[HN Gopher] Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
___________________________________________________________________
Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
Author : meetpateltech
Score : 376 points
Date : 2025-06-09 17:09 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| nharada wrote:
| I wonder how much of this transparent/glass design language is
| setting Apple up for AR interfaces where UI is overlaid on what
| you're looking at. Since you literally cannot have fully opaque
| elements with AR glasses this would be a smart way to ensure
| overall design is unified across platforms.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| This is 100% for that reason.
| detourdog wrote:
| I had the same thought as soon as they announced quartz. I'm
| really happy with the new GUI. I think it really demonstrated
| the flaws of the previous design.
| chakintosh wrote:
| Right before the unveiling, Craig specifically said visionOS
| was the driver for these changes. So the new UI is literally
| because Apple is still betting on visionOS.
| copperx wrote:
| good god. this never ends well.
| al_borland wrote:
| It could be worse, at least they didn't rename the company
| over their VR headset.
| crooked-v wrote:
| The thing I find really weird there is that visionOS panes
| and windows are more opaque than this. They have some
| transparency, but it's a heavily tinted frosted glass effect
| with entirely readable contrast. This may be "inspired" by
| visionOS, but this looks like somebody really just threw out
| that design and the usability with it.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's more likely because the visionOS designers needed
| something to move on to, so Liquid Glass is just their next
| project, and it's less work to do a similar thing as they did
| on visionOS. The new look also isn't actually the same as
| visionOS, just adopts some design elements.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Also a great way to speed up hardware upgrades. Each new os
| update can add more computationally expensive frills to make
| the older phones slow down.
| diggan wrote:
| This was also my first thought, "imagine how many who think
| their device is too old after installing this "everything
| transparent" OS update". I bet shareholders will love it
| though.
| al_borland wrote:
| We had operating systems with transparent windows 20 years
| ago. I have a hard time believing this UI will stress any
| device released in the last 5 years.
|
| One of the more common "problems" people have is that their
| devices are so much more powerful than they will ever use.
| basisword wrote:
| It seems to be largely based on the visionOS stuff.
| r00fus wrote:
| Bingo. It seems like the same mistakes made by MS in the 2000s
| when they prioritized a touch interface onto devices without
| them... why is Apple so desperate to make Vision happen?
| bombcar wrote:
| Because it's the only thing they have that even has a chance
| of being "the next big thing".
|
| So they're gambling everything on it; Steve would have
| shitcanned it a year ago and fired everyone involved.
| leakycap wrote:
| Apple's new video presentation style is so cloying, it really
| didn't help with the letdown this software is.
| paxys wrote:
| Some Windows Vista designer is shedding a tear right now. Got
| such a huge nostalgia hit watching the "liquid glass" demos
| during the keynote. Installing a leaked "Longhorn" OS on a PC
| back in 2005 and seeing all the translucent refractive glass
| really felt magical and futuristic. 20 years later, everything
| old is new again.
| timeon wrote:
| My nostalgia with glass goes bit further to KDE 2 or 3.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Someone at Apple shared a video about Frutiger Aero
| bitwize wrote:
| That's exactly what I thought. Look, they invented Windows
| Aero. Bet the John Gruber types who laughed at Aero and called
| it an Aqua ripoff are going full "two soyjaks pointing meme"
| over this.
| detourdog wrote:
| Was Aero trying to look like Quartz? The big improvement I
| see is that the plumbing has better integration and with
| Continuity it's really impressive. Even if it looks like Aero
| the functionality the OS is providing is the real feature.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| The 'win32' way, layers.
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winmsg/windo...
| jvreeland wrote:
| Awesome I wasn't having enough trouble figuring out what I could
| tap and not now everything has this crappy distorted look.
| ypeterholmes wrote:
| Liquid glass is gorgeous. But it's hard to reconcile next level
| design like this with complete disasters like Apple TV. Maybe
| spend some time on getting the fundamentals right too, before
| inventing the future
| reissbaker wrote:
| Why do you view Apple TV as a disaster? I don't own any Apple
| devices _other_ than an Apple TV, since IMO it 's better than
| basically all of the alternatives: it has no ads and it's
| extremely fast.
| throw0101d wrote:
| * [...] _it has no ads and it 's extremely fast._
|
| See recent "Breaking down why Apple TVs are privacy
| advocates' go-to streaming device":
|
| * https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/06/all-the-ways-
| apple-t...
| redczar wrote:
| Apple TV certainly has ads. It's just that it's ads for Apple
| products.
| reissbaker wrote:
| No, it doesn't. I have one. There aren't ads.
| redczar wrote:
| There are pre-installed apps like Apple Fitness+. When
| you scroll over that app the top part - maybe 1/4 of the
| screen - is a picture of a workout. This is an ad for
| Apple Fitness+. Similarly if you use the Apple TV app
| you'll see an ad for Apple TV+ shows.
| reissbaker wrote:
| I don't think a preview of the app, that displays only
| when you select that app in the UI, really qualifies as
| an "ad."
|
| If you do, I suppose what I would amend my statement to
| is: it doesn't show ads for apps I don't explicitly
| select in the UI. Either way, that's _much_ better than
| most competing products... And it 's incredibly fast,
| with the lowest latency of any streaming device.
|
| I don't like Apple's locked ecosystem, and avoid most of
| their products. But the Apple TV is just head and
| shoulders above anything else on the market, so I own one
| and am quite satisfied with it.
| redczar wrote:
| You didn't select to have Apple Fitness+ pre installed on
| the Apple TV and have placed in such a way that you will
| scroll over it occasionally.
|
| They made it so almost everyone uses the Apple TV app for
| at least some viewing and there you get ads for Apple TV+
| shows and their suggestions include shows that require a
| subscription to a service you may not already have. Or
| the suggestion will sometimes require a rental or
| purchase through the iTunes Store. These are ads.
| reissbaker wrote:
| I can place the Apple Fitness+ app wherever I want, and
| can place it last in the list such that I never scroll
| over it. In fact, this is exactly what I do, since I
| don't use it. Thus, I never see any app-specific UI from
| it. I don't think hovering on an app, and seeing app-
| specific UI from that app, is an ad; it's just app-
| specific UI. Some apps may use that to show ads, but that
| doesn't mean the OS has ads, and you are free to not use
| apps that do that.
|
| I have no idea what you mean by "they made it so almost
| everyone uses the Apple TV app." You mean, they made an
| app that many people like, and that _app_ has ads in it
| (but not the OS)? That doesn 't mean the OS has ads.
|
| Personally, I never use the Apple TV app: I use Netflix,
| Crunchyroll, HBO Max, and the Criterion Collection apps.
| And I never see what I would consider to be ads in the
| OS, and I never see content previews for apps I don't
| use.
| redczar wrote:
| That's why I said pre-installed in such a way...I know
| you can move it or delete it.
| masom wrote:
| There's ads for new shows and movies when you start a new
| Apple TV+ one, and there's ads for channels and
| subscriptions. You just didn't notice them?
| reissbaker wrote:
| If you mean "some apps have ads in them," that is true.
| What I mean is the _OS_ doesn 't have ads, unlike Google
| and Amazon's competing products... And unfortunately even
| Roku now.
|
| You are free to never open apps that have ads in them on
| the Apple TV.
|
| (If you mean: installed apps are allowed to show content
| previews when you hover on them in the UI -- I think
| that's pretty different from an ad, and it's a feature I
| personally like, since it means I can easily resume a
| show I was previously watching without even having to
| open the app-specific UI. That's quite different from my
| perspective than showing ads for services and apps that
| I've never used, that I can't remove.)
| shaftway wrote:
| I always find this take amusing, because there are ads.
| They're just for Apple services and they do a better job of
| blending in.
|
| Case in point, the largest screen in the lead image in the
| linked article does nothing to showcase this new UI, but it
| does promote Fountain of Youth, a show on Apple TV.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| That's awfully pedantic, though. In practice the answer to
| "does it have ads" for what most people mean by that
| question is "no."
| redczar wrote:
| These are ads. How much money would Paramount+ pay to
| have such a "preview" shown to Apple TV users? Whatever
| this number is it is certainly much larger than $0.
| Therefore it is an ad.
| dlivingston wrote:
| No, not quite. "Content previews", not "ads". A
| distinction with a difference.
|
| When you 'hover' over an app on an Apple's tvOS, the app
| populates that preview section with whatever content it
| wants. In the linked article's screenshot, the Apple TV
| app is being hovered over, so the 'preview' section is
| populated with content from Apple TV.
|
| If the user swiped right, to hover over the Arcade app,
| that preview would change to show some Arcade game. Hover
| over Netflix, Max, Hulu, Spotify apps, and you'll get
| content previews from them.
|
| So yes, they are "ads", in a hyper-literal sense, but not
| strictly, not facilitated by the operating system, and
| not in any way that matters.
| redczar wrote:
| Product placement in movies and tv shows are ads. Product
| placement on Apple TV are ads. Previews for new movies at
| a movie theater are ads. We live in a society where
| filling up your car with gas subjects you to ads. They
| are everywhere. We are so inundated with ads that people
| think what Apple does are not ads.
| reissbaker wrote:
| Okay, to fit this definition of content previews for an
| app when hovering on that specific app as an ad: I like
| that my Apple TV does not show ads for apps I don't
| explicitly select in the UI, unlike almost every
| competing device which shows intrusive ads for unrelated
| stuff that I haven't selected in the UI, and may not even
| have installed or subscribed to. (I also like that it's
| the lowest latency streaming box.)
|
| Apple TV is AFAIK the best device in its category.
|
| I also think your definition is overly broad and doesn't
| reflect what an "ad" is. For example, if Apple cut the
| feature from iOS that allowed you to control your music
| from your lock screen, Spotify would also be willing to
| pay Apple to be able to control specifically Spotify from
| your lock screen. Does that mean "being able to control
| music from your lock screen" is an ad for Spotify? No.
| Does iOS allowing app-specific widgets on the homescreen
| count as ads, since if it didn't exist, companies would
| be willing to pay to be on people's homescreens? No,
| widgets are not by definition ads (even if _some_ widgets
| may be ads!). Similarly, the Apple TV OS providing the
| ability for installed apps to show interactive app-
| specific UI _on hover_ (i.e. the user has chosen to
| interact with this app, or has chosen it as their primary
| app in the OS), does not mean the OS itself has ads.
| dlivingston wrote:
| No, dude. What Apple is doing is providing an API [0]
| that app developers can do whatever the hell they want
| with. Apple is delivering ads in the same way that your
| web browser is (giving other people a blank canvas to
| draw on).
|
| [0]: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
| guideline...
| redczar wrote:
| _Apple is delivering ads_
|
| We agree the that the Apple TV has ads in it.
| reissbaker wrote:
| The OS does not have ads. Some apps can contain ads. This
| is in stark contrast to other streaming box OSes, which
| contain ads built into the OS _and_ have apps that have
| ads in them.
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| Nobody is claiming otherwise. They're just pointing out
| that _this isn't what people are asking about when they
| ask if it has ads_. You, like GGP, are being pedantic.
| redczar wrote:
| I'm not being pedantic. It's not pedantic to call product
| placement an ad whether it occurs in a movie or on Apple
| TV.
| wmeredith wrote:
| I've used them all and Apple TV, while not without faults, is
| by far the best.
| graypegg wrote:
| Genuine question, what happened to Apple TV to make it a
| complete disaster? I feel like I probably missed something.
| (There's no good way to ask that without sounding like a
| fanboy, sorry haha. I just genuinely don't know.)
| rconti wrote:
| I'm not sure what you call it, but the "unified view" thing
| where you're supposed to be able to view content across
| providers is a complete nightmare. I'm not actually sure how
| I end up there -- I think it happens after I finish watching
| a program on AppleTV+ (oh, yeah, the naming is a disaster
| too). I'm not sure how I'd launch it if, for some reason, I
| _wanted_ to use it, and the navigation is just incredible
| strange.
|
| Figuring out which elements are selected in the UI is often
| hard.
|
| The trackpad on the remote is not good -- I've tried setting
| it to disable trackpad and click on, but then I'll inevitably
| find an app that needs a trackpad.
|
| Overall I'm quite happy with the AppleTV as a device, but the
| UI could use quite a bit of help.
| redczar wrote:
| Can you share what you don't like about Apple TV? I have one
| and really like it. I very much prefer using an Apple TV over
| using apps built into the tv.
| AlanYx wrote:
| It's an excellent device overall, but getting content onto
| the device to view is frustrating. Apps like VLC can have
| local storage, but the OS periodically purges locally stored
| content inside app storage.
| ErneX wrote:
| It's really meant for streaming though, I play movies
| directly from my NAS/Jellyfin with Infuse on the ATV.
| AlanYx wrote:
| It's definitely better for streaming, but the scenario
| you describe requires two other components (network
| attached storage and an Infuse subscription). It would be
| nice if you could just airdrop to device storage and play
| with an on-device Quicktime app.
| rconti wrote:
| +1 for Infuse. I tried to make Plex work for me, many
| times over the years, and it's always been so
| frustrating. From needing a server that can do
| transcoding, to demanding that I name my files in the way
| it wants them to be named, it just feels so incredibly
| constraining.
|
| Infuse just lets you... play a file. How novel!
| arnaudsm wrote:
| On top of wasting GPU cycles, such low-contrast graphics are
| terrible for older users. The Apple Music navbar is hilariously
| unreadable and distracting.
| pat2man wrote:
| Accessibility -> Display -> Reduce Transparency?
| detourdog wrote:
| Also it looks entirely customizable which will be really
| helpful for creating the correct text contrast for each
| individual.
| drdaeman wrote:
| The URL bar at 02:11 in the video looks awful, with all the
| background shining through making the text hard to read from a
| distance. This is sort of hidden by the video having 3x zoom,
| making the text thicker, but unless they tweak the transparency
| it's gonna be a real visual mess on a real device.
| fidotron wrote:
| This looks tailor made to be hard to recreate easily in CSS.
|
| Which is just going to make people try even harder.
| graypegg wrote:
| Raytracing and lighting effects in CSS 3D transforms! ;)
| diiiimaaaa wrote:
| Similar thing happened in iOS7(?) where they released glassy
| panels. Not far from that `-webkit-backdrop-filter` was added
| that allowed similar effect, I expect similar will happen. For
| new glassy effect it seems you need a separate filter for
| border, or maybe it's just gradient + blend mode.
| fidotron wrote:
| Refraction effects like that require a surface normal, even
| inferred from something like a bump map, or the result of a
| blur filter used as a bump map. I'm not aware of any CSS
| filter that could take a normal and do the appropriate ray
| redirection.
|
| In raw shader code it's verging on trivial, like old school
| environment mapping.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_mapping
| nikeee wrote:
| The lighting is depending on the devices' orientation to
| which a web site running in safari on iOS has no access to
| due to fingerprinting protection. Maybe you need to request
| permissions to the gyroscope, but doing that for a reflection
| in the UI is a bit overkill.
| detourdog wrote:
| Isn't it better to not limit GUIs to what can be achieved in
| CSS?
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| That's like saying this is hard recreate easily in playdough.
|
| It's not at all a concern for Apple, nor should it be.
| Insanity wrote:
| Based on the demo and screenshots I don't quite like this. It
| seems more distracting and gimmicky than actually nice to use in
| a day to day setting..
|
| But I'll probably get used to it.
| behnamoh wrote:
| > more distracting and gimmicky
|
| This. The animations on iOS are already a bit too much--now
| they've taken it to the next level.
| wmeredith wrote:
| Turn them off in accessibility
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| I wonder if there will be a big difference between a 60Hz and
| 120Hz Display. Blur is distracting if the content is dynamic.
| qgin wrote:
| Like the flashlight. There's no reason to have that much
| pageantry behind turning on a flashlight.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. I turn on the flashlight with
| two touches: drag from the top right corner to bring up the
| control center, then click on the flashlight icon.
| behnamoh wrote:
| OP is talking about the UI that let's you change the beam
| strength and focus
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Also it looks bad.
| bitwize wrote:
| Oh God, it's as I feared.
|
| Apple UI designer #1: Well, the flat design has been largely a
| success so far, but those darn users -- they can still easily
| pick out widgets from the background, and with a few tries still
| reasonably guess what they're for and how they'll respond!
|
| Apple UI designer #2: I know! Let's make the widgets
| _semitransparent_. That way they 'll be harder to pick out from
| the background, and Macs and iPhones will become delightfully fun
| puzzle boxes users will love trying to figure out, much like my
| dog loves his snuffle mat!
| mikeortman wrote:
| Apple claiming that Liquid Glass is a technique only Apple can
| achieve, will be replicated, or at least indistinguishably
| replicated, in pure CSS... within 48 hours of today, out of spite
| captainmuon wrote:
| It's just a shader, so maybe not in pure CSS, but you could
| probably achive something like that in WebGL.
|
| About "only Apple can achive that": It would be pretty simple
| for MS to do something like this in Windows. DirectComposition
| (or whatever it is called nowadays) could set the appropriate
| shader when drawing windows. You cannot do it as a normal user,
| because you can only pick from a select set of backdrop shaders
| (but if some hacker wants a challenge, you could inject the
| code into dwm.exe to do so :-)).
| drooopy wrote:
| Here's hoping that they'll keep the options to disable
| unnecessary transparencies and animations.
| Klonoar wrote:
| What makes you think they'd remove accessibility options like
| that? They're generally pretty considerate in that realm.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| Apple Music on Mac ignores the 'Reduce Motion' accessibility
| setting for their very distracting animated playlist covers,
| while apps like Weather respect it.
| detourdog wrote:
| What do expect from an animated playlist?
