Liquid Glass - A must read critique

[Happy_John]

for those who thought that there wouldn’t be any changes, good news. Apparently the beta three updates significantly reduce the liquid Glass effect.
and now people are complaining that it looks “too much like iOS 18”.

People will complain about everything, at least on the internet.

I’ll make no judgement, and I won’t voice an opinion until the release version. I’ve a beta on an iPad, but that’s because I wanted to try the windowing, but I’m ignoring the glass for now.

 

[nathansz]

So, redesign was pointless and all of this was a blunder? All of their promotional videos where they talk about glass and all the cool effects are already ripe for being thrown into the trash. That's what I am getting from this. It increasingly looks like a fiasco.

downloading now

we'll see if there is any improvement

I'll post some before and after shots

EDIT: turns out it's not working on apple silicon yet, just intel, so I haven't seen it yet.

sure is a breath of fresh air booting back in to sequoia after trying to get some work done in Tahoe while it was downloading!

 

[turbineseaplane]

Early reports on the beta released today indicate that the "glass" got toned way down and back into more "frosted"..

I'll be curious to see that.

Please post anything here any of you come across!

 

[StellarVixen]

Early reports on the beta released today indicate that the "glass" got toned way down and back into more "frosted"..

I'll be curious to see that.

Please post anything here any of you come across!

My personal experience is that if it was toned down, it's by a little.

Certainly nowhere near the iOS beta 3 level.

 

[nathansz]

Early reports on the beta released today indicate that the "glass" got toned way down and back into more "frosted"..

I'll be curious to see that.

Please post anything here any of you come across!

I don't see any real difference

 

[StellarVixen]

I don't see any real difference
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Music has been changed, that’s the only instance of where I’ve noticed reduced transparency. There might be some more instances, but I stopped poking around until tomorrow.

 

[nathansz]

tabs look a little better, but still no compact tab view, that a big chunk of screen real estate in and of itself

 

[nathansz]

for those who thought that there wouldn’t be any changes, good news. Apparently the beta three updates significantly reduce the liquid Glass effect.

not really seeing much difference on macOS. maybe some things are a smidge less transparent

the things I dislike about the UI are the same as they were

 

[nathansz]

incidentally, here's reminders and calendar in sequoia vs Tahoe (beta 3)

 

[dypeterc]

I’m a fan of the subtle tweaks to Liquid Glass in beta 3. The first 2 betas were too translucent and everything looked a bit murky but also too in you face. Beta 3 seems to turn the level down a few notches and this seems right. You still have the underpinnings of what makes it Liquid Glass with being able to somewhat see the layers and also maximize legibility. They should carry this forward

 

[StellarVixen]

I’m a fan of the subtle tweaks to Liquid Glass in beta 3. The first 2 betas were too translucent and everything looked a bit murky but also too in you face. Beta 3 seems to turn the level down a few notches and this seems right. You still have the underpinnings of what makes it Liquid Glass with being able to somewhat see the layers and also maximize legibility. They should carry this forward

Agreed. Regarding the glass, I think beta 3 is the perfect compromise. Now, onto the other things.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

tabs look a little better, but still no compact tab view, that a big chunk of screen real estate in and of itself

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The tabs look ridiculous with pills. Again, they've taken a design that worked and needlessly made it more complicated.

 

[AAPLGeek]

The tabs look ridiculous with pills. Again, they've taken a design that worked and needlessly made it more complicated.

The entire obsession with rounding off every corner is just pure insanity. It's why every single UI element is now either floating or encased in pill shapes of varied sizes. What a total cluster****.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I’m a fan of the subtle tweaks to Liquid Glass in beta 3. The first 2 betas were too translucent and everything looked a bit murky but also too in you face. Beta 3 seems to turn the level down a few notches and this seems right. You still have the underpinnings of what makes it Liquid Glass with being able to somewhat see the layers and also maximize legibility. They should carry this forward

Getting more tolerable it looks like.

I fully agree with @AAPLGeek above this though.
The rounding and encapsulating things "just because" is OUT OF CONTROL...

 

[ThomasJL]

But what I can’t help but notice for 12 years now is that without visual effects serving to differentiate one control from another, we’ve lost immediate recognition of different UI elements.

That quote by Louie Mantia addresses the crux of the problem with flat design and all flat design variants such as neumorphism and glassmorphism.

Notice how Mantia said the words “for 12 years now” in that quote. It’s now 2025, so 12 years ago was 2013, which is when iOS 7 was released. iOS 7 was the first thing Apple ever released with flat design.

Regarding flat design, Mantia said, “…without visual effects serving to differentiate one control from another, we’ve lost immediate recognition of different UI elements.” That explains why skeuomorphism (which was in iOS 6 and all of the versions prior to it) was the most intuitive UI design. It provided visual cues.

