Apple’s Liquid Glass Design Prioritizes Content Over Tools
I’ve finally figured out my core discomfort with Liquid Glass, Apple’s new translucent interface design language for its latest operating systems. It’s not that there are occasional spots where the translucency renders the interface nearly illegible. It’s usually either obvious what is being obscured or easy to clear up the confusion with a small movement. Nor is it that controls can shrink, expand, and “dynamically morph,” which harms discoverability and reduces affordances for users who assess the options without nervously swiping and scrolling to see how the interface changes. Neither of these issues is good, especially for less confident users, but I expect Apple to continue polishing Liquid Glass to eliminate more and more of these rough spots.
No, my problem with Liquid Glass runs deeper. Apple has said that it was “driven by the goal of bringing greater focus to content,” and that controls “give way to content,” “shrink to bring focus to the content,” and “refract the content behind them.” How can anyone argue against increasing focus on content? Haven’t we been told that content is king?
Here’s where I take exception to Liquid Glass, and to Apple’s positioning of content as the most important aspect of our digital devices, and thus of our digital lives. Yes, many people are largely passive consumers of content, whether we’re talking about Web pages, podcasts, or streaming videos. For those people, there is little beyond content, and Liquid Glass’s deprecation of controls may allow them to continue their consumption with less distraction. But that’s not a lifestyle to aspire to, reminiscent as it is of the humans in WALL-E—perpetually reclined in floating chairs, mindlessly consuming entertainment. (The movie is also notable for giving a credit to MacInTalk, Apple’s old speech synthesis system that voiced AUTO, the ship’s computer.)
But there’s an important point to make here: controls are not tools. Controls allow you to adjust settings—change channels, select colors, pause playback, and more. Tools enable you to create, modify, delete, or give a performance. It’s the difference between a volume knob and a violin.
I’ve always seen computers as tools: for creation, communication, research, performance, and learning. Although I didn’t come to this opinion because of Steve Jobs, he once said, “That’s what a computer is to me… It’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
It’s easy to appreciate—at least for an expert—what makes a fine chef’s knife, a well-balanced hammer, or a high-quality painter’s brush. However, it’s harder to pinpoint what sets a digital tool apart as excellent rather than just functional. To some extent, it’s personal—when I use an app with outstanding tools, like Arc or Mimestream, I can fall into a flow state where I’m working quickly, efficiently, and accurately on non-trivial tasks. It’s a feeling similar to when I’m cooking well or timing a race successfully, both activities that are inherently functional but which I think of as a performance. If I were musical, I might liken it to playing an instrument. It’s not uncommon for someone watching me work to comment that I move too quickly for them to follow what I’m doing.
So, no, I don’t want tools that “give way to content” or “shrink to bring focus to the content.” When I’m cooking, I want my knives, spatulas, measuring spoons, and the like exactly where they belong, so they’re instantly at hand. My Mac is set up in much the same way, with every app appearing exactly where I expect and, for the most part, providing an interface that looks and works as I want.
Apple has long struggled with balancing the importance of tools versus content. As physical objects, our Macs, iPhones, and iPads are all tools—we rely on their screens, keyboards, pointing devices, and ports to get our work done. For the most part, Apple has done a good job of making them highly usable and efficient, but at the same time, the company’s designers seem to want to pare away ever more of the physical instantiation. Bezels get smaller, keyboards get thinner, and ports disappear, all in the service of giving way to the content on the screen. But tools aren’t necessarily better for being smaller—function must dictate form, not the other way around. A chef’s knife with an ultra-thin handle may look sleek, but it would sacrifice the grip and control that make precise cutting possible.
The direction Apple is taking with Liquid Glass doesn’t surprise me because it follows the same minimalist path as much of the company’s hardware design. However, I would urge developers of productivity apps—of real tools—to think long and hard about how to keep their interfaces discoverable, accessible, and readable.
Content comes and goes, but tools endure.
Exactly. I’m finding i(Pad)OS downright bewildering at times.
