Steve Jobs would have fired everyone
twitter.comThe "it would have been different under Steve Jobs" trope is coming up every so often when Apple introduces a radical new feature. Oftentimes I don't agree but in this case I absolutely do. A huge amount of engineering to get these shader effects right, but the outcome will be that the platforms will look more like a fruit salad and less coherent. Companies that invested in React Native, Flutter, Tauri, or alternatives in the past years will not necessarily be willing to redo their whole app just so that the controls get the glass look. At the same time replicating this in every cross platform toolkit might be difficult, and so I think this will lead to many apps looking out of place which worsens the overall experience.
As with everything related to Apple, most likely this change is related to something coming in a year or two that needs transparent widgets.
Now devs have time to adjust their applications for this system, which makes the next update easier.
Could be AR glasses or a consumer level VR headset, or something completely different.
Well I agree that with Apple there is always some sort of plan. But the real question would be: is that plan worth it?
Considering what they are doing with the Vision Pro, I am extremely skeptical. I think Apple has lost touch with why people bought their stuff and this is more evidence of that.
You would think this would be obvious to everyone. Clearly Apple is prepping for a digital overlay on the real world. Also less UI interaction, more voice/AI interaction.
Looks quite relevant for Vision Pro, transparent screens, AR and such. I think that's the rational. Maybe a transparent iPhone screen coming up?
Very interesting take - infinitely more insightful that any knee-jerk reaction I've seen up till now!
They are called Apple, why are you surprised about fruid salad?
Additionally why would Apple be interested in making cross platform coherence easier? Just buy Apple if you want the cool design.
I agree, but I think they're not in the position anymore to enforce this. Years ago this would have been a valid move, but companies that switched to cross platform will not move back. It saves costs and adds velocity to just have one team for both platforms.
Companies will have to decide if they want the cool design or their own consistent look.
I think this was a business decision aiming for this result.I think this will lead to many apps looking out of place which worsens the overall experience.react nataive gets some design refreshes for free. its native.
But not these, afaik. RN only supports basic view types and composes them into controls. But these offer complete distinct controls. Using these in RN is possible, but usually via iOS-only plugins
A < Glass $gt; component that's an empty container everywhere else, except on iOS it a glass.
This is something I posted on Threads yesterday, but this kind of thing comes up every WWDC and every September.
> It’s WWDC week. Every time this rolls around, I see people saying the same sort of thing. “Steve Jobs wouldn’t have done this”.
> Firstly, Jobs wasn’t perfect. He got a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong. His opinion wasn’t the end of the argument when he was alive, and it’s certainly not now that he’s been dead 14 years.
> But more importantly: Stop putting your opinion in a dead man’s mouth to give it more credibility. It’s ghoulish. Let your opinion stand on its own two feet.
The folks saying "Steve Jobs wouldn't have done this" didn't know him at all and have no idea what he would do - They just want their opinion to have some form of validation because they feel that no one will give it to them otherwise. Additionally, the dude's dead because he refused chemo. He wasn't a genius saint.
Steve Jobs himself asked everybody at Apple not to second-guess what he would have done. I'm pretty sure they show quotes when they train executives at Apple University.
I can't get over this from Apple specifically, I offer joke about how UI/UX designers just make work for themselves but here someone was missing to call these things out.
The rounded edges are all a hodgepodge, the different levels of transparency is uncomfortable and the overall lack of coherence is really bad..
it's incredibly bad in every way and people defending it are completely out of touch
I used it and it’s readable (at least to me).
I did not particularly like it nor hated it before using it; I just went with an open mind, and it’s ok (on iPhone, on macOS it sucks, at least for now).
Apple used to care about accessibility by default. Even their cherrypicked and ultrapolished Keynote demo had issues with readability on almost every single screen they’ve shown. Windows 7 designers were smart enough to blur the glassy background behind the rare cases the text was shown on glassy backgrounds, and generally tended to avoid it altogether. Apple instead went full “tech demo” without considering any practical aspects.
Sure, you’ll be able to tone down glass effects in the Accessibility menu, but is making the text legible by default is too much to ask for?
I know people hate this but it shows a huge problem: innovation in operating system design. It's really a tough one. You really want the basic functionality to be very stable and unchanging to save yourself and others incompatibility pain over the next decades. OTOH, you need to release a new OS every now and again to show the markets that you are doing something. So they did a cosmetic upgrade like changing the graphic theme. Which, depending on your PoV, might be a very good thing.
UI is fashion-driven like clothing or furniture or car design. That's not new, it's just hard to admit for us techies that such a thing exists in our world. And just like with fashion, some changes are not for 'better' but for 'cooler' or 'more interesting'. The question is how far on the 'worse' scale you're willing to go to get up on the 'cool' scale. Otherwise, we'd all still be running Windows Server 2000...
Windows Server 2000 was great though! Or maybe that’s what you’re saying. I’m fine with all kinds of UX flash as long as it can be disabled; especially animation.
Or perhaps, it's for "designers keeping themselves employed"
IMHO the next actual OS design innovation isnt stylistic, its AI integration and everyone knows it.
