Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apparently not only they nailed "depth" but spacing & alignment too.

1765792902569.jpeg


1765792848050.jpeg

1765792824542.jpeg
 
My family is in iOS 26. Non-techie 30 somethings. While I haven’t polled them to see if they like it or not, we do as a family talk tech at times and there have not been any complaints.

You should actively encourage your daughter to switch to android - she may be happier.
As an extended family, we’re all long term Apple users. My son received his first iPhone, Christmas 2007, when he was 18. He’s an engineer who was recruited his senior year and rarely upgrades software. I didn’t need to tell him to beware of 26. I think he still uses iPadOS 17 on his mini. My brother, a recently retired technician in an applied physics lab is happy with 26 on his iPad Pro, but it ruined his older iPhone, so he grabbed a 17 Pro.

I encouraged my step-daughter to download .2 then activate reduced transparency and restart. Because of the Apple ecosystem, she’ll stay put.

I was there for OSX beta and saw its glitz, which faded away with upgrades. Bubble mania will fade with time, esp. since Dye is adios.
 
  • Like
Reactions: I7guy
Sitting too close to a 4K TV is probably not recommended and that’s probably the time you will notice the unrealistic super high details.

Example: view a night shot of a city skyline on a 4K TV with low, medium and high brightness in this example SDR/HDR. Now go outside in the night and view a similar city skyline of light up buildings, etc. The atmosphere (air pollution, smog, dust, etc), light pollution, your visual acuity, etc will have it perceive much differently between people standing besides each other compared to that image or video you see on the 4K tv.

People also don’t need to see other people’s skin pores while watching tv. In day-to-day life it’s mundane for our brains to spend time to notice every detail on another human. We will notice anomalies such as an individual having brighter skin, duller/pale skin etc but we don’t notice skin pores unless there is something unusual about it.

What 4K TV and content seeks to capture is your focus and attention and it has accomplished that. Some people report that text on a page if not a bit soft is not a comfortable experience and the eye muscles are unable to relax causing fatigue.
I’ve only seen 4k in stores. I have a 32” 720 TV because of the blurring of which you speak, and I sit at the distance at which one first loses the pixels.

But 26 icons are still fuzzy. No way I will back away from that.
 
As an extended family, we’re all long term Apple users. My son received his first iPhone, Christmas 2007, when he was 18. He’s an engineer who was recruited his senior year and rarely upgrades software. I didn’t need to tell him to beware of 26. I think he still uses iPadOS 17 on his mini. My brother, a recently retired technician in an applied physics lab is happy with 26 on his iPad Pro, but it ruined his older iPhone, so he grabbed a 17 Pro.

I encouraged my step-daughter to download .2 then activate reduced transparency and restart. Because of the Apple ecosystem, she’ll stay put.

I was there for OSX beta and saw its glitz, which faded away with upgrades. Bubble mania will fade with time, esp. since Dye is adios.
“Bubble mania” will be with us for 10 years in an evolving look and feel.

My wife has an iPad Pro who I mistakenly thought was upgraded to iOS 26 but was on iOS 18. I rarely use it but yesterday she said it wasn’t charging right to she gave it to me. I closed tabs, close apps etc. and then told her I was updating to iOS 26. Long story short she an I both agree the iPad Pro on iOS 26 seems faster than iOS 18. And while I toned down 26.2 prior to doing so, Liquid Glass looked great.

Anyway that’s my anecdotal story for today.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Imperial926
“Bubble mania” will be with us for 10 years in an evolving look and feel.

My wife has an iPad Pro who I mistakenly thought was upgraded to iOS 26 but was on iOS 18. I rarely use it but yesterday she said it wasn’t charging right to she gave it to me. I closed tabs, close apps etc. and then told her I was updating to iOS 26. Long story short she an I both agree the iPad Pro on iOS 26 seems faster than iOS 18. And while I toned down 26.2 prior to doing so, Liquid Glass looked great.

Anyway that’s my anecdotal story for today.
My test mule, an iPad gen9, seems to be quick with 26.2. Perhaps the code base was cleaned up or swapped?

You toned down 26.2? You mean the visual effects?

;)

I tried reduced transparency but because LG is the default, there seems to be more anomalies with reduced, so I returned to LG. Only the mist is heinous, and is inconsistent in its depth between Apple apps. On your iPad, do you find that the time/date and connectivity/battery are unnecessarily bigger and crowded?
 
My test mule, an iPad gen9, seems to be quick with 26.2. Perhaps the code base was cleaned up or swapped?

You toned down 26.2? You mean the visual effects?

;)

I tried reduced transparency but because LG is the default, there seems to be more anomalies with reduced, so I returned to LG. Only the mist is heinous, and is inconsistent in its depth between Apple apps. On your iPad, do you find that the time/date and connectivity/battery are unnecessarily bigger and crowded?
Yes I toned down the visual effects. I thought LG looked good and my wife doesn’t care, but I am a minimalist when it comes to animations and such.

To me the date and time looks similar to the way it was in iOS 18.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AlanMarron
I’ve only seen 4k in stores. I have a 32” 720 TV because of the blurring of which you speak, and I sit at the distance at which one first loses the pixels.

