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Liquid Glass - A must read critique

Shirasaki said:
Still, just because you don’t see much of the changes visually doesn’t mean there’s no change under the hood.
Click to expand...

In the past 5 or so years there have been some pretty major changes in the way macOS works "under the hood." Especially when it comes to the boot process, security, APFS and the way the kernel, user space and extensions all interact.

There are no such major changes with Tahoe, evidenced by the fact that most hackintoshes running sequoia can run Tahoe with minimal changes

Tahoe is for the most part Sequoia with a new UI
 
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nathansz said:
In the past 5 or so years there have been some pretty major changes in the way macOS works "under the hood." Especially when it comes to the boot process, security, APFS and the way the kernel, user space and extensions all interact.

There are no such major changes with Tahoe, evidenced by the fact that most hackintoshes running sequoia can run Tahoe with minimal changes

Tahoe is for the most part Sequoia with a new UI
Click to expand...
First of all, Tahoe is the last version of macOS Intel Mac will ever run, for those Mac that supports Tahoe. For their final version, making it as fancy and flashy as possible is ok imo. Nothing wrong with that.

Second, innovation doesn’t have to be mixed with under the hood changes AND visual changes. Besides, I think I see somewhere that Tahoe is the version that removes some key features in the bygone era, starting with built in FireWire drivers. And some changes causes it to not fully support Intel Macs without certain security chips, which idk if OCLP projects can resolve.

There’s always more that meets the eye.
 
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This complementary piece by Riccardo Mori is also worth a read. He goes a bit deeper into Apple's HIG and changes in icon design.

https://morrick.me/archives/10068



mori 1.png



mori 1-2.png



mori 2.png
 
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I’m out now.

I’ve been battling some software I need to work for about three months now. The vendor is open source. They don’t know what Apple broke and we can’t dig into their stack enough to work it out.

That and some worries about my data being held ransom (particularly proprietary undocumented APIs and storage - notes, numbers, reminders etc)

To have this utterly dire redesign appear on the horizon and be told it’s magical and something to look forward to is insulting my meagre intelligence. It’s the final straw.

I recently put down the cash for a not exactly bottom end M4 macbook Pro which I regret. I should not be rewarding them for this behaviour. So I’m not going to any more.

I have put together a mid range desktop PC and set up a very locked down windows 11 enterprise LTSC build on it (without the consumer garbage). Everything is offline and cloud disconnected apart from email which has moved to Fastmail after the iCloud email debacle last week. The software I need actually works properly there. And the vendor breaks it less often.

My Mac mini, iPad have been sold. I am migrating everything else over slowly.

I’m also fed up with being gouged. I put down £1k and I have an upgradable Ryzen 9600X, upgradeable 32Gb DDR5, upgradable 1TB SSD, upgradable Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16Gb. I chucked a 6TB NAS disk I have lying around in the case for snapshots with macrium reflect.

To clarify the design pushed me over the edge. It’s that visually offensive.
 
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nathansz said:
It won’t be looking and feeling great.

It will run the same, it’s an almost entirely cosmetic update this year
Click to expand...
I wouldn’t jump ahead and say it will run the same. It doesn’t run smooth on my 15 Pro and it‘s horrible with Low Power Mode enabled. Maps is almost unusable. I can’t imagine it running as smooth as iOS 18 does on my 11 Pro. Personally I’ve also not seen any reports from Mini users, but I imagine they are also going to suffer from weird and clunky UI „optimizations“, like they are present on SE phones when changing the text size.
 
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Shirasaki said:
First of all, Tahoe is the last version of macOS Intel Mac will ever run, for those Mac that supports Tahoe. For their final version, making it as fancy and flashy as possible is ok imo. Nothing wrong with that.

Second, innovation doesn’t have to be mixed with under the hood changes AND visual changes. Besides, I think I see somewhere that Tahoe is the version that removes some key features in the bygone era, starting with built in FireWire drivers. And some changes causes it to not fully support Intel Macs without certain security chips, which idk if OCLP projects can resolve.

There’s always more that meets the eye.
Click to expand...
But can we really trust Apple to figure all of what doesn’t work well out until WWDC 26?
I’m not interested in installing iOS 9 (iPhone 4s) or iOS 11 (iPhone 5) on my otherwise good and fully working upgraded 2019 16“ MBP.
It wouldn’t be the first time Apple pushes software that isn’t optimized for the oldest supported devices while also being the last update for said devices.
It would be nice to „visually future proof“ such a machine but not if it’s otherwise a downgrade.
Let’s hope Cupertino figures this one out before it’s too late.
 
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cjsuk said:
I’m out now.

I’ve been battling some software I need to work for about three months now. The vendor is open source. They don’t know what Apple broke and we can’t dig into their stack enough to work it out.

That and some worries about my data being held ransom (particularly proprietary undocumented APIs and storage - notes, numbers, reminders etc)

To have this utterly dire redesign appear on the horizon and be told it’s magical and something to look forward to is insulting my meagre intelligence. It’s the final straw.

I recently put down the cash for a not exactly bottom end M4 macbook Pro which I regret. I should not be rewarding them for this behaviour. So I’m not going to any more.

I have put together a mid range desktop PC and set up a very locked down windows 11 enterprise LTSC build on it (without the consumer garbage). Everything is offline and cloud disconnected apart from email which has moved to Fastmail after the iCloud email debacle last week. The software I need actually works properly there. And the vendor breaks it less often.

My Mac mini, iPad have been sold. I am migrating everything else over slowly.