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I expect them to behave the same way they do on my phone
| and not have a bunch of animated tiles on the home page?
| detourdog wrote:
| Maybe this upgrade will help.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Thank you for the bug report in a thread about whether
| Apple would remove a checkbox from the settings panel.
| megaman821 wrote:
| I have had both of those disabled for the last five years but I
| am really wondering what it is going to look like now with so
| much transparency everywhere.
| SebastianKra wrote:
| Eh, it could be worse. It looks like the over-the-top effects are
| limited to a few top-level elements such as the Navigation View,
| Homescreen, and Control Center. I wouldn't be surprised if these
| get dialed back in the future - especially the elements that
| break all contrast guidelines.
|
| Many elements are still completely flat or more subtle. So, to
| me, it feels more like a new tool to convey hierarchy, rather
| than a complete new design: Secondary < Primary < Glass.
|
| Also, the Safari-Redesign is back for round 2? It'd be funny if
| it runs into the exact same backlash again.
| mosdl wrote:
| Seems overly distracting, and not a lot of contrast.
| lordfrito wrote:
| Yeah I hope this doesn't last long
| 9d wrote:
| > "... and a fluidity that _only_ Apple can achieve ... " (from
| the promo video on https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-
| introduces-a-de... )
|
| I'm excited to see this effect turned into a WebGL library in
| literally a week by some smart devs out there, and then adapted
| by Material Design in another month. Really? Only apple? This
| kind of rhetoric might have worked on me 20 years ago, but today
| it's just sad how obviously false it is.
| 9d wrote:
| Don't get me wrong. I'm all for people sharing what they
| created with joy. And I'll even rejoice with you if it's
| genuinely cool. But to say "only we can do this" is like saying
| "we're the best, all of you are beneath us, and you always will
| be" and is just really off putting. I get that it's a marketing
| tone, but you could have just omitted those words "only apple
| can achieve" and just showed off the really cool thing you had
| and got us excited about that, rather than putting focus on the
| company itself. It's like how in movies they say show don't
| tell. Just show us the product, don't tell us how great you
| are.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| This gives Windows Aero vibes, but somehow even worse.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Honestly? It lacks the visual contrast that made skeuomorphism so
| popular. Material You gets this right by using accent colors to
| break up the uniform interface. It feels cohesive and well-made
| without feeling clinical or hard-to-read.
|
| It's also, somewhat curiously, not neumorphism. All the interface
| layers appear distinct, which makes me worry if things like
| Dynamic Island and Control Center will be mistaken for app
| controls and not distinct phone controls.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Looks great, looking forward to trying it...
| gherkinnn wrote:
| https://www.lux.camera/physicality-the-new-age-of-ui/
|
| This blog's prediction got remarkably close. I've been a sucker
| for glass UI since the first Longhorn (later Vista) screenshots.
| dmix wrote:
| I figured out why I don't like the icons
|
| https://www.lux.camera/content/images/size/w2400/2025/05/Mai...
|
| zoomed out they look blurry and unrefined, but when viewed
| zoomed in and large (like how a designer probably created them)
| they look kinda nice. Too bad they will all be small on iphone.
| wmeredith wrote:
| I find the assumption that these icons were designed huge and
| never tested at smaller sizes kind of baffling. There may be
| a difference in taste, but to think that Apple wouldn't look
| at their icons at different sizes is really, uh, something.
| JadeNB wrote:
| I think your parent said that they look good at some sizes
| and bad at others, and pointed out that this could be
| explained by their only being tested at the larger sizes,
| but didn't say that they necessarily believed that's what
| happened. The alternative, "tested but don't care," may be
| worse. (Or maybe you're disagreeing with the aesthetic
| judgment?)
| dmix wrote:
| Fair enough. I should wait to test it on iphone. Although
| sometimes concept ideas get mandated from above and the
| designers are left to figure it out the best they can.
| kej wrote:
| This feels suspiciously like the goals of Microsoft's "Metro"
| design from the Windows 8 era. It will be interesting to see if
| Apple can do a better job of keeping the same design without
| damaging the desktop experience than Microsoft did.
| jmkni wrote:
| Definitely in the minority here but I liked Metro, I always
| felt it was just a decade ahead of it's time (as was Windows 8
| generally)
| bowsamic wrote:
| I really liked metro on windows phone but I did not
| understand it on desktop. It didn't help that they took away
| the usual UI
| jmkni wrote:
| Right but go a decade ahead when many more people use their
| phones as their primary computer, much less of a problem
| bowsamic wrote:
| Then they should have waited for a decade? Literally what
| does that have to do with anything. No shit, design
| decisions are very different when teleported literally a
| decade later
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Familiarity was not the only problem. A good UI for a
| small touch screen is a bad UI for a large screen,
| keyboard, and mouse.
| jhickok wrote:
| The issue with Metro, imo, is that it was dizzying to use as
| you were swept away into new interfaces and for many tasks we
| lost a lot of usability.
| herbturbo wrote:
| Yes especially given that XP was the most useable version
| of Windows ever. They just threw it all away and expected
| people to relearn the basics of interacting with their PC.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| XP was good but I'm partial to 7. It was like a refined
| Vista that brought proper alpha blending support and a
| number of QoL improvements without setting the core
| experience on fire.
| max51 wrote:
| The esthetic wasn't bad, the problem is that it was a massive
| reduction in functionality. For example, the fact that Metro
| apps included on windows could only be use in fullscreen mode
| and only one copy of it could be used at the same time. The
| new Metro settings they included to replace the ones from the
| control panel had only like 10% of the functionality of the
| old one and they actively tried to prevent you from finding
| the old one. The content density was significantly lower and
| dialogbox/dropdownmenus couldn't be resized to display more
| items (eg. list of keyboard layouts that can only display 3
| items at the same time)
| moralestapia wrote:
| Metro was, and is, my favorite UI ever.
| BirAdam wrote:
| A Win8 tablet on Snapdragon X Elite would be a wonderful
| thing. Also, Metro on phones was amazing.
| grishka wrote:
| They've already started ruining the desktop experience with the
| macOS 11 redesign and there's no sign of them stopping. For
| example, the recent settings app redesign that no one asked for
| broke the fundamental desktop UI design rule that controls
| never scroll, only content does.
| n42 wrote:
| one of my favorite examples of how bad the System Settings
| app is: find where the Default Browser setting is, without
| using search.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Your smoking gun is to not use the app in the most
| intuitive and obvious way?
| grishka wrote:
| Different people may approach the same UI differently. A
| good practice in UX design is to put things where people
| expect to find them -- and duplicate them if different
| people go looking in different places. So a working
| search function doesn't absolve you of having to make the
| structure of your screens/menus/whatever make sense.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > Your smoking gun is to not use the app in the most
| intuitive and obvious way?
|
| Search isn't the most intuitive and obvious way to
| everyone. Just adding a search function also isn't an
| excuse to just totally ignore good UX design and
| information hierarchy.
|
| I've been a sysadmin my entire career, and still do end-
| user support occasionally. You'd be surprised how few
| people use the search function, for anything, on their
| computers. Just opening the windows start menu and
| showing them they can search there is like black magic to
| a frighteningly large amount of people.
|
| I've met fellow Mac users that don't even know spotlight
| exists, and navigate through the OS and every app via
| mouse and clicking around.
|
| So yeah, just throwing a search box in your app as an
| excuse for ignoring the experience of navigating it any
| other way is bad UX design.
| grishka wrote:
| Oh wow. Took me several minutes of aimlessly poking around.
|
| Actually, even without that, the grouping and the hierarchy
| don't make sense. Why are some things top-level items and
| other under "general"? Same for "privacy and security" (I
| assume that's what it's called in English), for some reason
| "passwords", "lock screen" and "touch ID and password" are
| separate top-level items even though they do very much
| belong to "privacy and security".
|
| The more you look at it, the less sense it makes.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Metro on phones worked so well but MS failed to translate it to
| desktops.
|
| As for the second part, Apple does a remarkable job at updating
| all of the OS to a new design language. Unlike Windows, which
| last time I used it, had three different settings panels and UI
| controls resembling archaeological layers going back to pre XP.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| You can still get the Windows 3/NT 3.5 directory picker if
| you dig around enough.
| bluSCALE4 wrote:
| Window's problem has always been their legacy systems. I
| believe to this day you can bring up windows 95 era dialogs
| somehow in Windows 11?
| whatever1 wrote:
| It's also a much deeper and broader ui. In the past 20 years
| of using windows I don't recall one time that I needed to
| bring up the command line to do something. Linux on the other
| hand is a constant battle with random commands with close to
| zero discoverability. macOS sits somewhere in between, but
| definitely a way more ui friendly system compared to the
| various Linux desktop distros
| jcranmer wrote:
| That would be a surprise, since Windows XP and newer are
| based on Windows NT, not the Windows 9x family (Windows 95,
| 98, and Me).
| abhinavk wrote:
| He did say era. It actually NT3/4 UI.
| whiteboardr wrote:
| It's terrible and an unsolvable "problem" that many have tried
| before and there's no way of getting this right.
|
| Transparent UI components always add noise by nature,
| especially glass that is intended to be realistic - see all the
| refractions shown in the keynote.
|
| Aqua was also playful and suggested the same feel but never got
| in the way of clarity and was beautifully implemented almost
| feeling revolutionary at the time.
|
| What is on point for VR use cases where this is taken from,
| unfortunately ruins a desktop or handheld experience.
|
| A massive loss of precision, focus and a big step backwards.
| out-of-ideas wrote:
| > It's terrible and an unsolvable "problem" that many have
| tried before and there's no way of getting this right.
|
| except apple dictates to its fans whats right. i feel apple
| has already begun a slow process of making them similar;
|
| what im more curious about is how they will improve the
| settings app (it seems the desktop settings is the worst its
| been design and flow wise - ive never liked the ios settings
| design - i do hope they change both of these for the better)
|
| edit: more newlines
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The biggest problem with Metro is how little effort was put
| into properly adapting it to desktops. It tried to handle
| everything from smartphones to tablets to non-touch PCs with
| 27" monitors with the same UI. It's an understatement to say
| that it was awkward to use with a keyboard and mouse, because
| it almost acted like those forms of input ceased to exist.
|
| If Apple makes the right platform-specific affordances (which
| they have a much better chance of doing) I think it can work.
| max51 wrote:
| > It tried to handle everything from smartphones to tablets
| to non-touch PCs with 27" monitors with the same UI
|
| That was a big part of the problem, but the issues with the
| UI/UX went far beyond that.
|
| For exemple, if you used the search bar in the "start menu"
| to get something from the control pannel, it would ONLY show
| the new W8 Metro dialog box that barelly has 1/5th the
| features and would refuse to show you the real one. It also
| took multiple years before the metro apps inlcuded in the OS
| (eg. pdf viewer) could be used in windowed mode (they were
| fullscreen mode like a video game, without taskbar), even the
| ipad at the time had better multitasking than the W8 Metro
| apps.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| And as I understand it, much of that sort of problem comes
| down to the "warring factions" model found at Microsoft
| internally where the whole company is never on the same
| page, a problem that Apple doesn't suffer from as badly.
| max51 wrote:
| Apple is a lot better at eating their own dogfood than
| microsoft. They had UI designers working on macbooks at
| the Microsoft office, that alone probably explains a lot
| of issues with the OS
| saratogacx wrote:
| It isn't quite as simple as that. The guy that ran the
| windows org during that time thought himself the Steve
| Jobs of Microsoft and didn't hear anything different (to
| the point of having multi-page public blog posts about
| how much the launched windows 8 US was the best thing
| ever and if you didn't agree, you were just wrong).
|
| During that time they also instituted "anti-leak"
| measures so teams would develop and commit features
| internally and keep them behind hidden flags that
| required special permissions from the org to change (via
| an app they called "red pill"). That means that by the
| time many teams saw what was happening with the UX in
| various places in the OS, it was too late to come to
| consensus.
|
| The entire cycle for the OS was empire building and
| emperor has no clothing from start to finish. It wasn't
| until he was ousted that they started to try and pull
| things back with 8.1 and eventually 10.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Not Metro, which was flat, but their newer Fluent UI, shown in
| their design videos [0].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/@microsoftdesign/videos
| wmf wrote:
| Do you mean Aero Glass from Windows 7? Metro is a flat design
| that looks nothing like this.
| basisword wrote:
| Do you mean Aero Glass from Windows Vista?
| llm_nerd wrote:
| I assume they might be talking more to the "universal design"
| aspect.
|
| Though Apple has long had a universal design across
| platforms. Not always in lockstep, but visual traits and
| behaviours and traits and appearances end up in all of their
| platforms, which even if it wasn't logical from a design
| perspective, there is loads of shared code so it's
| inevitable.
|
| But really a lot of what they showed today reminded me most
| of Aqua from 25 years ago.
| kej wrote:
| I was referring to the idea of having a universal design
| across mobile and desktop, which was one of the goals of
| Metro, rather than the specific visual style.
| al_borland wrote:
| It doesn't look like Apple changed how the desktop
| fundamentally works. Microsoft put a touch-first UI on the
| server, and replaced the start button with a hot corner. Using
| that with RDP was a horrible experience.
|
| If anything, we saw the iPad make serious roads towards
| functioning like macOS.
| Bondi_Blue wrote:
| It is weird that they acted as through the design system hasn't
| changed much since iOS 7. They've overhauled and tweaked it every
| year since 2011- increasing font weights, using slower
| floaty/bubble animations, increasing corner radiuses and adding
| more negative space, adding depth and shadows to icons, etc.
| Control Center, for example, looks nothing like it did in iOS 7.
| iOS 7 was much more minimal, the least skeuomorphic, and a bit
| more geometric than the "neumorphic" changes they've made since
| then.
|
| This updated design language seems to have similarities to
| Microsoft's Material/Fluent design system that brought more of
| that same glass material to Windows 11, with the more 3d-looking
| edge outlines on ui elements. So the glass metaphor seems to be a
| trending metaphor in these UIs, for better or for worse.
| croes wrote:
| So Apple goes Windows Aero?
| xattt wrote:
| I propose Apple Jello!
| jq-r wrote:
| To be honest, aero looked better.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Every Electron app is going to feel incredibly out of place.
|
| And for the few that aren't okay with feeling out of place, the
| devs of those apps will now have to contend with shipping more
| macOS specific styles and workarounds.
|
| I'm not looking to discuss Electron performance/etc so please
| ditch that discussion before it starts. I just find it
| interesting how comparatively tricky this particular UI styling
| might end up being for cross-platform developers.
| afavour wrote:
| I won't be surprised if we see a CSS filter that attempts to
| model this in Safari. Then it'll just be a question of whether
| Chromium (and thus Electron) get it.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Yeah, for sure. That solves part of it.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Can't you access rendered elements from JS? Then this will be
| a massive security issue, because anybody can read all the
| content from behind.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Elements have supported transparency for a couple decades
| now.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| But not across OS windows?
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I mentioned this elsewhere, but if LLMs are improving developer
| performance so drastically, why are none of these gains being
| used to get back towards native app development?
| afavour wrote:
| > if LLMs are improving developer performance so drastically
|
| IMO the jury is out on how much they are.
|
| > why are none of these gains being used to get back towards
| native app development?
|
| because the different platforms are still radically different
| in a way an LLM can't easily and simply paper over. How do I
| specify a UI in a way that an LLM can competently implement
| it in HTML, SwiftUI and whatever Windows is using these days?
| Klonoar wrote:
| > why are none of these gains being used to get back towards
| native app development?
|
| One argument might be that, like with any LLM output, you
| still do need to know it well enough to know if it's good or
| not implementation-wise. You still need that knowledge to
| understand if your performance for rendering in some
| scenarios is going to fall off a cliff.
|
| Web (via browsers or Electron/etc) are mostly one train of
| thought. When you're doing native application development
| using host OS frameworks, you have to actually know the
| framework. LLMs don't really save you from that; i.e, I could
| have an LLM spit out whatever flavor of Windows-specific UI I
| need. I have zero way of knowing whether it's correct or not.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Because devs lack the will to build native apps. Even on HN,
| native app dev is seen as somewhat esoteric because it isn't
| cross-platform by default.
|
| There's plenty of pragmatic reasons not to build a native
| app. The concerning thing IMO is the hegemony of opinion
| here. After all, nothing says "hacker" quite like following
| all the rules properly and always doing the sensible thing.
| :)
| socalgal2 wrote:
| > Every Electron app is going to feel incredibly out of place.
|
| AFAIK, most people do most things on the Web. So, no, Electron
| Apps will feel like what most people use most of the time. It's
| native apps that will feel out of place.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Nah, native apps end up feeling nice and cozy by comparison.
| :)
|
| The design language of native controls is usually much
| quieter and more subdued than the garishness that is allowed
| in the name of branding.
| irskep wrote:
| Electron apps are already out of place. In the space of Mac-
| apps-for-SaaS-products such as Linear, Slack, Notion, Asana,
| Figma, GitHub, and Spotify, they inflict the company's own
| design system on Apple's OS rather than try to ship Apple's
| design system applied to their product. Even the most popular
| IDE, VSCode, is just a wrapper around a web page.
|
| And they're rational to do it this way. These companies
| shipping apps to millions of people all came to the conclusion
| that investing in native Mac software is not worthwhile to
| their business. Users don't avoid Electron-based products, and
| building native Mac apps slows you down. It's easier both
| technologically and organizationally to ship your web site as
| an Electron app. It costs less and you don't lose any users.
|
| So I would be surprised to see _any_ popular Electron app get
| design updates to accommodate these changes.
|
| As a user it makes me sad, but I find myself blaming Apple for
| losing this fight, not the hundreds of successful companies
| that all somehow make the same choice. If building native were
| an advantage, people would take it.
| rdsnsca wrote:
| I certainly avoid Electron apps on macOS and konw I am not
| the only one who does.
| irskep wrote:
| Which apps do you avoid in particular which are associated
| with a service you are required by your job to use? Or,
| what purchasing decisions have you made on behalf of your
| company that took Electron-ness into account?
| timeon wrote:
| So when you have mention 'users' it was actually about
| 'companies'?
| irskep wrote:
| It was actually about customers and incentives. You're
| right that I shouldn't have said "users;" I should have
| said "customers."
|
| It's rational for businesses to do things that make them
| money, and to not do things that don't make them money or
| make them lose money. SaaS business believe that spending
| R&D budgets on growth hackers and web product engineers
| is a better return than spending those same budgets on
| macOS engineers. I suspect they are right.
|
| It doesn't matter to these businesses that you personally
| avoid Electron apps. They don't care, and Apple has made
| it easy and rewarding for them not to care.
| Klonoar wrote:
| > Electron apps are already out of place.
|
| You're taking the boring argument track here. Yes, they use
| their own design system language, but they still roughly fit
| in with an OS that's not random transparency/glass effects
| everywhere.
|
| They clearly will not fit in with the new UI styling without
| significant thought and work.
| danieldk wrote:
| _Every Electron app is going to feel incredibly out of place._
|
| It's not going to matter, most Electron apps look out of place
| on the Mac already. The developers are not going to care and
| probably most users are not going to care either (I used to be
| staunchly against Electron for this reason, but gave up, and
| now I choose just enjoy apps looking the same between
| platforms).
|
| Apple neglected the desktop from ~2016-2020 and made two
| frameworks that are unpopular among developers (Catalyst and
| SwiftUI) after that. Outside some indie devs, the native Mac
| app ship has sailed. Even developers that had their roots in
| macOS (e.g. AgileBits) have given up and switched to Electron.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I think differing app styles can work under this new macOS
| design, they'll just need to have more physicality, dynamism,
| and overall more involvement from the design department. Devs
| just won't be able to drop a dumptruck of flat roundrects on
| the screen and call it a day if they don't want their app
| looking bad.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| Ever since the death of WinForms and Cocoa we've moved away
| from apps having a unified visual experience on an OS to apps
| pushing their own consistent theme across platforms. A big
| contrast between app and OS theme in recent times was when apps
| offered Dark Mode before it became an OS wide setting.
| eviks wrote:
| The form over function school of design continues its grim march
| towards decreasing usability.
