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iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

macrumors.com

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Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#61

Post by throwaway48476 »

gambiting wrote: post #57
hombre_fatal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how I remember it. Back in the day the first thing you did was disable the Aero stuff to claw back some performance on Vista. That said, who knows how efficient the implementation is compared to other changes in iOS 26. I turned liquid glass off with "reduced transparency" because even 1% extra battery usage for it would be too much even though I kinda appreciated the new look.

>>That's not how I remember it. Back in the day the first thing you did was disable the Aero stuff to claw back some performance on Vista. I remember it being kinda like placebo - you did, you marvelled at how much faster it's working, but in reality nothing changed. I really liked the look, and it did run smooth unless you had something below the minimum spec(which a lot of people did at the time).

Vista problems were largely nvidia driver crashes and low spec machines. Otherwise vista was fine.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#62

Post by gessha »

joshuat wrote: post #48
mycodendral wrote: post #20

I switched from Android to iOS exclusively because of Liquid Glass. It's amazing. I'll just sit there and drag the glass back and forth over different things on my screen and stare in awe.

You forget that HN is incapable of detecting even the most obvious sarcasm

At this point the comment is more for internal vs external pleasure.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#63

Post by BriggyDwiggs42 »

Upgrading randomly broke my ultrawide second monitor. Now macos can’t figure out what resolutions it supports and the only two options look awful and stretched. Can’t figure out the refresh rate either and defaults to less than half the correct value.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#65

Post by fujigawa »

mikepurvis wrote: post #23
GenerocUsername wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it said enough, but liquid glass slowed my M3 noticably. Odd I got the update 2 weeks before M5 launch. Software as a means to obsolete hardware. Trillion dollar company

Wasn't Windows 7 doing this same stuff back in like 2009?

If we follow the same pattern, iOS 27 and corresponding releases will be completely flat and look like Mac OS System 7. Chicago font wants to live another day.

Windows 8 got some serious hate back in the day, it had some sound ideas that were implemented poorly, but no one could deny it was lightweight. It had the smallest memory footprint of all the modern Windowses IIRC.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#66

Post by dlivingston »

Gigachad wrote: post #54
dabinat wrote: post #28

It’s technically impressive that they’re simulating the way light travels through glass. But a lot of the time it’s so subtle that I wonder if they could have just used simple semi-opacity and it would have had 85% of the same effect at a fraction of the CPU cycles.

I'm not sure how but it doesn't seem to use that much processing power. My 5 year old apple watch seems to render the glass UI fairly well and I assume this thing has the bare minimum processing power.

It's a GPU shader(s), so you'd have to measure its resource usage indirectly (device heating up; shorter battery life).

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#67

Post by kridsdale3 »

spankalee wrote: post #45

How did they not do enough user testing to know users wanted this before it even got to beta? Are they so paranoid about secrecy that they can't do event the most basic of UX design processes?

Apple does zero user testing and AB testing, and has always worked that way.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#68

Post by wpm »

aylmao wrote: post #50

IMO a big problem with Liquid Glass is that you're trying to recreate an effect that's highly reliant on the sense of depth we get from binocular vision in a 2D screen. When looking at glass in real life, your left eye and your right eye see slightly different refraction patterns since they're looking at the surface from slightly different angles. It might be minimal, but light refraction patterns can change a lot wh…

The other problem is that the effect is so subtle everywhere until it gets in your way. Even on a system with actual binocular screens, the Liquid Glass effect is barely noticeable and has been since visionOS 1.0.

It's like a horrible compromise between the indulgences of early 10.2-era Aqua and the worst flat boring low contrast bullshit "mimimmumunlism" crap from iOS 7-18 and macOS from Big Sur onwards.

Re: iOS 26.1 lets users control Liquid Glass transparency

#70

Post by Austin_Conlon »

kridsdale3 wrote: post #67
spankalee wrote: post #45

How did they not do enough user testing to know users wanted this before it even got to beta? Are they so paranoid about secrecy that they can't do event the most basic of UX design processes?

Apple does zero user testing and AB testing, and has always worked that way.

Even in services?
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