[HN Gopher] Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
___________________________________________________________________
Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
Author : meetpateltech
Score : 696 points
Date : 2025-06-09 17:09 UTC (1 days 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.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| TBF it is a less prejudiced name than the one they used
| before.
|
| I think they really wanted to change their image, and the
| metaverse thing happened to also be a decent candidate
| for that.
| 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.
| monkeyelite wrote:
| I think asserting that there is no consumer product to be
| had in the realm of AR/spatial computing is shortsighted.
|
| And if so, then why not work on it? The research in AR has
| already improved the phones as well.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| but they can work on it without ruining ios. no?
| monkeyelite wrote:
| This idea is not in the comment I am replying to.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| They can't even work on iOS without ruining macOS, so,
| no.
| mulmen wrote:
| > Since you literally cannot have fully opaque elements with AR
| glasses
|
| Why not?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Because AR glasses, by definition, overlay an interface onto
| the real world that you are seeing through the transparent
| glasses.
|
| VR glasses like the VisionPRO can add a video stream of your
| surroundings, but they are physically opaque and thus don't
| suffer from this limitation.
| mulmen wrote:
| But why does the interface have to be transparent? Why
| can't it just be opaque then disappear when not needed
| and/or be placed in the periphery?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If we're still speaking about AR glasses, no current
| technology can make the images more opaque than the
| screen itself. So if the screen itself is transparent,
| whatever you draw on it with light will be at best as
| opaque as the screen - so, still transparent.
| montag wrote:
| I love the switcheroo thought experiment: imagine we have
| always had transparent glassy user interfaces; for whatever
| reason, that's what the techology allowed. And in 2025 we have
| made a breakthrough and finally achieved opaque buttons. Would
| this change be just as controversial?
|
| No, it would be a massive net positive. Everyone would love
| these new opaque buttons that obscure the noise underneath so
| that you can easily read foreground text.
|
| In light of AR glasses, this thought experiment is even more
| relevant...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Wouldn't that be a crazy bet, given how much AR has flopped? Or
| do people still think it's more than a fad of the early 2020s?
| sneak wrote:
| You are incorrect. Apple's (current) AR system uses cameras and
| video feeds, not translucent/transparent displays. You
| absolutely can have fully opaque elements; when the AVP is
| worn, all you see are displays. When it's off, you see nothing
| but pure black.
| 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.
| bitwize wrote:
| Aero wasn't trying to look like Aqua. Steve Jobs would have
| launched a devastating hypercombo of legal action if it
| were. But it was clearly a _response_ to Aqua: use 3D
| acceleration to provide fancy effects and shiny widgets.
| The previous release, Windows XP, still did everything with
| lines, solid-fill rects, and blitted bitmaps and was
| starting to look long in the tooth compared to Mac OS X.
| detourdog wrote:
| I stopped working with windows after 3.11, NT4. I was
| referring to the transparency/layer aspects.
| 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 then 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.
| dlivingston wrote:
| I get the crux of what you're saying -- the Apple TV
| homepage has a giant ad banner at the top; just another
| billboard in a world covered by them.
|
| What I dislike about internet discussions is that we've
| gone back and forth over pedantic definitions of what
| "ads" are, rather than discussing your more interesting
| meta-point.
| redczar wrote:
| People say Apple has not innovated much lately but
| they've innovated in the advertising space. They have
| just enough services and products to make it worthwhile
| for them to covertly advertise them to their customers.
| They don't feel like ads and it seems natural the way
| they do it. To me it is quite clever. I never noticed it
| until it was pointed out to me.
| 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.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| Basic visibility should be the default, most people never
| change their settings.
| 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.
| spartanatreyu wrote:
| We already have "standards" to implement this the web-standards
| way, but they don't have wide compatibility yet.
|
| 1. Use CSS Images Module Level 4's element() function to
| capture an image of the layer below. (currently only
| implemented in firefox)
|
| 2. Feed that image into an offscreen canvas.
|
| 3. Use a shader to distort the image as needed. This can be
| done in a paint worklet so it doesn't slow down or hold up the
| main thread.
|
| 4. Use CSS Painting API Level 1's paint() function to paint the
| contents of the canvas onto the background of the button.
| (currently only implemented in blink based browsers)
| creata wrote:
| How can you use element() to "capture an image of the layer
| below" and pass it to a canvas?
|
| I might be wrong, but without more context, that sounds like
| it'd defeat browser protections to avoid leaking your browser
| history via the color of :visited links.
| 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.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| you're welcome.
| 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.
| marcelroed wrote:
| After trying this out on my iphone, I can say your
| conclusion is exactly correct. The icons look subtly out
| of focus in a way that's quite unsettling.
| 2d8a875f-39a2-4 wrote:
| I mean, that just blog sums up the whole attitude issue here.
|
| "It's an exciting time to be a designer on iOS. My professional
| universe is trembling and rumbling with a deep sense of
| mystery."
|
| This person is excited that their job designing iOS apps will
| be more interesting (and the prospect of plenty of work in the
| pipeline doesn't hurt either).
|
| Fuck the end users who need to adapt to this needless change,
| suffer newly slow devices or invest in new ones, and put up
| with a hodge-podge of different UIs. Fuck the orgs who need to
| fund all this rework if they want their app on new devices.
| Fuck the waste of energy spent in the extra client-side cycles
| rendering all the needless new bling.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Indeed. This attitude is found throughout the tech industry.
| It stinks from a product manager's spreadsheets down to the
| infrastructure that runs it all. The design is just what is
| immediately obvious.
|
| In this case I am lucky, as I find glassy UIs visually
| appealing.
| 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.
| pndy wrote:
| Metro was terrific on mobile - especially for older people
| who had no issues reading information from tiles or
| navigating sharp interface. Once my mother's HTC 8S broke and
| she had to temporarily switch to iPhone she complained how
| the interface was small and barely readable. It's the desktop
| where it failed - you can't just force users into a mobile
| interface, at the same time remove the most recognisable
| element of your product (start button and menu) and believe
| people will adapt.
|
| What I find wild is that there were internal W8 releases with
| a proper start menu but they abandon it at some point to
| fully embrace Metro.
| 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.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| There's a search bar in the System Settings app, you
| don't need to know what Spotlight is.
|
| I'm staying with family and just handed my 64 year old
| mother _who has never used a Mac_ my Macbook Pro with the
| settings app open, and after explaining the concept of
| default browser in non-leading language (not mentioning
| the word default), her first thought was to click
| Display.
|
| When nothing familiar was there her next thought was to
| click Search and then type in Browser and she made the
| connection of "Default Browser" to the concept I
| mentioned immediately.
|
| -
|
| Non-techies are not going to learn the groupings for OS
| settings any easier than they'll figure out a UX pattern
| that's been widely accepted for decades:
| https://www.nngroup.com/articles/search-visible-and-
| simple/
|
| Of course, who don't know anything about UX tend to
| assume personal anecdotes map to a much larger sample
| size than they actually do.
| grishka wrote:
| By the way, macOS has a super useful search field under
| "help" in the menu bar. It searches among all menu items
| in the current app and even shows you where they are.
| Very non-obvious, but once you try it, you don't
| understand how you lived without it.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| This is one of my favorite features of macOS. It's
| actually coming to spotlight in 26
| n42 wrote:
| Life is not smoking guns, objective truths, or us and
| thems.
|
| I do find it amusing how disorganized the app has become,
| and that has become my favorite example.
|
| I find it even more amusing that you think citing search
| as a primary UI path is your "smoking gun" of good
| information hierarchy and interface design.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| It's just a bad example. Sorry you're upset I called it
| out.
|
| The original settings app had a nondescript "General"
| label for this same setting: neither tells me to expect a
| default browser setting.
|
| Overall the old UI was just the current UI with lower
| information density.
| TlrSwftFrPres wrote:
| > A setting's placement in the menu hierarchy "is a bad
| example" of the Settings app's being bad because search
| is available.
|
| > Search is always available while the app is open,
| across all menus and functions.
|
| > Therefore no placement or layout can be singled out as
| better or worse in the Settings app. All possible
| hierarchies or arrangements are equal.
|
| > I unroll my Apple UX Researcher Toolkit (contents:
| blindfold, dart, dartboard, crack pipe), and use it to
| make my decision: I put the dropdown 3 levels deep under
| Touch ID, safe in the knowledge that I cannot be
| criticized, because we've also included a search bar.
|
| It's just bad thinking. Sorry if you're upset I've called
| it out.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Search is... bad, generally.
|
| How is that setting spelled? What synonym did they use?
| Are there multi-work linking hyphens? Will it work with
| or without them? Is the search fuzzy?
|
| And then localization comes in. Take any translated UI
| and the search often falls short. Did they translate the
| setting name? Did they translate it right, or did a
| google-translate of their localization plist? Will it
| find the setting if I spell it without accents? Which
| dialect does it use? Wait I don't know how to say this
| specific technical work in my native language because
| nobody actually uses it?
|
| So yeah, please keep categories that make sense.
| jmb99 wrote:
| Search only works if you know what you're looking for and
| what it's called. Horrible for discoverability.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| I couldn't search System Settings when I setup my laptop
| for over an hour because it was indexing files I migrated
| from my old Mac. It made for a frustrating user
| experience trying to set this thing up.
| ninkendo wrote:
| I mean, by your logic the whole settings app should just
| be a search box when you open it. Clearly there's a use
| case for browsability in a settings app, so that you can
| discover what settings exist. Given that, it's probably
| important for the location of each setting to be
| intuitive.
| 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
| amlib wrote:
| You seem out of touch with the current trends, as it is
| right now you have to open a command line window during the
| installation of windows and run some commands just so you
| have the privillege of being able to install the system
| without the requirement of an online account. (And it's now
| a mandatory procedure if you have no internet access! You
| are locked up from even proceeding with installation until
| supplying access to the internet, unless you do that CLI
| kung-fu) Also, make sure you have the correct incantation
| because Microsoft keeps changing it from time to time!
|
| I've also noticed a lot of solutions to issues in windows
| now adopting the usage of power shell one liners as an easy
| way to fix it, and some times even the only way to change a
| setting or disable something in the system.
|
| Meanwhile in Linux land with the more recent distros
| running Gnome I've noticed less and less need to use the
| command line. Can still be annoying though, but I guess
| it's the price to pay when you roll the OS of your choice
| on a system that wasn't really validated for it. (it's
| amazing it works as well as it does honestly)
| 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.
| pndy wrote:
| Everything is deep down beneath all this W11 acrylic
| translucency. MS did a good work around W7 when they patched
| majority of old icons and resources and then made widgets
| flatter in W8 and W10 so they would fit better. That gray 9x
| legacy is here and will stay - for compatibility reasons
| 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?
| anonymars wrote:
| Windows Mojave strikes again. Vista really got the short
| end of the stick
| 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.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| As a followup on this, it's notable that Apple has changed
| the title of the linked post to "Apple introduces a
| delightful and elegant new software design", making the
| subtitle "A universal design across platforms brings more
| focus to content and a new level of vitality while
| maintaining the familiarity of Apple's software"
|
| Everyone was keying on the universal design thing, and the
| seeming importance of "introduces" as if this is a first,
| and it was such an odd thing for Apple to denote given that
| they have been using a universal design for a long, long
| time.
| 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.
| ilt wrote:
| Metro never had this much transparency ingrained in the UX -
| and where it had, it was tastefully done with no/minimal
| accessibility concerns - doesn't seem like a valid comparison.
| Windows 8, especially 8.1 was a very pretty piece of software,
| the whole gesture- and card-based interface fiasco ruined its
| good name.
| kej wrote:
| I didn't mean the visual style so much as the "let's use the
| same design on phones and on giant desktop monitors"
| philosophy.
| 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.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > Which apps do you avoid in particular which are
| associated with a service you are required by your job to
| use?
|
| Electron apps are not all B2B or associated with a
| service. This restriction is odd.
|
| > Or, what purchasing decisions have you made on behalf
| of your company that took Electron-ness into account?
|
| Password manager. PDF software. REST client. Other
| developer tools.
| 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.
| cageface wrote:
| Even if you like the general direction of SwiftUI it's way
| less mature on the mac and being tied to the OS version means
| you have to deal with all the churn it's had in the last
| three years to ship with it on the mac. Very few devs are
| going to bother with this.
| 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.
| kreco wrote:
| > Every Electron app is going to feel incredibly out of place.
|
| Consistency with native app/style had never been an issue,
| ever. It's stylistic choice. while I get that someone would
| like to have the same theme everywhere it does not prevent
| anything.
|
| Every single webpage is different that the other and yet
| everybody browse the web.
| 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.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Your username is lit! :)
|
| PS. Like, literally.-
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| But I have to be honest, it was randomly generated.
| detourdog wrote:
| From what I saw they were making more available screen space
| for content.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Content behind and in between controls is not available. And
| I saw padding which opaque controls wouldn't need. But
| excessive padding was common already so it could have been
| unrelated.
| 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...
| russelg wrote:
| Wow this unlocked repressed memories for me! DeviantArt was a
| treasure trove back in the Win7 days for windows theming. I
| used Shine for quite a while!
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| Take me back... All downhill from there.
| 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.
| chakintosh wrote:
| Yes, because in 99% of the marketing material from launch,
| you see it being used by some rando in their living room.
| 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.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Might be an attempt at Steve Jobs imitation with special focus
| on the worst aspects. Regardless of his reported reality
| distortion skills in person, I always found his big public
| presentations stiff and fake. I, as not-a-fan of game consoles,
| think that Mark Cerny gives fantastic presentations. He is
| always fluent, comfortable, and has an air of sincerity (while
| the contents are a little salesy). Kinda like a much more
| polished but slightly more fake John Carmack.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| They undergo intensive training for weeks before. Scripted,
| rehearsed, perfected, trained. I've witnessed it. There's not
| much space for natural expression in these talks. Everything is
| choreographed. Where to walk, look up, wave hand, smile etc all
| planned!
|
| The stiffness is because the presenter is mainly a techie,
| developer or manager and not a natural performer. Their bodies
| are resisting the conformity by conforming to the letter but
| not the spirit.
| 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.
| lazharichir wrote:
| to be fair, i'd take tame over horrendous and unparseable
| screen any day.
| 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.
| leakycap wrote:
| If you're here to make excuses for them, that's totally
| fine. I'd like to see Apple do better.
| 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.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| The AI features they promised 1 year ago are still not
| here. And they are not even close to shipping it. End of
| story as far as i'm concerned.
|
| But yes, it is nice to see some incremental AI improvements
| with suggestions in various apps, etc. Better than nothing.
| al_borland wrote:
| To be fair, they did say it was going to be a decade long
| arc to move to more AI stuff.
|
| We have a lot of other options for generic AI chat, so
| I'd rather them get it right than rush out something that
| isn't any good.
| 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.
| leakycap wrote:
| As far as I know, Siri cannot (by Apple's design) have a
| competitor on iOS.
|
| Unless you consider unlocking your phone, opening an app
| like Amazon, and tapping a microphone to talk to Alexa as a
| fair access for competition.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Sure, but that raises the question of what siri is
| falling behind if nobody else can fill that void.
|
| Now I haven't owned an android in many years, but I
| haven't heard a peep from google about how they're using
| AI to improve their basic apps.
| leakycap wrote:
| I recommend trying an Android device with an assistant --
| they can just do so much more I'm not sure how to tell
| you in words, other than Siri is in its own league and it
| isn't the big league. The things Apple lauded yesterday
| were on my Blackberry-branded Android. Let that timeline
| sink in.
|
| I appreciate Siri's privacy features. Full stop. Nothing
| else about Siri is even close to what Google delivered 2+
| years ago. Definitely try Google Assistant and others if
| you wish to be informed on this; Apple isn't going to be
| a good source of setting the bar for user experience with
| automated assistants for a long time.
| lxgr wrote:
| Mission accomplished: Users are now angry about something
| else?
| pndy wrote:
| When they announced Apple Intelligence, I had hopes that it
| would come with Siri supporting more languages.
|
| These features, that duck taping llm as parent comment says
| looks nice but not when your language isn't supported. 13
| years pass by since Siri was introduced and I still can make
| use of it beyond setting timers and managing music playback.
| lxgr wrote:
| Not sure a massive misallocation of resources is something to
| celebrate.
|
| > Agreed with other commenters that crappy electron apps will
| look increasingly out of place
|
| Aesthetics is the smallest problem I've had with Electron (or
| generally non-native) apps.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| What makes you so convinced it's a misallocation?
| lxgr wrote:
| Looking at it.
| tiltowait wrote:
| I've installed the beta, and I really like how it looks and
| works. Like you said, it's not perfect, but I expect the small
| gripes I have so far will be ironed out before long.
| seydor wrote:
| Did you mean _2007 when Windows Vista was released "?_
| 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.
| Micrococonut wrote:
| Look at the notifications in the middle of the landing page
| for iOS 17. https://www.apple.com/os/ios/ It is immediately
| awful. I hadn't even seen the keynote yet when I went to
| apple.com to see what had been announced and my very first
| thought was "Oh no"
| the_other wrote:
| > What makes you think that? Do you have a specific example
| from the keynote in mind?
|
| Almost every button and menu they showed was harder for me
| to read than the ones on my current generation Apple gear.
| The icons on buttons are indistinct, the text is hard to
| read. The buttons themselves seem to sink into the content
| "below" making both the buttons and the content hard to
| see.
|
| Some examples:
|
| - the tabs at the bottom left of the photos app
|
| - the address bar in Safari (what a complete mess... you
| can't see the content beneath because the address bar blurs
| it, but you also can't read the address bar because the
| glass effect destroys contrast
|
| - in the colourless "translucent" colour way, all the icons
| look the same
|
| - the (admittedly cute) "squish" effect when tapping menus
| and some of the buttons looked like it would slow down all
| interactions
|
| - the highlights and light/colour bending effects are
| utterly distracting, catching your eye when you really want
| to be skimming the content or overview to orient yourself
| in the UI
|
| True, I've not used it... but I was watching along with the
| launch video with rapt Apple fan-boi attention and I was
| surprised by how uncomfortable the new UI seemed to be.
| I've never felt that before.
|
| This new design style is certainly "fun", but it looks like
| it'll get in the way of fast use of the tools.
|
| I want my OS to promote clarity of affordances, and then to
| recede away from my attention so I can get on with doing
| what I was trying to do. This new design style looks like
| it's trying to hold on to my attention all the time I'm
| using the devices. (Admittedly today's keynote was an ad
| for the new design, so that sense of attention grabbing was
| hopefully accentuated over day to day use... but I'm
| skeptical.)
| CactusRocket wrote:
| See this from another comment in the thread
| https://imgur.com/a/6ZTCStC
| cosmotic wrote:
| Looking at Apple's curated headline hero image on
| https://www.apple.com/os/ios/
|
| Every single example of the five are hard to read,
| especially the second.
|
| At least half of the example screenshots and videos I've
| seen in the keynote and on various Apple website pages are
| hard to read. The lense effects, only visible in the
| animations/videos, are technically impressive, visually
| stimulating, but _terrible_ from a utilitarian perspective
| (unless you consider convincing people to buy iPhones using
| attractive visuals in a cinematic sort of way but not
| actually trying to use the devices as some sort of utility
| to Apple).
| paulcole wrote:
| > That's a huge loss to productivity and ease of use
|
| Have you used it yet?
| cosmotic wrote:
| I have looked at the screenshots and videos. I can tell
| from those that text is hard to read and icons are hard to
| differentiate. iOS has a long history of these gaffes.
| paulcole wrote:
| Well at least you didn't come into it with any bias.
| 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).
