Glass is complicated as a design element, give it time

[!!!]

The LG elements are not there to admire

No, that's exactly what they are for. It's so obvious, the entire thing has been designed around very fancy and computationally expensive effects. Effects are decorations.

instead to be the least intrusive and not to take your attention away from the actual contents you interact with.

This is what Apple says, but it's doublespeak and they actually mean the opposite. Hovering above content (blocking out parts of it) with big shadows and tons of effects is the opposite of getting out of the way.

video overlays (big glass see-through buttons

The massive button that covers and distorts the content is "getting out of the way"? Your example literally proves my point.

quite a bit of sense

It makes zero sense and Apple's development/design documentation is nonsensical wordbabble meant to justify their delusional design lead, Alan Dye.

It's like if I said I was trying to get out of your way, but I kept walking in front of you and putting up fun house mirrors as you tried to navigate the streets of NYC.

 

[jay-A]

The funny thing with Apple is that they convinced us that less is more when releasing the flat design, and now they're going the other way by needlessly complicating the UI elements. They're only interested in changing things every 5 years or so, not in making life simpler.

 

[one more]

No, that's exactly what they are for. It's so obvious, the entire thing has been designed around very fancy and computationally expensive effects. Effects are decorations.

This is what Apple says, but it's doublespeak and they actually mean the opposite. Hovering above content (blocking out parts of it) with big shadows and tons of effects is the opposite of getting out of the way.

The massive button that covers and distorts the content is "getting out of the way"? Your example literally proves my point.

It makes zero sense and Apple's development/design documentation is nonsensical wordbabble meant to justify their delusional design lead, Alan Dye.

It's like if I said I was trying to get out of your way, but I kept walking in front of you and putting up fun house mirrors as you tried to navigate the streets of NYC.

I see your points and, as it is at the moment, the new design indeed looks half baked, but Apple are still actively tweaking it, so let’s see how it ships in September.

 

[Ctrlos]

I see your points and, as it is at the moment, the new design indeed looks half baked, but Apple are still actively tweaking it, so let’s see how it ships in September.

I’m hoping it gets better but at this point I’m not holding my breath. There isn’t normally a huge bunch of changes from the public beta to gold release, sadly.

For me it would take reducing the transparency to 10% so that something like the control centre appears the same as the transparency behind the Safari address bar:

From this to this:

 

[klasma]

I see your points and, as it is at the moment, the new design indeed looks half baked, but Apple are still actively tweaking it, so let’s see how it ships in September.

No amount of tweaking will change the fact that the whole concept of Liquid Glass is misguided if clarity of the UI is a goal. But yes, let’s see.

 

[BarrettF77]

Go to Android then, enjoy the UI.

The only thing I can fault Apple right now is how behind they are in AI (Siri still sucks), but even then, I use primarily ChatGPT + the plethora of other AI tools that keep changing every day.

I'm picking up my Fold 7 tomorrow and am optimistic about it for a little change. I don't see the iPhone 17 pro impressing me and will have one of my 16 pros the next year and try out the new android setup for comparison. Apple just didn't motivate me after the last year of misses and the awful UI of iOS 26. I think they really need some restructuring internally and new leadership to give them a vision again they can be proud of.

 

[GrassShark]

Another beta released and legibility has taken a step backwards while any benefits have yet to reveal themselves.

 

[MDTyKe]

Quite honestly, the direction of iOS 26 is so bad I can see this resulting in lawsuits for Apple. When an iPhone 15 Pro runs sluggish due to all this unnecessary transparency and flickering, people are going to have outrage if they can't revert to something usable. Yes, I know this is a beta, but I've never, ever seen a 4th beta this bad. This seems to slow devices down to a level that's unwarranted, without giving anyone an option. I even had Reduce Transparency enabled. I fired up an old iPhone 7 running an old iOS, and it felt so "snappy" in comparison. It was as if my 15 Pro was 10 years old all of a sudden.

Like others I want to give this grace, but it's not looking hopeful. If this launches anywhere near where it is today, it'll certainly be time to short AAPL.

 

[SoYoung]

Quite honestly, the direction of iOS 26 is so bad I can see this resulting in lawsuits for Apple. When an iPhone 15 Pro runs sluggish due to all this unnecessary transparency and flickering, people are going to have outrage if they can't revert to something usable. Yes, I know this is a beta, but I've never, ever seen a 4th beta this bad. This seems to slow devices down to a level that's unwarranted, without giving anyone an option. I even had Reduce Transparency enabled. I fired up an old iPhone 7 running an old iOS, and it felt so "snappy" in comparison. It was as if my 15 Pro was 10 years old all of a sudden.

Like others I want to give this grace, but it's not looking hopeful. If this launches anywhere near where it is today, it'll certainly be time to short AAPL.

We are months of final release. Public beta isn’t out yet. Just calm down.

For what I remember, beta for major release never was optimized at this stage.

 

[SoYoung]

Another beta released and legibility has taken a step backwards while any benefits have yet to reveal themselves.

Seriously, What legibility issues? I’m vision impaired myself and this beta solve almost all problems especially the lock screen being darker when you scroll notifications. This new beta looks perfect and I’m glad apple listened. If you still have issues with legibility, accessibility is there for that.