Take the contextual menu for text (formerly copy/paste), which combines three distinct interface elements—one horizontal, one vertical, and finally a truncated version of the old Share menu—repeats commands unnecessarily, and hides most of that Share menu behind three dots. Worse yet, the first two elements are not customizable, so not only are we subject to the indignity of seeing the Copy option no less than three times, but Shortcut tools we actually created to do our work are hidden behind those three dots.
Or, how about the new multitasking? Works great with a keyboard, not so much with fingers. I’m constantly having to be careful where I press, lest a window suddenly shrink; or where I swipe, lest one float off the screen. Double-tap to restore that small window to full screen? Yes, but you might as easily lose your place as it takes you to the top of the document. Or it might do both! And those “flicks”? I have yet to get one to work on purpose, but often it flicks when I try to press a button; there’s no way to turn them off. Thankfully, it’s trivial to use Control Center to turn multitasking off, but why should I have to?
Not for the first time, I wonder whether anyone at Apple actually uses their products.
Not just Apple—I frequently wonder whether anyone at any tech megacorp regularly uses the products they foist on us. There’s an old saying about eating your own dog food, the particular wording of which eludes me at the moment, but it basically means to stand behind your product by using it yourself, not because you have to but because you want to. Aside from Xcode, which is necessary for developing iOS/iPadOS apps, I’m not certain that anyone at Apple relies on Apple software, MacBooks, or any other Apple-produced products that aren’t top of the line.
Do Alphabet employees use Chrome and Google Search at home? Do Tesla employees drive Model 3s and Cybertrucks? Do Meta employees spend leisure time on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads? Eat your dog food!
Liquid Glass is bling without any benefit. I found it unusable on macOS and I’m not sure yet on iOS. But the I’m weird and use my iPhone way less than my Macs. When I open the iPhone with my old fashioned passcode I’m utterly baffled how anyone sees the animations and thinks “this is an improvement”.
Back in the days when I worked at GM we drove the cars way before they were introduced to the customer. Even me as lowly IT person in quality had access to those cars occasionally. Even for the cars in production if I had a weird problem I could call my co-workers and have them look at the car.
For Apple I have always wondered if and how they actually use their stuff. Do they have a special version without the stupid dialogs? Does nobody find a bug and then yell at a co-worker to fix the darn thing?
I have decided that I will not update to this new system until Apple provides us a way to disable Liquid Glass. Not just change the transparency setting, etc., but some concrete method to use any new tools or other improvements. I’ll update the security settings, but nothing else. The only way I’ll go for this update is if Apple secretly forces an update while I sleep.
Let’s stick to the topic of Liquid Glass and focus on content over tools, rather than asking whether Apple employees actually use the apps they build. It’s difficult to imagine a developer not using their own app, and all the Apple employees I’ve known certainly did. Same with Google employees—they absolutely do use Google Search, Gmail, Google Docs, and the like.
That is one of the most insightful things I’ve seen written about macOS in a very long time. I’ll go further and suggest that not only is it insightful, it is very important.
Thanks for sharing it.
Is it possible to disable Liquid Glass or turn it on and off as needed?
I don’t have any exceptionally positive or negative feelings about liquid glass. On my iPhone I sometimes think it looks quite nice and modern. As long as I’m using light mode. I quit using dark mode because of excessive “glowing” when selecting text, and also bugs in some apps where typing black on a dark background doesn’t automatically adjust to be readable like in previous versions. At night I’m using “night shift” which makes it ok.
Unrelated to liquid glass, I noticed that Apple Mail doesn’t always take you to the newest message when changing between accounts. You often have to scroll up.
Some things are harder to find for no particular reason, like the volume change indicator.
But basically I think it looks nice. On the iPad, the new OS is revolutionary and really makes the iPad more usable. I highly recommend it if your iPad supports it. And if you are using an old iPad and that’s your main device I would even recommend upgrading so you can use iPadOS 26.
On the iPhone and Mac, well, I haven’t really felt any great functional improvements yet. But nothing greatly negative either.
See this Reddit post for a way to turn Liquid Glass off:
https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1nz6tco/open_source_disable_liquid_glass_with_solidglass/
The author offers an app to do so and also lists a command-line command to do the same.
