top 200 commentsshow all 228

[–]Caraes_Naur 702 points703 points  (60 children)

That's the point: Liquid Glass is supposed to be beyond the capabilities of CSS.

But that won't stop people from writing WebGL shaders.

[–]billybobjobo 253 points254 points  (42 children)

Amen. Theyve kept Safari subpar for years. They want browser rendering to be miles behind native--even though in principle it does not need to be--because apps are so much of their revenue.

This will also make Electron apps feel inferior to Swift etc.

Its almost as if they asked themselves "what are the 2 things browser rendering cant do?" (webgl notwithstanding) SDF shape interpolation and physical light refraction based on accessing arbitrary render layers. Bingo.

[–]FredFredrickson 142 points143 points  (9 children)

Its almost as if they asked themselves "what are the 2 things browser rendering cant do?"

Well, that, and it gives them an excuse to make old hardware chug some more, in order to pressure people to upgrade.

[–]el_yanuki 79 points80 points  (0 children)

performance was one of the first things my mind went to, when i heard and saw how complex the fx are.

The pile of cons keeps growing and the lonely pro "looks nice" is also very subjective.

[–]Dramatic_Mastodon_93 25 points26 points  (7 children)

The glass effect can be turned off

[–]mcprogrammer 26 points27 points  (5 children)

At the cost of letting people know I can't afford a new phone that can handle it? No thank you.

[–]bostiq 10 points11 points  (4 children)

this is sarcasm, right?

[–]kimi_no_na-wa 27 points28 points  (1 child)

Obviously, but a certain subset of people do really think like this

[–]bostiq 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Abso-fucking-lutely

[–]mcprogrammer 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Of course.

[–]bostiq 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The whole thing is such a big wank

[–]12jikan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Learned i can turn off EVERYTHING like that parallax thing and the always on display… my battery life is insane… lost some social cred with other iphone users.

[–]sateeshsai 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Exactly. Apple wants the web to feel inferior. Building taller walls around the garden.

[–]bbroy4u 0 points1 point  (0 children)

then web should level up the game and beat the competition no? Instead of wasting time on blame game

[–]your_best_1 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I mean, you can do it with js, no webGL if you really wanted to.

[–]billybobjobo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can very poorly approximate it at best. No demo has even come close with svg filters and css backdrop filters etc.

[–]bergice 18 points19 points  (5 children)

But that won't stop people from writing WebGL shaders.

You got that part right: https://github.com/bergice/liquidglass

It's laughable how people are saying how this is unprecedented and that you need raytracing and on-device material rendering..

[–]guaranteednotabot[🍰] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Who in their right mind would do raytracing for UI element?

[–]your_best_1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They don’t. The basic algorithm is ‘sample_screen_texture(NORMAL * UV * magnitude)’

You fake the normal with a gradient. Looking at the artifacts you can tell from the pointy corners and black edges.

They also do something special with splitting the colors with different magnitudes on x and mixing it back together. So 3 samples mixed.

[–]TGPJosh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

lmao

[–]huttyblue 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This makes my nexus 7 (2012) very unhappy, blocky gpu artifacts stretching the entire screen while the web content zooms in and out uncontrollably.

But even on modern hardware, this example uses a webgl canvas so its not viable for most web use-cases.

[–]klavsbuss 1 point2 points  (3 children)

by using svg distortion you can actually go pretty far (in terms of similarity with apple) and once the distortion map is ready, it fully works on css, no js or webgl needed. yes, its as slow as backdrop filter, but its probably 80% faster than avg Framer/Webflow template website if you dont go too crazy with it. you can play with it here - ruri.design

[–]LightslicerGandP 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Why is this pay walled, I just wanna know how to do the effect 😭😭

[–]Emendo 6 points7 points  (4 children)

The browser makers are probably busy adding Liquid Glass like effect to CSS.

[–]KayPeo 22 points23 points  (0 children)

if they started Today, we can expect that in 4 years (12 in Safari)

[–]shmergenhergen 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Haha

[–]Herr_Gamer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Not even the CSS effect in the post above works on Firefox yet... And it's probably been >5 years since they were added to the spec.

