Do you like Liquid Glass on Mac?

[TumbleDryer]

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That goes to all the people that say Tahoe is completely fine and okay. I mean. Look at the Plus. It doesnt fit to the rest of the UI and they cut it. It is way bigger than all the other buttons. This is not a desgin choice. This is bs that is everywhere. You can't tell me that none of them through all the betas opened Calendar.app and tried to add a new calendar.

Holy crapflaps batman... I read your post then opened calendar app to see what you were referring to and I threw up in my mouth a little bit. I count at least 4 completely useless elements that come together to make this monstrosity and none of them are even aligned with any logic and don't get me started on the animation that merges all this crap!

 

[turbineseaplane]

View attachment 2560779

That goes to all the people that say Tahoe is completely fine and okay. I mean. Look at the Plus. It doesnt fit to the rest of the UI and they cut it. It is way bigger than all the other buttons. This is not a desgin choice. This is bs that is everywhere. You can't tell me that none of them through all the betas opened Calendar.app and tried to add a new calendar.

Also, this looks misaligned to my eyes.

🤮 everywhere in Tahoe

 

[Adam Warlock]

Buffoonery from Apple. Worse than the Apple Maps launch fiasco IMO.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Buffoonery from Apple. Worse than the Apple Maps launch fiasco IMO.

What I don’t understand is how anybody is defending it or finding it “OK”.

It’s objectively an awful release.

It may get there but right now it’s dreadful.

 

[cleanton]

"Do you like Liquid Glass on Mac?"

Yes sir, I like it very much.

 

[chrickers]

There already are. Every major Linux distro has an Arm version. And there is at least one that works on Apple Silicon machines: https://asahilinux.org/

I'm aware of asahi – but it's not available for M3 or later.

 

[GlenK]

Yes I like liquid glass and love Tahoe. Really like all the options..

 

[johnkree]

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Also, this looks misaligned to my eyes.

🤮 everywhere in Tahoe

I didn't even notice... Everything is so f... up that I don't notice those small errors.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

I'm aware of asahi – but it's not available for M3 or later.

Ah ok. Never really looked into it, tbh. I just virtualize Linux.

But it seems they are at least working on it:

M4 Series Feature Support - Asahi Linux Documentation

None

asahilinux.org

 

[tkermit]

Buffoonery from Apple. Worse than the Apple Maps launch fiasco IMO.

As far as I'm concerned, the Maps "fiasco" was just an excuse to get rid of Forstall

 

[TumbleDryer]

Quiet night tonight so also had a stab at Mail... 😂

Everyone uses Mail differently so this might not suit everyones taste but it has everything I need and most importantly none of the crap I don't.

 

[n-evo]

I appreciate the idea, but I’m not really sure what this fixes compared to Liquid Glass (except for the corners). It looks like even more wasted screen space. Especially at the top. And it takes the amount of transparency to even a worse level without serving any purpose.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Wait, people use Apple Mail? LOL

 

[JMalone]

Quiet night tonight so also had a stab at Mail... 😂

Everyone uses Mail differently so this might not suit everyones taste but it has everything I need and most importantly none of the crap I don't.

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But why?

It’s like the invisible Aston Martin in the worst James Bond film of all time ‘Die Another Day’. The producers probably thought it was awesome but the whole world laughed and cringed.

Very excessive translucent or refractive effects that serve little purpose look silly and unserious when we spend thousands of dollars on some of the most expensive laptops and desktop computers in the world.

 

[TumbleDryer]

I appreciate the idea, but I’m not really sure what this fixes compared to Liquid Glass (except for the corners). It looks like even more wasted screen space. Especially at the top. And it takes the amount of transparency to even a worse level without serving any purpose.

Well stuff is aligned for starters. 😂

The transparency is to allow the content to stand out and it actually contains more information than MacOS currently provides in a single view. The negative space is to separate the sections without having to draw superfluous boxes around everything. If the space was closed up then everything would look complicated and messy as would having boxes everywhere.

 

[n-evo]

Wait, people use Apple Mail? LOL

Yawn.

Well stuff is aligned for starters. 😂

The transparency is to allow the content to stand out and it actually contains more information than MacOS currently provides in a single view. The negative space is to separate the sections without having to draw superfluous boxes around everything. If the space was closed up then everything would look complicated and messy as would having boxes everywhere.

Content really doesn’t stand out though with the wallpaper bleeding through everything. It just makes everything harder to read compared to a solid white background. It’ll look even worse when there’s actually formatting, colored tekst and God forbid images without a transparent background. It’s gonna be a mess.