I have installed even Sequoia yet, so I can’t test it.
Brilliant, Adam!
I haven’t even seen Liquid Glass yet, but your analysis worries me, because I feel exactly the same way. I am a heavy user of Adobe tools, and every change they make in the direction of hiding functionality whittles away at my ability to work in a flow state. In a related beef, much of the web is now almost impenetrable to casual browsing due to the obsession with obscuring functionality and textual information in favor of large scale animated imagery.
I prefer to use a Mac to do things than phone or tablet. A staff member at the local Apple store today said she did the same. The IOS interface is so limited and on top of that they have gone for bling.
It is a sad comment on the human population that they are more interested in appearance and gimmicks than function, which must be true since all manufacturers are going this way. It is probably why I stick to old versions of MacOS, preferring the security risks to loss of functionality.
Until now I didn’t have any problems with the brightness of my MacBook Pro M1. Until now! With Liquid Glass I asked my myself: where has the crisp display gone (my eyes are still the same) ???
I had to find a way to solve this : I found Brightintosh and I hope it doesn’t damage my display, but it helps working and find the tools!
Louis
Just a word of caution on strongly-held opinions about new things. Remember the “shock of the new.” As a 72 year-old professional designer, I’ve spent years introducing new things to people who were very comfortable with what they already had. The initial reaction to a change is often strong and negative (I even once received hate mail about a new graphic identity). But when some time has passed it is remarkable how often that shocking new thing becomes the comfortable thing that folks will fight—sometimes bitterly—to hang onto in the face of another change.
If you can, I suggest giving new things a few months to settle in before deciding just how much you hate them.
–Jim Gibson
I understand what you’re saying. I’m 80 years old; my first Mac was a Mac Plus, fresh off the assembly line. Likewise, I’ve seen Apple make more changes to its look than I care to think about. The serious user, the one who uses their Mac for more than entertainment, wants tools that work and improve the user’s working environment. Pretty is important or nice for some. Functionality, security, the elimination of memory leaks, and secretly using gigabytes of disk space to store data that isn’t necessary. Then there’s compatibility with third-party or independently developed software. These are all essential for a new OS. I suspect many of us, and I’m one for sure, don’t want a Mac and an iPad to look alike. Why would we? Why would I want decreased clarity or diminished brightness? What interest do I have in changed icons, rounded corners, and the like? Do any of these changes make my Mac experience better? I tried the beta, even the latest. I find this new concept of Liquid Glass to be to the detriment of my Mac and its relationship with me. No, I’m not reacting too early. If you don’t react now, this new feature will be pushed on you, and then you’ll have no option to protest. Why not demand that Apple give the user the choice to use Liquid Glass or not? They did offer the choice to use or not to use Apple Intelligence. Is this asking too much? How is it different? If you don’t like the word “hate,” how about “intensely dislike”? Unified eliminates distinctiveness and individuality. It promotes conformity. Nope, no thanks, not for me.
Masterful. This exactly it. Apple used to be all about creating the best tools for the user and now they are way more comfortable allowing those principles to slip, thinking it will better meet their business goals, when their business goals were previously met precisely because no other company cared as much as Apple.
Now, because there is so much lock-in of the ecosystem, they are getting lazy. That might make the bar graphs comfortable to look at, but at the loss of the mission, the idea, and now users will have to go search elsewhere to find that mission again unless Apple is again championed by people who prioritize it.
Thanks, Adam. Food for thought. I don’t agree, though, that the distinction between “tool” and “content consumption device” is clear cut. Apple products are both, and swing back and forth depending on user and context. My iPhone switches from being a tool (when I’m taking pictures, eg) to being a content consumption device (when I’m looking at the pictures I took). My iPad is primarily a content consumption device, though with occasional tool use. My Mac is primarily a tool (or set of tools) and rarely a content consumption device.
