Author here. I was also surprised to see this getting a bunch of HN traffic suddenly. I guess the Liquid Glass hate is pretty strong when a dashed-off blog post about a real blog post can randomly do numbers! Heartened to see that others are annoyed by this design as well, though. Hopefully Apple will do something about it, but I'm not holding my breath.
I don’t know if you remember iOS 7, it was a catastrophe. Designs evolve on Apple platforms, usually in the correct direction.
Anecdotally, I have used Liquid Glass since the first beta and I honestly think there are a lot of good things there. Took me a few months but I actually like it now (and I have some colleagues in there same boat as me).
> the theory that Liquid Glass is an attempt to distract customers from iOS 26’s lack of long-promised AI features
How can anyone write that with a straight face?
A design system like this takes at least a year, probably more like zero or three years. It’s not something you do at the last minute to “distract” from other feature teams’ failures.
I personally think Liquid Glass is promising but flawed, but there is zero chance Apple’s UX designers were given a brief “distract from the lack of AI progress”.
For all its flaws, it is very deeply thought out. This is not a rushed project on a whim.
I don't think anyone is alleging they went to the UX designers and told them they needed some form of distraction. What is plausible is that the UX designers were working on one or more possibilities for a major redesign and apple executives decided to push one out even though it might not have been good enough/ready because they needed something splashy in the absence of their promised AI features.
> they needed something splashy in the absence of their promised AI features
Yes - they showed their hand when Apple execs declined to appear at the annualThe Talk Show Live shortly after the host of the show publicly questioned the Apple about the failure to deliver on Apple Intelligence. They clearly did not want anyone talking to them about that, and the myriad of friendly interviews they did post with other tech folks danced beautifully around the lack of anything in Apple's AI offering.
It would still be a year or more before launch. They had to have the toolkit ready for internal apps way back when.
And any time you make a massive change in design system, you’re faced with a choice of maintaining two systems (which sucks) or ripping the bandaid off and shipping when the new one is not completely ready (which sucks)
The distraction thing is just a totally unnecessary conspiracy theory. It’s sufficient to observe that LG just doesn’t seem ready.
Is there a term for this accidental creation of a straw man where you may not have intended it but you quickly and confidently respond based on a shallow and poorly thought out interpretation of something?
In this case, jumping to the idea that designers were told to abruptly create something new with little time when the much more likely hypothetical scenario is that a project already deeply in progress was simply moved up from 27 to 26?
I'm not saying I believe that happened, but it's at least a viable speculation and accidentally got dismissed because of a poor interpretation of the original idea.
Eh, it's slightly viable, but unlikely. LG is too far along to be something they wanted to maintain as a fork for an entire year. Keeping apps working with two totally different design systems is a nightmare.
For this theory to work, you'd have to believe that Apple was planning to maintain two versions of the operating system and 1P apps for an extra year. I find that beggars belief, but of course it's not impossible.
In any event, it is way way too speculative to claim as an axiom.
IMO: There's a ton of circumstantial evidence Liquid Glass was supposed to be a 2026 feature, but at some point between 2024-2025 they accelerated it for a 2025 release. Stating that it was because of the Apple Intelligence disaster of 2024 totally fits in the timeline.
1. Liquid glass went through significant changes in every developer and public beta release between June and the full release in September. Transparency, border, light scattering changes, it was very clear that they didn't even have a strong definition internally of "how liquid" and "how glass" the liquid glass should be, and were responding in real time to reddit comments complaining about it.
2. Many aspects of the design system are still buggy, today, in October. There's some evidence that accessibility features like Increase Contrast and Button Shapes are implemented entirely differently depending on your model of iPhone [1]; they certainly do not do what the label says they should do for some users, and at the very least are implemented inconsistently, or not at all, across many apps.
3. The MacOS 26.1 developer beta further implements (welcome) changes to the design system [2]. Why weren't these ready for 26.0 GA?
4. It is expected that 2026 and 2027 are going to be a massive years for new iPhones, as we're expected the iPhone Fold to drop in 2026, then in 2027 we'll see something related to the 20th anniversary of the iPhone. Comparatively speaking, 2025 saw a new midrange iPhone model, but that's it. Coinciding a large design system change with a new phone format change (foldable) is an Apple thing to do.
