Massively innovative to announce a new design language that makes text harder to read As a part-time macOS user and full-time iOS user, this WWDC is just a set of pointless announcements to me...
Massively innovative to announce a new design language that makes text harder to read
As a part-time macOS user and full-time iOS user, this WWDC is just a set of pointless announcements to me that overall seem to just make things worse
Re being mean: Too bad we can’t share images easily here because I clicked on the article and thought it was called “liquid ass”. The video play button was covering up the first two letters of...
Re being mean: Too bad we can’t share images easily here because I clicked on the article and thought it was called “liquid ass”. The video play button was covering up the first two letters of glass. I guess I know what the name of this will be if people don’t like it.
Yeah I'm being a bit snarky- and of course, I don't mind companies trying to be less boring and actually make some aesthetic and design changes from time to time rather than just kinda settling on...
Yeah I'm being a bit snarky- and of course, I don't mind companies trying to be less boring and actually make some aesthetic and design changes from time to time rather than just kinda settling on something overly clean or minimal or devoid of character.
But, it just always feels weird to me whenever the decisions don't seem well-thought out (from accessibility/etc points of view) and are just "design for design's sake", though, even as an Apple user, I'm aware that "form over function" has been a common thread through Apple historically in both software and hardware.
Though, notably, they've sometimes had some good focus on accessibility as an important thing, which is why this still surprises me a small bit.
I hope their usage stats report a nice, big uptick in users turning on the "reduce transparency" accessibility option on release day. It smells like someone was annoyed their pet project (Vision...
I hope their usage stats report a nice, big uptick in users turning on the "reduce transparency" accessibility option on release day.
It smells like someone was annoyed their pet project (Vision Pro) looks different from the rest of the lineup, so they changed everything else to match.
Personally, I like contrast. Crisp, black text on white paper or sharp, bright text on a black screen. Simulated glass is probably going to be awful in day to day usage. I could be wrong, but I'm really not feeling it.
Silver lining: buttons that look like buttons! The lack of depth and beveling during the flat hype cycle has sucked.
Contrast is good but I think the stark whiteness found in Windows 8, iOS 7, and the equivalent macOS onward are/were a bit too much and big drivers behind the sudden popularity of dark mode. The...
Contrast is good but I think the stark whiteness found in Windows 8, iOS 7, and the equivalent macOS onward are/were a bit too much and big drivers behind the sudden popularity of dark mode. The midtones that UIs used in light mode before still had plenty of contrast but didn’t have as much of that flashbang effect.
Heh, I use the 'light love' styling in tildes specifically for this reason. I'm not a particular fan of purple, rather it balances strong contrast without feeling glaring on my eyes. Especially as...
Heh, I use the 'light love' styling in tildes specifically for this reason. I'm not a particular fan of purple, rather it balances strong contrast without feeling glaring on my eyes. Especially as I keep a perma-'night mode' orangish tint, which renders the pale purple more of a warm hazy shade.
This just seems like a really flimsy premise for a design language. The jump from skeuomorphic to flat was a BIG DEAL. This is...flat with a little more consistency across platforms and...
This just seems like a really flimsy premise for a design language. The jump from skeuomorphic to flat was a BIG DEAL. This is...flat with a little more consistency across platforms and photoshop's blur tool thrown into the mix. Wow...truly earth shattering. Although interestingly enough the blur effect is itself a return to skeuomorphism, though not enough to be noteworthy?
I'm sure it'll be fine, maybe even look great, but in typical Apple fashion they're taking something mundane and pretending they've given us the moon.
I see it as bringing back some of the depth cues that made skeuomorphism so, usable, without bringing back the more dated design metaphors that don't make so much sense anymore. I think this will...
I see it as bringing back some of the depth cues that made skeuomorphism so, usable, without bringing back the more dated design metaphors that don't make so much sense anymore.
I think this will do a lot to make their aesthetic stand out more among the crowd, and Material Design in particular is going to look very flat in comparison. I also think Microsoft already invented a ton of this with Windows Vista almost 20 years ago.
WWDC is the WorldWide DEVELOPER’s Conference. They talk about things of interest to Apple developers. A redesign is important to announce because developers will need to spend the rest of the year...
WWDC is the WorldWide DEVELOPER’s Conference. They talk about things of interest to Apple developers. A redesign is important to announce because developers will need to spend the rest of the year revising their UI to match it.
I am aware of what WWDC stands for, as a techie, and a user, I've followed it for many years now, but thanks for emphasizing it as if I'm dense. I am also aware that they use the keynote as a...
I am aware of what WWDC stands for, as a techie, and a user, I've followed it for many years now, but thanks for emphasizing it as if I'm dense. I am also aware that they use the keynote as a large marketing event to the public to showcase new features, and where they are headed, and thus, I don't find my snarky criticism out of place.
I also have no problem with them announcing a new redesign, or design language! Of course it makes sense to give devs a heads-up. Have at it, Apple! But that won't stop me from criticizing the design itself (or the general sense of what's good or bad in the impending OS updates and such)
It looks absolutely fucking awful. Every announcement coming out of Apple nowadays makes me wonder if it's even worth staying in their "ecosystem" anymore.