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Oh even immediate UI framework don't paint non-stop. If
| the UI has not been interacted with, or if there are no
| animations/gifs, it has no blimey reason to repaint, and
| it will not. It will repaint the whole screen, of course,
| but that's already a win.
| 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.
| 9dev wrote:
| There are myriads of glass controls around you, just pay
| attention to it. From car interiors to elevator buttons, it's
| there.
|
| Glas actually makes sense, given its an extension of the
| device's hull.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Probably the main reason is because they have ugly
| electronics behind them instead of pretty dynamic colors.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| By this token, why not add particle systems and fancy
| explosions to every button click? Why stick to squares or
| rounded squares etc, when you can use voxel shading to generate
| complex n-gons with thousands of edges?
|
| The problem with all this - and 'liquid glass' as well - is
| that far from adding anything to the experience, they take away
| from it. They muddy and visually complicate what should be a
| visually clear and simple interface, one that gets out of your
| way as much as possible while allowing you to reach what you
| really care about - the content in your apps.
| vijucat wrote:
| > One reason for flat design is because it was the lowest
| common denominator and easy for devs to implement.
|
| The 3D buttons in Windows 98 (Start button, for example) must
| have be harder to develop due to the animation involved. Yet,
| that was perfectly fine on hardware much older than those on
| which flat UIs were developed. I think you are missing the main
| point, which is that designers maul designs every season
| exactly like in the fashion industry due to merely being
| employed to do so and feeling a need to produce something new
| all the time (, which is sub-optimal for the humans who have to
| bear the UX consequences, to say the least).
|
| https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98
| 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
| viburnum wrote:
| I'm getting older too and the last thing I need is more
| blurriness.
| seydor wrote:
| i get enough natural, organic blurriness from my presbyopia
| after 40
| 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.
| cheema33 wrote:
| > I hate things that are translucent.
|
| Same here. I do not understand the fascination with making
| things harder to read and see.
| 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.
| metadat wrote:
| > It feels like Apple is entering a design hell, and I don't
| know how they'll get out of it.
|
| Improvement is always only a single update away! Potentially..
| thinkingemote wrote:
| It's probably to train the users for augmented reality UI. We
| will probably all see some kind of floating transparent user
| interface over a camera background. That the "liquid"
| transparency is dynamic and can change depending on the thing
| underneath and the thing being shown seems to directly point to
| this.
| 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?
| mjburgess wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent
| moralestapia wrote:
| So ... what's your point? I don't get it.
|
| That some company is making money?
| mjburgess wrote:
| That tim cook is reaping the rewards of their earlier
| innovation. The opposite of economic rent is economic
| value creation.
| moralestapia wrote:
| I still don't get your point.
|
| "Reaping the rewards of their earlier innovation" is
| literally his job.
| mjburgess wrote:
| The point is that tim cook is less responsible for
| apple's weath than the innovators before him, he just
| reaps what others have sowed.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Ok ... so I guess they should stop selling the iPhone ...
| out of some sort of ... rules? ... that you're appealing
| to?
|
| I still don't get your point.
|
| Apple is a public company. It's mission is not to impress
| @mjburgess but to make money for its shareholders, which
| they do really well.
| 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
| 5.293h-2.725c.286-.34.493-.74.606-1.17a2.875 2.875 0 0
| 0-.333-2.322A2.906 2.906 0 0 0 13.64.48a3.31 3.31 0 0
| 0-2.372.464 3.775 3.775 0 0 0-1.534
| 2.483l-.141.797-.142-.847A3.745 3.745 0 0 0 7.927.923
| 3.31 3.31 0 0 0 5.555.459 2.907 2.907 0 0 0 3.607
| 1.78a2.877 2.877 0 0 0-.333 2.321c.117.429.324.828.606
| 1.171H1.155a.767.767 0 0 0-.757.757v3.674a.767.767 0 0 0
| .757.757h.424v7.53A1.01 1.01 0 0 0 2.588 19h14.13a1.01
| 1.01 0 0 0 1.01-.959v-7.56h.424a.758.758 0 0 0
| .757-.757V6.05a.759.759 0 0
| 0-.868-.757Zm-7.196-1.625a2.665 2.665 0 0 1 1.01-1.736
| 2.24 2.24 0 0 1 1.574-.313 1.817 1.817 0 0 1 1.211.818
| 1.857 1.857 0 0 1 .202 1.453 2.2 2.2 0 0 1-.838
| 1.191h-3.431l.272-1.413ZM4.576 2.386a1.837 1.837 0 0 1
| 1.221-.817 2.23 2.23 0 0 1 1.565.313 2.624 2.624 0 0 1
| 1.01 1.736l.242 1.453H5.182a2.2 2.2 0 0 1-.838-1.19 1.857
| 1.857 0 0 1 .202-1.495h.03ZM1.548
| 6.424h7.54V9.39h-7.58l.04-2.967Zm1.181
| 4.128h6.359v7.287H2.729v-7.287Zm13.777 7.287h-6.348v-7.30
| 7h6.348v7.307Zm1.181-8.468h-7.53V6.404h7.53V9.37Z"
| fill="#121212" fill-rule="nonzero"></path></svg>
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I don't even see the SVG anymore, I just see blonde,
| brunette, gift box with a bow.
| 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.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| TIL upper/lower case. I always thought it was because
| upper case letters look taller, thus are "up" while
| lowercase are smaller thus "low" on the typeface line.
| yeahforsureman wrote:
| Tsk, tsk! You're using thorn (d) for two different 'th'
| sounds. Old English used 'eth' (th) to mark both sounds
| but it'd be more precise to use both letters like in
| Icelandic, eg for the above: things, de (although the
| vowel in 'the' is actually more of a schwa [@] usually,
| or [i] before vowels). Also, you're still sticking to
| some English spelling pecularities there...
|
| In a fictitious modern, phonology-based spelling system,
| you could write the above something like:
|
| "Bat sac things gou in sajkls, and wan dej di Inglis
| langwidz wil bi simplifajd."
|
| ;)
| ben_w wrote:
| Interesting, in my accent the "th" in "the" and the "th"
| in "things" sound the same.
|
| Accents do make spelling reform difficult. For example,
| some of the people who grew up 5 miles from me (they were
| Cosham/Portsmouth, I was south Havant) pronounced both
| these "th"s as... I don't know the linguistic symbol, but
| something like a "v" or an "f".
| 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...
| keyringlight wrote:
| The way I've come to understand "icon" is that it's as
| used like "religious icon". A painting of a particular
| figure is not so much about that figure, but what they
| represent, it's somewhat abstract. The save icon isn't
| about the literal bit of media as what you could do with
| it.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > Everyone decided that "save" = "disk"
|
| > Maybe a different looking disk, but still a disk.
|
| I had a discussion about this with my parents, who saw
| the 5" disks actually flopping back in the days, but
| never cared enough about computers.
|
| They thought the floppy icon meant it was saved on their
| drive, when it was actually commited to the cloud service
| they were using. They spent a while looking around, in
| their Document folder, Download folder etc. and gave up
| after a while.
|
| I can't remember which service they were using, but boy
| were they pissed.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Well, things _were_ fine before Microsoft, Apple, and
| Google decided that organizing things was too much to ask
| of the average user, and launched into the insanity of
| {latest version of multi-location library} and {cloud
| storage that pretends it 's local storage}.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Adobe does the same, most businesses that can afford it
| will try going that route, as it means user lock-in and
| more subscription money down the road.
|
| This reminds me of the Figma rant on how you can't do
| presentations offline even if you save your slides to
| disk, that's where the whole industry is trending.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| IMHO this is precisely why clinging to old metaphors
| might not be optimal.
|
| While the Shift key keeps some resemblance of the
| original object behavior, a shortcut like Cmd + Shift V
| makes no sense in the metaphor.
|
| Same way holding Shift while selecting objects in the
| finder, or arrowing around breaks the mental image. In
| many ways, the Command key's higher abstraction makes it
| easier for newcomers to grasp that it just does magical
| things.
|
| Cmd + S saving the document needs no additional lore or
| image of a past clunky machine would had somehow reacted
| in a Rube Goldberg way.
|
| Interfaces should be simple to use for simple tasks
| anyway, getting rid of semantic noise is IMHO a better
| way.
| 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.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I have to admit that I don't feel that on my old SE 2, but
| I do see Apple not caring about the device type. Some of
| the UI elements overlap og doesn't line after the update to
| iOS 18.
| 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.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| I was initially excited as on paper it sounds like a
| fantastic throwback to the Aqua design, which I still think
| was fantastic.
|
| From the preview so far I'm not excited.
|
| I have to say app icons look nice (the borders make them pop
| just a bit more), the border highlights are clear without
| being loud, and elements like the dock look nice. The
| inactive button states actually look great - as shown in the
| Camera and Facetime screenshots - they actually do look like
| little glass buttons, which is good.
|
| Where I have issue is when multiple of these glass elemenst
| are shown at once they fight for attention and it's persnally
| quite overwhelming for me. The image of the video player
| controls on iPhone and AppleTV are in my opinion awful and
| load, and that's especially where you want a quiet UI.
|
| When the shape has a strong refractive index and that's where
| it becomes really noisy for me with the Safari and music tab
| bars being absolutely awful in my opinion.
|
| It's a shame because I think if they kept the idea but dialed
| it down from 11 it could be fantastic.
| pndy wrote:
| Someone installed beta and posted a screenshot down below
| somewhere; control center with these glass buttons over a
| colorful springboard icons grid turns interface into a
| visual mess.
|
| I wonder if they manage to change anything or tweaks,
| polishing (sic!) will happen over next or two iOS releases.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > Suddenly Apple decided that this fancy acrylic glass
| animation for widgets, interface that says "look we aren't
| stagnant - we did something"
|
| like a lot of redesigns, its more about marketing and 'the
| new shiny' than anything else imo
| pndy wrote:
| Maybe it's because I'm living in a country where we had to
| catch up with marketing and advertising after communism
| fell and I have some kind of "immunity" and cynical
| approach to such forms of product presentations... But this
| whole keynote video felt like it's on nearly same levels as
| car salesman, infomercials/teleshopping.
|
| And I honestly felt sorry for woman who tries to sell me
| amazing emoji combining "technology". Who actually uses
| this beside the obvious die-hard fans on dedicated sites
| and forums.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > But this whole keynote video felt like it's on nearly
| same levels as car salesman, infomercials/teleshopping.
|
| get the same vibes as well, its basically a 90min
| commercial (and at a developers conference no less)
| 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.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Oh timers, you mean the one thing I use daily for cooking
| where they changed the recognized phrase between iOS 17
| and iOS 18? It used to understand "notify me in 15
| minutes" meant to set a timer. Now it asks for what I
| want to be reminded about to add it to the calendar. I
| have to explicitly say "set a 15-minute timer".
|
| So long for muscle memory (oh and for consiseness, it's
| worse in French).
|
| Anyways, that's the prime reason there's no list: either
| they want to change the commands willy-nilly, or they
| don't know them because that's whatever the model's
| learned.
| NaOH wrote:
| > _I have to explicitly say "set a 15-minute timer"._
|
| Only saying "15 minutes" initiates a timer for that long.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| OMG thanks, it also works in french!
|
| This goes even deeper in the "undiscoverable commands"
| issue at hand.
|
| "notify me in 15 minutes" feels natural and casual, and
| how I'd expect to interact with modern voice assistants.
| "set a 15 minutes timer" feels overly formal and
| redundant (it does not help that in French, a timer is
| "minuteur", so you repeat the "minutes" sound twice), and
| how I'd expect to interact with old voice assistants.
| This new one is just some hidden trial-and-error thing
| deep in Siri that's likely an engineer that likes cooking
| that added it as a shortcut.
| NaOH wrote:
| _> This new one is just some hidden trial-and-error thing
| deep in Siri that's likely an engineer that likes cooking
| that added it as a shortcut._
|
| Among the many shortcomings of Siri is that it seems as
| if it's not good with verbs. I've learned to avoid them
| as much as possible. Put another way, it's better with
| nouns, so I focus on them. I guess that's why
|
| "15-minute timer" and
|
| "15 minutes"
|
| work well. But similarly, I wanted to use the stopwatch
| the other day. Not something I ever really do. Just
| saying, "Stopwatch" got it open. And testing now on some
| non-Apple apps also worked (in case Siri has some built-
| in pro-Apple bias). One was WhatsApp. The other was an
| app for an insurance and banking company. That one, just
| saying its name opened the contact card I have for the
| company. That's fair. Trying again, and saying "company
| name app" opened the app.
|
| Of course, sometimes the verbs are necessary. But I've
| had more success when I could avoid them. Do note that I
| say all this using a Siri-only phone that is too old for
| any of Apple Intelligence that may get mixed in with
| Siri.
| Suppafly wrote:
| It's not a huge deal, but on google devices, setting a
| timer is different from setting an alarm. the end result
| is more or less the same thing, but it uses different
| underlying functionality and I have to remember to say
| timer instead of alarm when I'm cooking.
| OccamsMirror wrote:
| Yep this gets me all the time. The biggest difference is
| that a timer will be displayed whereas an alarm is in the
| background. The display is very handy when cooking.
| kaztal wrote:
| Saying "set an alarm in 15 minutes" vs "set at timer for
| 15 minutes" to Siri also do different things
| prennert wrote:
| Really? For me both commands set a timer for 15 minutes.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's a disconnect between the vision and the reality.
| Users shouldn't have to learn Siri, it should just work
| every time no matter how you ask as long as it's
| understandable to a person.
|
| But the reality is it doesn't work and users have to
| specifically learn the few things it can do.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| It's a disconnect because we have this vision that
| language (as commonly spoken, not legalese) is perfectly
| clear and precise. But the reality is that even two live
| people who seem to speak the same language will
| misunderstand each other, including for "basic" things.
| So how should a computer be able to read your mind, when
| it most likely doesn't even have the context of where
| you're from?
|
| Regarding the "notify" vs "timer", I had a very similar
| experience with a friend. I went to a bakery, and she
| asked me to get her some kind of pastry. To me, she meant
| some kind of bread. Queue confused faces on both sides
| when she asked where her stuff was. Sure, it's still in
| the broad "baked goods" category, just like a reminder
| and a timer. This was in France, both living in major
| cities 200 km apart. It's not like some extreme variation
| of English from the other side of the world.
| cubefox wrote:
| Theoretically, large language models have enough common
| sense to understand all variations of natural language
| commands, and to ask for clarification if they think some
| request is ambiguous. It's probably not yet feasible to
| do Siri via an LLM, or not via a properly large one (that
| has the necessary intelligence).
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| Affordances is a more general term, not necessarily
| purely visual, or even visual at all (it can be tactile,
| or auditory, etc.). It doesn't denote a particular visual
| design, and full-blown skeuomorphic elements would also
| exhibit affordances. But yes, it approaches the heart of
| the problem.
| seanwilson wrote:
| Signifiers?
| https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/94265/whats-the-
| diffe...
|
| > Affordances are what an object can do (truth).
| Perceived affordances are what one thinks an object can
| do (perception). Signifiers make affordances clearer
| (closing the gap between truth and perception).
| Signifiers often reduce number of possible
| interpretations and/or make intended way of using an
| object more explicit.
|
| > A grey link on the screen might afford clicking
| (truth). But you might perceive it just as a non-
| interactive label (perception). Styling it as a button
| (background, shadow etc.) is a signifier that makes it
| clearer that the link can be clicked.
|
| I don't think there's any more widely known terms here,
| and not any used within general tech audiences. I'd like
| it if there was a useful shorthand too but
| devs/users/clients are probably going to stick with e.g.
| "I couldn't tell that was a button" because the above
| have failed to catch on.
|
| "Visual cues" feels accurate enough. I immediately
| understand "Buttons should look like buttons".
| ilt wrote:
| Thanks. Signifiers looks like a perfect fit here since
| they are elements which signify their affordance. It
| should ideally get more mainstream instead of someone
| inventing a new word.
| seanwilson wrote:
| Yeah, I find it interesting these words haven't become
| more mainstream though when they've been around for a
| while, and maybe that ship has sailed. They don't
| resonate? The definitions are too complex? (they often
| cause debates) They're not guessable? They don't shorten
| what you mean enough? ("it should look more like a
| button" isn't much longer than "it's lacking signifiers"
| to be worth the jargon) I see people drop
| "afford/affordance" into replies occasionally but most
| people don't know what it means and it rarely adds
| anything.
|
| "Skeuomorphism" has caught on. It's not guessable but
| then it saves quite a few words so helps with
| communication. It probably got picked up by some tech
| news/blog sites and reached critical mass because
| skeuomorphism vs flat design resonates with people.
| azdle wrote:
| Ideomorphic seems like it would work for that.
|
| Turns out it's actually already a word: having the proper
| form or shape --used of minerals whose crystalline growth
| has not been interfered with
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idiomorphic
|
| That seems to fit amazingly well here too.
| 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.
| cubefox wrote:
| This is similar to WolframAlpha. Theoretically, it can do
| countless different things, but you wouldn't know about
| them just from looking at the empty text box. The
| difference to something like ChatGPT is that it can
| interpret arbitrary commands, even if it can't properly
| execute them.
| keyringlight wrote:
| I think one thing that is involved in this is conventions,
| and when you've learned one set of rules on how to
| communicate on one form of interface that it transfers to
| other applications on that interface. If there's certain ways
| to use graphical elements, gestures, console keywords/option
| flags, spoken keywords, while other applications have the
| freedom to do their own thing it should be seen as better not
| to diverge and reinvent the wheel (so each needs learning its
| own rules) too much without good reason.
| 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/
| artursapek wrote:
| Agreed. Use the medium's capabilities! Don't cripple it for
| the sake of familiarity.
| 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.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| I think you have a romanticized revisionary memory of back
| then.
|
| I went to school in the 90s and learned computers in school.
|
| All they taught us was the basics. How to use Windows explorer.
| What files are and how to rename and delete and undelete them.
|
| And some hypercard clone. Which barely taught us anything about
| computers except "they can do stuff you tell them to," which I
| guess was a valuable lesson?