Given that, I think Apple has to balance the two things, hopefully in ways that don’t inhibit either one, and they seem to me to be doing that – yes, Liquid Glass aims more toward content consumption, but iPad OS got a big makeover (including spectacularly workable multitasking) that enhances it as a tool. Pulling one item out (even if it’s the item that Apple has been trumpeting) misses that balancing act.
There has at times been a struggle over the “high style” aspects of Apples’ products, both hardware and software. Steve Jobs typically defended function over form – even while demanding a highly style-conscious form. Any innovation that detracted from functionality would be quashed mercilessly, and many were.
Jony Ives’ design instincts ran amok after Jobs’ passing, and this affected not only a variety of hardware design excesses but eventually software as well, things like the “treasure hunt interface:” Functionality stepped aside for the sleek ‘look’ of whatever.
This tug-of-war continues, and I see the sort of forced imposition of “liquid glass” across the product line as a bit of a power grab from the marketing department; version naming and design ethos are now being centrally dictated by… someone, or by committee, I don’t know. But it’s clear now that creativity and functionality are being corralled in favor of uniform icon design and other stylistic dictums, functionality be damned. Apple has always tried to keep software authors inside certain style guidelines, but this latest bit of forced homogenization is concerning.
Steve Jobs introduced Aqua, which Liquid Glass seems inspired by, so I’m not sure I’d agree with the above.
The kitchen was an excellent analogy. This sacrifice of tools for content has been going on for years. How long have we been dealing with a jump on a page without a clue as to what we did and how to get back to where we were? Then it is click here. Slide there. Use more fingers. It is like hiding the knives in separate drawer and cabinets instead of in one place in the knife rack. And eventually to do a search on the internet for some kind soul who has solved the problem and shared the solution. Steve Jobs’ statement “… the computer for the rest of us” no longer applies. A couple of OS versions ago. I had to enhance contrast in order to see window layouts and divisions with white windows and pale gray lines and type. My optometrist says I have 20/20 vision but I cannot easily read all of the “tool type” on my 14 inch MacBook Pro at knee distance. No battery life when you have to run the screen at maximum brightness to read it easily. This liquid glass is just another step in “disappearing” the tools. Next one is perhaps to make tools invisible and to remember where the active areas of the screen are.
Although I agree 100% with @adam, all my Apple devices are tools, at present I just try to ignore it. I know my brain will get accustomed to the new things.
I just upgraded and the next morning I had a very nice experience thanks to Apple. I have made a spreadsheet in Numbers that tells me how long I have to charge my Apple Watch to reach 75% every morning. This is the minimum charge I have found will get me through the day. I set a timer as I put it on the charger. The timer now have a Stop button that is big and easier to hit than the old one.
I think Adam was primarily talking about software in the comparison of tools versus content consumption. A device can be all of these things at once, but only a narrow range of apps (such as web browsers) function well in both roles. The OS should be enabling both roles, but when it favors one over the other, in either direction, you lose the passion of a market segment.
It’s a fair point, and there is some truth to it. At the same time, I find that many are very quick to pronounce that “people hate change” as an excuse to ignore valid criticism.
It’s also been my experience that people embrace change when it makes their lives easier/better.
You make a good point, and something I could have explored a little more is how digital devices are malleable, so what may make sense for content consumption doesn’t have to carry over to productivity scenarios. To an extent, we’ll see what Apple thinks about this once we get significant updates to the iWork apps—does Apple embrace the Liquid Glass ethos there or not?
My Mac is a tool. Not an art piece.
Funny story:
When I was young my dad had a full wood shop, he made most of the furniture in our house. I was learning how to use tools. One day he gave me a bunch of nails, an old board, and a full sized hammer, and I went at it. After a few minutes he stoped me and showed me how to hold and swing the hammer, (from the elbow, not the wrist).
Then the next week he saw me holding the hammer up near the head, and ‘pushing’ the nails. He took the hammer an cut off about ⅔ of the handle. And said; “Use this for month, I’ll give you a new one when you figure out respect for the tool.”
Liquid Glass = Cutting off the handle, and making hammering work much harder.
.
A fascinating discussion at Reddit - thank you for the link.
I have bookmarked it for when I eventually “upgrade” to OS26.