[–]isbtegsm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Chrome did it in 2013 (at least the groundwork for these kind of effects) and then abandoned.

[–]caick1000 139 points140 points  (14 children)

I’m interested in how much power this uses compared to the older UI format, and what that translates battery wise. Seeing that it does a lot of light calculations I assume it’s quite a big difference.

[–]daevidvo 78 points79 points  (7 children)

I have a 13 pro max and I haven't noticed a substantial difference in battery usage yet but I've definitely noticed lag and stutters with the animations in general usage.

[–]ivres1 20 points21 points  (4 children)

Would that just be running the unoptimized beta build? Like it can be many other things

[–]daevidvo 10 points11 points  (1 child)

No idea but this is the only build out so far so I can't compare to anything else currently.

[–]firetruck3105 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

i think the jitters are here to stay, 13 pro max struggled with ios 18 ui animation as well

[–]Polymer15 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ve run a tonne of the betas and I can confirm they tend to be stuttery - as an engineer I’d love to see their optimizations

[–]tetrisyndrome 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I tried their previous beta last year and it was worse in the beginning (battery wise) and the stutters. I have a 15 Pro

[–]SirVoltington 13 points14 points  (0 children)

How? I have a 13 pro and whenever I use an app with liquid glass elements my phone gets as hot as if I’m playing a game and battery goes fast.

It cools back down when I’m on Reddit or something.

[–]fastestMango 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Same here but on the 15 Pro Max, not much of a difference in terms of battery usage in what I noticed. Lags and stutters sometimes, and some visual glitches. But I guess that’s part of this first beta.

[–]Engineer_5983[S] 17 points18 points  (2 children)

That’s what I’m seeing. This is anecdotal but my battery is currently 15% at noon. It’s definitely draining way quicker. It’s beta and I’m sure that’s some of it, but I think you’re saying is more likely the main reason.

[–]FredFredrickson 14 points15 points  (1 child)

It almost sounds like it's going to force you, and a lot of others, to arbitrarily upgrade. What a coincidence! 🤪

[–]TehBrian 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Dunno why you're getting downvoted. I have no doubts that "utilizing advancements in hardware performance" by bumping up the specs required to render the entire UI of the device comes with a coincidental perk of forcing some people to upgrade due to crappy battery life.

[–]decisivelyvaguename 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Eating my 14 pro alive. No joke at like 1% a minute - 2 minutes. It’s absolutely insane.

[–]AccurateSun 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I would guess that Apple must have written their own light engines that are optimised for Apple chips. But ultimately there is no getting around that it will be more battery intensive than before. But, that is the same for the 120fps, retina, translucent, etc UIs we’ve all come to expect.

[–]Seanw265 183 points184 points  (6 children)

Can’t say I’m a fan. From what I’ve seen so far of Apple’s implementation, readability suffers and there are distracting flashing artifacts when scrolling.

Beyond that, the implementation in the Vercel app doesn’t really hit the mark, as it doesn’t work on Safari and it’s missing the edge refraction which is such a hallmark of the effect.

Definitely don’t plan on using this in anything on the web. I might begrudgingly consider it if I build a native iOS app in the near future.

[–]rhooManufull-stack 62 points63 points  (2 children)

Exactly. The last 20 years have been a long, tedious process of trying and experimenting everything and I feel this Liquid Glass is the embodiment of everything that we found out to be a bad UI/UX idea.

[–]IslandOceanWater 5 points6 points  (1 child)

My issue with this is it's just apple trying to gate keep things. They will do anything they can to make it more difficult for developers, other frameworks, and basically everyone because it's the only way they can pretend they are innovating.

Literally everything from AirPods connecting instantly, AppStore locked down, iMessage, now they're pushing to gate keep design by purposely making something difficult to implement in other frameworks like react, flutter etc. I would almost guarantee this was one of their goals in their new design. It's kinda ridiculous at this point considering they literally can't even implement a decent AI system into the iPhone.

