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Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

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Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#191

Post by khana »

shermantanktop wrote: post #125
porcoda wrote: post #31

This update is one of the rare cases where I really dislike the new version. I’m usually happy with Apple updates, even ones the commentators dislike. This time I’m sorta agreeing with them: I don’t like the new iOS. Same with the Mac and iPad: other than being glitchy, I just don’t like the changes. It feels like my screen real estate isn’t as efficiently used, UI elements feel jumbled and the transparency makes thi…

Same. I'm just not someone with strong feelings about UX consistency or appearance, and tend to focus on functionality. But this...this feels like a symptom of something fundamental inside Apple going wrong.

[dead]

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#192

Post by jsbisviewtiful »

porcoda wrote: post #31

This update is one of the rare cases where I really dislike the new version. I’m usually happy with Apple updates, even ones the commentators dislike. This time I’m sorta agreeing with them: I don’t like the new iOS. Same with the Mac and iPad: other than being glitchy, I just don’t like the changes. It feels like my screen real estate isn’t as efficiently used, UI elements feel jumbled and the transparency makes thi…

Same boat. I started with the third public beta on my iPhone and the UX overhaul has not grown much on me. I reversed the Safari layout back to the previous, the combined Phone sections are not intuitive (and I almost reversed back to the previous with that too), the lock screen change is not bad but also not bringing more usability... The lack of new lock screen widgets is baffling. The overall appearance... it's hideous. Everything looks unfocused/muddy, colors look gross, readability is down and practically everything is clunky. I changed my Home Screen apps to all clear so I wouldn't have to look are the loud and oversaturated colors. Def not Apple's best work and confusing how we got here. The spam filtering for texts and phone calls is the prize change for the entire OS, which is funny because Apple Intelligence is still somewhat worthless even a year and a big update later. Genmoji, the only good thing about it, still fails 50%+ of the time.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#194

Post by nipperkinfeet »

I've always had an Android phone, but since my parents have Apple devices, I'm the one who has to help them with any technical issues.

I tried to minimize the horrible glass design as much as possible because they couldn't see the text bleeding through the background. In my opinion, Liquid Glass is the worst design I have ever seen. It looks like a crappy GeoCities design from 1999. The team who designed it should be fired and replaced with people who priorities a professional appearance and usability.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#195

Post by mrducksy »

donmcronald wrote: post #111
porcoda wrote: post #31

This update is one of the rare cases where I really dislike the new version. I’m usually happy with Apple updates, even ones the commentators dislike. This time I’m sorta agreeing with them: I don’t like the new iOS. Same with the Mac and iPad: other than being glitchy, I just don’t like the changes. It feels like my screen real estate isn’t as efficiently used, UI elements feel jumbled and the transparency makes thi…

On my Mac I almost laugh at how massive the borders are to accommodate the freakishly large corner radius. The next version might have round windows at this pace.

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Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#197

Post by kevinsundar »

I know im in the minority but I have a car (Mazda) that has CarPlay but no touch screen, so you have to scroll through the elements on the screen with a wheel.

iOS 26 is terrible on it. They decided to use gray as their selection color where it used to be a blue outline. So now I need to, while driving, visually hunt for a gray color to see what im about to select.

Even worse the gray color can either be the background of a target OR a border around the target, it's not consistent.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#198

Post by toomuchtodo »

mfro wrote: post #179
toomuchtodo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it’s pretty bad. It causes my 16 pro max to lag in some apps, Siri is broken, etc. Very surprised this made it through QA to GA.

Re: performance, I disabled Apple Intelligence (it’s useless anyways) and noticed a big perf improvement on my 16 plus.

Appreciate the suggestion, unfortunately, I have it off already :(

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#199

Post by shantara »

I'm an iOS developer and for the last decade and a half I've been updating most of my Apple devices to the new version of iOS on day 1. I knew it meant bugs, but the excitement of trying shiny new features has greatly overshadowed the potential issues. iOS/macOS 26 have become the first exception for this rule.

I strongly dislike Liquid Glass and would avoid upgrading for as long as possible. I would also delay updating both my personal and my work apps for the new design language. It is a massive usability downgrade, and it undoes all the effort I put into implementing accessibility related features in my apps. The negative sentiment has also been universally shared among my colleagues and other iOS devs I've talked about.

It is a major factor why I decided to skip an iPhone update for another year. I'd rather continue using my older device despite its dwindling battery life than be forced to use glass-based iOS version. Together with Apple's adversarial attitude to the regulation compliance in EU, its become increasingly more difficult to find any excitement in my dev job, and I find myself spending more and more time with my Linux desktop over my MBP.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#200

Post by OGEnthusiast »

scelerat wrote: post #180
porcoda wrote: post #31

This update is one of the rare cases where I really dislike the new version. I’m usually happy with Apple updates, even ones the commentators dislike. This time I’m sorta agreeing with them: I don’t like the new iOS. Same with the Mac and iPad: other than being glitchy, I just don’t like the changes. It feels like my screen real estate isn’t as efficiently used, UI elements feel jumbled and the transparency makes thi…

I suppose an upvote should be sufficient, but I am so unhappy with the new UI I am actually holding off switching to a new M4 MBP and sticking to my old M1 still on Sequoia 15.7.1. I also try to give these things time and I am usually ok with the changes eventually, but the new UI elements are so incredibly distracting it's actually affecting my ability to focus on what I'm actually doing.

The M4 MBP, even if it comes pre-installed with Tahoe, can still be downgraded to Sequoia via DFU restore. The real cut-off will be the M5 Macs, which only Tahoe and above will have hardware support for.
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