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Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

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Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#231

Post by nicoburns »

leakycap wrote: post #198
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #93

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…

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.

> 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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#232

Post by rpgbr »

basisword wrote: post #188
dimal wrote: post #148

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…

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.

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…

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#233

Post by pzo »

captainmuon wrote: post #98

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…

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#235

Post by jauntywundrkind »

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?

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#236

Post by zilti »

Someone1234 wrote: post #146

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. Recent…

> (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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#237

Post by pzo »

satvikpendem wrote: post #160
captainmuon wrote: post #98

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…

> 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.

apple need to persuade people somehow to buy new iphone.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#238

Post by overfeed »

mrweasel wrote: post #192
Someone1234 wrote: post #146

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. Recent…

> 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 M…

> 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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#239

Post by vFunct »

dimal wrote: post #148

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…

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#240

Post by mrweasel »

wavemode wrote: post #220
mrweasel wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 M…

> 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 digit…

> 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?

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