I don't think it's a particularly hard concept to grasp what's happening here. UI elements above content stop you seeing it. Apple has tried to make them both see through so that you screen feels bigger and stand out so that you can actually interact with the UI effectively. Some images/demos look good. Some look horrible. Time will tell.
Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
171–180 of 306 posts
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of "old and senior people" also fumble with big mistakes a lot of the time. They're not all-perfect gods. In reality, most successful people are one trick ponies. They caught lightning in a bottle once early on that boosted their careers but that doesn't mean they're still relevant and correct with their decision making today. Look at John Romero, he knocked it out of the park with Doom 1, 2 and some of Quake,…
> They're not all-perfect gods. In reality, most successful people are one trick ponies. They caught lightning in a bottle once early on that boosted their careers but that doesn't mean they're still relevant and correct with their decision making today. I don't think that characterization is quite right either. I'm a big fan of Brian Eno's "scenius" phrasing: > A few years ago I came up with a new word. I was fed up…
That a great idea, perhaps it is not just cultural.
Look at the Solvay Conference. That's a lot of lightning in a bottle all at once.
Though it's beyond me to articulate it, perhaps that was also cultural.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#173The most important thing about this new design is that it differentiates itself from Android. Not super important in the U.S. where iPhone lock-in is pretty endemic, but for the markets where there is competition, this bit of eye candy will make a big difference. Usability is secondary. The directive from on high was probably about creating a more visually distinctive UI which takes advantage of Apple hardware, thus…
Apple and Androids relationship I would say is known and stable.
I suspect they are more worried about HarmonyOS phones in China and other markets as Huawei are fierce competition.
“Calculations based on data from the government-affiliated China Academy of Information and Communications Technology showed that April shipments of foreign-branded phones in China rose to 3.52 million units from 3.50 million a year earlier.
Apple has faced increased competition from domestic rivals in China and has resorted to price cuts to stay competitive.
Chinese e-commerce platforms were offering discounts of up to 2,530 yuan ($351) on Apple's latest iPhone 16 models in May.“
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/apples-iphone-sales-capt...
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see no way around all that optics physics not sucking up computation and battery. Perhaps Apple will add liquid glass silicon to the mix to do that physics in hardware. Using glass to compute glass, LOL
my initial thought is that apple is preparing to launch physically deforming screens which will create bumps similar to this liquid.
Or using cameras to render what’s behind the phone as a background. That would help explain the continued focus on thinness.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of "old and senior people" also fumble with big mistakes a lot of the time. They're not all-perfect gods. In reality, most successful people are one trick ponies. They caught lightning in a bottle once early on that boosted their careers but that doesn't mean they're still relevant and correct with their decision making today. Look at John Romero, he knocked it out of the park with Doom 1, 2 and some of Quake,…
> They're not all-perfect gods. In reality, most successful people are one trick ponies. They caught lightning in a bottle once early on that boosted their careers but that doesn't mean they're still relevant and correct with their decision making today. I don't think that characterization is quite right either. I'm a big fan of Brian Eno's "scenius" phrasing: > A few years ago I came up with a new word. I was fed up…
I could believe that this happens at Apple if it wasn't for the executive veto that pushed stuff like the Touch Bar and Butterfly Keyboard to consumers. It sounds less like "very large numbers of people" conspiring, and more like a select few conspirators hand-picking the contributions they think would sell well.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#176I think I know what happened. The A-squad design team left Apple 15 years ago. The B-squad left 5 years ago. What remains is a sea of Gen Z designers who weren't yet alive when the foggy glass of Windows Vista seemed like a good idea. Meanwhile, the talent wars are raging, with every AI company offering 7-figure salaries to the best of Apple's prodigies. Apple is now the old guard. They're no longer cool, and as a pu…
That’s BS take. iOS design is one of the most coveted roles if not the most important role you can get as a designer. It reaches billions and influences everything else. Just because we are not impressed with Apple’s direction, doesn’t mean these roles at Apple are not highly sought after. People would work for free to have that on their cv. Not everyone is motivated by pay and this is especially true among people with actual talent.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#177I think I know what happened. The A-squad design team left Apple 15 years ago. The B-squad left 5 years ago. What remains is a sea of Gen Z designers who weren't yet alive when the foggy glass of Windows Vista seemed like a good idea. Meanwhile, the talent wars are raging, with every AI company offering 7-figure salaries to the best of Apple's prodigies. Apple is now the old guard. They're no longer cool, and as a pu…
> The A-squad design team left Apple 15 years ago. Does the A-squad include Steve Jobs, who seemed to have been a fan of skeuomorphism: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph#Virtual_examples Does the A-squad include Johnny Ive, who gave us butterfly keyboards and the Touch Bar (where (IIRC) the initial revision of which did not have a separate physical key for ESC)? Though Ive did get rid of skeuomorphism.
> Though Ive did get rid of skeuomorphism.
By replacing skeuomorphism with minimalism, Ive's anti-skeu was a cure nearly as worse as the disease. They were right to move away from skeuomorphism, but they did so recklessly, giving us a UX where almost all cues for an element being "clickable" were stripped away.
Ive hasn't done a single impressive thing after Jobs' departure. To the extent that Ive did anything noteworthy, it was with Jobs as visionary, product director and tastemaker. Outside of that relationship, his work has been derivative of prior Apple design success, or embarrassingly wrong-footed. Factoring in the lag time of product cycles, it's astonishing how rapidly Apple improved after Ive's departure.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#178We have 'instinctive visual cues' for depth and light coming from above, hence why button gradients are so immediately effective,because our visual system recognizes it in milliseconds. we don't have "instictive visual cues" for refraction and lensing , that's why we are confused about underwater distances . That's why magnifying glasses make us dizzy. I just can't believe this is coming from apple.
Holding Apple to a high standard this long after the the death of the industry’s one and only true UI/UX purist is folly.
It’s regular “you”s and “me”s there now.
US corporate structure absolutely kills the spirit in the kind of people who could make a difference. And when it doesn’t, it kills the ability of those people to be promoted to a position of influence.
I am not a huge fan of Steve Jobs, but he did understand UI and UX better than just about anyone, and he stuck to his guns.
“I can’t believe this is coming from Apple” is something I said when I saw iPhones with a camera bump. Camera bumps are a fucking abomination.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#179If someone at Apple said I want communicate in a natural way on video and not really go into TED talk mode would they get in trouble?
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#180I think I'm convinced with liquid glass design, the issues highlighted by the users in the beta release IMHO are a result of rushing it out for WWDC. It appears that they didn't have enough time to polish the UI to comply with the principles described in this video. For example the designer in this video says no glass over glass but the control center and the lock screen are glass over glass. It looks cluttered and t…
Tbh, I get strong flat-earther vibes from that video ;) E.g. trying to justify a stupid base assumptiom with pseudo-science. I predict that in 2..5 years Apple will go back to regular opaque UI elements with a slight 3D hint to separate items that can be interacted with from non-interactive items. Windows users might be lucky when Microsoft skips that fashion cycle by saying "been there, done that".
> Windows users might be lucky when Microsoft skips that fashion cycle by saying "been there, done that".
Given Microsoft’s track record, I’d expect worse, not better. Metro might’ve looked good on phones, but the desktop incarnation was pretty ugly (it was basically Windows 1.0 with antialiasing) compared to Aero. It would be completely on brand for them to do something like ditch their current reasonably nice looking Fluent in favor of something hideous and then stubbornly try to make it work without changes for the next decade before finally relenting.