Nick Heer Peers Through Liquid Glass

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Originally published at: Nick Heer Peers Through Liquid Glass - TidBITS

In a deep examination of Liquid Glass on the iPhone and Mac on his Pixel Envy blog, Nick Heer writes:

I am spending an awful lot of words on the MacOS version because I think it is the least successful of the two Liquid Glass implementations I have used. MacOS still works a lot like MacOS. But it looks and feels like someone dictated, context-free, that it needed to reflect the redesign of iOS.

The iOS implementation is more successful since Liquid Glass feels — and I mean feels — like something designed first for touch-based systems. There is an increasingly tight relationship between the device and its physical environment. Longstanding features like True Tone meet new (well, new-ish) shifting highlights that respond to physical device orientation, situating the iPhone within its real-world context. Yet, even in its best implementation on iOS, Liquid Glass looks out of place when it is used in apps that rely on layouts driven by simple shapes and clean lines.

I highly recommend reading Heer’s extensively documented criticisms of Liquid Glass. He offers numerous examples of what he likes and doesn’t like about Liquid Glass, though there is much more of the latter, leading to this delicious line, “I could keep going with my nitpicks, so I shall.” Nevertheless, it’s essential to acknowledge that Liquid Glass is here to stay, while also offering constructive criticism that can help push Apple to improve the user experience.

I also appreciated his attempts to understand why Apple chose to introduce Liquid Glass now:

I kept asking myself “why?” as I used iOS 26 and MacOS 26 this summer. I wanted to understand the rationale for a complete makeover across Apple’s entire line of products. What was the imperative for unifying the systems’ visual interface design language? Why this, specifically?

Come to think of it, why is this the first time all of the operating systems are marketed with the same version number? And why did Apple decide this was the right time to make a dedicated “operating system” section on its website to show how it delivers a “more consistent experience” between devices? I have no evidence Apple would want to unify under some kind of “Apple OS” branding, but if Apple did want to make such a change, this feels like a very Apple-y way to soft-launch it. After all, your devices already run specific versions of Safari and Siri without them needing to be called “Mac Safari” and “Watch Siri”. Just throwing that thought into the wind.

If anything like that pans out, it could explain why Apple sees its products as needing a unified identity.

Why now? The answer may partly lie in available processing power. The balance between usability and aesthetics has always been informed by technical capabilities. Consider a few dates from Apple’s history:

  • 1980s: With just Motorola 680Ă—0 chips and QuickDraw—and users new to graphical interfaces—a focus on usability was paramount.
  • 1990s: As computers gained power, interface flourishes became possible, leading Steve Dorner to add his cranky “Waste cycles drawing trendy 3D junk” setting to Eudora.
  • 2001: Mac OS X’s Aqua interface introduced gel buttons, drop shadows, and translucent menus, made possible by Quartz and GPU acceleration.
  • 2007: The iPhone’s signature 60 fps animations—smooth scrolling, springy bounces, fluid zooms—left competing smartphones stuttering through basic tasks.
  • 2013/14: iOS 7 and OS X 10.10 Yosemite pushed hardware limits with live blur effects and translucency that older devices struggled to handle.
  • 2025: Apple silicon provides enough horsepower that our devices can easily handle the kind of sophisticated optical effects once reserved for SIGGRAPH graphics conference demos.

I’m also intrigued by Heer’s idea that Liquid Glass might signal a broader “Apple OS” branding, since I’ve been using OS as a shorthand for Apple’s stable of operating systems for some time now. While I’d be surprised to see Apple drop the separate operating system names entirely, Heer makes a valid point that Apple already uses universal naming across platforms for apps and features.

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…which makes it hell to search for troubleshooting info when something goes wrong on one device in one OS, but most of the support articles that come back from searches are for a different device and/or a different version or for a service that shares the name of an app or…

I give up.

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I have fewer problems with the universal naming than with the generic names. Calendar, Contacts, Mail, etc. are even harder to search on.

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The linked article links to other interesting articles, such as:

which links to:

and:

Yes, macOS forcing icons to look like iOS is my bugbear.

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Interesting. This seems to indicate that the squircles are not created by macOS, but is the result of app developers updating apps with new icons.

Is Apple forcing app developers to do this or are developers just jumping on the bandwagon? I suppose it doesn’t matter too much, but it will be important for figuring out where to direct complaints if you object strong enough to voice a complaint.

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Based on comments from Rogue Amoeba in an update to their Audio Hijack application, it sounds like the constraints are imposed by the OS. I have one app in the App Store (so smallest possible sample size), and its icon was already contained within a rectangular frame, so no impact to me.

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I liked Heer’s article; it was illuminating.

I don’t hate Liquid Glass, but I am struggling to see much more. I’ve had Reduce Transparency, Reduce Motion, Large Text, and Increase Contrast on since they were introduced.

So much of the UI text is gray which makes it hard to read. I’m using Voice Over a lot more now.

