Timely you should say that. I just got a new macbook and lots of the colours in menu bars and buttons seemed 'washed out'. I eventually remembered I had turned on "reduce transparency" on the old mac, a setting which didn't carry over it seems. I turned it on, now the display is legible again. If Apple goes all frosted plastic I also hope they give an option to disable it.
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6 visionOS-Inspired Design Elements Coming to iOS 26
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I hope they reduce the amount of white screens and declutter the chaotic mess that iOS has become with iOS 18. The Photos app alone made me buy another iPhone with an older iOS version. I was never a huge fan of the iOS 7 design era, but I feel like iOS 9 and iOS 15 were the best iOS7-era versions so far. I honestly wouldn’t be too mad if they instead of a complete redesign focused on making iOS more polished, just as iOS 6 was. I love iOS 6 even today, and while it does show it’s age and feels a bit dated, it’s so nice to use and feels like home. I wish they could find some middle ground between iOS7 and iOS6 designs for the upcoming major update.
Until OpenAI sells their first hardware device with an operating system you can't really compare it with Apple. LLM's are fascinating and potentially disrupting, but we're far away from (safe, reliable and affordable) mainstream use. There is a small elephant in the room with these 'AI' applications: who's going to pay for it? Odds are the end user by surrendering even more privacy...
The fact that you can access those tools today for cheap is because those 'AI' companies are floating on investment money and are clamoring for market share.
How many years until Vision is as affordable as iPhone and starts to be ubiquitous, could be over five years yeah?
The translucency must be optional.
Rounded icons are not good. Just keep them as they are. We don't want android clones. I hate the control center in iOS 18. Not only rounded, but inconsistently so. At least on android you can apply skins and change the UI. Sure as hell we won't have that on anything from Apple.
Rounded icons are not good. Just keep them as they are. We don't want android clones. I hate the control center in iOS 18. Not only rounded, but inconsistently so. At least on android you can apply skins and change the UI. Sure as hell we won't have that on anything from Apple.
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I sure hope that the menu bars will stay as much as possible too the bottom WHERE I HOLD MY PHONE.
Otherwise I'm pretty indifferent to what is just a coat of paint...and hoping that all those "subtle effects" won't have any significant compute cycles/battery life cost.
Otherwise I'm pretty indifferent to what is just a coat of paint...and hoping that all those "subtle effects" won't have any significant compute cycles/battery life cost.
Excited and waiting to see all the changes across the various softwares. Hopefully there won't be too many bugs.
...but it's pretty good evidence that it WORKS and the fact that people are familiar with it is a huge advantage. It should set a very high bar for any argument for change: first, understand the old way, then demonstrate that the new way fixes something that was broken and that it doesn't break anything else.
Chesterton's fence - LessWrong
Chesterton's Fence is the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is understood. Related: Epistemic Modesty From Chesterton’s 1929 book, The Thing, in the chapter entitled The Drift from Domesticity [1]: > In the matter of reforming...
www.lesswrong.com
I know the article here is based on a rumour and not the horses mouth, but it positively reeks of "form-over-function" and "Chesterton's fence". Starting with the fact that the whole project is called "Solarium" - i.e. everything is glass - i.e. aspiration to a form rather than an aspiration to make things more usable.
Then there's the "inspired by Vision OS" and "consistency" thing. Why? OK, some consistency of function is good - but only where appropriate. Vision OS was designed for AR, so there was a reason for making things transparent and keeping on-screen info to a bare minimum. iOS was designed for phones - there's no need for transparency, and no reason not to fill the screen with information, as long as it's clearly presented and well organised. MacOS is designed for laptops and desktops with at least a 14" screen. Apple sell 32" screens with super-high definition - why would anybody want to use all of those expensive pixels to display lots of translucent empty space?
Not having lots of unnecessary clutter should go without saying, but it's only one of a host of competing constraints: mobile-oriented design has already seen a plague of dumbing down and mystery-meat navigation that has made essential (for some) features hard to discover. Some "clutter" is nececessary clutter.
