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Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

developer.apple.com

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Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#281

Post by QuantumGood »

QuantumGood wrote: post #226
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…

Historically, design as a priority worsened UI for average and new users, and Apple has prioritized a feeling of elegance over ease of use. Liquid glass puts UI second (feature cues) in favor of UX (interesting experience), harkening back to skeuomorphism but misprioritizing UI. I appreciated in Jobs's time how skeuomorphism was used to reveal more features, and give new users simple cues. Now there is this idea that…

It's also ironic that so much effort has been spent on the "liquid" feel of the phone ... which is mostly lost when it's in a case.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#282

Post by callc »

wapeoifjaweofji wrote: post #280
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.

Apple is the company that makes laptops without power LEDs so you can't even tell if they're on.

“Think different”

Joking aside, “design” clearly supplanting ease of use

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#284

Post by egypturnash »

rahen wrote: post #205
seydor wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not actually glass, instead the apple engineers and designers are basically simulating effect of surface tension of drops of liquid. Unfortunately the refraction at the edges of a droplet is not informative about whether the droplet is inward or outward facing (i.e. if it it toggled on or off). Hence why they use additional highlights and shadow to indicate the 3D structure. The liquid effect is a total gimmick…

I know most people couldn’t care less about this, but those gimmicky animations probably consume more computing power than the entire Apollo project, which strikes me as unnecessary and wasteful. Given the choice, I’d much rather have a clean, efficient interface. I tend to like Material Design in comparison. It’s clean, efficient, and usable. I just hope Google won’t try to "improve" it with annoying gimmicks and en…

I'm pretty sure my Amiga 1000 had more computing power than the entire Apollo project. I mostly used it for games.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#285

Post by deepsun »

torben-friis wrote: post #119
mrtksn wrote: post #43

I think I'm convinced with liquid glass design, the issues highlighted by the users in the beta release IMHO are a result of rushing it out for WWDC. It appears that they didn't have enough time to polish the UI to comply with the principles described in this video. For example the designer in this video says no glass over glass but the control center and the lock screen are glass over glass. It looks cluttered and t…

This is not surprising at all. I was a student taking an android dev course when the first iteration of material design came out. My classmates and I had the running joke of “this is an amazing design guide, someone should send it to google”. You’d see even the most specific principles being broken, the left menu in gmail for example interacted with the header exactly the opposite way the guide said it should.

Pros know all the rules, masters know when to break them.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#286

Post by adastra22 »

derefr wrote: post #45
adastra22 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you put a square cover on a round hole? The hole came first. They dig a hole, then they have a need to put a cover on it. Making a circular cover to fit over a circular hole is if anything cheaper and easier than making a square cover over an inscribed circular hole, at least when working with metal. The hole drove the design of the cover, not the other way around.

In this hypothetical, presuming you're putting the manhole (subsurface conduit/plumbing maintenance access point) in after you've already paved the road: it's because the tool you'd use to cut a hole into pavement (i.e. a concrete saw) cuts straight lines — and it's easier to make a square/rectangle out of straight lines than a circle. And sure enough, whenever you see workers hacking up the road, they generally are…

A manhole is a hole for men to go in, not a near-surface utility access. Those square cut quick access holes often do have square metal covers.

The manhole opens up into a vertical tube, often with a ladder built into the wall, big enough around for a man to descend into a subsurface structure. Hence, manhole.

Manhole covers are always round because the tube they connect to is round, and that tube is round for structural reasons.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#287

Post by ivape »

ashwinsundar wrote: post #204
ivape wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They ran tons of a/b testing on user groups. I can tell you it feels fresh to me which is very necessary with aesthetics (fashion). Their main operating principle I believe is that they have acclimatized users to the position and flow of the UI for over a decade. At that point, you can embellish the UI. If I skinned HN to anything you would still be totally intimate with where things are so long as I didn’t put yello…

A/B testing doesn’t work if the actual answer is C I don’t want my computer (which I use for work) to be a fashion statement. I stare at the UI all day, every day. My opinion matters just as much as any designer’s.

It doesn’t. If yours or my opinion mattered, we’d be staring at garbage all day.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#288

Post by rob_c »

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’.

Now give the laptop back to your parents and go touch grass.

This has no place in the desktop.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#289

Post by rob_c »

kylebenzle wrote: post #188
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.

[flagged]

I've never wanted Ashai to be more of a success. Their hardware is nice, but the desktop and window management sucks the big one.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#290

Post by thorio »

hershey890 wrote: post #277
thorio wrote: post #143

My 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.

Interesting point.

So if that really might be the way forward in mind when developing liquid glass, I think they did a pretty good job. Curious to see how this works in more complex UIs - I'd expect, that it has to play along with a very reduced number of visible UI components in sight.

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