Apple introduces a universal design across platforms • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#321

Post by nikeee » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 8:22 PM UTC

austinl wrote: post #265

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…

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.

> 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

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#322

Post by zerocrates » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 8:23 PM UTC

nlarew wrote: post #275

cosmotic wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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?

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#323

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 8:23 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#324

Post by jorvi » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 8:23 PM UTC

coastalpuma wrote: post #179

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…

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…

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?

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#325

Post by rollcat » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 8:24 PM UTC

plainOldText wrote: post #200

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 th…

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#326

Post by Lammy » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 8:25 PM UTC

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#327

Post by jcranmer » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 8:26 PM UTC

bluSCALE4 wrote: post #84

kej wrote: post #54

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.

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?

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).

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#328

Post by pndy » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 8:26 PM UTC

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…

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#329

Post by thesuitonym » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 8:27 PM UTC

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…

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#330

Post by jandrese » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 8:27 PM UTC

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…

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.