It looks absolutely fucking awful. Every announcement coming out of Apple nowadays makes me wonder if it's even worth staying in their "ecosystem" anymore.
Completely agree. My problem is there's nowhere to run that I want to go. Just like with Apple, I strongly dislike Google as a company and while I don't hate Android I do think there are...
Completely agree. My problem is there's nowhere to run that I want to go. Just like with Apple, I strongly dislike Google as a company and while I don't hate Android I do think there are legitimate reasons to avoid it and stay on iOS.
It's just quickly becoming a world where there is no good option for <insert tech product here> and only "what garbage can I tolerate most"
It's definitely something to keep in mind as an option, though, I've never been all too convinced by the alternative OS's, or I've found the barrier annoyingly high to leave the iOS ecosystem I'm...
GrapheneOS
It's definitely something to keep in mind as an option, though, I've never been all too convinced by the alternative OS's, or I've found the barrier annoyingly high to leave the iOS ecosystem I'm currently in (given that I have other devices too and a long history of purchased apps / etc) and to then have to do a bunch of special setup on another device.
Part of why I don't make many moves in the mobile space is because it's the couple of devices that I want to "just work" and not hack around with like I do my desktops/laptops with Linux
Amazing how some take things differently. I think it looks great, it really turned my head and is making me consider daily driving a Mac for the first time since the PPC days
Amazing how some take things differently. I think it looks great, it really turned my head and is making me consider daily driving a Mac for the first time since the PPC days
I agree. Feels underwhelming. Like a collection of quite nice usability improvements and I think actually fun design changes. Kind of overly busy. But like... That all you got?
I agree.
Feels underwhelming.
Like a collection of quite nice usability improvements and I think actually fun design changes. Kind of overly busy.
But like...
That all you got?
I didn't expect the Windows Aero Glass look to make a comeback through Apple. Mini Microsoft design rant I much preferred what Microsoft was doing with their design language in Windows 7 than...
I didn't expect the Windows Aero Glass look to make a comeback through Apple.
Mini Microsoft design rant
I much preferred what Microsoft was doing with their design language in Windows 7 than whatever abomination the current look is now which I think is the worst its ever been across the bar including Windows 11 including the worst emojis I've ever seen that's made me actually hate emojis and I didn't like them much before.
Mini rant reply In my opinion the Windows 7 of Aero has aged remarkably well. Even before this new Apple look, with a few minor touchups it’d look great on modern systems. The degree to which it...
Mini rant reply
In my opinion the Windows 7 of Aero has aged remarkably well. Even before this new Apple look, with a few minor touchups it’d look great on modern systems. The degree to which it doesn’t look old strikes me every time I boot up a 7 machine or VM.
Aero wasn’t bad because glass looks are bad. It was bad because it took up all your RAM. The average Window’s user’s hardware just wasn’t up to it which means for most people it was jittery and slow.
Aero wasn’t bad because glass looks are bad. It was bad because it took up all your RAM. The average Window’s user’s hardware just wasn’t up to it which means for most people it was jittery and slow.
Actually the reason why most people had such bad experiences with Windows Vista. Affordable hardware, underpowered laptops mostly, became available as a common household object right as Vista...
Actually the reason why most people had such bad experiences with Windows Vista. Affordable hardware, underpowered laptops mostly, became available as a common household object right as Vista became the dominant OS. An OS that chewed through RAM like a caffeinated goat through fresh grass.
That's not to say it was a good OS if you did have the hardware, not by any stretch of the means, but overtime it genuinely became not as bad as the reputation would have you believe... though nobody could tell because your 4gb RAM shit box probably blue screened when Vista tried to open the default clock widget before your mouse could move.
Liquid Glass might not end up being “it”, but at this point anything that’s not flat rounded rectangles with the occasional wild drop shadow appearing is welcome. Please tech industry, experiment...
Liquid Glass might not end up being “it”, but at this point anything that’s not flat rounded rectangles with the occasional wild drop shadow appearing is welcome. Please tech industry, experiment with UI again! We’re surrounded by all of these astonishingly capable screens and doing approximately nothing with them.
Or they could just keep things as easily readable functional buttons so I can get my work done without having to relearn the same interface I've been using for 15 years.
Or they could just keep things as easily readable functional buttons so I can get my work done without having to relearn the same interface I've been using for 15 years.
Oh god yes. I miss when tech was weird, man. Let's just have some fun! Hell, throw in some compiz wobbly borders when you minimise apps! Or maybe I miss that green man with his head open in...
Oh god yes. I miss when tech was weird, man.
Let's just have some fun! Hell, throw in some compiz wobbly borders when you minimise apps!
Or maybe I miss that green man with his head open in windows media player...
On that note, it’s nice that Apple has been paying more attention to customization in the past few OS releases, with this release adding things like choice of folder icon colors and higher quality...