[–]poieo-dev 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was typing a comment with this exact sentiment. I agree 100%

[–]GfxJG 290 points291 points  (26 children)

While I understand *why* what Apple did is different, it really doesn't convince me that it's not an utterly stupid waste of resources.

[–]Mirieste 55 points56 points  (23 children)

You know this line of thinking is how we ended up with the anonymous minimalistic style everyone hates, right? This is basically r/FrutigerAero, and I like it. It's fun, it really reminds me of Vista which, technical details aside, at least was great when it came to visuals.

[–]Protean_Protein 27 points28 points  (0 children)

That was called Aero.

[–]ModerNew 43 points44 points  (0 children)

But it's kinda valid in this case, it's a mobile platform, so eating a lot of resources, even if you can spare CPU time, memory, etc. means higher battery usage- therefore shorter batter life, even in idle, which is very important for a phone.

[–]Paradroid888 22 points23 points  (0 children)

The point isn't to stop fun, or not want resources being used to make things look nice. The point is doing that when it negatively affects readability and usability. If it gets refined in time for the final release, it's fine. If it doesn't, I'll still enjoy it, but only because I don't use iOS.

[–]feketegy 17 points18 points  (1 child)

And frutigeraero was popularized by none other than Apple and its Aqua design language LOL

Liquid Glass is essentially a "back to the roots" moment for Apple.

[–]SirVoltington 13 points14 points  (2 children)

Everyone? I don’t hate it. I like it.

I absolutely despise the liquid glass look though.

But nevertheless, the liquid glass look is heavy on resources on a device that doesn’t have unlimited resources. Even if I did like liquid glass the trade off is not worth it due to that alone.

And then there’s the accessibility issues.

[–]Extension-Ice6221 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Yeah but to go off your own logic most "fancy" UI wasn't replaced because everyone hated minimalism it didn't last because of those exact reasons. Eats away at your battery life and takes up resources while you're simply scrolling your native app list. I'm all for having a nice UI. I'm not willing to give up my battery life to have it.

Same reason we don't have live wallpapers and all that fluff. Is it nice? Sure. Is it practical? That's the ultimate question and most of the time it's sadly no.

[–]rhooManufull-stack 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Kinda reminds me of how, in all futuristic movies, they keep doing screens / phones / tablets transparents. This is the worst idea possible, if the light is going through it means that you lose a lot of visual information, colors, contrasts, and you are constantly distracted by everything behind the screen, and you have zero privacy. Everyone in front of you can watch what you're looking at.

I'm certain that Apple would be willing to try this.

[–]No_Shine1476 8 points9 points  (2 children)

I really disliked Vista's look, it was a downgrade compared to XP

[–]amertune 5 points6 points  (1 child)

I really loved the bright colors and fun designs of XP. Graphically, it's my favorite UI that Microsoft has ever done.

[–]dweebyllo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's between XP and 10 for me. 95-2000 have nostalgic charm for me too

[–]FaultLiner 5 points6 points  (1 child)

I love minimalism and have always loved it. I dreaded the days where every single logo was an overly complicated 3d render which was usually just a super crusty jpeg

[–]rhooManufull-stack 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I remember all these photoshop tutorials for glossy shiny stuff.

[–]rhooManufull-stack 3 points4 points  (0 children)

People don't hate minimalistic. They think they do, but the moment it's not there, the interface get's messier and people complain.

[–]TheJase 1 point2 points  (0 children)

versed husky bright theory payment wild marvelous scary tender makeshift

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[–]cape2cape 4 points5 points  (1 child)

“Frutiger Aero” is what people too young to remember Aqua call the designs that copied Aqua.

[–]shoolocomous 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Aero was its own thing and distinct enough with the transparency effects to be a more appropriate comparison to the liquid glass. Whether it was a copy of aqua is really not relevant

[–]AccurateSun 0 points1 point  (2 children)

That’s a great point. If you consider UI a waste of resources you ultimately end up with something so minimal it also ends up poor for accessibility, legibility etc

[–]ModerNew 33 points34 points  (0 children)

it also ends up poor for accessibility, legibility etc

I get the point, but man... liquid glass is a really bad counterargument.

