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Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

developer.apple.com

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Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#91

Post by martin-adams »

mvkel wrote: post #36

I think I know what happened. The A-squad design team left Apple 15 years ago. The B-squad left 5 years ago. What remains is a sea of Gen Z designers who weren't yet alive when the foggy glass of Windows Vista seemed like a good idea. Meanwhile, the talent wars are raging, with every AI company offering 7-figure salaries to the best of Apple's prodigies. Apple is now the old guard. They're no longer cool, and as a pu…

Siri to book a flight? I just want it to reliably tell me what time a specific meeting is tomorrow, know that when I ask for where Mount Etna is, I don’t mean a city in the USA, and stop just ignoring me randomly when I talk to it.

Apple are much further behind with Siri than they realise.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#92

Post by aprilnya »

iTokio wrote: post #13

I’ve been using it for 2 days now, and the first thing I noticed is that readability took a hit. My background is a mid tone warm photo, not dark or light, icons got a white foreground that’s very hard to read against their translucent background. The second thing I noticed, is that when I’m scrolling a webpage, icons now switch color randomly (according to the bg dominant color) and that’s distracting. The last thin…

iPhone 16 here - my phone was laggy and warm for the first day of having the update. Everything is completely back to normal now, perfect performance even when interacting with liquid glass stuff, exactly as it was on 18.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#93

Post by chartered_stack »

mrtksn wrote: post #43

I think I'm convinced with liquid glass design, the issues highlighted by the users in the beta release IMHO are a result of rushing it out for WWDC. It appears that they didn't have enough time to polish the UI to comply with the principles described in this video. For example the designer in this video says no glass over glass but the control center and the lock screen are glass over glass. It looks cluttered and t…

The main issue I feel is that Apple's internal threshold for what quality of software is acceptable to be launched to the public has dropped a lot in the years since the last major redesign.

Yes, they iterate through versions and drop things that don't work with their design philosophy (parallax effects on iOS 7) but the first major version they released always seemed well thought out and solid from a design perspective.

I don't get that feeling from this redesign. I'm sure that this Liquid Glass redesign would look and work great next year or the year after that or even by the public launch of iOS 26. They'll fix the issues with readability, control center etc. But the fact that the first version of Liquid Glass doesn't look good is what's problematic.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#94

Post by Kwpolska »

int_19h wrote: post #50
iTokio wrote: post #13

I’ve been using it for 2 days now, and the first thing I noticed is that readability took a hit. My background is a mid tone warm photo, not dark or light, icons got a white foreground that’s very hard to read against their translucent background. The second thing I noticed, is that when I’m scrolling a webpage, icons now switch color randomly (according to the bg dominant color) and that’s distracting. The last thin…

There's a reason why Win7 dialed transparency down from Vista.

[citation needed]

Vista had a black taskbar with some transparency, 7 made it glass.

If you maximised a window on Vista, the maximised window's border became dark (black/with an accent colour tint) and opaque, the taskbar and sidebar went opaque as well. 7 got rid of that.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#95

Post by ErneX »

Kwpolska wrote: post #89
mrtksn wrote: post #43

I think I'm convinced with liquid glass design, the issues highlighted by the users in the beta release IMHO are a result of rushing it out for WWDC. It appears that they didn't have enough time to polish the UI to comply with the principles described in this video. For example the designer in this video says no glass over glass but the control center and the lock screen are glass over glass. It looks cluttered and t…

Everyone at Apple knows WWDC is in June, and WWDC is the event where Apple show off the new stuff and deliver a public beta. Some of the terrible designs were shown in the pre-recorded demos, and if anyone had used the new beta for more than five minutes, they would have ended up in the broken control center.

It’s a beta though, plenty of time until this comes out to polish.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#96

Post by ErneX »

jes5199 wrote: post #16

so this did all this transparency stuff without it being the run up to the launch of a new augmented-reality device? I don't understand what they are thinking.

They want a common design language across all their current devices and the devices we don’t know about yet.

https://omc345.substack.com/p/from-skeuomorphic-to-liquid-gl...

Edit: added a link.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#97

Post by madeofpalk »

chartered_stack wrote: post #93
mrtksn wrote: post #43

I think I'm convinced with liquid glass design, the issues highlighted by the users in the beta release IMHO are a result of rushing it out for WWDC. It appears that they didn't have enough time to polish the UI to comply with the principles described in this video. For example the designer in this video says no glass over glass but the control center and the lock screen are glass over glass. It looks cluttered and t…

The main issue I feel is that Apple's internal threshold for what quality of software is acceptable to be launched to the public has dropped a lot in the years since the last major redesign. Yes, they iterate through versions and drop things that don't work with their design philosophy (parallax effects on iOS 7) but the first major version they released always seemed well thought out and solid from a design perspect…

iOS 7's first beta design was worse than this. They walked back some pretty distinctive parts of the design - mainly the ultra thin fonts - during the betas and following releases.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#98

Post by Kwpolska »

russellbeattie wrote: post #49

The most important thing about this new design is that it differentiates itself from Android. Not super important in the U.S. where iPhone lock-in is pretty endemic, but for the markets where there is competition, this bit of eye candy will make a big difference. Usability is secondary. The directive from on high was probably about creating a more visually distinctive UI which takes advantage of Apple hardware, thus…

Non-Apple flagships have powerful GPUs too. They could clone Liquid Glass easily, and I would expect some chinesium manufacturers to do so next year.

If it would work as well as it does in the beta, you're right it would stand out, but in the negative sense.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#99

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

iTokio wrote: post #13

I’ve been using it for 2 days now, and the first thing I noticed is that readability took a hit. My background is a mid tone warm photo, not dark or light, icons got a white foreground that’s very hard to read against their translucent background. The second thing I noticed, is that when I’m scrolling a webpage, icons now switch color randomly (according to the bg dominant color) and that’s distracting. The last thin…

> "The last thing, is that my phone is getting warmer and scrolling has become less fluid, choppy. And that’s on the 16 Pro Max."

to understand the motivations, look at the outcomes.

Re: Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]

#100

Post by omnee »

russellbeattie wrote: post #49

The most important thing about this new design is that it differentiates itself from Android. Not super important in the U.S. where iPhone lock-in is pretty endemic, but for the markets where there is competition, this bit of eye candy will make a big difference. Usability is secondary. The directive from on high was probably about creating a more visually distinctive UI which takes advantage of Apple hardware, thus…

I agree with your reasoning, but I would add that customers also want to be easily distinguished from using an Android or a different device. Apple has long recognised the importance of this sign value and is acting accordingly.
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