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I've been hearing that kids do not understand files and
| hierarchal file systems due to cloud and iOS.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > I taught people to use computers in the 90s and early 2000s,
| and having those concepts matching to real world objects helped
| immensely.
|
| As I child of the nineties I was surprised to eventually learn
| that a file in a folder was a real thing and not only a
| computer concept.
| 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.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| These likely have small radius rounded corners too.
| cardanome wrote:
| Rounded corners vex me so much.
|
| I can barely cope with their being no option to turn them
| off on Mac, especially for windows. I literally had to make
| my background pure black because the few pixels of
| backgrounds always showing pissed me off so much.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| It makes taking nice screenshots so much more awkward, if
| not impossible. Just give us a quick toggle option,
| please!
| adregan wrote:
| Command+option+shift+4 then press the space bar to take a
| screenshot of a single window (shadow included).
| 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.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Or maybe they standardise on the codename across
| platforms? If they're going to aim for meaningful cross-
| compatibility, then that would make a lot more sense than
| confusing, boring version numbers.
| steve-atx-7600 wrote:
| Thought you guys were just being whiney until I looked at
| the linked "beautiful new design" page and saw the screen
| shots they selected. Literally gives me a headache to look
| at the first sample and I am one of the people that miss
| the candy coated look of early OS X.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| The section on macOS only used the name Tahoe, like the 26
| idea hadn't made it to the copy for that section.
| 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. "
| monkeyelite wrote:
| What is the reasoning behind this comment?
| bsder wrote:
| This UI "update" is so obviously detrimental to anyone
| who doesn't have great 20ish-year-old eyesight, that it
| is going to negatively impact customer support costs,
| sales, engagement, etc.
|
| So, you can either assume that Apple are blundering,
| incompetent dolts who have completely lost the plot
| (certainly possible) or that Apple has an actual purpose
| behind this.
|
| If you ask for the purpose and the look at the GUI, you
| see Apple cramming a UI update targeted with the design
| language from AR (transparency behind everything, motion
| cues to activate orienting reflex, etc.) down the throats
| of _all_ developers as opposed to just those on the
| Vision.
| 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.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Since when did we care about what designers want? It's
| called User Experience, not Designer Experience. The
| target audience is not people who are intimately familiar
| with digital idioms, that's why skeuomorphism is
| remembered more fondly than the iOS 7 design.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Reminds me of when Jony Ive had the run of the place and
| gave us the bending iPhone and MacBooks with no ports.
| All for the sake of "Designer Experience".
| pseudalopex wrote:
| ''Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what
| it looks like,'' says Steve Jobs, Apple's C.E.O. ''People
| think it's this veneer -- that the designers are handed
| this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what
| we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and
| feels like. Design is how it works.''[1]
|
| Interface design is not a place for unlimited creative
| expression. But recent user interface trends exclude many
| design idioms and relegate one to a limited range of
| creative expression also. Some people think they look
| better. Some do not.
|
| Accessible interfaces have become uglier in ways which
| did not improve accessibility. And recent trends have
| made them less accessible in some ways also. Choose not
| enough contrast or too much. Choose contrast or color
| where both were before.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/30/magazine/the-guts-
| of-a-ne...
| 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...
| TylerE wrote:
| Try making the window chrome bigger on macOS. You can't
| do it.
| 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
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Did burntalmonds bitch about the flat look before? Or was
| this the fallacy where people assume everyone else is 1
| person?
| dylan604 wrote:
| or more like the fallacy that people can come online and
| snipe a thread when they miss the joke and think everyone
| else is serious trying to prove a fallacy. let's get meta
| 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.
| 1over137 wrote:
| "reduce motion" is gone in the new macOS beta.
| root_dir wrote:
| no it isn't
| lurking_swe wrote:
| the autistic user base is vastly smaller than the
| neurotypical user base. So it makes sense to ship settings
| that most people would like.
|
| It's simply a matter of "which settings would MOST of our
| users want enabled by default?"
|
| I do agree that the accessibility settings can make ios
| pretty ugly though. It's a real shame. :(
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm don't think that most users want a fancy new look
| that also decreases usability and readability. At least
| that's not the impression I get with the users I talk to.
| _Maybe_ most users let themselves be impressed in a
| marketing sense, but that doesn't mean they would
| actively want it by themselves.
| lozenge wrote:
| The version most people would like is usually the first
| or second iteration. Then designers need to change things
| to keep it looking new and fresh and the changes are
| inherently going to be worse because that's the only
| option available.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I hope it removes the shading and gloss too. Literally
| nothing in this design update is an improvement to
| accessibility.
| 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/
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The problem is the background can be more than 1 color.
| vFunct wrote:
| Which is why the gaussian blur was invented...
|
| People pretend this isn't a solved problem.
| 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.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Expose and multi touch seem too well designed for no
| research.
| delfinom wrote:
| Absolufuckingloothy.
|
| The Apple of today is nowhere near what the Apple of Steve
| Jobs was.
|
| Bugs galore, UX issues galore. Overall it's a mashup of
| various staff egos over everything.
| 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...
| andrepd wrote:
| > M3 Expressive designs were overwhelmingly rated higher
| for attributes such as "energetic," "emotive," "positive
| vibe," "creative," "playful," and "friendly."
|
| Heavy research indeed
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I can't tell if you're joking. M3 Expressive is godawful
| and throws away so many hard-won lessons in UX R&D.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I spent some time navigating through the linked page.
|
| I don't doubt designers spent a lot of time researching
| it. It still reads like an incredible amount of carefully
| crafted bullshit.
|
| The more the design of things "evolve", the more I
| appreciate designs that simply don't.
| Due_Winter_5330 wrote:
| Well to be fair their research confirmed that half of 55+
| year-olds didn't like the new design
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Funny, someone else mentioned in another reply that I may
| be too young to remember something from like 25 years
| ago.
|
| I'm a Schrodinger's old man.
| 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.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| They're not [always] about hiding loading times. Even
| switching from an app to the desktop screen has a slow
| animation, or switching back and forth between two
| running apps.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| That explanation makes no sense in this case. The
| workspace transition animation takes a full second, on
| extremely performant devices that can keep up their pace
| up until the OS swaps around 15GB, at which point
| animations start lagging so they actually make it even
| worse. Meanwhile a Linux setup will switch workspaces
| instantly. Same for Windows 11 if you turn off
| animations, by the way.
|
| This animation slows every transition by one second
| _including entering and leaving fullscreen mode_ ,
| because on Mac OS fullscreen works by moving the window
| to a new workspace. There is no justification for this.
| cyberax wrote:
| > You can also disable animations on iOS.
|
| No, you can not. You can reduce _some_ animations, but most
| of them actually remain. Including the most annoying ones
| like the slowwwww screen switching, or the bottom sheet
| animation.
|
| An amusing anecdote: I have animation turned off entirely
| on my Android phone, and I was demoing an app on it. People
| commented how amazingly fast it felt compared to iOS,
| simply because there were no animations.
| 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.
| dimal wrote:
| Everyone affected by this will know to look for those deeply
| nested setting, right? Or will the 70 year old with bad
| eyesight just stop being able to use their phone? Or use it a
| lot less, or be frustrated and stressed by it? A lot of
| people don't bother fiddling with their settings and just
| take what they're given.
|
| I'm not just thinking of myself here. I'm concerned that a
| lot of people who don't consider themselves disabled will _be
| disabled_ by this.
| heartbreak wrote:
| My 70 year old relatives seem to have no problem finding
| the setting that makes everything on the phone 2x bigger.
| Probably because Apple is good at this and offers it up as
| an option in the OS onboarding and after every major
| update.
|
| It'll be fine.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| On Mac OS the first significant thing on screen after
| turning it on for the first time are the accessibility
| settings with screenshots and animations to explain every
| option. You can also access those options with the
| Spotlight search, typing "tran" will give you the "reduce
| transparency" toggle directly in the search results without
| having to open settings first (though to be fair the search
| indexing is a bit lacking, like on iOS - the animation
| toggle is called "reduce motion" and so it can't be found
| via typing in "animation").
| jajuuka wrote:
| Apple designs stuff this way on purpose. They think it's
| neat to "discover" something that should be obvious. The
| new camera app is a perfect example of this. No indication
| that swiping up from the bottom brings up a menu for camera
| controls. The fact any of these obviously terrible design
| and implementation choices are praised is baffling.
| 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"
| landl0rd wrote:
| Right. My point is the response to this is "well if we
| optimize it more we'll improve performance", but
| oftentimes if you optimized the existing code you would
| also improve performance. Your end state is still worse.
| gmueckl wrote:
| Is it really worse if the GPU spends maybe 0.5ms more per
| frame on these effects? I'd be surprised if a good
| implementation adds much more to the per frame rendering
| time.
| landl0rd wrote:
| The consideration for mobile devices (laptops, tablets,
| and phones make up the bulk of apple's hardware sales) is
| more power consumption.
| gmueckl wrote:
| But even then it doesn't matter in practice. I dare you
| to measure the battery life impact of this change.
| butlike wrote:
| Thanks. Wasn't familiar with that latin
| blinding-streak wrote:
| The reality distortion field is back, it seems.
| 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
| threeseed wrote:
| Apple provides a battery replacement program.
|
| And you can use third parties as well which Apple now
| officially supports.
|
| It is just a lie to say you need a new phone.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| We don't need to carry water for greedy billionaires.
| bigyabai wrote:
| JWZ was right about us the whole time.
| 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.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| I agree, it was the right call to make -- a temporarily-
| impaired device is always better than a temporarily-
| failed device, especially when you're talking about
| something you may need in an emergency situation.
|
| That said, Apple _significantly_ erred in not over-
| communicating what they were doing. At that point, the OS
| would pop warnings to users if the phone had to thermal
| throttle, and adding a similar notification that led the
| user to a FAQ page explaining the battery dynamics
| wouldn't have been technically hard to do.
| 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.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Right, yes, your anecdotal experience is totally
| 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?
| wolpoli wrote:
| I would prefer to be told that my battery is weak so I
| could make a decision on if I want to replace the
| battery, replace the phone, live with the phone shutting
| down randomly when battery is low, or continue with a
| slower phone. That's just me.
| 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.
| worthless-trash wrote:
| Right, but you choose when to play the games right ?
|
| You can't choose when to use your OS, and you need to
| 'update your os' to stay secure.
| slt2021 wrote:
| if I want to play games, I will buy the latest iPhone. If
| I want to a smartphone with couple simple primitive apps
| that just send JSON and call REST APIs in the cloud, I
| don't want to be forced to shell out $1500 every couple
| years
| 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.
| nsonha wrote:
| No one is holding back software. You're not running local
| LLM or anything useful, you're adding performance cost
| for merely displaying icons on screen.
| sanswork wrote:
| No one is holding back software because they aren't being
| allowed. If we were forced to support decade+ old devices
| though software would for sure be held back.
|
| Laggards cost society by running insecure devices that
| generally impact the rest of the world besides just
| complaining about no one continuing to support them long
| after the useful life of their devices.
| bschwindHN wrote:
| > Laggards cost society by running insecure devices that
| generally impact the rest of the world
|
| Maybe there's also a cost to updating phones as
| frequently as people do, and inefficient software running
| across billions of devices.
|
| I wouldn't blame people who make their hardware last
| longer and call them "laggards". And it's not their
| responsibility to write security patches for their
| device, that falls on the manufacturer.
|
| For these people, me included, they don't need the latest
| hardware features to ray trace a game or run some local
| LLM. We're just taking some photos, making calls, getting
| map navigation, messaging, interacting with CRUD apps,
| and web browsing. None of that requires the latest
| hardware, and especially Apple hardware from 8 years ago
| is more than capable of handling it smoothly.
| sanswork wrote:
| Ask anyone who had to deal with supporting IE back in the
| day what the cost to the world is fort supporting tech
| laggards. They are an anchor on tech growth and a real
| issue.
|
| If you're running an insecure device past it's support
| life it's your responsibility and your fault if it's used
| to attack others. You are fully to blame for choosing to
| use something past it's serviced life. You cannot expect
| companies to support old software forever.
| cardanome wrote:
| So trashing fine working hardware that was produced using
| valuable and rare resources sounds perfectly sane to you?
|
| For what? So a designer can get a promotion? This is not
| progress, this is pure fashion. As if the planet being
| literally on fire needed more fuel.
| sanswork wrote:
| Yes, everything has a lifetime, 10 years is a very good
| run for a complex piece of technology you can carry in
| your pocket. Send it in for recycling.
|
| So that we can have better features and functionality in
| our future systems. Backwards compatibility is an anchor.
| If you want new things then expect to get new platforms
| to run them on don't expect everyone to limit their
| possibilities to support you.
| cardanome wrote:
| The vast majority of things don't get recycled properly.
|
| We are not talking about new features. Of course no one
| expects to run a LLM on an ten year old phone, again we
| are talking about fashion. It is change for change's
| sake. It is not providing value to users it is so the the
| designer gets to eat and management and shareholders are
| kept happy.
|
| There is a difference between actual technical progress
| and you throwing out your skinny jeans because baggy
| pants are now in fashion.
|
| Why shouldn't we build phones that last ten year, twenty
| years, or even more?
| sanswork wrote:
| Apple offers a recycling program.
|
| >We are not talking about new features
|
| We are, you are just choosing to ignore them and call
| them fashion. There have been immense changes in
| capabilities over the past 10 years.
|
| >Why shouldn't we build phones that last ten year, twenty
| years, or even more?
|
| We do, dumb phones, why don't you own one of those
| instead of trying to limit progress in the phones pushing
| progress?
| 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.
| threeseed wrote:
| Do you have some actual evidence that this is the case ?
|
| Otherwise saying it is definitively true is misleading to
| put it mildly.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| Replying to you from an iPhone 7 that I use daily.
| apetresc wrote:
| Apple announces _all_ iOS updates in June and releases
| them simultaneously with the newest iPhones in September.
| So you 're right, but only trivially so.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I'm very happy with my iPhone 13 Mini, my wife is very
| happy with her iPhone 12. They feel exactly the same as
| when bought new.
|
| Whatever is it that you're saying that Apple does, it's
| either not obvious or they're shit at it.
| dkarl wrote:
| More likely it's a result of pressure to ship highly
| visible "improvements," combined with a lack of ideas that
| could improve the experience in a meaningful way. What do
| you do in that situation? Ship an obvious UI update that
| wouldn't have performed on the last gen hardware.
| Someone wrote:
| I haven't used the new UI, so don't assume this to be an
| endorsement of it, but even if you have good ideas about
| UI improvements _and_ implement them, there still is
| pressure to make the UI look different because that, at a
| glance, shows users that they get something new.
|
| And yes, "looking different" doesn't have to mean
| "requires faster hardware", but picking something that
| requires faster hardware makes it less likely that you
| will be accused of being a copy-cat of some other
| product's UI.
| 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
| hajile wrote:
| I don't think upgrading was the reason for Vista
| performance. MS wasn't in the hardware business back then
| (and is just a marginal player even today).
|
| They WAY overreached in their goals with Longhorn. When
| they finally decided to cut back features to something
| actually attainable, they didn't have enough time to make
| a high-performance OS.
|
| Windows 7 was a well-loved rebrand of what was
| essentially just a Windows Vista service pack and
| improved performance (though it was still too heavy for a
| lot of the older machines people tried to upgrade to
| Vista). If they'd have cut back on their goals earlier,
| Windows 7 is likely a lot closer to what would have
| shipped as Vista.
| p_l wrote:
| A lot of problems was simply a fight with device makers
| and shit drivers, to be quite honest.
|
| Windows 7 benefited from coming later with Vista being
| the battleground in which vendors were forced to update
| to NT6.0 models.
| 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
| p_l wrote:
| Vista was dogged by issues caused by migrating display
| drivers from NTDDM to WDDM 1.0, something that was only
| finished by 7 (which dropped NTDDM fully and introduced
| WDDM 1.1) and 8 (which afaik had mandated WDDM 1.1 only).
|
| Unlike previous GDI acceleration, DWM.EXE could composite
| alpha channel quickly with the GPU, and generally achieved
| much higher fill rates on the same hw - if the drivers
| worked properly.
| krferriter wrote:
| Yeah one of the easiest ways to make windows vista+7
| perform better was to simply disable all the fancy UI
| graphics that add nothing. I don't care if my window title
| bars have a gradient and animated transparency. It's
| actually a bit distracting and makes the system perform
| worse, so I just turned it off.
|
| Even on modern devices though which have more computation
| and graphics power to the point that they aren't going to
| actually lag or anything while rendering it, why waste
| cycles and battery animating these useless and distracting
| things? There's no good justification.
| 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
| adastra22 wrote:
| Ray tracing is done in shaders these days. Doesn't make
| it cheap.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| The comment you're replying to probably means "a shader
| that is a fine approximation of ray tracing (for cheap)"
| AlienRobot wrote:
| I don't usually say things are bloated but raytracing
| buttons is something I'd expect to be a parody...
|
| And all of this just to make the whole UI white and
| generic.
|
| I just want everything to look like Windows XP. I don't
| get it.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| It's almost certain to be a fairly cheap thing, at least
| for a GPU that can sling pixels at the gigabytes per
| second necessary to get smooth touch scrolling at these
| screen resolutions.
|
| The demos only show a very limited array of shapes.
| Precompute the refraction, store the result in a texture,
| and the gist should be sample(blur(background),
| sample(refraction, point)). Probably a bit more
| complicated than this--I'm no magician of the kind that's
| needed to devise cheap graphics tricks like this--but the
| computational effort should be in that ballpark. Compared
| to on-device language models and such, I wouldn't be
| worried.
|
| (Also, do I need to remind you of the absolute disdain
| directed by 95/98/Me/2000 users at the "toy" default
| theme of XP? And it was a bit silly, to be honest. It's
| just that major software outfits don't dare to be silly
| anymore, and that way lies blandness.)
| lodovic wrote:
| > It's just that major software outfits don't dare to be
| silly anymore, and that way lies blandness
|
| Great observation! We need some of that sillyness back.