On that note, it’s nice that Apple has been paying more attention to customization in the past few OS releases, with this release adding things like choice of folder icon colors and higher quality app icon tinting. It’s not the quirky Winamp skins, Windows msstyle themes, and Kaleidoscope schemes of yesteryear but it’s much better than where things were where the extent of customization was dark mode (and prior, not even that).
Surfboard is an iOS app for browsing Tildes. I believe earl is the dev, so they built the app with no changes but with the new iOS version (which would pick up “default” design changes) as a...
Surfboard is an iOS app for browsing Tildes.
I believe earl is the dev, so they built the app with no changes but with the new iOS version (which would pick up “default” design changes) as a comparison.
@earlsweatshirt could you include an image of current Surfboard for comparison?
Good point haha. Here it is: https://ibb.co/35cQLtRN As you can see the app uses the native tab bar, navigation bar, and search bar, so it picks up new designs for all those components « for free »
As a mobile dev myself, use of mostly-stock widgets on iOS has saved me a lot of trouble over the years because of exactly this. At the company I work at, this year I'll have some fixes to do, but...
As you can see the app uses the native tab bar, navigation bar, and search bar, so it picks up new designs for all those components « for free »
As a mobile dev myself, use of mostly-stock widgets on iOS has saved me a lot of trouble over the years because of exactly this. At the company I work at, this year I'll have some fixes to do, but they’re very minor compared to what shops that ship a lot of custom UI are facing.
Dude… The app I actually get paid to develop… Nightmare fuel looking at this redesign. Everything is completely custom, and doesn’t fit in super well with the new design. Oh well, I’ll see what...
Dude… The app I actually get paid to develop… Nightmare fuel looking at this redesign. Everything is completely custom, and doesn’t fit in super well with the new design. Oh well, I’ll see what the designer has to say 😆
One of my previous internships was similar. It introduced me to iOS dev (and I kinda wish to return to it in the future) and I don't think we used a single built-in iOS component for things....
One of my previous internships was similar. It introduced me to iOS dev (and I kinda wish to return to it in the future) and I don't think we used a single built-in iOS component for things. Everything was custom built and made to match the company aesthetic of our software. They've since started moving everything over to React Native though so sad to see native development dwindle.
I hadn’t bothered to look at the presentation because the topic bores me but I do legitimately think the new design looks better on your app. It feels more friendly while being a tad bit more dense.
I hadn’t bothered to look at the presentation because the topic bores me but I do legitimately think the new design looks better on your app. It feels more friendly while being a tad bit more dense.
I know the world has a massive hate-boner for Apple, and for the most part I agree, but for this one I may be going against the grain when I say: this looks nice! It seems to be really focused on...
I know the world has a massive hate-boner for Apple, and for the most part I agree, but for this one I may be going against the grain when I say: this looks nice!
It seems to be really focused on showing content, be it a wallpaper, an article, a video, etc. and having the UI 'melt' into the display. Also, I appreciate using our modern processing power to have live(?) distortions, it seems like the natural evolution of the noisy blur that we got used to over the last 5+ years. I disagree with concerns about readability, since a UI rarely has walls of dense text, and iOS is icon-forward anyway. People have to keep in mind that the average Apple user doesn't care at all about the form (or function!) of their products in any real sense, so I can't imagine there being any real reception to this beyond "ooh, glassy buttons". All in all, I'm down for a return to depth and what seems like a pretty novel UI concept.
That said, I don't know if I agree with 'iOS 26'. I get the point, but it seems like an unnecessary change. Doesn't really matter, though.
As a huge Aero theme fan that still resents (a bit) that we moved away from it, this is promising to me because it might inspire others to go back to the glass look. I look at Windows Vista and 7...
As a huge Aero theme fan that still resents (a bit) that we moved away from it, this is promising to me because it might inspire others to go back to the glass look.
I look at Windows Vista and 7 and compare it to the recent OS's in general, and formers look more vibrant, colorful, hopeful. I never appreciated the simplist/minimalist design that we got in Metro for example. They just look... Boring.
Yay for.........Squares........I guess...
I talked about windows here but this honestly applies to every other GUI in other OS's too (imo)
I'm a fan, and the realistic refraction effect is super cool. I felt that we had been stuck in the paradigm of approaching UI design like how we approach designing for paper or other flat media....
I'm a fan, and the realistic refraction effect is super cool.
I felt that we had been stuck in the paradigm of approaching UI design like how we approach designing for paper or other flat media. But Apple is actually doing something fundamentally interesting: they're imbuing UI elements with realistic physical properties.
In my opinion out of all the incarnations of flat UI we’ve seen I think Metro, at least the form seen on desktop PCs, was the worst. Those hard-cornered square windows with 1px borders like first...
In my opinion out of all the incarnations of flat UI we’ve seen I think Metro, at least the form seen on desktop PCs, was the worst. Those hard-cornered square windows with 1px borders like first appeared in Window 8 and endured through 8.1 and 10 look downright amateur compared to Aero and were just generally ugly. Both Google’s Material Design and Apple’s flat look had problems too but both were more dynamic and less dull.