I’m also fed up with being gouged. I put down £1k and I have an upgradable Ryzen 9600X, upgradeable 32Gb DDR5, upgradable 1TB SSD, upgradable Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti 16Gb. I chucked a 6TB NAS disk I have lying around in the case for snapshots with macrium reflect.

To clarify the design pushed me over the edge. It’s that visually offensive.
Click to expand...
Apple products and software would have to be pretty bad for me to go to Windows. It's nowhere near that for me. Yes, I complain about the liquid glass but, the overall interface is still basic Finder with progress (except some of the interface). I mess around with Windows some but, always go back to Mac because it just doesn't feel pleasant to use.
 
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Totally agree Liquid Glass is bad. If a design element needs extensive background blur or drop shadows, maybe it’s just not a very good design element.

They have made such bad choices for Finder windows in macOS Tahoe. Buttons with poor contrast that are visible only by throwing a ******** of drop shadow underneath them. Every toolbar just blurs into the content. Sidebars that sit on top of a window so you need more space around it. It’s just inefficient, less clear, not solving any problem, and frankly: creating more problems.

I thought Apple’s UI design was getting better and better over the years until they announced this. They just walked back on the natural evolution of UI getting more and more out of the way to let the content shine. Now we should be impressed by shiny glass elements? I really don’t care, I don’t want UI to draw attention at all.
 
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Shirasaki said:
Besides, I think I see somewhere that Tahoe is the version that removes some key features in the bygone era, starting with built in FireWire drivers.
Click to expand...

Yes drivers get removed every year. This is not a major "under the hood" change to how the OS works

Shirasaki said:
And some changes causes it to not fully support Intel Macs without certain security chips, which idk if OCLP projects can resolve.
Click to expand...

This has already been resolved.

Shirasaki said:
There’s always more that meets the eye.
Click to expand...

Not in this case. Again, this is a cosmetic update. Everything meets the eye. And in a strikingly negative and less user friendly way.
 
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Joosst said:
I thought Apple’s UI design was getting better and better over the years until they announced this.
Click to expand...

It has been, that's why Liquid Glass is so frustrating.

It turns out Sequoia is peak Aqua.* Tahoe is a massive step backwards.

Rather than merely being the proverbial solution looking for a problem, Liquid Glass creates problems that had already been solved or where none ever existed.

(*Aqua is the name of macOS Desktop Environment, even though people here like to use it to describe a particular era.)
 
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AAPLGeek said:
This complementary piece by Riccardo Mori is also worth a read. He goes a bit deeper into Apple's HIG and changes in icon design.

https://morrick.me/archives/10068
Click to expand...

Excellent piece, thank you for sharing it.

That new migration assistant icon to me seems worse in every possible way.
They stripped it of all personality or context and just made it an arrow that points right?

This is the “good design” of Apple now?
 
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Parowdy said:
I wouldn’t jump ahead and say it will run the same. It doesn’t run smooth on my 15 Pro and it‘s horrible with Low Power Mode enabled. Maps is almost unusable. I can’t imagine it running as smooth as iOS 18 does on my 11 Pro. Personally I’ve also not seen any reports from Mini users, but I imagine they are also going to suffer from weird and clunky UI „optimizations“, like they are present on SE phones when changing the text size.
Click to expand...

I should have been more clear. I'm specifically talking about macOS.

I don't know enough about iOS to comment on how it works or if there are changes.

I do know that yes, Liquid Glass is extremely clunky and annoying on my 12 mini.
 
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Tozovac said:
But why some leader would let it get in this direction of New Vagueness at all is what’s beyond many of us.

I myself want to us my mac, not be suddenly perplexed or distracted by it.
Click to expand...
because (and you know this already), not everyone sees this as a bad move; some ppl like it now (me, for example), most will adapt as they do with every new OS, and we'll then repeat this cycle in a year (or years) when apple changes it up again. good times ☺️
 
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AAPLGeek said:
This complementary piece by Riccardo Mori is also worth a read. He goes a bit deeper into Apple's HIG and changes in icon design.

https://morrick.me/archives/10068
Click to expand...

The problems start from the very first line of the navigation section of the new guidelines:

"Liquid Glass applies to the topmost layer of the interface, where you define your navigation. Key navigation elements like tab bars and sidebars float in this Liquid Glass layer."

Why are navigation elements the topmost layer of the interface, floating on top of everything else?!?!?

Navigation elements should stay out of your way in the background unless you need them, they should take up as little space as possible and should ABSOLUTELY NOT CAST SHADOWS over top of the rest of the UI.
 
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nathansz said:
Navigation elements should stay out of your way in the background unless you need them, they should take up as little space as possible and should ABSOLUTELY NOT CAST SHADOWS over top of the rest of the UI.
Click to expand...
This. And I don't understand how having content fade behind UI elements is in any way better than what we currently have. If the UI is not to distract the user from their content and provide focus, then they should be distinct enough that said content clearly has its own boundaries.
 
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AAPLGeek said:
This complementary piece by Riccardo Mori is also worth a read. He goes a bit deeper into Apple's HIG and changes in icon design.

https://morrick.me/archives/10068
Click to expand...

those who keep saying "it's just a beta, they'll fix it by release" should really read this piece.

it uses apple's own documentation to make clear that the things being complained about are not bugs, but very deliberate design decisions that are here to stay indefinitely
 
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DENZIE said:
But if one waits to a near final build to give judgment then it’s certainly too late to accomodate any critique
Click to expand...
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.
 
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