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iOS 26 Liquid Glass is awful in many ways

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: iOS 26 Liquid Glass is awful in many ways

#25

Post by deanmoriarty »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #15

I refuse to install *OS 26. I don't need these headaches or wastes of time.

Does that mean that you hope the next generation of iOS will do away with liquid glass so that you can update, or that you’ll never update again (also implying you’ll never buy an Apple device again)?

I always understood the sentiment of waiting until the first dot release for bug fixes, but refusing to update while still being in the ecosystem seems clearly a losing battle not even worth fighting for.

Re: iOS 26 Liquid Glass is awful in many ways

#27

Post by moomoo11 »

While some UX improvements are nice, there are way more UX regressions that affect my day to day.

FaceTime zoom via drag gesture used to be so nice. Now I can only pinch (requires both hands) or tap the preset zooms.

Safari tabs and other interactions are ass now.

Selecting text and dragging selection is impossible if I’m dragging down. Half the time it doesn’t do shit because it opens a pane right below which registers my tap instead.

So many other interactions that required single tap or drag now require 2 or more and invoke opening a menu. Wtf.

Honest feels like an intern project, and not something I’d expect from Apple design team. Did any important/good people leave recently?

And yeah it looks cheap. I used to hate this similar look a decade ago when it was on iOS. I liked the last few UIs. This is just awful.

Re: iOS 26 Liquid Glass is awful in many ways

#28

Post by skydhash »

bruce511 wrote: post #19
k310 wrote: post #9

Two factors in play, IMO. 1. The hubris of big companies deciding that they know what you want better than you do. I used to chide Microsoft, not that they were listening, that their motto was "We will optimize you (if you change your life to do things our way)", like the ubiquitous "Excel as a database." Only a visionary can anticipate your needs, and Steve Jobs is gone. 2. Change for the sake of change. Compare wit…

I'd suggest that Open Source just defines the castle differently. People outside the castle have no say. I'd also suggest that OS UI's are almost (but not quite) universally horrible. In most cases OS is about functionality, not astheics. There are good looking OS projects, but they are rare. And most often just a clone of a good looking commercial system. I get that lots of people would love to return yo Windows XP…

> but interestingly, looking back, I see that software as unbearably ugly.

I would love software to be ugly again. So that companies can focus on building features instead of animations and other gimmicks. Collect customer feedback and build useful features instead of endlessly twiddling with knobs and adjusting settings everyone was fine with.

Re: iOS 26 Liquid Glass is awful in many ways

#29

Post by k310 »

skydhash wrote: post #28
bruce511 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest that Open Source just defines the castle differently. People outside the castle have no say. I'd also suggest that OS UI's are almost (but not quite) universally horrible. In most cases OS is about functionality, not astheics. There are good looking OS projects, but they are rare. And most often just a clone of a good looking commercial system. I get that lots of people would love to return yo Windows XP…

> but interestingly, looking back, I see that software as unbearably ugly. I would love software to be ugly again. So that companies can focus on building features instead of animations and other gimmicks. Collect customer feedback and build useful features instead of endlessly twiddling with knobs and adjusting settings everyone was fine with.

No liquid glass? Weren't crowds surrounding the Apple spaceship demanding it?

As an optics person, I just have to chortle every time I hear that.

If glass has any liquidity after cooling, it's unobservable [0] (Note, it deforms, but that's not liquidity.)

> Window glass at room temperature has a nearly incalculable relaxation time, approaching the age of the universe itself.

More on point, Apple does drive me crazy when it changes things. The level of "How the hell do I do this?" is off scale. That used to be RTFM, when there were manuals and geeks who read them. I just found the color picker in Preview app. Features are like Easter Eggs, when so many are crammed into an app's window.

It feels like every app other than Preview app has a floating font/style menu. To change the font size, color, etc., you have to pull it down repeatedly. .... Oh well .....

I use it to do quick image hacks, rather than fire up GIMP. (did someone change the default behavior of layers in GIMP? I used to just edit stuff, and then had to merge down every time, until I (ta-da) found the layers window (in the Windows menu)) Oh well ...

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-glass-really-a...

Re: iOS 26 Liquid Glass is awful in many ways

#30

Post by rtcoms »

k310 wrote: post #9

Two factors in play, IMO. 1. The hubris of big companies deciding that they know what you want better than you do. I used to chide Microsoft, not that they were listening, that their motto was "We will optimize you (if you change your life to do things our way)", like the ubiquitous "Excel as a database." Only a visionary can anticipate your needs, and Steve Jobs is gone. 2. Change for the sake of change. Compare wit…

I have different take on this, with AI coming into mobile interface, the context about what is present on the screen becomes important, user will like to know what is present on the screen and verify answers from AI frequently.

Liquid glass UI with transparency may allow user to keep that context without completely putting AI user interface aside.

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