The comparison with MS Windows is a worry!
I take Adam’s point, but from my extremely near-sighted frame of reference as a user and a “content creator,” it seems to me Apple has made branding more important than users.
Apple long ago lost sight of the fact that a computer is a tool, instead focusing on whiz-bang neato stuff that often detracts from its purpose. Steve Jobs oversaw the creation of magnificent machines that improved on their predecessors. Tim Cook created revenue streams. I don’t need a new OS every year, I need the one I have to work for me.
To me there is more here than frustration. This is the kernel of a very good idea. The option to NOT use some of the “New Features” of the new interface ( or at least choose to implement a version without them) would be a very good solution.
True it is that it might be a bit of an ego-killer to work hard on adding some slick new thing and yet maintain the ability for a user to turn it off. But, by keeping an eye on how many of which demo of user chooses to “go retro”, Apple might get a better handle on how important this eye-candy really is - or isnt.
Years ago I likened Windows to a “yank tank” - the oversized, glitzy American cars of the 1950s. Apple is going down that path!
My undergrad design profs spent a decent amount of time discussing the qualitative difference between a design process lead by pursuit of a single vision (usually by a single lead designer) and the process when there is no single vision. Even when the teams are composed of the same individuals, the solutions are reliably quite different. One consistent feature of the differences was the tendency for particular components to be “over-diesigned” in ways that made them individually “better” but which made them detract from the overall design when integrated with the other parts.
I would posit that that was a big part of the “Ive effect”. He was a stellar designer but what he managed to do that was just as important was to make sure that the final design was a gestalt and not a collection of well designed components with individual personalities.
Liquid Glass has broken the rule; sure it is slick and sparkles with Aaah, but it does NOT enhance the usability of the package. Someone let this component go too far and it is detracting from the whole.
While I am here, IMHO this is of a piece with the kinds of things that started off as a way to deal with the tiny, low-res screens on early phones. No space for full menus spawned the whole “contextual menu” thing. Then came gestures, then came “magic spots” where menu options were revealed only in certain contexts, then comes the wonderful idea of overlaying things and making them transparent. In the context of limited screen size on a phone, this MAY make some kind of sense but carrying it over to iPads and - Gods forbid - to MacOS on machines with full sized ( or even multiple) screens, touch pads, full time keyboards, mice, and room for multiple menu bars risks alienating users who are existential to the Apple ecosystem.
When Adam says - whoa boys, you are going down a blind alley here! - Tim should look closely at what is happening. Adam speaks for many here.
I put Liquid Glass in the same category as the decision to create invisible controls, that you don’t realize exist unless you happen to mouse over them. Both are prioritizing appearance over function.
And, I think the reason behind it is that there’s a graphic design team that needs to be doing something else they lose their jobs. Same reason that companies change their logo, justifying with marketing drivel such as “the tilted box implies a bias for Action”.
The only positive, if you could call it that, is that while with iOS 7 and OS X Yosemite Apple’s change to flat design was catching up with the trendy UI design, this time Apple is leading. We’ll see if the rest of the industry follows or if Apple is too outre.
I’ve got so much work that I want to get done I choose the path of least resistance: no change.
I only just upgraded to macOS 15 and iOS 18, so I can’t see myself moving on until at least macOS 27 by which time maybe Apple will have either whipped it into shape, or reverted some things, or both.
Well, basically, they do. It’s just not a single switch:
Settings / Accessibility / Display / Reduce transparency: ON
Settings / Accessibility / Motion / Reduce motion: ON
Those two pretty much simmer down everything.
As a general note, if you thoroughly poke around and try other Accessibility settings you may find unexpected things that make your experience better.
After a couple weeks with OS26 on a Mac mini and an iPhone (but not my iPad—too old.
) with transparency & motion off, I don’t find the new OS to be all that different. I periodically switch them back on just to see if my negative reaction was correct. It was. 
You know? When I’m in a room I like looking out windows but much appreciate very opaque walls (particularly in the bathroom). Transparency and diaphanous layers are great but like Mies Van Der Rohe’s Farnsworth house, the residents weren’t always so happy about endless glass no matter how gorgeous the design.
