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iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

macrumors.com

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Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#121

Post by kcplate »

cardanome wrote: post #92
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> give me proper theming support This is sort of like walking into an art gallery and demanding they hang different art. Apple has always been visually opinionated. That’s fine. Not everything needs to be customisable. The problem is their aesthetic historically varied between daringly great and daringly fucked. Nothing about Liquid Glass, on the other hand, screams daring, thought or even vision. It’s just a random…

No that is like my landlord telling me what kind of art I can hang in my own home. If I spend hours of my day using a device I should be able to theme it exactly to my taste. The customer is always right in matters of taste. You are supposed to serve your customers not the other way round. And don't give me oh that is not the apple way. I don't care. People don't buy apple for liquid glass or whatever but because the…

> If I spend hours of my day using a device I should be able to theme it exactly to my taste. The customer is always right in matters of taste. You are supposed to serve your customers not the other way round.

This attitude always cracks me up. Only with tech products and among techies do we hear these demands of infinite customization of the products and tools we use.

Can you imagine any other vocation or industry making such demands of infinite customization of their tools and products that they use? I know I can’t.

The real analogy here isn’t landlords and homes. It’s a carpenter demanding that Stanley ship moldable handles with their hammers so that it fits their hand one millimeter better giving them the ability to maybe hammer one extra nail a day.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#122

Post by trenchpilgrim »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #13

In big engineering programs engineers are paid bounties for every kg they remove from the design. We need software developer bounties for removing CPU cycles and memory.

I heard about this story when BMW was designing the 1300GS, they had a bag of 40 lbs of sand hanging in the engineers' office. Engineers who developed weight savings got to do a ceremony where they removed that amount of sand from the bag.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#123

Post by makeitdouble »

montroser wrote: post #3

So, so, much money, time, and resources poured into this update that only made things worse; and now again to roll it back...

TBF

- they made and are still making the headlines for how many months ?

Any press is not always good press, but in this case it's not like their users were going to flock to android anyway. So same deal as the orange iPhone: they kept a pretty big place in the news cycle.

- not doing any changes to the OS appareance for more decades would make it exponentially harder the more it goes on.

Doing a shit job at it is still fine in that respect, they get leeway to fix it, and people will still praise Apple for having seen the light at the end.

As a parallel we had the port situation and the keyboard on MacBooks. They did a shit job and reversed it, and during that time sales didn't specially tank. They could afford to do two or three cycles of "here we fixed it", to scrap it all at the end, and people still love their MacBooks the same.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#124

Post by hu3 »

etempleton wrote: post #31
fidotron wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple product managers are falling into the trap Microsoft did in the run up to Windows 8: a belief that unifying across Mac, iOS, Apple TV and Vision Pro will make them all stickier. In truth it really does just make everything obnoxiously bad.

Unifying the look and feel to such a literal degree on desktop was a weird choice and I hate it a lot on my personal and work machine.

Do you like the enormous round borders?

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#125

Post by jonhohle »

wpm wrote: post #68
aylmao wrote: post #50

IMO a big problem with Liquid Glass is that you're trying to recreate an effect that's highly reliant on the sense of depth we get from binocular vision in a 2D screen. When looking at glass in real life, your left eye and your right eye see slightly different refraction patterns since they're looking at the surface from slightly different angles. It might be minimal, but light refraction patterns can change a lot wh…

The other problem is that the effect is so subtle everywhere until it gets in your way. Even on a system with actual binocular screens, the Liquid Glass effect is barely noticeable and has been since visionOS 1.0. It's like a horrible compromise between the indulgences of early 10.2-era Aqua and the worst flat boring low contrast bullshit "mimimmumunlism" crap from iOS 7-18 and macOS from Big Sur onwards.

I would gladly take the indulgences of the 10.2 era where clickable things looked like clickable things instead of hobs and gobs of indistinguishable text.

What’s misunderstood about aqua was how most of the visual flair was for usability. Things looked like what they did. Windows XP famously ripped off how MS thought they looked without considering how they worked.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#126

Post by hu3 »

kcplate wrote: post #121
cardanome wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that is like my landlord telling me what kind of art I can hang in my own home. If I spend hours of my day using a device I should be able to theme it exactly to my taste. The customer is always right in matters of taste. You are supposed to serve your customers not the other way round. And don't give me oh that is not the apple way. I don't care. People don't buy apple for liquid glass or whatever but because the…

> If I spend hours of my day using a device I should be able to theme it exactly to my taste. The customer is always right in matters of taste. You are supposed to serve your customers not the other way round. This attitude always cracks me up. Only with tech products and among techies do we hear these demands of infinite customization of the products and tools we use. Can you imagine any other vocation or industry m…

What you call "demands of infinite customization" is a basic thing on Windows and Android since forever.

Users can change the theme however they want.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#127

Post by GaryBluto »

cardanome wrote: post #19

Give me proper theming support. Allow me to disable all animations, rounded corners, opacity, white space and whatever else I don't need. Imagine how snappy and productive it could be!

I feel that Apple succeeds because it isn't customizable, although I do think a completely customizable phone operating system (that wouldn't be Linux or Android-based) could be successful with a niche crowd.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#128

Post by dav43 »

aylmao wrote: post #50

IMO a big problem with Liquid Glass is that you're trying to recreate an effect that's highly reliant on the sense of depth we get from binocular vision in a 2D screen. When looking at glass in real life, your left eye and your right eye see slightly different refraction patterns since they're looking at the surface from slightly different angles. It might be minimal, but light refraction patterns can change a lot wh…

The big problem is that it’s shit and terrible UX. We should stop complicating feedback :)

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#129

Post by GaryBluto »

hu3 wrote: post #126
kcplate wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I spend hours of my day using a device I should be able to theme it exactly to my taste. The customer is always right in matters of taste. You are supposed to serve your customers not the other way round. This attitude always cracks me up. Only with tech products and among techies do we hear these demands of infinite customization of the products and tools we use. Can you imagine any other vocation or industry m…

What you call "demands of infinite customization" is a basic thing on Windows and Android since forever. Users can change the theme however they want.

Windows isn't a mobile operating system, unless you're referring to Windows phone, and from what little knowledge I have of what it's like to use an Android device, you can install custom "launchers" but you cannot change the user interface too drastically.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#130

Post by jesterson »

nntwozz wrote: post #118

You know it's a sad state we're in when this passes for news these days. What's next? iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass color? Woweeeee, what's up with designers like Ive and Alan Dye going off the deep end in their late careers? I don't how much Craig Federighi has been involved but it's definitely tainted his reputation too I'm afraid.

It's gonna last as long as people will buy this crap. And it doesn't seem to be the end for this delusion of "progress".
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