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Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

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Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#481

Post by thepryz »

prashnts wrote: post #361
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…

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.

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#482

Post by lbotos »

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…

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#483

Post by ethbr1 »

stalco wrote: post #397

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

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#485

Post by tshaddox »

highwaylights wrote: post #441
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…

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.

> 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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#486

Post by shakna »

carlosjobim wrote: post #391
coastalpuma wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 po…

You know something that almost never has rounded corners? Glass.

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#488

Post by RollingRo11 »

pcurve wrote: post #472
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…

I don't mind physicality, but not glass. Please. There are reasons why most controls are NOT made of glass in real life.

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.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#489

Post by crazygringo »

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 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...

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#490

Post by chasil »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #395
austinl wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Aero
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