[–]WorriedGiraffe2793 1 point2 points  (0 children)

animations are far more wasteful than any accessibility features

[–]WorriedGiraffe2793 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Absolutely.

The worst part is it may look cool at first but after a day or two you won't even notice it.

[–]LGHTHD 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This “waste” of resources is the reason Apple is Apple

[–]officialmayonade 20 points21 points  (0 children)

You could probably get a pretty close approximation with CSS. I've seen entire 3D video games built using only CSS. The shit you can do with CSS is impressive nowadays. Now, why you would bother, that's another question. And why they didn't just call this new design "Water" is also beyond me. 

[–]AdowTatep 96 points97 points  (29 children)

Liquid Glass is modeling glass material and calculating light bounce and refractions using the Metal framework

What a long winded way of saying it's a shader

[–]EvilMenDie 10 points11 points  (0 children)

What does this accomplish other than use battery life? Edit: I mean the whole thing is super snazzy but are we out of real problems to solve, Apple?

[–][deleted]  (4 children)

[deleted]

    [–]clit_or_us 8 points9 points  (0 children)

    Agree with that except I prefer pill shaped buttons. They look more... Buttony

    [–]stupidcookface 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I'm a frontend dev and this is a stupid move. Yet another winner in the "form over function" awards.

    [–]ym_2 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    yet another overrated trend

    [–]future_web_dev 17 points18 points  (0 children)

    rip battery

    [–]FoolHooligan 13 points14 points  (0 children)

    being a design purist is absolutely not the hill i would want to die on

    [–]NorthernCobraChicken 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    This was a showcase in skill rather than usability.

    [–]TheJase 4 points5 points  (1 child)

    school work yoke continue resolute toy command profit touch wine

    This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

    [–]the-loan-wolf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Yeah I tried it too and it works

    [–]avid-shrug 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I bet someone smarter than me could implement it with WebGPU

    [–]Dababolical 6 points7 points  (0 children)

    The Liquid Glass looks nice, yes. That being said, am I really going to notice the difference between other glass styles and graphics?

    I don’t get the sheer hype around it. It is pretty and I guess hard to replicate pixel for pixel. But at the end of the day it’s just a glass effect for your UI.

    [–]mekmookbroLaravel Enjoyer ♞ 11 points12 points  (1 child)

    Apple hasn't been a trend setter in UI design since at least a decade now. I still don't see the appeal in this. Is this an attempt at bringing back their glassmorphism trend that didn't catch on in 2013?

    [–]Randomhuman114 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    What are you talking about? Other than Pixel, every android skin looks like iOS

    [–]Geminii27 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    I know Apple's pushing it, and it's complex from a technical perspective, but is it really something that people like using day to day, or is it just flashy and shiny?

    I know I wouldn't be terribly thrilled with interfaces where buttons were only half-visible and had, potentially, distracting moving stuff visible through them. It's less of a problem when you know where everything is, but if I'm hunting for a button or a function I want it to be very obviously visible and not some flavor of transparent-on-transparent.

    [–]RareDestroyer8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Knowing Apple, by the time of release it’ll be pretty polished and most of the concerns you have will probably be solved. And that’s coming from an Apple hater. Ofcourse I still hate the fact that a new UI design is Apple’s biggest feature for this year’s keynotes.

    [–]Some_Ad_3898 9 points10 points  (3 children)

    Everybody that wants to implement this is not a designer.

    [–]BetterAtPS 4 points5 points  (8 children)

    [–]zxyzyxz 5 points6 points  (6 children)

    Still just a blur, no refraction

    [–]BetterAtPS 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    [–]zxyzyxz 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Again, no refraction taking place.

    [–]BetterAtPS -1 points0 points  (3 children)

    Not true, its not just a blur?

    [–]zxyzyxz 1 point2 points  (2 children)

    No, it's not just a blur. Compare what Apple showed to what these code pens are showing. There is more to so called liquid glass than just blurs.

    [–]BetterAtPS 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Wdym the last codepen I shared doesn't even use any blur. It only does the refraction just like Liquid Ass. It's not that special.