Dave
Adam, after all of our remarks regarding this new “innovation,” do you think Apple is paying attention to us? Are we speaking to the wind? You’ve dealt with Apple for ages; will they pay any attention, or do you think they are locked in on this change to make our Macs, phones, and iPads essentially the same?
Personally I think they’re locked in, based on some plan that was put in action a while ago. It’s like stopping a freight train.
Steve Jobs used to say they planned 4 years ahead but I get the feeling these days with aspects of software it’s more like 1 given how uncharacteristically unfinished and work in progress a lot of stuff feels. Liquid Glass essentially being designed through the beta period and into the release period is kinda unheard of.
Whether it’s a foldable phone (doesn’t seem like a good endgame to me) or AR (waiting on the killer app) or something else entirely is the question.
Another case of bling-bling is the iOS App Store. I don’t appreciate being exposed to these inane graphics that seem to be geared to kids.
So far, I’m not finding any difficulty. I’m 83 and don’t like change.
Perhaps Apple should provide the ability to manage the change for those that don’t want it - to the extent it doesn’t interfere with the ability to use it?
And, perhaps Apple does have a plan and the changes reflect moving towards that plan?
David
Great post @ace…
If computers are just a tool, they’re a pretty odd tool.
Since Ada Lovelace’s observation that the intelligence of the device was separate from its physical nature… we have had software separated within the platform. The software we use to create, communicate, to share with each other, to be entertained and informed by…it functions at times more like a medium than a tool. Content has driven so much of the technological innovation of recent times.
We craft these tools with languages we have created, they echo us and our wishes, thoughts and desires.
Prioritizing content over tools… that just might sum up the times we are living in.
But anyway…
@mschmitt makes an interesting observation above, the disappearing tool or the ‘appropriately unveiling’ tool that underpins the ‘new’ iMovie and Final Cut Pro design may well be part of the thinking which has led to Liquid Glass.
Indeed – and it strikes me that the worst time to talk about a new design language is right when it comes out. People don’t like the new (as someone mentioned already), the new stuff tends to be a bit buggy, and so the immediate reaction is often more visceral than it will be after things have matured for a while.
The Law of Conservation of Complexity (Tesler’s Law)
One interesting element to this law is the suggestion that even by simplifying the entire system, the intrinsic complexity is not reduced, it is moved to the user, who must behave in a more complex way.
I am not a fan of anything that reduces usability either for consumption or creation. Disappearing scroll bars, Windows without clear places to grab them to move and resize, low contrast (often grey on grey) text. Buttons, drop downs, etc., that look the same as text (generally from lack of borders and other visual cues), all degrade the experience of using a computer for any task. Unfortunately all are common and seem to be getting worse in Apple’s operating systems.
What real benefit does Liquid Glass offer besides (arguably) looking pretty? I’m using and adapting to it on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac, but I can’t say that it has made anything actually better for it’s introduction.
Kevin
While I agree with Adam, there are many, many more people using volume knobs than violins. But improving one should not degrade the other, which is part of the problem here.
Kevin
I’ve been curious as despite all the comments I’ve read, I’ve noticed very few appearance changes on my iMac, iPad, & iPhone. Other changes have been apparent but visually, all have only slight changes. Finally realized it might be due to System Settings changes I made years ago when I began have some vision difficulties. Just read an article about ways to make Liquid Glass visually easier & when I rechecked my System Settings, saw they were already set that way.
So, if you’re finding Liquid Glass visually difficult, here are a couple suggestions. They obviously won’t help w/all Liquid Glass “complaints” but they might help:
System Settings/Accessibility/Display: Turn On Reduce Transparency
System Settings/Appearance/Icon & Widget Style: Default
System Settings/Appearance/Appearance: Dark (turns the Dock background black)
I know this won’t help everyone w/everything but hopefully it will make things easier for some.
Yes. You can turn Glass off completely with a tick of a checkbox using TinkerTool (free). Or you can turn it off on a per-app basis using SolidGlass.
