It would take a monumental failure in them not delivering quality products and services for people to really make a move that would hit their bottom line. Had this conversation with my teens the other day. They asked me if I considered changing to a Google Pixel which apparently has a much better camera. I told them that I was not familiar with Pixel and would not even bother looking at it. Why? Because I have 4 iPhones in my household, 3 iPads, 3 MacBooks, 3 Apple Watches, 12 AirTags, everything connected to an Apple ecosystem in iCloud that works seamlessly. Could I get the same with Google or Samsung? Maybe but the effort that would take me to switch is not worth it my time. Thus, I may not like that the iPhone camera is not as fancy as Pixel, I may not like the new iOS, but as long as the "entire ecosystem" works for me, I will stay on it. In my case, this is a year to buy new iPhones as my teens have old models that need replacement as battery is dying and it is time. That means I will get a 17 Pro Max and pass my 15 Pro Max to my wife so she moves her whatever to the kids and we recycle the old ones. Well, I will have no choice other than using iOS26 as my new phone will come with it. It is what it is.
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iOS 26's Liquid Glass Design Draws Criticism From Users
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This is true, but not a great comparison. Apple didn't fundamentally change Phone, Messages, etc, anything analogous to removing the steering wheel or pedals. Instead they covered the whole thing in a strange and unpleasant coat of paint, like removing all the dashboard buttons and putting those controls on an awkwardly placed screen or getting rid of the turn signal stalk and putting the indicators on the wheel.
Fundamentally still the same thing. Just much less pleasant to use as a result.
I’ll give you the most egregious one. Most Liquid Glass controls can be held and dragged. All of them follow finger but not in Safari. In Safari tab groups, the movement is inverted and moreover, a drag to the right is an action to create a tab group
Yep! Exactly why Apple can and will do anything they want.
A large chunk of folks are stuck and/or won't leave literally no matter what.
Fun times.
/s
I haaaaate it so much. The time I have to use my work phone with the update installed on it-- it gives me a headache and makes me dizzy. Im glad others hated the animation as well-- it makes no sense. There's no purpose to all these visual frills we don't need.
As for the skeuomorphism, the day they did away with it was the best day ever. That design change STILL feels solid. I pray we never head back in that direction.
As for the skeuomorphism, the day they did away with it was the best day ever. That design change STILL feels solid. I pray we never head back in that direction.
But if a car manufacturer moved the controls around people would be saying, "You just hate change." Which is my point.
Right. And my point is that there are manufacturers moving those controls back, to great praise at that. Because they listened to their clientele.
And my point is STILL that manufacturers only moved a few, non-vital controls, and it took them 10 years to _start_ fixing those.
This is the conclusion of our correspondence, which I did not begin, and terminate with satisfaction.
I have a problem with screen brightness since installing iOS 26 on my 15PM. I have true tone switched on but it continually fails. I'll take the phone out of my pocket and unlock it to find the screen very dark. I turn up the brightness in the control centre because I have to, but then after locking the screen and unlocking it again it becomes super-bright (reflecting my adjustment?), so I have to turn it down again.
Not happy with the 'toy-town' look either tbh 😐
Not happy with the 'toy-town' look either tbh 😐
the fact that i need to double tab to get to my open tabs in safari infuriates me.
everything does, but esspecially the keyboard looks the most awful, cartoony and juvenile
everything does, but esspecially the keyboard looks the most awful, cartoony and juvenile
Settings > Apps > Safari > under the Tabs heading select "Bottom" instead of "Compact".
Correct. People buy Apple products for their own reasons and not the reasons fornMR posters. Apple removed the headphone jack. Lots of complaining, did Apple suffer. Apple removed the charging brick, have a multi-year cycle for their phones, don’t innovate enough, Tim Cook is greedy, shareholders first, etc. Did any of that hubris matter to the masses?
It’s easy to change. Just do it. There are tools to help one move to another platform.