|
| Look at the most basic UI interaction - text cursor movement -
| and note how this new liquid glass adds more confusing visual
| noise by adding text reflection for no good reason, which makes,
| for example, an empty line appear as a line with some text due to
| this reflection, thus making it harder to see that your cursor is
| located at the top line.
|
| > more focus to content
|
| it's the opposite, you dilute focus on content by manufacturing
| non-existent noise.
|
| And the claim to being "natural" in the video falls flat -
| compare to the actual physical movements a few frames before -
| the lens doesn't change in width or height! So the digital
| animation noise is unnatural!
|
| Similarly with the menu sheet adding new rubberband effect in the
| corner- what underlying natural interaction does it reflect? What
| signal does that jiggly noise send?
|
| But yeah, if you live in a "lively delight" fantasy of design,
| nothing would stop you.
| dmix wrote:
| The icons look pretty bad and the glass reflection/blurring
| during scrolling looks distracting. But I do like the focus on
| fluid animations, transparent bgs by default for overlaid
| controls, and smaller contextual control areas.
| ambyra wrote:
| Would be cool if they started using displays with multiple
| layers, kinda like the looking glass 3D display, to get actual 3d
| layering of UI. Would look amazing with this new UI design.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Am I the only one that hates the concept?
|
| I want a good UI to fade into the background. But this one is
| like a UI designer's promotion fever dream: The UI is at the
| center, no matter the content. The promotional video says "This
| material brings a new level of vitality to every experience" and
| then they show a video player where now the control overlay has
| more contrast, more movements, and more bright lights than the
| actual movie. And then the other features are just bull*: "It
| responds in real-time to your actions". Gosh I hope other UI
| frameworks would respond to my actions, what a novel idea! And
| yeah, ever played a video game? Things reacting to user input in
| real-time isn't exactly groundbreaking. And then they top it off
| with "a fluidity only Apple can achieve", which is just
| delusional. Desktop Linux box + RTX 5090 + current video game +
| 240 Hz screen => a fluidity that exceeds everything that Apple
| can achieve on a phone.
|
| I mean I like SwiftUI and I like how apps look on the current
| iOS. But I think it's already borderline intense just to use the
| OS. It certainly should not have any more additional glitter,
| blinking, movement, or animations. It might be the direction that
| GTK could benefit from, but not SwiftUI.
|
| In short, this feels like a step in the wrong direction for Apple
| to me.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Why can't we leave good enough alone?
|
| Heck, we hit "peak-UI" with Win 2K, AFAAIC.-
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| peak-UI was Visual Basic 3. Any component that wasn't in VB3
| was post-peak UI.
| Bluestein wrote:
| That indeed tracks.-
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I looked it up to double check if it is what I remember.
| And yes, you are correct.
| detourdog wrote:
| From what I saw they were making more available screen space
| for content.
| j45 wrote:
| This looks nice, but I can't say it's clear how a touch interface
| can be sent to macOS when MacBooks continue to not have
| touchscreens.
|
| Maybe this is the start of replacing macOS with some form of
| iPadOS experience in the medium to long term.
| dougbrochill wrote:
| It looks cool, but I'm worried about readability on the phone.
| The text in some of those menu bars and notifications really
| blended in with the wallpaper in a few of those screenshots.
| wdb wrote:
| Yeah, struggling with reading things
| athriren wrote:
| yes, legibility--at least during the presentation--was really
| bad. hope it's better on device.
| asciimov wrote:
| Can't wait to be told, "You're viewing it wrong." /s
|
| But yes, terrible visual usability. Otherwise it looks nice,
| better than flat.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| I noticed the same thing while watching their youtube promo
| video. I grabbed this screenshot that shows exactly how
| problematic this design is.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/AEEj5w1
| jrmg wrote:
| There are definitely compression artifacts in there that are
| making it look significantly less crisp than it would in
| reality.
| leakycap wrote:
| And zero smudges, environmental reflections, and glare than
| in reality while still being impossible to read.
|
| It will be even harder to see in anything but a dark room
| than these perfect press videos show.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| IMO it should "opaque up" the glass stuff when the blur
| detects significant similarity between the text / icon
| content on top, vs the blurred background on bottom.
|
| "COOL" is not "success".
| sanbor wrote:
| In this screenshot you can hardly read the app names because
| the color of the text is white and the background is also very
| white:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/HrfhA8E
|
| I am surprised they forgot the important detail of good
| contract to be able to read the name of apps.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| Anything that moves away from flat colorless rectangles is a good
| thing, I welcome this change.
| wmeredith wrote:
| I also welcome the return of buttons. The en masse replacement
| of buttons with what looks like text links had driven me crazy
| for a long time.
| bowsamic wrote:
| It seems over the top to me, fatiguing even. Like I might have to
| take breaks from being so overwhelmed from using these
| interfaces. I have been mac exclusive for a long time now but I
| recently installed xubuntu for an intern and it made me quite
| jealous
| jcalx wrote:
| The children yearn for the mines Frutiger Aero
|
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frutiger_Aero)
| isoprophlex wrote:
| I was going to comment something similar; this is just Aero
| with higher DPI and more GPU-intensive gimmicks, right?!
| carlosjobim wrote:
| 15 years later, Shine 2.0 for Windows is still the most modern
| and best designed GUI for computers:
|
| https://www.deviantart.com/zainadeel/art/Shine-2-0-for-Windo...
| chakintosh wrote:
| Interesting how it seems now Apple's realized they should have
| marketed visionOS for Enterprise from the beginning. Nobody was
| gonna be a $3k AR headset to edit text. The Enterprise is where
| the use cases are. And now seems Apple has pivoted towards that.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| Then again in the keynote today Apple proudly said Vision Pro
| was used by "thousands" of companies. So it sounds like it
| isn't such a success (yet?) in the enterprise either.
| anotherhue wrote:
| Why, why, why, do all the Apple announcements have the exact same
| ASIMO stiff hand gestures? Hostage videos have more fluidity.
| ejpir wrote:
| thought the same, how on earth did they think this looks like a
| smooth presentation. Almost like he doesn't believe what he's
| saying
| leakycap wrote:
| At least they didn't use 3d-generated hands holding fake
| phones this time. The uncanny valley in prior presentations
| was jarring when they'd go to a 3d "human hand"
| jq-r wrote:
| It is so fake and scripted it makes generated videos look
| extremely realistic and natural.
| yborg wrote:
| Patiently awaiting the Teams AI filter to automatically apply
| Apple Keynote Hands in video conferences.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I really dig apple's work. It's so refreshing to get a tech event
| in 2025 where design is a huge focus and not just duck taping
| another LLM to everything. Design is expensive and it's clear
| they've invested a massive amount of resources into liquid glass.
| It's not perfect, but I think they'll iron out some of the
| contrast bugs.
|
| Agreed with other commenters that crappy electron apps will look
| increasingly out of place (... slack ...). Too bad LLM's coding
| efficiencies haven't been used to try to get us back to native
| UIs from electron yet. Companies would rather pocket the savings.
| danieldk wrote:
| _It 's so refreshing to get a tech event in 2025 where design
| is a huge focus and not just duck taping another LLM to
| everything._
|
| I don't want to make this an Apple vs. Google comment (Mac user
| since 2007, iPhone user since 2009), but Google spend a good
| chunk of time on their Material Design 3 Expressive redesign at
| the Android event a few weeks ago.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| MD3 feels pretty tame in comparison, though. Mostly still the
| same flat look but with more roundness and louder colors. I
| think it's going to end up dated looking much, much more
| quickly than MD1/MD2 did.
| testfrequency wrote:
| Tame is what Apple should have shipped instead of this
| liquid glass disaster.
| leakycap wrote:
| Apple didn't talk about AI or Siri because they're currently
| flailing and so behind it's concerning.
|
| This was design-focused because skin-deep was all they
| accomplished.
| Manfred wrote:
| A company with thousands of developers can focus on multiple
| things at once. I'm happy they are trying to improve all
| parts of the operating system and not just AI features I
| personally will never use.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Apple didn't talk about AI or Siri because they're
| currently flailing and so behind it's concerning.
|
| Either concerning or reassuring depending on your
| perspective. I for one will be glad if there's a platform
| left that hasn't been invaded by AI.
| leakycap wrote:
| I wouldn't find the company's inability to deliver on their
| own top priorities something to take a sigh of relief
| about.
|
| What internal issues is a company like this also failing to
| deliver? A problem like this doesn't come about in
| isolation.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Eh. Apple have always been good at products and bad at
| services.
| brenns10 wrote:
| > I for one will be glad if there's a platform left that
| hasn't been invaded by AI.
|
| There's always Linux! ;)
| rebasedoctopus wrote:
| only concerning if you have major investments in apple, and
| rely on ai hype to drive the stock up. I don't know if it's
| because I watch so much sports but to see someone fall behind
| doesn't really make me believe they lack the ability to catch
| up
| leakycap wrote:
| I don't want the AI features, either -- but I do want a
| company that can deliver on what they promise.
|
| Apple has fallen behind before; I don't doubt they can
| recover I just hope it's a good Apple that we get to live
| with on the other side of what they're going through.
|
| Apple of the last few years hasn't been consumer or
| developer friendly; their privacy promise being one of the
| big standouts in their favor.
| BirAdam wrote:
| There were a ton of tweaks across their ecosystem that I
| think are great. What I would truly have preferred, however,
| is a feature freeze and bug fix while Apple Intelligence
| improves...
| al_borland wrote:
| They did still have a lot of AI features, just not AI chat.
|
| Users can now use AI in Shortcuts, developers can use the
| various on-device models, I assume the call and text
| screening uses AI. Those are a few things off the top of my
| head. We need to some thinking the start and end for AI is a
| text field with a submit button.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > because they're currently flailing and so behind
|
| ...behind what? Siri doesn't have a meaningful competitor on
| iOS. Nothing else even has access to my personal data.
| cmdtab wrote:
| There is no contrast. Wow! Why?
| captainmuon wrote:
| We have these brilliant high resolution displays, and these
| powerful, energy efficient GPUs that are always running and
| compositing frames like a game engine 120 times a second.
|
| It's about time we start seeing more physicality in our user
| interfaces!
|
| We can make things look convincingly like glass, or metal, or
| even materials that don't exist in reality. One reason for flat
| design is because it was the lowest common denominator and easy
| for devs to implement. If Apple makes it easy to implement this
| liquid glass stuff - Rectangle().background(.glass) or something
| - then it's going to be really successful.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| so what you're saying is that we need to resurrect
| skeuomorphism?
| lukebuehler wrote:
| yes, I think this is exactly what's happening.
| gaze wrote:
| I get the sense that the Scandinavian minimalism thing has
| worn too heavy on everyone and now we're taking a collective
| step back to explore things that are a bit more fun and
| maximalist. So yeah, maybe a little more skeuomorphism but
| done differently? That was a fun era!
| mrweasel wrote:
| > I get the sense that the Scandinavian minimalism thing
| has worn too heavy on everyone
|
| As a Scandinavian: I don't feel like we tried that since
| Braun. Apple has tried to mimic a Scandinavian sort of
| minimalism, but only in appearance. The iPhone UI is way to
| busy and is to hard to navigate for me to classify it as
| minimalism.
| wartijn_ wrote:
| I would be happy with that. After years of using iOS with the
| current design it still takes me a few moments before I've
| found the Photos app with its meaningless icon that looks way
| too much like some other icons.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Skeuomorphism in the sense of exactly mimicking existing
| physical interfaces probably mostly not, but skeuomorphism in
| the sense of using physically-inspired visual effects to add
| depth to a virtual interface I think so for sure. Liquid
| glass is so damn pretty.
| keyringlight wrote:
| I think modern skeuomorphism must be in a weird spot
| compared to a few decades ago. Right now our real world
| devices designers would be inspired are less likely to have
| physical controls, so the virtual versions are pulling from
| a more distant original source that's already been through
| a few degrees of separation. If the original industrial
| design that computer interface graphics was pulling from
| was the rise of industrial and consumer electronics through
| the 20th century (the various switches, dials, indicators,
| tuning knobs, etc), what new physical design is there to
| inspire that isn't feeding on itself.
| Findecanor wrote:
| From one point of view, this design language _is_ a type of
| skeuomorphism, by it mimicking pieces of rounded glass laid
| on top of one-other.
|
| The problem with skeuomorphism in iOS' first design language
| was that resemblance to real-world objects was taken too far
| -- at the expense of legibility. Users attributed affordances
| to virtual objects that they didn't have.
|
| The problem with iOS 7's flatter interface was that the anti-
| skeumorphism went too far in the other direction, again at
| the expense of legibility. Users couldn't see what controls
| were supposed to do.
|
| ... And now the pendulum has swung back in the other
| direction, again too far, and missed the goal.
| cosmotic wrote:
| Just because we can doesn't mean we should. Using this new
| design language as an example, things are now harder to read,
| identify, and understand. That's a huge loss to productivity
| and ease of use.
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| Agreed. That should be the focus of any user interface.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Reminds me of when they added more transparency to the UI
| around Mac OS X 10.9 where they argued that it "helps you
| focus on what's important". Huh? By showing me what's behind
| what I'm trying to look at? The first thing I do when I setup
| a new machine is to go to accessibility settings and turn on
| "reduce transparency". Hoping there is a way to do something
| similar with this.
| keyringlight wrote:
| Similar with how MS brought 'glass' into their Aero theme
| for vista or win7. There was exactly no benefit to being
| able to see some blurry version of the background window if
| I'm trying to read the foreground. I don't think a version
| that lets background detail through clearly will do any
| better outside of flashy demos.
| nlarew wrote:
| > things are now harder to read, identify, and understand
|
| What makes you think that? Do you have a specific example
| from the keynote in mind?
|
| There must be something since you've never actually used this
| design system yourself. Or is this just your pre-judgement?
| zerocrates wrote:
| Even in their animations on this page there are things
| where the user scrolls the interface and the part under one
| of these glass buttons looks more exaggerated and draws the
| eye in an unpleasant way, and depending on where they land
| with it, the text on the button isn't particularly
| readable.
| yuehhangalt wrote:
| In the keynote, they showed an app, I think it was
| Messages, where the UI at the bottom was illegible because
| it was translucent and the background image and text were
| showing through too much. There are other examples that I
| was able to find were legibility was negatively impacted.
| Prickle wrote:
| Just the short demo videos on their website.
|
| Their example of the music app. You have a translucent bar
| showing the currently playing music app.
|
| It gets harder to read when it overlaps with the background
| music album covers. I can very easily see a situation where
| you need to scroll to an empty bit, just to be able to read
| what it is actually playing.
|
| Now, imagine you have a visual impairment. It's already
| hard to read with mostly normal eyes. This will be
| impossible for anyone with bad vision, probably even worse
| if colorblind.
|
| It is genuinely unreadable, and a mess visually.
| paulcole wrote:
| > That's a huge loss to productivity and ease of use
|
| Have you used it yet?
| kergonath wrote:
| > Using this new design language as an example, things are
| now harder to read, identify, and understand
|
| Wait until we have some real feedback to complain, at least.
| nottorp wrote:
| > that are always running and compositing frames like a game
| engine 120 times a second
|
| Which is complete idiocy if you ask me. Why update a static
| screen at 120 fps? Are our batteries too large?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _Why update a static screen at 120 fps?_
|
| Good thing it doesn't do that then, variable refresh rate
| displays that go down to 1 Hz are fairly standard now on
| phones as well as other displays.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| Even before that, mobile UI frameworks are retained mode
| GUIs, not immediate. They aren't drawing to a blank
| framebuffer 120 times a second if they don't have to.
| Redraws only happen when something changes (e.g. "Dirty"
| rects).
| kllrnohj wrote:
| They don't. GPU rendering only happens when something
| changes. Even composition only happens when something changes
| thanks to panel self refresh (this is independent of the more
| recent VRR that also lowers refresh rate when idle, this is a
| relatively small savings compared to the other two)
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _It 's about time we start seeing more physicality in our
| user interfaces!_
|
| It's actually quite resource intensive to have translucency, in
| many implementations across the web and mobile.
| pzo wrote:
| apple need to persuade people somehow to buy new iphone.
| beAbU wrote:
| Microsoft did glass with windows 7, maybe even vista. Can't
| remember.
|
| Kinda old hat at this point tbh.
|
| And just because we have all this powerful hardware, does not
| mean we need to waste it on physically accurate glass surfaces
| on UIs.
|
| If this rolls out to all iDevices, how much energy (in other
| words CO2) will be expended worldwide on rendering things like
| this?
| pzo wrote:
| only if each iOS app experience wasn't worse with each release.
| SwiftUI apps feels much slower than UIKit. My iPhone 13
| experience with latest iOS overall feels very sluggish to old
| iPhones. This design feels not bringing much benefits but only
| drawbacks - more energy wasted, slower performance on older
| iPhones (apple want you buy new phone) and IMHO is just worse
| UX.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Highly dynamic frames makes sense for an immersive game. It
| doesn't make sense when I'm trying to read my email or what the
| name of the song that is currently playing is.
| WillieCubed wrote:
| This is the Jevons paradox [1] in full display here. It's much
| easier to take advantage of hardware to run software at 120
| FPS, so why not?
|
| And I agree about liquid glass being successful iff they make
| the developer tooling for this as easy as additional modifiers
| to components, or even the default for SwiftUI.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
| noosphr wrote:
| >It's about time we start seeing more physicality in our user
| interfaces!
|
| I'm not sure if this is a joke or not.
|
| We had that, it was called skeuomorphism:
| https://miro.medium.com/v2/da:true/resize:fit:1200/0*6DRkHp3...
|
| Then we got rid of it because it looked too 2010 now we are
| bringing it back because flat looks too 2020.
| pcurve wrote:
| I don't mind physicality, but not glass. Please.
|
| There are reasons why most controls are NOT made of glass in
| real life.
| RollingRo11 wrote:
| I mean probably because they would break, no? I think glass-
| looking buttons are great (think Sony's Dualsense controller,
| Xbox controllers, tbh many controllers have glass-ish
| buttons)
|
| I think it's a nice aesthetic. It obviously needs some tuning
| (contrast, transparency, etc.), but the idea is nice! I've
| installed the beta, and it isn't as bad as it looks, just
| takes some getting used to.
|
| I also theorize this may be some grand transition phase to
| prepare everyone for the visionOS future apple wants to
| happen, but that could just be a stretch.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Looks awful to be honest.
| w-hn wrote:
| Huh, this reminds me of the Photos app. Apple completely broke
| iOS Photos in the last update.
|
| I really hope apps like Ente can step up and get better and
| native, offer desktop backup + sync both as well. But then
| there's always the chance that Apple will just find a way to shut
| them down. or reject their updates, just like they did in the
| past.
|
| Anyway, I guess we'll have to wait and see what else they manage
| to screw up with this "move."
