The second i saw Liquid Glass I started laughing out loud in the office - it made me think of The Abyss (1989) when the liquid tentacles come into the habitat...
Steve Jobs would have fired everyone
31–40 of 79 posts
Re: Steve Jobs would have fired everyone
#32I think it outlines a bigger problem we have in the tech industry: innovation for the sake of innovation. When you have an in-house design team, or development team, you will, inevitably, reach a point where your product is "ready": design was finalized, functionality is there, and aside from minor bug fixes, there is nothing else really to do. Then you ask yourself, what should you do with the in-house teams? The lo…
On point - Can you imagine it's 2025 and I still can't customize my iOS keyboard... but we now have Liquid Glass
Re: Steve Jobs would have fired everyone
#33I think it outlines a bigger problem we have in the tech industry: innovation for the sake of innovation. When you have an in-house design team, or development team, you will, inevitably, reach a point where your product is "ready": design was finalized, functionality is there, and aside from minor bug fixes, there is nothing else really to do. Then you ask yourself, what should you do with the in-house teams? The lo…
Its just fashions. UI's have been going through multiple phases of fashions where accessibility and basic function is often sacrificed to have a different look. Windows didn't need all the colour and style changes its gone through, neither has Android and neither did iOS. These aren't changes for a good reason they are just fashions.
The longer I watch the tech industry the more I realise its going through these fashion and hype cycles.
Re: Steve Jobs would have fired everyone
#34Not sure why they think this improves in any way what they got, as am not sure why they thought the previous redesign improved what they got in the first place. This one can be nothing but a huge blow to readability and accessibility.
Re: Steve Jobs would have fired everyone
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not enough. What if the background is solid white, or white with few details? Blurring just leads to white-on-white.
The primary color turns dark when the background is too bright, see "Meet Liquid Glass" or "What's new in SwiftUI" from WWDC25.
(a) Changing the primary colour past a certain threshold is not a solution, in my experience: there are backgrounds where the contrast is too low, no matter what you do.
(b) Even if it were, Apple's implementation doesn't work. https://furry.engineer/@cendyne/114660612541978921
I've been playing with such UIs for years, and they've never left my personal setup, because – while very pretty – they're not worth the hassle. However, Apple's implementation here is particularly bad. (I don't see why anyone takes these companies seriously any more.)
Re: Steve Jobs would have fired everyone
#36I've been on the fence about whether or not I should upgrade my 2017 iPad Pro (which recently fell out of support, but is still getting critical patches).
I'm thinking I'll just go with an Android tablet from here on. Any recommendations?
Re: Steve Jobs would have fired everyone
#37Stupid comment, why someone who is not Steve Jobs can say what SJ would do. Because anyone who is not him can say his own point of view and tag it as « Steve Jobs would have … »
I even think someone at Apple might have said « SJ would have loved it ».
SJ apparently said to Tim Cook : « Don't Do What I Would Do--Just Do What's Right ». In other words, do whatever you want. So only time will tell if he’s right and people complained a lot about the atrocity of the notch and it still made them billions (witch matters most at the end for a company I guess)
Re: Steve Jobs would have fired everyone
#38The "it would have been different under Steve Jobs" trope is coming up every so often when Apple introduces a radical new feature. Oftentimes I don't agree but in this case I absolutely do. A huge amount of engineering to get these shader effects right, but the outcome will be that the platforms will look more like a fruit salad and less coherent. Companies that invested in React Native, Flutter, Tauri, or alternativ…
As with everything related to Apple, most likely this change is related to something coming in a year or two that needs transparent widgets.
Now devs have time to adjust their applications for this system, which makes the next update easier.
Could be AR glasses or a consumer level VR headset, or something completely different.
Re: Steve Jobs would have fired everyone
#39Apple used to care about accessibility by default. Even their cherrypicked and ultrapolished Keynote demo had issues with readability on almost every single screen they’ve shown. Windows 7 designers were smart enough to blur the glassy background behind the rare cases the text was shown on glassy backgrounds, and generally tended to avoid it altogether. Apple instead went full “tech demo” without considering any practical aspects.
Sure, you’ll be able to tone down glass effects in the Accessibility menu, but is making the text legible by default is too much to ask for?
Re: Steve Jobs would have fired everyone
#40I think Apple is well aware that this Liquid Glass design is harder to read and it's intentional. They want to train/prepare users for upcoming lighter AR glasses UI experience, where everything will be superimposed over "reality" with some glass-style UI and will be harder to read.