Know this though. Both apps work fairly well, but there are anomalies using either. For instance, some transparency issues appear with various drop-down/pop-up menus.
Not users, sorry. For Apple to pay attention to user chatter, it must reach a point where some value of “everyone” is discussing the same thing. From Apple’s perspective—which is very much born out of Steve Jobs’s design arrogance—they know better than we do, and we’re just complaining because we don’t like change.
However, I do think that enough media (defined broadly) attention on a particular topic can draw Apple’s attention. We’ll never learn when or how, but over the years, there have been instances where Apple changed course based on media coverage. The best example that comes to mind is Joanna Stern’s reporting about thieves shoulder-surfing passcodes and then stealing phones, which caused Apple to implement Stolen Device Protection.
Perhaps I’m just being self-aggrandizing here, but I do think that coverage has to be the right combination of reasoned, well-supported, comprehensive, and balanced. Angry posts that essentially say “Liquid Glass sucks!” without explaining how or exploring why won’t resonate with anyone inside Apple.
Hmm… On the one hand, you’re absolutely right about immediate knee-jerk reactions to change. On the other hand, I do think there’s a window of time in which reactions are more seriously considered. If we all just stayed quiet for six months, that might send the signal to Apple that they did a great job, everyone loves it, and no changes need to be made. Plus, Apple is making marketing hay on the fact that it is new, so it seems only fair that criticisms appear alongside Apple’s claims of being the next great thing.
Very interesting thoughts, and I’ll have to ponder. What’s interesting about computers is that they’re general-purpose tools, so their software causes them to change completely from app to app. And of course, apps communicate…
I’m encouraging seniors where my Mom (and I) live to wait for 26.1 to upgrade their devices.
I know that “under the hood” is mostly the same (ignoring new features) but the visual changes are hugely confusing to most of my neighbors who have auto upgraded.
At times Apple has introduced features that seem to have been rushed because they wanted something new rather than just making iterative changes. The Liquid Glass seems to be something to show off that didn’t take a massive investment in coding, because they haven’t had as much of the AI stuff that they wanted. Anyone remember the Touch Bar, and feel that they miss it on new MacBooks? Probably not.
I installed 26.0.1 in a VM to check it out. I then upgraded it to 26.1b2 to see the differences.
Other than the large rounded corners and general increase in button size, and of course reduction in legibility, the main issue for me is the huge change in performance and thus battery life issues. There is no excuse for Apple to ship such bad code, other than bad management and misguided priorities.
@gingerbeardman Matt could you clarify, are you saying the performance change was between an OS prior to 26 and 26.0.1, or between 26.0.1 and 26.1b2?
Performance of 26 in any version (point release, beta, macOS, iOS) is worse than anything before it (macOS 15/14 and iOS 18/17 in my case) on the same device (MBP M1 Pro, MBP M4 Max, iPhone 16 Pro).
I think this cartoon from the latest New Scientist sums up this topic well..
After finally updating to 26 (well 26.1, actually) I just noticed that my scroll bars are humongous. Turns out, if you, like me, prefer to always see scroll bars you will be getting a fat scroll bar variant everywhere. If you OTOH select to only show scroll bars when scrolling, you get a much more slender and elegant implementation.
I like showing them always since that serves as a visual cue for when there actually is something to scroll. Since otherwise that’s not always clear. Showing scroll bars also indicates how much of a certain page you are actually seeing at any given time.
I just wish I could have them display always and still get the slender variant. Ideal, in my opinion, would be slender for display that then turns fatter when you get close to make it an easier target to hit.
When scroll bars went invisible til user scrolls, I tried it and stayed with it.
Just now I tried making scroll bars Always visible and will try it for a while but don’t find them to be so much larger than the ‘on scroll’ version. Maybe there is an Accessibility Setting which makes them larger…
I like your idea of Always Slender with Dock Magnification effect though. I’ll bet there are smart enough people at Apple to make that happen, and maybe as an extra bonus, they could be both bigger and darker at first, then slowly fading to lighter color…
Another regression I notice with the Liquid Glass GUI is the new volume slider.