| Everything is all serious and corporate nowadays, even
| 'fun' stuff like social media or games. Even movies can't
| be silly anymore.
| stereolambda wrote:
| Not sure about 'serious and corporate', the big corps
| like to appear cute, folksy etc. and recently we even saw
| new Google Material Design advertised as judged more
| "rebellious" by focus groups. Maybe bland and toothless
| is just a general direction of contemporary culture and
| style that they follow.
|
| Myself, I can appreciate corporate stuff presenting
| corporate. More truthful, feels a little less
| manipulative.
| UltraSane wrote:
| the Winamp GUI and skins are "silly". This is just boring
| and bland.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _It's almost certain to be a fairly cheap thing, at
| least for a GPU that can sling pixels at the gigabytes
| per second_
|
| Okay, but what about the battery connected to the GPU?
| The battery in my iPhone has already degraded below 80%
| health in the 2.7 years I've had it, so I'd rather not
| waste its charge on low-contrast glass effects.
| jitl wrote:
| You'll be able to turn them off with "reduce
| transparency" setting like you've been able to since iOS
| 7
| rdtsc wrote:
| Make things slow so they can sell more hardware to make
| it look faster?
|
| I don't know, just kidding :-)
|
| If GPUs can handle it, I guess why not. It's some people
| will notice and say "wow, looks pretty, glad I upgraded"
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _And all of this just to make the whole UI white and
| generic._
|
| 3:30-3:45 in the video is painful. Describing "giving you
| an _entirely_ new way, to personalise your experience",
| while showing... white. White white white. Oh, and light
| tinted backgrounds to set your white on. I hope the
| personalisation you wanted was white.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| My conspiracy theory is that dark/light theme was
| invented by companies to keep users from asking for full
| customization.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| We used to have such customisation, then it kinda went
| away for a while because it was too hard and limited
| development, and then dark mode was hailed as a brilliant
| new invention.
|
| But it is worth remembering that dark mode _does_
| actually get you some things; it's not all bad: the
| restrictions _do_ have some value.
|
| Full customisation became paradoxically limiting: when
| you give too much power to the user, the app is
| essentially operating in a hostile environment. Of
| course, a lot of it was laziness on app and UI framework
| developers' parts, but it really did limit innovation,
| too.
|
| Dark mode gets you a pair of themes that you can switch
| between easily, and an expectation that there are _only_
| two themes you need to consider, with well-defined
| characteristics. This is a much more practical target, a
| vastly easier sell for app and framework developers.
|
| The funny thing with monochrome icons is that in some
| ways they were actually a _better_ fit for a full-
| customisation environment, where you had arbitrary
| background and foreground colours. Once it's just mundane
| light and dark themes, you could more safely have full
| colour in two variants.
|
| Certainly light mode and dark mode does _not_ mean things
| need to be monochrome.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Hey now, this is Windows Vista. Get it straight!
| _bent wrote:
| where do you see raytracing? it's just reading back the
| texture of the layer behind a bit distorted. honestly
| that's cheaper than a blur
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| I would imagine that for a known geometry of glass, you
| can do the ray tracing once, see where each photon ends
| up, and then bake that transformation into the UI. If you
| do this for each edge and curve your UI will produce, you
| can stitch them together piecewise to form UI elements of
| different shapes without computing everything again from
| scratch.
| LtdJorge wrote:
| The sampling will still affect performance.
| 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.
| miffy900 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.
|
| "Without any performance issues"? Entirely false - reviews
| at the time noted iOS 7 dramatically reduced battery life -
| all across the board for Apple devices, even for the then
| latest iPhone 5S and 5c
| (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/ios-7-thoroughly-
| rev...).
|
| The abuse of transparency/translucency in the UI was the
| primary reason - you could go to Accessibility settings and
| disable animations + transparency/translucency and get
| notable increases in both runtime speed of the OS UI and
| battery life.
| threeseed wrote:
| You can't judge battery life and performance off a .0
| release when the priority is on delivering features with
| the minimum number of showstopper bugs. At least wait
| until the .1.
|
| It has been like this for every Apple release for over 20
| years.
| TylerE wrote:
| Poor performance of a GUI is a showstopper bug. It should
| be, anyway.
| bigyabai wrote:
| If Apple has been shipping betas for 2 decades that do
| not meaningfully prepare the release candidate for users,
| something is horribly wrong. They're either not listening
| to the feedback they receive or they're not giving
| themselves enough time; both are firmly within Apple's
| control.
| tl wrote:
| Maybe for "Apple", but there's one team that takes
| performance seriously. The WebKit team has a zero
| tolerance policy for performance regressions
| (https://webkit.org/performance/) dating back to the
| implementation of the Page Load Test in 2002 (Creative
| Selection, p. 93).
|
| WebKit sounds like the kind of scrappy startup Apple
| might want to acquire and gain some hard-earned
| engineering knowledge.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _The WebKit team has a zero tolerance policy for
| performance regressions_
|
| But apparently they still welcome app-crashing bugs and
| UI-stalling code!
| rideontime wrote:
| Maybe we should stop accepting this?
| exe34 wrote:
| > number of showstopper bugs
|
| Screwing with the battery life on a mobile device would
| be a showstopper bug if Steve were still around.
| xattt wrote:
| Memory unlocked: the awful slog that was an iPhone 4S
| with iOS >= 7.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Indeed, I remember the switch to iOS 7, for me battery
| life seemed to get slightly worse but there were
| conflicting opinions at the time. It's fresh in my memory
| as it was around the same time I binged on all five
| seasons of Breaking Bad :)
|
| I's also true that iOS 7 made the 4/4S seem much slower,
| but the frosted glass effect still ran at 60FPS - that
| was my point. It was really impressive at the time.
| Though unless you spent hours sliding the control center
| up and down, it's hard to blame the blur effect for the
| reduced battery life, as it rarely appeared inside apps.
| Most likely the result of increased OS bloat and
| proliferation of background services.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Anyone who's ever written a blur shader knows that blurs
| aren't cheap.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Yes! And it was frustratingly patented!
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US7397964B2/en
|
| I made a comment about this a couple of years ago, but I
| fudged the explanation of it.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34937618
|
| I suspect that their new technique implements the existing
| fast gaussian blur, and since the patent is about to
| expire, it was a good time to spice it up.
|
| I suspect as others have mentioned here, they use a "Liquid
| Glass" shader which samples the backing layer of the UI
| composition below the target element and applies a lens
| distortion based on the target element's border radius, all
| heavily parameterized so as to be used with the rest of the
| system's Liquid Glass applications like the new icon
| system.
| rjmunro wrote:
| Surely it's a performance nightmare because whatever is
| behind the frosting has to be rendered in full. Without
| this it can see that it's occluded and not have to render.
| Or does MacOS not do that?
| p_l wrote:
| Early iPhone hardware was barely keeping with rendering the
| UI _with_ a total ban on transparency. Even on iPhone 4
| which improved the hardware a lot had the issue that it
| also increased amount of pixels to be pushed around.
|
| And yes, later iOS on early hardware was huge PITA and
| slowdown.
| 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.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > It's in beta so ofc I'm getting a ton of frame hitches,
| overheating
|
| how is battery-life?
| tempodox wrote:
| Since overheating was already mentioned, I give you one
| guess how that affects battery life.
| mminer237 wrote:
| How can you get overheating and better performance? Is it
| just using the big cores for basic OS functions now?
| busymom0 wrote:
| My guess- GPU is probably being used a ton for the blurs
| causing the heat but the CPU is still free allowing for
| snappy scrolling performance.
| 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.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Apple loves their battery life numbers
|
| For devices currently being sold, primarily.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Maybe in the past, but my iPhone 13 still has pretty good
| battery life considering the battery has physically
| degraded over the years. No update felt like it killed
| the battery.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Eh, I use an iPhone 11 that's 5.5 years old, with the
| original battery and to this day the battery life is not
| noticeably different from when it was new.
|
| It's the first iPhone I bought and has lasted longer than
| any of the three Android phones I had before it.
| wooger wrote:
| Literally impossible for your battery life not to have
| degraded in 5.5 years, battery tech just degrades - my 14
| Pro was noticably worse in less than a year.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Hence the use of 'noticeably', as opposed to
| 'measurably'. There's no point in arguing about
| subjective experience.
| drob518 wrote:
| These modern chips have so much graphics processing
| capability, I think they just throw the problem at the
| hardware and let it do its thing.
| solfox wrote:
| It may not be overt, but it also seems they are working to
| justify the hardware with the software.
| david-gpu wrote:
| _> At a previous company, we were forbidden from using
| translucency (with a few exceptions) because of the
| performance cost of blending._
|
| I imagine this was on mobile devices.
|
| Blending was relatively expensive on GPUs from Imagination
| Technologies and their derivatives, including all Apple GPUs.
| This is because these GPUs had relatively weak shader
| processors and relied instead on dedicated hardware to sort
| geometry so that the shader processor had to do less work
| than on a traditional GPU.
|
| Other GPUs vendors rely more on beefier shader processors and
| less on sorting geometry (e.g. Hierarchical-Z). This turned
| out to be a better approach in the long term, especially once
| game engines started relying on deferred shading anyway,
| which is in essence a software-based approach that sorts
| geometry first before computing the final pixel colors.
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I feel like a few years back when I still used an Intel
| macbook i noticed an increase in battery life and less frames
| dropping (like during 'Expose' animations) by disabling
| transparency in Accessibility settings.
|
| I think this was after the BIg Sur update.
| skhr0680 wrote:
| Translucency being a main feature of Mac OS X is decades old
| at this point. I remember a magazine article touting it as an
| advantage over the _upcoming_ release of Windows XP!
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| This reminds me of disabling the Windows Vista translucent UI
| to claw back performance on my crappy Gateway laptop in uni.
| illiac786 wrote:
| Interestingly, in iOS 18, suppressing transparency (there's a
| setting for it) makes performance worse, not better. The UI
| lags significantly more with transparency disabled. I expect
| it will be the same with iOS 26: there will be setting to
| reduce the transparency (which I find highly distracting) but
| it will make performance actually worse...
| krferriter wrote:
| Did suppressing transparency also turn on processor
| throttling or something too? Like putting the device in a
| power saver mode?
| 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.
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| Oh! I've long struggled with the narrow indents on Hacker
| News comments. I thought this was a reply to OP.
|
| Thank you.
| dimal wrote:
| Autistic people tend to have very different sensory
| sensitivities than neurotypical people. Most are very
| highly sensitive and tend have trouble picking out a signal
| when there's too much noise around it.
|
| To me, being socially awkward is kind of a secondary, less
| important trait, but that's the one everyone seems to
| notice. We're weird on the outside because inside, we're
| dealing with overwhelming sensory input.
| georgebcrawford wrote:
| Whoops, I didn't see parent comment and thought the reply
| was to the submission. It seemed massively out of context
| but absolutely wasn't :-)
|
| Curse HackerNews' narrow indents!
| 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?
| delfinom wrote:
| >I fail to see any systematic approach/ consistent design
| language at play here.
|
| O no, there is a systematic approach.
|
| 1. Bosses in UI division get promotions & raises for their
| new implementation of shiny
|
| 2. Marketing guys get to use their bird brains to promote
| shiny
|
| 3. Apple UX guys get to have their med prescriptions renewed
| 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.
| SirMaster wrote:
| There has been a reduce transparency option in iOS and it has
| this effect on the new OS.
|
| https://preview.redd.it/zzxh77iv906f1.png?width=2358&format=.
| ..
| 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.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| there is a setting labeled "increase contrast" under
| Accessibilitt > Display & Text Size. That may help? i
| haven't tried it.
| layer8 wrote:
| It helps only in some limited ways, while also making
| some elements look more ugly. It does too little to solve
| the overall issue.
| 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.
| swores wrote:
| It's not something you rush out at the last minute, but it
| might be something you plan a long time ahead as "our
| interesting stuff might not work out, so let's do a huge
| redesign too to be confident we can pretend to be releasing
| something excitingly new either way".
|
| (I don't particularly have an opinion that this was their
| line of thinking, just pointing out that for a company like
| Apple they would have been thinking "what if X isn't ready
| in time" months or even years before the point of actually
| knowing if X is it isn't ready on time.)
| srg0 wrote:
| That's probably driven by some kind of an AR headset. AR
| can't properly render solids, so it is stuck with having
| everything transparent. Now it won't look worse than
| everything else.
| tempodox wrote:
| Because everything else looks worse instead. That's one way
| to solve it, I guess.
| 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.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Background meant anything behind. Not wallpaper.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/AEEj5w1
| treetalker wrote:
| It's not a layer ... it's a _new material_
| oftden wrote:
| I agree that these changes are distracting. I don't want
| effects that change things as I move it. I want fewer
| distractions and don't want things all over the place.
|
| I liked webpages in the 1990s before the blink and marquee
| tags. I wasn't excited by skeuomorphic design, but it was at
| least fun. Then there was flat blocky design which really
| sucked. Then that was undone by putting curves back in, and it
| was ok. Then people started adding a shit ton of empty space
| everywhere which was the first time when Millennials started
| f-ing up design. I still blame them today because they're still
| the most opinionated and make terrible, TERRIBLE design
| decisions. I don't think I'll ever be happy again with
| interface design. It's super f-d.
| pbreit wrote:
| Seems like they could not choose between flat and not flat.
| diabllicseagull wrote:
| I'm on the same boat. The specularity around edges don't match
| the refraction patterns and it throws me off every time.
| Somehow they thought this wouldn't affect readability of
| whatever button or panel it's applied to. They also use the
| specular bits as a border that's also so uneven depending on
| which direction light hits from. I noticed that some of the
| dark panels had almost no borders at the lower right corner.
|
| Another bit I'd like to pick on is the speed at which
| transparent context bubbles spring out. Waiting for a panel to
| bounce back and forth so that you know where to put your finger
| next is so bad as a UX choice that I'm losing confidence in
| Apple.
|
| From a visual point of view, there is now flat design mixed
| with this voluminous transparent design which is a weird
| combination of skeuomorphic and abstract designs in one. I
| really don't know what they were thinking.
| MonkeyIsNull wrote:
| > 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.
|
| How can that possibly be? Didn't he say it will: "bring joy and
| delight to _every_ user experience"
|
| That means YOU as well. No way he could over-selling something.
| Inconceivable.
| steve-atx-7600 wrote:
| Apple has historically been above average in terms of
| considering usability. So, I think seeing this new design as
| being asinine is not an unexpected opinion.
| sgarland wrote:
| Accessibility aside, I don't see the appeal in this design. I
| find the current design quite pleasant and usable. Translucent
| 3D text sounds like teenage-me messing around in Photoshop in
| the early 2000s.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The new glass design feels fresh and playful. Like a more
| refined luxury version of Frutiger Aero. The current design
| is functional, but it feels pretty stale and mundane after
| years.
| gond wrote:
| That is actually a feature. An UI should never be, under
| any circumstances, in line with a trend, fresh or different
| for the sake of being different.
|
| It should, however, be as invisible as possible. Being only
| functional is a compliment.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Huge disagreement here. Maybe true for something critical
| like the control board on some heavy machinery.
|
| But for something like a phone or messaging app, I want
| to see the return of fun, creative, and unique. We had
| such a great era of design around 2006-2013 and then it
| all rapidly went incredibly dull since then.
|
| I want to see creative menus back, I want to see whacky
| UIs like windows media player skins back. Ultimately for
| basic stuff of low importance like your phone, the most
| absolutely optimal UI doesn't matter, much like I don't
| care for the most absolutely optimal furniture. Its
| visual appeal matters.
| adastra22 wrote:
| My phone is the control board of my life. It is critical
| infrastructure and serious.
| Gigachad wrote:
| No one is getting mangled in machinery if I take 100ms
| longer to send a text message. There's time to spare to
| actually enjoy the design.
| paganel wrote:
| 911/112 calls are still made via phones, and I have to
| say that even making a simple phone call has, at times,
| become highly problematic on these new and very complex
| smart-phones.
|
| With that said, my pants' pocket still manages to somehow
| initiate the "emergency call" procedure every couple of
| months or so, I have no idea how that happens (I don't
| even know how I'd do that with the phone placed in front
| of me).