Metro looked fine or even great on phones and tablets, but those aren’t desktop PCs…
Metro was quite beautiful and fresh on phones. But why they forced it into Windows, nobody knows. Especially Windows 8 was such a mess. In later versions, the UI is still a mix of ideas. Shame it...
Metro was quite beautiful and fresh on phones.
But why they forced it into Windows, nobody knows. Especially Windows 8 was such a mess. In later versions, the UI is still a mix of ideas.
Shame it failed because I like seeing new ideas on computer interfaces!
Innovations in UI are driven by innovations in graphics and technology, pushing forward the frontier of what's possible. The most interesting thing about Liquid Glass is that it's not a simple...
Innovations in UI are driven by innovations in graphics and technology, pushing forward the frontier of what's possible.
The most interesting thing about Liquid Glass is that it's not a simple Gaussian blur: images behind the new liquid glass material are actually distorted and bent—refracted—in a physically realistic way that subtly indicates material layer height.
This suggests that the folks at Apple figured out some efficient algorithm to achieve that visual effect.
Gotta empty that battery somehow! Seems battery life for iPhones has been at about a day for a while now! With all that processing power they should be able to make it last longer.
Gotta empty that battery somehow! Seems battery life for iPhones has been at about a day for a while now!
With all that processing power they should be able to make it last longer.
These aren’t independent specs. Battery capacity is a budget for the device. They target giving it enough battery to be able to last a day given how much power is available to do the stuff they...
With all that processing power they should be able to make it last longer.
These aren’t independent specs. Battery capacity is a budget for the device. They target giving it enough battery to be able to last a day given how much power is available to do the stuff they want it to be able to do. If you want it to last a lot longer you can go into accessibility and turn all the bells and whistles off and keep it in “low power mode” at all times and it will last you like 3x as long. Nobody does that because they like the bells and whistles. (Though I do turn them off if I’m going hiking just in case).
Looking at the effect in action, the Gaussian blur that's still in the effect will be the most computationally expensive part of it. The rounded edges effect is just a little bit more...
This suggests that the folks at Apple figured out some efficient algorithm to achieve that visual effect.
Looking at the effect in action, the Gaussian blur that's still in the effect will be the most computationally expensive part of it. The rounded edges effect is just a little bit more trigonometry, which is extremely common in graphics effects.
If I can be bothered, I might try re-creating the effect myself and do a quick write-up about it. I'm sure many around the internet will beat me to it (my spare time for the next week is mostly allocated to other things already), so maybe search around in a day or so to see what people have made with the concept.
I think they had to develop that for VisionOS because the items on screen have to realistically interact with the light in the room. So as long as they’ve solved the problem there, they can employ...
I think they had to develop that for VisionOS because the items on screen have to realistically interact with the light in the room. So as long as they’ve solved the problem there, they can employ it here.
Interesting look.. Not sure how I feel about it. Some parts (like the notifications example) don’t look very readable. And I guess now Surfboard needs a redesign to fit in 😆
Interesting look.. Not sure how I feel about it. Some parts (like the notifications example) don’t look very readable.
And I guess now Surfboard needs a redesign to fit in 😆
This strikes me as just moving the furniture around while failing to provide any truly new features (and ignoring that they dropped the ball on delivering their AI promises last year).
This strikes me as just moving the furniture around while failing to provide any truly new features (and ignoring that they dropped the ball on delivering their AI promises last year).
I don't know how to feel about it just yet... I love it, but at the same time I hate it. I like the direction that they're going giving the design some sort of "physicality" (not sure if that's...
I don't know how to feel about it just yet... I love it, but at the same time I hate it.
I like the direction that they're going giving the design some sort of "physicality" (not sure if that's the word I should use?) and I was really looking forward to what they'd do with an all-glass UI but this is kind of too much. I really wish they went with a more frosted glass look than the transparent glass they're doing with this redesign--something along the lines of Microsoft's fluent design.
Maybe it'll take some time getting used to, but first impressions are not good so far.
Why does it seem that I can measure the passage of time in terms of changes to border radius? This trend just seems to ebb and flow and I'm kind of tired of it.
Why does it seem that I can measure the passage of time in terms of changes to border radius? This trend just seems to ebb and flow and I'm kind of tired of it.
Could be cool, too soon to tell whether it will make things easier to use. I do appreciate change just for aesthetics sake. But this guy, however, seems to apply a gloss of boring to the whole...
Could be cool, too soon to tell whether it will make things easier to use. I do appreciate change just for aesthetics sake.
But this guy, however, seems to apply a gloss of boring to the whole announcement. youtube
Absolutely hilarious that at the same time that Samsung iOS'd their design language with OneUI 7, Apple Windows/Samsunged THEIR design language for iOS 26.
Absolutely hilarious that at the same time that Samsung iOS'd their design language with OneUI 7, Apple Windows/Samsunged THEIR design language for iOS 26.
I just watched Luke Miani demonstrate the new design here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGhGL29yegI I think I like it. Not sure. I don't much care for Mac OS, but when it has more customisation...
