Scott Forestall lasted about a year and Jony Ive won that battle (though Ive himself only stuck around, in a partial capacity f
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And this was something, ergo it had to be done.
Re: Deck chairs on the titanic (Score:1)
"I don't understand objection to skeuomorphism"
It's a waste of space.
well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just add an opacity slider?
Re:well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just add an opacity slider?
Came to say pretty much this. Tech companies in general - and Apple in particular - need to get over this precious-snowflake conceit that their aesthetic choices are sacred and not to be tampered with. They seem to regard users' tastes as inferior and their and usability concerns as trivial. Not to mention a "change for change's sake" mentality that decreases comfort and productivity in the name of changing stuff "just because".
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a valuable and important rule. Sometimes breaking it is beneficial, or even necessary. But making the breaking of it a regular practice is abusive and anti-social.
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I still curse the small, low-contrast font craze from a few years back. Leftovers are still around. Was it a plot to keep us geezers off the WebTubes?
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It's mind boggling that they even attempted it in the first place. Windows Vista had glass effects that were soon toned down, but apparently Apple doesn't learn from other people's mistakes.
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It's mind boggling that they even attempted it in the first place. Windows Vista had glass effects that were soon toned down, but apparently Apple doesn't learn from other people's mistakes.
They actually normally DO! That's always been one of the big Slashdot slanders of Apple -- that they're not the first mover, they just copy other people but do it really well. (I don't entirely agree, but that's neither here nor there for this conversation.)
Liquid Glass does give me serious Vista vibes, and so far, I don't get it. I've only tried it on one device so far, so I'm willing to give it a shot, but I'm not incredibly optimistic.
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I doubt many current SDEs were alive for Windows Vista, hence the repeating mistakes because old stuff isn't worth learning about.
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A solid, usable UI design will last for years. But how does that drive new sales? You need to change it up every season to keep people on the upgrade treadmill. It stopped being about usability decades ago, now it's about the latest UI fashion trend.
My bet is that with the way they're going, in a few more iterations they're going to land on the most sublime and minimal
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They seem to regard users' tastes as inferior
And most of the times, they are right. It is a big reason Apple is worth trillions, so that users can rely on Apple to give them what's best for them without having to mess with settings. I remember my family doctor, who was quite a geek and had a PC at home. But in his office, he had a Mac, because that computer was for doing his job and he didn't want to be bothered by anything else.
I don't know if Apple is as good as it once was, but I think they are still among the best. The *did* change the problematic
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"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a valuable and important rule.
As is "Do not give the user enough rope to hang themselves". For a company that provides itself on a consistent UI look and feel to demonstrate their brand, providing the user with the choice on how the system looks would be an antithesis.
The day Apple provides the user with a transparency slider, is a day they admit they've given up on design themselves.
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Who asked for any of this? (Score:3)
I don't know of anyone who said "I would really like to buy an iPhone, but the look of the buttons is holding it back"
There are far more core usability challenges in iOS. Apple to this day can't even figure out how to make a consistent back or menu function in their apps, and this is what they are focused on?.
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Probably no back, only forward, too.
And always twirling, twirling towards justice!
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I don't know of anyone who said "I would really like to buy an iPhone, but the look of the buttons is holding it back"
brunes69 declared confidently while talking about a device designed infamously by a designer who hated all buttons.
The feature that no one wanted... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I think fraud is way more likely. People seem quick to forget that Apple is a recidivist violator. They've been found guilty of 28 violations for over $1.4 BILLION in fines. Price fixing, device throttling, selling unsafe products, discrimination, polluting...Apple's done it all! This is a group of people who can longer plausibly be given the benefit of the doubt. (https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/apple-inc)
Flame bait? (Score:1)
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Bring it back, that's what I say. People still talk about BlingOS, Snow Leopard, as their favourite incarnation. There's a lot of functionality added since that I'd miss and I'm not totally sure on th
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It's a real joy to use the old versions of OSX. I miss those days. Aqua was a lot of fun.
Prior Art (Score:2)
That's what my eyeglasses look like if I procrastinate cleaning them. I have a hunch grime is probably not a socially advantageous look.
This is a joke right? (Score:1)
There are zero features worth discussing, now we talk about icons????
How horrible (Score:2)
Making it easier to see what you're looking at.
If you want glass, pick one up and have a drink.
Apple is so behind the curve (Score:3)
form over function (Score:2)
subj says it all
Oh, come on... (Score:2)
How else are all those designers going to justify their salaries if they don't keep changing the UI?
Remember When (Score:2)
Remember when Slashdot discussed the virtues of GPL, or the religious wars over Gnome and KDE, or whether you were a real man depending on if you ran MySQL or Postgres?
Now, the big news is the opacity of Apple's screen widgets. Slashdot has come a long way.
Material Design still sucks all these years later. (Score:2)
Who cares? (Score:2)
Who cares? You? Perhaps consider getting a life.