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Do you like Liquid Glass on Mac?
- Thread starter Apple Knowledge Navigator
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I miss the 3D tray dock. I have yet to install Tahoe on any of my Macs because I need Adobe Creative Cloud to work; but the overly rounded corners I do not like. I hope Apple corrects that soon.
Before Tahoe, I had Moonlight and the old version of Reeder next to each other on the dock, and they were both using square, gray icons. And I always got the two of them confused, and had to take a second to pick the correct one I wanted.
After I upgraded to Tahoe, I realize I've spread that confusion to every icon on the dock.
Or they rushed Tahoe Emoji Vista out the door to impress Mother Nature during her quarterly visit to Cupertino with biodegradable UI Liquid plastic bubbles to avoid the Mother Nature death glare. Apple took climate anxiety and turned it into a design language. At least it’s carbon neutral, or was, until they started peeling off the Carbon Neutral stickers. Coming soon macOS 27 Tundra, now with 40% more existential dread and 60% less contrast.
Anybody want to go back to the old Menu Bar❓
macmenubar.com
Lou
Boring Old Menu Bar | MacMenuBar.com
The transparent menu bar of MacOS 11 Big Sur is a nightmare for some people. This menu bar app brings back the "perfectly fine" macOS Catalina menu bar.
macmenubar.com
Lou
I want so many things back. Top-notch icons, depth, contrast, buttons, titlebars, corners, a decent settings application, professional quality.....Anybody want to go back to the old Menu Bar❓
Boring Old Menu Bar | MacMenuBar.com
The transparent menu bar of MacOS 11 Big Sur is a nightmare for some people. This menu bar app brings back the "perfectly fine" macOS Catalina menu bar.
Lou
Gloom and doom. All Apple OS now suck beyond repair.
Apple has violated all common sense rules and made the OS almost useless.
People have been complaining about MacOS and iOS being boring and Apple has now done something to change everything up. No one likes the changes and they were pushed down the throats of users. Apple does what they want despite what their customers want. I am sure there are a ton of other complaints I have not listed.
Hmmm. Sort of sounds like Windows 11 or any other proprietary software that changes are made without customers approval. Apple doesn't have a track record of forcing changes on there customers??? Lol.
The more I read this thread the more people insult each other and complain endlessly about something that is completely out of their control.
This last point is what I don't understand. You have two choices. Get used to the new software and figure out how to make it work as best as possible for you. The other choice is to stop using the software you no longer enjoy.
Endless screenshots and various keyboard experts tearing Apple apart are certainly entertaining but I don't think these efforts will amount to much.
If I was really upset by a company decision I would organize a group of people that are like minded and get all of them to give feedback to Apple and call Apple and make suggestions to improve the OS. Maybe host a website for people to voice their complaints and a streamlined set of directions to get their information to people at Apple. Over time this effort could make a difference as attention and publicity to the issues raised by the group might be enough to make a difference. Anything less is just complaints to complain.
We should change the title of the thread to complaints about Liquid Glass and why it sucks.
Apple has violated all common sense rules and made the OS almost useless.
People have been complaining about MacOS and iOS being boring and Apple has now done something to change everything up. No one likes the changes and they were pushed down the throats of users. Apple does what they want despite what their customers want. I am sure there are a ton of other complaints I have not listed.
Hmmm. Sort of sounds like Windows 11 or any other proprietary software that changes are made without customers approval. Apple doesn't have a track record of forcing changes on there customers??? Lol.
The more I read this thread the more people insult each other and complain endlessly about something that is completely out of their control.
This last point is what I don't understand. You have two choices. Get used to the new software and figure out how to make it work as best as possible for you. The other choice is to stop using the software you no longer enjoy.
Endless screenshots and various keyboard experts tearing Apple apart are certainly entertaining but I don't think these efforts will amount to much.
If I was really upset by a company decision I would organize a group of people that are like minded and get all of them to give feedback to Apple and call Apple and make suggestions to improve the OS. Maybe host a website for people to voice their complaints and a streamlined set of directions to get their information to people at Apple. Over time this effort could make a difference as attention and publicity to the issues raised by the group might be enough to make a difference. Anything less is just complaints to complain.
We should change the title of the thread to complaints about Liquid Glass and why it sucks.
People that work at Apple do see the reactions on forums and on social media.
It's fatalistic to just say "get used to it or move on".
The staff making these changes are people that read and respond to feedback, at all companies.
I am saying why waste emotions and time doing something that only concentrates and reinforces the negative things in something you honestly have no control over.
If you can accept that you personally are insignificant and have no control over any decision Apple makes then your actions will change to what can you and away from endless complaints and move to a group to influence change within a company.
Forum feedback is monitored but how much weight does Apple give to a thread on a Mac forum vs an organized effort to effect change?
I am not saying people don't need to vent and voice their opinions as that is the point of a forum but anything on the internet gets exaggerated to a point of ridiculousness and simply becomes an echo chamber of whomever complains the loudest.
