Apple, back in June of this year:
This is our broadest software design update ever. Meticulously crafted by rethinking the fundamental elements that make up our software, 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, as it transforms depending on your content or context.
↫ Apple’s WWDC press release
Today, iGerman00, detailing their merge request for adding Liquid Glass effects to a KWin plugin:
Added a Concave (lens) refraction mode for a more “Liquid Glass” look, it’s a lot closer than the current implementation. Also added a Refraction Corner Radius slider (0–200px, 30 steps) to shape the SDF independently of edge size. Because the concave implementation is a bit “weaker”, I’ve raised the maxima to 30 for the relevant sliders. Added some UI logic for irrelevant options between modes.
↫ iGerman00’s merge request
One of the world’s wealthiest companies, outdone by a random “amateur hobbyist developer“. Not only does this merge request recreate Apple’s Liquid Glass effects, it does so with a detailed settings panel to control every aspect of the effect, something Apple obviously won’t allow you to do.
“Only Apple” my ass.
The way AI can help an amateur hobbyist developer code what they envision is pretty amazing, isn’t it Thom? Glad to see you promoting the greatness that AI can help us achieve. Thank you for being pro-AI!
I don’t see anywhere in iGerman00’s github or website where they say they used AI for “vibe coding” and development, only that they’ve trained their own models and tinkered with neural nets. It sounds to me like they are doing the opposite, applying their human coding skills to create and train AI models.
Nice attempt at trolling though, 3/10.
> Please excuse any LLMy or sloppy code – happy to change, I still do not know C++ or the ecosystem around kwin effects; but it compiles, works and doesn’t seem to tank my CPU or GPU.
From the linked MR.
Definitely outdid Apple, Thom is right. I’m sure Apple vibe coded all their liquid glass implementation and has similar comments about their engineers not understanding why it works but that it doesn’t tank cpu and gpu in the code base.
This project seems to be the *exact thing* Thom was ranting about when he brought up analogies to poor translations and problems with AI recently.
Thanks, I completely missed that. Still doesn’t change the trolling nature of the comment above.
You clearly don’t understand what “Only Apple” means.
Obviously it’s that only Apple can convince the world that it’s a good idea now that the heyday of early 2000s Linux DE theme jank is over.
Now that Apple has done the hard part, it’s easy for others to ride along. ;P
Apple can claim to have invented a thing that already existed, and people will believe it.
Like the entire smartphone category, which existed in the slab/multi-touch form long before iPhone popularized it.
That “Can’t innovate anymore” clip is one of my favourites. It is just a lovely historical footnote given both that it ushered in a massive stall in innovation (the product did not change again for over 5 years) and also because the product so poorly reflected the needs of its target users (eg. expandability). Perfectly undeserved arrogance.
That said, I do consider the 2013 Mac Pro to be a beautiful piece of technology. I have one running Proxmox a few feet away from me.
I run macOS with reduced transparency and high contrast enabled to avoid that kind of useless eye candy…
Ha! And he used an LLM too.
That is not only an ugly effect, but a clear show of wasting computer resources for doing it. There is a reason the Aqua UI from OSX was dropped in favor or non-translucent and simpler UI in the end.
That said, if THIS is current-day Apple innovating, they are doomed.
protomank,
I am not a big fan of the effect either, it’s not good for contrast, which is more important than having the effect. But then users have always been divided over eye candy.
They’re sitting on so much cash though, I don’t think “Doomed” fits their position.
Tech companies have long lost the plot with consumers. I was happy with the win2k aesthetic, very basic and blocky components. MS had done a ton of work making windows accessible and for that I give them credit. One never had trouble identifying/clicking buttons, radio buttons, resizing windows, using scrollbars, etc. This is more than I can say for modern UI design though, accessibility has taken a back seat in favor of sparse interfaces that cull visual feedback and hit boxes. I noticed a client who was struggling to move an excel window because microsoft removed the title bar. This would have never passed microsoft’s usability standards and yet now those standards are nowhere to be seen.
I think people have gotten tired of OS “upgrades” though. Sales are bad for both desktop and mobile because people don’t want to pay indefinitely for dubious benefits. Enshitification is taking off, bombarding customers with ads just like cable TV is where computing is headed.
@Alfman
To be fair, they were IBM’s usability standards. The Common User Access standards were an explicit design goal in OS/2, Windows, and Motif. Windows before 95 and OS/2 before 2.0 featured almost identical implementations (not by accident).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
Microsoft created their own guidelines for Windows 95 but of course they were heavily influenced by CUA:
https://ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/courses/ICS104/course-notes/Microsoft_WindowsGuidelines.pdf
Like SerenityOS, I feel like OS UI design peaked with Windows 2000.
Modern interfaces lean into aesthetics instead of usability. Much has been lost.