Apple Knowledge Navigator
macrumors 601
I believe the point is that there are examples of where Apple has failed to adhere to its very own guidelines with Tahoe.
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macOS Tahoe: A Pattern of Poor Usability and Design Regression
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Kal Madda
macrumors 601
Outdated and irrelevant guidelines from 1992… Of course, Apple’s probably “failed to adhere” to a LOT of such old and outdated standards in years since they were revised, they aren’t supposed to be binding into eternity, they’re changed and updated for a reason…
Menus | Apple Developer Documentation
A menu reveals its options when people interact with it, making it a space-efficient way to present commands in your app or game.
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
They didn’t, that claim is demonstrably false… And besides, HIG is for third-party developers, not Apple…they broke every single guideline of the current HIGMenus | Apple Developer Documentation
A menu reveals its options when people interact with it, making it a space-efficient way to present commands in your app or game.developer.apple.com
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
And symbols are typically a good thing in UI design, they can convey meaning faster than words. Symbols in menus have made it faster finding things in them for me. I noticed I was spending less time looking for things in the Menu Bar menus when I first started using the betas for Tahoe. There’s a reason symbols are used for traffic signs. They can convey meaning very quickly. Apps like Photoshop or Affinity rely entirely on symbols for tools in the toolbar. I see no convincing argument for not using symbols in menus…
And I read both the aforementioned blog post, and the linked portion of HIG. HIG says “Use a single icon to introduce a group of similar items.” It doesn’t say “don’t use any icons in menus”… And Apple clearly follows this guideline, including in the attached screenshot. “Clean Up” uses an icon, but “Clean Up By” doesn’t, it’s nested under “Clean Up” as a similar item… Same with many other examples in the screenshot…
Reading that portion of HIG, I don’t see a single guideline Apple’s supposedly “broken” or “ignored”… And clearly the claim that Apple has supposedly “broken every current HIG guideline” is obviously and demonstrably false….
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Apple Knowledge Navigator
macrumors 601
Speaking of the behaviour of Liquid Glass in relation to app controls, I don't understand why there are varieties of 'fade away' areas:
and 'solid' areas:
What does the system (and user) gain from a hazy/out-of-focus region, where solid material is appropriate for another app? I'm not buying into this whole "It looks cool" argument.
I've tried playing around with sidebars and other windowing options, but there doesn't seem to be any correlation for how these designs are used.
What's interesting is that Dictionary.app was updated precisely because the hazy button area made text partially illegible; so why not treat other apps in the same fashion? Would it really hurt Apple's pride to replicate the Dictionary.app format system, wide?
By the logic of LG defenders, why hasn't Stickies received this treatment? Why doesn't Mail, a text-heavy app, replicate Dictionary?
and 'solid' areas:
What does the system (and user) gain from a hazy/out-of-focus region, where solid material is appropriate for another app? I'm not buying into this whole "It looks cool" argument.
I've tried playing around with sidebars and other windowing options, but there doesn't seem to be any correlation for how these designs are used.
What's interesting is that Dictionary.app was updated precisely because the hazy button area made text partially illegible; so why not treat other apps in the same fashion? Would it really hurt Apple's pride to replicate the Dictionary.app format system, wide?
By the logic of LG defenders, why hasn't Stickies received this treatment? Why doesn't Mail, a text-heavy app, replicate Dictionary?
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fisherking
macrumors G5
it's obvious that liquid glass is seeing improvement; not surprising, when you try something new; you often have to find your way as you move forward; apple seems to be doing that.
not sure how you'd prove it's obvious that it's a disaster. that would be an opinion; why are people here so afraid to own their own opinions? 🤔
not sure how you'd prove it's obvious that it's a disaster. that would be an opinion; why are people here so afraid to own their own opinions? 🤔
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Apple Knowledge Navigator
macrumors 601
Is it?
It's been 10 months since announced and all they've done is added a head-scratching 'Tinted' mode and played back-and-forth on how transparent some elements are. Drop shadows have done the rounds, too.
Improvement isn't going back-and-forth, it's taking affirmative action and sticking to it based on a reasoning. The very fact that even Apple can't decide whether Control Centre should have a shadow or not is telling.
Could you please explain this 'moving forward' phrase? Just because something is new and/or different doesn't make it an improvement.
Because they're not backed up with evidence.
I don't know who would have thought that selected item highlight should be of lower contrast than others around it. I could care less about shapes and corners but this detail looks like made by blind people...
fisherking
macrumors G5
agreed!
also, i'd prefer not to go round-&-round with you (again). we disagree. that's ok (even if you don't agree that it's ok). we don't all have to see things the same, but it would be great if we could respect each other.
a worthwhile goal, for macrumors people.. and everyone, really 🙏
Apple Knowledge Navigator
macrumors 601
Agreed; however I'm not disrespecting you. It's your choice to reply to my comments or not.
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
This, 100% 👆. There’s no one “correct” opinion on matters like this. There are multiple opinions, and they are equally valid. I have had many great discussions with people who don’t like Tahoe or Liquid Glass (and many other topics), but are not claiming their opinion is anything more than opinion. I still disagree with them, but I have felt I’ve walked away with a better understanding of their position/opinion, even though I still disagree. 🙂👍🏻
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svenmany
macrumors 68030
It is definitely improving. I don't think it's a complete disaster.