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| > Pant's pockets
|
| Yep. I keep making accidental emergency calls too.
| Another interesting incident which happened only once:
|
| I accidentally opened instagram, a group chat, and
| changed the background to bubbles or something like that,
| all with my phone in my pocket. I guess I put my phone
| into my pocket unlocked by accident because I can't
| imagine accidentally typing my PIN.
| dave881 wrote:
| But what if animated and "playful" do not make the UI
| enjoyable?
| gond wrote:
| >We had such a great era of design around 2006-2013 and
| then it all rapidly went incredibly dull since then.
|
| I agree with the huge disagreement. That 2006-2013 era
| was, in my opinion, horrendous and takes the second spot
| as an offender just after "peak flat".
|
| However, I never denied that visual appeal matters. But
| design is how it holistically works, not how it looks.
|
| Maybe, at some point, some team will get back to Dieter
| Rams 10 principles and hammer it into an UX experience.
| We were so close in the 90's.
|
| Maybe we can agree on: make the os maximally unobtrusive
| by default but include options to customise to taste?
| butlike wrote:
| It's Aqua 2.0, or at least, I hope it's going to be like
| that.
| Theodores wrote:
| Apple know their customers and what they like.
|
| I am actually Apple-phobic, a diehard linux user and
| incapable of doing simple tasks on Apple products. However, I
| think they have got a winner here. Although people talk of
| Vista Aero, it is more sophisticated than that, and, when
| this rolls out, Android will look distinctly old fashioned
| and low status, even if it is better as far as accessibility.
| I like what they have done here, even if it is not for me.
| yeahforsureman wrote:
| Disagree on almost all points. Glass and the relative
| absence of color, texture and patterns make it look cold,
| detached, almost inhuman and absent of anything your eyes
| could rest on. There are ways to make this approach look
| cool and futuristic, but it suffers from the same downside
| as a lot of the white/glassy modernist architecture: the
| human eye abhors lack of detail and natural/organic
| patterns and texture. (It makes for a great canvas for
| graffitti though...)
|
| Meanwhile, Android's Material You/Expressive design
| language is taking almost an opposite approach. Personally,
| I prefer it to Liquid Glass by a wide margin.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Architecture without structural integrity is terrible no
| matter how it looks. User interfaces that aren't usable
| and clear are bad no matter how they look. Sure the human
| eye enjoys looking at trees with thousands of leaves, but
| you won't find a person who enjoys a UI with a thousand
| buttons on screen.
|
| To me visual noise in user interfaces is a severe
| distraction and I tend to prefer applications with
| minimal UIs (not minimal features). I disabled text
| cursor blinking in the browser and use a program to auto-
| hide the mouse pointer after a few seconds because it can
| distract me from reading.
|
| I do like this new UI Apple shows here, though I would
| probably get tired of the effects if I had to use it for
| extended periods of time. Just like animations look
| satisfying until you realize they slow down everything
| you do on the computer because often their main purpose
| is marketing and not usefulness.
| MetaMonk wrote:
| Haven't been able to turn it off yet. It's so awful looking and
| distracting, even with "reduce transparency" and "reduce
| motion" enabled. I actually think these settings are making it
| stutter more. It's definitely slower than iOS 18.
| hartator wrote:
| > accessibility nightmare.
|
| It's also annoying, slow you down, and anyway useless if you
| don't have a physical issue with them.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| i think apple has historically always shipped their products
| with plenty of accessibility settings. Even today it's possible
| to easily increase contrast, reduce transparency, reduce
| animations, and way more on ios.
|
| i'm not too worried, but let's see. The new design is super
| ugly though.
| pxc wrote:
| > This seems like an accessibility nightmare.
|
| One of the accessibility features included in macOS for
| visually impaired people lets you reduce transparency for
| exactly this reason.
| kelseydh wrote:
| The "liquid glass" design changes shown by Apple look mostly
| like slight tinkering around the edges of how widgets
| look/feel. Way less of a design change than the move to flat
| design was.
| solfox wrote:
| Yes, knowing Apple, this has probably been in development for
| years and seen a million internal iterations.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| There will undoubtedly be optional low-transparency and high-
| contrast modes, just as there are in iOS now.
|
| Apple is pretty good on accessibility but sometimes it does
| involve changing some settings.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Yep, nailed it. This is such regressive, ignorant junk. I
| mean... WTF? Welcome to the failed "transparent UI" fad of two
| decades ago. Apple tried to revive this trash a few years ago,
| but then seemed to back off (or maybe I just disabled it)...
| and now this?
|
| Even for the current sorry state of Apple's design regime, this
| is disappointing. It's way beyond a squandering of desperately-
| needed-elsewhere engineering resources; it's a dated-looking
| degradation of usability (and potentially performance).
|
| Depressing.
| billti wrote:
| Yeah. On Windows some apps (the new Terminal) used to have the
| opacity set to 0.9 or something by default. First thing I did
| was set it to 1.0. Having the background bleed through is
| distracting for no real value.
|
| I'm usually a big fan of Apple design and UX. Any change faces
| some initial resistance, but this is first real "Ugh, hard no"
| reaction I can recall after seeing some of those.
| cheema33 wrote:
| Same same. And yes, I hate the translucency in Windows
| terminal as well and immediately turned it off. I do not
| understand the insanity of turning these things on by
| default.
|
| A "hard no" is where I am with this "improvement".
| idk1 wrote:
| There is, they outline it in this video. It looks like there
| are three ways to turn it off: high contrast, reduced motion,
| and frostier glass. So it looks like there's just a way to have
| a full basic icon with just the icon and the outline and a
| white background.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/219/
| xp84 wrote:
| PSA: High Contrast mode on MacOS, incidentally, destroys
| theming on Microsoft Edge (I know, I'm a weirdo who uses Edge
| on Mac). I use theming to differentiate between several
| browser profiles. For months I thought Edge had decided they
| wanted the themes to be ultra lame and subtle, but it was my
| usage of that setting that broke it.
|
| Besides that huge dealbreaker though, HC mode is amazing for
| people like me who think UIs should be clear, obvious, and
| functional first rather than "elegant" and pretty as the main
| priority.
| keepamovin wrote:
| The future is translucent tablets ( smart glass pads ). It's
| not about what this UI is - it's about where it's going. This
| is the UI to bridge to the next hardware modality and begin to
| train people to prepare for (at first) HUDs everywhere, then
| smartglass and holoprojective displays.
| CarVac wrote:
| The translucent blur is... alright. The refracting edges look
| incredibly distracting for me.
| swah wrote:
| Someone put the Windows phone screen against this design, with
| opaque colorful blocks and clear text - and I was like "yep, I
| wish we go back to that. That is the future."
| bandoti wrote:
| It's going to be really interesting to see how this UI paradigm
| pans out. I think this captures a shift toward the extreme in
| responsive, fluid, convergent, whatever-you-want-to-call-it,
| design.
|
| We've had books/scrolls for thousands of years, laid out in
| beautiful proportion, and now it has all melted in the oven!
| SirMaster wrote:
| Fortunately you can turn off the transparency in accessibility
| options.
|
| https://preview.redd.it/zzxh77iv906f1.png?width=2358&format=...
| tempodox wrote:
| +1. I wish they would concentrate more on bug fixes instead
| of adding "features" you have to turn off to make the OS
| usable.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Also, Apple is already bad at translucent UX as if it were
| beneath their consideration.
|
| If there's a bright blue background behind the control panel
| buttons (like the wifi button), you can't tell if it's blue
| because it's on or because it's off but the background is blue.
|
| Slide down the control panel when the blue weather app is open
| to kinda see what I mean.
| qn9n wrote:
| I imagine they overdid just in case and will receive enough
| feedback to dial back the translucency just a tad.
| garyrob wrote:
| I find transparency annoying enough that if it becomes more
| prevalent on MacOS in a way I can't turn off, I may switch to
| Linux for that reason alone.
| mdasen wrote:
| You can turn off the current transparency (just search for
| transparency in settings)
| 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.
| eviks wrote:
| You can't "fine tune" fundamental flaws away
| bigyabai wrote:
| Platinum's pinstripes and Aqua's glossy buttons didn't
| interfere with contrast. That's the golden rule - as long
| as content is legible, you can go off doing whatever sorts
| of cute baffles you want as a bonus. The pinstripes created
| texture that defined the titlebar in Platinum, Aqua's color
| emphasized interactive elements using visual contrast. In
| my opinion Aqua looks awful, but I do accept that it was an
| extremely usable interface for people with weak vision or
| little computer experience. The same can be said for Comic
| Sans and it's deliberate ugliness.
|
| How will those same audiences react when they see a glassy
| squircle pop up on their iPhone? What _is_ it a metaphor
| for? Is it a button? A notification toast? An entry window?
| An app? A widget? Did they forget to put on their glasses
| this morning? Is it interactive, are there gestures or
| buttons to close it? How do you call someone from this
| screen?
|
| This is objectively bad design. I would argue you don't
| know what made Platinum and Aqua great if you're comparing
| those complaints to this clown vomit.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Aqua's color emphasized interactive elements using
| visual contrast.
|
| There were _loads_ of complaints about readability with
| Aqua, particularly of the menus and the windows title
| bars, both of which were translucent _and_ had
| pinstripes. Briefly discussed here for example:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/05/mac-os-x-
| revisited/ . There was also the uproar at Leopard's
| transparent menu bar and glossy dock, discussed here:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5/ .
| All these were over the top initially and were toned down
| and tweaked over time.
|
| > How will those same audiences react when they see a
| glassy squircle pop up on their iPhone?
|
| It's a button. It has a shape, some physical character,
| and when you poke it wiggles and does something. It looks
| miles better than the label-button-links things that
| looked all identical in iOS 7 and that still plague
| modern design.
|
| > This is objectively bad design. I would argue you don't
| know what made Platinum and Aqua great if you're
| comparing those complaints to this clown vomit.
|
| I did not really like Platinum (I spent quite a lot of
| time with Kaleidoscope, which I miss very much). I really
| liked Aqua, though, despite its occasional brushed metal
| excesses. I would not mind going back to Lion, when they
| toned down the glossiness they introduced in Leopard. I
| think that UI was very elegant. But I have to admit there
| is a kind of playfulness with the concept of liquid UI
| that is intriguing. I love how the Dynamic Island reacts
| and behaves as it splits, grows, and shrink. I think I
| like it better than iOS 5-era glossy everything, and
| definitely more than iOS 7+. I am willing to admit that I
| have bad taste, but I am optimistic about the
| possibilities with the concepts they showed.
|
| That said, I swear I read the clown vomit but about Aqua
| back in 2001. Some things never change.
| bigyabai wrote:
| The Apple customerbase never changes. When Apple hypes up
| a bad update, people apologize and say "wait for the next
| point release" as a healing salve. When Apple releases a
| flop like the Vision Pro, everyone has to point out that
| the Newton failed so the iPhone could run. Maybe, _just
| maybe_ , Apple's characteristic product management
| results in blatant failures. Mice that put a charging
| port on the bottom. Serial cables that are a white-label
| USB with licensing fees. Lisas that inhabit landfills. We
| can't always argue that Apple exists independent of other
| marketing influences and can just do whatever they want
| as a result - they _have_ to compete! Resting on laurels
| isn 't good enough.
|
| I'm willing to give Apple their credit, where due. Mojave
| and Catalina was polished to a professional sparkle, it
| was very believable as a professional OS back then. Big
| Sur wasted a lot of screen real estate without any good
| way to get it back, and now Liquid Glass is sacrificing
| visual clarity to Mammon in hopes that it sells more
| Macbooks. I don't think it makes sense, any way you cut
| it. Not everything has to be history repeating itself,
| Apple has proven more than adept at inventing new ways to
| fail. Apple Car and Airpower both come to mind -
| sometimes it just doesn't work out.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Maybe, just maybe, Apple's characteristic product
| management results in blatant failures.
|
| I know, I went through a couple of real lemons, like the
| 2nd-hand PowerBook 5400c I had as a kid, or the early MBP
| with a bad GeForce, and an overheating late Intel MBP
| with an awful keyboard. I also still have a hockey puck
| mouse somewhere. And again, Aqua had its excesses and I
| strongly disliked their turn to flat design.
|
| All I am saying is that the concept of liquid glass is
| interesting and I am sure they will iterate over time to
| fix issues. All the legibility and readability concerns
| could be addressed by tweaking the opacity of the buttons
| whilst keeping the dynamic and kinetics aspects of it
| without throwing the whole thing away.
|
| There are many precedents, it would not be really
| unexpected.
|
| > Not everything has to be history repeating itself,
| Apple has proven more than adept at inventing new ways to
| fail. Apple Car and Airpower both come to mind -
| sometimes it just doesn't work out.
|
| Yes indeed. I am not arguing otherwise.
| 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.
| wpm wrote:
| Liquid Glass looks better on iPad and iPhone.
|
| On the Mac it is offensive. Vulgar. Disgusting.
| Loathsome.
| leakycap wrote:
| I agree. I installed the beta and after just a few hours,
| I can tell this won't work for my eyes.
|
| It's like staring into a chrome bumper while trying to
| use your computer. But also, it's see-through.
| 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.
| cyberax wrote:
| Try getting a device like a foldable phone that has no
| i-land analogs! That will provide a nice way to get
| benefits from the transition.
| ssl232 wrote:
| Wasn't there a rumour that the next iPhone will be
| foldable?
| cyberax wrote:
| Yeah, since the first foldable Samsung phone 6 years ago.
| baggachipz wrote:
| I was a diehard Android person for years, and I really
| really wanted to like it. Even when it dropped calls,
| failed to even show incoming calls, apps crashed regularly.
| This was a Google phone on Google Fi, unaltered and
| supposed to be the "pure" Android experience. My final
| realization and the impetus for the switch was that Android
| is an app ghetto; Good apps are designed for iOS first, and
| half-assedly ported to Android. Android's store has so much
| trash in it as to make it impossible to find a real app
| that isn't malware.
|
| I switched to iOS and despite its flaws, the experience is
| so much better.
| nixosbestos wrote:
| Lmao. Just some wildly untrue, especially with Pixel
| phones.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| As someone who has daily driven Pixels since the first
| one but listens to plenty of Apple users: no, Apple
| really does have it better for most default experiences.
| Really, the main thing Android still has going for it is
| that sideloading is easy and I can have a full terminal.
| 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.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| They are both broken in their own ways. However, on one of
| those, I have some amount of flexibility/freedom to put in
| my own fixes/hacks/solutions to make it work. I will pick
| the additional headache that flexibility brings over being
| in a straight jacket everytime.
| 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.
| rollcat wrote:
| <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/217>
|
| TL;DR: if you want window decorations, link with
| libadwaita.
|
| SDL ended up linking with libdecor. You know how when you
| use a Qt app in Gnome, it looks out of place? Now even
| the window decorations look inconsistent from one
| another.
| wirybeige wrote:
| I'm well aware of this issue. I don't expect windows to
| look the same to each other. I like that the title bar
| can have other content in it other than just the app name
| and the close button.
|
| For that reason alone I avoid Qt apps, as almost none
| draw their own title bar. Qt apps aren't even consistent
| among themselves in theming/style, for example the only
| apps that look in place on KDE are specifically made with
| KDE in mind.
|
| I don't understand where the "consistency" obsession
| comes from, all these apps use different tool kits and
| will look different regardless.
| 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.
| amlib wrote:
| > 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.
|
| AFAIK what gnome does is not give you any options above
| 15 minutes, but they do provide a toggle for disabling
| screen power saving and toggles for other such power
| saving features.
|
| I've always been able to disable if fine, what irks me is
| the artificial 15 minutes limit in the drop down menu,
| forcing you to edit dconf entries to increase it...
| 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.
| skydhash wrote:
| > _It 's really hard to tell if anyone is actually using
| those things or not._
|
| They do.
|
| You're mostly spend a few days on configuring the basics,
| then tweak things over the next months. Then you don't
| touch anything for years as everything is working exactly
| the way you want. Some programs do better with defaults
| so you can tweak the shipped config.
|
| I don't need GNOME or KDE maturity because what I need is
| just a fraction of what they can do. And what I concocted
| is more stable and don't require clickops to get the same
| version on another computer.
| cardanome wrote:
| > And there are no alternatives.
|
| I am happy as can be running Linux Mint Cinnamon. It just
| works.
|
| Also there is good old Xfce, in fact there are lot of
| good alternatives.
|
| This year was the first time I ever used a Mac and I was
| shocked how bad the desktop was. You can barely be
| productive without installing ten different apps that
| allow you to use basic stuff like alt-tab or properly
| rebind keys..
|
| Linux users have it really good, all things considered.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| should have have mentioned Wayland is what I was
| considering. Mac is pretty rough I agree.
| cardanome wrote:
| Yeah, using Wayland is the mistake. X11 works.
|
| Wayland will probably still need a few years to mature
| and actually be viable.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| no thanks
| pndy wrote:
| Dunno if you missed it but Linux Mint team forked
| libadwaita into libadapta to enable theming
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44230914
| rollcat wrote:
| > The (maybe) rising solution is "build-your-own-desktop"
| options [...].
|
| This is not a solution for power users, this is a half-
| hearted non-solution for people with too much time on
| their hands. As a power user, I need the computer to do
| the stupid work for me, so I can focus on the more
| interesting/important stuff, like playing games,
| recording a song, building an app, or just making a
| living.
|
| I play guitar. I tried building one. It was terrible.
| There's a good reason why there's very few luthiers among
| guitarists.
|
| > Maybe it's early days.
|
| People have been doing this since before KDE. I started
| using Linux around 2002, and it wasn't long until I was
| theming Fluxbox.
|
| If you want a decent and hackable desktop environment,
| start with matching the functionality of OS X 10.4, then
| work from there.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Did you look at KDE?
| Taniwha wrote:
| .... and I'm pretty sure KDE did the glass everywhere theme
| maybe 20 years ago
| christophilus wrote:
| I use Niri, but I like Gnome. How are they getting worse?
| cayley_graph wrote:
| I like Gnome. I prefer my desktop to be designed around one
| unifying philosophy instead of a hodgepodge of customizations
| which don't work well together. The Gnome team has done
| pretty well at avoiding the classic Linux issues with the
| latter, though it doesn't win them any favors from people who
| would've been using KDE or some tiling WM anyway.
| colonial wrote:
| Seconded. GNOME is simple and cohesive. Sure, some of the
| apps are a bit feature light, but I do most of my heavy
| lifting in the terminal anyways - I really don't need my
| "core" GUI tools like the file explorer to do a whole lot.
| rollcat wrote:
| > I prefer my desktop to be designed around one unifying
| philosophy instead of a hodgepodge of customizations which
| don't work well together.
|
| I agree. It's why I prefer Gnome over KDE, and macOS over
| Windows.
|
| My main point is: Gnome can't tell simple from simplistic.
| Terminal cursor blinking. Removing every command until
| everything fits in one menu and/or title bar. It's so
| crammed with buttons, I can't tell what is what. But
| ironically, there's no desktop icons, despite "Desktop"
| folder being pinned in Nautilus. Everything is so spaced
| out. Top bar has three interactive elements, but it takes
| four clicks to log out. There's a dock, but you can't move
| it to the left/right side, so it takes up even more
| vertical space. You can fix some of that with extensions,
| but half of them get disabled on every upgrade.
|
| This is in stark contrast with macOS. If you can't find
| something in the menu bar, there's a search field in the
| help menu. If you use some menu bar option often, you can
| bind it to a custom key. Both of these are provided through
| standard system APIs, so every application uses them by
| default. Title bars have buttons, but are spacious enough
| so that there's always an obvious place to click-to-drag.
| (Gnome had to solve it by making ordinary widgets
| draggable... How do you know if you're selecting text in a
| URL bar, or moving the window?) I could keep going, but
| macOS has always been more intuitive _and_ more friendly to
| power users.
| 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.
| username223 wrote:
| I never worked for Apple, but I've used mostly Macs since
| System 6, and am feeling the same frustration with their
| software. Unfortunately their laptops are way better than
| anything else out there, so I'm forced to tolerate it. I ran
| Linux on a PowerBook for awhile, but it was janky, and it
| seems like that has not changed. OS X is still basically
| Unix, so I'll go on running the Unix stuff I need, and turn
| off the lickable distractions to the extent I can.
| simgt wrote:
| I recently switched to Linux Mint on a makeshift PC and it
| feels a bit like going back to Snow Leopard. It's snappy,
| pleasant to look at and has all the necessary modern features
| I need. Very surprisingly and unlike everything I experienced
| before on Linux desktops, it all worked out of the box (plus
| a few extra clicks on a GUI to get some proprietary drivers).
| 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.
| folmar wrote:
| Also this is way better compared to Android, where "remove
| animations" make apps feel like a dumpster fire, many of
| them lose parts of UI that were animated instead of showing
| them statically, feedback for touching gets often lost,
| things are waiting for animation so you are still stuck
| waiting a second or two for nothing, etc.