I just watched Luke Miani demonstrate the new design here
I think I like it. Not sure. I don't much care for Mac OS, but when it has more customisation than GNOME, I sit up and notice. Really like that tint feature, could make some pretty desktops.
Had my eye on an M4 Mini for a while, they look reasonably priced. We'll see how this Mac OS release goes and maybe I get one.
Overall, I'm a fan of this design to be honest. Would be cool to see tech re-visit some of the design things they did in the late 2000s. The phones and computers we had back then were not high...
Overall, I'm a fan of this design to be honest. Would be cool to see tech re-visit some of the design things they did in the late 2000s. The phones and computers we had back then were not high resolution enough and sometimes not powerful enough to truly enjoy the detail that went into skeumorphism.
The big thing that I didn't see discussed too much in this thread are the new animations throughout the system. Much like Google's Material 3 Expressive design system, Apple have added much more expressive and fluid animations throughout the OS here and I love it. Things react to other things around them and it's a joy to use.
I installed the developer betas on all my devices against my better judgement and while the betas are a bit rough, it's cool seeing where they want to head with design. It reminds me a lot of the flat design switch of iOS 7. Some things definitely looked better on the designers tools than on devices and need adjustments.
hey nice. I had a similar theme on my 4S. I've been on developer betas since jailbreaking pretty much died off and I never seem to have any issues. I wish they'd let us change the density of the...
hey nice. I had a similar theme on my 4S. I've been on developer betas since jailbreaking pretty much died off and I never seem to have any issues.
I wish they'd let us change the density of the home screen so I could have an extra row or two of icons.
edit: this is so ugly
double edit: restored to 18.x dbs --- new os runs hot for too long and has a really ugly outline on everything.
I recently switched from their smallest recent model (iPhone SE with the home button) to their largest (16 Pro max) and I’m genuinely surprised that they didn’t add even a single vertical row for...
I wish they'd let us change the density of the home screen so I could have an extra row or two of icons
I recently switched from their smallest recent model (iPhone SE with the home button) to their largest (16 Pro max) and I’m genuinely surprised that they didn’t add even a single vertical row for apps.
I had to re-sort the order of my buttons in the Control Centre so it’s obvious that the phone is not just bigger but a whole different ratio, and yet no extra room for apps even though this is apparently their tallest phone (by ratio and by actual size) even compared to the Pro Max of last year’s model.
It genuinely makes this supposedly “mega premium” device feel like an afterthought, which is not at all what I would have expected from their most expensive phone in the lineup!
This screen is just screaming for an extra row of icons, but also given the overall size, it could easily accomodate an extra column too!
a lot of stuff feels like that these days. I've been thinking of making a large widget in Widgy that is really just an app launcher. It'll be a pain in the ass to build, but I can have a shitload...
a lot of stuff feels like that these days. I've been thinking of making a large widget in Widgy that is really just an app launcher. It'll be a pain in the ass to build, but I can have a shitload of tiny icons at my fingertips.
I really like how it looks, been missing the Frutiger Aero aesthetic that I wanted to have an Aero like theme on Gnome/Linux. On the other hand my iPhone 13 Mini battery has dipped below 90%...
I really like how it looks, been missing the Frutiger Aero aesthetic that I wanted to have an Aero like theme on Gnome/Linux.
On the other hand my iPhone 13 Mini battery has dipped below 90% battery health so I dread the battery hit with iOS 26.
Massively innovative to announce a new design language that makes text harder to read
As a part-time macOS user and full-time iOS user, this WWDC is just a set of pointless announcements to me that overall seem to just make things worse
Kinda I felt too but I didn’t wanna be too mean hahaha
Re being mean: Too bad we can’t share images easily here because I clicked on the article and thought it was called “liquid ass”. The video play button was covering up the first two letters of glass. I guess I know what the name of this will be if people don’t like it.
The Verge: No more Liquid Ass
I guess they're writing articles about anything these days
Yeah I'm being a bit snarky- and of course, I don't mind companies trying to be less boring and actually make some aesthetic and design changes from time to time rather than just kinda settling on something overly clean or minimal or devoid of character.
But, it just always feels weird to me whenever the decisions don't seem well-thought out (from accessibility/etc points of view) and are just "design for design's sake", though, even as an Apple user, I'm aware that "form over function" has been a common thread through Apple historically in both software and hardware.
Though, notably, they've sometimes had some good focus on accessibility as an important thing, which is why this still surprises me a small bit.
I hope their usage stats report a nice, big uptick in users turning on the "reduce transparency" accessibility option on release day.
It smells like someone was annoyed their pet project (Vision Pro) looks different from the rest of the lineup, so they changed everything else to match.
Personally, I like contrast. Crisp, black text on white paper or sharp, bright text on a black screen. Simulated glass is probably going to be awful in day to day usage. I could be wrong, but I'm really not feeling it.
Silver lining: buttons that look like buttons! The lack of depth and beveling during the flat hype cycle has sucked.
