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Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

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Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#421

Post by theodric »

dimal wrote: post #148

Oh no. It looks like every button and menu is now a translucent layer, so that any noise from the background shows through and muddles the text. This seems like an accessibility nightmare. Translucent layers generally make software unusable for me. In the video, I saw several instances that would be really really bad for me, where I’d be straining to understand the text. Looks really cool and futuristic though. Just…

I'm sure they will continue to allow disabling transparency in accessibility settings, given that the current OS version has transparency throughout which can already be so disabled.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#422

Post by flohofwoe »

nlarew wrote: post #268
andrepd wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, once again, designing interfaces based on "vibes" instead of science or principles or used feedback, optimising for looking good on screenshots and marketing materials and not for actual usability or user friendly was. With "vibes" here standing for whatever some SV asshole thinks it's cool and modern. Alegria, flat design, pastel colors, or unholy amounts of whitespace. It's been the story of the last 15 year…

Do you really think that Apple, of all companies, did a cross-platform UI refresh based entirely on vibes without considering user taste, usability, accessibility, etc? You've already judged the system as only good for "looking good on screenshots and marketing materials" when you haven't even seen anything other than the announcement.

> Do you really think that Apple, of all companies, did a cross-platform UI refresh based entirely on vibes without considering user taste, usability, accessibility, etc?

Yes, and where have you been for the last two decades? :) The last time Apple did actual UX research must have been in the late 1990s.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#423

Post by cryptonector »

austinl wrote: post #265
dimal wrote: post #148

Oh no. It looks like every button and menu is now a translucent layer, so that any noise from the background shows through and muddles the text. This seems like an accessibility nightmare. Translucent layers generally make software unusable for me. In the video, I saw several instances that would be really really bad for me, where I’d be straining to understand the text. Looks really cool and futuristic though. Just…

This is also likely a performance nightmare. Funny that they mention that "new hardware has enabled us to..." which means that this will perform poorly on old devices. At a previous company, we were forbidden from using translucency (with a few exceptions) because of the performance cost of blending. There are debugging tools we'd use fairly often to confirm that all layers were opaque.

> Funny that they mention that "new hardware has enabled us to..." which means that this will perform poorly on old devices.

They're going to backport this? I seriously doubt it.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#424

Post by al_borland »

copperx wrote: post #89
chakintosh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right before the unveiling, Craig specifically said visionOS was the driver for these changes. So the new UI is literally because Apple is still betting on visionOS.

good god. this never ends well.

It could be worse, at least they didn’t rename the company over their VR headset.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#425

Post by bigyabai »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #235

The style here suggests a split between tools and content, which is something I'd love love love to see emerge. Having one and only one app be both viewer and toolkit feels like a convenience trap, one that NeXT tried to fight (as did OLE) and that feels unlikely to ever be turned back from, but I want to dream. This UI doesn't materially move us towards a more aggregative/accreted system of systems model, but it vis…

> Having one and only one app be both viewer and toolkit feels like a convenience trap

It's a decade too late for that. Websites and mobile applications are the de-facto metaphor for using computers, trying to fight that trend ostracizes your most promising markets. Hell, it even ostracizes a lot of Mac users that like the new approach.

Maybe it's time to face the music - people like convenience. MacOS does not have potent enough windowing controls to make most users comfortable throwing around several windows to use one app. iOS and iPadOS both neglect their multitasking abilities to the point that people practically forget you can use more than one app at once.

I don't hate the idea of trying to enforce a more informative windowing model, but I also don't think most people can intuit how to use it. If Stage Manager is any indication, most people just want a fullscreen view of a single-page app.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#426

Post by al_borland »

kej wrote: post #54

This feels suspiciously like the goals of Microsoft's "Metro" design from the Windows 8 era. It will be interesting to see if Apple can do a better job of keeping the same design without damaging the desktop experience than Microsoft did.

It doesn’t look like Apple changed how the desktop fundamentally works. Microsoft put a touch-first UI on the server, and replaced the start button with a hot corner. Using that with RDP was a horrible experience.

If anything, we saw the iPad make serious roads towards functioning like macOS.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#427

Post by lurk2 »

sanswork wrote: post #377
slt2021 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

these performance hungry "improvements" are forcefully introduced to legitimately slow down older devices and force the device refresh across the user base. I have been using 8 year old iPhone just fine, but features like these over time will make the experience slower and slower and slower, until I am forced to refresh my iphone

In the late 90s/early 2000s desktop computing was moving at such a pace that an 8 year old PC was near unusable. Overtime progress slowed and its not unusual to have a decade old desktop now. The problem is thinking that mobile has slowed that much too. Mobile is still progressing quite rapidly so yeah an almost decade old device is going to feel slow. You have what an iPhone 6? 1GB of RAM vs 8GB for modern devices,…

> Why should we hold back software to support extreme outliers like you?

What are apps and mobile sites doing differently today besides loading up unnecessary animations and user tracking? How has user experience improved for those operating on devices fast enough to make up for developer laziness?

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#428

Post by SlowTao »

leakycap wrote: post #337
pzo wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I was kind of slowly preparing myself that I might be switching to android and it seems this might be the final straw. Will wait until Sept to see how new iphone and google pixels will look like but most likely I will do the transition (even though been developing for iOS for more than 10 years.

I've tried to escape the walled garden to Android before, and I've given up. No matter which company's phone or what version of Android, it didn't work well as a phone, alarm, and reliable device that I use for stuff like my home security. Things broke on Android like clockwork, and the clock didn't work. The latest Google pixel devices are specifically blocked from using Wyze devices right now due to a typo in the p…

Thats interesting. The clock stuff on android has always been the most reliable thing for me. But milage may vary by user.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to jump out of the Apple ecosystem nowadays. I left in 2012 and it was difficult even then.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#429

Post by dmix »

wmeredith wrote: post #118
dmix wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured out why I don't like the icons https://www.lux.camera/content/images/size/w2400/2025/05/Mai... zoomed out they look blurry and unrefined, but when viewed zoomed in and large (like how a designer probably created them) they look kinda nice. Too bad they will all be small on iphone.

I find the assumption that these icons were designed huge and never tested at smaller sizes kind of baffling. There may be a difference in taste, but to think that Apple wouldn't look at their icons at different sizes is really, uh, something.

Fair enough. I should wait to test it on iphone. Although sometimes concept ideas get mandated from above and the designers are left to figure it out the best they can.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#430

Post by RollingRo11 »

austinl wrote: post #265
dimal wrote: post #148

Oh no. It looks like every button and menu is now a translucent layer, so that any noise from the background shows through and muddles the text. This seems like an accessibility nightmare. Translucent layers generally make software unusable for me. In the video, I saw several instances that would be really really bad for me, where I’d be straining to understand the text. Looks really cool and futuristic though. Just…

This is also likely a performance nightmare. Funny that they mention that "new hardware has enabled us to..." which means that this will perform poorly on old devices. At a previous company, we were forbidden from using translucency (with a few exceptions) because of the performance cost of blending. There are debugging tools we'd use fairly often to confirm that all layers were opaque.

Currently replying from my iPhone 16 pro (granted, not old by any means) on the iOS 26 dev beta. MOST things actually feel smoother/snappier than iOS 18. Safari is a joy to use from a performance perspective.

It’s in beta so ofc I’m getting a ton of frame hitches, overheating, etc. but my summarized initial thoughts are “it’ll take some getting used to, but it feels pretty fast”

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