Siri was a fun toy, but "Siri except not an idiot" is a revolutionary step, and how to tastefully integrate her is an interesting, challenging, and active problem with tremendous upside. I know enterprise moves slow but do they need Open AI and others to build a fully functioning alternative OS before they wake up?
> IMHO the next actual OS design innovation isnt stylistic, its AI integration and everyone knows it.
I'd be careful with "everyone" in this context. So far, almost every review I read/watched sees Apple Intelligence as underwhelming at the very least (I ignore the backlash at the ad campaign as I believe Apple understood by now these ads were really stupid).
It's why Linux with a sane WM has become the most pleasant client OS almost by default.
Not sure why they think this improves in any way what they got, as am not sure why they thought the previous redesign improved what they got in the first place. This one can be nothing but a huge blow to readability and accessibility.
I think people would probably feel less strongly about design decisions like these if their customization weren't confined to the Accessibility settings.
Same thing goes for, say, the caption settings on tvOS.
It's an interesting UX decision to always confine those settings to just that category when it's perfectly normal to change and customize settings to their own personal preference. But Apple are also big believers in only putting settings in one place, and obviously people with disabilities in particular might become outright unableto use Apple devices and software without them.
But maybe it feels like a design concessions to give people are more direct way to change your design decisions on Apple's part.
People have lots of opinions about Microsoft's designs, but most of them aren't as important when there are (somewhat) straightforward settings to tweak them.
Apple makes a big deal about how much they focus on accessibility (which they honestly do), so it might be that the Accessibility team is the only group that has the internal clout to push back on these types of design changes. As long as the setting is categorized as accessibility, the design teams might just have to live with it.
It’s very possible that if the settings weren’t under accessibility, they might not exist at all.
I think Apple is well aware that this Liquid Glass design is harder to read and it's intentional. They want to train/prepare users for upcoming lighter AR glasses UI experience, where everything will be superimposed over "reality" with some glass-style UI and will be harder to read.
The current visionOS design is perfectly legible even with all of its translucency. This is far worse than that.
Wow, I didn't care enough about the news to actually look at any pictures, I just read the name and heard the general idea. That is truly awful. On top of the multiple visible layers of stuff everywhere, those are some of the ugliest "squircle" shapes that I've ever seen, beaten only by the app icons in Samsung's Android skin.
Look at how the red notification icon of a folder gets mirrored and stretched near the top of the media widget. It makes the widgets look particularly odd (it seems like an optical illusion, I find that the straight edges of squares look bent out, until I look right at them and see them as straight). The only positive I can give them if that someone worked hard on figuring out how to distort the images underneath.
I watched the video on this and I just really hate that they seemingly market it in a way that is somewhat suggestive of it being a new type of glass. After watching the video I was slightly confused as to whether they were just being grandiose with the name or they had actual new hardware with some fancy glass that was being explained poorly. It’s clearly the former but man that is dumb
I’ll reserve judgement until I can play around with a final release version for a bit. the screenshots so far don’t look great but the idea of minimizing UI elements to maximize content area display does make sense, if it’s done well
The other possibility is he would have managed the development into a release with successful user scenarios. I think it short changes his management ability to think firing was the only thing he brought to the table.
I think it outlines a bigger problem we have in the tech industry: innovation for the sake of innovation.
When you have an in-house design team, or development team, you will, inevitably, reach a point where your product is "ready": design was finalized, functionality is there, and aside from minor bug fixes, there is nothing else really to do. Then you ask yourself, what should you do with the in-house teams? The logical answer would be to let them go, or focus on different projects.
But this is not how our industry works. Instead, teams are sitting there, coming up with problems in order to create solutions, because otherwise you are getting paid for doing nothing. This, eventually, leads to enshittification of everything.
This new apple design is one example. Another example is a not-so-recent redesign of whatsapp where they went from blue color scheme to green. It's works for the sake of work.
Its just fashions. UI's have been going through multiple phases of fashions where accessibility and basic function is often sacrificed to have a different look. Windows didn't need all the colour and style changes its gone through, neither has Android and neither did iOS. These aren't changes for a good reason they are just fashions.
The longer I watch the tech industry the more I realise its going through these fashion and hype cycles.
Nailed it. If you let your whole UI, in a consumer application, stagnate, you will lose. Your software could be fantastic, but someone else will build something nearly as good, paint it a “cool” color, and eat your lunch.
The idea that phones aren’t, for a huge number of people, fashion accessories, is really funny, and extremely IT-centric, to me. Look at the way Apple releases very visible, specific features for its Pro models - it’s all signaling. My phone is purple because one year that was the new color so everyone who saw your phone would know it was the new one.
(I say this also not taking away from the opinion that it’s prepping users and developers for something they’re going to bring out in two years - both things can be equally true.)
On point - Can you imagine it's 2025 and I still can't customize my iOS keyboard... but we now have Liquid Glass
> I think it outlines a bigger problem we have in the tech industry: innovation for the sake of innovation.