Contrast is good but I think the stark whiteness found in Windows 8, iOS 7, and the equivalent macOS onward are/were a bit too much and big drivers behind the sudden popularity of dark mode. The midtones that UIs used in light mode before still had plenty of contrast but didn’t have as much of that flashbang effect.
Heh, I use the 'light love' styling in tildes specifically for this reason. I'm not a particular fan of purple, rather it balances strong contrast without feeling glaring on my eyes. Especially as I keep a perma-'night mode' orangish tint, which renders the pale purple more of a warm hazy shade.
This just seems like a really flimsy premise for a design language. The jump from skeuomorphic to flat was a BIG DEAL. This is...flat with a little more consistency across platforms and photoshop's blur tool thrown into the mix. Wow...truly earth shattering. Although interestingly enough the blur effect is itself a return to skeuomorphism, though not enough to be noteworthy?
I'm sure it'll be fine, maybe even look great, but in typical Apple fashion they're taking something mundane and pretending they've given us the moon.
I see it as bringing back some of the depth cues that made skeuomorphism so, usable, without bringing back the more dated design metaphors that don't make so much sense anymore.
I think this will do a lot to make their aesthetic stand out more among the crowd, and Material Design in particular is going to look very flat in comparison. I also think Microsoft already invented a ton of this with Windows Vista almost 20 years ago.
It’s also going to make low effort app ports stick out in a bad way, which may or may not be an intended effect.
I'm okay with anything that makes it harder to get away with low effort crap
WWDC is the WorldWide DEVELOPER’s Conference. They talk about things of interest to Apple developers. A redesign is important to announce because developers will need to spend the rest of the year revising their UI to match it.
I am aware of what WWDC stands for, as a techie, and a user, I've followed it for many years now, but thanks for emphasizing it as if I'm dense. I am also aware that they use the keynote as a large marketing event to the public to showcase new features, and where they are headed, and thus, I don't find my snarky criticism out of place.
I also have no problem with them announcing a new redesign, or design language! Of course it makes sense to give devs a heads-up. Have at it, Apple! But that won't stop me from criticizing the design itself (or the general sense of what's good or bad in the impending OS updates and such)
It looks absolutely fucking awful. Every announcement coming out of Apple nowadays makes me wonder if it's even worth staying in their "ecosystem" anymore.
Completely agree. My problem is there's nowhere to run that I want to go. Just like with Apple, I strongly dislike Google as a company and while I don't hate Android I do think there are legitimate reasons to avoid it and stay on iOS.
It's just quickly becoming a world where there is no good option for <insert tech product here> and only "what garbage can I tolerate most"
Outside of an iPhone, I am aware that PrivacyGuides also recommends GrapheneOS on a Pixel phone. Thoughts?
It's definitely something to keep in mind as an option, though, I've never been all too convinced by the alternative OS's, or I've found the barrier annoyingly high to leave the iOS ecosystem I'm currently in (given that I have other devices too and a long history of purchased apps / etc) and to then have to do a bunch of special setup on another device.
Part of why I don't make many moves in the mobile space is because it's the couple of devices that I want to "just work" and not hack around with like I do my desktops/laptops with Linux
Amazing how some take things differently. I think it looks great, it really turned my head and is making me consider daily driving a Mac for the first time since the PPC days
I agree.
Feels underwhelming.
Like a collection of quite nice usability improvements and I think actually fun design changes. Kind of overly busy.
But like...
That all you got?
I didn't expect the Windows Aero Glass look to make a comeback through Apple.
Mini Microsoft design rant
I much preferred what Microsoft was doing with their design language in Windows 7 than whatever abomination the current look is now which I think is the worst its ever been across the bar including Windows 11 including the worst emojis I've ever seen that's made me actually hate emojis and I didn't like them much before.Mini rant reply
In my opinion the Windows 7 of Aero has aged remarkably well. Even before this new Apple look, with a few minor touchups it’d look great on modern systems. The degree to which it doesn’t look old strikes me every time I boot up a 7 machine or VM.Aero wasn’t bad because glass looks are bad. It was bad because it took up all your RAM. The average Window’s user’s hardware just wasn’t up to it which means for most people it was jittery and slow.
Actually the reason why most people had such bad experiences with Windows Vista. Affordable hardware, underpowered laptops mostly, became available as a common household object right as Vista became the dominant OS. An OS that chewed through RAM like a caffeinated goat through fresh grass.
That's not to say it was a good OS if you did have the hardware, not by any stretch of the means, but overtime it genuinely became not as bad as the reputation would have you believe... though nobody could tell because your 4gb RAM shit box probably blue screened when Vista tried to open the default clock widget before your mouse could move.
Liquid Glass might not end up being “it”, but at this point anything that’s not flat rounded rectangles with the occasional wild drop shadow appearing is welcome. Please tech industry, experiment with UI again! We’re surrounded by all of these astonishingly capable screens and doing approximately nothing with them.
Or they could just keep things as easily readable functional buttons so I can get my work done without having to relearn the same interface I've been using for 15 years.
Oh god yes. I miss when tech was weird, man.