| 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.
| Gigachad wrote:
| That building for accessibility helps more than just
| disabled people?
| 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.
| xmddmx wrote:
| Even the non transparent stuff looks bad - a plain Finder
| window: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/macos-
| tahoe-26-0-beta-1...
| bigyabai wrote:
| Here I was, thinking it couldn't get any worse than Big Sur
| like a _fucking moron_.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| Oh dear...
|
| That's worse than I expected.
| Clamchop wrote:
| Did they "squircle" the window? I've been enjoying the look
| of the liquid glass thing but this looks unserious, toy-like.
| jmb99 wrote:
| > Apple had a good run, I've genuinely enjoyed using their
| platforms daily, but I'm afraid they're dropping the ball now.
|
| I haven't owned a (personal) Mac since High Sierra. The UI had
| been going downhill since Yosemite in my opinion, but
| gradually; it took a nosedive with Big Sur (I think that's the
| one that introduced all the SwiftUI apps?) to the point that I
| realized I probably wouldn't own another Mac until they figured
| out that a Mac is a computer, not an iPad. Looks like they
| still haven't yet.
|
| That being said, I believe that 10.5-10.9 is probably somewhere
| close to what peak computing looks like. It's not perfect but
| it _makes sense_ to some degree. I had no problem teaching
| people of any technological skill level how to use Snow Leopard
| or Lion; and not just getting by, properly becoming competent
| computer users. On the other hand, I 've been watching my
| parents (both of whom have been using computers since the late
| 70s) slowly lose the ability to "understand" both modern macOS
| and iOS, and are more and more frequently struggling to find
| old and new features and functionality (like being able to see
| all of their emails on their phone).
|
| It's disappointing really. For a while I couldn't stand using
| Windows and regular Linux desktop distros were too fiddly to be
| useful, and Mac really was the best option for "I just want to
| do X" with the least friction. Nowadays, Windows sucks for a
| whole host of reasons, and the Linux desktop is more usable but
| still Linux, and apparently Mac has decided to shoot itself in
| the head. If my grandmother asked me what computer to replace
| her Mac Mini with if it died right now, I really don't think
| I'd have an answer.
| 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
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Nothing new probably - I just remember diving down the
| rabbit hole from the Wikipedia page on Forstall a couple
| years back, e.g. stuff like this:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20514464.
|
| But more importantly, I take issue with the main theme of
| your first link, as it's stuff I've heard a bunch
| elsewhere. I can agree that "innovation requires some
| tension", but I think it's a huge mistake to think that
| because Forstall had some (or at least looked like he had
| some) of the qualities of Jobs that he was the right man
| for the <no pun intended> job. I.e the argument usually
| goes something like "Hey, Jobs was disagreeable and kind
| of an asshole, so since Forstall is disagreeable and even
| more of an asshole he should be CEO."
|
| But that clearly misses the fact that Forstall could in
| no way engender the level of respect that Jobs had, and I
| don't think people would have respected him more if he
| became CEO. People really admired Jobs at a deep, deep
| level, and that was clearly not the case for Forstall
| based on the many other Apple execs who couldn't stand
| him.
| rweichler wrote:
| That's unfortunate, I would read Creative Selection if I
| were you
| 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
| makeitdouble wrote:
| TBF Jobs wasn't a well-rounded human being either.
|
| It all comes down to what results they can produce inside
| the organization, people will bear the worst assholes if
| the output can justify it somehow.
| 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.
| anon7000 wrote:
| Accomplish more is relative. At a large, later stage,
| companies become a lot more stability and long term revenue
| & sustainability. Which Tim Cook has absolutely excelled
| at. Sure, Steve was more of a tech revolutionary. But weird
| designs were super common under him! The Apple design
| language has been pretty consistent over the past decade.
|
| I think it's odd this thread is largely complaining about
| Apple taking too many risks, or making weird designs they
| don't like, or being too feature-driven. The fact of the
| matter is that Apple has by far created the most stable
| tech ecosystem of any comparable company. With a very
| consistent design language as well.
|
| Windows has a horrific track record (with only Windows 7 &
| 10 being well regarded in the past 15+ years). Android
| typically doesn't support devices with major software
| updates past a small handful of years. Apple's combo of
| privacy, long term support, and extremely consistent
| release cadences & design language make it a much more
| stable platform than practically anything else. They even
| did an entire hardware architecture change under our feet
| without downgrading the user experience in any meaningful
| way.
|
| I mean whether or not you agree or like Apple's service
| products like Apple Music, it is absolutely a very smart
| business decision to continue investing in them. Apple TV
| has a higher percentage of high quality content than other
| providers. Apple Music is at worst hardly that different
| than Spotify. Apple Arcade is just a way to bundle products
| that already exist.
| rweichler wrote:
| Cook is not "about to be CEO longer than Steve Jobs", he
| was also CEO from 1976-1985
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I suspect ego played a part in Steve Jobs selecting Tim Cook
| as his successor. Famous CEO's tend to pick a successor that
| is less charismatic and more risk-averse than they were.
| CEO's that retire 'honorably', so to speak, don't want
| someone who will outshine them or make sweeping changes to
| the brand or the company's organization. In other words, they
| want to preserve their legacy.
|
| Tim Cook is exactly this kind of executive. While he has done
| an incredible job with leading the business and operational
| side of Apple, the public doesn't give credit for that sort
| of thing. Now imagine if Steve appointed someone just like
| himself and the business fumbled. Steve would hate for his
| legacy to be tarnished by appointing a brash successor.
|
| All that being said, for what it's worth, I don't think
| anyone could have lived up to Steve's reputation. It is quite
| unfair to Tim Cook that he will always be compared to what
| people _think_ Steve Jobs would have done.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > While he has done an incredible job with leading the
| business and operational side of Apple
|
| Can we say that yet? A lot of value was made in the short
| term, but it kinda feels like that would happen to _any_
| CEO that has an iPhone moment on their hands. Cook 's real
| challenge was to flip the scenario into something
| sustainable; can Apple take the excitement and turn it into
| a product line?
|
| They certainly tried. Cook led the charge on the Apple
| Watch, which fell short of a tentpole offering but still
| found an audience. Airpods took off, presumably after Cook
| learned from the failure (and acquisition) of Beats by Dre.
| And Vision Pro... the less said the better. Maybe there's
| something still in the holster, but I expect this to be a
| dead-end product line moreso than Airpower.
|
| Are disposable headphones enough to build a legacy off of?
| The Apple Watch certainly isn't, and don't even get me
| started on Vision Pro. We could point to the big one that
| everyone likes to credit him as; "the supply chain guy",
| but even that seems to foster political contention in
| America. Apple's software faces antitrust scrutiny, privacy
| concerns[0], and an overall degradation in app quality as
| their attention splits into different markets. The legacy
| is the important question, and if Tim Cook were to resign
| tomorrow I think he would be remembered as the CEO that
| screwed Apple over for good.
|
| [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-
| admits-to-...
| jmb99 wrote:
| > They certainly tried. Cook led the charge on the Apple
| Watch, which fell short of a tentpole offering but still
| found an audience.
|
| That's an interesting way to say "is the best selling
| watch model of all time, and outsells not only all other
| smartwatches combined but also a substantial chunk of all
| normal watches put together."
| cyberax wrote:
| > is the best selling watch model of all time, and
| outsells not only all other smartwatches combined
|
| Apple has about 25% of the global marketshare for
| smartwatches:
| https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/global-
| smartwa... They are the _largest_ supplier, but they
| certainly don't outsell everyone combined.
|
| It also took Apple about 4 years to find the actual use-
| case for the Apple Watch: health tracking and payments.
| shivasaxena wrote:
| You forgot M1 macs.
| aikinai wrote:
| Steve knew he'd dead by the time the next CEO's results
| were in. Do you really think he'd prefer Apple to stagnate
| rather than continue to soar with a great CEO after his
| dead?
| blt wrote:
| IDK, I think Apple creating its own laptop/desktop-class
| CPU was a pretty bold move with a huge payoff. It's less
| sexy than introducing an entirely new category of product,
| but it's not exactly risk-averse either.
| rbrown46 wrote:
| Cook saw it through, but Apple began moving towards
| replacing Intel back in 2008 (under Jobs) when they
| acquired P.A. Semi.
| pndy wrote:
| Jobs pick him because he knew he's gonna to handle company's
| financials good once he's gone. My partner says Cook is just
| a good accountant focused on keeping numbers up and nothing
| else.
| 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.
| karel-3d wrote:
| iOS 7 made sense though, they really did need an upgrade back
| then. the design showed its age. even compared with Android at
| that time.
|
| this... I don't understand the reasoning. Nobody is complaining
| about iOS design? Nobody asked for this? This is just bad?
| xnx wrote:
| We can only hope the next redesign regresses further and copies
| Windows 95.
| dominicrose wrote:
| There's been a lot of hardware improvement since Vista. Apple
| is also in a much more commanding position when it comes to
| both design and hardware. They basically own the design and the
| hardware.
|
| While I'm not an Apple user I believe these iOS devices are
| going to sell like hotcakes.
| 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.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| All local maxima are optimized into. Until there is a break.
|
| I agree that right here right now change feels impossible.
| That the monolith app as everything as the sole decider of
| all UX feels absolute & total, a fief never to be invaded.
|
| But I'm less confident this fortress really will hold
| forever. And liquid glass has some of the seeds of undoing
| this totality, by emphasizing content, by making tools a
| visually separate layer.
| 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.
| odo1242 wrote:
| I tried the beta on my phone and the antialiasing is mostly
| fine - the video was downscaled in resolution so it has more
| aliasing in it
|
| (I hate the update by the way)
| agumonkey wrote:
| oh interesting, thanks
| oofbaroomf wrote:
| a "clear" opinion... :)
| 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.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Ah of course, I had forgotten that you could put stuff there.
| My home directory is a terrible mess, but my desktop is
| pristine.
| bombcar wrote:
| I somehow continually hit that key stroke or did the mouse
| movement, so I went and disabled both
| 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.
| ch_sm wrote:
| Oh cool, I had forgotten about this project, thanks for posting
| it! This is the first time I've noticed that they had the
| perspective "glass table" style dock that Apple used a couple
| of years later in Mac OS X Leopard.
| 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.
| seydor wrote:
| Liquid glass , like windows vista before it, looks plasticky.
| It's tupperware and it looks cheap and almost smells of garlic.
| 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.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > 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.
|
| This shows most designers follow trends. It does not show
| Apple's ideas were good.
| 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
| Micrococonut wrote:
| The fact that it ever made it to this stage is troubling.
| It was quite literally the very first thing I thought when
| I saw their landing page for ios 17.
| https://www.apple.com/os/ios/ Look at the notifications
| front and center in the very middle of the screen. It's
| unbelievable. How are these the decisions being made at one
| of the biggest tech companies on the planet.
| ljsprague wrote:
| Maybe they overshot on purpose? When I change my gaming
| control sensitivities I will do this (overshoot and then
| dial back) because I think it helps me get used to them
| faster.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| This means devs and users need to be vocal and outraged at
| every new design (as it will be overdone on purpose), and
| Apple gauges how much they dial it back based on the heat
| of it....
|
| That doesn't sound like a healthy relationship to
| developers to me.
| 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?
| hokumguru wrote:
| I switched two months ago and it's surprisingly usable.
| Come a long way in the last 10 years.
| rubslopes wrote:
| Not yet for me, still waiting for a 8-hour battery...
| veqq wrote:
| I get 30 hours on a 2017 Dell, using Linux mint. auto-
| cpufreq or even just making an alias to disable some
| cores let you push it very far
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Nothing screams "Linux desktop" quite like a custom
| terminal command to manually manage your CPU cores being
| presented as a solution for longer battery life.
| 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.
| McAlpine5892 wrote:
| > What the fuck does that even mean?
|
| Nothing. It's corporate bean-counter speak. Some poo-brained
| exec says a lot of words that sound inspiring but adds up to
| mean exactly nothing.
|
| This is the kind of garbage I have to listen to in so-very-
| important quarterly "huddles" with thousands of people. It's
| nonsensical but makes the speaker feel so very special.
|
| I guess this really gives insight to how Apple got here. It
| really has been taken over by a bunch of people who like how
| their own farts smell. Now they're trying to gaslight you and
| I into liking it.
| cyberax wrote:
| Puh. That's pure amateur hour. They need to _at_ _least_ add
| something like: "synergy with ideographic interface,
| achieving unrivalled experience while preserving the
| individualized touch".
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| The only thing worse than shitty design is when the shitty
| design changes each time you use it.
| 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?
| wpm wrote:
| It looks awful, and doesn't actually remove all of the
| transparency effects, though that might be due to the fact
| that its Beta 1.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| I cannot confirm that.
|
| Reducing transparency, the entire background gets greyed
| and the background/ look is much more akin to iOS 18.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Holy shit. That has to be a joke. It looks like some bad UI
| mockup from Jon Prosser
| chupchap wrote:
| It's Apple Maps bad!
| azinman2 wrote:
| Apple Maps is actually great now.
| qwerpy wrote:
| Going from Apple Maps to Google Maps is now like going from
| ublock origin to a stock browser. Crap everywhere that you
| didn't ask for, slowing you down as you try to locate what
| you're actually trying to find.
|
| Meanwhile the maps/data quality is quite good, probably 95%
| there for the things I care about. I've been able to use it
| full-time for years now.
| cageface wrote:
| This might be true in the US but it's close to worthless
| in a lot of the rest of the world.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| It's true in most rich countries at this point. Apple's
| been steadily launching more of their capabilities in new
| countries. I just used Apple Maps across eight countries
| in Europe. I did send a few problem reports, but they're
| better than Google now everywhere I went.
|
| At this point if I lived somewhere they weren't great,
| I'd submit improvements for all the places I went
| adastra22 wrote:
| In asia it is still unusable. I have to re-download
| Google Maps (I abhor using Google products) every time I
| travel to that part of the world.
| cageface wrote:
| My experience too. Here in Bangkok I never bother to even
| open it anymore.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| I've found it to be excellent in Japan. Like I said...
| rich countries.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Just checked my commute to work on the west coast. It
| found 1 of 3 public transit options, doesn't know that my
| company has an office at that location (public info), and
| doesn't list the cost. I also just finished a driving
| trip through Central Europe with an apple map user, where
| it got stuck in construction Google knew about (+1h),
| didn't have good traffic info at other times, and also
| chose the most boring route. The trip improved once we
| switched to routing with Google.
|
| Apple maps is _adequate_ now, but as a map power-user it
| 's been pretty far from great every time I've tried it.
| I'm happy they finally managed to get an accurate basemap
| though.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's pretty much equal to Google maps in Australia. It's
| mostly lacking in reviews.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Depends on your region. It is fantastic in Cupertino. It is
| literally unusable in Japan or Taiwan. Literally--it will
| fail to get directions or even find your destination
| (typing in English or the local language).
| azinman2 wrote:
| Really? I've had it work very well in Japan for me.
| Taiwan I've never tried.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Half the time when I input a destination (kanji or
| romanji) it fails to find what I'm looking for. Google
| Maps never fails.
| barrell wrote:
| I find the search pretty poor on Apple Maps, but I've
| traveled the world using only Apple Maps and I've gotten
| around fine in quite remote areas.
|
| The only reason I ever use google maps is to search
| somewhere and copy paste the address into Apple Maps.
|
| Can't speak towards Japan or Taiwan specifically but it's
| been fine in extremely rural Africa, India, Brazil,
| Indonesia, Bosnia, Australia, etc. Much better than
| Google Maps in most of Western Europe and America these
| days.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Wow, that was full in "thanks, I hate it" territory for me.
|
| I think that design triggered me for 2 reasons. First, it
| really gets to something that's bugged me a lot about
| technological advancement in general over the past 15-20 years
| or so. It used to be that I felt like tech advances were great
| because they actually solved a human problem. Now, so much tech
| just feels like "tech-for-tech's-sake". Like I get you need to
| have a lot of designers at Apple, and now that devices have
| more processing power that they want to do something "cool"
| with it, but this just seems like someone that literally nobody
| asked for and nobody wants.
|
| Second, I'm someone who thinks very "linearly". I like to do
| one thing at a time, and I hate distractions (because I'm
| easily distracted). I hate these translucent interfaces because
| they are literally distracting to me _even if_ I 'm looking
| directly and squarely at one single thing. It just seems like
| another way that tech is constantly fucking with our attention.
| the_other wrote:
| I thought the same, about distractions, whilst watching the
| videos. Even the highlights and speckles at the edges of the
| icons grab your attention. It's the visual equivalent of
| running your finger over velcro: slip, catch, slip, catch the
| whole way down.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Yeah, the address bar in the browser in the video at
| 2:10-2:13 is _appalling_. And how they describe it!--
|
| > _it responds in real time to your content, and your
| input, creating a more lively experience, that we think
| you'll find_ truly _delightful._
|
| "Infuriating" and "horrifying" would both be much more
| accurate words than "delightful". Even if you liked it
| briefly, it would get old _really_ quickly.
|
| This truly is stunningly, _spectacularly_ bad.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| This looks like a screenshot from one of the jailbreak themes
| from like 15 years ago, and not one of the good ones
| bigyabai wrote:
| As a former Cydia user, my 12-year-old self takes that as
| validation that I _was_ living in the future after all!
| kumarvvr wrote:
| Wow ! That is ugly.
|
| Wonder if Apple has any Quality Control department at all.
|
| I mean, a designer comes up with a proposal, someone else ought
| to check it.
| solfox wrote:
| Sad thing about Apple is that this was designed by a huge
| design team and about a million keynote presentations to
| execs that sounded exactly like this.
| rifty wrote:
| Funny, I'm pretty sure glass on glass is one of their
| guidelines no-no situations. Nice of them to implement it on
| their own control centre to prove how bad it is.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Normally I don't have strong opinions on UI design but that
| just looks wrong.
| replwoacause wrote:
| My eyes don't know where to focus. Everything runs together.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Ugh oh god
|
| That evokes an immediate visceral reaction hah
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Wow. It would _almost_ be OK if they had had the sense to dim
| the background substantially, but... wow.
|
| It had better be possible to turn this crap completely off. Is
| it?
| thenaturalist wrote:
| Reduce transparency in the accessibility settings.
|
| Fixes it luckily.
| ilt wrote:
| OMG, I expected bad but not this bad. How did designers ever
| think this will fly is beyond mind-blowing. Visual disturbance
| is off the charts. I am just hoping it to have good
| accessibility options to turn whatever-this-is off immediately.
| adastra22 wrote:
| That screenshot is utterly unreadable. It makes my eyes hurt.
| For the young people out there, I'm not exaggerating or being
| metaphorical. Literally pain in my eyes as they try (and fail)
| to focus on the appropriate UI elements.
|
| I was going to upgrade to an iPhone 16 this week. I might be
| checking out Google or Samsung devices instead.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| That screenshot had the same effect on me.
|
| Baffling choice.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I think it's also just ugly to be honest. Completely opposite
| of Apple's values of focusing on one thing at a time and even
| basic grid alignment. And I am an Apple fanboy....
| debo_ wrote:
| You might want to look at the new design language that
| Android is going for:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43975352
| adastra22 wrote:
| Ugly and a definite regression. But at least my eyes don't
| hurt.
| eertami wrote:
| Somewhat amusing after this how the top comment mentions
| "Apple ... never makes marketing content like this about
| its design language"
| pphysch wrote:
| Not just the top comment, that whole top thread is
| basically glazing Apple. Deliciously ironic.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _You might want to look at the new design language that
| Android is going for:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43975352_
|
| Feels very much like a fruit-colored version of late 1960's
| early 1970's pop culture design.
|
| Change it to browns and oranges and golds, and it'll be
| perfectly groovy.
| solfox wrote:
| That screenshot! Terrible
| benplumley wrote:
| Is the WiFi enabled, or does it just have a blue icon behind
| it?