| jakub_g wrote:
| > iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and tvOS 26
|
| Bumping from iOS 18 / macOS 15 etc. towards year-based naming,
| nice. I wish more projects followed this.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| I liked it too with Windows 95, Windows 98 etc. Not sure why
| Microsoft dropped it tbh!
| m3kw9 wrote:
| First thing i thought is that they will have a setting to turn
| down the behind the last see through, the legibility is worse if
| you have a lot of graphics morphing wildly behind texts
| socalgal2 wrote:
| As someone who's getting old and whose eyesight is getting worse,
| this makes things strictly harder to read with lower contrast.
|
| The 4th image on the page showing "All Of Me, Nao" is really hard
| for my eyes to read. I can't read "Nao" at all if I view that
| page on my iPhone. I can only read it on my Macbook Pro on a
| large external monitor.
|
| I suppose there will be an accessibility setting to turn it off
| paradite wrote:
| I hate things that are translucent. I find them very distracting,
| and hurt my eyes.
|
| I hope Apple gives the option to turn this whole thing off.
|
| I notice the borders now also have shadows / gradients due to
| reflection, that's also something I'd like to remove personally.
| xnx wrote:
| This clearly wasn't in dogfooded long enough or the designers
| would've gotten sick of it themselves.
|
| This is the kind of design that does great in a 15 minute user
| test, but is annoying 2 months on.
| leakycap wrote:
| I agree. Apple's been down this path before... From Mac OS 10.0
| to 10.9, the march was steadily toward trimming back the
| excessive Aqua-ness.
|
| Then we went totally flat in 10.10, and it was pretty awful
| then too. I'll stay on Sequoia until Apple irons this out in
| 2-3 future macOS versions, or maybe it's finally the year of
| the linux desktop... at least in my world.
| Jordan-117 wrote:
| I hate it. The distortions and refractions of every page element
| in the UI as you scroll (including moving in the opposite
| direction) would be maddening. I really hope there will be an
| option to turn this off, or at least tone it down.
| whytaka wrote:
| I only caught a glimpse but what I saw for iOS Safari concerns
| me.
|
| The browser navigation overlaps the viewport. I wonder if this'll
| break websites/apps that anchor a menu to the bottom.
| CleverLikeAnOx wrote:
| I think iOS safari already breaks bottom bars by having phone
| controls show up when a user taps near the bottom.
| whytaka wrote:
| This is mitigated by wrapping the main scrollable content in
| a container that has height: 100dvh and overflow: auto. It
| means that phone controls are always showing but it made a
| bottom anchored menu reliably static.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Thanks, I hate it.
|
| Floating menu bars over the content at the bottom is a great way
| to make it impossible to actually use the bottom of web pages.
|
| The "liquid glass" stuff, even in their handpicked promo
| screenshots, has functionally unreadable text and illegible
| controls.
|
| The vanishing buttons are going to make app UIs even more obtuse
| and undiscoverable.
| leakycap wrote:
| With Save, Submit, Next, Continue, and other similar navigation
| at the bottom of the viewport, this is going to be very
| annoying for iPhone users
| saratogacx wrote:
| Floating widgets are endemic across all the platforms now. I
| see it on Google, MSFT, and now Apple applications. Content
| used to be king, now it is a wallpaper for the UI/UX team to
| dress as they please.
| ricokatayama wrote:
| When Apple introduced the whole skeuomorphic analogy, they did it
| because they needed to make a new way of interacting with touch-
| based apps feel tangible. That seemed totally fair.
|
| When Apple brought a spatial analogy to the Vision Pro, it also
| felt fair they were thinking in terms of volume and dimensions,
| after all, they were teaching people how to interact with a new
| reality.
|
| I can even understand Apple wanting to unify their design
| approaches, but bringing the "liquid glass" look to everything
| feels like a massive step backward. The interface looks messy,
| clunky.
|
| It feels like Apple is entering a design hell, and I don't know
| how they'll get out of it.
| asciimov wrote:
| I'm all for a new design esthetic, even if they have to iterate
| it a few times to improve usability.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > Apple introduced the whole skeuomorphic analogy
|
| IBM was doing it 10 years earlier.
| glkindlmann wrote:
| It does indeed feel like a step backward - I was also weirdly
| reminded of the Forstall skeuomorphism era of UIs.
|
| The video says: "It beautifully refracts light, and dynamically
| reacts to your movement, with specular highlights"; ugh, why?
| Why add dynamic==distracting high-frequency details that supply
| zero information?
|
| The recent super flat UI aesthetic bugged me for awhile for its
| apparent lack of affordances, but when used consistently it
| made sense. Now it seems we still get zero affordances, but
| also visual noise.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > When Apple introduced the whole skeuomorphic analogy, they
| did it because they needed to make a new way of interacting
| with touch-based apps feel tangible.
|
| Skeuomorphism was on the Apple Lisa in 1983, and they didn't
| invent it. Apple's first touch device wasn't until ten years
| later in 1993 in the Newton MessagePad. The MessagePad didn't
| really have "apps," that wasn't until like 2008 when it was
| added to the iPhone, but now we're twenty-five years after
| Apple's first usage of Skeuomorphism. The Xerox Star was in
| 1981 and had Skeuomorphic elements.
|
| So I'm not really following what you're trying to say in that
| sentance.
| beAbU wrote:
| You are right, I believe skeuomorphism was basically the
| first approach for graphical user interfaces when they came
| out. The "save" icon being a floppy disk has been around for
| literal decades.
|
| I can be argued that the Xerox Alto (1973) had skeuomorphic
| elements to it's GUI.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| You're comparing multi-touch technology to the experience of
| the MessagePad? Also, do you know a bunch of people who were
| big Xerox Starheads? It doesn't count if you don't have mass
| adoption.
|
| Likewise, I'm not really following what you're trying to say
| in that sentence.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > You're comparing multi-touch technology to the experience
| of the MessagePad?
|
| Nobody mentioned multi-touch at all. We're talking about
| Apple's first usage of skeuomorphic UI design, and or their
| first usage on a touch device in particular.
|
| > Also, do you know a bunch of people who were big Xerox
| Starheads? It doesn't count if you don't have mass
| adoption.
|
| I genuinely don't understand what you're responding to or
| trying to say. I'm not following the relevance nor what you
| mean by "count" (or not-count).
|
| I feel like you're trying to have a conversation about
| something else, but I'm really not sure what or what it is
| you thought you read.
| nottorp wrote:
| Can they fire all their designers _and_ Cook?
|
| And go back to Mac OS the most easily usable GUI?
|
| I don't want to watch Avatar XXXVI when I pick up my phone to
| check my messages.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Cook added 2 trillion (more?) in market cap.
|
| Cook stays.
| mjburgess wrote:
| He collected 2tr in rent
| dymk wrote:
| Renting out... iPhones?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I'm really showing off my age here, but it has been all down hill
| since skeuomorphic design; because the focus was primarily on
| usability and teachability as first-class concepts. Heck,
| companies were spending millions on usability research at the
| time, much of which was used.
|
| I taught people to use computers in the 90s and early 2000s, and
| having those concepts matching to real world objects helped
| immensely. Recently I had to teach my kids to use a PC (they no
| longer teach that in "computers" at school, by the way, iPads
| only), and everything was arbitrarily designed without even
| internal rules/consistency let alone building on real-world
| metaphors.
|
| You've also had this ongoing trend of content density getting
| consistency worse, and now Apple is accelerating a trend to make
| UI elements difficult to see/harm discoverability further. Liquid
| Glass is going to be a painful period, and all the clones that do
| it even worse are going to be pure hell.
| whiteboardr wrote:
| Attack of the clones, yes.
|
| Just as visual design across the majority of digital
| touchpoints seems to have arrived at a mature level, this will
| unleash a giant wave of noise including gradients on text.
|
| Brrr.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > having those concepts matching to real world objects helped
| immensely
|
| A lot of those real world objects no longer exists, or are less
| frequently used than their counterparts, so I sort of see why
| moving away from that design language makes sense.
|
| I'll hold of judgement of "Liquid Glass" until I've seen and
| used, but I don't feel like it's necessary. It's certainly not
| "the biggest" design update ever. System 9 to MacOSX was still
| greater.
|
| This isn't really Apples fault, but I also expect others to
| start implementing something similar, but badly. Apple do have
| a point that this is something that only Apple can do well,
| because you do need to ensure that hardware can keep up. We're
| going to see other attempt something similar, but it won't been
| nearly as polished.
|
| Overall I still feel that Apple is trying to force to much
| functionality into the phone platform. It would be really
| lovely to have an iOS light, that does less and with a simpler
| UI/UX.
| wavemode wrote:
| > A lot of those real world objects no longer exists, or are
| less frequently used than their counterparts, so I sort of
| see why moving away from that design language makes sense
|
| This reasoning never made a ton of sense to me. Gen Z don't
| use devices with knobs and buttons anymore, therefore we
| should all design our interface elements to look like nothing
| in particular?
|
| If you give someone young and tech savvy a digital UI, they
| will figure out how to use it. It's precisely the oldest and
| least tech savvy users for whom interface design is most
| important, as they are more like to get frustrated and quit
| your app. Why optimize for the young, then?
|
| (I mean, it's a rhetorical question, as I already know the
| answer - the designers creating the interfaces are themselves
| young and tech savvy gen-Z'ers.)
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Gen Z don't use devices with knobs and buttons anymore,
| therefore we should all design our interface elements to
| look like nothing in particular?
|
| We have volume sliders rather than knobs, because that's
| easier on a touch interface. I get your point, but does the
| button need to look like the button on the radio in our
| grandfathers car from 1960? Probably not. I was thinking
| more in terms of filling cabinets, floppies as save icons
| or even the phone as the receiver on a rotary phone. Would
| it be easier to set a timer on your phone if the UI looked
| like a kitchen egg timer? Having the email icon be a letter
| doesn't even make sense anymore. My kid has sent one letter
| ever and all the mailboxes will be removed next year. How
| does having a letter as an icon going to provide any
| meaningful frame of reference when we daily receive more
| email than we do actual letters in a year, or two, or
| three?
| wavemode wrote:
| I understand the concept that objects like letters are no
| longer used very much. My question is, what icon do you
| use instead of a letter icon, and what tangible benefit
| does it bring, given that people are already used to
| letter icons, and aren't going to be used to your new
| icon. Tangible benefit meaning "users will be able to use
| this interface more easily".
|
| Usually the reasoning just stops at "but nobody sends
| letters anymore!" without going a step further and
| justifying why that even matters.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > My question is, what icon do you use instead of a
| letter icon
|
| That is a good question. The "share" icon e.g. is
| something that has no real world equivalent, and I'd
| argue that it almost doesn't work. Technically it could
| be anything and we'd over time agree that "This thing
| means share".
|
| We're still at a point where many still understand the
| references, but over time something like the letter in
| email icons, just becomes cargo cult. Perhaps you're
| right, it doesn't matter, as long as we agree what the
| icons mean.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The "share" icon e.g. is something that has no real
| world equivalent_
|
| The New York Times uses a box wrapped up in a bow.
|
| I can't link to it because it's rendered as an in-line
| SVG, but this is HN, so picture this in your mind:
| <svg aria-hidden="true" width="19" height="19" viewBox="0
| 0 19 19"><path d="M18.04
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| al_borland wrote:
| The classic example is the save icon being a floppy disk.
| Older people understand the history, and young people
| figure it out, even if they don't know the history.
|
| Computers are full of these things though. The Shift key is
| a reference back to how typewriters worked. We didn't
| change the name of the key, because nothing physically
| shifts anymore. Most don't know what it means historically,
| but they still know what it does on their computer.
|
| I'll all for bringing skeuomorphism back.
| ben_w wrote:
| And the "upper case" vs. "lower case" distinction, even
| though we no longer use a printing press in which each
| letter is sorted into a different box, or "case",
| depending on if it's a capital or not.
|
| And we kept the letter "c", even though in English this
| is always* either pronounced like "k" or like "s", or the
| "ch" digraph. But sutsh dings go in sykles, and one day
| de English language will be simplified.
|
| * Saying "always" is a risk on a forum like this, no
| doubt there's an example I've not thought of.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The benefit of skeuomorphism was that it was _universal_.
|
| Everyone decided that "save" = "disk"
|
| Maybe a different looking disk, but still a disk.
|
| That _universality across apps_ for basic functionality
| was the biggest feature: it didn 't matter if I knew what
| a disk was or not, because I knew the disk-shaped thing
| meant save in every app.
|
| The original modern sin of UX was having the hubris to
| ditch universality because they believed whatever batshit
| they dreamed up was better enough to justify doing so.
|
| It wasn't. Arguably, it couldn't ever be.
|
| You could come up with a unique wiz-bang UX for something
| that's objectively 25% better than skeuomorphism, and it
| still wouldn't be a net improvement. _Because no user
| cares about one specific app enough to train on it._
|
| But building a hammer that looks like every other hammer
| doesn't get you on the cover of design/UX magazines...
| notjustanymike wrote:
| > Gen Z don't use devices with knobs and buttons anymore,
| therefore we should all design our interface elements to
| look like nothing in particular?
|
| Knobs work as a tactile interface that require two fingers
| minimum to rotate predictably. With digital screens we lost
| the tactile element, and mandated a new one finger (thumb)
| minimum. Interfaces had to adapt, which is why knobs were
| replaced with sliders. Changes like this happened all over
| the place; not because of "gen-Z", but because they were
| the most effective solution for the platform.
| overfeed wrote:
| > A lot of those real world objects no longer exists
|
| Yep. What would the modern equivalent of the save icon - a
| cloud or an generic IC representing the soldered-on SDD? Hard
| drives, floppies, or any other user-controlled storage
| devices are now out of fashion.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Personally I'd just make it a button that says "Save", but
| I doubt that's going to be popular.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| "Save" is 4 characters in English, but it's over twice as
| long in German (9 Characters), and even longer in French
| (11). The variable length means the UX for word-based
| buttons would need to be designed for the longest case,
| which is why we mainly see them in title bars for
| navigation, or in very sparse UI.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Especially not in non-English countries.
|
| Icons make localisation much easier. In fact flat web
| design has evolved a fairly standard set of icons for
| basic operations. Most people know what a burger menu and
| x in the top corner of a window do. Same for copy, share,
| and so on.
|
| The problem with Liquid Glass is that it's making the
| background style more important than the foreground
| content. No one cares if buttons ripple if they can't see
| what they do, because icons themselves are _less clear
| and harder to read._
|
| So I don't know what the point of this is.
|
| Unifying the look with Apple's least successful, least
| popular, most niche product seems like a bizarre
| decision. I'm guessing the plan is to start adding
| VisionPro features in other products, but without 3D
| displays the difference between 3D and 2D metaphors is
| too huge to bridge.
|
| I really liked Aqua. It was attractive and it was very
| usable.
|
| This is... I don't know. It seems like style over
| substance for the sake of it, with significant damage to
| both.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| And while we're making the button say Save, perhaps we
| could put other buttons around it that just say what they
| do. We could even group those buttons into common types
| of activities, and then hide them in some sort of flyout
| dialog until you want to actually use them. We could
| group all File activities, all activities relating to the
| View, all activities relating to getting Help. This idea
| might revolutionize computing!
| timschmidt wrote:
| USB flash drives are still quite universally used and a
| direct replacement for the floppy's functionality. I've
| seen a USB stick shaped icon used as a metaphor for saving
| in some places. But I agree with the sibling post that the
| text "save" probably has more staying power.
| rollcat wrote:
| I find it comical that macOS displays an HDD icon for
| internal storage. It's even using the "old", skeuomorphic
| art style, from before the flat design.
|
| (It also displays a CRT with a Windows 95 BSOD for Samba
| network shares, but that's 100% on purpose.)
|
| OTOH Apple's own apps haven't had a "save" button for a
| really long time now. Everything autosaves (and syncs to
| iCloud) automatically - use Undo if you need to. More
| complex apps, like Numbers, also automatically maintain a
| version history.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I've seen a few instances of an arrow pointing down into a
| box/tray. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It seems
| appropriate, but the only caveat is that a lot of
| applications already represent 'download' with a similar
| icon. I imagine some product designers would be unhappy
| with a download-looking icon representing saving to a
| location in "the cloud".
| rollcat wrote:
| > [...] this is something that only Apple can do well,
| because you do need to ensure that hardware can keep up.
|
| Yeah, about that.
|
| When iPhone SE2 was first released (April 2020), it featured
| the A13 Bionic, which was the most powerful SoC Apple has had
| at the time (to be succeeded by A14 in iPhone 12 couple
| months later), and ran iOS 13.
|
| Every succeeding iOS release, the phone felt a little more
| sluggish. Right now, by iOS 18: it sometimes takes half a
| minute to open the share sheet; misbehaving apps can make the
| phone almost too hot to touch, and can freeze the app
| switcher UI for 10+s; Safari takes 4s to "cold start" into
| about:blank; and so on. None of these are signs of CPU
| throttling, it's all just software. I almost can't wait for
| Apple to drop support for major releases - even if the
| current release is crap, the next one will be worse.
|
| I pretty much expect last year's devices to start struggling
| with this new design after 2 releases.
| sixothree wrote:
| Having lived through the whole iPhone 4 thing, I'm
| extremely hesitant to upgrade my iPhone 13 Pro here.
|
| To be clear, an irreversible update caused my iPhone 4 to
| become immediately unusable.
| zilti wrote:
| > (they no longer teach that in "computers" at school, by the
| way, iPads only)
|
| I swear, some decisionmakers deserve a brutal punch in their
| face. I don't even care anymore about being civil in such
| matters.
| acheron wrote:
| > Recently I had to teach my kids to use a PC (they no longer
| teach that in "computers" at school, by the way, iPads only)
|
| The middle school here has a "computer applications" class that
| covers all that kind of thing. Definitely not iPads only.
| pndy wrote:
| This whole flat style fever which doesn't distinguish between
| active elements and informative text allowed to spread
| darkpattern tactics which lead to deploying adverse or even
| harmful changes for users. It also contributed to nullifying
| customisation under linux - looking exactly at you adwaita.
|
| My age shows here as well and I'm not in any way excited about
| this design change at all. Suddenly Apple decided that this
| fancy acrylic glass animation for widgets, interface that says
| "look we aren't stagnant - we did something" will be enough to
| diverge attention from other problems. I sincerely doubt that
| it's gonna be.
|
| This release feels like a return to transparency trend which we
| had somewhere around Vista and initial KDE Plasma releases.
| jandrese wrote:
| IMHO skeuomorphic design had a few wins, but also plenty of
| losses. Sometimes the real world interface is just not as
| intuitive as it should have been.