Let's just have some fun! Hell, throw in some compiz wobbly borders when you minimise apps!
Or maybe I miss that green man with his head open in windows media player...
On that note, it’s nice that Apple has been paying more attention to customization in the past few OS releases, with this release adding things like choice of folder icon colors and higher quality app icon tinting. It’s not the quirky Winamp skins, Windows msstyle themes, and Kaleidoscope schemes of yesteryear but it’s much better than where things were where the extent of customization was dark mode (and prior, not even that).
Yeah I agree, even if the needle is moved slightly, I'm glad it's moving at all.
Here’s how Surfboard looks built against iOS 26 with zero design changes:
https://ibb.co/XfphdBkn
https://ibb.co/h1CGBx58
Interesting.
can you explain this comment to me?
Surfboard is an iOS app for browsing Tildes.
I believe earl is the dev, so they built the app with no changes but with the new iOS version (which would pick up “default” design changes) as a comparison.
@earlsweatshirt could you include an image of current Surfboard for comparison?
Good point haha.
Here it is: https://ibb.co/35cQLtRN
As you can see the app uses the native tab bar, navigation bar, and search bar, so it picks up new designs for all those components « for free »
As a mobile dev myself, use of mostly-stock widgets on iOS has saved me a lot of trouble over the years because of exactly this. At the company I work at, this year I'll have some fixes to do, but they’re very minor compared to what shops that ship a lot of custom UI are facing.
Dude… The app I actually get paid to develop… Nightmare fuel looking at this redesign. Everything is completely custom, and doesn’t fit in super well with the new design. Oh well, I’ll see what the designer has to say 😆
Job security 🫶
One of my previous internships was similar. It introduced me to iOS dev (and I kinda wish to return to it in the future) and I don't think we used a single built-in iOS component for things. Everything was custom built and made to match the company aesthetic of our software. They've since started moving everything over to React Native though so sad to see native development dwindle.
I hadn’t bothered to look at the presentation because the topic bores me but I do legitimately think the new design looks better on your app. It feels more friendly while being a tad bit more dense.
I like it. I don’t think it’s as awful as people are making it out to be. Maybe I’m just a sucker for shiny things?
I know the world has a massive hate-boner for Apple, and for the most part I agree, but for this one I may be going against the grain when I say: this looks nice!
It seems to be really focused on showing content, be it a wallpaper, an article, a video, etc. and having the UI 'melt' into the display. Also, I appreciate using our modern processing power to have live(?) distortions, it seems like the natural evolution of the noisy blur that we got used to over the last 5+ years. I disagree with concerns about readability, since a UI rarely has walls of dense text, and iOS is icon-forward anyway. People have to keep in mind that the average Apple user doesn't care at all about the form (or function!) of their products in any real sense, so I can't imagine there being any real reception to this beyond "ooh, glassy buttons". All in all, I'm down for a return to depth and what seems like a pretty novel UI concept.
That said, I don't know if I agree with 'iOS 26'. I get the point, but it seems like an unnecessary change. Doesn't really matter, though.
As a huge Aero theme fan that still resents (a bit) that we moved away from it, this is promising to me because it might inspire others to go back to the glass look.
I look at Windows Vista and 7 and compare it to the recent OS's in general, and formers look more vibrant, colorful, hopeful. I never appreciated the simplist/minimalist design that we got in Metro for example. They just look... Boring.
Yay for.........Squares........I guess...
I talked about windows here but this honestly applies to every other GUI in other OS's too (imo)
I'm a fan, and the realistic refraction effect is super cool.
I felt that we had been stuck in the paradigm of approaching UI design like how we approach designing for paper or other flat media. But Apple is actually doing something fundamentally interesting: they're imbuing UI elements with realistic physical properties.
In my opinion out of all the incarnations of flat UI we’ve seen I think Metro, at least the form seen on desktop PCs, was the worst. Those hard-cornered square windows with 1px borders like first appeared in Window 8 and endured through 8.1 and 10 look downright amateur compared to Aero and were just generally ugly. Both Google’s Material Design and Apple’s flat look had problems too but both were more dynamic and less dull.
Metro looked fine or even great on phones and tablets, but those aren’t desktop PCs…
Metro was quite beautiful and fresh on phones.
But why they forced it into Windows, nobody knows. Especially Windows 8 was such a mess. In later versions, the UI is still a mix of ideas.
Shame it failed because I like seeing new ideas on computer interfaces!
Innovations in UI are driven by innovations in graphics and technology, pushing forward the frontier of what's possible.
The most interesting thing about Liquid Glass is that it's not a simple Gaussian blur: images behind the new liquid glass material are actually distorted and bent—refracted—in a physically realistic way that subtly indicates material layer height.
This suggests that the folks at Apple figured out some efficient algorithm to achieve that visual effect.
Or they brute force it with superior hardware... Or a combination of both
Gotta empty that battery somehow! Seems battery life for iPhones has been at about a day for a while now!
With all that processing power they should be able to make it last longer.
