They could be priming users for a transparent interface, like a transparent iPhone. Or glasses.
Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
271–280 of 306 posts
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see no way around all that optics physics not sucking up computation and battery. Perhaps Apple will add liquid glass silicon to the mix to do that physics in hardware. Using glass to compute glass, LOL
my initial thought is that apple is preparing to launch physically deforming screens which will create bumps similar to this liquid.
Physically tactile would change my opinion about Liquid Glass.
And it would make screens more usable for the visually impaired.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
my initial thought is that apple is preparing to launch physically deforming screens which will create bumps similar to this liquid.
Then it would make no sense to simulate them.
Unless you want the same look on your non-tactile and tactile surfaces.
But I think the theory is too far-fetched.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I just can't believe this is coming from apple. Apple has prioritized style over usability for decades now. Remember the godawful hockey puck mouse and how stubbornly they clung to it? It shouldn't be a surprise when Apple picks a solution that looks cool but is worse to use; that's who they are.
I agree that their keyboards and mice are the worst. Even the cheapest no-name peripherals do not invoke the same kind of anxiety that Apple's stuff does. I don't have any issue with their UIs however. I think they are generally very good. Things are not perhaps as discoverable as they could be but the alternative would probably be worse as it would lead to more clutter.
> I agree that their keyboards and mice are the worst.
They are now. A couple of weeks ago I bought an Apple keyboard from the late 80s on EBay (M0116 model). After a quick solder job wiring half an S-Video cable to a ProMicro, it now talks USB, works perfectly and is one of the best feeling keyboards you could hope to use. (One of the later iterations with saner cursor key placement would be better still, though...)
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Liquid Glass looks awesome, people are just piling on.
Agreed. I initially thought "this is going to make everything look so messy" but after I watched this particular video, it's clear that they've put so much thought into every scenario imaginable, including giving developers a lot of advice on when to use it, and when not to use it. All that is very old-school Apple actually. Way way way more thought put beneath the surface than just meets the eye, when it comes to UI…
Yes, this. When I first heard about OS X all those years ago, I dismissed the ideas as eye-candy until I actually played with it. I quickly noticed how much thought had been put into what was conveyed by all the little animations and finesse touches.
The same thing applies here, I think - I watched the video expecting to see the exact opposite of what I want in a UI, but came away impressed by how much thought and consideration has been put into it.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#276Subtext: If you’re not under 30, with great eyesight, fuck you. If you’re neurodivergent, fuck you. If you just want to use your technology to do useful things and don’t need to be “delighted” by every button press and interaction, fuck you.
I don’t see how this won’t disable a lot of people. It’s cruel.
The section where they talk about how it adapts to different situations so that it still shows the top layer information did not inspire hope. I’m autistic and I have a hard time picking out signal from a noisy background easily. In the demo, it’s as if the icons are constantly dancing (delightfully, no doubt) but the information is lost.
For those that say that Apple always has accessibility settings where you can lessen effects like this, that’s not enough. We’re techies. We know about fiddling with settings. A lot of people won’t know. A lot of people that will be affected by this won’t consider themselves disabled, so they don’t even know the word “accessibility”. It’ll just subtly make every interaction with their technology more difficult and more stressful.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#277My first thought was: This seems like a very logical next step in order to prepare for future broader market adoption of AR applications and AR glasses. Being a sceptic about the latter at first I must say, I wish the technology would finally allow having a "normal" pair of glasses with high resolution, no cable attached, AR overlay screens.
Ditto. It seems Apple is preparing their users for the same UI that would be present on AR Glasses.
Rumor has it they ran an internal poll on whether their employees would purchase AI glasses which is their first step when developing a new product.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The A-squad design team left Apple 15 years ago. Does the A-squad include Steve Jobs, who seemed to have been a fan of skeuomorphism: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph#Virtual_examples Does the A-squad include Johnny Ive, who gave us butterfly keyboards and the Touch Bar (where (IIRC) the initial revision of which did not have a separate physical key for ESC)? Though Ive did get rid of skeuomorphism.
> 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 guess I agree.
Perhaps people can argue with me: I claim skeuomorphism jumped the shark with the pseudo reel-to-reel playback UI in ... was it the Podcasts app? Or maybe people think it was Notes with the torn edge along the top margin.
Regardless, skeuomorphism seems to have gone too far at some point. Perhaps became overly cute, overly precious, pretty-pretty.
Skeuomorphism was said to have been the thing in early GUI computers, as metaphor or real objects, that helped early users to those interfaces understand them. Dragging a file icon that looked like a dog-eared piece of paper to a trash can icon on the screen (to delete the file) — the most obvious example.
I suspect by the time the Web came around, users had to become more comfortable with being bombarded with all manner of wild UI paradigms and they learned to more or less cope. Skeuomorphism, like training wheels, were perhaps not really needed as much as they had been a decade earlier.
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#2797:44 "These liquid glass elements form a distinct functional layer for controls and navigation..." Hala fricking luah. I think. This sums up--without under bus throwing--what I have loathed about the last 10ish years of "flat design" hell. I wonder if there will be some issues with what happens when elements are not clearly differentiable from from "controls and navigation" and "everything else"? But just recognizing…
I mean the idea itself isn't terrible; maybe the glass just needs to have some colour to provide background. Maybe "live glass" instead that knows the context in which it is and applies the right amount of tint of the most appropriate colour based on what's underneath it.
> Maybe "live glass" instead that knows the context in which it is and applies the right amount of tint of the most appropriate colour based on what's underneath it.
That’s precisely what it does, only in grayscale
Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
#280We 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.
Apple is the company that makes laptops without power LEDs so you can't even tell if they're on.