I get why they would want to unify the Control Center widgets. But this change from centered indicator to slider in the corner results in a) a very small widget compared to the well visible previous indicator and b) removes the quantification. I used to always know that adjusting to just 4 blips would set my volume to a reasonable level for myself in my quiet office. And one or two taps on the volume up/dow keys would quickly get me to exactly my personal default.
Now I no longer have a cue as to if my volume is set that way since the slider offers no increments or tics. The best I can do is check to see that the pill on the slider is roughly where the P is in the MacBook Pro Speakers labels shown above. And even that hack breaks immediately when I connect to speakers or some other audio-in device with another name.
LOL. That actually would be a “liquid glass” effect that makes sense! Maybe the only one!
That said, I am running Tahoe in a virtual machine, and the wide scrollbars are one of the few things I actually like!
Muscle memory has me looking at the bottom of the screen every time I adjust sound levels.
The Music app is worse, flipping the controls from the top to the bottom. Overlaying controls over the artworks is simply making it harder to see and use. Form over function strikes again.
And one more regression with Liquid Glass, this time on iOS.
In Weather, I used to be able to directly tap on a dot in the location indicator at the bottom in order to directly go to a specific one of my saved locations. Now, it appears I can only tap on the left side of the indicator pill to move backward one by one, or tap on the right side of the pill to move ahead one by one. I cannot anymore see a manner by which to jump to a specific saved location within that pill.
I would prefer they used swipe gestures for this kind of ±1 behavior but still interpreted a tap on a specific dot as the instruction to jump straight to that specific dot.
There’s an easier way:
Tap the list icon on the lower right to get a list of all your favorite locations. Scroll the list to the desired location and tap. If you want a location not in the list, complete the search area at the bottom of the screen. I think that you’ve always been able to access loctions this way.
This is not about easy. That way works of course, but it requires two taps. Before the Liquid Glassification of iOS, we could just jump to an arbitrary location with a single tap. That is now no longer possible.
Funnily enough, today I fired up a good ol’ swivel screen iMac on 10.4 and… I like its version of glass buttons and scroll bars better than LiqGla!
Let me just say I absolutely love the Liquid Glass “Compact” interface for iPhone Safari. It’s even more compact than it used to be in 18 and before Liquid Glass. It allows me to maximize screen available for content, but through neat gesture support it still allows for very good productivity. The only option I’d like to see added is a setting to retain the regular pill rather than switch to the mini pill regardless of scrolling behavior.
Why is that you ask? Because the regular pill allows for so many great gestures which the mini pill does not. I don’t know if this is clear to everybody, but you can reach almost anywhere with just a gesture on the Safari pill. Swipe left on the pill to go to the last tab, swipe right on the pill to go to the next tab, and if there is no next tab, it will automagically open a new tab for you. Swipe up from the pill to go to the tab overview. Tap on the pill to see your Favorites page. I absolutely adore these gestures, it makes it so quick and simple to move around various tabs in iOS Safari.
But that is also where my additional settings request comes in. If you scroll around on a page (or you return to Safari and to a page that has been scrolled to somewhere) that pill is shrunk down to a mini pill, which is nice because it gives way to more content, but it’s also a pitfall. If you miss that pill has become mini pill and muscle memory has you use one these usual swipe gestures, you then get dumped out of Safari ending up with something you absolutely did not want. Swipe to the right will take you to last app, swipe up will take to you the springboard. These gestures are of course native to iOS and make sense, but they trigger because pill has been replaced by mini pill which is very easy to miss when you’re hastily tapping and swiping around iPhone Safari on a small screen (at least to me).
I get why Apple has the mini pill and how they switch from and to it is indeed smart, but I catch myself using Safari gestures on it far too often and then dumping myself where I didn’t want to go and breaking my whole flow. A simple option to retain the pill at all times would fix that for me.
[Edit: Of course a tap on mini pill will return it to pill state so that the gestures work, but that’s easy to miss considering the two pill states or not that very different in terms of appearance.]