It completely destroyed my iPad's (2020) performance which was to be expected, but I also catch myself using it and constantly thinking "Oh my god, this looks so ugly" about different UI elements. E.g. the numpad for entering your PIN looks so terrible when pressing buttons (at least on top of my wallpaper). It lights up in a weird way and is just unpleasant to look at.
Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
401–410 of 538 posts
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#402This update is one of the rare cases where I really dislike the new version. I’m usually happy with Apple updates, even ones the commentators dislike. This time I’m sorta agreeing with them: I don’t like the new iOS. Same with the Mac and iPad: other than being glitchy, I just don’t like the changes. It feels like my screen real estate isn’t as efficiently used, UI elements feel jumbled and the transparency makes thi…
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.
IMO at Apple the feedback loops seem to have gotten longer. They took a lot of time to discontinue the butterfly keyboards, bring magsafe back, etc. So it's likely that they'll double down on this OS/ UX than correct their path soon. I am not saying that they don't care. But I haven't seen statements like 'we made a mistake', or even 'you are holding it wrong', etc. This- not caring to be answerable to the end user, along with other perceptions in this thread (like siloed teams, bugs in their own apps) makes me think that Apple has become a somewhat dysfunctional enterprise. If they are going down that path, maybe they should hire SAFe Agile consultants. :-)
Disclaimer: Don't follow Apple or HN a lot. And these opinions are maybe more of my perceptions than facts. Open to corrections.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#403I haven't upgraded to iOS 26 because of Liquid Glass, mostly because I've read that it causes performance degradation on older devices (I use an iPhone 13 Mini because I have zero interest in using a larger phone). So, it looks like I'll be using iOS 18 for the foreseeable future.
Well I guess I'm not updating my iPhone 11 then!
Same here, iOS 18 already felt a bit sluggish compared to 17, but sadly Apple stopped signing 17 some days before I discovered you can downgrade.
26 is definitely not for older devices. Heck, 26 is probably not for any device, this article makes UX look like crap.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#404Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#4052025 feels like a cardinal year for top-down decisions we all just have to endure for the present. The best we can do is bitch loudly and often, and hope the people at the top still feel threatened by consumers/constituents. This Liquid Glass decision is particularly challenging for my tiny startup. We have multiple platforms including iOS and Android. I was hoping to share much of our design language across iOS and…
You were wrong to even attempt to share design language across platforms. You should make your applications good native citizens if you have any respect for your users, because yours isn’t the only software they use.
The trend over the past decade has been towards multiplatform frameworks, mostly with React Native, but more recently Flutter, KMP, and even Swift multiplatform.
And here's the thing: The Apple users who actually care about this are in the minority. You just get an outsized sampling of them on HN because they tend to be techies as well.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#406This update is one of the rare cases where I really dislike the new version. I’m usually happy with Apple updates, even ones the commentators dislike. This time I’m sorta agreeing with them: I don’t like the new iOS. Same with the Mac and iPad: other than being glitchy, I just don’t like the changes. It feels like my screen real estate isn’t as efficiently used, UI elements feel jumbled and the transparency makes thi…
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.
Apart from the usual suspect of "modern" UI designers needlessly changing stuff to justify their job, it is my personal opinion that the SwiftUI framework is one of the root causes of Apple's piss-poor software UX and performance. For anything apart from very simple bog-standard views, that framework becomes bewildering with a high cognitive burden and simply does not scale well when any kind of customization is needed.
Also compiler performance - People get fed up of "The compiler could not type check the expression in reasonable time" and just say fsck-it and ship broken stuff.
It is one of the reasons that now >40% of apps on iOS/MacOS now use other frameworks - and that percentage is steadily climbing. (I think that number has already crossed 50% recently).
Apple needs to re-invent their UI framework from scratch. Plain old-school MVC worked better.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#407This article doesn't even mention the worst part of the update. Frame rate has dropped remarkably. iOS used to have flawless smooth animations, with 0 dropped frames, setting the industry standard. Now every interaction with the phone yanks at least once, it feels like some cheap entry level Android phone from 2008. I don't even mind the translucency, i just want my FPS back.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#408This article doesn't even mention the worst part of the update. Frame rate has dropped remarkably. iOS used to have flawless smooth animations, with 0 dropped frames, setting the industry standard. Now every interaction with the phone yanks at least once, it feels like some cheap entry level Android phone from 2008. I don't even mind the translucency, i just want my FPS back.
A few years ago, I’d install all iOS major updates practically as soon as they came out.
Nowadays I feel that the quality of iOS has slipped, so will wait for 26.1 first.
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#4092025 feels like a cardinal year for top-down decisions we all just have to endure for the present. The best we can do is bitch loudly and often, and hope the people at the top still feel threatened by consumers/constituents. This Liquid Glass decision is particularly challenging for my tiny startup. We have multiple platforms including iOS and Android. I was hoping to share much of our design language across iOS and…
You were wrong to even attempt to share design language across platforms. You should make your applications good native citizens if you have any respect for your users, because yours isn’t the only software they use.
Our large commercial apps were certified to pass the WCAG accessibility requirements, which we need to comply with for legal reasons. If we did’t enable the compatibility flag and opt out of the glass altogether, this would have meant massive breakages and regressions, which would require the designer and developer time to fix, and the financial burden of having to go through the certification process again. And all because of Apple’s whims and zero benefits for our customers or our developers. Why would we blindly choose to follow Apple’s missteps instead of having our own design system and standards?
Re: Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Legend, thank you. Increase contrast + reduce transparency did it for me.
Yup! it's called differently depending if you're on iOS or Mac OS. just try enabling everything and see what works for you :)