Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2025/10/06/apples-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.