If you ask an opinion and one side of that opinion insult anyone who disagrees then the free exchange of ideas becomes scewed and is no longer asking an opinion but forcing compliance with the majority opinion. This defeats the purpose of a forum and that is what I am seeing here.
Let's be respectful to each other and I personally think that a new thread that focus on the problems with liquid glass and feedback would be a better thread since the majority on this forum don't like liquid glass. Another thread could be for those who like liquid glass. Then I think the discussions would be more constructive. Otherwise it will be and endless argument over an opinion of liquid glass being bad or good.
macOS 26 is an awful upgrade, but there are many more things we can do. Give feedback to Apple, pinpoint on forums UI and fuctions that Apple has messed up so other people learn, at the same time make some fun out of it and smile. Windows Vista made a history, now Apple makes similar history with OS26 accross iOS and macOS platforms.
As turbineseaplane said, and I'm on the same boat, some workers from Apple are reading this. Most companies have teams monitoring social media. Especially now, when such data can be used to train LLM models or utilized by AI agents to provide information about their products. Even this thread can motivate Apple company to do changes to "Liquid" UI, UX and applications that are now broken.
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Honestly I think it's fine and I've been using Macs since whatever was before OS 8.6
Liquid Glass refers to some of the special effects in the new Aqua. It’s a theme like the titanium and brushed metal themes. Liquid Glass isn’t the issue, it’s the overall new update of Aqua.
The user complaints are about the bad UI decisions like translucent text on top of text causing text clash, flat buttons that look like disabled buttons, hyper curved corners that make it look like a toy OS and cause padding issues, missing scroll bar tracks, cut off scroll bars, etc. and then on top of that it has all been rushed out the door so that there wasn’t enough time for user feedback.
Big tech companies care less about deep internal testing these days. They treat the public as their guinea pigs now. Anything to save money on hiring people to work hard inside the companies. Imagine if they tested Liquid Glass privately for two years before WWDC and the public beta testing period, but no.
Send us your data and feedback and maybe we will fix it or maybe we will use it to force you to upgrade again and again even when you just need better apps not “better OS”.
There was never ever a reason why Sequioa or Sonoma etc could not have had a Journal app, Health app, Phone app or Meta 4. It’s just pressure to make you upgrade an OS to make older computers redundant.
Thoughts on Finder, with tabs and controls?
Honestly, Tahoe to me looks like a downgrade. Visually more busy, no consistency with how the tabs behave relative to buttons. Feels like an afterthought.
Honestly, Tahoe to me looks like a downgrade. Visually more busy, no consistency with how the tabs behave relative to buttons. Feels like an afterthought.
Craft.app with its new Liquid Glass interface.
Well, at least they managed to properly align their toolbar icons, unlike one of the wealthiest companies in the universe, Apple.
Thoughts?
The Tahoe version is a downgrade in every way I can think of.
The encapsulation of everything completely breaks the visual model of "being on a tab" and having all the controls for that active tab be visually connected.
I can't stay this more strongly.
They have "designers" just doing stuff .. with no rhyme, reason or thought behind the why of things.
Still sitting here on Sonoma, it feels like living on borrowed time. The dye is cast, Apple has switched focus to things that don't matter to me (smartphones, touch interface, AR) and that's not going to change. The option to upgrade to Sequoia is not available through normal means, so next year I'll either have to jump through hoops to do that or simply move on.
At this point, moving on doesn't seem so difficult. There are fewer and fewer advantages to using a Macbook. The main one now is I like the touchpad and speakers on this more than any other laptop, but it's not enough to give up everything else.
At this point, moving on doesn't seem so difficult. There are fewer and fewer advantages to using a Macbook. The main one now is I like the touchpad and speakers on this more than any other laptop, but it's not enough to give up everything else.
Don't give up!
Go to Sequoia. It's really not hard and you'll be able to enjoy it for years to come with no compatibility issues.
Thankfully macOS is nothing like iOS in this regard.
I'm sure I will, if for no other reason than to get the most life I can out of this laptop. But I still have to stubbornly repeat that it's still a compromise, because I have never been a fan of the UI in the Big Sur era.
I have seen more comments than expected referring to Sequoia as "near perfect." It is better than liquid glass as currently implemented, but very far from perfect or even good, for my taste.
I sure as heck didn't say "near perfect", I can tell ya that!
It's just way better than what I'm seeing from Tahoe, and I'm on an M4 Mac Mini here, so my options are what they are.
Also, Sequoia runs fabulously on my 2015 15" MBP, which is my travel machine, so I enjoy that I'm on the same setup for both of my Macs.
I'm pretty sure adding LG to my 2015 MBP would not be a good idea - lol
On one hand, it's tempting to think that surely this Tahoe redesign will be vastly improved. But at the rate things are going, is there any reason to be confident in that? I'm not so sure.