I’m thinking it’s just classic fashion marketing. The most important thing is the “new and fresh look for your active content-creator lifestyle”. Different and “new” helps sell phones, even if we’ve had semi-transparent UIs before, had the exact same discussions and came to the same conclusions.
Staying visually the same for too long is considered boring and makes it so much easier for users to stay with their old device. Bad for business.
In closing, to paraphrase Merlin:
“Every day, someone is born who have never seen Aqua or Windows 7.”
Overall I’m fine with Liquid Glass, but the automatically elongating numerals for the time often overlay the actual person in the picture. Isn’t it supposed to detect the face and avoid doing that? Is there any way to turn off that one aspect?
But back in the 90s the updates to the OS was an exciting and pleasurable experience, getting a load of floppies, upgrading and seeing what visual changes there were for 7.1. It was about the ability of a computer to make you feel good through attention to design.
So I don’t think a visual refresh is necessarily purely a modern cynical fashion marketing exercise, or at least historically within Apple it hasn’t been.
Is it just that they aren’t leaders in design any more?
I think this is correct. Their apparent design superiority over the last few years can mostly be attributed to the business decision to keep themselves ad- and junkware-free. The actual design itself is nothing to write home about, whether on Macs or on mobile.
I never, ever thought I would be tempted to switch out of an iPhone. And because I know those other phones certainly have their own problems, maybe worse ones, I probably won’t switch. But Apple’s lack of AI chops and questionable design decisions have me thinking about it. which is shocking to me.
I’ve used an iPhone since 2007 but my current 16 Pro may be my last one. I’ve decided that if Apple doesn’t deliver on all the promises they made at WWDC 2024 by June 2026 I’m checking out the competition.
I haven’t relied on Apple software and services for several years so switching should be trivial.
IMHO they need to stop this annual upgrade cycle and spread them out, ignoring product release cycles. This is what they used to do and we were all better off without the rushed designs.
Not that I am proud of being susceptible to advertising, but one of the Apple competitors is running a great ad about waiting for the phone of the future, and how if your current phone has been promising to be the Phone of the future for years, but never does, you should maybe look elsewhere.
I guess if it were a really great ad, I would know which company made it. But that ad made me start thinking seriously about a switch.
I’m running iOS 26 on my iPhone 14 Pro and wish I had held off, but I’ve just accepted it and moved on. I don’t care for the liquid glass look. I think they sacrificed legibility and other things all for eye candy, which makes no sense and doesn’t feel like the Apple I’ve known all these years of using their hardware since 2003. They do offer reduce transparency and that helps a bit, but something feels wrong that so many people are going into accessibility settings out of annoyance rather than actual accessibility needs. To me, that says a lot.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this statement.
+1
Hopefully (and most likely), Apple will be tweaking everything over the next 2 years until it works much better. Consider the iterative evolution in UI design following the “revolution” of iOS 7.
Unfortunately one thing I learned early in my software development career is that there are many graphic designers out there whose top priority is impressing themselves and other graphic designers. (Meeting the users’ needs is lower on that list, if if it’s on the list at all.) Sadly Liquid Glass feels like it was created by those same designers.
After 10 years in an iPhone I switched to a Pixel 8 Pro for one year last year. I only switched back to Apple because the Pixel was harder to integrate into my Apple eco system. However, the Pixel was better in my opinion than the iPhone and I only gave it up grudgingly.
If Apple continue on their current trajectory I will most likely begin to move out of the Apple eco system. They no longer have any lead in any area in my opinion. And their prices are exorbitant. Apple AI is an absolute joke. I mostly get Apple AI can’t work with this type of content or a referral to use ChatGPT. The big change on the iPhone homescreen was stretching the time. Nothing sensible like adding multiple widgets. I find the new interface glitchy. Transitions can be jerky and on my iPhone 16 Plus the battery life has taken a 10% hit on daily usage with OS26 over iOS18.
I agree with jerky transitions - the way the icons on the Home Screen come in after unlocking just seems annoying, unnecessary, and badly implemented to me.
But in terms of Apple no longer having a lead in any area - I’d say privacy (FWIW as I think privacy is a losing battle and most of us have given up).
But let’s not get off topic away from design, and not whether Apple should do design/changes but whether liquid glass is actually any good.
Anything that makes things harder to see or read is bad in my book. But hey, I’m not a young man anymore! . I do think that they should make ui styles options rather than hard coded.
I’m also finding Safari bookmarks not in my muscle memory yet at all and the smaller search bar at the bottom of Safari means I click on the page settings icon by mistake often
I disagree. Apple has a massive lead in mindshare because of the iPhone. They really haven’t had to work very hard for quite a while and Apple really needs some serious competition, IMO.
Iron sharpens iron. If Google is successful merging Chrome OS with Android to produce a new desktop OS that might provide some needed incentive for Apple to sharpen their focus. And that would be good for both company’s customers.
There are definitely issues. I don’t mind change as long as it’s for good reason or worse a zero sum effect, however, Liquid Glass has felt like pure eye candy at the expense of legibility. Right before iOS 26 released I had a new battery put into my iPhone 14 Pro because it was starting to die mid evening. I got a lot of battery life back, but that feels like it got taken back from Liquid Glass. I don’t know how scientific this testing was, but someone used what looks to be a metered power strip to understand some of the power draw from different effects. If this is accurate, Liquid Glass is pretty heavy on the battery. Which makes me question the change even further.
. I do think that they should make ui styles options rather than hard coded.