 

[GrassShark]

Legibility

issues

like

these

ones.

I'd be curious to know what your visual impairment actually is. There are lots of different forms of impairment and some don't really impact how you see a phone screen.

That being said, my vision is basically perfect as of a couple of months ago and while I can read some of these if I zoom in or really focus, none of these examples are as easily glanceable as the current design and some, like the tiktok icon under the clock, make text completely illegible. It seems from the screenshots that I've seen that text in notification bubbles on the main homescreen are somewhat solved, but those were always the low hanging fruit. The little details like the clock and control icon labels are where designs live or die. Given that I have no visual accessibility needs, I shouldn't need to resort to accessibility features, and if that really is the only solution to make this stuff legible then it's just more evidence that this is fundamentally bad design.

And, just to be clear, all of this is still for done in order to provide no tangible benefit. It makes no sense.

 

[MDTyKe]

Legibility
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ones.
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I'd be curious to know what your visual impairment actually is. There are lots of different forms of impairment and some don't really impact how you see a phone screen.

That being said, my vision is basically perfect as of a couple of months ago and while I can read some of these if I zoom in or really focus, none of these examples are as easily glanceable as the current design and some, like the tiktok icon under the clock, make text completely illegible. It seems from the screenshots that I've seen that text in notification bubbles on the main homescreen are somewhat solved, but those were always the low hanging fruit. The little details like the clock and control icon labels are where designs live or die. Given that I have no visual accessibility needs, I shouldn't need to resort to accessibility features, and if that really is the only solution to make this stuff legible then it's just more evidence that this is fundamentally bad design.

And, just to be clear, all of this is still for done in order to provide no tangible benefit. It makes no sense.

I think people are in denial over how bad this is. I’ve been beta testing for 10+ years (probably more like 20 if I’m being honest), and for a 4th beta this is some of the worst performance from Apple I’ve seen.

I went back to 18.5 and my iPhone feels unbelievably fast. Heck even little things like going to the various modes in the Phone app, or opening camera to take a selfie. It almost feels as if Apple are intentionally slowing devices down. I’ve never seen such poor design from Apple at any stage, even in the dev betas. It’s quite shocking to be honest.

 

[GrassShark]

I think people are in denial over how bad this is. I’ve been beta testing for 10+ years (probably more like 20 if I’m being honest), and for a 4th beta this is some of the worst performance from Apple I’ve seen.

I went back to 18.5 and my iPhone feels unbelievably fast. Heck even little things like going to the various modes in the Phone app, or opening camera to take a selfie. It almost feels as if Apple are intentionally slowing devices down. I’ve never seen such poor design from Apple at any stage, even in the dev betas. It’s quite shocking to be honest.

I'm not even talking about performance at this point, I haven't used any of the betas (I'm not a dev and so I don't run dev betas ever) but I trust Apple can at least get that to a manageable state by launch. My issues are with the design language that seems to have put usability way down on the list of priorities when it should really be up fighting for top priority.

 

[tim_apple]

Quite honestly, the direction of iOS 26 is so bad I can see this resulting in lawsuits for Apple. When an iPhone 15 Pro runs sluggish due to all this unnecessary transparency and flickering, people are going to have outrage if they can't revert to something usable. Yes, I know this is a beta, but I've never, ever seen a 4th beta this bad. This seems to slow devices down to a level that's unwarranted, without giving anyone an option. I even had Reduce Transparency enabled. I fired up an old iPhone 7 running an old iOS, and it felt so "snappy" in comparison. It was as if my 15 Pro was 10 years old all of a sudden.

Like others I want to give this grace, but it's not looking hopeful. If this launches anywhere near where it is today, it'll certainly be time to short AAPL.

I’m using the same phone as you. Doesn’t feel slow at all.

 

[AlanMarron]

LG will make perfect sense when you get your Neuralink implant.

 

[!!!]

while I can read some of these if I zoom in or really focus, none of these examples are as easily glanceable as the current design and some, like the tiktok icon under the clock, make text completely illegible.

I think a lot of people arguing for LG think that, because they can squint at it and figure it out, it must be "readable". Of course the point of a UI is to be easily readable, to be glanceable.

Even disregarding the bad contrast for the text, the entire control has bad contrast. I wouldn't be surprised if the average user had a hard time figuring out that those tab cars are actually UI controls, and not some static part of the content. UI controls need to be distinct from the content, identifiable, and consistent. The transparency makes it hard to distinguish or identify, and the floating nature goes against the past 18 years of controls being pushed to the edge of the screen on some background that extends from that end and removes consistency.

 

[colinw123]

I hate liquid glass so much I might go back to Android, I just prefer it like it is on ios 18 etc.

 

[MDTyKe]

I’m using the same phone as you. Doesn’t feel slow at all.

Fire up 18.5 again, and you'll see what I mean. It's shocking how slow 26 is in comparison.

 

[gigatoaster]

Would be nice to see a video comparison. Maybe it could highlight sluggishness.

 

[youdontsay]

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While I think there have been improvements made, I agree these examples are atrocious. I don’t understand why, for tinted actions or selected states, they are not using « colored » glass. After all it’s in their wwdc documentation video and it would solve that issue.