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| The accessibility for this design is pretty terrible. There's a
| reason the gold standard for closed captions is still white
| text with solid black background. That way, regardless of
| what's going on in the background, the text is still readable
| for someone with poor eyesight.
|
| Out of curiosity, I used this site [1] to get the contrast of
| some text, specifically the artist name on the Apple Music now
| playing bar (in the "Updated App Design" part of the page).
| During parts of the video, the contrast of the artist name with
| the background was 1.7:1, which is terrible. For reference, the
| minimum recommended contrast by WebAIM is 4.5:1 [2].
|
| Maybe there are accessibility options that improve things, but
| the defaults seem terrible. The goal for any design should be
| reasonably accessible as default, with robust options for
| people with more specific needs. As it stands, this UI is just
| too hard to read, and Apple needs to make a second pass.
|
| [1]: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
|
| [2]: https://webaim.org/articles/contrast/
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| Oh yeah that's bad. I hope there is an option to disable
| translucency globally. I don't need to see a desktop/home
| screen under another menu, or even another app under the menu.
| I can't interact with something underneath the top menu and it
| really messes with readability from your screenshot.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Yikes...
| rurp wrote:
| Good lord, I started getting a headache just looking at that
| image for a few seconds. Apple has always preferred form over
| function but this UI change takes it to a whole other level.
| barrell wrote:
| I mean I really don't like it either, but I have to say, it
| screenshots 10x worse than it really looks. There's enough
| 'glow' that things look largely distinct.
|
| I would still prefer 5x the blur; I really, really, really
| hate the shapes of the tab switchers; and they use space so
| inefficiently I feel like I'm using an iPhone SE... but the
| liquid glass is ok. Gimmicky and ugly but it is mostly usable
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Straight from early 2000s. The early photoshop effects everyone
| applied on their geocities webpages.
| 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.
| wraptile wrote:
| truly contender for the worst redesign of the decade. It's hard
| to see how a trillion dollar company would stumble so bad here.
| They must be real zealots on AR to even go here.
| 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.
| oidar wrote:
| >It's button camouflage.
|
| Exactly. It's like they are trying to make it harder to use.
| replwoacause wrote:
| Tbh I'll be doing the same thing when my devices get this
| update. It's inscrutable. _Tap tap tap_ ....
| _taptaptaptaptapTAPTAP!!!_
| pndy wrote:
| Guess this is universal because mine does the same. Perhaps
| it's a frustration that screen doesn't responds in same way as
| e.g. a remote control where there's a physical press. Sure
| there can be a haptic feedback on phone but it's not the same.
| Especially for older people.
| 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.
| missedthecue wrote:
| God this is so real. Every saas app I pay for randomly and
| pointlessly changes up their UI every 6-12 months for
| literally no reason or productivity enhancement. I assume
| it's just bloated UI teams justifying the fact they're
| consuming so much payroll.
| 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.
| danhite wrote:
| I appreciate your focus on the long run. Apple has a long
| history of focusing on the long run. So I am replying to tell
| you why you are right, given that I feel my single upvote
| wasn't thanks enough for your first hand take.
|
| I am not sure we have a long run, as both dooms & destiny loom
| (eg Future Shock .. Singularity], but if we do then here is my
| background for my short take ...
|
| 1. Unlike you, I have not used the beta but I thoughtfully
| watched both Monday developer sessions on Liquid Glass & their
| new design system
|
| 2. My early computing experiences were, eg, ASR-33 teletype
| with paper tape to timeshare, then Altair 8800 and then punched
| card batches, so I have lots of personal evolution in ui/ux
| over many decades. Sadly my parents--born in 1922/1923--never
| used computers nor understood why I loved them and programming
|
| 3..665 omitted for brevity
|
| 666. in recent years I have devolved into Stone Knives &
| Bearskins dev mode within iPad Safari, because no one cares
| what I do and so I get to enjoy tinkering with tiny things in
| odd ways; ie I might be slightly crazy, so caveat emptor ...
|
| Apple is threading a needle here. If they push too hard and
| fail they're doomed. If they don't take the lead (atop shock
| wave of tech) they're doomed.
|
| Their leadership is rich and could easily retire, and
| Apple~ponderers need to always factor in that they dogfood
| their products because they believe in them.
|
| Like Capital B _Believe_ in Apple /products in that very real
| way in which one doesn't just say they dig a band but actually
| struggle and sacrifice to get to a concert thousands of miles
| away.
|
| Allow me to observe that we already live in a trending
| post~Literate society and the ongoing collapse of the USA
| educational system, Covid~lost-years, the current
| Administration chaos, and the unstoppable engulfing of
| everything by ~AI++ makes a completely non-traditional ui/ux
| near term inevitable just by the principle: Flux !== inertia.
|
| I am observing that the traditional ~marketplace deciders
| coupled with generational fashion du jour flocking are dwarfed
| by our Interesting Times just as diaspora can elevate tulips to
| mania and wheelbarrows full of money can fail to buy lunch.
|
| Within that point of view (and if you're reading this far, no,
| to answer your question, I do not do drugs or write manifestos
| for public consumption) I will offer this condensed thought
| about Apple's current ui/ux steps ...
|
| Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
| magic.
|
| Applying that to our extraordinary circumstances with a McLuhan
| Tetrad lens (Retrieval) suggests that all of classic myths to
| 20th Century SF&F invocation of magic words, gestures and
| holodecks are nearly upon us for reals.
|
| Our devices are about to watch us, listen/hear us, immerse us
| in interactive faux reality to an unprecedented extent, ie
| apart from thousands of years of fanciful storytelling. Genies
| and demons. Dragons and Wizards.
|
| Gods taking human form.
|
| So.
|
| If Apple is on a 1.5 year track to force developers to unify
| their runs-on-any~device ui/ux to a ~simplified magic, then I
| say we are witnessing Apple trying to mount their surfboard,
| quite calmly, incoming tsunami considered.
|
| Lots of us may not be looking forward to getting wet.
|
| But that is hardly Apple's fault.
|
| Surfboards for the Mind(TM)?
|
| _lurker mode back on_
| jonplackett wrote:
| The whole event should have been titled:
|
| We completely ignored all the things you actually wanted and did
| this instead.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I love designing and building UIs, but one thing that really
| depresses me is how you're often pressured to keep changing
| things just to justify your continued employment.
|
| It feels like that's what happened here, to be honest.
|
| It's okay for a product to stay the same, if the current design
| is the right one. I just can't imagine what problems they're
| trying to solve with this update.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| They butchered the swipe actions on iOS it seems.
|
| Open notes or messages, swipe left on an item.
|
| In iOS 18, the options (silent/delete in Messages or share/
| delete) were simply icons, cleary delineated as buttons with
| color matching backgrounds, no text.
|
| Now the options have descriptive text under each button which of
| course is cut off 99% of the time as it exceeds the tiny width
| these action buttons have - and the buttons are harder to hit.
|
| How? Why?
| dluan wrote:
| everything is mid 2000s again. this really feels anti-apple even
| though the design polish is top notch, but to just abandon
| accessibility for shinyness feels like something steve would have
| obviously been against.
|
| but it definitely takes me back to endlessly tweaking with linux
| mint skins in my college dorm.
| pndy wrote:
| Can't wait for another turn to flat when '50 will be around the
| corner /s
|
| The overall bulky style reminds me of the least appealing
| cosmic-techno-chrome Windows themes that were spawning like
| rabbits ~20 years ago:
| https://www.thepcmanwebsite.com/themes/images/themes/bounce_...
| ch_sm wrote:
| Haha, nice screenshot. It even has Bryce 5 in the start menu!
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I didn't mind the preview of it on a play button or lock screen.
|
| But why would a slider button suddenly become translucent when
| you move it? Awful.
| raspasov wrote:
| I like it, I think it will be great after ironing out a few
| obvious issues.
| tyleo wrote:
| Glass UI can look good but you need to frost it pretty heavily
| for usability and accessibility. I'm not seeing that here.
| Hopefully they turn that up before this is fully rolled out.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Looks terrible. I hope that what he said in the video about "only
| Apple being able to achieve this" is correct because I don't want
| this coming to my devices
| nsonha wrote:
| This looks like Windows 11's promotional video but we know
| Apple's UI is going to look exactly like it, for real and not
| just for show.
| hajile wrote:
| I want another Snow Leopard update with less glamor and a lot
| more bugfixes.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| the most usable UIs are, i guess "not attractive" anymore. but
| they are productive, and a joy to use when you need to get
| something done. these new UIs are a pain to use, but they trick
| our depressed ADHD brains to keep flipping through the screens
| and menus with fancy colors and animations. AND THAT IS THE GOAL.
| screen time. because you are nothing but a target for ads and
| subscriptions.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| for those who doubt me, use the Accessibility settings on your
| current device to disable all the eye candy and switch to gray
| scale. it will rarely impact your ability to make a call, send
| a message, look up some details (OK, photos will be semi
| unusable). but once the task is done, you'll have no desire to
| keep fiddling with your shiny toy. try it.
| Groxx wrote:
| Disabling animations is also the quickest way to remind
| yourself that computers are in fact pretty fast. No more
| waiting a half second after every action for things to stop
| moving, it responds _instantly_.
| Groxx wrote:
| Google and Apple are both on some weird bouncy shrooms or
| something this year. What the heck.
|
| Both new UIs look truly awful, and seem like accessibility
| nightmares. I will continue enthusiastically disabling
| animations.
| montag wrote:
| It's really beautiful, but I don't want it on my device.
| sakesun wrote:
| The Liquid Glass terrified me as someone started in green
| monochrome CRT days. Software people really have endless creative
| ways to spend hardware resource quota.
|
| Perhaps human should be less obsessed in twisting nature to serve
| our comfort, and just adapt ourselves more to what nature
| provides.
| wvenable wrote:
| > Software people really have endless creative ways to spend
| hardware resource quota.
|
| If we have the hardware then not using it is wasteful. My
| iPhone doesn't get cheaper if I don't use all the power it
| provides.
| sakesun wrote:
| Perhaps, use more affordable hardware instead, and reserve
| resources for those who are less fortunate.
|
| Plus your battery will thank you for this.
| protocolture wrote:
| Apple has invented Windows Vista
| nipperkinfeet wrote:
| It looks cheap and tacky. Apple really lost its way. Who thought
| this was a good idea?
| jwilliams wrote:
| This is Windows Aero all over again - why is this a persistent
| design?
|
| You can't see or process the information behind the glass - at
| best it's major cognitive load to do so, at worst it's just very
| noisy with zero added information.
| bombcar wrote:
| Because it looks really good in a five minute demonstration to
| the C-level execs.
| Group_B wrote:
| The idea of this transparent UI is so dumb. How could anyone at
| apple think this would be a good idee? Sure, let's make it 100x
| harder to read and navigate the UI. Genius decisions being made
| at Apple here. I hope they do a lot of tweaking with this before
| it's forced onto my device.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| My bet is the new iPadOS does nothing to quiet the gripes about
| the iPad. Window management isn't the main issue. The main issue
| is that the iPad doesn't do enough of what a Mac does when you
| need it, and so you bring your laptop just in case.
|
| Oh and the Magic Keyboard? Great. Now my thin 13" iPad Pro feels
| literally as heavy as a MacBook Pro.
|
| Someone tell me what is the point?
| mjmas wrote:
| Windows at least did it (at least conceptually) in a way that
| should be fairly performant with their Mica material (just
| showing the desktop background and nothing else with a large blur
| and filters).
|
| This looks far more complex and something almost like real time
| ray tracing.
| crawsome wrote:
| Every time Apple reinvents the wheel, they release it like it's
| the very first time it happened.
| vlark wrote:
| It's just clear Aqua.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| I'm honestly shocked at the new interface. It's like Windows
| Vista all over again - everything's broken. The whole thing looks
| like a broken HTML page with CSS slapped on top of macOS Finder.
| Text readability is terrible and I really hope you can disable
| most of the glass effects in accessibility settings.
|
| This'll probably stick around for years until Apple decides to
| switch design languages again, and they'll never admit the old
| one was bad - classic Apple.
|
| It's unbelievably broken... like an Android phone with 30 themes
| installed at once.
|
| iOS 18 actually looks good and is readable, which makes this
| worse. That's the thing about peaking - it's a long way down.
| Feels like they had to ship something because their AI isn't just
| behind - it's absolutely broken like shit. Siri's been stale for
| 15 years, and they're not even polishing features that others
| have half-baked into their products. They've got... nothing.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Maybe a better iCloud+, a better iCloud (maybe
| version/history/logs?), a better way to operate/control two
| different seems (hint: "differently"), easy import/export of data
| from various services, less software opacity etc etc?
|
| But instead we got this.
|
| Does this how a massively large and rich company's intellectual
| bankruptcy begin?
| rifty wrote:
| I like the glassy shader effect and concept even if lacking a bit
| of discipline in all of the places where it's applied at the
| moment. Though I think the real test of differentiation for this
| redesign is how approachable the 'liquid' animations will be for
| developers to implement outside of the UIKit elements. Will be
| interesting to see how this design language system changes how
| they approach elements of the experience as they get more used to
| thinking through it.
| steele wrote:
| Windows 7 Aero
| gigatexal wrote:
| The biggest most coolest thing is new windowing and tiling
| controls for the iPad. Really cool stuff.
|
| The glass stuff I am meh on but let's see it in practice.
| cyberax wrote:
| Can we get universal APIs then? E.g. no restrictions on JITs on
| iOS?
| absurdo wrote:
| The death and return of Aero.
| nake13 wrote:
| I've noticed something no one has mentioned yet: Liquid Glass is
| natively HDR.
| wizee wrote:
| The excessive translucency makes contrast much worse and complex
| backgrounds poke through to distract from the test. Readability
| suffers severely. This is a terrible design direction. Kill it
| with fire.
| replwoacause wrote:
| That's it. I'm finally switching to Linux and Android.
| Groxx wrote:
| Got bad news for ya on Android...
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43975352
|
| It's not glassy (thank god), but it is just as disorientingly-
| bouncy.
|
| I am quite happy with Mint/XFCE on the Linux side though. Clear
| and very fast. Glad to have finally shifted.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Yeah I tell myself that every time too
| mock-possum wrote:
| > The new material, Liquid Glass, combines the optical qualities
| of glass with a fluidity only Apple can
|
| God this marketing copy is _sickening_
|
| Literally who wrote this, and who did they write it for??
| cubefox wrote:
| Fun activity: count how often they use the word "delight".
| dankwizard wrote:
| Apple have done it again - This is further proof that they are
| miles ahead of the competition. Kudos Apple.
|
| Stunningly beautiful.
| nprateem wrote:
| They should call the next macOS "KDE" and give credit where
| credit's due.
|
| Apple designers: Please copy wobbly windows too.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
|
| Looks like shit.
| blinding-streak wrote:
| Touch bar 2.0.
| seydor wrote:
| Terawatts of green energy being wasted to make your screen
| unreadable
| Hard_Space wrote:
| Oh please God let there be some way of turning this off or at
| least dialing it down. Maybe worse than the dreaded glass
| performance hit on CPU/GPU is the promise that elements 'get out
| of the way', for instance tabs disappearing while scrolling. As
| someone who thought Word 2003 was aok, I have hated this
| convergence upon an 'empty square' as a design goal. Show me all
| the settings, please, and don't hide them in an ellipsis either.
| barrenko wrote:
| This is why Ive left.
| joeguilmette wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember iOS7. It was dog ugly and universally
| reviled.
|
| This is new update is dog ugly and universally reviled. They'll
| fix the most egregious stuff in beta, and then in a year or two
| dial it in.
|
| This is a big, bold move. I'm happy to see them do something that
| takes some courage and also ship it.
|
| Most of the really bad/unreadable screenshots I see are people
| customizing things so they look terrible. All the defaults look
| great.
|
| I think it's great we have deep customization options coming.
| That's good. To people that say you shouldn't be able to make it
| look bad... No. My desktop OS is infinitely configurable and I
| can absolutely break it. I'm happy to see at least the most
| surface level guard rails coming off of iOS.
|
| This is good.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Wow, they've been really slowly moving towards this. I remember
| when I heard this for the first time, must have been more than
| half a decade ago, sounded like a logical step. I'm surprised
| they didn't want this to happen any faster though
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| It's the worst UI design I've seen from Apple, ever.
|
| Makes everything harder to read, far more expensive on your
| battery. No benefits.
|
| WTF.
|
| That's the final nail in the coffin for me.
| replete wrote:
| There are some horrific looking UI on the screenshots, e.g.
| Acorns floating toolbar with integrated traffic lights - it looks
| awful and with a bevel emboss - remember that? Yes, the ugly
| Photoshop effect option that only looked cool in the early 2000s.
| Some of this looks very cheap and amateur Photoshop like.
|
| It''s not terrible, but I will avoid it for a while. My biggest
| issue is the system resources this will require. I just don't
| care for the pretty, as much as I care for fast UI. Thinks
| Windows 11 delayed right click context menu.