(I have often been frustrated by "PowerPoint" syderome - you demonstrate a new design for a desktop app on a data projector and the audience immediately start complaining that there is too much on the screen... which would be true if it were a design for a PowerPoint slide that had to get 3 bullet points across in 10 seconds. Of course, in the next breath they start asking for more and more features to be added... but that's the challenge of designing UIs...)
Then there's how the UI works. WatchOS is controlled by a minute touchscreen, barely big enough for multi-touch, and "smart crown". iOS is controlled entirely by a (reasonably large) multi-touch screen and MacOS is controlled by a trackpad or mouse + on-screen-pointer. Those modes of use have very different affordances (pointers are very precise - so controls can be smaller - and separate pointing from 'clicking' so there is hover functionality allowing pointer shapes or tool tips to indicate what a click will do , touchscreens are far less precise & need larger controls, can't use hover functionality but have all sorts of multi-touch and gesture possibilities, WatchOS... is always going to need custom UIs. Then VisionOS is controlled by eye-movement and 3D hand gestures which will have a whole different set of affordances...
There are multiple reasons why Microsoft lost the mobile race - but I'm sure that one of them is that they contrained themselves to try and imitate the Windows UI (while also supporting touch, stylus, keyboard, number-pad, joystick, jog wheel, function buttons...) on a device where it just didn't work well - whereas what-became-iOS was designed from the ground up for a multi-touch-only phone-sized device, rather than as a sort of mini-MacOS. (and Android was designed for Blackberry-like devices until the iPhone came out & it was rapidly re-fitted for touch).
So, yes, consistency where it makes sense, but beyond "use the same icon labels and function names" the UI is best designed for the platform it will be used on.
(Then, of course, we have iPadOS sitting in the big uncanny vally between iOS and MacOS. I think, really, the iPad Pro needs to be a dual-mode device if lots of people are going to use it with a keyboard and pointer).
On the subject of icons - I'm sure I remember - back in the days of "Inside Macintosh" style guides for developers - a recommendation that icons should have unique outlines to help make them visually unique. That baby seems to have been thrown out with the bathwater, with everything being a rounded rectangle(and, frequently, a rounded rectangle with a circular logo).
Why a lot of people including myself may be switching away from iPhone in the next year or so
You misspelled Mac OS OSX Dock
Vision OS transparency looks a lot like the original iOS7 Control Center
Didn't we have this translucency with iOS7? I clearly remember all the layering and Jony boasting about how the new iOS feels more organic and layered or something along those lines. I don't know, but this looks to me like a rehashed iOS7 with far rounder elements and really ugly take on icons.
I had proposed that jokingly for the 20th-anniversary glass iPhone. But you would constantly be looking for backgrounds in your environment that make text more readable, or, maybe more likely, if the camera is dedicated as in your proposal (which is unlikely for Apple to spend extra hardware resources on), just tape it shut for a dark background.
Even in light-weight glasses form (which is much further away than five years) it wouldn't become ubiquitous like iPhones, because people don't actually like wearing glasses that much if they don’t have to. It's also more cumbersome putting them on and off than glancing at your phone. Don't expect smartphones (small screens you carry around in your pocket) to become obsolete, even with perfect voice AI. They are in a usability sweet spot that's very hard to beat.
Funny... Windows Vista is what got me to switch to Macs many, many years ago. What a mess that was!
Some people don't like wearing glasses, I however do to the point that Lasik or contacts don't appeal to me. But even people who don't like glasses will wear them if they provide value, like reading or sunglasses, and for smart glasses to catch on they would need to do this.
I've had progressive, blended bifocals for a decade and I never have to touch my glasses.
I agree. Smartglasses/AI might replace some of your phone's functionality now, but it's going to be decades before phones can be replaced completely. There's also a cost issue, Meta's smart glasses concept aren't for sale because their estimated cost would make the VisionPro a bargain by comparison.
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Aesthetically you are correct, in particular it reminds me of the iOS7 Control Center, but the redesign is supposed to be structurally deeper than just adding round icons and a transparent skin.
Most people don’t, however, which is why they won't become ubiquitous like smartphones.