|
| But I'm 100% behind you on "make buttons look like buttons" and
| "don't hide functionality behind arbitrary gestures that you
| never tell the user". UI designers may hate menus these days,
| but they were so good for letting a user browse through looking
| for the thing they want. Search boxes are a good speed
| improvement, but should never be the only interface object
| because many times the user doesn't know exactly what they're
| looking for.
|
| This is also why most voice assistants don't get used very
| much, there's no easily accessible list of phrases they know
| and they aren't smart enough to really understand what the
| person wants, so people end up using the one or two phrases
| they know the assistant can handle and forget about it
| otherwise.
| ben_w wrote:
| > This is also why most voice assistants don't get used very
| much, there's no easily accessible list of phrases they know
| and they aren't smart enough to really understand what the
| person wants, so people end up using the one or two phrases
| they know the assistant can handle and forget about it
| otherwise.
|
| Thank you for saying this, you've just made me realise they
| share all the problems of text adventures while having none
| of the excitement.
| gmueckl wrote:
| I was actually complaining about this the other day: there
| is no manual (or even a searchable database) of recognized
| commands/features. I often discover that something was
| possible with Google Assistant when the announcement comes
| that it's being removed.
| sixothree wrote:
| When you start a timer with Siri, it often announces that
| you can also tell it to stop the timer by saying stop.
| This tells me that even the most rudimentary functions of
| starting and stopping timers is not yet learned by users.
| Every time I hear that message I think of how much of a
| failure this whole thing has been.
| layer8 wrote:
| I think we need a word for "buttons look like buttons", as
| opposed to "the Contacts app looks like a real-world leather-
| cladded address book" skeuomorphism. I'm seeing
| "skeuomorphism" increasingly used for the former, where
| people mostly mean "not flat design", whereas originally it
| meant only the latter.
| seanwilson wrote:
| > I think we need a word for "buttons look like buttons",
| as opposed to "the Contacts app looks like a real-world
| leather-cladded address book" skeuomorphism.
|
| Likely related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance#
| As_perceived_action..., but it's a jargon word most tech
| people and others don't know, and it creates debates about
| what it means among those that do know it.
|
| I usually say something like it should be obvious it's
| clickable, or obvious what it does, when it comes up.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is exactly the problem with Siri - if it was _nothing_
| but a vocal command line that I had to memorize exactly how
| to talk to it, and I could find a list of commands to learn,
| it 'd be 1000x better.
| ofcrpls wrote:
| I believe that new to computing populations in developing
| countries who were also new to literacy benefited a lot because
| of the shift away from skeuomorphic design paradigms because
| those real world object choices didn't always translate.
| kstrauser wrote:
| > it has been all down hill since skeuomorphic design
|
| I strongly disagree. I don't mind if people like skeuomorphic
| graphics. Want to make the "play" button look like a 1987 tape
| deck? Not my thing, but everyone has different preferences.
| That's fine.
|
| But I loathe, detest, hate, despise, skeuomorphic user
| interfaces. Remember when Calendar.app would only let you turn
| one month page at a time because that's how desk calendars
| work? How Podcasts looked like a reel-to-reel recorder and
| waste tons of screen space? Contacts app imitating the
| limitations of a physical black book because that's how real
| books work?[0]
|
| If you like brushed metal or whatever, right on. Again, not my
| thing, but you do you! But I cannot abide the fake limitations
| that skeuomorphic design pushed onto software in the name of
| making apps work just like their physical equivalents. The UI
| on the magic boxes we're typing this on are limited only by our
| creativity. Please, _please_ don 't infect them with the real
| world's restrictions when it's not necessary!
|
| [0] https://www.betalogue.com/2012/01/15/abook6-dumb/
| tengbretson wrote:
| > and all the clones that do it even worse are going to be pure
| hell.
|
| This is my #1 take-away from this. At this point it seems
| pretty safe to assume that interfaces made by Apple will
| probably still be decent, in spite of this design philosophy.
|
| The clones, however, are going going to take accessiblity to
| new lows.
| pier25 wrote:
| I like it _a priori_. Let 's see how it holds up in practice.
| dimal wrote:
| Oh no. It looks like every button and menu is now a translucent
| layer, so that any noise from the background shows through and
| muddles the text. This seems like an accessibility nightmare.
|
| Translucent layers generally make software unusable for me. In
| the video, I saw several instances that would be really really
| bad for me, where I'd be straining to understand the text. Looks
| really cool and futuristic though. Just like a movie. Big whoop.
|
| I'm autistic, but this won't only affect autistic people. A lot
| of people are going to have problems with this. I hope there's a
| very prominent way to turn it off.
| moralestapia wrote:
| I'm not autistic and I don't like this upgrade, at all.
|
| It looks so tacky.
| coastalpuma wrote:
| I agree, I think it extends to anybody who wants a calmer
| experience or has vision trouble or strain. I guess you can
| turn those options off but if the aesthetic appeal of the
| design is based on them then I assume we'll be getting a
| second-class version of it. I was already leaning towards
| switching to Linux for other reasons but I think this is the
| thing that finally pushes me there. I think optimizing for
| VisionOS is quite a bad idea from a UX POV, since they're two
| entirely different usecases. With augmented reality you need
| and want to see things in the background, whereas on other
| devices you don't. It's a fairly fundamental difference, and
| it's sad that they chose to go this way in my opinion.
| coastalpuma wrote:
| This is an existing and somewhat nitpicky issue, but it's
| also annoying how they specifically insist on rounded corners
| "because that matches all modern devices" in the
| announcement. Pretty much all third party external monitors
| don't, and even their latest top line laptops only have them
| at the top of the screen. So we're stuck with these dumb
| little triangles of background peeking out. It's kind of the
| "charging port on the bottom of the magic mouse" of MacOS.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You know something that almost never has rounded corners?
| Glass.
| vel0city wrote:
| I have several objects on my desk made of glass with
| rounded corners. The glass lunch container I ate out of a
| little bit ago. A squircle glass bowl on my desk holding
| various nicknacks. The glass on the front of my phone.
| The glass I'm drinking out of right now has rounded
| corners. I used to have a kitchen table that had the top
| as one giant sheet of glass as a square with rounded
| corners. The windows in my car have some corners rounded.
| Tons of glass things have rounded corners.
| tshaddox wrote:
| And don't forget eyeglasses, which are named for the fact
| that they are made of glass, and which very often have
| rounded corners.
| vel0city wrote:
| Here I was looking through them and not even thinking
| about them. Yes!
| carlosjobim wrote:
| No you don't.
|
| Just kidding: Yeah, it's just that when I think about a
| digital glass effect it feels more right with square
| corners than rounded corners. Because glass windows which
| we look through usually have square corners. Says I, who
| spend most of my time looking through a curved motorcycle
| helmet visor.
| roguetoasterer wrote:
| The fate of all perfectly squared glass sheets is to
| become quite round if you get them hot enough. If you get
| a moment, try looking up glass fusing. It is admittedly a
| niche hobby, but it's pretty interesting what starts
| happening when you apply a little heat.
| shakna wrote:
| Rounded corners is easier than straight. When you work
| glass, its usually somewhere between a liquid and non-
| Newtonian fluid. Molding it into round frames is trivial.
|
| That's why we have round glass coasters, round lenses,
| round glasses for drinking, etc.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Almost every common glass object I can think of has
| rounded corners. The only obvious exception is most
| household window panes. I have to think pretty hard to
| come up with another one...maybe aquarium tanks? Some
| mirrors and glass tables, although the images that comes
| to mind for those are just as likely to be round as
| square.
|
| I'm very curious which items you went through before
| concluding that glass _almost never_ has rounded corners.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I should have specified glass panels/panes, specifically
| windows and mirrors, which you mention.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| if you're switching to linux what device are you considering
| getting?
| armchairhacker wrote:
| "Turning off" could just put solid light/dark under the
| glass. That would be decent-looking (not much different than
| before), accessible, and easy to implement.
| jorvi wrote:
| To me it looks plain ugly, especially with all the bounces
| and transforms. Look at those sliders and toggles..
|
| It's straight from the 2000s, with Linux users using Compiz
| and... Amethyst(?), stuffing their entire desktop full with
| gaudy transparency, transforms, jiggles and bounces.
|
| More of a nit, but the sentence The new
| design extends across iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26,
| watchOS 26, and tvOS 26 to establish even more harmony
|
| is so ironic and funny. No one noticed how talking about
| "harmony" whilst having one single platform use a codename
| next to the version number just screams inattention to
| detail?
| rafram wrote:
| They switched the positions of the codename and version
| this time (macOS 15 Sequoia to macOS Tahoe 26). I'd give it
| one more version cycle until the codenames go away.
| bsder wrote:
| > I think optimizing for VisionOS
|
| Yeah, this really looks like an Apple temper tantrum of
| "Nobody wants to program for the Vision Pro? Fine. We'll
| _MAKE_ you program the iPhone like the Vision Pro. Take that
| developers. Now get back to doing our job for us, you lazy
| slobs. "
| basisword wrote:
| Apple takes accessibility more seriously than most. I would be
| shocked if there isn't a setting to instantly remedy this for
| people with any sort of vision issue.
| rpgbr wrote:
| I bet there will be, but let not dismiss that good
| accessibility is when the UI is readable/accessible by
| default.
|
| Anyway, I also bet they will tone this transparency stuff
| down a lot in the betas leading to the stable version in
| September. iOS 7 all over again...
| landl0rd wrote:
| Let's also not ignore that, whether apple has actually
| achieved this or not, the highly-accessible version of
| something necessarily excludes many design idioms and
| either looks worse or relegates one to a limited range of
| creative expression. As such, most designers will not want
| to design for that by default.
| TylerE wrote:
| In some ways. But they have many failings. It's completely
| Impossibly to make the gui larger, for instance.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Not so.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/zoom-in-
| iph3e2e367e/i...
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/customize-the-text-
| si...
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I'd bet there's a toggle that dramatically increases opacity or
| eliminates transparency entirely while keeping the shading and
| gloss. If it exists I'm sure it'll be popular.
| burntalmonds wrote:
| I'm hoping that's true and there's still an option for a
| flat, minimal look.
| dylan604 wrote:
| so all they had to do to get people to quit bitching about
| the flat look was to introduce the translucent look!
|
| updating ticket to closed
| layer8 wrote:
| Probably, but they tend to also make for an ugly look, like
| the "Increase Contrast" setting in iOS. The other way around
| would be better: Have an accessible down-to-earth default,
| and a secondary "fancy visuals" mode for those who want that.
| brookst wrote:
| I have no complaints with the UI settings I use on iOS:
| reduce motion, reduce transparency, differentiate without
| color.
|
| Given the huge change and sensitivity to accessibility I'm
| going to guess the opposite -- it will be designed to look
| nice without transparency.
| vFunct wrote:
| They say the text color adapts to the background based on
| contrast.
|
| I'm just wondering if Apple is going to make matching CSS
| updates in Safari so web app developers have matching visuals.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'm just wondering if Apple is going to make matching CSS
| updates in Safari so web app developers have matching
| visuals._ color: contrast-
| color(rebeccapurple);
|
| https://webkit.org/blog/16929/contrast-color/
| andrepd wrote:
| It is, once again, designing interfaces based on "vibes"
| instead of science or principles or used feedback, optimising
| for looking good on screenshots and marketing materials and not
| for actual usability or user friendly was. With "vibes" here
| standing for whatever some SV asshole thinks it's cool and
| modern.
|
| Alegria, flat design, pastel colors, or unholy amounts of
| whitespace. It's been the story of the last 15 years of UI
| design at least.
| nlarew wrote:
| Do you really think that Apple, of all companies, did a
| cross-platform UI refresh based entirely on vibes without
| considering user taste, usability, accessibility, etc?
|
| You've already judged the system as only good for "looking
| good on screenshots and marketing materials" when you haven't
| even seen anything other than the announcement.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Do you really think that Apple, of all companies, did a
| cross-platform UI refresh based entirely on vibes without
| considering user taste, usability, accessibility, etc?
|
| We are talking about the same company that to make a the
| MCP a little bit thinner released that crap with only two
| USBC ports, forcing everyone to carry fucking dongles
| everywhere.
|
| And let's not forget that awful butterfly keyboard.
|
| So much usability, so much accessibility. No vibes, no sir.
| nlarew wrote:
| Perhaps they learned something from that? Look at modern
| MBP models which have MagSafe, HDMI, and SD card slots.
| skyyler wrote:
| I think the implication was that if they went on anything
| but vibes, they would have never removed MagSafe, HDMI,
| or SD card slots.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Mr. Vibe works for OpenAI now.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Mr. Vibe wasn't the issue. Tim Apple was the one who gave
| his leash infinite slack, and he's still there calling
| the shots. Probably conferring equally stupid protections
| onto whoever replaced Ive internally.
|
| Lord only knows Altman is probably doting on him in the
| same way. This industry just never learns.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Are you telling me that the trillion dollar company had
| to actually release a laptop with only two USBC ports to
| "learn" that people need more ports on a laptop? And you
| do that on a straight face on a sequence where it was
| claimed that they carefully consider usability and
| accessibility?
|
| And yes, I am aware those silly toy computers have a
| couple more ports nowadays, I have to use that on a daily
| basis for work.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I think you're holding it wrong
| ben_w wrote:
| > Do you really think that Apple, of all companies, did a
| cross-platform UI refresh based entirely on vibes without
| considering user taste, usability, accessibility, etc?
|
| Yes, I think they would do that.
|
| Lots of historical examples of Apple making weird design
| choices for decades now. I'm old enough to remember the
| hockey-puck mouse on the original iMac.
|
| Also, here's a list of bugs I've personally observed over
| just the last two months: https://gist.github.com/BenWheatl
| ey/29a3c22203d90ae80465cdb1...
|
| 3.3 trillion dollar market cap, and the *clipboard* is no
| longer reliable. The mail badge is an unreliable count. The
| wallpaper sometimes disappears. The alarms don't play out
| of whatever speaker or headphones you're using for all your
| other audio.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Of course they would. Have you used Sequoia? It's a hot
| dumpster fire that's caused me unending frustration with
| how they've broken the bluetooth and networking stack,
| introduced unprecedented instability (anyone else's
| macbooks suddenly crashing and restarting _while the lid is
| closed and it 's in sleep mode?_) and a host of other
| issues. Apples has been taking one step forward and two
| steps back with their software and design for a long time,
| and they have increasingly preferred form over function,
| and hidden, obtuse UX.
|
| If their hardware wasn't so damn good for my professional
| work, I wouldn't go near this child slavery enabling
| shitshow of a corporation. I don't know if I've ever felt
| as trivialized or patronized as watching someone in formal
| dress talk to me about how many new ways I can express
| myself to my friends via emoji or whatever else as I have
| when watching Apple keynotes. It feels like they've tried
| to commoditize interaction even more than Meta. It all
| feels so hollow. You can tell Steve is gone.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > Do you really think that Apple, of all companies, did a
| cross-platform UI refresh based entirely on vibes without
| considering user taste, usability, accessibility, etc?
|
| Yes, and where have you been for the last two decades? :)
| The last time Apple did actual UX research must have been
| in the late 1990s.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > , designing interfaces based on "vibes" instead of science
| or principles or used feedback
|
| Well, this is what Apple does, and the reason I hate their
| devices with a passion. It always was style over substance.
| yuehhangalt wrote:
| You must be too young to remember because a lot of the
| early user interface design principles, based on actual
| research, were pioneered by Bruce Tognazzini and Jef Raskin
| at Apple. Tog on Interface and Tog on Software Design were
| THE bibles back in the day and Apple's Human Interface
| Guidelines showed how a company could and should adopt
| consistent user experience across all of their products.
|
| It honestly saddens me how far Apple has fallen.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > You must be too young to remember
|
| Hopefully. I wouldn't mind being young. I am also not a
| designer, so UI/UX history may be lost on me.
|
| I can only say that the only Apple product I genuinely
| enjoyed from a design perspective was the iPod Nano I
| bought sometime in early 2000s.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I feel the same way about Google's design and development
| principles. What the fuck happened?
| Due_Winter_5330 wrote:
| You mean how they heavily researched their latest
| redesign of Android?
| https://design.google/library/expressive-material-design-
| goo...
| mikelevins wrote:
| And Larry Tesler, who was a particular champion of
| usability testing and important in the development of the
| Human Interface Group. Larry cared a lot about usability.
|
| When I was at NeXT, Steve Jobs told me that if it was up
| to him, Apple would get rid of the Human Interface Group.
| (Steve was rather hostile to Larry.)
|
| Later, when it was up to Steve, he did exactly what he
| said: he got rid of HIG.
|
| I think it's easier to sell visual design than it is to
| sell usability because people see visual design
| immediately, but it takes time and experience to see and
| understand usability (and some users never seem to
| consciously notice it at all).
| linguae wrote:
| I had no idea Steve Jobs felt that way about Larry
| Tesler. There were so many great UI experts at Apple,
| like Larry Tesler, Bruce Tognazzini, and Don Norman.
| While I love Mac OS X for its stability and its Unix
| support, I prefer the interface of the classic Mac OS,
| and it seemed to me that many third-party applications of
| the era were even more compliant with Apple's human
| interface guidelines compared to later eras.
|
| A dream desktop OS for me would be something with a
| classic Mac interface and with conformity to the Apple
| human interface guidelines of the 1990s, but with Lisp-
| or Smalltalk-like underpinnings to support component-
| based software. It would be the ultimate alternate
| universe Mac OS, the marriage of Smalltalk (with Lisp
| machine influence) with Macintosh innovations. Of course,
| there were many projects at Apple during the 80s and 90s
| that could've led to such a system.
|
| Now that I'm a community college professor, I have more
| free time in the summer months for side projects...
| username223 wrote:
| > It honestly saddens me how far Apple has fallen.
|
| Same. For just one example, consider how submenus work.
| You don't notice when they're done right, but when
| they're done poorly, they will disappear when you try to
| choose a submenu item, or stick around when you expect
| them to go away. Getting them right is subtle; Apple got
| them right, and plenty of web pages still get them wrong.
|
| That's interface design. Flashy translucency effects are
| something else.
| rollcat wrote:
| macOS (I'm still on Sonoma tho): System Settings ->
| Accessibility -> Display -> Reduce Transparency. (I also
| recommend Reduce Motion, but YMMV - some animations are really
| helpful.)
|
| iOS: Settings -> Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> Reduce
| Transparency.
|
| You're welcome.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Yeah I'm pretty sure that setting has been there since
| Yosemite. That was the version that first prominently
| featured blurred translucency. (The transparency in earlier
| versions like Mavericks was really subtle and would not need
| such a setting: see for yourself in this image found by
| Googling https://i0.wp.com/morrick.me/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/02/001-....)