They may not care, but people don’t care they don’t care. And Apple still has a high satisfaction rating.
I'm quite enjoying the Liquid Glass aesthetic on all my devices (M2 Mac Studio, 11 pro, iPad mini 7, & 2 Apple TVs). In fact, other than the standard .0 release bugs, my only major complaint is the (needless, regressive, accessibility conflicting) loss of Launchpad.
Which is even more ironic because the Liquid Glass icons would've looked great in Launchpad.
Which is even more ironic because the Liquid Glass icons would've looked great in Launchpad.
Really? After more than 1/2 thousand entries in this thread and whole day discussion? Have you joined lately? It would be great you first flip through this thread and read at least some of entries, e.g. #349.
There's so much to say, but my key point is that LiquidDesign is lack of balance between usability and aesthetic. They decided to base its new design on distractors. Transparency - lack of balance (definitely too much). Blurred text as an element (e.g. top and bottom of text inside Safari window) of design - very bad choice. Blurred text has bad connotations (visual defect). It's ok when you make text hardly visible (like in OSes until 26). Here, it's like - I can recognize it but can't read it. Part of your brain is involuntary trying to read it and "steals" precious brain's CPU resources. Great achievement of Ive was that he knew what kind of aesthetic fits OS GUI (it must be about simplicity - Bauhaus style, etc., but definitely not about baroque style).
The fact that Apple was changing back and forth drop down notification window visual parameters with every beta release is best example of my point. Every next iteration will be compromise between compliance with LiquidGlass and usability and cleanness. Unless they'll find the way to fix it (27 or 28 version release?) in some way (roll back some features of LiquidGlass and improve other).
And last point. I'm pretty sure that Apple knew what they're doing and they have no clue what final, "stable" version of new design will be in couple of months/years. They just decided that it's time to launch the product as distractor (same word again) for AI flop and small set of new features. People buy products, incomes are huge anyway, despite flops. That's the only thing that matters for Tim and investors.
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How do you think anything would ever improve if it stayed the same? We would all still be on Windows 95 or even earlier! Change is inevitable and when we look back things most often improve as a result .. except in politics of course!
The idea is cool, but as the former head of a design shop at a publisher I do find some of the design touches reminiscent of the early days of “desktop publishing” when a amateurs could layout their own posters or books. The outlines on everything are super cheesy, diminishing an otherwise good concept. And we should be able to control the level of transparency. The customization of lock screens is great too, but it’s not flexible enough or even predictable enough. I find myself fighting with it all the time. Apple is known for tight control over design, and a dedication to cool, simple, clean design, but there is a sloppiness in this evolution. I also think OS26 is a wee bit flaky, especially on older devices.
It's been two days since iOS 26 was released, and Apple's new Liquid Glass design is even more divisive than expected.
Any major design change can create controversy as people get used to the new look, but the MacRumors forums, Reddit, Apple Support Communities, and social media sites seem to feature more criticism than praise as people discuss the update.
Complaints
There are a long list of complaints about Liquid Glass, from the impact on readability to lag caused by animations. Here are some of the main critiques:
Some People Like It
- Animations run slow, and the interface feels sluggish on older iPhones.
- The constantly changing colors, shapes, and shading are distracting.
- The animations make no sense.
- It looks like a Barbie phone with battery wasting features.
- Basic actions require too many taps.
- The bubbles and floaty icons are cartoony.
- The contrast is awful.
- Some app icons look blurry.
- The design is inconsistent, and some things are flat while some are glass.
- Highlights on UI elements are inconsistent.
- It's hard to read things like notifications.
- The effects are too subtle for the system overhead costs.
On the MacRumors forums, complaints about Liquid Glass are interspersed with responses from people who have been using it during beta, and the consensus is "you'll get used to it."
It does always take time to get used to a new look, and Liquid Glass will become less jarring as people become accustomed to the new animations and the behavior of buttons and other interface elements.