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One thing I’ve noticed about Liquid Glass is that when you’re entering a numeric passcode on the lock screen, the buttons show a lot more visible response than they used to. This seems to me like a gift to shoulder surfers.

Dave

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One speculation that I read somewhere is that Apple introduced Liquid Glass to distract from its lack of news in AI-related development.

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One speculation is that Apple’s lack of news in AI-related development is because the engineering resources were devoted to Liquid Glass.

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That’s the sort of thing I was afraid of as I read Adam’s comments, and find it troubling. After a year of trying to use an iPhone, I still don’t use most of its smartphone features. I had cataract surgery about a decade ago, and after half a century of looking at the world through the narrow tube of thick eyeglasses, it’s a joy to see the whole world again. I now require reading glasses, but that’s not a problem for normal reading on paper or on a desktop screen. It is a smartphone. Not only do I have to fumble to get the thing out of my pocket, I have to put on my reading glasses before I can read anything on the screen. Small type on small screens is a pain, and can be literally painful because they give me eyestrain. When my wife tries to show me something on her iPhone, I usually can’t read it.

I could go on, but my point is that some of us are not matched to the iPhone or iOS. I didn’t buy mine; my old dumb phone broke and my wife gave me her old SE when she upgraded. If my iPhone broke, I would go back to a dumb phone because I can’t use most smartphone features. The iPhone is a technological masterpiece, but it doesn’t work for me, and I don’t want iOS features getting in the way of the MacOS features that do work for me.

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That is why I like a bigger phone. What bothers me are UI design and apps that don’t let you make the text bigger!

I have a third party email app I use for one account (because Apple Mail broke that account and won’t work with it on iPhone any more) and I’ve got all the text settings to maximum size (both in the app and in system Accessibility) and the dang app still displays my email messages in tiny 8-point type! :enraged_face:

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Do make sure you go to Settings > Accessibility for:

Display & Text Size Turning on (tap the slider so green shows) Bold Text and Larger Text and possibly Increase Contrast & Reduce Transparency.

Also under Settings > Accessabilty you might try turning on Zoom, which enlarges the whole screen with a three-finger double tap.

You can navigate around the enlarged screen by dragging with three fingers.

It can take a bit to get used to it, so give it a fifteen minute try before rejecting it.

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Thanks for the suggestions, but I’ve tried and it wasn’t good enough. I have an original SE, with is three of my fingers wide. I tried enlarging the letters, but making them readable made them so long that a whole phone number did not fit on the screen. Cutting off the last couple of the caller’s phone number so I could not tell who calling. After that, I could see there was no point in trying to set up the phone for email. If I’m traveling, I take my MacBookAir so I can read my mail if I need, and even that means I have to put on my reading glasses. The eyestrain I would get from trying to read on a phone is just not worth it.

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That’s the way I am on the watch. I don’t even try to read texts there, unless it’s just a few words or an emergency. I always have my phone with me, so the watch is just a quick confirmation that it’s not urgent and I can read it on my phone later.

(Of course I can make the texts on the watch bigger, but then it’s line one word per line making a sentence require scrolling.)

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To me there’s an obvious reason behind this shift towards a unified visual approach: preparation for the next things to come: glasses.

All of this resembles the AppleVision interface on 2D displays. We are getting used to this semi 3D interface and the Apps are getting prepared as well.

So when Apple rolls out the AppleVision successor we immediately understand the UI and most Apps don’t need a visual overhaul.

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I’m mostly a MacOS user, though I have other Apple devices - I have three Macs now. I recently got an M4 Pro Mac Mini because my vintage Intel iMac, with the gorgeous 27” 5K Retina display, won’t run current versions of my work applications. It is nice when the handheld devices work but whereas I beta tested iPadOS26 on my iPad 9th gen - I don’t use it much. When iOS26 dropped, I updated my hand-me-down iPhone 13Pro Max - and have since have gotten used to it. A helpful Apple Store employee - showed me their tips to reduce motion, increase contrast and so on - because we shared a distaste for all that shiny distraction - while I was there shopping for my sister for a new iPhone 17 Pro. She was upgrading from an iPhone 11 Pro. So I’m okay with all things :red_apple:26 - Apple TV, Apple Watch. I am not rushing to update my MacBook M1 Air (I’ve set up 3 of these for family members and they will use them forever) nor the venerable iMac - which can’t be updated beyond Ventura anyway - to macOS 26 Any rate, while recently troubleshooting why Ventura and a Sequoia system both connected to the same iCloud Drive could not sync reliably with other - I had reason to delve a little deeper into the several implementations of iCloud. Apple have been clever in hiding the details - which would be great if it just worked - but there are very ways to get a handle of what is happening when it doesn’t. The has lead to considerable frustration and yes, consideration of whether Apple’s iCloud is still an acceptable fit for my use case. There are plenty of alternatives.

It occurred to me that the future of the consumer/desktop operating system [or just a fruity vision?] is one in which - as presaged by iOS - the operating system is invisible to the user, that is except to techies