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| You can also disable animations on iOS.
|
| When switching between screens, there's just a long pause
| instead of the animation. These pauses drive me crazy, it's
| simply not possible to configure the device to be responsive.
| rollcat wrote:
| macOS is awful in so many places. I would prefer if they
| had an option to disable only _some_ of the animations.
| "Show Desktop" is so sudden and zoomy I almost get motion
| sickness, but Mission Control is more subtle and really
| helps me figure out which window is which.
|
| My strategy for multiple desktops is to not use them at
| all. But I'm enjoying the comfort of a 43" screen, so all
| the windows I need just fit.
|
| IMHO iOS strikes an almost perfect balance. It animates
| things in response to continuous drag gestures
| (notification centre, app switching), but almost nothing
| else. Maybe macOS could take a page from that book? E.g.
| dragging the menu bar; the animation plays out in direct
| response to user action.
| majewsky wrote:
| I'm just as annoyed by this, but from what I understand,
| the animations are used to hide loading times, so the delay
| is not optional.
| robocat wrote:
| Thanks.
|
| Transparency confuses me regularly - and I then waste cycles
| trying to understand why a particular heading has a strange
| colour before I work out it is bleeding through from some
| unobvious background thing.
| matja wrote:
| Going from the ratio of adjectives on the page, it is 2.5 times
| less functional than beautiful.
| austinl wrote:
| This is also likely a performance nightmare. Funny that they
| mention that "new hardware has enabled us to..." which means
| that this will perform poorly on old devices.
|
| At a previous company, we were forbidden from using
| translucency (with a few exceptions) because of the performance
| cost of blending. There are debugging tools we'd use fairly
| often to confirm that all layers were opaque.
| c-hendricks wrote:
| These transparency effects have been in macOS, ipadOS, iOS,
| and tvOS for years though?
| landl0rd wrote:
| There's a difference between something like a transparent
| background (you can run i3/picom on a potato) and having to
| composite many little UI elements to render a frame.
| gmueckl wrote:
| I can think of a couple of creative ways to dramatically
| optimize rendering of these effects. There is probably
| quite some batching and reordering possible without
| affecting correctness.
| landl0rd wrote:
| Ceteris paribus your performance is always going to be
| substantially worse even with tons of fancy tricks. Those
| also get much harder to implement when you're building a
| complete UI toolkit that has to support a ton of stuff
| rather than just writing first-party apps/OS components.
| gmueckl wrote:
| I think that the batching that I have in mind would work
| especially well with complex layouts. The thing to
| realize is that even if you have tons of elements on a
| screen, their visual components aren't actually stacked
| deeply in most cases and the type and order of applied
| effects is quite similar for large groups of elements.
| This allows for pretty effective per-level batching in
| hierarchies, even if elements don't have the same
| parents.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| "ceteris paribus" - "all else equal"
| slt2021 wrote:
| these performance hungry "improvements" are forcefully
| introduced to legitimately slow down older devices and force
| the device refresh across the user base.
|
| I have been using 8 year old iPhone just fine, but features
| like these over time will make the experience slower and
| slower and slower, until I am forced to refresh my iphone
| mikestew wrote:
| And you base your first sentence on...? Surely not the ol'
| "my phone slows down when my battery is failing so that
| I'll buy a new phone" canard?
|
| To be clear, these are new features that will likely have a
| setting to turn off. There's no conspiracy, nothing
| "forcefully" added for the purpose of driving upgrades.
| (Ah, ninja edit): There's not even a guarantee these
| features will be supported on an eight year old phone.
| EDIT: wait a minute...your eight year old phone won't even
| be supported.
|
| (EDIT: reworded first paragraph to account for the ninja
| edit.)
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| What's the exact canard here?
|
| It's a legitimate concern even assuming good intent.
|
| But Apple has had to publicly admit bad intent
| specifically with their batteries and had to offer people
| money etc.
|
| Strange to criticize people for something Apple publicly
| admitted they did wrong.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Apple publicly admitted they did wrong._
|
| When is the last time a company has admitted wrong-doing?
| No, Apple admitted to slowing down phones when the
| battery was shot so it wouldn't just suddenly shut down.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate
| slt2021 wrote:
| the solution to old battery is $15 replacement battery,
| not the $1500 replacement iPhone.
|
| which I am doing exactly, but still new iOS version make
| my phone slower and slower and I cannot even opt out of
| updates.
|
| because some apps are forcing me to use the latest
| version of iOS (Authentication, Okta 2fa, etc)
| sanswork wrote:
| You can opt out of updates by not using new software. You
| want the best of both worlds.
| slt2021 wrote:
| the software forces me to update
| nerdsniper wrote:
| I adamantly believe this was the right call for Apple to
| make. I frequently switch between Apple and Android
| phones across different generations. At the time I had an
| aging flagship Samsung that did NOT do this. My battery
| indicator would say "18%" and it would last however long
| that implies...if I didn't do anything remotely CPU-
| intensive. If I did anything that boosted the CPU, the
| current draw caused the battery voltage to fall off a
| cliff and the phone would instantly shut down without
| warning.
|
| The worst part was that during the boot sequence, the CPU
| ran at full-throttle for a few moments until the power-
| management components were loaded. So I couldn't restart
| it. As long as I didn't open a game or YouTube or a wonky
| website with super awful javascript, I could continue
| using the phone for another couple hours. But if the
| phone turned off, it couldn't be turned back on without
| charging it more ... even though it had "18%" battery
| left (as determined by voltage, not taking into account
| increased internal resistance in the battery as it ages).
|
| I was envious of iPhone users that got a real fix for
| this (Apple slowing down the phone when the internal
| voltage got low). I would have greatly preferred that
| Samsung had done the same for my phone too.
| DecentShoes wrote:
| That was fake, tho. They slowed down old iPhones to make
| you buy a new one. My iPhone 7 wasn't auto shutting down,
| battery health was good, but they still made it so slow
| it was unusable the same week they released the iPhone X.
|
| There is literally a zero percent chance it was anything
| to do with batteries. This is not a conspiracy theory.
| It's an objective fact.
| sanswork wrote:
| They didn't admit bad intent. They admitted to doing
| something with good intent(the slowing was to stop
| crashes with near EOL batteries) but that they weren't
| transparent about it.
|
| I'd much rather us have progress and people with 8 year
| old phones suffer than ensure that everything continues
| to run smoothly on any old device for eternity.
| skywhopper wrote:
| Disagree. I much preferred my phone running slightly
| slower to shutting down randomly. Maybe that's just me.
| DecentShoes wrote:
| So why did they slow down iPhones that weren't shutting
| down randomly?
| sanswork wrote:
| In the late 90s/early 2000s desktop computing was moving at
| such a pace that an 8 year old PC was near unusable.
| Overtime progress slowed and its not unusual to have a
| decade old desktop now. The problem is thinking that mobile
| has slowed that much too. Mobile is still progressing quite
| rapidly so yeah an almost decade old device is going to
| feel slow.
|
| You have what an iPhone 6? 1GB of RAM vs 8GB for modern
| devices, the first A chip came out 2 generations after
| yours as has 2% of the power of a current chip so modern
| chips are likely close to 100x as powerful as your phone.
|
| Why should we hold back software to support extreme
| outliers like you?
| slt2021 wrote:
| I am totally fine if I stop getting software updates. In
| general I prefer not to update software either, because
| every new version brings only bloat
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Why should we hold back software to support extreme
| outliers like you?
|
| What are apps and mobile sites doing differently today
| besides loading up unnecessary animations and user
| tracking? How has user experience improved for those
| operating on devices fast enough to make up for developer
| laziness?
| sanswork wrote:
| Games are dramatically bigger in scale and graphics
| quality.
|
| I can now do on-device transcription without issue,
| security improvements at the chip level, HD graphics for
| video streaming, etc.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Windows 10 keeps telling me I need to buy a new Desktop
| in October. I don't remember when I bought it, but it
| runs fine for everything I do. I've been running Linux
| for ages on my laptops, I be upgrading my desktop to
| Linux too!
| sanswork wrote:
| Windows 10 is EOL. As a fellow internet user I'm glad
| Microsoft is taking a harder line these days on people
| running EOL software. The internet has a history of being
| swamped by people running EOL versions of Windows full of
| security issues causing problems for everyone else.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I think probably a much bigger problem is app bloat. Devs
| are usually using very recent if not brand new top end
| devices to test and develop against which naturally makes
| several types of performance degradation invisible to them
| ("works on my machine"). Users on old and/or low end
| devices on the other hand feel _all_ of those degradations.
|
| If we want to take increasing device lifetimes seriously we
| need to normalize testing and development against slow/old
| models. Even if such testing is automated, it'd do wonders
| for keeping bloat at bay.
| dmix wrote:
| No matter what happens in the world someone will blame it
| on a top down conspiracy decided in some smoke filled back
| room.
| slt2021 wrote:
| if conspiracy makes hundreds of billions $$$ then nothing
| stops people really.
|
| like Charlie Munger have said: "Show me the incentives
| and I will tell you the outcome"
| whynotminot wrote:
| I don't think your overall take is wrong (it's about
| money), but maybe the simplicity of it is.
|
| Reality is that designers, product managers, engineers --
| they all wanna build cool things, get promoted, make
| money etc.
|
| You don't do that by shipping plain designs, no matter
| how tried and true. The pressure to create something new
| and interesting is ever present. And look we have these
| powerful Apple silicon chips that can capably render
| these neat effects.
|
| So no I don't think it's a shadowy conspiracy to come
| after your iPhone 8. Just the regular pressure of
| everyday men and women to build new and interesting
| things that will bring success.
| DecentShoes wrote:
| But this one is true. Apple obviously puts out slowdown
| updates right as they release a new phone. They made my
| iPhone 7 unusable the same week they released the iPhone
| X.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Modern iOS and Mac devices have plenty of GPU power for a
| shader effect. They already do one with the translucent blue.
| Macha wrote:
| Meh, Vista laptops could run lots of translucency fine (well
| as long as they were actualy Vista era laptops and not just
| XP era laptops with Vista installed)
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's almost like they said the same thing: Funny that they
| mention that "new hardware has enabled us to..."
|
| oh wait. it's not like they did. they did say it.
| slt2021 wrote:
| you just proved that MSFT released slow OS to force people
| refresh hardware.
|
| Plus, vista was released in 2007, XP SP2 (the most popular
| version) was in 2004. so its like ~3 years diff. So its not
| like hardware has progressed in 3 years, its more like new
| software got significantly slower
| nikeee wrote:
| > Wirth's law is an adage on computer performance which
| states that software is getting slower more rapidly than
| hardware is becoming faster.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law
| jmrm wrote:
| I think brand most recent iPhones are ridiculously powerful
| for their average use, so I don't think this would be an
| issue.
|
| For older models, on the other hand, it would be an issue,
| and will put pressure to people to buy a new one.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Windows Vista introduced this same concept. Performance was
| awful unless you had compatible graphics acceleration. 20
| years later, I think most devices should be fine, especially
| Apple devices.
| chasil wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Unlikely. Frosted glass blur was introduced almost twelve
| years ago in iOS 7, and was supported all the way down to the
| iPhone 4. Many apps like control center have used a full
| screen blur without any performance issues for a long time.
|
| Apple at the time created their own 'approximate gaussian
| blur' algorithm specifically to enable this, and it ran crazy
| fast on devices where a simple gaussian blur would barely
| achieve double digit FPS. Even if this 'liquid glass' effect
| is heavier to compute, on the hardware we have today it will
| be a negligible performance concern.
| mholt wrote:
| This isn't just a gaussian blur though, there's raytracing
| and refractions happening. The OS is becoming a low-key
| high-fidelity video game.
| gfody wrote:
| it looks like old school 2D bumpmapping to me, it's not
| expensive if you don't overengineer it
| seemack wrote:
| From what I've seen,the refractions happen in predictable
| contexts so I suspect that they'll be able to create
| shaders, etc that will limit the performance hit
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| "Supported" and "works well" ain't the same. Do you
| remember how your iPhone 4 crawled when that effect was
| enabled?
| DecentShoes wrote:
| iOS 7 made the iPhone 4 practically unusable.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > Funny that they mention that "new hardware has enabled us
| to..." which means that this will perform poorly on old
| devices.
|
| They're going to backport this? I seriously doubt it.
| abhinavk wrote:
| It runs on iPhone 11 and later.
| RollingRo11 wrote:
| Currently replying from my iPhone 16 pro (granted, not old by
| any means) on the iOS 26 dev beta. MOST things actually feel
| smoother/snappier than iOS 18. Safari is a joy to use from a
| performance perspective.
|
| It's in beta so ofc I'm getting a ton of frame hitches,
| overheating, etc. but my summarized initial thoughts are
| "it'll take some getting used to, but it feels pretty fast"
| dmix wrote:
| > MOST things actually feel smoother/snappier than iOS 18
|
| I have a feeling the whole smooth animations thing
| contributes to this a lot. Obsessing about the reaction
| time and feeling of how stuff comes on the screen. But yeah
| iPhone 16 pro is probably a bad performance test case
| whynotminot wrote:
| Real test probably iPhone 12 Pro. Anecdotally, I still
| see a tonnn of those in the wild.
| raydev wrote:
| > this will perform poorly on old devices
|
| I don't know how long you've been following Apple but with
| previous "high cost on old hardware" features they just
| disabled them for old hardware.
|
| Apple loves their battery life numbers, they won't
| purposefully ship a UI feature that meaningfully reduces
| them. Now bugs that _drop_ framerates and cause hangs, they
| love shipping those.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| Not autistic, but this is just so weird.
|
| Why would you design readability and visibility to depend on
| chaotic, highly varied and probably sometimes bad underlying
| backgrounds?
|
| I fail to see any systematic approach/ consistent design
| language at play here.
|
| Let's hope this does not survive for long.
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| What does autism have to do with it?
| thenaturalist wrote:
| Check the parent comment.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| I've noticed a recurring theme on iOS where interactions
| intended for an app get trapped by the OS (especially multi-
| window interactions on iPad). The OS is less and less a
| foundation to support what you actually want, and more the
| product itself. If the actual content of the phones matters
| less than the fact that iOS itself is "the latest" then this
| makes perfect sense and is in line with the general momentum
| over the past several years.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| Fully agree with your sentiment, and it was kinda sad to
| see the demo going there.
|
| "And this is how easy I can replace this custom component
| with a new glass component...".
|
| The whole thing is just wild.
|
| There was plenty of UX enhancements which looked solid, but
| just for them to be paired with a design choice of N=1
| elements is... well let's see if it pays off I guess?
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I'd argue that it doesn't even look that cool or futuristic.
| Kind of looks like Windows 7.
|
| That said, Windows 7 had an option to turn off all the
| translucency, so hopefully Apple ripped that idea, too.
| iaaan wrote:
| Completely agree, takes me back to the days of Compiz Fusion,
| wavy windows and fire trails.
| kmfrk wrote:
| Ever since we didn't use bolder text for bright text on dark
| backgrounds (dark mode) to keep with typographical principles,
| it looks like we're doubling down on the readability sins.
|
| Surely anyone who's fiddled with the caption background opacity
| on their TV or video player knows this is a mess?
|
| Would have been nice for someone to explain why we're getting
| Windows Aero[1] for main content and not just bezels.
|
| I don't think this design language is mutually exclusive with
| readability, it actually looks really cool in many ways; I just
| can't fathom why the examples in the presentation seemed good
| enough to show.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| I'm bothered by how swaywm leaks the background into
| transparent gaps in windows, but I should be thankful tbf--
| macOS is just another level of nightmare entirely.
| camillomiller wrote:
| they will not. Apple has accessibility features for all of the
| use cases and surely for this as well.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| There is a 'Reduced transparency' mode which you can enable in
| system settings. Safe to assume this will still exist in the
| new OS versions.
|
| This will be a massive improvement in usability over flat
| design, which made UIs only learnable by trial and error.
| layer8 wrote:
| I don't see a lot changing about the problem of labels and
| active controls still being hard to distinguish, and the
| like.
| theodric wrote:
| I'm sure they will continue to allow disabling transparency in
| accessibility settings, given that the current OS version has
| transparency throughout which can already be so disabled.
| highwaylights wrote:
| Ironic that it's the 20th anniversary of this other design
| masterpiece:
|
| https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Scree...
|
| I don't know that a redesign was called for at all. I guess
| they needed to show something if Siri still isn't ready, but
| this is just not it.
|
| I'd have personally hoped for them to beef up iCloud+ but I
| know it doesn't sell devices to the general user.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > I guess they needed to show something if Siri still isn't
| ready, but this is just not it.
|
| This certainly is not that. Like it or not, a huge multi-OS
| redesign is not something you rush out for a keynote because
| your first choice didn't pan out at the last minute.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Their existing glass effect is distracting enough.
| lbotos wrote:
| iOS currently has "Reduce Transparency" in Accessibility
| settings. I suspect they will have some sort of similar feature
| across devices. What will it look like... that's the real
| question.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I think it's going to look alright on iOS/iPadOS where apps are
| inherently full-screen and the "background images" are really
| "foreground content" where you do kind of want the controls to
| "recede".
|
| On the other hand, I can already tell I'm going to despise this
| on macOS. I always work with windows maximized on my laptop,
| because I just want to concentrate on the document I'm editing,
| or code I'm writing, and have maximum space for that. And the
| past couple of versions of macOS by default make your menu bar
| a weird pale purple or pink or green that is _hugely_
| distracting because it 's a blurred image of your desktop.
| Fortunately you can turn that off with the "Reduce
| Transparency" accessibility option, which I do.
|
| But the idea that people using Macs want to always being seeing
| some colorful desktop image around the edges and at the top
| just seems bizarre to me. iPhones and iPads are more for
| consuming, so this makes more sense. And _within_ apps on Macs
| this seems like it 'll be fine. But I hate that it doesn't seem
| designed to let me "tune out" the desktop image while I use an
| app. It's taking existing translucency and just making it
| worse...
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| So change the background to solid color then.
|
| I used to like solid background, but lately screens got so good
| that it makes sense to put something up.
| treetalker wrote:
| It's not a layer ... it's a _new material_
| charamis wrote:
| Really wish that this sets a trend like iOS 7 did and move
| forward from this bland flat design that exists everywhere
| ksec wrote:
| It seems the "Universal Design" across platforms was the _only_
| thing new in this WWDC. There are lots of little Apple
| Intelligence _features_ sprinkled everywhere, but most of them
| dont interest me.
|
| I guess we will have to wait for State of Union.
| nytesky wrote:
| I like the clear transparent apps and widgets. I feel like that's
| less stimulating like running my phone on grayscale. Mostly just
| a pretty picture with tools if I seek them out.
| pfortuny wrote:
| What is the purpose of the windshield in a car?
|
| What is the purpose of text in a screen?
|
| Does something really help that purpose? Anything that does not
| is WRONG.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| This is essentially Microsoft's Fluent UI [0], right down to the
| translucent glass rectangular prisms (not to say that there
| haven't been glassmorphic UI systems since forever, including
| Apple's own Aqua).