Yeah. Imagine the world if all the tech companies stopped spouting useless new features every day and dedicated 3-5 years on fixing bugs and improving the existing products / performance.
Stupid comment, why someone who is not Steve Jobs can say what SJ would do. Because anyone who is not him can say his own point of view and tag it as « Steve Jobs would have … »
I even think someone at Apple might have said « SJ would have loved it ».
SJ apparently said to Tim Cook : « Don't Do What I Would Do--Just Do What's Right ». In other words, do whatever you want. So only time will tell if he’s right and people complained a lot about the atrocity of the notch and it still made them billions (witch matters most at the end for a company I guess)
Looks like the coolest KDE setup of 2005.
I can't wait to see Apple's take on the Compiz cube.
It reminds me more of Windows Aero Gone Wild™.
Lol. Exactly that. They need to put some widgets to tell how much processing the done is using and make it all over a cube surface too
(Just to be sure, let me tell you that this is just a joke. It is 2025 and you never know ...)
True, that!
It will be hilarious if Apple's telemetry shows that most people go out of their way to disable this in the Accessibility settings.
Yeah there needs to be more background blur but I think that would fix it.
I don't like the lack of contrast either. But they have to use a small blur kernel otherwise the glass distortion would not be noticable
That's not enough. What if the background is solid white, or white with few details? Blurring just leads to white-on-white.
The primary color turns dark when the background is too bright, see "Meet Liquid Glass" or "What's new in SwiftUI" from WWDC25.
(a) Changing the primary colour past a certain threshold is not a solution, in my experience: there are backgrounds where the contrast is too low, no matter what you do.
(b) Even if it were, Apple's implementation doesn't work. https://furry.engineer/@cendyne/114660612541978921
I've been playing with such UIs for years, and they've never left my personal setup, because – while very pretty – they're not worth the hassle. However, Apple's implementation here is particularly bad. (I don't see why anyone takes these companies seriously any more.)
(a) fair point but edge cases exist everywhere
(b) this is the developer seed do you think they will ship it like this?
(a) Looking around me, I'm struggling to find a photo I could take that wouldn't trigger this "edge-case" – so it can't be that much of an edge-case.
(b) I'd expect them to patch this particular issue, now it's been widely-publicised, but Apple's pushed bigger defects to prod over the last few years (e.g. https://www.applevis.com/bugs/ios/when-editing-text-using-ha...). I'd be extremely surprised if this feature shipped in a properly usable state, especially given that their marketing shows that several fundamental design flaws are works-as-intended.
That's not hard to solve, you just need a good blending algorithm. For example: https://leloctai.com/asset/translucentimage/image/flatten.we...
It would be more grey on white than you think. It's not just Gaussian blur, they also have noise layers in the shader.
I've been on the fence about whether or not I should upgrade my 2017 iPad Pro (which recently fell out of support, but is still getting critical patches).
I'm thinking I'll just go with an Android tablet from here on. Any recommendations?
In the tablet space, nothing really comes close to iPads.
Ooof that's bad lol. At least increase the blur or reduce the transparency or anything to make the settings stand out more from the background...
My biggest complaint as a loyal Apple consumer and perhaps maybe more importantly shareholder is… What happened to one more thing? Literally all their events are bland, lacking any explosive or gasps from the crowd. Same old, minor tweaks and dumb innovation such as genmoji. Honestly who’s coming up with this crap?
The last thing Apple did that actually got people excited and real innovation was apple silicon.
Lest we forget, Jobs LOVED the original iMac Hockey Puck Mouse and wanted the iPhone to only run a handful of Apple-designed apps.
The original iPhone was supposed to be used for PWAs. Job's vision actually made way more sense in retrospect although what Apple produced was ultimately much more profitable for them.
It feels like harder to read
Windows 7 was better in that regard
Honestly, it doesn’t look as bad of a redesign as iOS 7 was. I remember people hating the new flat look, and how worse it was by all measures.
But time passes, and a generation of UI designers has grown up who never knew better. Now it’s their turn to be baffled, then they too will just become old and grumpy.
I love the new design. Like Windows 7/Aero but with dynamic effects instead of the static stripes.
When I come across these "Steve Jobs would've never done this" clickbait posts, I always wonder who knew Steve better -- random poster on the internet or folks at Apple.
The second i saw Liquid Glass I started laughing out loud in the office - it made me think of The Abyss (1989) when the liquid tentacles come into the habitat...
The kind Vladimir Illych would have shot everyone here.
Why does it say Tesla at the top?
The Tesla app was using location services when the screenshot was taken. It’s a similar indicator to camera activity, basically a privacy feature in iOS.
Needs more Compiz, imo
I'm also pretty sure he wouldn't have released a phone with the notch.
I think the general move is towards more monochromatic interface and I for one welcome it. It will take a while to adjust, but I think we might end up with much more "peaceful" interface. I'm tired of icons jumping at me.
I really like what they’re going for but I’m disappointed in the outcome (so far). Then again, Apple has always managed to have a glaring oversight in design somewhere — “just hold your phone differently!”