These aren’t independent specs. Battery capacity is a budget for the device. They target giving it enough battery to be able to last a day given how much power is available to do the stuff they want it to be able to do. If you want it to last a lot longer you can go into accessibility and turn all the bells and whistles off and keep it in “low power mode” at all times and it will last you like 3x as long. Nobody does that because they like the bells and whistles. (Though I do turn them off if I’m going hiking just in case).
Looking at the effect in action, the Gaussian blur that's still in the effect will be the most computationally expensive part of it. The rounded edges effect is just a little bit more trigonometry, which is extremely common in graphics effects.
If I can be bothered, I might try re-creating the effect myself and do a quick write-up about it. I'm sure many around the internet will beat me to it (my spare time for the next week is mostly allocated to other things already), so maybe search around in a day or so to see what people have made with the concept.
I think they had to develop that for VisionOS because the items on screen have to realistically interact with the light in the room. So as long as they’ve solved the problem there, they can employ it here.
Interesting look.. Not sure how I feel about it. Some parts (like the notifications example) don’t look very readable.
And I guess now Surfboard needs a redesign to fit in 😆
A little off topic, but my Surfboard expired one day and stopped working. Is it back?!
Yeah, it’s been back for a bit. Could use some little bug fixes, but for those who want to use it as is, it’s there.
This strikes me as just moving the furniture around while failing to provide any truly new features (and ignoring that they dropped the ball on delivering their AI promises last year).
I don't know how to feel about it just yet... I love it, but at the same time I hate it.
I like the direction that they're going giving the design some sort of "physicality" (not sure if that's the word I should use?) and I was really looking forward to what they'd do with an all-glass UI but this is kind of too much. I really wish they went with a more frosted glass look than the transparent glass they're doing with this redesign--something along the lines of Microsoft's fluent design.
Maybe it'll take some time getting used to, but first impressions are not good so far.
Why does it seem that I can measure the passage of time in terms of changes to border radius? This trend just seems to ebb and flow and I'm kind of tired of it.
iOS wasn’t rounded enough for these new super rounded iPhone screens ! It had to change !
You can customize border radii now so I think we’ve collapsed into a temporal singularity.
Could be cool, too soon to tell whether it will make things easier to use. I do appreciate change just for aesthetics sake.
But this guy, however, seems to apply a gloss of boring to the whole announcement.
youtube
Absolutely hilarious that at the same time that Samsung iOS'd their design language with OneUI 7, Apple Windows/Samsunged THEIR design language for iOS 26.
The iPad os improvements seem pretty decent, especially for multitasking. I’ve not installed it but a friend who has is very happy with it.
I just watched Luke Miani demonstrate the new design here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGhGL29yegI
I think I like it. Not sure. I don't much care for Mac OS, but when it has more customisation than GNOME, I sit up and notice. Really like that tint feature, could make some pretty desktops.
Had my eye on an M4 Mini for a while, they look reasonably priced. We'll see how this Mac OS release goes and maybe I get one.
Overall, I'm a fan of this design to be honest. Would be cool to see tech re-visit some of the design things they did in the late 2000s. The phones and computers we had back then were not high resolution enough and sometimes not powerful enough to truly enjoy the detail that went into skeumorphism.
The big thing that I didn't see discussed too much in this thread are the new animations throughout the system. Much like Google's Material 3 Expressive design system, Apple have added much more expressive and fluid animations throughout the OS here and I love it. Things react to other things around them and it's a joy to use.
I installed the developer betas on all my devices against my better judgement and while the betas are a bit rough, it's cool seeing where they want to head with design. It reminds me a lot of the flat design switch of iOS 7. Some things definitely looked better on the designers tools than on devices and need adjustments.
hey nice. I had a similar theme on my 4S. I've been on developer betas since jailbreaking pretty much died off and I never seem to have any issues.
I wish they'd let us change the density of the home screen so I could have an extra row or two of icons.
edit: this is so ugly
double edit: restored to 18.x dbs --- new os runs hot for too long and has a really ugly outline on everything.
I recently switched from their smallest recent model (iPhone SE with the home button) to their largest (16 Pro max) and I’m genuinely surprised that they didn’t add even a single vertical row for apps.
I had to re-sort the order of my buttons in the Control Centre so it’s obvious that the phone is not just bigger but a whole different ratio, and yet no extra room for apps even though this is apparently their tallest phone (by ratio and by actual size) even compared to the Pro Max of last year’s model.
It genuinely makes this supposedly “mega premium” device feel like an afterthought, which is not at all what I would have expected from their most expensive phone in the lineup!
This screen is just screaming for an extra row of icons, but also given the overall size, it could easily accomodate an extra column too!
a lot of stuff feels like that these days. I've been thinking of making a large widget in Widgy that is really just an app launcher. It'll be a pain in the ass to build, but I can have a shitload of tiny icons at my fingertips.
I really like how it looks, been missing the Frutiger Aero aesthetic that I wanted to have an Aero like theme on Gnome/Linux.
On the other hand my iPhone 13 Mini battery has dipped below 90% battery health so I dread the battery hit with iOS 26.