This looks like Windows 11's promotional video but we know Apple's UI is going to look exactly like it, for real and not just for show.
Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
571–580 of 1001 posts
Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
#572Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unlikely. Frosted glass blur was introduced almost twelve years ago in iOS 7, and was supported all the way down to the iPhone 4. Many apps like control center have used a full screen blur without any performance issues for a long time. Apple at the time created their own 'approximate gaussian blur' algorithm specifically to enable this, and it ran crazy fast on devices where a simple gaussian blur would barely achie…
This isn't just a gaussian blur though, there's raytracing and refractions happening. The OS is becoming a low-key high-fidelity video game.
I don't usually say things are bloated but raytracing buttons is something I'd expect to be a parody...
And all of this just to make the whole UI white and generic.
I just want everything to look like Windows XP. I don't get it.
Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
#573I installed it. I really wanted to love it but it’s bad. It’s very busy and the proportions in the Settings app are awful. It’s on the “cozy” side of things (as opposed to “compact”). This means you see less options at one time on the screen and have to scroll more around the OS to get where you need to. As for accessibility… It’s hell. Have a look: https://imgur.com/a/6ZTCStC
This looks like a screenshot from one of the jailbreak themes from like 15 years ago, and not one of the good ones
Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
#574Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unlikely. Frosted glass blur was introduced almost twelve years ago in iOS 7, and was supported all the way down to the iPhone 4. Many apps like control center have used a full screen blur without any performance issues for a long time. Apple at the time created their own 'approximate gaussian blur' algorithm specifically to enable this, and it ran crazy fast on devices where a simple gaussian blur would barely achie…
> Unlikely. Frosted glass blur was introduced almost twelve years ago in iOS 7, and was supported all the way down to the iPhone 4. Many apps like control center have used a full screen blur without any performance issues for a long time. "Without any performance issues"? Entirely false - reviews at the time noted iOS 7 dramatically reduced battery life - all across the board for Apple devices, even for the then late…
Memory unlocked: the awful slog that was an iPhone 4S with iOS >= 7.
Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
#575Earlier 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,…
No one is holding back software. You're not running local LLM or anything useful, you're adding performance cost for merely displaying icons on screen.
Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's so refreshing to get a tech event in 2025 where design is a huge focus and not just duck taping another LLM to everything. I don't want to make this an Apple vs. Google comment (Mac user since 2007, iPhone user since 2009), but Google spend a good chunk of time on their Material Design 3 Expressive redesign at the Android event a few weeks ago.
MD3 feels pretty tame in comparison, though. Mostly still the same flat look but with more roundness and louder colors. I think it’s going to end up dated looking much, much more quickly than MD1/MD2 did.
to be fair, i'd take tame over horrendous and unparseable screen any day.
Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> this will perform poorly on old devices I don't know how long you've been following Apple but with previous "high cost on old hardware" features they just disabled them for old hardware. Apple loves their battery life numbers, they won't purposefully ship a UI feature that meaningfully reduces them. Now bugs that drop framerates and cause hangs, they love shipping those.
> Apple loves their battery life numbers
For devices currently being sold, primarily.
Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
#578Oh 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…
Seems like they could not choose between flat and not flat.
Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
#579I wonder how much of this transparent/glass design language is setting Apple up for AR interfaces where UI is overlaid on what you're looking at. Since you literally cannot have fully opaque elements with AR glasses this would be a smart way to ensure overall design is unified across platforms.
> Since you literally cannot have fully opaque elements with AR glasses
Why not?
Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms
#580Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unlikely. Frosted glass blur was introduced almost twelve years ago in iOS 7, and was supported all the way down to the iPhone 4. Many apps like control center have used a full screen blur without any performance issues for a long time. Apple at the time created their own 'approximate gaussian blur' algorithm specifically to enable this, and it ran crazy fast on devices where a simple gaussian blur would barely achie…
> Unlikely. Frosted glass blur was introduced almost twelve years ago in iOS 7, and was supported all the way down to the iPhone 4. Many apps like control center have used a full screen blur without any performance issues for a long time. "Without any performance issues"? Entirely false - reviews at the time noted iOS 7 dramatically reduced battery life - all across the board for Apple devices, even for the then late…
Indeed, I remember the switch to iOS 7, for me battery life seemed to get slightly worse but there were conflicting opinions at the time. It's fresh in my memory as it was around the same time I binged on all five seasons of Breaking Bad :)
I's also true that iOS 7 made the 4/4S seem much slower, but the frosted glass effect still ran at 60FPS - that was my point. It was really impressive at the time. Though unless you spent hours sliding the control center up and down, it's hard to blame the blur effect for the reduced battery life, as it rarely appeared inside apps. Most likely the result of increased OS bloat and proliferation of background services.