Not everyone hates Liquid Glass, and there are also many positive comments from people who prefer the new design. Some of that sentiment:
Media Complaints
- It makes the iPhone feel faster.
- It feels modern and clean, and makes a boring smartphone a little more fun.
- It's bright, bouncy, and just plain cool to use.
- Getting notifications is satisfying, and the Lock Screen keypad is like bubbles.
- It's fresh and easy to get accustomed to.
- iOS 18's flat UI was depressing, so iOS 26 is an improvement.
- It's technologically impressive with the light refraction and diffusion of chromatic aberration.
- The icons are slick and it harkens back to the OG Apple UI design.
iOS 7
- The unbearable sameness of Liquid Glass
- Liquid Glass Could Be One of Apple's Most Divisive System Designs Yet
- This Liquid Glass Optical Illusion on iOS 26 Is Driving Me Insane
- Apple's Liquid Glass: The liquid works, but the glass is broken
Everyone remembers iOS 7, because it was the first big design change that Apple made to iOS. Apple did away with skeuomorphism in favor of a "flat" design, and it was not a change that people were prepared for. A lot of the comments shared when iOS 7 came out mirror the comments we're seeing now about Liquid Glass.
Despite the complaints about iOS 7, Apple stuck with it. There were ongoing refinements to fix bugs and to tweak the overall design, but Apple didn't reverse course. Design updates in iOS 8, iOS 9, and iOS 10 didn't change the fundamentals, but it got better and bette... Click here to read rest of article
- iOS 7 Interface Design is so UGLY!
- The real problem with iOS 7 Design
- Does anyone dislike IOS 7 as much as I do?
- iOS 7 Bugs: Will They Ever be Fixed
- The biggest complaints about iOS 7 so far
- The design of iOS 7: simply confusing
Article Link: iOS 26's Liquid Glass Design Draws Criticism From Users
It’s draining my 15PM battery very fast as well. But I can’t agree on the looks. I'd restore to my backup of iOS 18, but then I'd lose the calling features, which seem good functions..
Tap and hold on the dots and then move up to the All Tabs button and release. Or you can also swipe up on the address bar
That's not how effective change works.
Effective change is implemented because a problem needs to be resolved, and those solving the problem understand what they need to do from the user perspective. Windows 95, as much as I hated it, was driven by changes requested by Windows users to make the OS more user-friendly—and it did. Regardless of how we old-school Mac users want to think of it, something like Win95 was necessary for the large-scale adoption of the home computer and everything that came with it. Win95 made DOS easy, and it allowed your parents to work on a spreadsheet from work after you played Doom. It was a seismic shift that affected the world; it was not solely change for change's sake.
What, precisely, is Liquid Glass solving? Sure, Apple could make the argument that it's a common UI, but the UX differs from device to device because the devices' purposes change. As I mentioned way back on another page, implementing a common design language across the devices makes sense—it would allow me to quickly move from an iPad to a Vision Pro to a Mac and generally know what I'm doing and how to navigate around each device. That's not what Liquid Glass is doing—it's simply one type of frosting on different types of cake.
Well, it is solving a problem, or is intended to solve a problem, for Apple.
It doesn’t solve any tech problem or Ux problem.
It does solve an “infinitive growth” problem. Both shareholders and customers expect significant level of “new shiny stiff” every year.
To be fair, this forum is very guilty of that.
So Apple is under pressure to come up with obviously shines new stiff every year, even when there’s no need for it.
Realistically, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with minor iterative updates each year. It’s a phone. It’s a nature technology, it already has all the functionality it needs.
But then influencers moan, forums, moan, and shareholders get worried.
Of you’re going to blame Apple fir selling snake-oil every year, acknowledge that it’s the users, influencers and internet dwellers / keyboarder warrior that have painted Apple into this corner. (A very wealthy corner, I’m not claiming Apple are victims).
Change only for change’s sake. We are the problem, not Apple. It’s us that has made this happen.