But 26 icons are still fuzzy. No way I will back away from that.
No one is asking you to back away from your beliefs, you can submit your grievances about iOS and macOS to Apple online submission as well.

it’s about being cognizant that LiquidGlass is here to stay in some form albeit with refinements and hopefully you come to some compromise, if not the option to jump ship is also available.
 
Nor should you back away from it.
It's true, and done by design.

I really hope so much of this stuff gets readdressed with the 27 OSes and beyond now that Dye is gone.
Nothing to suggest that any UI/UX will not be refined overtime, history has proven it with Apple so why fret.
 
I genuinely can’t see what you are referring to. Both screens look absolutely fine to me. And I would also say, both screens look as clear as each other.

Use the Photos icon for comparison.
There are outlines in the top screen and is much sharper in the lower screen.

Or look at Reminders, with the hazy outer circles around the 3 bullet points, but much sharper in the lower screen.
 
No one is asking you to back away from your beliefs, you can submit your grievances about iOS and macOS to Apple online submission as well.

it’s about being cognizant that LiquidGlass is here to stay in some form albeit with refinements and hopefully you come to some compromise, if not the option to jump ship is also available.
Jump ship? How about I stay on 18 until my banks, etc. stop supporting it? I can bank with my 8+ using 16.

As far as LG being “here to stay”, unless you’re inside of Apple, that’s just your guess. I’ve been using Apple since System 7 and have seen plenty of backtracking.
 
Whilst I like the new design, and appreciate the nuance brought to icon design, it occurred to me that all this might be much less of an issue for people if they changed some of the icons more. I'm thinking of the Photos icon, and it's had the new design language put to the same design. If the design were different, and more suited to the current design, there'd be less direct comparison to the old, flat, hard coloured, sharply minimal design.

People who don't like change won't like anything that isn't what they had yesterday, but everyone in-between would have a better chance with the new design.
 
Jump ship? How about I stay on 18 until my banks, etc. stop supporting it? I can bank with my 8+ using 16.

As far as LG being “here to stay”, unless you’re inside of Apple, that’s just your guess. I’ve been using Apple since System 7 and have seen plenty of backtracking.
Got it Apple backtracked from iOS flat design from skeuomorph only to later give us LiquidGlass.

Same can be said for macOS Aqua. Keep holding onto iOS 18 while you still can and enjoy the ride. /s
 
Got it Apple backtracked from iOS flat design from skeuomorph only to later give us LiquidGlass.

Same can be said for macOS Aqua. Keep holding onto iOS 18 while you still can and enjoy the ride. /s
I’m such an old dog that I’ve seen everything that was in vogue fall from fashion, only to return a generation or so later. Now that generations have compressed to 15 years, I expect that I will live to see flat, quickly identifiable icons, etc make a comeback. Of course, others insist that we’ll be switching to audio “interfaces” and visuals won’t matter. Nothing but GPS into the lake.
 
  • Like
Reactions: turbineseaplane
I’m such an old dog that I’ve seen everything that was in vogue fall from fashion, only to return a generation or so later. Now that generations have compressed to 15 years, I expect that I will live to see flat, quickly identifiable icons, etc make a comeback. Of course, others insist that we’ll be switching to audio “interfaces” and visuals won’t matter. Nothing but GPS into the lake.
I'm waiting for something like a System 9 rehash to come back into fashion. For a clean, professional look.
 
I want to skip that and go back to the skeuomorphic look.
Good lord please no!

Since it's literally impossible to please everyone at once, maybe we should have a system that allows for some theming? Then you can make your system look like OS X, I can run with Liquid Glass, or Mac OS 9 Reincarnated. Then we could all be happy!

Except the devs who somehow have to support it all, but surely we could find a way to make it at least a little bit practical!
 
Good lord please no!

Since it's literally impossible to please everyone at once, maybe we should have a system that allows for some theming? Then you can make your system look like OS X, I can run with Liquid Glass, or Mac OS 9 Reincarnated. Then we could all be happy!

Except the devs who somehow have to support it all, but surely we could find a way to make it at least a little bit practical!
Perfect! I’m in!
 
"softer and without hard edges" = "looks a little blurry to people".
I have experienced this in the last few years with changing eyesight. There are many design and display elements that I now make things blurry to me. High contrast accessibility is a life-saver for me.
 
This is not something Apple has ever shown interest in. And a real benefit of many Linux implementations.
The problem with Linux is that it's too niche for a desktop OS. It's fantastic if you want to tinker, and you can find software that does what you need. I've done my time there, and I don't have the energy to fight with it these days. I no longer use computers for the sake of using a computer. Now when I use a computer it is to do something. All that tinkering was fun back in the day, but now I don't want to have to work just to be able to do some work. Anyway, Linux won't run the software I need to work with so it's a hard pass. Everything I need, and 98% of what I want, runs perfectly on macOS. I'm happy here.
 
Is there any way to fix this? My phone has auto updates on, and I stupidly didn’t do any research into how bad ios26 is. The photos show comparisons of my iPad and iPhone and you can see how blurry the apps look on the phone. It just looks broken. Like an old VHS tape.

Both devices have reduced transparency on and the iPhone has increased contrast which only helped slightly.


View attachment 2587049View attachment 2587050
use dark icons and a darker wallpaper. I find it to be so much better than standard or liquid glass options
 
  • Like
Reactions: Crystal21
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.