Apple at WWDC announced iOS 26, introducing a comprehensive visual redesign built around its new “Liquid Glass” concept, alongside expanded Apple Intelligence capabilities, updates to core communication apps, and more.
Liquid Glass is a translucent material that reflects and refracts surroundings to create dynamic, responsive interface elements, according to Apple. The new design language transforms the Lock Screen, where the time fluidly adapts to available space in wallpapers, and spatial scenes add 3D effects when users move their iPhone. Meanwhile, app icons and widgets gain new customization options, including a striking clear appearance.
↫ Tim Hardwick at MacRumors
Apple also posted a video on YouTube where you can see the new design language in motion, which gives a bit of a better idea of what it’s actually like. Of course, before you believe anyone who’s writing about this new Liquid Glass design language, the only true way to form a coherent opinion of a user interface is through usage, so keep that in mind.
Looking at the video, the good part that immediately jumps out at me about this Liquid Glass stuff is the animations informing you where stuff is coming from and where it’s going. These are the sort of affordances I was writing about almost 20 years ago, when Compiz’ animations and effects made windows and virtual desktops feel like “real” objects that had a physical presence in a space. Apple’s Liquid Glass seems to have the same effect, and I’m here for it.
The transparency, though, I’m not a huge fan of. Depending on the content shown beneath the glass user interface elements, contrast can suffer, making things incredibly hard to read. While the glassy refraction effects looks neat, I would’ve much rather seen a focus on blurred glass, which makes a lack of contrast much less likely to occur. I think we’re going to be seeing a lot of screenshots, videos, and thinkpieces about how this much transparency is going to hurt readability.
I love it when an operating system gets a design language overhaul, and in this case, Apple is applying it across the board, to all of its operating systems. This may be the perfect moment for me to grit my teeth, hold my nose, and get my hands on a Mac just so I can write about Liquid Glass once it lands.
So UselessOS has now the Vista GUI.
What could go wrong? 😀
I kinda like the glass effect a little, but it is incredibly distracting.
First, all the refraction without muting the contrast of the elements behind it makes any movement behind the button very distracting and looks like it’ll easily make the buttons hard to read. Buttons shouldn’t be attempting to draw your attention anymore than is required to help you find them when you are actively looking for them.
I really dislike the momentum the elements have. Each time something moves, it acts like “Oops, I moved a few pixels too far one direction, let me move back real quick.” That’s just terrible. It’s distracting and time consuming, and it doesn’t actually provide any useful feedback that isn’t already being provided by existing display elements.
Drumhellar,
After browsing some screen shots, I’d probably turn it off after a while, glitzy effects aren’t really my thing. When I was younger I might think it was cool, like “windows plus pack” but now days it’s more important for computers and phones to be tools rather than a fashion statement. Hollywood loves to portray transparent interfaces as futuristic, but this tends to interfere with clarity and that seems to be the case here too.
Thom Holwerda,
The 00’s called, they want their skeuomorphism back 🙂
The bouncy, blobby effects seem like they would get annoying after a while and just make everything feel slow to me.
I remember Compiz. I remember it got very boring very fast and I turned it off.
When you’re trying to do something with your computer you don’t have time to watch all those “physicality” animations that you’ve seen 500 times already.
As for contrast, I’d like Apple’s designers and all those “web designers” that do those grey on grey pages to be condemned to actually get information out of low contrast sites 16 hours per day…
Think about the slow minds that will be amazed by these animations, and given enough time to think the next step. Pretty much like the tutorials in the newer games. Not everybody using a smartphone is smart.
Most Compiz themes were tackiness personified. Aero Glass was beautiful though, and the animations enhanced the desktop experience instead of distracting from it.
I wonder where “I love it when an operating system gets a design language overhaul” comes from.
Every time that happens you have to learn yet-another-way-of-doing things IN ADDITION to all other “design languages” that are already there.
Last Windows 3.0 (sic!) dialogue was only removed from Windows 11!
Sometimes it’s a good thing (both Windows 95 and macOS X, the original one, did significant improvements, that were worth the introduced inconsistency), but most of the time “new design language” just means platform is becoming more shitty and harder to use. Simply because negatives (lack of consistency) are always there and minuscule improvements in usability that would be fully realized after 20 or 30 years… are simply not worth it.
P.S. Things work better for smaller programs, sometimes. Because there are a tiny chance that “a new design language” would be consistently implemented. But with OSes… it’s net negative in almost all cases.
I am with you.
Operating Systems don’t exist on their own. I don’t turn my computer on to run Mac or Linux or Windows. I turn my computer on to get shit done. The OS should be the simplest and least intrusive gateway to whatever you want to actually do.
Win95 and Mac OS X were clear improvements compared to what came before.
Now that I think of it. iOS is basically Windows 3.x. It’s a program launcher that allows you to group programs together. No desktop paradigm.