Apple do listen to the Apple community. The problem the the Apple fan community ( like all online communities) is toxically impatient, demanding and overly entitled.
Maybe it’s just a case of getting the corporation we deserve.
I really like it! In my opinion it sharpens up the look, on phone, iPad, watch, and even in the car. GREAT JOB Apple!
It's been two days since iOS 26 was released, and Apple's new Liquid Glass design is even more divisive than expected.
Any major design change can create controversy as people get used to the new look, but the MacRumors forums, Reddit, Apple Support Communities, and social media sites seem to feature more criticism than praise as people discuss the update.
Complaints
There are a long list of complaints about Liquid Glass, from the impact on readability to lag caused by animations. Here are some of the main critiques:
Some People Like It
- Animations run slow, and the interface feels sluggish on older iPhones.
- The constantly changing colors, shapes, and shading are distracting.
- The animations make no sense.
- It looks like a Barbie phone with battery wasting features.
- Basic actions require too many taps.
- The bubbles and floaty icons are cartoony.
- The contrast is awful.
- Some app icons look blurry.
- The design is inconsistent, and some things are flat while some are glass.
- Highlights on UI elements are inconsistent.
- It's hard to read things like notifications.
- The effects are too subtle for the system overhead costs.
On the MacRumors forums, complaints about Liquid Glass are interspersed with responses from people who have been using it during beta, and the consensus is "you'll get used to it."
It does always take time to get used to a new look, and Liquid Glass will become less jarring as people become accustomed to the new animations and the behavior of buttons and other interface elements.
Not everyone hates Liquid Glass, and there are also many positive comments from people who prefer the new design. Some of that sentiment:
Media Complaints
- It makes the iPhone feel faster.
- It feels modern and clean, and makes a boring smartphone a little more fun.
- It's bright, bouncy, and just plain cool to use.
- Getting notifications is satisfying, and the Lock Screen keypad is like bubbles.
- It's fresh and easy to get accustomed to.
- iOS 18's flat UI was depressing, so iOS 26 is an improvement.
- It's technologically impressive with the light refraction and diffusion of chromatic aberration.
- The icons are slick and it harkens back to the OG Apple UI design.
iOS 7
- The unbearable sameness of Liquid Glass
- Liquid Glass Could Be One of Apple's Most Divisive System Designs Yet
- This Liquid Glass Optical Illusion on iOS 26 Is Driving Me Insane
- Apple's Liquid Glass: The liquid works, but the glass is broken
Everyone remembers iOS 7, because it was the first big design change that Apple made to iOS. Apple did away with skeuomorphism in favor of a "flat" design, and it was not a change that people were prepared for. A lot of the comments shared when iOS 7 came out mirror the comments we're seeing now about Liquid Glass.
Despite the complaints about iOS 7, Apple stuck with it. There were ongoing refinements to fix bugs and to tweak the overall design, but Apple didn't reverse course. Design updates in iOS 8, iOS 9, and iOS 10 didn't change the fundamentals, but it got better and bette... Click here to read rest of article
- iOS 7 Interface Design is so UGLY!
- The real problem with iOS 7 Design
- Does anyone dislike IOS 7 as much as I do?
- iOS 7 Bugs: Will They Ever be Fixed
- The biggest complaints about iOS 7 so far
- The design of iOS 7: simply confusing
Article Link: iOS 26's Liquid Glass Design Draws Criticism From Users
It's failry subtle on the iPad and iPhone, I don't mind it. Nothing like going from iOS 6 -> 7.
It just sucks because we'll be stuck with this UI until 2037ish.
It just sucks because we'll be stuck with this UI until 2037ish.
With the Liquid Glass, I like the minimalism I have with it on smaller items like inside the Music app.
I didn't really test the Liquid Glass icons it much during the betas. If people are complaining, I maybe should have tested a bit more to see if I like it.
I didn't really test the Liquid Glass icons it much during the betas. If people are complaining, I maybe should have tested a bit more to see if I like it.