|
| Unifying their operating system design language makes sense, but
| ugh do we really need yearly operating system revisions like
| this. It is obvious that the engineers struggle with the
| marketing led pace judging by how many issues there are every
| major release of macOS. I don't upgrade to a new major until a .3
| usually because of this.
| designerarvid wrote:
| As a user centered designer I naturally agree with most criticism
| shared here. Not the direction I would have wished for.
|
| Trying to understand where this is coming from, I guess two
| sources:
|
| 1. It's a fashion update to give GenZ and younger something they
| haven't seen before. They are too young to remember Windows
| Vista, and are the most important future target group that spends
| 12+ hrs / day on their iPhone. Also it is an audience that
| heavily customizes their UI, and care more for visually
| communicating cool-ness, than to get work done with efficient UX.
| Similar to using rainmeter on a desktop PC. Unsurprising, this
| look a lot like a rainmeter skin.
|
| 2. This is a way to communicate unmatched quality. Similar to
| what AirBnB are doing. When everyone can use icon- and component
| libraries like material and shadcn to build UI:s, this is a
| visual language that communicates premium quality is through an
| interface and iconography that is different and too expensive for
| others to recreate. Many companies don't have the skill nor the
| time and money to do custom icons in 3D software, or create
| elaborate translucent effects. Let's see what multi-plattform
| apps will look like with this new UI, perhaps the goal is to make
| them stand out as "outdated"
| throw28198 wrote:
| I'll quickly correct you as a zoomer: Gen Z is too young to
| remember windows vista, but just old enough to have enough
| fuzzy memories of skeuomorphism to be nostalgic for it (think
| of it like millenials liking vaporwave despite being very young
| in the 80s).
|
| This makes far more sense as #2 with a flavor of cashing in on
| zoomer nostalgia.
| settsu wrote:
| > millenials liking vaporwave
|
| From context, I'm assuming this is a misnomer and not a jab.
| XD (Although, admittedly, I'm not sure what the reference is
| actually to...)
| jitl wrote:
| Browser/webview have had iOS 7+ style blur for a while now, but
| won't have an answer to emulating Liquid Glass shaders for a
| while.
|
| EDIT: although perhaps this will allow emulation in webview if
| performance isn't abysmal https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/SVG/Reference/E...
| dodo_is_dodo wrote:
| I'm curious about the 'new hardware has enabled us to' part. I
| know they have full control over software, hardware stacks(A,M
| chip, Metal, OS), so I can easily imagine they do their best to
| optimization.
|
| Is it possible to do the same job with same performance on
| Android? or Windows or any general target OS and software stack?
|
| Seems that shader itself does not costs too much(normal map?
| lookup table?). What really matters is their UI/Shader job
| scheduling in realtime constraints on any CPU/GPU load state.
| scdnc wrote:
| I like the idea of using a more glass-like UI, but the
| implementation is horrible. It looks like a school project rather
| than work from the biggest company in the world. I generally
| don't understand the idea of making every UI look more like a
| children's toy.
| minhoryang wrote:
| Curious how much the work environment would deteriorate if an
| expert program with a large amount of information were redesigned
| with Liquid Glass. It's a bit perplexing that I have to look for
| a way to turn off this type of UI change under the accessibility
| menu.
| markpapadakis wrote:
| This looks like a disaster. It is like it was fast-tracked based
| on the oomph factor because seriously, how come you didn't notice
| how hard it is to read text or even notice overlapping
| objects/controls? Maybe once we use it for some time, we will all
| get it - it is possible - but as it now stands, I hope there will
| be an option to turn all that off, _especially_ on MacOS which is
| what I use to get work done.
| Woodi wrote:
| Transparent glass UI will be good for UI in glasses :)
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| As someone who loved aero glass and aqua, this looks like
| absolute dogshit.
|
| There was a reason nobody layered barely readable icons directly
| onto the glass surface in aero. Even the text in the title bar
| had a glow to increase the contrast at least!
|
| Fire all the design team. Should have done it back when iOS7 came
| out but clearly it wasn't a one off.
| gchokov wrote:
| This design is terrible. Also... no hope in Apple changing their
| mind. First time in 15 years that I am not looking forward to
| such changes.
| HenriTEL wrote:
| Apple already had serious contrast issues that have been adding
| up over the last few years, notably yellow text on white
| background or grey text on dark grey background. This liquid
| glass design will make the issue ubiquitous.
| seydor wrote:
| They are also apparently doing away with tabs. Now tabs will
| appear as buttons and pills. Just to make sure that you are
| entirely and unmistakably confused
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Can I have all that, but without the gaudy blurs and dynamic
| reflections?
|
| Without all that glassy thing. A neutral consistent flat design
| without too many shades.
|
| You know..., like Material design?
| smcleod wrote:
| One of the first things I do on app with transparent interfaces
| is disable transparency as it usually impacts battery life /
| performance and results in very low contrast UI hinting.
| earthnail wrote:
| As an indie app developer, this design update discourages me
| massively. The previous, minimal design gave the impression of
| being a platform, even though it was always mostly Apple stuff in
| Apple land.
|
| The new design is so visually overwhelming that I think the only
| way for users to deal with it is to reduce complexity. I read a
| statistic that said the average user had 21 apps on their phone.
| I think that will reduce to 15 now, or less.
|
| As for my app, this basically throws my whole design system out
| the window. I don't want to add glass to all my UI elements.
| Remember the visual noise that translucent window borders
| introduced in Vista? Why would I do that to my UI?
|
| I like the fact that the new design introduces a sense of
| hierarchy, and that it has more animations. I also like that
| transition animations are now interruptible by default (watch the
| "What's new in UIKit" video for that). But that could've happened
| without the glass nonsense.
|
| It was hard to feel excited in previous WWDCs, but I just took it
| as a sign of platform maturity. This year, on the other hand, is
| outright discouraging.
| gherard5555 wrote:
| Aero 2.0
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| So, it's official: I'm now old. I have seen the new that became
| old become new again.
|
| This reminds me a lot on the visual we were saying for Windows
| Longhorn before Vista was released, peak Apple being their usual
| trailblazing self.
| nashashmi wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. On windows we turned off most of this in
| exchange for speed. And then when I went to turn it back on, it
| did not look good anymore.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| I don't know. I think Aero was quite far from what was
| envisioned due to technical limitations and I'm quite sure it
| will look better now.
|
| I'm just amused we have somehow circled back.
| bilekas wrote:
| This is such a nothing burger and what happens when you let UI
| take control of your whole business model.
|
| "Look at our presentation, UI updates"
|
| What happened to actually innovating?
|
| They really are promoting "set your alarm without closing your
| streaming video"
|
| ... I mean. Great. My life is gonna be so much easier.
|
| > Users love widgets
|
| MMmm Apple. Time to stop with the mushrooms
| vijucat wrote:
| I got a minor amount of hate for it, but to repeat what I wrote
| here [1]:
|
| "Slowly, I'm coming to the conclusion that designers should never
| be employed, only consulted on a per-project basis. If they sit
| around 8 hours a day, they end up changing something or the other
| to justify their existence. But human beings are not used to
| change at such a rapid cadence. Humans take time to settle into a
| design and establish patterns of usage."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44103131#44105292
| fastasucan wrote:
| I don't understand how you can both appreciate the importance
| of good design, but at the same time claim that making good
| design is not a full time job.
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| Because good design turns into bad design when the designers
| have nothing better to do.
| dragochat wrote:
| this++
|
| We need more UX that people can "settle into" instead of the
| constant assault of superficial change that drains energy from
| everyone's ongoing effort to adapt to exponentially increasing
| _fundamental_ change!
| lobsterthief wrote:
| This is why UX teams should be data-driven. Do user research
| and A/B testing to hone your UI.
| dragochat wrote:
| uhm, maybe no... data-drive in UX means sliding towards the
| lowest common denominator, optimizing at first for the
| dumbest user, then later giving in to dark patterns and
| quasi-scamming
|
| there's room for creativity in UX, lots, just not at the
| "how does the texture of a button feel and flow" - need to
| move HIGHER level, towards eg thinking of experience
| minimizing cognitive load, increasing synergy and
| augmentation ppotential etc etc ...the ceiling is waaaay
| higher than most UX ppl think
| kreco wrote:
| I don't fully disagree but this is not the root of the cause.
|
| If I'm being employed to create bad product (bad UI) then I'm
| bad at my job.
|
| Everything single decision should have a rational about it. You
| should fix what is broken, improve what can be improved and
| certainly not doing feng shui changes.
|
| TL;DR: It's a management issue.
| wseqyrku wrote:
| I think this is rather intentional. A sparkly design to
| distract from Siri failure. Oh look at that glass. It's almost
| real.
| pzo wrote:
| Could be also another side-benedits for apple:
|
| - on older iphones this design probably wont render so well
| or fast (I guess require modern iphone with raytracing
| functionality) -> people need to buy new iphones
|
| - put wrench into those cross-platform apps like flutter,
| capacitor to make their apps feel off.
| EZ-E wrote:
| > If they sit around 8 hours a day, they end up changing
| something or the other to justify their existence
|
| I've seen this - it's not limited to designers, I've also
| business stakeholders with limited scope pushing for
| meaningless changes and revamps. The incentives to absolutely
| find something to do are too great. No one in higher management
| ever wants to hear that everything is fine and that we should
| do nothing. You'll be instantly booted saying that for lacking
| ambition and vision even if you're right. There should always
| be the next thing. As part of the tech industry earning a
| salary you always need to sell "something" internally.
| tootie wrote:
| Bad designers are like bad engineers. Seeking interesting
| things to do rather than serving the audience. Honestly, can't
| blame them either. They want to enjoy life not make profits.
|
| Really good designers exist and are about as rare as good
| engineers.
| tropicalfruit wrote:
| Apple OS marketing updates exist for 2 reasons:
|
| 1. new wallpaper to differentiate yearly identical hardware
| increments
|
| 2. CPU bloat to hog resources, slow your device and push people
| to update their HW
|
| these tick both boxes.
| xg15 wrote:
| The time display on the lockscreen is hilarious. Who doesn't want
| a towering, gargantuan "9:41" implanted into their photos?
| wseqyrku wrote:
| With this glassy schmlassy design everyone should forget about
| Siri right?
| sneak wrote:
| I'm very sad that Apple lost their main "no" guy.
|
| It doesn't seem like they have anyone who can say "we're not
| shipping/announcing that" with ultimate authority.
|
| The AVP never should have shipped in its current state. Then
| there was/is the Siri 2/AI debacle. Now macOS, too.
|
| This is to say nothing of the butterfly keyboard.
| DrScientist wrote:
| From the way they present it it looks like a 'looks' led, rather
| than usability led interface design.
|
| Grrr...
|
| Hard to tell for sure until you have hands on though.
| zac23or wrote:
| For those who complain that the old interfaces were better and
| the current ones are horrible, including this one (I tried using
| some glass interfaces, transparencies, etc. in the past. It's
| horrible to use) you're right, and that's not going to change.
| It's a question of the market.
|
| When nobody used computers, it was necessary to attract people.
| How? With the bestter interfaces, usability. A graphical
| operating system running on a CPU of 20 MHz or less was
| something. It's not fast, but it's the best possible for the
| time!
|
| And after 2000, everyone is using computers. The market is not
| expanding as companies expected. It's no longer important to
| attract people, everything can be done without worrying about the
| user, he's no longer important. Now, the Android keyboard is
| bigger than the Windows 95 installation, and my computer crashes
| from time to time with CPUs operating at GHz.
|
| No, the interfaces of the past were not perfect, but they were
| made to try to fool people.
|
| Remember Netflix? It used to recommend sharing passwords, now it
| tries to charge for each different IP. Is the same thing, the
| stream market is stable now...
|
| The good UI is lost, it's a thing of the past.
| tootie wrote:
| Can anyone convince me of why I should care about OS U8 design?
| Don't people spend 98% of their time inside an app that doesn't
| follow the system UI?
| botanical wrote:
| This translucent 3D look doesn't feel like they took usability
| into consideration. They just wanted to force a glass-look. At
| least the Aero look was frosted, this makes it so you have to
| strain to differentiate buttons and text on it.
| karel-3d wrote:
| If this ships in the current iteration, I will seriously consider
| jumping ship to Galaxy.
|
| AirTags are still holding me in Apple ecosystem but now Androids
| have their own tracking thingies, maybe it's time.
| bandoti wrote:
| It's going to be really interesting to see how this UI paradigm
| pans out. I think this captures a shift toward the extreme in
| responsive, fluid, convergent, whatever-you-want-to-call-it,
| design.
|
| We've had books/scrolls for thousands of years, laid out in
| beautiful proportion, and now it has all melted in the oven!
| CivBase wrote:
| I have a hard time reading the text in a lot of their examples.
|
| The artist name "Nao" on the music player. The zoom level "1x" on
| the camera. The tab "Library" on the gallery. And even the URL
| "floralarrangem..." in the browser.
|
| Seems to be a consequence of low-contrast, busy backgrounds, and
| overly aggressive use of transparency. Maybe a "tinted glass"
| approach and more considerate color/contrast choices would help.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| > It combines the optical qualities of glass with a fluidity only
| Apple can achieve, as it transforms depending on your content or
| context
|
| Is there a reason only Apple can achieve this look, or is it just
| marketing crap?
| wraptile wrote:
| looking at the official examples[1] seems like it's the latter
| one.
|
| 1 - https://i.ibb.co/FbrSjXfF/image.png
| cwizou wrote:
| Installed iOS, iPad and macOS yesterday, some things are quickly
| obvious :
|
| - In general, it _always_ looks worse on dark mode
|
| - The glass transparency effect is too local. It looks only at
| what's exactly below, so if you have two icons side by side in
| Control center on iPhone, one may show dark and the next one
| light, making you think one is active and the other one is
| inactive. It's pretty clear they wrestled with icons being too
| transparent so they blurred them a bunch, but it just makes it
| worse in those cases.
|
| - It does have sensible defaults for (most) 3rd party icons that
| are flat, by adding some reticule on the flat logo to make it pop
| and look less out of place.
|
| - The textfield contrasts can be horrendous. If you try to add a
| sky background to macOS messages (the first choice), the
| textfield is white text on lightly colored background. In Safari,
| if you have one of the default desktop background, you can get
| grey text on blue grayish background. There's absolutely no
| contrast and it's clear that they will have to address it.
|
| - Safari for macOS takes the contrast issue above and pushes it
| to 11. It tries to reintroduce the universally hated concept of
| "the webpage takes over your browser window" but makes it worse.
| It's horrible enough to have your tabs and icons change color
| from white to black if you tab from say hacker news to github,
| but they've added a very slow (and buggy) animation for the UI on
| top. So while the tab switches immediately, the UI on top slowly
| morphs from white to black. Absolutely infuriating (and can't be
| disabled in beta 1). You also can't really see the selected tab
| in dark mode on a webpage with a black background.
|
| In summary, some things look ok but in general it's really rough.
| The finder icon sums it best, they had a concept (transparent
| layers), and tried hard to shove everything through it, never
| stopping to question if maybe the concept needs adjusting when it
| clearly didn't work. I expect a bunch of changes, as is it's
| really rough.
| richardlblair wrote:
| Someone at apple spent too much time on r/unixporn
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Please make that iphone doesn't start playback when I sit in my
| car I'm dying.
| tencentshill wrote:
| It's like one of those terrible Winterboard skins I used on iOS
| 6.
| dayvid wrote:
| They're betting big on AR. This is for their glasses, but they'll
| have to split the design from AR/VR and non AR/VR
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Change for the sake of change. Because otherwise, there would be
| no news and we would stay at: "things are pretty good, besides
| the bad ui and ux in some parts".
|
| Absolutely nothing interesting or innovative on the horizon,
| besides AI snake oil that they apparently just can't get right...
|
| End stage big tech.
| sjs382 wrote:
| This could be a GREAT design if it implemented head/eye tracking
| to create a true layered/3d feeling with depth.
|
| That's something that would have been VERY doable for them on the
| iPhone/iPad, too.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Probably not possible without a major hit to battery life to
| keep Face ID/front camera on persistently. I agree it would be
| insanely cool though. Someone actually put together a demo (in
| 2019!) where the UI chrome correctly reflects the device's
| orientation relative to the ambient light here:
| https://youtu.be/TIUMgiQ7rQs
| idle_zealot wrote:
| I'm generally not a fan of the new design. I prefer my interface
| to be functional, consistent, and get out of my way rather than
| be flashy or attention-grabbing.
|
| That said, I do greatly appreciate how the new guidelines and
| redesigned UIs make interactive buttons _actually look like
| buttons_. Each tappable element is visually distinct and
| represented in a consistent way. I just wish that Apple didn 't
| insist on moving/hiding buttons in response to unrelated actions
| (ie WHY do I lose my action buttons when I scroll down, and why
| do they poof into existence when I scroll up? Why can I search on
| the root page of Settings but not on any subpage? Why does
| tapping a button that reveals a submenu hide that button?) Just
| stop moving things around, please.
| joduplessis wrote:
| Aside from the (glaring) accessibility issues, the aesthethic
| doesn't look great.
| tangomama wrote:
| Alright, I'm officially turning off iOS automatic updates.
| dev1ycan wrote:
| Transluscency has always been a beautiful effect I don't care
| what brainwashed "UI/UX"designers post ~2013 think, they are
| literally conditioned to just repeat mantras.
|
| The original reason for dropping transluscency was that "old
| people can't tell apart things", well we're way past the era of
| "no phone" generations, are we forever going to have things stay
| ugly?
|
| Vista was the best looking OS ever with Aero on.
| waffletower wrote:
| I wonder if 'Liquid Glass' would have been less crass looking to
| me if Jonny Ive was still at the company and somehow approved it.
| It almost has the consistency of gummy candy, which isn't
| something I like to touch either.
| settsu wrote:
| I would've loved to have been a fly on the wall throughout the
| various discussions as this idea made its way across the Apple
| org.
|
| That this was the dominant topic during the keynote of their
| annual _developer_ event doesn 't seem to bode well for the state
| of the ecosystem. Especially combined with how cutting the
| sarcasm was for the new version numbering and new macOS name
| announcement(s).
| butlike wrote:
| It's nice to see the Mac getting some love
| neya wrote:
| Did Apple just do *{ opacity: 0.36
| }
|
| And call it revolutionary?
| pardner wrote:
| Yet more glossy 'form over function' nonsense from Apple in my
| opinion. Was hoping '26 would be the release that tackled their
| massive technical debt around broken/reduced functionality. I did
| see a Reddit post that summarized it nicely, a screenshot of a
| Youtube video where the play button overlaps the name so it reads
| Liquid*ass
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