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Do you like Liquid Glass on Mac?
- Thread starter Apple Knowledge Navigator
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Poor text legibility on Preview's toolbar. It makes me laugh, they add a huge drop shadow to separate the buttons from the document, but then that obscures the button labels. It's somewhat ironic that an accessibility feature isn't particularly accessible.
Again I'm left asking, "are they even trying anymore?" At least with macOS. Because if this is the result of effort, it should be embarrassing.
It’s crazy how clean, usable and perfect that is. That was the gold standard. If they want to modernize anything they could have just done the scroll bars, Dock, icons and menu bar only.
Being able to easily option click on a title bar to get the document path was an important part of the macOS UI going back 30 years.
Getting rid of title bars and then making the top of windows transparent was just an insane idea and propbably the worst design decision in the history of computing. I am so glad to hear the guy in charge of design has left but I would be much happier to hear he was very angrily fired.
Fortunately app developers don’t need to use all these idiotic UI changes and hopefully Apple reverses some of those decisions.
This one is just unforgivable for me.
It’s just heart breaking. It’s just like the desktop UI version of watching a civilisation getting destroyed by vandals and barbarians.
Yeah it's like Apple skipped their "Design Basics 101" class.
looks just fine on mine, keep in mind that the image below is scaled down, totally legible for me ...
It is as if Apple forgot the basic ideas of a design language, compromising functional interface design for pretty graphics that would justify the number of GPU cores they embed on their chips.
The pervasive translucency muddles together the formal primitives. This weakens semantic boundaries. For example, floating sidebars appear like detachable windows, but are not. Another irritating example is that title-bar transparency erases window boundary cues. When white windows overlap other white windows, it becomes hard to see window boundaries.
A big thing they've screwed up is the core rule of the Xerox PARC UI language that visual containment implies control scope. The most glaring violation is putting traffic-light window controls inside an embedded sidebar, but having them control the containing window.
The work arounds they give in Accessibility prove that Apple half-assed this entire concept. If you "reduce transparency" the menu bar at the top of the screen turns grey and is distinguishable from the desktop again (a good thing), but title bars on windows and floating sidebars become less distinguishable from their containing windows. Then if you switch on "increase contrast", it draws ugly little lines around different UI elements–a tacit acknowledgement by Apple that their transparency rules reduce functionality.
The pervasive translucency muddles together the formal primitives. This weakens semantic boundaries. For example, floating sidebars appear like detachable windows, but are not. Another irritating example is that title-bar transparency erases window boundary cues. When white windows overlap other white windows, it becomes hard to see window boundaries.
A big thing they've screwed up is the core rule of the Xerox PARC UI language that visual containment implies control scope. The most glaring violation is putting traffic-light window controls inside an embedded sidebar, but having them control the containing window.
The work arounds they give in Accessibility prove that Apple half-assed this entire concept. If you "reduce transparency" the menu bar at the top of the screen turns grey and is distinguishable from the desktop again (a good thing), but title bars on windows and floating sidebars become less distinguishable from their containing windows. Then if you switch on "increase contrast", it draws ugly little lines around different UI elements–a tacit acknowledgement by Apple that their transparency rules reduce functionality.
Now that is one of the most cogent and intelligent responses to the thread topic I have seen with valid examples and historical references. Not just opinions.
I liked the idea of liquid glass when it first came out because I thought it was going to be more like OSX tiger but it isn't close. It is like they took all of the worst of a glasslike interface and made an OS. I would have enjoyed a more 3d looking GUI like back in the day even with modern twists but this isn't it and it is disappointing.
I've mentioned all this too in one of my posts. Im almost wondering if they designed iOS (not very well) and then someone said 'Hey Siri design a MacOS based on iOS.' Siri replied 'Im sorry I can't do that' (which for once you can appreciate) and so they set about attempting it anyway.
In Snow Leopard and Aqua overall really any element that was 'Aqua like' was clickable. You knew immediately what was a button and they were coloured separately from the rest of the UI. In Liquid Glass EVERYTHING looks the same, layered on top of each other, with transparency compounding it. Its a complete mess and causes you to stop and to make sure you're clicking the right thing or are even just looking at the correct window.
