Apple Codename Provides Clue About iOS 19's Rumored New Design

[NT1440]

I'm mainly worried this will result in poorer accessibility and usability because it "looks cool".

I personally think Apple, with the visionOS UI and now iOS is still reaching towards their original “magic pane of glass” UI philosophy.

They’re training the user base for the eventual UI of their actual glasses project.

 

[Premium1]

Wasn't it reported that the feature(s) existed but it was not as accurate as Apple wanted. It was something like 70-80% correct.

It still doesn't change the fact that what they showed was vaporware. This is turning it airpower and apple got caught with their pants down again.

 

[Premium1]

I’m not sure what is more surprising about this: thinking that they came up with a total redesign in 6 months, or thinking that they’re doing a risky UI change to cover some controversy.

Never said they redesigned it in 6 months. Although we have been hearing about this "groundbreaking" redesign for at least 4+ years now. The only thing that has come out of it is some second rate AI and a siri that continues to be worse than when they first bought it.

 

[Velli]

Everyone thinks change from what they have become used to is negative, even if the new is much better. I struggled a lot with iOS 7, but around the time of iOS 8 launch, I picked up a phone with iOS 6 on it, and it looked hilariously old.

I will reserve judgement on iOS 19 until about Christmas.

 

[scorpio vega]

How many times have we heard “biggest design changes”?

Once. In iOS 7

 

[scorpio vega]

There is no such thing as Sirigate. Only a few certain people are making a big deal about a missed deadline. It is better for Apple to make it right than pull a Google and release something before it is ready.

Shhh. You’re making sense lol.
Google gets a free pass to release inferior half baked products. If Apple does it they get criticized lol.

 

[jole]

visionOS is beautiful.

(Yes, it does have other challenges)

 

[Spunk Bubble]

Actually that would be better than the current flat boring design.

Lets agree to disagree.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Which MS apparently answered by having Ballmer run around their campus yelling "Transparency! Transparency! Transparency!".

Can just see it!
He was even rocking a bit of the "transparency" with the areas of his sweat soaked shirt

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

With the benefit of hindsight a lot of people were comparing Snow Leopard to Lion. Lion was probably even worse when it first came out. It felt slower. Most people at the time were running MacOS on a mechanical drive and performance-wise even later releases of Lion never got back up to where Snow Leopard was. That’s where this lore about Snow Leopard performance and stability comes from.

The truth about Snow Leopard? Yes, it took up less storage space, but the real reason for the ‘optimizations’ was to cut out PowerPC Macs and force those users to buy new Intel ones. A competent PR department has a way to spin a bad thing and make it sound good - and in this case it worked exactly as planned.

Yeah, for example, a lot of recent macOS versions have taken up less storage space as they cut off tons of 2012-2017 Macs, Andrew Cunningham mentioned it in his reviews of Big Sur, Monterey and Ventura.
Another thing people forget about snow leopard is that a lot of the gainedstorage was just an illusion, seeing as in leopard apple calculated one gigabyte as 1024 MB, starting in snow leopard that went to one gigabyte equals 1000 MB.
So while, yes, they’re absolutely was storage you got back with snow leopard, the vast majority of it was just recalculated storage.
We will probably see a similar gain in storage and speed once Apple removes all of the Intel support, my assumption could be as early as this year, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not until 2027.
There is so much smoke and mirrors around snow leopard, a lot of people think The reason it had such little upgrades was because Apple was being “nice” or something, but it wasn’t.
It was literally because, between 2007 and 2009, Apple was having to take people away from development of OS X to work on the iPhone and iPod touch. And this isn’t even speculation, they literally said that in their leopard delay announcement.

Apple delays Leopard until October because of iPhone

Apple has delayed release of its Leopard operating system until October because it had to divert engineering and QA resources to finish the iPhone on time.

www.macworld.com

Snow leopard literally happened because Apple was forcing the Mac to play second fiddle. Is that really what people want to go back to?

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

Once. In iOS 7

Yeah. I don’t know where this idea that a redesign is rumored every year comes from.
People in the *Mac Rumors comments* seem to ask for a redesign every year, but those people aren’t leakers and have absolutely no information.
I’ve even seen some people try to claim that Gurman said there would be a redesign last year, which he absolutely did not. He said there would be a redesigned control center and tinting on the home screen, which… Actually happened. But he did not say that there would be a complete UI revamp.
The last time there were ever serious grumblings about an OS redesign was around iOS 13… When there was an OS redesign called dark mode. Either than that, any actual leakers with serious track records have always kept expectations low, talking about new features, but never stating a redesign. At least since iOS 7, as you said.

 

[mutablecopy]

about 10 years ago or so, there was a guy (may have been ex Apple) experimenting with attaching a 180degree camera to the front of the iPhone and simulating a phone OS UI design which would react to the light captured by the camera, I think using PBR/IBL, similar to how iOS and VisionOS can build a dynamic light cube from the environment just by moving around:

Adding realistic reflections to an AR experience | Apple Developer Documentation

Use ARKit to generate environment probe textures from camera imagery and render reflective virtual objects.

developer.apple.com

So, if we get this glass UI thing, I believe this years gimmick (maybe only with 17 series iPhones) will be “realistic” reaction to ambient light on these glassy bits.