If you think about Apple's timeline pre-AI, all of this kind of makes sense. A bunch of Apple Intelligence features were supposed to be done by the iOS 18 cycle, then for iOS 26 they could have continued to fill in more AI features, before a massive design refresh + new phones for iOS 27 in 2026. But they got to like iOS 18.2 before they realized that they screwed up and the AI features needed a ground-up rewrite [3] and wouldn't be ready for 18.4, let alone maybe even the 26 cycle. At that point, they realized that they went from a decent 18 month roadmap for AI stuff, to 0 months; and they needed something to make 26 interesting. So, they go to design and say "i know you thought you had 12 months until the 27 cycle, but actually, you have six, we want this in 26".
[3] this is not supposition - if you weren't following the Apple Intelligence drama of 2024, Apple has publicly stated that their AI had an initial v1 architecture that was demoed at WWDC 2024, but by late-2024 it became clear it would have to be thrown out: https://youtu.be/wCEkK1YzqBo?t=89
My biggest issue with iOS 26 is not the UI (it’s subpar compared to prior work), but the fact that it drains my battery 2x faster than before and I’m with an iPhone 16 Pro. That’s unacceptable performance degradation on a 1-year old phone.
I mean, they need arguments to make their user base buy a new iPhone. Does a thinner, smaller battery make you buy it? No. Does Apple Intelligence make you buy it? Maybe, but it won't be released in the next 100 years. Does a very slightly better camera make you buy it? No. What if we make your current phone slower and use up more storage of it with every update, would that make you upgrade?
I actually like it. There are glitches and various issues, but it still feels solid and something that Apple would do, not Microsoft with Vista. Looks like something funky and a breath of fresh air compared with all the boring flat designs that took over everything.
Do the people designing these interfaces not have parents/grandparents? How anyone over 50 can even see well enough to use many of these interfaces is a mystery to me. Increasing the text size usually makes the interface even more difficult to use.
My main issue with iOS 26 is too much (unnecessary) animation and the fact that as you scroll, the buttons at the bottom of the page change.
I think that's what the article refers to when it mentions lack of predictability. On iOS 17 I can scroll and use muscle memory to tap on any of the buttons down the page. But with iOS 26 I must be careful because the buttons either merge or change location and size...
Apple is split between being this poppy, fresh company for the creative, as they were with their skeuomorphic designs and a more security savvy crowd with their new marketing bent towards organizations now that windows is less than reliable. Perhaps this was the right move for their consumer-bent OSses like ipados or ios, but there's a reason most enterprise companies used windows 7/vista with the boxy classic themes.
They will have a seriously hard time coming up with something new. The last thing they did was the iPhone and since then their output has stagnated. Yes, M series, yes Metal yes that dumb AR headset. They’re playing catch up to everything everyone else is doing and it’s not going well.
That Liquid Glass thing is an absolute meme. I can’t believe they fell for it. We did it back in mid 2000s mostly because Aero was kitsch as fuck and having all those blend layers in Photoshop was phreaking cool. But 2025 with a whole OS/WM? Get the hell out I can’t believe it’s a thing.
The pace of consumer tech has stagnated so Apple is going to have a very hard time finding something truly new that’s actually useful to put in front of people. Mostly it’s a fashion item right now with people upgrading to latest phones to flex on their friends and cow workers
Readit News
Can mods change the linked article away from the thin blog post?
This current submission is nothing but a duplicate and should be flagged dead.
I mean I had a gut feeling it would be bad for a11y when I saw it but they really twist the knife.
Anecdotally, I have used Liquid Glass since the first beta and I honestly think there are a lot of good things there. Took me a few months but I actually like it now (and I have some colleagues in there same boat as me).
How can anyone write that with a straight face?
A design system like this takes at least a year, probably more like zero or three years. It’s not something you do at the last minute to “distract” from other feature teams’ failures.
I personally think Liquid Glass is promising but flawed, but there is zero chance Apple’s UX designers were given a brief “distract from the lack of AI progress”.
For all its flaws, it is very deeply thought out. This is not a rushed project on a whim.
