iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency • Hacker News Board

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#241

Post by wpm » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 3:36 PM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #125

wpm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Totally agree. I have 10.2 on a G4 Cube on my workbench and it's just so wonderful to boot it up. Especially on the Studio Display CRT at 1600x1200@75. Just gorgeous, friendly, enticing, with just a few rough spots where they maybe overcooked some transparency or flair.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#242

Post by freehorse » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 3:48 PM UTC

hug wrote: post #239

freehorse wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Measurements actually support that [0]. I am pretty sure you could devise some scenarios where individuals with strabismus do not perform as well, but for most irl scenarios there is no difference. Compensatory mechanisms do the job just fine, and even those with normal eyesight do not rely solely on binocular convergence either. Our brains don't usually rely on a single signal to make sense of the world, and predict…

That article does not seem to support your point. They're not measuring depth perception, they're measuring whether people with strabismus have managed to learn perspective cues in 2D images, and, in fact, the article explicitly states agreement with the point you're arguing against. > Strabismus disrupts sensory fusion, the cortical process of combining the images from the two eyes into a single binocular image [3–6…

You quote:

> Strabismus disrupts sensory fusion, the cortical process of combining the images from the two eyes into a single binocular image [3–6]. The main perceptual consequences of lack of fused binocular images is diplopia (double vision) and a lack of binocular depth perception.

I am speaking specifically about whether people with strabismus have issues with depth perception or not. Obviously "strabismus disrupts sensory fusion" as you do not combine the input of the 2 eyes, and obviously this is a problem outside of depth perception. Moreover, most people with strabismus have bad eyesight more generally, as a common path to develop strabismus is having one eye much worse than the other. I am not saying strabismus is not an issue, I am saying that people with strabismus can still develop normal levels of depth perception in most irl situations by compensating with perceptual cues.

The article specifically tests whether people with strabismus had problems developing depth perception. If binocular depth perception was necessary for developing depth perception, they would have found that people with strabismus have impaired depth perception with 2d images. They didn't.

Again as I wrote to the other commenter before, I do not know about your situation, but I am curious about how you compare depth perception specifically with your friends and family. Having problems wrt visual perception does not mean that "lack of depth perception" is the issue. Using only one eye at the time is a huge issue by itself that makes vision harder, and a huge confound to control for in such comparisons.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#243

Post by freehorse » Wed, Oct 22, 2025, 3:52 PM UTC

rkomorn wrote: post #238

freehorse wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about your experience or situation, but a confound is that usually people with strabismus have bad eyesight in other aspects in general too. Usually, developing strabismus is the result of other issues with eyesight. The obvious confound is basically having only one good eye to use at a time, and thus also less neural pathways developed and utilised than those who use 2 eyes. This could make visual perce…

You might well be right. My eyes are definitely not great on top of the strabismus and lack of binocular vision. One of the main issues with tracking things is focus switching from one eye to another based on where it's moving. That said I do think the issues with pouring things is more of a depth perception issue. I basically have to switch focus from one eye to another to be satisfied I'm aligned where I want to be…

Pouring things sounds more like sth that could be a depth perception issue, true, though I never actually noticed that for myself. I believe I find it harder than usual passing a thread through a needle though because of depth perception issues.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#244

Post by mikepurvis » Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 5:43 AM UTC

BoredPositron wrote: post #172

jval43 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unironically Mac OS 7/8/9 felt the best IMHO. Even though there were some missteps (the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Strip was awful) and 9.x got a bit overloaded towards the end. Mac OS X (and macOS still) never felt as good.

Tiger was fine :D

A lot of people argue it peaked with snow leopard; that was consistent, performant, and feature complete, not yet overly influenced by mobile.