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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

#431

Post by setopt »

porcoda wrote: post #31

This 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…

Same here. I was about to order a new MacBook recently, but there’s been a lot of small issues annoying me over the past few years and Liquid Glass was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me.

Back to Linux for me. Ended up ordering a Thinkpad X1 Carbon instead, and am planning to throw Fedora on it.

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

#432

Post by pcdoodle »

amluto wrote: post #358
bavent wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m referring entirely to built-in Apple apps - Mail, Messages, etc. The in-house apps can’t even get it right, which to me means: - devs are so siloed, nobody knows what’s going on - product is not communicating anything outside of individual fiefdoms - there is zero QA testing - no designers are actually signing off on the final results …which all seem pretty typical for a large bureaucracy, I guess I just had high…

Apple’s Mail app has been intensely buggy for years, and the bugs rarely get fixed. (Search is comically bad.)

Search is so so bad. I just want to find an email with a word in it. All my Apple Devices fail at this.

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

#433

Post by tempodox »

> and Usability Suffers in iOS 26

Everybody with at least one eye can see that but good luck getting Apple to admit it. The divide here between the corporate bullshit and reality has reached kafkaesque dimensions. There should be a prize for anti-achievements like this.

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

#434

Post by KronisLV »

These are otherwise smart people who also make more money than I ever will, shipping stuff that is bad even when it comes to basic usability, like the transparency in particular. I don't get it, why did something like that pass through whatever approval processes are in place? If nothing else, they should have at least ensured that there is enough opacity and contrast with whatever's the background at any given time, otherwise it's just... way, way worse than the previous design?

I am one of the people who didn't mind the Windows Vista/8.1/10/11 redesigns and to me most versions of macOS and also various Linux DEs all typically look more or less fine (maybe tiny window controls in some versions of Linux Mint are a pet peeve of mine). But this is just so much worse. That's like a Windows 8 release level fuckup.

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

#435

Post by pcdoodle »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #214
archagon wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks pretty (sometimes) but I have not found a single usability improvement stemming from the new paradigm.

One thing I’ve noticed is that search fields are now generally at the bottom of the screen which makes them a lot easier to activate. (No more flicking the screen down to search). I disliked the update for a week or so at first, but I have to say I find the liquid animations fun now.

fun?

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

#436

Post by pcdoodle »

Gigachad wrote: post #283
bicx wrote: post #79

2025 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…

I’d rather an app look consistent with iOS than look consistent with an android version I don’t use.

Subzero

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

#438

Post by sfoley »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #16

All of this is true. The first thing I did was turn down transparency. But there's no way to tone down the new animations, which make the UI feel twitchy and distracting. And there are some stupidly obvious bugs - like the WEATHER header in the weather app is black on a dark background. And the way the buttons at the bottom of the page are tight up against the content instead of being centred in the space under it. I…

> But there's no way to tone down the new animations

Does Reduce Motion (under Accessibility) not work? I haven't updated to 26 yet, and probably won't for a while.

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

#440

Post by joshstrange »

The design is not my cup of tea but whatever, my issues are the bugs.

Never in my life using iOS have I seen the animation for a click but have the click not “register”/happen. That’s something I’ve experienced on multiple flavors of Android OS.

Just today I long-pressed on an image in Safari, it brought up the context menu, and I clicked “Save to Images” (or whatever it’s called). There was a glass outline around that option and it looked “pressed” but nothing happened. I clicked again and it worked. I’ve never had such buggy behavior for simple interactions.

And lest anyone blame my hardware, it’s a 17 Pro Max.

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