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/@microsoftdesign/videos
| koiueo wrote:
| You people are funny, trying to reason about readability and
| distractions. Go drink your americanos in your skinny jeans (or
| whatever is the most recent thing falling out of fashion in favor
| of the next big thing).
|
| Apple products are gonna be perceived as the icon of the beauty
| and usability regardless of the actual qualities. Be sure, Xiaomi
| and Huawei (and probably even Samsung) will try mimicking the
| newest Apple design language. Like it was before with crippled
| keyboards, enormous touchpads, glossy reflective screens,
| notches, etc..
| dogleash wrote:
| > Apple products are gonna be perceived as the icon of the
| beauty and usability regardless of the actual qualities.
|
| ofc. but people don't like it when you say the quiet part out
| loud.
| julienfr112 wrote:
| something funny would be a kind of Erotic sake cups, when a safe
| image reveal something completely different when transformed by
| the the glass upon it.
| hotmeals wrote:
| Only Apple could call an Aero-esque water based design "Liquid
| Glass".
| quyleanh wrote:
| More distractions, making the text difficult to read, and
| increased resource consumption from rendering these unnecessary
| animations.
| clueless wrote:
| so let's use up those extra CPU cycles and update the UI to slow
| everything down again.
| plainOldText wrote:
| This looks horrible to be honest.
|
| This new liquid glass will lead to liquid brain, because my brain
| will be melting trying to process all that visual mess daily.
|
| Now of course, I'll have to experience this new design in
| practice to be sure, but judging from the screenshots it looks
| really hard on the eyes. Hopefully they'll allow the translucency
| to be customized.
|
| Apple had a good run, I've genuinely enjoyed using their
| platforms daily, but I'm afraid they're dropping the ball now.
|
| I guess on a long enough timeline, every company is bound to
| disappoint. It's hard to get it right, consistently.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I agree that it seems to be a move toward lower contrast. I
| prefer higher contrast.
| vFunct wrote:
| I like it a lot. Reminds me of the OG Mac OS X Aqua theme,
| except a more reactive/dynamic version of it to account for
| accessibility.
|
| Refreshing counter to the brutalist styles that were trending.
| The problem with brutalist styles is that they tend to be busy,
| which becomes confusing and unintuitive to new users.
|
| This seems like it would help separate elements for easier
| focus, to make things more obvious.
| yuehhangalt wrote:
| Apple learned a lot of lessons with Aqua and eventually
| dialed back the translucency. Unfortunately, they seem to
| have forgotten those lessons.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Reminds me of the OG Mac OS X Aqua theme
|
| What I find surreal is that most comments are exactly like
| those back in the day, too! (Pinstripes, what were they
| thinking? Glossiness is distracting! Where's my platinum?
| This is a stupid toy!)
|
| Anyway, this will be refined and fine tuned and we will all
| be fine.
| pzo wrote:
| Same. I was kind of slowly preparing myself that I might be
| switching to android and it seems this might be the final
| straw. Will wait until Sept to see how new iphone and google
| pixels will look like but most likely I will do the transition
| (even though been developing for iOS for more than 10 years.
| plainOldText wrote:
| Sure, it's reasonable to consider a switch. But while Android
| devices have come a long way in terms of physical design,
| capabilities, UI/UX, etc, out of the box Apple still offers a
| more comprehensive, user friendly and privacy focused
| security solution: lockdown, tighter controls of
| hardware/software integration, etc. So there's that.
| leakycap wrote:
| Agreed; I will probably be staying with iOS no matter how
| garish it becomes - Apple has the foundations right.
|
| I can't say I feel the same about macOS before; as a user
| since the early 1990s, I'm likely moving to Linux rather
| than Liquid Glass for my personal computer.
| SlowTao wrote:
| It is a shame because Android has everything they need to
| be just as good but its fragmentation as a whole just gets
| in the way of its potential.
|
| I have been using android for maybe 11-12 years and once
| locked down it great for me. But I suspect less than 1% of
| users would use these things like this.
| encom wrote:
| Apple user friendliness only extends as far as you're
| willing to do things the Apple way. If you want to do
| something Apple doesn't approve, it's going to be
| difficult, impossible, or miserable.
|
| Example: file syncing and password management. Possible,
| but my Nextcloud and Keepass experience was janky. 3rd
| party Youtube client, impossible. Adblocking - all
| solutions I tried were terrible to mediocre (around 2020,
| but I doubt it improved since). On Android I can run any
| browser I want and install uBlock. Music: I can just dump
| my collection of mixed format music files (aac, mp3, mpc,
| flac, wavpack) over USB and play them with foobar2000.
| Foobar2000 is available on iphone, but needs dumb
| workarounds to play files not natively supported by Apple.
| And so on...
|
| If you're balls deep in the Apple ecosystem, you probably
| have none of these problems. I never allowed myself to get
| locked in, which also made it very easy to leave ios
| behind.
|
| Only thing I miss a little is the ios email and calendar
| clients. They were alright.
| leakycap wrote:
| I've tried to escape the walled garden to Android before, and
| I've given up. No matter which company's phone or what
| version of Android, it didn't work well as a phone, alarm,
| and reliable device that I use for stuff like my home
| security. Things broke on Android like clockwork, and the
| clock didn't work.
|
| The latest Google pixel devices are specifically blocked from
| using Wyze devices right now due to a typo in the pixel's
| configuration files, for example. Stuff like that happens
| constantly with any phone in the super fragmented Android
| ecosystem.
| SlowTao wrote:
| Thats interesting. The clock stuff on android has always
| been the most reliable thing for me. But milage may vary by
| user.
|
| I cannot imagine what it would be like to jump out of the
| Apple ecosystem nowadays. I left in 2012 and it was
| difficult even then.
| ragazzina wrote:
| >it didn't work well as a phone, alarm, and reliable device
|
| If you google "ios alarm not working" you'll find out
| alarms on iOS are absolutely not reliable, they are often
| silent.
| PKop wrote:
| The Pixel 9 with Android 16 QPR Beta 1 is working smooth
| right now, and looks great. Very polished overall. I would
| recommend Pixel if you go the Android route as Google's
| implementation is imo the highest quality compared to others'
| rollcat wrote:
| I think it's time for me to look back at Linux.
|
| (*Looks at Gnome.*)
|
| Hm, they're getting worse faster than Apple does. Never mind.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| The damage Gnome does to the reputation of Linux is surreal
| rollcat wrote:
| True. They're stuck in between badly aping Apple, trying
| too hard to do their own thing, and being toxic to the rest
| of the developer community.
|
| They're not a trillion dollar company. Sure, many projects
| would do well with more decisive decision-making, but the
| strength of free software comes from community and
| collaboration.
| wirybeige wrote:
| I've found GNOME developers to be pleasant to work with &
| I enjoy the experience I have with the DE.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| And there are no alternatives.
|
| I learned to love KDE, but I understand why people don't
| default to it. All other alternatives are dead and it makes
| sense. The scope of something like KDE or GNOME isn't
| really reasonable these days. I learned to install the most
| minimal version of KDE.
|
| The (maybe) rising solution is "build-your-own-desktop"
| options like:
|
| - Hyprland (for Window management and other random tasks
| like wallpapers and lockscreen)
|
| - Waybar (for task bar/menu bar)
|
| - Rofi/Wofi (for Spotlight/Search&Launch)
|
| Then you a la carte your File Manager, photo editor,
| browser, and whatever apps you like.
|
| While I find that somewhat appealing, and those solution
| are flexible enough to pretty much build whatever you like
| your DE to be like, they are also extremely complex. For
| most things there is no "defaults". You don't get to do
| anything "by default" other than boot into a GUI
| environment. You configure a shortcut to launch your
| terminal or apps, a task bar that also has an empty
| default. Things that have defaults are gonna be extremely
| "basic" (think html no css). Just the data dump, and it
| expects you to style it. They are entirely configured (and
| styled) through a series of conf/css/ini/yaml/json files.
|
| These apps/environment pretty much dominate all the Linux
| desktop discussion these days. (At least discussion I can
| find on here or reddit or Twitter when I used to check it)
|
| It's really hard to tell if anyone is actually using those
| things or not. They are extremely tedious and a giant pain
| in the ass for daily use. Maybe it's early days. It's been
| about 8-6 years now since all the talk has become about new
| Wayland compositors. There were dozens of them, but
| Hyprland seems to have the most mindshare? maybe? hard to
| tell. It's the youngest, but it would take many years to
| reach KDE or GNOME maturity
| encom wrote:
| I find that KDE just works like most people expect a
| computer to work, and it doesn't get in my way, or try to
| impose a way of doing things. The defaults are
| reasonable, but you can tweak nearly anything to your
| liking.
|
| My "favorite" Gnome-ism was something that happened a
| year or two ago. At work there's a machine in the
| workshop we use to reference technical drawings, charts
| and so on. So I wanted to set the display to never turn
| off, because I got annoyed with having to drop what I was
| holding (and sometimes walk down a ladder) and wiggle the
| mouse to wake up the machine.
|
| That is impossible on Gnome. You get a dropdown of a few
| fixed values, none greater than 60 minutes, and you
| better like what choices the Gnome devs have granted you.
| The workaround requires some brain surgery in the
| terminal.
|
| On KDE I can set the timeout to any integer I want.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| > I understand why people don't default to it.
|
| Can you explain why KDE shouldn't be the default?
|
| > The (maybe) rising solution is "build-your-own-desktop"
| options like
|
| That's not new, people have been doing that with twm,
| awesomewm, dozens more for over a decade. That's niche
| though, the majority see Gnome and that's it. They will
| never even know that there is something else, they
| probably don't even know that Gnome != Linux.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Did you look at KDE?
| christophilus wrote:
| I use Niri, but I like Gnome. How are they getting worse?
| yuehhangalt wrote:
| Agreed. I've used Macs since 1986 and at one point worked for
| Apple. I used to make the same jokes about Linux on the desktop
| as everyone and yet I see myself seriously considering it more
| every day.
| prashnts wrote:
| Reduce Transparency in Accessibility settings removes the glass
| effect, but I believe has been updated to be closer to the
| translucent effects in current iOS.
| stock_toaster wrote:
| I find the "reduce motion" toggle to be a more pleasant
| experience on iOS as well.
| thepryz wrote:
| It's sad when so many settings people use to make Apple's
| products better/more usable seem to always be hidden in
| Accessibility. I'm sure that says something.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _trying to process all that visual mess daily._
|
| That's exactly the thing, that's what I don't get. Apple's
| brand is all about simplicity and visual clarity.
|
| This is a visual _mess_. We 've gone from clean delineated
| color areas to... slop?
|
| I really expected them to use subtle glass and shadow effects,
| but with minimal translucency. Heck, a lot of this is barely
| even translucency, more like _transparency_.
|
| I'm really surprised, because I didn't expect _Apple_ to
| produce a design language that so easily turns into seemingly
| visual chaos.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > I didn't expect Apple to produce a design language that so
| easily turns into seemingly visual chaos.
|
| I don't understand how anyone can act surprised anymore.
| Seriously. The App Store is an absolute mess, and Apple seems
| to be okay with it because it makes them money. Same goes for
| Apple News, Apple Music, AppleTV+, Apple iCloud, Apple
| Fitness+ and Apple Arcade. To say nothing of the quality of
| these apps (for their benefit), it's brand dilution. Am I
| supposed to believe that MacOS and iOS are spared from
| Apple's attention being divided into a hundred pieces? Am I
| supposed to expect them to invest in high-quality tentpole
| software when their logo is the only thing required to make
| people spend money?
|
| At some point, consumers have to distinguish between the
| identity that Apple markets to them, and what Apple's
| _actual_ impact is on the carelessness of modern design.
| People have been saying this since 2013, Apple 's new design
| languages aren't even close to the HIGs from the Macs of
| yore. Liquid Glass has been destined to fail ever since, it's
| an iteration on iOS7 and not an interface people _actually_
| like.
| shayway wrote:
| Visually very reminiscent of Win7 Aero, yet the 'unified'
| approach plus low information density is much more Win8 Metro
| (with some modern/Apple tweaks). A charming era of design but not
| one that deserves revisiting in such a big way.
| ksec wrote:
| The whole thing is Windows Vista Aero Glass and iOS 7 all over
| again. Repeating all the _SAME_ mistakes with 3D translucent
| design.
|
| Right now I really want skeuomorphism back.
|
| Much like iOS 7 they will have to spend another 2 - 3 years
| "tweaking" or basically walking back some of these design
| decisions.
|
| I believe the problem is when Tim Cook decided to merge "Design"
| under one umbrella. So the Design team now takes over both
| Hardware and Software Design when they kicked Scott Forstall out.
| A lot of Apple's UX went down hill from there.
| laserbeam wrote:
| It's not "mistakes", it's fashion. The cool thing about fashion
| is you can never run out of innovation. If something has been
| out of fashion for 15 years you can bring it back! It makes it
| seem like everything is forever changing and new. I'll bet your
| ass that material design will be all the rave in 10-15 years or
| so.
| withinboredom wrote:
| material design ... spsh, we call it substence design.
| rweichler wrote:
| When Cook became CEO, all of this was inevitable. I used to
| blame Jobs for not picking Forstall as his successor, but it
| recently dawned on me that it was never his choice to begin
| with. The board probably crowded him out again, just like the
| Sculley situation.
|
| In a month Apple will have been on autopilot for longer than
| Jobs was at the company during the 1997-2011 heyday. Jobs
| became iCEO in September 1997. After 167 months passed, he left
| in August 2011. It has been 166 months since then.
| m33pm33p wrote:
| Wow hard to believe it's been that long but really puts this
| era at Apple in perspective
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Literally everything I've ever read about Forstall and his
| behavior post-Jobs makes me think he would have been an awful
| CEO. It just sounded like he was "Game of Thrones-ing" from
| the second Cook became CEO. E.g. it was widely reported that
| Ive and Forstall could barely stand to be in the same meeting
| with each other. I may have some criticisms in my mind about
| some of Ive's design post-Jobs, but I don't think I have ever
| heard other folks be critical of Ive's leadership style or
| personality - everything I've read about him uses words like
| "inspirational", "remarkable", "calm", etc. I've read tons of
| criticism about Forstall.
| rweichler wrote:
| Mind throwing some links my way? I love me some Scott
| Forstall anecdotes.
|
| Here, I'll start:
|
| - https://randsinrepose.com/archives/innovation-is-a-fight/
|
| - https://youtu.be/IiuVggWNqSA
|
| - https://amazon.com/dp/B07D435DFQ
| thepryz wrote:
| I would agree about Ive, based on what he chose to mention
| about his team in a recent interview -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLb9g_8r-mE
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Man, if Apple 2011-2025 is "on autopilot" I wish I was on
| autopilot like that. Can you give me a company that wasn't?
| I'm curious what your bar is exactly.
| ksec wrote:
| Cant believe Tim Cook is about to be CEO longer than Steve
| Jobs. Thank You for that perspective.
|
| On the other hand Steve Jobs has accomplished far more within
| the same time frame compared to Tim Cook with far fewer
| resources. I really like the analogy of "autopilot".
|
| I do think Steve could push Forstall as his successor, but
| didn't because Forstall wasn't ready as CEO. Tim Cook was a
| much better choice at the time as they have to compete with
| Android and they need market share ( in terms of user not
| sales ) to not repeat the same mistake with Mac vs PC. Tim
| should have mediate between Forstall and Ive instead of
| picking sides. The restructuring created power vacuum for
| Craig and Eddy Cue to pick up. With Crag we end up with OS
| that is constantly resume / features release driven and Eddy
| Cue which we end up with Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple
| Fitness, Apple Arcade. None of them in my opinion are good
| decisions or great products / services.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Given that this look appears to be imitating frosted glass,
| it's very much compatible with skeumorphism. Maybe not the one
| you _want_ , but it's very much attempting to mimic a physical
| look.
| pcurve wrote:
| Just because it mimics glass that exists in real life, that
| doesn't make it skeuomorphism.
|
| skeuomorphism is grounded on real world counterparts.
|
| How many buttons in real life are actually made of glasses
| clear or frosted?
| nwienert wrote:
| Quite a lot of clear plastic or glass buttons. BMWs latest
| gen's entire interior is centered around a bunch of crystal
| buttons.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Good point. I don't like this but maybe, just maybe there's
| something I'm missing that you might have brought to light.
| solardev wrote:
| I guess Windows Vista gets the last laugh, after all.
| 9d wrote:
| It's the candy look from the early 2000s, from Mac OS X 10.1,
| turned up to 11.
|
| Did Apple learn nothing from Windwos Vista and Compiz?
| thewebguyd wrote:
| What's old is new again. There's a whole generation of users
| that never experienced those days. OS X 10.1 is 24 years old
| now. So for them, this is all brand new and innovative.
| raydenvm wrote:
| Funnily enough, a lot in Liquid Glass is inspired by older design
| systems from Microsoft : Fluent Design (Win 11) and Windows Aero
| (Win 7). It shows how real tough it is now to come with something
| really new these days in design.
| alberth wrote:
| Aqua, reminds me of OS X (Aqua theme) from 20+ years ago.
|
| And while it was very pretty, the movement away from translucency
| was due in large part because of accessibility (for all users).
|
| It's actually quite difficult to see controls (and read text)
| when not on a flat/solid background.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Looks like something you could do with a clever displacement map
| -- or several mappings that would include a specular highlight
| map, etc. The tech is clever.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| The style here suggests a split between tools and content, which
| is something I'd love love love to see emerge. Having one and
| only one app be both viewer and toolkit feels like a convenience
| trap, one that NeXT tried to fight (as did OLE) and that feels
| unlikely to ever be turned back from, but I want to dream. This
| UI doesn't materially move us towards a more aggregative/accreted
| system of systems model, but it visually suggests some of the
| absurdity of there being such heavily coupling, if the UI is
| really incidental that floats atop. I'd love to see this pushed
| further, to emerge into a multilayered information world, where
| Rainbow's End discourse piles up and forms trees out and up.
|
| I hear folks on contrast concerns. I have hope though. I really
| like the de-emphasis on compute. On tools being less the thing,
| on the content first, on getting computing out of the way, making
| it ambient. Unboxing the content, unframing it.
|
| The glass refraction seems like a an amazing leap forward.
| Material has been around forever and there's all these developer
| docs showing the stack up of layers, implying the depth of the
| system, but in the 2d user world everything is flat, composited
| into indistinction. The visual sepration, allowing semi
| transparent motion, but using refractive style to clearly
| separate the layers, adds such clarity that it feels obvious in
| retrospect immediately to me.
|
| I still lack hope that XR is going to be a huge huge thing, that
| it will be comfortable over time, but it makes such sense to me
| that XR would inspire & lead this shift, to depriotizing the UI &
| emphasizing the content.
|
| I'm stressed a bit trying to imagine the transforms required to
| make this refraction happen. I don't think CSS is going to be
| enough. The new CSS Painting API ("Houdini") also seems more
| generative than able to modify & script what is?
| whiteboardr wrote:
| How does liquid glass unbox and unframe the content?
