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Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

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Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#361

Post by sroussey »

walkabout wrote: post #152
shermantanktop wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I'm just not someone with strong feelings about UX consistency or appearance, and tend to focus on functionality. But this...this feels like a symptom of something fundamental inside Apple going wrong.

The only time before this I've felt like Apple took a huge UX or appearance dive on an OS upgrade was iOS6 -> iOS7. People complain about almost every macOS upgrade, but the closest they've come to bothering me is that I hated the new tab styles in desktop Safari they introduced a while ago, but that was configurable so I just set it back to normal and that was that. I've disliked other things (the Touch Bar was neve…

The touchbar was great, but it should have been above the (half height) function keys. Had they done that, it would still be around.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#362

Post by disqard »

brailsafe wrote: post #261
nipperkinfeet wrote: post #194

I've always had an Android phone, but since my parents have Apple devices, I'm the one who has to help them with any technical issues. I tried to minimize the horrible glass design as much as possible because they couldn't see the text bleeding through the background. In my opinion, Liquid Glass is the worst design I have ever seen. It looks like a crappy GeoCities design from 1999. The team who designed it should be…

> The team who designed it should be fired and replaced with people who priorities a professional appearance and usability. Eh, I disagree about who should be fired. The designers and implementers are not (necessarily) the ones who decided it was their job. As far as I know, and probably depending on department, Apple internally works in annual cycles and sort of decides what the mission is up front. Any designer or…

I work at a FAANG (but not Apple) -- your characterization is accurate, and I think it's important to not "shoot the messenger" here. The team of UX+SWEs probably made valiant efforts to reify some "vision" from a higher-up who cannot be contradicted.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#363

Post by dwood_dev »

NaomiLehman wrote: post #255
scelerat wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose an upvote should be sufficient, but I am so unhappy with the new UI I am actually holding off switching to a new M4 MBP and sticking to my old M1 still on Sequoia 15.7.1. I also try to give these things time and I am usually ok with the changes eventually, but the new UI elements are so incredibly distracting it's actually affecting my ability to focus on what I'm actually doing.

I know it's shit. But for all of you, regardless of whether it's Mac OS or iOS, go to accessibility options and enable high contrast. It removes transparency/liquid glass.

Yes. I was iffy on contrast, but after a day I made the same change on all my devices. I decided i really like well defined borders on things.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#364

Post by sroussey »

mvdtnz wrote: post #350
nkrisc wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost nobody uses both an iPhone and Android for their day to day use. It doesn’t matter if your iOS and Android apps don’t look share the same design language, no one is going to see both of them. Integrate into each OS as much as you can.

It matters because engineering time can be better spent improving the app functionality itself.

And it’s not about the two platforms looking the same, sometimes you just want your own look.

And it’s easy to see in websites since no one uses the base system design for ui.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#366

Post by wltr »

andix wrote: post #259
bavent wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond that, it’s buggy and inconsistent. In dark mode, text boxes suddenly become light mode when they expand to add a second entry line. Buttons aren’t aligned within their containers properly. Some times buttons are in light mode when my phone is in dark mode, or if I open an app, it starts out in light mode and then suddenly switches to dark mode after a second or two. There is a noticeable lag when I back out of…

In my opinion Liquid Glass is still an alpha release. Nothing is really finished, it's conceptually unfinished, the changes are not well thought through, and it's really buggy. I think they failed with Apple Intelligence (also a mess, without being useful) and needed something big. So they planned this big design change. When they realized they failed miserably, it was too late to undo it.

Also, I think they will work through bugs, but the losers with the older devices aren’t going to get it.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#369

Post by ninetyninenine »

bitpush wrote: post #216
ninetyninenine wrote: post #35

I disagree I love the glass. The human eye was not designed to look at text or to look at text on top of solid color static backgrounds which don’t exist in nature. Our eye was designed to look at noise and filter moving noise. It is better to have a background that distinguishes itself based off of texture and movement rather than a sudden contrast of divergent flat colors. Yes flat design is logically more efficien…

> Your eye can handle flat design or Liquid Glass without any extra stress. It’s not really a big difference. Your eye can handle it and if you can’t you probably shouldn’t be driving and you should see an eye doctor. You could have used the time to type up that comment on the basics of visual design, and saved us all some sanity. For hundreds of years, humans have been studying light, color, and shadows. All the way…

>You could have used the time to type up that comment on the basics of visual design, and saved us all some sanity.

For hundreds of years humans have got it wrong. The basics of visual design are made up qualitative guidelines with no solid metrics to back it up. Just a bunch of arbitrary rules with legit sounding words and rules to dress it up as a science.

Take for example the primary colors. RYB. Completely ass wrong for hundreds of years. Our eyes achieve color ranges by mixing RGB. RYB is an arbitrary choice.

You've been drinking the koolaid.

> There are absolutely things that do not work well

Did I say there wasn't? What are you going off about here?

>So no, it isnt your eye. And you dont need to see an eye doctor. The person/team/company that designed it fell short of the mark.

So you're saying Apple really fucked their entire company over with liquid glass? Really? Let's be real. People can't use their phones anymore because the GUI is so terrible? It's so bad everyone is going back to windows and android?

Wake up man. It's a band wagon and you're getting on it; destination: Not reality.

Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

#370

Post by andix »

keyshapegeo99 wrote: post #345
andix wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy that they removed split view and slide over from the iPad. The new window management is still extremely fiddly. It takes now 7 steps to open another app next to the current one, and a few more steps to get them all full screen again. I used split view quite often, but I never use the new window management. I just store away my iPad more often now and use my PC instead.

The new windowing system is actually rather decent when used with a keyboard + all window tiling / maximising / app switching keyboard shortcuts memorised. Although the lack of Slide Over is still inexplicable and sucks. The issue is that most people don't use iPads with keyboards. The windowing system in this case is then an absolute nightmare compared to what came before, as touch-based users were clearly a distant…

It looks so easy on the video. If I try to drag a full screen window it only works in 20% of the cases. In the other cases either one of those things happen: menu bar opens, widgets opens, control center opens, lock screen opens, or I tap some controls in the app.

I don't think it's "an issue" that I use an iPad without mouse and keyboard most of the time. Last time I checked the iPad was designed as a touch device.

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