As I use Tahoe, I find myself enjoying the look of it. I'm quite pleased with something I use all the time - the cmd-tab popup to switch to an app. I really enjoy the transparent background. I gives me pleasure every time I use it. I'm even enjoying the Spotlight popup that I use as an app launcher.
I still see things which are egregious mistakes for the general population. And Apple's developers' own inability to use Liquid Glass in a bug-free way does say something about how ambitious the design is and how little support and direction developers are given to use it correctly. As it is now there are only two parts of LG that consistently throw me.
- I no longer have room for the icons in the toolbar. I often have to make a window bigger to avoid getting the ">>" at the end. I've tried to move away from the icons - using fewer of them. But, for one program I use, QSpace, this is a pain. The icons are just too big for my needs.
- The window corner rounding has produced massive inconsistencies. Many applications I use are cross platform. The developers certainly won't adopt the extreme roundedness that some of Apple's applications use. Chrome and Brave have adopted a bit more roundness to bend a knee to Apple, but not as round as Safari. They just can't screw with web applications which are being rendered on many operating systems. Other applications I use didn't change the window corner curvature at all. Even some of Apple's apps which would be functionally impacted by the rounding have used less of it; Terminal is an example. So, I have twenty windows open and they are all rounded differently. It's disturbing. I've stopped using Safari because I prefer the rounding on Brave. What a strange thing to drive a choice of browser.
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svenmany
macrumors 68030
I have a feeling Apple, in their delivery of LG, is leaving a lot of choices to developers. Everyone chooses something different in their fading. That lack of direction from Apple will have to be addressed. Also, inconsistencies within a single app could be bugs.
The bugs are obvious in Preview and System Settings. Sometimes the translucency works OK and sometimes not. I've chalked it up to a threading issues in some common libraries the Apple developers might be using. This morning I was looking at my paystub in Preview and I couldn't even read the title of the document after scrolling up a bit. When I reopened it, it was fine. In System Settings they fixed the inconsistency in the search field, but now I see inconsistency in the main section.
When launched by clicking on a notification popup at boot:
When launching settings directly:
Threading issues relate to the timing of when threads get certain work done. Many things can impact that timing, including other things running on a computer. These bugs might relate to the immaturity of the API's used to work with Liquid Glass; leaving the timing of things too much to the developer.
In this case, because the notification popup launched System Setting directly into the "Login Items & Extensions", the display rendered before the translucency adjusting processes finished initializing. This is just a guess.
To be realistic - this is the first iteration of this user interface. That's why it is immature and many things are inconsistent what comes to app developers as well.
Apple Knowledge Navigator
macrumors 601
I certainly agree with this. But if we’re speaking of a lack of quality control, less conceptual choices, then Apple hasn’t helped itself by choosing to release the UI before it was ready, or at least properly tested.
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
Neither of those screenshots reflect the current behavior in macOS 26.4 RC…
star-affinity
macrumors 68020
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
Here's a fresh screenshot from 26.4, for your delight:
star-affinity
macrumors 68020
Safari I think it was. Whoever's fault it is it's not okay. 🙂
I shouldn't have to move the content to properly see the GUI elements – then something is amiss design wise in my opinokn
kagharaht
macrumors 68020
Just updated. Started to play withe Clear or Tinted Option. It doesn't really do anything! Once again I'm the idiot that Apple Engineers are laughing at when they see the stats for people that keep clicking that option back and forth a dozen times to see if it does anything significant. LOL 😛
svenmany
macrumors 68030
I'm struggling to determine what to blame. There's Liquid Glass, the design. There's the API provided to programmers to use pieces of the design. There are the programmers with some discretion of how to use the API. And then there are bugs.
There is no doubt that varying levels of translucency is in play across different applications. That must be a programmer's choice, how much to fade the background so it doesn't interfere with foreground items.
In my example:
I blame the left side on programmer discretion (if "Family" is scrolled up a bit more, it fades more). I blame the right side on a bug (there's no fading at all). But, does that mean there's anything wrong with Liquid Glass, the design?
No matter how much translucency I want (and I like a lot in some places), I never want text to bleed through at all near text I'm trying to read (or worse, a place I might want to type something). I would be very surprised if the Liquid Glasses designers thought that was OK. If some senior Apple designer, with input into Liquid Glass implementation, thought that was OK, then we have no hope. If not, then I maybe developers will learn from improved guidance from the designers and a more mature API that makes mistakes less likely.
It's an half-assed idea with an even more half-assed implementation.
Kal Madda
macrumors 601
Yeah, if it’s a webpage in Safari, then likely an issue with website. I’m not saying it’s “okay” per se, but I really don’t think it’s a major issue either. As I mentioned before, this has been the case with some websites for many years now, this is not something unique to iOS 26. Would it be good if there was some fix? Sure. But I’m not entirely sure that’s something Apple can really entirely fix themselves, I think it’s something developers have to fix. And I don’t see this as a major issue as most webpages handle it properly. 👍🏻
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