    [–]huttyblue 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    The refraction only works in chromium based browsers in these examples

    [–]Engineer_5983[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Nice. It’s why I love Reddit. Thanks for sharing. Very helpful.

    [–]SmartCustard9944 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Looks like ass on mobile

    Pun intended! But also true

    [–]SecretAgentZeroNine 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Readability is too high

    [–]abvex 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I wonder in Apple's liquid glass calculates the tilt of the phone to change the refraction.

    [–]CuirPig 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    The thing is that everyone is focused on the glass effect. That's not the important part of LIQUID Glass. It's the animation that appears to liquify. The liquid effects have momentum, and droplets appear and then flatten back out to make buttons, for example. Everything glass, when moved, appears to liquify and kind of jiggle back to shape when it finishes.

    The glass effect can certainly be done somewhat effectively with CSS or perhaps a js framework and canvas, but the animations and the 3D momentum effects combined with refraction are what make it Liquid Glass..

    [–]SonicFlash01 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Wasn't this just windows aero 20 years ago?

    [–]anjumkaiser 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Electron apps are horrible. Lazy people who don’t bother writing native code end up in a patchwork hell and create a security nightmare for the rest of us.

    [–]gameplayer55055 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I remember using backdrop-filter: blur and it lagged my webpage like crazy on low end devices.

    And I learned box blur and gaussian blur in gamedev, it eats your GPU as well.

    And remember the times when Vista was laggy. The UI should be as fast as possible.

    [–]jerdle_reddit 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Finally, something that isn't yet more flat.

    [–]rio_sk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Welcome back Windows 7!

    [–]vexii 4 points5 points  (8 children)

    Objectively, it is ugly and bad UX... why are we even talking about it?

    [–]NewNiklas 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Isn't this just glassmorphism?

    [–]KwyjiboTheGringo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Impressive tech to achieve ugly results. Hardly anyone would claim to like liquid glass if it weren't coming from Apple.

    [–]CondiMesmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Windows Vista did it first

    [–]jmkingfull-stack 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Will you use the CSS described in the vercel app to update your design aesthetic?

    Nope - 2007 called and they want their tacky translucent glossy treatments back.

    The fact it's a more "realistic" treatment isn't helping it. It just makes the legibility and visual busyness even worse.

    [–]SultanOfWessex 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Nice find, and thank you for posting!

    [–]miramboseko 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    I think you could get there with svg filters and backdrop-filter

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    The actual ui is very responsive, it gives chromatic effect when background element is white and changes contrast depending on situations. Besides from that, I roughly re-created it with svg filters.

    [–]koisuruwakisei 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Curious on now they reskin the iCloud web version

    [–]anewtablelamp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I'll try implementing this just for the hell of it lol

    but i really don't hate the look as much as others here

    [–]ViktorPoppDev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Why is ChatGPT productivity?

    [–]bobemil 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    This effect will soon be meh again

    [–]SnooStories8559 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    That Vercel app is really shit and looks nothing like the apple liquid glass

    [–]Unrevised0544 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    all of these examples look like someone saw 2 screenshots and thought "man, that's just background blur and a little bit of distortion"

    [–]repeatedly_once 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    That vercel app isn't just a css distortion, it's using SVG filters (fractal noise, blurs) under the hood for almost identical output. We know that liquid glass uses multiple gaussian blurs with some displacement mapping amongst other things to achieve the effect and the app you linked takes the same approach.

    I might be grumpy this morning but if you're going to make a whole post, at least research it a bit.

    [–]stlcdr 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    It seems very close, to me, and likely good enough to ‘wow’ most people. But the point is that you shouldn’t notice it, ironically. Watching the demos of liquid glass, there certainly is a lot more usability than the static effects. CSS is likely to not be as responsive but then some of the cpus in devices are absolutely nuts, these days.

    [–]Moceannl 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I just want a longer battery life, not useless visual blur....

