Apple's Liquid Glass is prep work for AR interfaces, not just a design refresh

There's a weird amnesia in tech journalists that occurs when Apple does something and it's suddenly the first time it's been done. My hunch is that it's because they use iPhones as their daily drivers and don't really use other devices except in passing. So for them it is new and the first time it's been done.

FWIW, I always liked the Windows Phone OS design. Its text first minimalism was refreshingly useful. It was a big leap ahead from Windows Mobile. I think it had something worthwhile to offer.

iPeople reject your reality and substitute their own.

When Apple makes a mistake, it was really a genius 4D chess move and everyone will copy them and also it wasn't really a mistake, we just have to trust the plan.

Yep. This is another semi-fawning, apologistic article full of made-up assertions.

It ignores the fact that there has been a welcome step back from the derelict wasteland of "flat design" that users have endured for far too long. Flat design is often cited as a reaction to absurd levels of skeuomorphism, which Apple certainly WAS a leader in. Remember the "felt" surfaces of Game Center, the "paint" upon which was inexplicably a control? And the "leather" binding of Notes?

Then there's this: "In AR, visual affordances work differently. A button that casts realistic shadows and responds to virtual lighting feels more "real" when floating in your living room than a flat, colored rectangle."

That makes it a SHITTY control, which will get lost in the visual noise of the real environment. This UI sucks for the same reason that sports-stats graphics that are tracked onto real surfaces in TV coverage suck: They don't stand out. It's that simple.

So after years of "flat" design where nothing was demarcated as a control and users were apparently supposed to click on every pixel and every character on the screen in a hunt for hidden goodies, this article celebrates Apple's plan to create the same problem in AR using OVERLY-decorated controls.

Not to mention the stupidity of crippling computer, tablet, and phone UI for the sake of a "VR" UI. This isn't just dumb from a practical standpoint, but from a technical one as well. There's no reason that the control library can't be rendered differently on different devices. So, if this (admittedly poorly-substantiated opinion piece) is right about the motivation behind Apple's exhumation of the "transparent" UI fad that died 20 years ago, we can only lament the end of desktop usability... which Windows flushed vigorously with Microsoft's brain-dead attempt to dumb its UI down for touchscreens years ago.

> That's quite a rewrite of history considering Windows Phone and Microsoft's Metro interface launched a full three years before Apple's move to a flat design in iOS 7.

Even Android had moved to a flatter design pattern 1-2 years before iOS. While Material Design wouldn't be released until 2014, you can see them moving in that direction from Gingerbread to Jelly Bean, particularly when looking at the system components and first-party apps, since this was before the concept of a unified design language across third-party apps had been formalized.

At the time Apple introduced their flat design in June 2013, they were the odd ones out. In fact, I remember a Daring Fireball article posted in spring 2013 (a few months before WWDC) praising Apple for leading the pack in flat design, and HN excoriating it for making what was at the time a clearly preposterous claim.

You and your “facts”. stop ruining the story time

Yeah, I distinctly remember calling iOS 7 a copy of Android design when it came out, in a bad way. I want an iPhone, not an Android.

This is also a history rewrite. The recent MS UIs in at least the last 5 years are doing exactly the same thing. Fairy sure I saw some Windows AR demo about it a few years back.

As a visionOS user (somewhat) what is so funny about all of this is that the translucency effects in visionOS are significantly toned down compared to liquid glass for this specific reason. The glass is heavily diffused, you can maybe get an idea of what is behind (a person moving, a television thats turned on) but nothing even close to the level that I have experienced in the iPadOS beta

I have to disagree with Carmack here.

The evidence suggests this isn't AR prep at all. I watched Apple's 20-minute design presentation, and their design team makes the same point repeatedly: Liquid Glass has very narrow guidelines and specific constraints.

Here's the actual design problem Apple solved. In content apps, you have a fundamental trade-off: you have a few controls that need to be instantly accessible, but you don't want them visually distracting from the content. Users are there to consume videos, photos, articles - not to stare at your buttons. But the controls still have to be there when needed.

Before Liquid Glass, your least intrusive option was backdrop blur or translucent pastel dimming overlays. Apple asked: can we make controls even less distracting? Liquid Glass lets you thread this needle even better. It's a pretty neat trick for solving this specific constraint.

So you'll feel like you're seeing Liquid Glass "everywhere" not because Apple applied it broadly, but because of selection bias. The narrow use case Apple designed this for just happens to be where you spend 80% of your phone time: videos, photos, reading messages. You're information processing, not authoring.

Apple's actual guidelines are clear: only a few controls visible at once, infrequent access pattern, only on top of rich content. The criticism assumes they're redesigning everything when they explicitly documented the opposite. People are reacting to marketing tone instead of reading what Apple's design team actually built.

[1] https://peoplesgrocers.com/en/writing/liquid-glass-explained

> Translucent UI is usually a bad idea outside of movies and non-critical game interfaces.

