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Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

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Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#961

Post by jitl »

msephton wrote: post #952
jitl wrote: post #895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browser/webview have had iOS 7+ style blur for a while now, but won’t have an answer to emulating Liquid Glass shaders for a while. EDIT: although perhaps this will allow emulation in webview if performance isn’t abysmal https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/Reference/E...

It's already been imitated in CSS https://twitter.com/bbssppllvv/status/1932325303273271727

I think the hard part is the droplet animation when expanding/contracting controls, dragging, etc.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#962

Post by __m »

stevenhubertron wrote: post #436

I don't post here often, but I hope someone at Apple is reading this as this is one of the worst designs I have seen from this company. Even in their own presentation they shows text hard to read, text on top of text. It's an accessibility and usability nightmare. I really don't want to give up iMessage but if what ships looks as bad as this I may jump ship.

They are probably used to the outrage. Apple removed the floppy disc drive, optical drive, headphone jack. Most people don't care. I don't think that buttons people pressed a thousand times before that are now slightly less readable are a big issue.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#963

Post by agos »

sirwhinesalot wrote: post #826
fastasucan wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how you can both appreciate the importance of good design, but at the same time claim that making good design is not a full time job.

Because good design turns into bad design when the designers have nothing better to do.

that's also true of engineering, but suggesting never hiring engineers would not go as well on this website

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#964

Post by [deleted] »

ricardobeat wrote: post #400
austinl wrote: post #265

Earlier 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.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#965

Post by dexterlagan »

This is one possible elegant and esthetically pleasing solution to keeping readability/visibility as high as possible while allowing dark/light modes AND complex backgrounds. It has the advantage of having the exact same visibility properties in both modes, no matter what you have as background. The downside... well everything is blurry and glassy.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#966

Post by Cthulhu_ »

raydev wrote: post #539
austinl wrote: post #265

Earlier 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

...under pressure of consumer protection and e-waste laws. As it should be, I hope the other phone manufacturers are experiencing the same pressure.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#967

Post by Cthulhu_ »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #395
austinl wrote: post #265

Earlier 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.

Windows Vista introduced this same concept. Performance was awful unless you had compatible graphics acceleration. 20 years later, I think most devices should be fine, especially Apple devices.

20 years later and they're building the start menu in React Native.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#968

Post by citrin_ru »

illiac786 wrote: post #933
austinl wrote: post #265

Earlier 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.

Interestingly, in iOS 18, suppressing transparency (there’s a setting for it) makes performance worse, not better. The UI lags significantly more with transparency disabled. I expect it will be the same with iOS 26: there will be setting to reduce the transparency (which I find highly distracting) but it will make performance actually worse…

Thanks for this insight. It's very counter intuitive. Normally transparency is additional work for a GPU.

I had "Reduce Transparency" check-box in settings turned on because I distaste semit-transparent interfaces. Was not noticing performance problems except one application - Ogranics Maps which were unusably slow after switching to another app and returning to maps so I had to restart it freqently (swipe up). I was thinking that the problem is with Ogranics Maps code.

After seeing this comment re-enabled transparency (iOS default) and Ogranics Maps working fast even if I switch between Organic Maps and other apps!

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#969

Post by illiac786 »

krferriter wrote: post #939
illiac786 wrote: post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, in iOS 18, suppressing transparency (there’s a setting for it) makes performance worse, not better. The UI lags significantly more with transparency disabled. I expect it will be the same with iOS 26: there will be setting to reduce the transparency (which I find highly distracting) but it will make performance actually worse…

Did suppressing transparency also turn on processor throttling or something too? Like putting the device in a power saver mode?

My phone is always in power save mode. Re-enabling transparency actually made the UI less jerky. It was mostly the keyboard that became unresponsive, I could type 15-20 letters while it froze and it would then „catch up“.

Also reported here for example: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255911835

Re-enabling transparency improved this a lot, also keyboard still hangs a bit from time to time. I’m always in power save mode, on an iPhone 12, running iOS18.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#970

Post by illiac786 »

citrin_ru wrote: post #968
illiac786 wrote: post #933

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, in iOS 18, suppressing transparency (there’s a setting for it) makes performance worse, not better. The UI lags significantly more with transparency disabled. I expect it will be the same with iOS 26: there will be setting to reduce the transparency (which I find highly distracting) but it will make performance actually worse…

Thanks for this insight. It's very counter intuitive. Normally transparency is additional work for a GPU. I had "Reduce Transparency" check-box in settings turned on because I distaste semit-transparent interfaces. Was not noticing performance problems except one application - Ogranics Maps which were unusably slow after switching to another app and returning to maps so I had to restart it freqently (swipe up). I was…

It potentially only applies to older iPhones, I have an iPhone 12, what’s yours?

Also reported here for example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1d2ncvu/if_your_old...

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