 

[dsemf]

It has been interesting reading the comments in the various threads. I finally realized that I don't really see the issues since I run most of my apps, Apple and 3rd party, in full screen spaces. My normal set is 9 spaces. Even Finder has its own space with tabs as needed. This means there is no wallpaper. The tool bar icons are easy to see.

I do run a Java application with lots of windows, so it runs in a desktop space. Since the JRE windows are solid, there is no wallpaper issue.

Hopefully the Safari compact tabs option comes back. That is my only major adjustment.

The loss of Launchpad was not as dramatic as I expected. My Dock has four items. Finder, the Java app, the Applications icon and the trash. By moving some rarely used apps to folders in /Applications, the app grid uses one page.

Contacts is really ugly. I luck out there since I use contacts in Fastmail.

Widgets are in the slide from right window. There was an option to move the desktop widgets to the old style.

The only time I see really see LG effects is when using cmd-tab or when playing music.

Note: M2 MBA 15

DS

 

[turbineseaplane]

Quiet night tonight so also had a stab at Mail... 😂

Everyone uses Mail differently so this might not suit everyones taste but it has everything I need and most importantly none of the crap I don't.

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What is the point of having the wallpaper (or windows behind the active window) show through to make it harder to see what you're trying to read or interact with?

I do not understand what the heck the point is of some of this.

 

[Sowelu]

View attachment 2560848

Also, this looks misaligned to my eyes.

🤮 everywhere in Tahoe

Your eyes are working as designed.

Shocking that a company the size of Apple refuses to hire actual UI designers, or are retaining the ones that clearly don't know what they're doing. So many amazing graphic designers out there who are making beautiful icons and GUIs that we can't use because Apple locked the option to change icons on most apps. They should have snatched these designers and did an actual visual overhaul for their OSs, because OS 26 is, for the most part by appearance, the same old, but with a (glass, but at the right angle, or if you scroll over certain things, or with the right wallpaper) theme grafted over it, button and menu changes for the sake of change, with QOL functionality and overall UX reduced in the process. While iOS, iPadOS and tvOS look somewhat better than Tahoe, the design changes are actually minimal despite Apple's claims of an 'all new' OS.

And, since just about every big Apple YouTuber who's reviewed Tahoe and iOS 26 (who prioritize staying in Apple's good graces) are just praising all the bells and whistles and are speaking nothing to the reduction in user experience, visibility, and overall bugginess, so there isn't enough buzz getting back to Apple. If nothing else, Apple has got to tweak Dark Mode because it's not giving Liquid Glass, just weird illusions trying to force the eyes to see a highlight of something that isn't there. Notice how almost every single 'review' is in Default/Light Mode with emphasis on the 'Liquid Glass' effect with just the right wallpaper and with just the right overlay scrolling.

 

[G5isAlive]

What I don’t understand is how anybody is defending it or finding it “OK”.

It’s objectively an awful release.

It may get there but right now it’s dreadful.

Nothing objective, it's all opinion. And saying nay is always the easy path. Sure it is change, but it is refreshing. Apple never innovates, oh no they changed something!

It is great now

And that is objective.

 

[Glenny2lappies]

Years ago the Apple Mac interface was truly awful with the skeuomorphic design principles. Flat design came out of that mess as a simplification of the user interface; function trumping form.

Alas it seems that new designers have forgotten how awful things were then and... welcome to liquid glass where form overrides function.

One hopes that Apple will draw the line where it is; alas that's probably not the case and worse is yet to come.

Bottom line: the user interface should never be noticed; liquid glass and large (wasted) white space keeps shouting its presence.

 

[TumbleDryer]

This will be the last thing I post on this but I find the responses genuinely interesting. My screenshots are not far removed from VisionOS with regards the transparency and yet most people are lauding that. My aim was to retain a sense of VisionOS but not copy it though. I don't think it will work in MacOS environment as evidenced by Tahoe but I wanted to try and clear up the hideous layout of Tahoe purely for my own amusement and posted here out of interest.

Reading the criticism and after looking at my screenshots with different monitor contrast settings some settings can be harsh and therefore a bit harder to read so I've refined it a little and even added in garish coloured text that Mail would use for replies etc and an image as n-evo mentioned and for me I think it works. It's denfinitely an improvement on Tahoe at least.

The transparency offers a refinement from harsh white backgrounds and overpowering black text. It's akin to printing 100% or 95% black ink on bright white paper. The 95% always looks more refined and less harsh on the eye. And for me the subject of the email in the screen shot still stands out more than everything else.

 

[turbineseaplane]

And for me the subject of the email in the screen shot still stands out more than everything else.

Because you have a background that happens to mostly work ok for this and you have no windows behind it.

Now we have to be worried about what our BG image is and make sure nothing is "behind" our active window that might interfere?

This is quite a usability regression for a desktop OS meant to be used for getting things done.