Reading the article's claims about translucent UI being ideal for AR, all I could think about was how bad this roadside traffic sign would be if it was white text printed on translucent glass. https://images.app.goo.gl/MU4kJmWZ8ogNGAD9A

Assuming the information a daily-use AR headset is presenting is important, it needs to be instantly legible to be useful. I guess my counter to the article would be images of "Roadside traffic signs as re-imagined in Apple's Liquid Glass." Would showing an intersection with a Liquid Glass stop sign and a car crashed into the side of another be too much?

> Would you prefer a notebook of white sheets, or hundreds of different blurry image backgrounds?

Weird tangent, but I used tracing paper over piece of graph paper for notes for a while. I liked it because I could use the graph paper for drawing my figures or align my text, but then have something more aesthetically pleasing and nice for reading after. I find reading on graph paper annoying, due to the vertical lines.

Anyway, I can’t think of any way that a transparent OS window could be similarly helpful.

Liquid glass looks great on the "Meet Liquid Glass" video. Implemention feels wrong. I think it was rushed. Video has some selective background/font color combinations.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IrGYUq1mklk

For VR goggles, I agree. But if we're headed toward AR glasses, most (all?) technologies in that space don't support opaque screen content. They project images into your eyes, but they can't block light coming in from the real world.

So if that's the next big thing, Apple had to get consumers used to translucent UIs.

I get the legibility argument, but if you want to make an AR device that’s safe to use in _any_ context, you just can’t occlude the environment. People would have accidents because of that - as drivers, but also while walking or just bumping into things while putting something in the fridge.

For walls of text you can still opt out of this and use a less translucent material.

Win7 had translucency, and it looked way better than Win8+. Vista looked meh because it overdid it initially, but Win7 dialed it down (mostly with "frosted glass" effect) in most places to where it didn't impede contrast, and added various ways to highlight text in places where it was directly overlaid over glass.

Judging from the demos, Apple's version is even more translucent than Vista, so I have no doubt that it'll be bad.

An even simpler explanation is that regular UI redesigns are an important tool for a device manufacturer to make the experience feel new or refreshed, and this novelty helps sell devices. Everyone reacts to the content of the redesign when it lands, but the fact that it happens should not be surprising.

Usability issues only manifest after point of sale. Messaging/marketing happens after the work has been done (and can involve post-rationalization).

The fact that the majority of AI features which were promised (and pushed hard) by Apple for iPhone 16 are still nowhere in sight should honestly be a bigger story. So many people upgraded to that phone entirely for AI.

There’s lots of new AI features in iOS 26, iPadOS 26, etc. But they aren’t the blockbuster features.

They’re more like quality of life issues that users will appreciate.

A now that 3rd parties can access Apple’s LLM models… let me correct that. Shortcuts, a visual automation app, can also access models on device or bigger, more capable models using Apple’s Private Cloud Compute.

Apple’s not playing multidimensional chess… but they are playing the long game, where users won’t have to use multiple AI chatbots to get work done, because most of what they want to do is handled by their current apps with new AI capabilities—on device.

No, you see, Apple has spent untold billions of dollars chasing AI as a feint. Them repeatedly apologizing and telling investors they are working as fast as they can is all lies. They have everyone just where they want them, and are poised to deliver the killing blow of ... a new UI that everyone has to relearn.

The reality distortion field didn’t die with Jobs.

And nobody mentions "developers forced to redesign and reimplement their app UI for no good reason" as part of the cost. Of course fanboys couldn't care less about that.

As I remember it, there was actually a step between Transition and Native in that image, which was noticeably flatter than Native. It was the first Ives interface, mentioned in the article: "iOS 7's initial release had similar problems: ultra-thin fonts that were hard to read, blue text links that didn't look clickable, animations that made some users motion sick. Apple responded with gradual refinements: thicker fonts, higher contrast, optional accessibility settings, and more obvious interactive elements." i.e. they made it much worse and then made it slightly less bad. I presume they'll follow a roughly similar path with this, when really, in my view, they should be reversing course on some of the fundamentals to make it easier to use. Scrollbars are a great example. I've got used to the fact that they're hidden on macOS now, but looks at some of the great ones from the past that have an almost tangible feel to them: https://imgur.com/scrollbars-through-history-fixed-jpdGk

One reason I use a plain black background for my iPhone--I can actually read the labels under each icon. (I could use plain text rather than icons, but that's a different gripe.)

Also, I can actually read the battery level indicator in the skeuomorphic display. I sometimes resort to getting out a magnifying glass to read it on my iPhone's current display. (Yes, I have old eyes. And I have to keep telling those Apple UI people to get off my grass.)

I have similar feelings every time I look at a Windows 95 screenshot: everything is easy to grasp and feels natural. I know immediately what is interactive or not and what is the hierarchy between the different parts of the UI.