Anyway…
I wouldn’t be happy if cars would suddenly change the place of the tools at hand, or if someone would change how a screwdriver or an oven work every few years. It’s a tool, be a tool. Sometimes people can’t catch up easily.
My grandfather is 91. He can get stuff done with the computer once he gets to it. Install and print to a remote wifi printer? Sure. Share Internet? Sure.
But whenever things change place he loses his shit. His eyesight is deteriorating and he relies a lot on muscle memory. So when he looks at a corner of the screen and a button that should be there is gone, he gets really upset.
Example: doing whatever video call. No one can hear him. He can’t find the mute button.
“Here grandpa, this is now the mute button – it moved places and now it is flat”
He dislikes flat buttons because the 3D push button effect gives more contrast and helps him see it better.
So yea…
Because changes like that are highly visible to users. It makes it obvious that the new version is “ooh shiny”, and obvious that the old version is “last year’s look”. It creates demand for the new version.
Behind the scenes changes just leave users wondering what they’re paying for.
I understand why companies and even open-source communities do that. I’m just not sure why that’s something to celebrate.
AI hype attracts new users, too… and yet that’s not something that celebrated on OSNEWS… why one kind of enshittification is better than another ones?
Windows Vista won
Compiz won
Most Compiz themes were butt-ugly. Also, they had zero transparency. Aero Glass was beautiful yet understated. and so was MacOS X’s Aqua (the first iteration).
Making UIs like Aero Glass and MacOS X Aqua is a lost art.
> Also, they had zero transparency
Compiz definitely had transparency. Heck, even E16 back in the late ’90s had that.
Aero-like themes didn’t have it, they all looked like Windows Vista Basic. And anyway, all Compiz themes I saw back in the day were tackiness personified, with windows disappearing in flames and windows wobbling and other tackiness. Aero uses glass effects and 3D effects to enhance the desktop experience, not distract from it.
Nonsense. Transparency was built into Compiz. It was one of the few effects not using a plugin, but instead being a default part of it. Compiz was also released before Vista.
As for the themes – there were so many of them it’s absolutely stupid to dismiss them all in one full go. Most people didn’t even really use Compiz “themes”, but instead used it to add transparency and smooth animations to the default GTK/Qt/etc. themes. I’m sorry, but your memory is clearly affected by something.
Definitely Compiz (and the better fork Beryl) had a custom decorator that had transparencies.
They were modules that could be enabled or not, possibly kurkosdr never dug enough in the contextual menu and never enjoied them.
Beryl had the default KDE decorators + another bunch of them of various quality.
But speaking of vista one of such decorators was an almost exact clone of the Vista one.
I think the problem with Apple (well, one of the many problems) is that they seem to have more UI/UX designers than developers. Everytime you let those guys loose on a codebase, everything gets enshittified.
Instead of redesigning the ui every 3 months because these designers have to justify their fat paychecks, Apple could actually work on making their OS and apps actually useful.
Luckily, the only interactions I have to subject to with Apple stuff is spinning up an OSX vm once in a while to compile some flutter app for iOS (and it’s a torture every time.. Having to interact with their store website is quite painful.. Not to mention having to update xcode and shit every time).
They do have developers, but they have to update the apps every year to the new “style” to create the illusion of progress. Which is better than the mess of UI styles Windows has become since Windows 8, but it’s not real progress.
OSes have become like the fashion industry, where they’ll remove and add buttons on the sleeves of tuxedos every year just so they can present some “progress”. Same for going from sharp to soft edges on iPhones and back to sharp edges.
Get a used M1 Mac Mini. I got one with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD for 350€. I found it to be pretty useless (for me, I have a big gaming/Linux PC) and sold it for nearly the exact same price.
You can get a HP Elitedesk 800 mini (Intel based) or its brother 705 (Ryzen based) for around 100$ or little more depending the configuration. Both of them comes in 35 and 65W flavours, both of them have upgradabile CPU/RAM/SDD VGA port, incredibly given the tiny size (at least the 705) can mount even a discrete GPU.
And if you are masochist enough you can still use macos on them either natively or as a VM.
And there are the also the equivalent models from Lenovo Dell and Fujitsu.
350€ sounds like a deal only if you compare it with Apple prices, when you compare it with real computers 350€ sounds like a steal (from your pokets 😀 )
Will they get a replacement program going on for when all that glass gets cracked or scratched? Will it get rebranded as “brushed glass”?
Will this thing trigger “liquid damage” on the devices?
A step in the right rirection, still too flat though. But i really like that this “flat trend” is finally dying off.
My thoughts exactly.
UI design is still on the fundamentally enshittifying track it’s been on since Steve Jobs gave the industry permission to prioritize glitz over function in 2001, but at least they’re now trying to lead the sheep back to a design language suitable for things that can be interacted with.