Yes - they showed their hand when Apple execs declined to appear at the annualThe Talk Show Live shortly after the host of the show publicly questioned the Apple about the failure to deliver on Apple Intelligence. They clearly did not want anyone talking to them about that, and the myriad of friendly interviews they did post with other tech folks danced beautifully around the lack of anything in Apple's AI offering.
And any time you make a massive change in design system, you’re faced with a choice of maintaining two systems (which sucks) or ripping the bandaid off and shipping when the new one is not completely ready (which sucks)
The distraction thing is just a totally unnecessary conspiracy theory. It’s sufficient to observe that LG just doesn’t seem ready.
In this case, jumping to the idea that designers were told to abruptly create something new with little time when the much more likely hypothetical scenario is that a project already deeply in progress was simply moved up from 27 to 26?
I'm not saying I believe that happened, but it's at least a viable speculation and accidentally got dismissed because of a poor interpretation of the original idea.
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At least they have a ton of feedback now and I think majority of people on the phone love it.
It is not that bad, but the implementation of it looks definitely complicated.
For this theory to work, you'd have to believe that Apple was planning to maintain two versions of the operating system and 1P apps for an extra year. I find that beggars belief, but of course it's not impossible.
In any event, it is way way too speculative to claim as an axiom.
1. Liquid glass went through significant changes in every developer and public beta release between June and the full release in September. Transparency, border, light scattering changes, it was very clear that they didn't even have a strong definition internally of "how liquid" and "how glass" the liquid glass should be, and were responding in real time to reddit comments complaining about it.
2. Many aspects of the design system are still buggy, today, in October. There's some evidence that accessibility features like Increase Contrast and Button Shapes are implemented entirely differently depending on your model of iPhone [1]; they certainly do not do what the label says they should do for some users, and at the very least are implemented inconsistently, or not at all, across many apps.
3. The MacOS 26.1 developer beta further implements (welcome) changes to the design system [2]. Why weren't these ready for 26.0 GA?
4. It is expected that 2026 and 2027 are going to be a massive years for new iPhones, as we're expected the iPhone Fold to drop in 2026, then in 2027 we'll see something related to the 20th anniversary of the iPhone. Comparatively speaking, 2025 saw a new midrange iPhone model, but that's it. Coinciding a large design system change with a new phone format change (foldable) is an Apple thing to do.
If you think about Apple's timeline pre-AI, all of this kind of makes sense. A bunch of Apple Intelligence features were supposed to be done by the iOS 18 cycle, then for iOS 26 they could have continued to fill in more AI features, before a massive design refresh + new phones for iOS 27 in 2026. But they got to like iOS 18.2 before they realized that they screwed up and the AI features needed a ground-up rewrite [3] and wouldn't be ready for 18.4, let alone maybe even the 26 cycle. At that point, they realized that they went from a decent 18 month roadmap for AI stuff, to 0 months; and they needed something to make 26 interesting. So, they go to design and say "i know you thought you had 12 months until the 27 cycle, but actually, you have six, we want this in 26".
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1nx4aqe/comment/nhkor2...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOSBeta/comments/1no2uuu/macos_26...
[3] this is not supposition - if you weren't following the Apple Intelligence drama of 2024, Apple has publicly stated that their AI had an initial v1 architecture that was demoed at WWDC 2024, but by late-2024 it became clear it would have to be thrown out: https://youtu.be/wCEkK1YzqBo?t=89
The new MacOS on the other hand is still a bit inconsistent but it's getting there. Feels like they could've polished it more before release
I think that's what the article refers to when it mentions lack of predictability. On iOS 17 I can scroll and use muscle memory to tap on any of the buttons down the page. But with iOS 26 I must be careful because the buttons either merge or change location and size...
That Liquid Glass thing is an absolute meme. I can’t believe they fell for it. We did it back in mid 2000s mostly because Aero was kitsch as fuck and having all those blend layers in Photoshop was phreaking cool. But 2025 with a whole OS/WM? Get the hell out I can’t believe it’s a thing.
The pace of consumer tech has stagnated so Apple is going to have a very hard time finding something truly new that’s actually useful to put in front of people. Mostly it’s a fashion item right now with people upgrading to latest phones to flex on their friends and cow workers
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