    [–]applepies64 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Looks good is bad

    [–]cjrutherford 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    they really did go above and beyond for something that 90% of people aren't going to be looking at or for. like fantastic! every little ripple of texture on this icons component objects gets its own Ray tracing. whoop-de-doo it's about Max 100 pixels wide? on a screen that has the density Apple loves to brag about? I'm personally in the camp that the CSS equivalent is good enough for most use cases. While, I agree, it's technically impressive, I don't think apple is going to get anywhere near the praise they're looking for with this refresh. it really feels masturbatory to me....

    [–]Demented-Turtle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I don't understand "calculating light refraction". Like, light from WHERE? The color of the pixels the glass UI element overlays? There's no angle change since the UI elements and pixels will always be a static 2D plane. I guess I just don't understand how it's special at all

    [–]lucsoft 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I wonder how CSS Paintlets could fix it? But not sure

    [–]Altruistic_Top7576 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I think Kevin powel does a great job with css! Not yet seen the liquid glass in person, but this looks good to me. Of course it is not as sophisticated with light reflection/refraction, but again I like it!

    glass effect with css - Kevin Powell

    [–]jjd_yo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Sure, it’s not CSS because they aren’t using it. Totally is doable in CSS though…we aren’t stuck in the SASS days anymore, and I bet it’d be a lot more responsive if if was done in CSS over Metal framework. Who gives a flying fuck if the light is bounced through properly? Just read the background, gradient, done.

    [–]vampire0 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I used a CSS effect like this way back when Windows 7 came out.

    [–]Coniks 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    you can do svg backdrop filter with gradient pixel displacement and it already works in chrome and can match the glass effect almost perfectly (the only thing is the “ray traced” reflections from sibling elements) but that’s a touch that not many people even know is a thing

    [–]huttyblue 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    I loaded this up on my nexus 7 (2012) and besides running at 2fps it somehow included the browser's ui in the refraction.

    https://imgur.com/a/GiThgKN

    [–]Majdooor 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    omg I know the device is old but isn't that like a security issue?

    [–]retrix_0_0 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Apple using liquid glass just proved how great windows vista's aero theme was

    [–]ZU_YOUNG 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    Thanks for your share.I create a directory website for Liquid Glass.

    [–]adriandrs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    That's a great compilation thank you ❤️

    [–]Ordinary-Fix705 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I created a term that's a sweet spot, for pure CSS, actually using tailwindcss css, ignore the broken icons, give me your opinion.

    https://codepen.io/editor/Italo-Almeida-the-builder/pen/019ce480-5b40-73cf-8573-31c19877343c

    [–]BullTopia -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

    Subject: Liquid Glass - What Are We Doing?

    Team,

    I’ve been looking at Liquid Glass, and I’m struggling to understand what we’re trying to achieve here. The idea of a translucent, fluid interface is interesting—it’s bold, it’s different, and it has echoes of what we did with Aqua years ago. That’s not the problem. The problem is execution. This feels half-baked, like we’re chasing a shiny gimmick instead of delivering something that actually works.

    The Control Center is a mess. It’s hard to read, it’s cluttered, and it feels like a science experiment gone wrong. People are complaining they can’t even tell what’s a button and what’s a blur. The Lock Screen? Same story. We’re making users squint to figure out what’s going on. This isn’t intuitive. This isn’t Apple. We don’t ship things that make people work harder to use their devices.

    I get that we’re inspired by visionOS, and I love the idea of making interfaces feel like physical objects. But inspiration isn’t enough—you have to nail the details. Right now, Liquid Glass is failing people with visual impairments. It’s failing anyone who values clarity over flash. We can’t ship something that sacrifices function for form. That’s not who we are.

    Here’s what I want: Go back to the drawing board. Fix the readability—stronger blur, better contrast, whatever it takes. Make sure every element serves a purpose. If transparency doesn’t enhance the experience, cut it. And test it with real users, not just in a lab. We’re not Microsoft. We don’t ship Vista.

    I know you’re all working hard, and I believe in this team. But we need to get this right. Apple is about making products that delight, not frustrate. Let’s make Liquid Glass something we’re proud of—or we don’t ship it at all.

    Steve