Comment by stalco
7 days ago
I installed it. I really wanted to love it but it’s bad. It’s very busy and the proportions in the Settings app are awful. It’s on the “cozy” side of things (as opposed to “compact”). This means you see less options at one time on the screen and have to scroll more around the OS to get where you need to.
As for accessibility… It’s hell. Have a look: https://imgur.com/a/6ZTCStC
This looks like a screenshot from one of the jailbreak themes from like 15 years ago, and not one of the good ones
As a former Cydia user, my 12-year-old self takes that as validation that I was living in the future after all!
Cydia would be the only way I'd ever go back to using an iPhone as my main driver. Good days.
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The public beta hasn’t even been released yet, this is only a developer beta. Bit early to be assuming it will look like this by release no?
Glasklart?
The accessibility for this design is pretty terrible. There's a reason the gold standard for closed captions is still white text with solid black background. That way, regardless of what's going on in the background, the text is still readable for someone with poor eyesight.
Out of curiosity, I used this site [1] to get the contrast of some text, specifically the artist name on the Apple Music now playing bar (in the "Updated App Design" part of the page). During parts of the video, the contrast of the artist name with the background was 1.7:1, which is terrible. For reference, the minimum recommended contrast by WebAIM is 4.5:1 [2].
Maybe there are accessibility options that improve things, but the defaults seem terrible. The goal for any design should be reasonably accessible as default, with robust options for people with more specific needs. As it stands, this UI is just too hard to read, and Apple needs to make a second pass.
[1]: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
[2]: https://webaim.org/articles/contrast/
Wow. That is really bad. Apple already does the transparency thing with the control center menu, but it blurs the background so much that you don’t notice it. Why they’d want to lessen the blur and make it more transparent is beyond me.
Remember this is the first developer beta. I’m pretty sure a lot of iOS 7 was dialed back between announcement and release
The fact that it ever made it to this stage is troubling. It was quite literally the very first thing I thought when I saw their landing page for ios 17. https://www.apple.com/os/ios/ Look at the notifications front and center in the very middle of the screen. It's unbelievable. How are these the decisions being made at one of the biggest tech companies on the planet.
This means devs and users need to be vocal and outraged at every new design (as it will be overdone on purpose), and Apple gauges how much they dial it back based on the heat of it....
That doesn't sound like a healthy relationship to developers to me.
Maybe they overshot on purpose? When I change my gaming control sensitivities I will do this (overshoot and then dial back) because I think it helps me get used to them faster.
oomph, looks like this might finally be (my) year of the linux desktop..
I switched two months ago and it’s surprisingly usable. Come a long way in the last 10 years.
Nice; mine was in 1995!
Not yet for me, still waiting for a 8-hour battery...
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year of the linux mobile?
That screenshot is utterly unreadable. It makes my eyes hurt. For the young people out there, I'm not exaggerating or being metaphorical. Literally pain in my eyes as they try (and fail) to focus on the appropriate UI elements.
I was going to upgrade to an iPhone 16 this week. I might be checking out Google or Samsung devices instead.
You might want to look at the new design language that Android is going for:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43975352
Somewhat amusing after this how the top comment mentions "Apple ... never makes marketing content like this about its design language"
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You might want to look at the new design language that Android is going for:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43975352
Feels very much like a fruit-colored version of late 1960's early 1970's pop culture design.
Change it to browns and oranges and golds, and it'll be perfectly groovy.
Ugly and a definite regression. But at least my eyes don’t hurt.
I think it's also just ugly to be honest. Completely opposite of Apple's values of focusing on one thing at a time and even basic grid alignment. And I am an Apple fanboy....
I highly recommend giving the S Ultra series a try. I use them for the built-in stylus, I had a few Note devices before the S.
Once you realise what life with a stylus is like, you'll not accept anything less.
I modify my devices slightly to make the stylus easier to remove, if you're interested I could show it off.
It’s a developer beta, don’t assume the release version will look like this mess.
That screenshot had the same effect on me.
Baffling choice.
OMG, I expected bad but not this bad. How did designers ever think this will fly is beyond mind-blowing. Visual disturbance is off the charts. I am just hoping it to have good accessibility options to turn whatever-this-is off immediately.
Holy cow that's bad. 2 slightly different grids overlaid with transparency feels like a joke but here t is
This kinda looks like a fake "iOS" skin for Android from 2018... nasty
Wow, that was full in "thanks, I hate it" territory for me.
I think that design triggered me for 2 reasons. First, it really gets to something that's bugged me a lot about technological advancement in general over the past 15-20 years or so. It used to be that I felt like tech advances were great because they actually solved a human problem. Now, so much tech just feels like "tech-for-tech's-sake". Like I get you need to have a lot of designers at Apple, and now that devices have more processing power that they want to do something "cool" with it, but this just seems like someone that literally nobody asked for and nobody wants.
Second, I'm someone who thinks very "linearly". I like to do one thing at a time, and I hate distractions (because I'm easily distracted). I hate these translucent interfaces because they are literally distracting to me even if I'm looking directly and squarely at one single thing. It just seems like another way that tech is constantly fucking with our attention.
