This is incorrect, Apple has never, ever used that word.
They don't have to use the word to talk about the concept:
...the new design features an entirely new material called Liquid Glass. It combines the optical qualities of glass with a fluidity only Apple can achieve...
https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2...a-delightful-and-elegant-new-software-design/
If I talk about "a water fowl that waddles and quacks" then I'm talking about a duck. A duck by any other name would still smell of duck (ugh!)...
If someone talks about "Liquid Glass" in MacOS/iOS they're talking about a design that mimics another material - that's one form of
skeuomorphism, and is also the fundamental distinction between "skeuomorphism" and the "flat design" philosophy introduced with iOS 7
.
In fact, on a panel on the launch of the original iPhone given in 2017, Scott Forstall, the man who many hold responsible for the entire Skeuomorphism debate, said he had never heard the word “Skeuomorphism” in his life until Internet critics started complaining about it around the launch of Lion.
That's entirely possible, but what was going on in iOS 6 etc. - and what iOS 7 and later rebelled against - still falls under the definition of skeuomorphism - an established word that goes back at least as far as fake rivets and rope-textured handles on ceramic pottery.
To be fair, even during the peak of apples realistic looking era (iOS 4-6 and Mac OS X Lion and Mountain Lion) most of it was still form over function.
True, but skeuomorphism in UI design goes back to
at least the first popular GUIs in the 1980s - "delete" functions looking like trashcans, file icons looking like sheets of paper, "buttons" representing pushbuttons - all forms of skeuomorphism. The difference is that 1980s "skeuomorphic" GUI designs were form-follows-function and grounded in serious user interface R&D, but by iOS 6 it had degraded into faux leather contacts apps and the original purpose had been lost.
The idea that the items that you use within the operating systems displayed on all of that Glass should look like glass, while clearly not being everyone’s cup of tea, is a more understandable design philosophy than adding gray linen everywhere because… um… linen is a real material and things should look real.
It's still skeuomorphism,
and its still form-over-function because even "matching the physical device" is pure cosmetics and doesn't reflect what you're
actually trying to do with the software - read/write messages, take photos, watch video, pay bills etc. Nothing wrong with looking nice, of course, except where it introduces practical problems like distracting screen clutter (phones and small notebooks are still not over-endowed with 'real estate') and poor contrast /readibility (translucency opens a massive can-of-worms when it comes to legibility).
Every screen you look at is glass
Yes, and that is a huge problem when it comes to reflections and light scattering. Apple put expensive optical coatings and nano-etching on their Studio Displays to
stop them looking like glass. If I'm watching a video or editing a document on a screen I want the glass to go away so I can immerse myself in what I'm doing.
Apple have pretty much said that part of the inspiration for Liquid Glass is the (apparently failed, for now) Apple Vision Pro AR interface... but that has one major design constraint in that you
need everything to appear transparent so that users don't keep walking into doors or get totally disoriented. Or, because it's
augmented reality the content being displayed was actually referencing and annotating things you could see "in the background". So what Apple have done with Liquid Glass is pointlessly imposed a major design constraint of AR onto phones, tablets and laptops, despite the fact it causes problems with legibility.
I fear the other influence is all of those transparent/holographic displays in SF/futuristic shows, which would be horrible to use in practice (...I mean, people get triggered about seeing faint reflections in displays - and you really want to be able to
see through the screen completely?)
The old TV that represented YouTube made absolutely no sense, because YouTube wasn’t a television service meanwhile iTunes actually sold movies and TV shows.
How is YouTube not a television service? Tell that to traditional broadcasters who are now facing it as one of their major competitors... and the
name YouTube is a reference to old school cathode-ray tubes. As I mentioned in a previous post, images of 'vintage' devices are still widely recognised and visually distinctive c.f. modern equivalents which all tend to look like black slabs.
Likewise, if having iTunes sell movies is (was) confusing, the problem starts with the name, not the icon. Now, we've got separate Music and TV Apps (and the latter at least tries to pull together multiple providers) - which has nothing to do with icon design. The Music icon is easy because there is a well-recognised flat, abstract symbol that suggests "music" - the current TV icon relies entirely on the typography "TV", if you wanted a skeuomorphic icon then an anachronistic image of a CRT or a frame of movie film would be distinctive and widely recognised.
Same with many others, I remember John Siracusa being particularly offended by the Lion Contacts and Calendar apps because despite having the window dressing of their physical counterpart, the applications did not at all act like the physical counterparts.
Yes, and I agree that they were the absolute nadir of skeuomorphic design that went beyond form-over-function into form-contradicts-function. Trouble is the "flat design" was an equally form-over-function backlash against stitched leather and green baize that completely neglected any idea of form-suggests-function and threw away a lot of visual cues in favour of "mystery meat" navigation.