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Instead of the content having controls and a slide up drawer
| at the bottom of the screen, those are now overlayed onto the
| content. The content extends across much more of the screen's
| vertical space.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > Having one and only one app be both viewer and toolkit feels
| like a convenience trap
|
| It's a decade too late for that. Websites and mobile
| applications are the de-facto metaphor for using computers,
| trying to fight that trend ostracizes your most promising
| markets. Hell, it even ostracizes a lot of Mac users that like
| the new approach.
|
| Maybe it's time to face the music - people like convenience.
| MacOS does not have potent enough windowing controls to make
| most users comfortable throwing around several windows to use
| one app. iOS and iPadOS both neglect their multitasking
| abilities to the point that people practically forget you can
| use more than one app at once.
|
| I don't hate the idea of trying to enforce a more informative
| windowing model, but I also don't think most people can intuit
| how to use it. If Stage Manager is any indication, most people
| just want a fullscreen view of a single-page app.
| beached_whale wrote:
| I hope I can disable the transparency, nothing makes it harder
| and slower to read than that for me. Distracting too.
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| In order for any of that glass design to look like glass there
| needs to be a background with a mix of at least 3 colors. I
| implemented the glass design in an app last year and afterwards
| thought it was ok. It makes some text difficult to read depending
| on the background.
| alberth wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: considering that last year's WWDC was all
| about Apple's vision for deep AI integration (still not yet
| released), and this year's event mostly focused on a fresh coat
| of paint for iOS/macOS, it raises a fair question: _" What has
| Apple actually been working on for the past two years if the AI
| still isn't here and the main update is just new paint"_?
|
| Note: not being a hater and appreciate the complexities of
| working on huge platforms as Apple ecosystem. Just genuinely
| wondering, since it feels like maybe 2 years of
| start/stops/changing priorities.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > Just genuinely wondering, since it feels like maybe 2 years
| of start/stops/changing priorities.
|
| I think it's exactly this. Apple got caught with their pants
| down on AI, had to shift quickly and that's what got us last
| year's announcements that never came.
|
| Well, it still isn't ready, so they needed something to give
| this year since they are so committed to an annual release
| cycle (which I think is a mistake IMHO), so we get a design
| change & some love for the iPad.
|
| OTOH, I like where Apple is going with private, on device AI.
| So if they need some more time to make it useful and polished,
| totally fine with me. I'd prefer they don't ship a half baked,
| hallucinating piece of crap. I personally don't/won't use any
| of the AI "features" so for me personally, it's refreshing to
| have a tech conference keynote not be "AI AI AI AI." It's worse
| than when blockchain was all the rage.
| pmontra wrote:
| It's got some KDE 4 vibe https://news.softpedia.com/news/How-to-
| Install-KDE-SC-4-4-on... which in turn had probably a Windows 7
| feel. A random image at
| https://www.computerworld.ch/software/windows/microsoft-deta...
| normie3000 wrote:
| How much battery life could you save by disabling these effects?
| realcul wrote:
| looks like windows vista aero feature. wow.. we have come a full
| circle indeed!
| willio58 wrote:
| I agree with those saying this feels like a step back toward
| skeuomorphic design for Apple. I personally think it looks nice
| visually, but I do have some concerns: - Accessibility. I don't
| see good examples in their promotional videos about how contrast
| of text is ensured to be in an acceptable range. Even for those
| without visual impairments, this is important for UX. -
| Performance. I'm usually the guy in the room saying "Apple is not
| making devices slower over time on purpose", but this sort of
| graphical intensity is basically needless and I hope they have
| something in the plans around automatically disabling more
| complex visual animations if the phone is showing signs of slow-
| down.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I don't use iOS in any capacity, but I'm sure anything they do
| will only improve what has always felt like a clumsy OS.
|
| On the Macos side, I'm open to the new aesthetic, but I just hope
| to god they've been actually investing in performance
| improvements when it comes to SwiftUI, which has only barely been
| viable in some cases thus far. If MacOS gets a full UI update,
| but the Settings screen still lags when navigating between
| sections, someone's doing something wrong.
| y42 wrote:
| At what point do we reach this attitude, where we do not rage
| against everything that's new?
| amegahed wrote:
| I wonder how long this will take to trickle down into webdev,
| automotive dashboards, embedded systems, and every other thing
| with a GUI? It's probably already happening.
|
| p.s. If you like Aqua, you might enjoy playing around this open
| source glass rendering CSS library:
| https://www.specularcss.org/#materials/glass
| throwaway2562 wrote:
| This is what a company running out of ideas looks like
| amegahed wrote:
| I wonder how long this will take to trickle down into webdev,
| automotive dashboards, embedded systems, and basically every
| other thing with a GUI. It's probably already happening.
|
| p.s. If you like Aqua, you might like this open source glass
| rendering CSS library:
| https://www.specularcss.org/#materials/glass
| vitaflo wrote:
| It will trickle down and be a worse implementation than what
| Apple has done which is already pretty bad. Expect a lot of
| horrible UIs in the future.
| deergomoo wrote:
| I am incredibly annoyed that they've hidden all the camera
| controls behind an overflow button. Hiding functions is _not_ the
| same as simplicity any more than shoving all the dirty laundry
| under your bed is cleaning.
| rogerthis wrote:
| It's weird the amount of not asked/not needed things we do.
| andersa wrote:
| It's... awful? Why would I want all this distracting shimmering
| as I scroll?
|
| Apple really isn't what it once was, this is embarrassing.
| pentagrama wrote:
| I need to experience it more to have a clear opinion, but looking
| at those videos, these types of translucent UI layers with a
| magnifying glass effect feel so annoying when they move; it's
| distracting.
|
| Knowing that people will be spending hours of the day with these
| animations, it could be overwhelming. I'm not someone who suffers
| from videos or video games with photosensitive content warnings,
| but for many people, this might feel similar, like a friend of
| mine who can't play Quake 3 Arena because it gives him nausea.
| I'm sure there will be an option to turn it off.
|
| I also suspect that Apple, for marketing reasons, felt the need
| to present something visibly new and eye-catching. They probably
| turned to flashy design resources meant to impress rather than
| serve real usability needs. It feels more like a UI concept made
| for a sci-fi movie than something designed with accessibility and
| productivity in mind.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Even the antialiasing is bad.. this is below Apple usual
| slickness.
| microflash wrote:
| I'm all for great design but I hope that reduce transparency and
| motion settings just tone this thing down. I want my devices to
| be boring and subtle. I want to get them do what I want quickly,
| fade away and disappear. This redesign does the exact opposite.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Every now and then my macbook will hide all of my windows so that
| I'm just looking at my wallpaper. It is a pretty wallpaper, but I
| don't really understand why I need a hotkey or gesture or
| whatever is happening just to allow me to gaze at it.
|
| I guess this is more of the same? Some pretty picture can shine
| through at you because... pretty?
| hotsauceror wrote:
| I may be mistaken but I believe the hotkey is "display my
| desktop, uncluttered" for those that still store files on their
| desktops.
| Lammy wrote:
| The marketing text feels like it's trying way too hard, to the
| point that it makes me second-guess my positive first impression.
| I do think the UI looks cool, and I did like Aero Glass too, but
| having the headline straight-up tell me that the UI is
| "delightful and elegant" and having the first-sentence-of-first
| paragraph " _beautiful_ new software design" hyperlink cheapens
| the whole thing IMHO.
|
| Yes I know Apple have always been like this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx7v815bYUw (BOOM)
|
| But at least the Stebe Jovs keynotes gave me the chance to be
| impressed for a moment in my head before laying in to the
| superlatives.
| BirAdam wrote:
| The quality of their presentations has just gone down. No one
| at Apple has the stage presence of Jobs.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| I think years ago I made a joke that the reason we need compute
| shader support in WebGL was so we could do fluid dynamic
| simulations for our button hover effects. Nobody is laughing
| now..
| padjo wrote:
| Well that looks awful
| Bengalilol wrote:
| From Aqua to Liquid Glass (AKA it will change over time and at
| some point ... disappear). I am just sad that it's the first
| feature announcement for Apple OSs 26. I understand Apple's point
| of view to communicate on that, but I have a big hollow feeling
| this is not enough.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Looks like Apple (re)discovered Sun's Project Looking Glass from
| 2003.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass
|
| Liquid Glass looks a lot like coming up with changes for the sake
| of them.
| robertoandred wrote:
| I think they (re)discovered Mac OS X from 2001.
| submeta wrote:
| Good Lord, this concept of ,,liquid glass" is ugly. Not visibly
| distinct, looks blurry, not clear and sharp. And then they
| overlap with the content. I never liked the overlapping menus in
| Notability app either.
|
| This is a flop like the flat keyboard design. Making worse by
| trying to make it better. Verschlimmbessert.
|
| And this from a company with unlimited financial resources.
| mwkaufma wrote:
| my kingdom for usable bevel-gray toolbars and controls
| boars_tiffs wrote:
| im having flashbacks from when apple introduced flat design in
| ios 7. i refused to upgrade for 2 years...
| gausswho wrote:
| Same response I had for iOS 7: Clown vomit.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Oh right - I almost forgot we're in the timeline where the
| "experts" always make the worst choice available to them.
| basisword wrote:
| After installing the betas I'm very surprised at how much a
| departure this is on the Mac. Feels like using an iPad all of a
| sudden. There are some nice bits but they're going to have to
| tweak it significantly over the next couple of months. Safari
| tabs are an abomination. On other hand Spotlight has some great
| improvements and Launchpad is gone.
| epanchin wrote:
| So, windows Aero?
| gastonmorixe wrote:
| Windows Vista vibes gone wrong. What happened to Apple's design
| lead and taste? jeez
| poisonborz wrote:
| What's the point of a translucent taskbar? I might understand in
| a taskbar of a desktop wallpaper to not disturb the scene, but
| what information does it hold if the search bar over a map or a
| link list is translucent? It's just useless noise.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| this ui is cosmically horrible. power users are seeing the end of
| the tunnel
| bix6 wrote:
| Feels very Walt Disney / multiplane camera to me.
|
| Wanted to hate it but looks kind of cool so we'll see how bad the
| accessibility is.
|
| They call it a material so this is a new type of glass? Can I
| actually use a loupe on it or that's just for fun?
| chungy wrote:
| So I guess 19 years is the ideal time to wait before copying
| Windows Vista.
| username223 wrote:
| They can't even make a webpage that doesn't have janky scrolling
| in Safari. And it prompts me to enable notifications? I'm not so
| optimistic about their new UI design.
| leoh wrote:
| Awful everything
| sarreph wrote:
| Perhaps contrarian (here anyway) but I think Liquid Glass looks
| neat, and represents the next evolution of the "backdrop-filter:
| blur;" effect that we've been seeing on the web a _lot_ as of
| late... Which, funnily enough also gained adoption in a large
| part IMO due to Apple's usage of it in macOS for the past few
| years now.
|
| I think the new design approach here is a clever nudge towards
| "Neo Skeuomorphism". Interface design is clearly heading in a
| much more skeuomorphic direction (see: AirBnB redesign) lately
| with the rise of AI. Liquid Glass is an apt way to provide more
| material-realism without devolving back to the objective realism
| that the old Skeuomorphic style pre-2013 represented.
|
| Time and time again I see people bemoan Apple's UI direction and
| then sure enough within a year or two it becomes ubiquitous as
| web designers adopt the patterns for their own work.
|
| The funny part is that the lede is getting buried here. The big
| story is of course the universal design _across platforms_. We're
| now ultra-ultra close to a unified OS, something that has been in
| materializing extremely slowly over the past decade and a half.
| hk1337 wrote:
| I'm skeptical but I will hold judgment until I actually see it.
| Things can look weird or ugly on video or the first time you've
| seen it but given some time you can change your mind.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Last time they redesigned the Home Screen they dropped most of
| the features which I used--except showing the time, and being
| able to open the camera.
|
| I hope the funky animated time can be disabled and I can still
| open the camera.
| elAhmo wrote:
| I thought this was an April 1st joke.
| stalco wrote:
| I installed it. I really wanted to love it but it's bad. It's
| very busy and the proportions in the Settings app are awful. It's
| on the "cozy" side of things (as opposed to "compact"). This
| means you see less options at one time on the screen and have to
| scroll more around the OS to get where you need to.
|
| As for accessibility... It's hell. Have a look:
| https://imgur.com/a/6ZTCStC
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Holy cow that's bad. 2 slightly different grids overlaid with
| transparency feels like a joke but here t is
| Axsuul wrote:
| That could be fixed I feel by decreasing the background
| opacity.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| This kinda looks like a fake "iOS" skin for Android from
| 2018... nasty
| Vegenoid wrote:
| Wow. That is really bad. Apple already does the transparency
| thing with the control center menu, but it blurs the background
| so much that you don't notice it. Why they'd want to lessen the
| blur and make it more transparent is beyond me.
| hbn wrote:
| Remember this is the first developer beta. I'm pretty sure a
| lot of iOS 7 was dialed back between announcement and release
| seemaze wrote:
| oomph, looks like this might finally be (my) year of the
| linux desktop..
| kazinator wrote:
| Nice; mine was in 1995!
| odo1242 wrote:
| year of the linux mobile?
| PKop wrote:
| Looks like a soup sandwich. Layers of mixed together colors
| with no distinction
| TriangleEdge wrote:
| I hope they tweak the opacity before they go live with this
| because I find the shared image quite unpleasant. I have no
| issues with the current design. Kind of like the camera button
| and the touch bar, I hope this goes away fast.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The entire press release made my brain hurt.
|
| >> _Meticulously crafted by rethinking the fundamental elements
| that make up our software, the new design features an entirely
| new material called Liquid Glass. It combines the optical
| qualities of glass with a fluidity only Apple can achieve, as
| it transforms depending on your content or context._
|
| What the fuck does that even mean?
|
| Feature litmus test: if you can't describe why it's better in
| plain English... it's probably not better.
| curiousgal wrote:
| I know I am going to sound like an asshole but I scrolled,
| started watching the video and the guy speaking made me
| cringe so badly I closed the tab. This is reads and looks
| like satire. And here I thought OneUI 8 was bad.
| crazygringo wrote:
| OMG that image is _hilarious_. It 's a total disaster.
|
| And it's not like someone had to go out of their way to find
| something clashing like that. Pulling up control center from
| the home screen is something you do _all the time_.
|
| Like, I genuinely would have assumed that control center would
| need to be non-translucent precisely because of that. But...
| nope?
| outcoldman wrote:
| please please please, everyone, submit feedback at
| https://www.apple.com/feedback/
|
| I was ok with the system settings redesign, could get used to
| it. But this whole new design is a different level of bad.
| Due_Winter_5330 wrote:
| How does it look if you enable "Reduce Transparency" in
| Accessibility - Display settings?
| t1234s wrote:
| Did they introduce an easy way to remove the bloatware from
| MacOS?
| 827a wrote:
| Running the iOS beta now. There's structural elements to this
| redesign that I think are generally great. Mostly, they've moved
| the search bar to the bottom of many of their apps (messages and
| settings are the most obvious). The centered island-style
| navigation bar feels better than the old boxy-style one.
|
| The transparency effect is a nightmare. Its so fascinating to me
| how this made it through to an official iOS release. We'll see
| how it plays on GA. I think we're going to see some major changes
| to the way its designed before GA.
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| I don't post here often, but I hope someone at Apple is reading
| this as this is one of the worst designs I have seen from this
| company. Even in their own presentation they shows text hard to
| read, text on top of text. It's an accessibility and usability
| nightmare. I really don't want to give up iMessage but if what
| ships looks as bad as this I may jump ship.
| appleiigs wrote:
| It's button camouflage.
|
| My 82 year old mother has enough trouble figuring out what is a
| button vs. what's not. She just taps everything on screen to find
| out. This is going to make it worse.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Transparency has been around for a while - I remember playing
| around with it on linux desktops back when I was still using CRT
| monitors.
|
| I turn it off now. Turns out the instances where I want to see
| through a window are basically nil. They make for nice
| screenshots though.
| throw03172019 wrote:
| Did any user or developer ask for this? This looks absolutely
| awful and I'm a huge Apple fan. I can't get behind it. :/
| 65 wrote:
| Designers gonna design. Even when a UI is perfectly fine, huge
| design teams have to justify their existence and therefore
| change everything for no real reason. I guess it makes more
| work for developers, though the utility of the work is
| questionable.
| tolerance wrote:
| Dude in that one video needs to go ahead back home and put on the
| sweater and slacks he deserves.
| squidsoup wrote:
| This is going to be awful for the large proportion of greybeards
| reading HN, but the kids are going to love it.
| pcurve wrote:
| I'm pushing 50 and personally I love the look. Their attention
| to details and execution are amazing. It's perfection.
|
| But my aging eyes would like option to turn of the translucency
| altogether. That would be gold.
| valleyjo wrote:
| There's a reduce transparency setting in accessibility. Wonderful
| what this will look like if that's on. I've been using it for
| years as I don't like frills.
| vid wrote:
| That video. This is why I can't take Apple, and, sorry, many of
| their fans, seriously.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| All I could think about is how beautiful those treetops are
| inside the Apple spaceship ... glorious view.
|
| Still rocking a budget Android though ... don't see a reason to
| change.
| oidar wrote:
| From an accessibility point of view, this seems unusable for
| those with visual deficits. I sincerely hope that this can be
| made non-translucent. The ability to distinguish between icons is
| already hampered with all icon artwork being the same color, with
| this translucent "glass", it will be the hardest to use iOS,
| MacOS design ever.
| devmor wrote:
| Oh god this looks like a horrible, visually indistinct mess.
| prmoustache wrote:
| So this is MacOs Vista?
| jamsterion wrote:
| After 16 years on iPhone and Mac, I'm finally making the switch.
| Apple's latest design choices are not just aweful, they reflect a
| broader decline in the company's direction across the board. I've
| considered moving to Linux, Windows, and Android for years. Now
| feels like the right moment.
| 65 wrote:
| I'll take ugly Liquid Glass over Windows any day.
| amelius wrote:
| Most of these effects are happening under your finger.
|
| But maybe on the desktop you can see them if you use a mouse.
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| All I wanted was an option in settings that allows me to turn off
| all animations on macOS. How hard can that be?
| jordansmithnz wrote:
| Having used it very briefly, I think it's a reasonable direction.
| Before you all jump to tell me why I'm wrong:
|
| 1. It makes depth and layering extremely clear.
|
| 2. It prioritizes focusing on the content.
|
| These are good principles and I think they'll last the distance.
| There are plenty of refinements needed, especially for
| accessibility. I suspect over the next few years we'll see the
| direction toned back a little while still retaining the best
| parts.
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