I thought the same, about distractions, whilst watching the videos. Even the highlights and speckles at the edges of the icons grab your attention. It's the visual equivalent of running your finger over velcro: slip, catch, slip, catch the whole way down.
Yeah, the address bar in the browser in the video at 2:10–2:13 is appalling. And how they describe it!—
> it responds in real time to your content, and your input, creating a more lively experience, that we think you’ll find truly delightful.
“Infuriating” and “horrifying” would both be much more accurate words than “delightful”. Even if you liked it briefly, it would get old really quickly.
This truly is stunningly, spectacularly bad.
The entire press release made my brain hurt.
>> Meticulously crafted by rethinking the fundamental elements that make up our software, the new design features an entirely new material called Liquid Glass. It combines the optical qualities of glass with a fluidity only Apple can achieve, as it transforms depending on your content or context.
What the fuck does that even mean?
Feature litmus test: if you can't describe why it's better in plain English... it's probably not better.
Puh. That's pure amateur hour. They need to _at_ _least_ add something like: "synergy with ideographic interface, achieving unrivalled experience while preserving the individualized touch".
> What the fuck does that even mean?
Nothing. It's corporate bean-counter speak. Some poo-brained exec says a lot of words that sound inspiring but adds up to mean exactly nothing.
This is the kind of garbage I have to listen to in so-very-important quarterly "huddles" with thousands of people. It's nonsensical but makes the speaker feel so very special.
I guess this really gives insight to how Apple got here. It really has been taken over by a bunch of people who like how their own farts smell. Now they're trying to gaslight you and I into liking it.
The only thing worse than shitty design is when the shitty design changes each time you use it.
I know I am going to sound like an asshole but I scrolled, started watching the video and the guy speaking made me cringe so badly I closed the tab. This is reads and looks like satire. And here I thought OneUI 8 was bad.
I hope they tweak the opacity before they go live with this because I find the shared image quite unpleasant. I have no issues with the current design. Kind of like the camera button and the touch bar, I hope this goes away fast.
Wow. It would almost be OK if they had had the sense to dim the background substantially, but... wow.
It had better be possible to turn this crap completely off. Is it?
Reduce transparency in the accessibility settings.
Fixes it luckily.
How does it look if you enable "Reduce Transparency" in Accessibility - Display settings?
It looks awful, and doesn't actually remove all of the transparency effects, though that might be due to the fact that its Beta 1.
I cannot confirm that.
Reducing transparency, the entire background gets greyed and the background/ look is much more akin to iOS 18.
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My eyes don’t know where to focus. Everything runs together.
Oh yeah that's bad. I hope there is an option to disable translucency globally. I don't need to see a desktop/home screen under another menu, or even another app under the menu. I can't interact with something underneath the top menu and it really messes with readability from your screenshot.
Is the WiFi enabled, or does it just have a blue icon behind it?
OMG that image is hilarious. It's a total disaster.
And it's not like someone had to go out of their way to find something clashing like that. Pulling up control center from the home screen is something you do all the time.
Like, I genuinely would have assumed that control center would need to be non-translucent precisely because of that. But... nope?
It's Apple Maps bad!
Apple Maps is actually great now.
Depends on your region. It is fantastic in Cupertino. It is literally unusable in Japan or Taiwan. Literally--it will fail to get directions or even find your destination (typing in English or the local language).
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Going from Apple Maps to Google Maps is now like going from ublock origin to a stock browser. Crap everywhere that you didn't ask for, slowing you down as you try to locate what you're actually trying to find.
Meanwhile the maps/data quality is quite good, probably 95% there for the things I care about. I've been able to use it full-time for years now.
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Normally I don't have strong opinions on UI design but that just looks wrong.
That could be fixed I feel by decreasing the background opacity.
That does not look good and I can already see my elderly parents having trouble with just how messy and confusing the colors from the homescreen bleed into the foreground.
Good lord, I started getting a headache just looking at that image for a few seconds. Apple has always preferred form over function but this UI change takes it to a whole other level.
I mean I really don’t like it either, but I have to say, it screenshots 10x worse than it really looks. There’s enough ‘glow’ that things look largely distinct.
I would still prefer 5x the blur; I really, really, really hate the shapes of the tab switchers; and they use space so inefficiently I feel like I’m using an iPhone SE… but the liquid glass is ok. Gimmicky and ugly but it is mostly usable
Looks like a soup sandwich. Layers of mixed together colors with no distinction
Holy shit. That has to be a joke. It looks like some bad UI mockup from Jon Prosser
Straight from early 2000s. The early photoshop effects everyone applied on their geocities webpages.
please please please, everyone, submit feedback at https://www.apple.com/feedback/
I was ok with the system settings redesign, could get used to it. But this whole new design is a different level of bad.
Ugh oh god
That evokes an immediate visceral reaction hah
That screenshot! Terrible
Yikes…
Wow ! That is ugly.
Wonder if Apple has any Quality Control department at all.
I mean, a designer comes up with a proposal, someone else ought to check it.
Sad thing about Apple is that this was designed by a huge design team and about a million keynote presentations to execs that sounded exactly like this.
Funny, I'm pretty sure glass on glass is one of their guidelines no-no situations. Nice of them to implement it on their own control centre to prove how bad it is.