The visual cues contained within Apple’s skeuomorphism were based on painstaking user-friendliness research dating back to the development of Apple’s Lisa in the early 1980s. And Tim Cook was so clueless and mediocre that he allowed Jony Ive to throw all of that away in favor of copying Microsoft-pioneered flat design.

Scott Forstall was Apple’s biggest proponent of skeuomorphism, and is responsible for Apple’s two highest peaks of UI design: iOS 6 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Forstall was a goldmine, and Cook threw that all away by firing him. The fact that Cook didn’t realize nor appreciate the value of Apple’s most valuable asset—its skeuomorphic design UI—shows just how utterly incompetent he is.

 

[CyberDavis]

I don't see any real difference
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Unless I’m misunderstanding (and I fully accept I could be) the menu bar and icons are clearer.🤷🏽

 

[nathansz]

Unless I’m misunderstanding (and I fully accept I could be) the menu bar and icons are clearer.🤷🏽

the menubar just looks different because its a different background

 

[DENZIE]

nonsense. Software is a constant evolving thing.
26.0 will quickly be followed by 26.1, 26.2 and so on, and Apple will continue tweaking the design pretty much indefinitely.
anyone remember how many changes they’re actually were between iOS 7.0 and 7.1? it was a lot.

So taking your stance, what’s wrong with giving critique earlier?

 

[Pudlo]

I’m a fan of the subtle tweaks to Liquid Glass in beta 3. The first 2 betas were too translucent and everything looked a bit murky but also too in you face. Beta 3 seems to turn the level down a few notches and this seems right. You still have the underpinnings of what makes it Liquid Glass with being able to somewhat see the layers and also maximize legibility. They should carry this forward

yeah but keep in mind people here are comparing "day" mode, dark mode is much more transparent, like every menu is transparent, so it is interestnig if they go more towards the dark mode transparency or white mode

 

[nathansz]

Apple’s two highest peaks of UI design: iOS 6 and Mac OS X Mountain Lion

the mountain lion dock was ridiculous

I personally really like the current macOS design. it's simple to navigate and unobtrusive. in some ways it is a refinement of mountain lion with the distracting and screen real estate stealing cartoonish elements stripped away

I would call iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia Apple's two highest peaks of UI design

now we are headed back downhill with a design where navigation and UI elements literally overshadow apps and content in an obtrusive and unhelpful way

 

[nathansz]

The visual cues contained within Apple’s skeuomorphism were based on painstaking user-friendliness research dating back to the development of Apple’s Lisa in the early 1980s.

Which was helpful when most people weren't used to computers and needed a lot of help finding their way around.

 

[ThomasJL]

Which was helpful when most people weren't used to computers and needed a lot of help finding their way around.

That is the elitist argument that many people used to justify flat design. It’s an ignorant argument that reeks of privilege. That argument was widely propagated by flat design supporters in 2013 (when Apple released iOS 7), but the data from 2017 and 2021 shows how extremely and utterly wrong it is.

In 2017, the World Economic Forum reported that in wealthy OECD countries, “A quarter of adults can’t use a computer” and “Almost a quarter (24.3%) of the people in the study don’t know how to use one. Ten per cent had never used a computer…”

In 2021, the United Nations reported that 2.9 billion people, which is 37% of the world’s population, have never used the Internet.

Sources:

The four levels of computer skills, and the surprising number of adults who fall short

Only 5% of people in OECD countries are any good with a computer.

www.weforum.org

More than a third of world’s population have never used internet, says UN

Nearly 3bn people, or 37% of global population, have never been online despite rise in use during pandemic

www.theguardian.com

 

[StellarVixen]

Which was helpful when most people weren't used to computers and needed a lot of help finding their way around.

In a nutshell: it worked, and it worked so damn well.

 

[nathansz]

That is the elitist argument that many people used to justify flat design. It’s an ignorant argument that reeks of privilege.

Please explain how it is elitist and reeks of privilege.

In 2017, the World Economic Forum reported that in wealthy OECD countries, “A quarter of adults can’t use a computer” and “Almost a quarter (24.3%) of the people in the study don’t know how to use one. Ten per cent had never used a computer…”

In 2021, the United Nations reported that 2.9 billion people, which is 37% of the world’s population, have never used the Internet.

What makes you think any of that has anything to do with UI?

 

[ThomasJL]

Please explain how it is elitist and reeks of privilege.

The tech journalists who used that argument in 2013 assumed that just because they were fortunate enough to have the time and financial resources to use computers and smartphones for a long enough time that they don’t need the visual cues of skeuomorphic design anymore, no one else should be able to have those visual cues anymore.

What makes you think any of that has anything to do with UI?

People who are inexperienced with computers and smartphones are confused by flat design and would benefit from the visual cues offered by skeuomorphic design.