Sure, it's not pretty by today's standard, but it's way easier to use IMO.

iPhone 5 with iOS 6 was peak, around when Jobs died iirc. Then they changed the design, made the phones too big to fit in pockets, removed headphone jack to sell AirPods, and replaced the home button with some confusing gestures. The keyboard doesn't even work right anymore.

This looks like a product evolution, but in reverse.

Yeah at the default sizes i couldn't read the glass ones nearly as easily. the icons themselves look like a bad icon pack that i could download on android 14 years ago

I really hated all the liquid glass screenshots, and had a bad reaction when I first updated my phone to it. I also updated my macOS, and had a MUCH better reaction to that. And after a few days I really dig it on my phone too.

I thought there was supposed to be a way to add a tint to it though, which I haven't found a setting for, and think I would do if I could find it.

I find it surprising that skeumorphism is popular here: the rationale is the opposite of the rationale for power-user desktop UIs.

I suppose it's easy to grok what the newsstand is[1], but I'm not convinced it would matter after the first five minutes.

[1] Because I've seen it in US media, along with the route symbol on the maps icon and the fire hydrants that are in captchas.

This is insightful thank you. Question: if you work with a wide range of AR displays, what do you suggest that's readily available and has a sdk?

I would actually expect AR displays to be naturally transparent. I'm not a specialist at all, but achieving a transparent screen with perfectly opaque rendered areas sounds quite unrealistic.

If the display is naturally transparent, I don't see the need for a non-opaque UI.

I just had a holy-shit moment reading through what you just said. I had not considered that AR overlays wont be blurred, without sampling what's behind the overlay/glass.

People are in for a world of pain when they realize this.

AR glasses will have some sort of camera. It's easy enough to warp the captured video to roughly match the view from each eye. It doesn't have to be perfectly aligned, clear, nor high-resolution. It just needs to be sufficient to provide a faux blurred background behind UI elements.

Looking at Liquid Glass, they certainly solved it for higher-res backdrops. Low res should be simpler. It won't be as clean as Liquid Glass, but it could probably do VisionOS quality.

I think the appeal and the value equation of AR would be completely different if it didn’t feel like you were donning a heavy headset to step into the matrix. It’s very likely that there will be innovation in translucent displays and input methods that make AR ubiquitous at some point in the future. I just don’t know if that will be in 5 years or 15 years.

> People do not want invasive glasses, even if they make them as small at normal glasses. I just don't see it becoming anything other than a niche product.

Wait, are you arguing that consumers will reject something that puts, say, a social media feed in front of their face 24hrs a day? That will allow them to just gaze at an internet site constantly without even having to think about it? That will allow them to have videos in their peripheral vision while they “concentrate” on something else?

AR headsets will not replace computers, they’ll replace phones.

I actually have a homebrew Linux AR setup that I use heavily and absolutely think it will be the future (although it will be similar to the smartphone where you get a combined form factor and paradigm shift that people think are both connected.)

Good AR glasses are already available and combined with modern LLMs you can have normal people thinking about computers the way we do. This will feel less invasive than smartphones do currently while being able to do much more.

I'm absolutely certain Apple will not survive the transition though.

I genuinely expect that in a few years, Apple will release something that is effectively identical to Google Glass, and that will historically be seen as the real start of wide-spread usage of AR.

Anything less than lightweight glasses is a non-starter outside of gaming and other enthusiasts. The Vision Pro is just too bulky for it to sell serious numbers.

VR / AR will definitely replace desktop / stationary computers, but they need to be as lightweight as headphones. Steve Jobs said it best (also his opinion of the current Vision Pro at the very end): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQECSInWVPY

Apple has worked out a system of scaling to deal with differing pixel counts. One just provides assets in @2x and @3x versions. And most designers design non-vector assets once in 3x, and then downscale once. This system works remarkably well given that we have long reached the sweet spot of screen DPI.

I’ve seen skeuomorphic designs done with vector art, surely this can’t be the only/real reason.

I have a very open mind wrt liquid glass.

I expect an "AR based UI" to somehow leverage depth of field and focus. Blur and translucency/transparency used to achieve that could be amazing.

I'm reminded of prior UIs which had Z depth. One of the iOS releases had parallax.

Remember that awesome demo repurposing two Wii controllers to do head tracking? It transformed the screen into a portal that you that thru. Moving your head around changed your perspective.

I want that.

I just started watching the WWDC videos. So far I like what I see. I'm on board with stacked components; we'll see how it pans out. I love the idea of morphing UI elements, transitioning between list <-> menu bar; I really want this to succeed.

Mostly, I want less clutter. No matter the appearance or theme, I'm overwhelmed by all the icons, options, etc.

The age old conundrum of balancing ease of use against lots of features. Having created UIs in anger, I'm no smarter than anyone else and don't have any ideas to offer.

Further, I'm apprehensive about voice (w/ GPT). Methinks this will become the best strategy for reducing visual clutter.

Being an old, I just hate talking to my computer. Though I accept it feels natural for others, like my son's generation.