| ▲ | kace91 5 hours ago |
| There is so much of that in modern apple. Clear issues caused by a seemingly bright idea, but the idea still pushed forward no matter what. One example that I hate on iOS: the notification/lockscreen curtain is supposed to cover the content as it slides down. That’s what a curtain does, this has been the language for years. Now the curtain is transparent, so it can’t cover the content behind. How does the content disappear then, as you slide the curtain down? … it doesn’t. Icons do a buggy looking animation crashing toward the user and through the screen, and if it’s an app there is just no transition. You can check by sliding the curtain down slowly and then letting go. |
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| ▲ | merlindru 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > seemingly bright idea i disagree about that one. im not a UX expert by any means but my first impression at WWDC seeing liquid glass was "holy shit, they pulled that off? i know apple would never compromise on legibility, so... how? there are so many situations where this won't work, and they can't exactly control the content that the buttons are overlaid on top of" cue my confusion when it was exactly that: an obviously problematic idea implemented with all the obvious flaws showing up they have largely fixed it now, half a year later, but the liquid glass isn't very liquid anymore. it's frosted. which is fine, but obviously not the original idea they were going for contrasty backgrounds are fundamentally incompatible with legibility |
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| ▲ | kace91 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >im not a UX expert by any means but my first impression at WWDC seeing liquid glass was "holy shit, they pulled that off? i know apple would never compromise on legibility, so... how? there are so many situations where this won't work, and they can't exactly control the content that the buttons are overlaid on top of" That's what I mean, even if worded badly. Someone probably managed the glass distortion effects as an experiment, or demoed a transparent redesign of a small portion of the UI, and it looked awesome. I think it's cool that they can green light weird ideas, otherwise there's stagnation. But it is obvious that there were fundamental unresolved issues, and yet something in the process pushed the idea forward anyway. It signals something very wrong in company structure. If you can't trust the process to drop what doesn't work, then trying new things is risky. And as you say, it's an experiment that feels so unlike apple, to disregard polish and accessibility that way. | |
| ▲ | PaulHoule 14 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | ... liquid glass isn't very liquid anymore. it's frosted.
is an important point. Liquid Glass does not come across as "a bold design idea which is slightly flawed" but rather something which failed so bad when they tried it that they dialed the intensity back to the point where it doesn't make a statement anymore. So it looks like they hired an intern to randomly add anti-antialiasing here and there for no good reason. | |
| ▲ | chilmers 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think a primary concern when Apple evolves their new design language nowadays is competitive differentiation. Because so many people try to clone their UI, they seek to add visual elements like frosting, glass, squircles, etc. that are difficult or impossible to achieve in competing platforms. Gradually others catch up and they need to evolve it again. Liquid Glass seems like an aesthetic choice made purely for the technical difficulty of the simulated physics necessary to accurately recreate it. | | |
| ▲ | jlnthws an hour ago | parent [-] | | Wouldn't that imply that design is solved (at least regarding visual elements discussed here)? Then why not move onto other things? Why self-sabotage their success? | | |
| ▲ | AlexandrB an hour ago | parent [-] | | If I'm being cynical: because the design team at Apple needs something to do. | | |
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| ▲ | threatofrain 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If AR/VR took off then something along the lines of liquid glass would be the only option for the entire design space. Early on there's going to be a lot of embedding of app context into the AR/VR setting to get a jump-start on content. But if people are going to be walking around with rectangular panes around their head, it's better that part of the app chrome is transparent. Is this compromising readability? Yes, but now there's another kind of perception problem, and it's whether you can see what's literally in front of your eyes in physical space. | | |
| ▲ | kace91 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | The AR push is also an issue in itself. There are very fundamental issues that remain unresolved, and I would say untackled even. VR setups make you isolated and vulnerable. Any VR device is really awkward to use in public (read: in your living room or in an office). In turn, AR setups that let the world through reduce image quality by virtue of being transparent, and it is unclear that they provide advantages. You get a slightly more immediate access to notifications in return for permanently pointing a camera towards anything you look at, which is understandably not well received. And that's just for content consumption. When you introduce work, input is still significantly worse unless you're sitting in front of a keyboard and mouse, in which case you might as well have a full laptop. |
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| ▲ | hulitu 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > i disagree about that one. Why ? I'm sick of square windows. I want disc windows. And instead of scrolling them, i want to rotate them. /s Fixing bugs is hard. Better focus on the aesthetics. | | |
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| ▲ | stateofinquiry an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "Clear issues caused by a seemingly bright idea, but the idea still pushed forward no matter what." .. well put. It occurs to me that this is the case on the HW front with Apple as well. I remember the butterfly keyboard, the notch, everything glued in and unservicable, the removal of ports like magsafe, ethernet, USB-A... well, at least some of the HW mis-steps have been reversed. We see some movement in that direction from the later versions of Tahoe. |
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| ▲ | s3p 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This one has always confused me. And then, to be even more confusing, if you start sliding up slowly, the background does not disappear. It stays this time around. Pull down slowly, no background, just the glass effect. Pull up slowly, still have the background, no glass effect. I guess I don't necessarily hate it, it's more of a neutral thing, but who is deciding these strange things?? |
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| ▲ | coldtea 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | >I guess I don't necessarily hate it, it's more of a neutral thing, but who is deciding these strange things?? Probably nobody, just some artifact of the overlay APIs used default behavior that they didn't bother to streamline. | | |
| ▲ | StilesCrisis an hour ago | parent [-] | | In this case, the behavior is so weird and easy to trigger that I'm sure someone has filed a radar by now. So somebody has at least written a post-hoc justification? |
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| ▲ | aucisson_masque 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Yeah I found that surprising too and assumed it was a bug. I see this kind of trend with apple since big sur. It's not new but it's becoming more obvious with every release. |
