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Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

developer.apple.com

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Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#231

Post by jameshart »

philistine wrote: post #157
whiteboardr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus, to be truly realistic it also would need to take into account ambient lighting scenarios surrounding the device displaying it. Like this it’s really just another try in recreating glass which never made sense to be used in UI. It is beyond me, how this got chosen as a way forward - taking visual design which makes sense in a VR/AR environment, to ruin their rectangular display UI. It will make implementation wa…

I think they refuse to pick a shade of grey for their UI's background, so we're stuck with transparent elements.

You know the dominant apps used on phones have large full screen user-generated video and imagery, right?

These are UI elements designed to work great over scrolling content feeds, full screen product images, album artwork, and thirty second videos of people doing meme dances. There is no room for ‘a gray background’.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#232

Post by jameshart »

serial_dev wrote: post #38
seydor wrote: post #18

We 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.

That’s an interesting point, never thought about it. These complicated lenses distorting light from all directions look fancy in a designer portfolio, having them almost everywhere… I’m not sure how it will work out. In contrast, the original material design was quite intuitive, iirc they based their design on paper sheets, much simpler, and much more common in our day to day life. I still have some hope it will work…

The linked video gives the explicit human interface guideline of don’t use it everywhere.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#233

Post by christophilus »

ljm wrote: post #229
seydor wrote: post #18

We 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.

The accessibility angle is what concerns me. The demos of the Music app, for example, seemed much less clear. You’re gonna have to mess around with whatever settings they provide to turn it off if you have impaired visibility. It gives off a weird 2.5D HUD effect that works well enough in first-person games (which is basically simulating AR), but is just harder to read and kind of unmoored from the main UX on a flat…

Their accessibility settings actually seem decent. You can turn off the animation, increase contrast, go nearly opaque… I still don’t think I’ll love this new paradigm, but it looks like I can mostly mitigate my concerns.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#234

Post by mixmastamyk »

abcd_f wrote: post #201
simondotau wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 notewo…

I've been in agreement with you up until this point - > it's astonishing how rapidly Apple improved after Ive's departure Is there another Apple? What improvements are you talking about, leave alone astonishing ones?

Keyboard and touch bar reverted.

Not exactly improvements in the traditional sense. More likely cleaning up an intentional mess.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#235

Post by jeroenhd »

Kwpolska wrote: post #87
mvkel wrote: post #36

I 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…

Aero Glass in Windows Vista and 7 worked quite well. Virtually no applications had the glass everywhere. Many stayed with the default of only having a glass title bar and window border. Some apps extended it a little to cover a toolbar or two. Also, the glass effect was simpler, and had enough contrast by default (and the colour and transparency were customizable), whereas Apple has the glass everywhere and often wit…

In some Vista betas, where Aero wasn't finished yet, Aero's glass was a lot more transparent. This video shows some of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCDcekzU3cQ

There were parts of Vista that were mostly glass and they still looked fine. The widget picker comes to mind: https://istartedsomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/gad...

What Apple demonstrated in their first OS demo is not yet finished, and I'm sure they'll add some more frosted glass efects for legibility and such. What they show off in the video looks fine to me, and the explanation that comes with the visuals show that at least from a designer point of view, all of the weird stuff that jumps out in the macOS demo was violating the design principles.

I loved Aero and I bet once Apple adds the diffuse glass to the places it need to for legibility, I'm sure this will look great too.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#236

Post by jeroenhd »

farzd wrote: post #63
mvkel wrote: post #36

I 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…

It seems like they are trying to unify the UX for vision OS and other devices and have them finally morph with the AR interfaces that are to come. There is probably a bigger vision behind this than just shiny visuals.

I think this too. Microsoft thought something similar when they tried to unify Windows, Xbox, Windows Phone, and Windows RT in one design language.

With how badly Apple's VR headset actually sold, I don't think they're going to for a unified AR-first approach just yet. Then again, Apple did think their VR headset was a good idea, so maybe they're just high on their own supply.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#237

Post by jeroenhd »

rkagerer wrote: post #147

Somehow I've always considered controls that float over your content to be a bit of a UI design cop-out. They often get slapped on top willy-nilly, and wind up blocking something below - either from view, or from interaction with another tool. While I recognize Apple's approach here tries to mitigate that complaint... I still appreciate when designers craft a distinct space for my buttons/menus/controls to live, trea…

This is my biggest problem with UI designs like this. There are lots of rules to follow, or the design looks like a cluttered mess.

Having seen what UI atrocities Material Design has allowed amateur app developers to bring to market, I hope Apple makes these new UI elements difficult to mess up, because unless they're making the UI libraries good by default, apps are going to get messy for a few years.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#238

Post by swores »

tgv wrote: post #152
nomel wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this wrong? Our visual system is optimized, rather extremely, for understanding 3d scenes under the simple perspective model that our eyes are based on: x' = (x * f) / z Outside of that 99.999% experience norm, that are brains are so used to, is disconnect and discomfort. If you've ever put on a new pair of glasses, with a different prescription, you'll understand exactly what he's talking about: depth offset…

If our brain understands one thing, it's that glass is a wall between our body and what we see. You can't touch that, or you'll hurt yourself.

That's... an odd thing for your brain to believe about glass.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#239

Post by whiteboardr »

jameshart wrote: post #231
philistine wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they refuse to pick a shade of grey for their UI's background, so we're stuck with transparent elements.

You know the dominant apps used on phones have large full screen user-generated video and imagery, right? These are UI elements designed to work great over scrolling content feeds, full screen product images, album artwork, and thirty second videos of people doing meme dances. There is no room for ‘a gray background’.

This doesn’t justify applying a less than suboptimal design for everything else.

UI on content is a special case just like AR and here it might be ok, but why add “glass” as a background on icons or panels for text that are served much better by using a single colored transparent background without the noise that glass is bringing to the table - if there’s a background needed at all.

The visual signal to noise ratio is being cranked up to 11 for novelty’s sake.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#240

Post by DidYaWipe »

seydor wrote: post #18

We 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.

Nailed it.

Apple's vaunted UI has always been crippled by some stupid decisions and practices. But exhuming the idiotic "transparent" UI fad that died 20 years ago must rank among the worst.

What Apple just rolled out is embarrassing and depressing. You know it's bad when a thread like this is full of well-written, incontrovertible takedowns and nearly devoid of apologist drivel.

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