It’s a great way to keep these chips crunching just for fun.

 

[bLackjackj]

Its very simply the VisionOS icons but square. Why is this so hard to understand?

 

[WU27f1xcCs]

They should have codenamed it “Longhorn”.

View attachment 2497202

I unashamedly loved that era so much

 

[darkpaw]

Please bring back skeuomorphism.

While some people keep requesting this, do you have any idea of how much of a nightmare that was for developers? Bringing it back will slow down everything.

We had to create the left edge of a button, and the right edge, then the bit in the middle that would be used to fill in the width of the button. Then, for the Back button with its left-pointing triangle, another image needed to be created. You couldn't use a plain colour for the background of your app, you had to have wood, steel, or paper, etc. It was a nightmare, and all so you could look at a fake bookshelf on a 4-inch screen.

Not every developer is also a graphic artist, so pre-iOS 7 an app was either coded well or looked nice, unless you were part of a team in a company. Indie devs had it hard.

 

[ronno]

There is no such thing as Sirigate. Only a few certain people are making a big deal about a missed deadline. It is better for Apple to make it right than pull a Google and release something before it is ready.

The AI delay (and Siri ineffectiveness) has recently been written up in the Wall Street Journal, etc., etc.
It’s definitely not just a few bloggers - but I’m guessing you actually know that.

 

[v3rlon]

So to be clear, based on this thread:
Apple should give up on this glass design and focus on skeuomorphic designs like they used to.
Apple should definitely never ever use skeuomorphic designs like they used to.
Apple should do more with the glass design
Apple copied the glass ideas from Windows Vista
Apple did not copy the glass ideas from Windows
Apple should stop adding new features and focus on bug fixes
Apple will die if they don't get some cool new original features implemented.
Tim Cook is only in this for the money and doesn't care about customers, designs, or anything.
Tim Cook is deliberately trying to tank the company with bad decisions. Its the only thing that makes sense (how does that make sense, exactly?)
Sirigate is dooming Apple
Sirigate is not a thing


Am I missing anything?

 

[baconcat_8964]

I still miss the skeuomorphic design of the original design, still think that it was much better than the current flatter design.

Aren't we already past the time when we need the software to look like a real life thing to teach people how it works?

 

[icerabbit]

As long as I can turn it off in accessibility, they can have at it.

I hate translucent effects, because it add nothing, it only distracts and causes eye strain.

Jut give me plain windows, and buttons, with proper colors. Not the skinny three shades of grey fonts etc.

If you have an old mac, Snow Leopard is such a joy to use.

 

[Itinj24]

I, for one, am looking forward to this… and all the inevitable bugs that follow.

 

[Adora]

I am curious how it will run on my SE3.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

If you have an old mac, Snow Leopard is such a joy to use.

I hate translucent effects, because it add nothing, it only distracts and causes eye strain.

You mean the same snow leopard that had a (pretty controversial at the time) translucent menu bar, 3D Dock and rewritten Finder with tons of animation?
I swear, sometimes you people are just fighting imaginary enemies.
“ I hate translucency, let’s go back to snow leopard where there was… Plenty of translucency”.

 

[frownface]

FFS Apple we need a Snow Leopard equivalent of an iOS/iPadOS (macOS, too) update

https://theilife.com/2008/06/wwdc-2008-mac-os-x-state-of-the-union-mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard/

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/08/28/mac-os-x-snow-leopard-15-years/

That apple is gone.
The apple of today is beholden to shareholders; and absolutely must show progress for the sake of progress.
Improving user experience is fine; as long as it results in them having a reason to spend more money.

Should apple take a gap year to iron out all the existing problems? yes. Will it be good for consumers? yes. Will it sell more phones? no.
Will releasing another incremental phone built upon vaporware promises result in sales? yes.
Guess which they'll do?

 

[mlayer]

Still have the original Snow Leopard disc in its sleeve box, which I treasure. For the first year or so it sort of was the Pax Romana period of OS X. It was great to use as a go-to for practically any early Intel Mac. As has been pointed out earlier in this thread, Snow Leopard's biggest legacy was cutting off PowerPC Macs. You have to figure that a 2027 or 2028 release will probably do the same for Intel since it will be seven years after the final Intel Mac was sold. That Pax Romana was nearly two years until Lion, which had its own teething issues.

I can't get overly concerned about translucency or flatness or other aesthetics on desktop OSes days since they're really just fads. How much of Vision OS's presentation of depth will translate to a 2-D screen? Probably not much, though I'm eager to see how they do it.

 

[svish]

Interesting. Waiting to see all the changes this year at WWDC. Looks like design changes will be the main change of iOS 19.