I work FAST, I have to as I produce many magazines at once. Im dealing with a great many bits of information all at the same time. I need many multiples of windows for emails, messages, spreadsheets, design assets, notes, finder for dragging and dropping to help make my workflow as efficient as possible. Tahoe has genuinely slowed my production down as I have to concentrate way more on where my pointer is and what it's doing and which window Im in. This level of interaction should not even be a conscious thing and pretty much based on reflex as you navigate all the windows. In Liquid Glass you have to consciously make sure your in the correct window and its utterly draining after a long day at work.
Tahoe is genuinely the worst MacOS so far.
People always say you'll get used to whatever changes Apple makes, but for me, that just hasn't been the case since Big Sur. The lack of titlebars still sucks. The completely flat UI and harsh monochrome is still terrible. And the square icons... this is something I continue to hate more as time goes on.
Just looking at this again... are they feint because they're not active? I mean if you click one will it become less s**t?
Either way it doesn't work in Liquid Glass as everything looks the same. If you just tint something it's going look even more like everything else. So while tinting works as a concept to distinguish between active and inactive its clear that Liquid Glass can't handle it because the whole concept of LG is half baked.
Apple Studio Display
in 'dim mode' they 'highlight' but there is no font definition.
With Dim set to 'Never' - at least the active items switch the font to black. The idiocy of this is if you need to make a selection with everything off - you can't read the white on white. Unacceptable.
There are major issues with (some) Widgets and Home.app UI. Both in color pickers and font sizes. This goes hand in hand with the other issues in Contacts/Music/Phone apps. Poor design.
in 'dim mode' they 'highlight' but there is no font definition.
With Dim set to 'Never' - at least the active items switch the font to black. The idiocy of this is if you need to make a selection with everything off - you can't read the white on white. Unacceptable.
There are major issues with (some) Widgets and Home.app UI. Both in color pickers and font sizes. This goes hand in hand with the other issues in Contacts/Music/Phone apps. Poor design.
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Wow. So naff. Do have a HDR screen by any chance? When I set my AppleTV to HDR it washes the UI out so bad very similar to your screen shots but everything else looks fine.
EDIT: Just tried it on my HDR screen and my Home widget has more contrast than yours so not sure what's happening.
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They waded into an aesthetic change that made usability exponentially more difficult to achieve. They've demonstrated a number of times that as they try more and more complex things, they fall short. Often, they're trying to deliver tangible user benefit, like various integration features that have reliability issues. In the case of Liquid Glass they were looking for subjective improvements. It feels self-indulgent and arrogant that they took the risk.
Apple Studio Display, reduced transparency, in light mode
if you turn off RT, its "better"... but then all other elements—Control Center, Menus etc—are too challenging to decipher.
It's a ridiculous game of wack-a-mole. Those of us with "accessibility needs" are being sidelined by dropping the ball here. I just can't understand how those with good eyesight can accept this as normal let alone have a 'it'll get better' attitude?
RT off.
RT on.
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My God this thing is a disgrace.
It's partially because they're trying to force the same design for a desktop and phone, which just makes no sense. Also partially incompetence, clearly. Even with the nonsensical goal of convergence, it could have been done much better than this.
It seems that macOS is the one that has suffered the most among the 26. I understand that iPhones sell and make more money... but they are losing sight of WHERE the content that makes iOS and its companions so successful is actually produced.
Preview is the only application that I have these kinds of problems with.
I have 14 windows open at the moment and only two of them are Apple applications - Safari and Preview. So far, I've not encountered a website that makes the Safari window hard to use. But, I currently have a PDF document open in Preview and it is very unpleasant to use. I am showing thumbnails and the bleed through of the pages into the button area is terrible. The top of the application is an absolute chaotic mess, especially when there's another window behind and extending above it. The bleed through of text actually can obscure the title of the document and the "page x of y" wording.
I tried Apple Pages just now. It doesn't do that kind of silliness. If they retrofit the sidebar crap into it then it probably will start to.
The key to surviving Liquid Glass might be to avoid Apple applications. Certainly Contacts and Preview are high on my hit list. Getting rid of Safari might be a good next step since it would eliminate all the wasted screen real estate due to the extreme rounding of the corners of the windows.
Unfortunately QSpace, my Finder replacement, has adopted the silly Tahoe sidebar. Maybe there's a way to turn it off since they have a million configuration options.
I was able to turn it off in QSpace. They have a setting that makes the sidebar not extend into the toolbar.