Do you like Liquid Glass on Mac?

[Comfortably Numb]

I've got the oppostive feeling: the boomers were replaced by younger folks or too much of AI and we've got this mess now.

If you take a look at the C-suite of the company, they are all in their sixties. These guys are responsible for everything that happens at Apple:

• Tim Cook — 64
• Katherine Adams — 61
• Eddy Cue — 60
• Craig Federighi — 56
• John Giannandrea — 60
• Greg “Joz” Joswiak — 61
• Sabih Khan — 59
• Deirdre O’Brien — 59
• Kevan Parekh — 53
• Johny Srouji — 60
• John Ternus — 50
• Jeff Williams — 63

And it's this clown in particular who we can thank for "Liquid Glass" version 0.0001 being released as final version:

 

[Snow4maen]

My initial reaction to the Tahoe UI was based on how I can make my desktop look. The monochrome feel is still pretty appealing to me, but now I have had some time with it. I am NOT sure if I do like the rounded corners. I can't comment on how design works, I would have no clue. Those here have commented and seem to know something about it. I've had more time now to use windows, and Finder, etc. I'm thinking it does actually look kinda funny. I like the mono dock, and my grey folders. But for something 'rounded', it appears quite clunky.

 

[fisherking]

Although i like it overall Tahoe does look like ass in dark mode to be honest

looks better to me in dark mode. guess we all have our preferences 👍

 

[MisterAndrew]

macOS Tahoe looks like it was designed for toddlers. They should have named it macOS Fisher-Price.

 

[JMalone]

If you take a look at the C-suite of the company, they are all in their sixties. These guys are responsible for everything that happens at Apple:

• Tim Cook — 64
• Katherine Adams — 61
• Eddy Cue — 60
• Craig Federighi — 56
• John Giannandrea — 60
• Greg “Joz” Joswiak — 61
• Sabih Khan — 59
• Deirdre O’Brien — 59
• Kevan Parekh — 53
• Johny Srouji — 60
• John Ternus — 50
• Jeff Williams — 63

And it's this clown in particular who we can thank for "Liquid Glass" version 0.0001 being released as final version:

View attachment 2550482

That’s the second time in a week I have seen someone make the mistake in believing Federighi is in charge of UI design. He’s not.

The design team is separate and have their own chief. When Jonathan Ive was there he was in charge of the Yosemite redesign, not just hardware designs.

It’s easy to understand why people make this mistake because at WWDC Federighi shows off the new operating system updates along with the UI. But the UI is not his work. He is mostly busy in the labs optimising under the hood performance, frameworks and drivers with the Apple Silicon team.

 

[JMalone]

Oh as to the poll. I voted No, but I have to emphasize.

I like Liquid Glass on the Dock and the Menu Control Center. I don’t mind the new sliders.

I don’t like anything else about the new UI and ridiculous rounded corners and abundance of pill shaped objects on the screen at the same time, especially because light mode now is too white and dark mode now is too dark. The flat buttons don’t look clickable. They look like disabled grayed out buttons.

Sequoia nailed the right balance and whatever worked there didn’t need to change. All we needed was a new shiny dock and sliders.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

That’s the second time in a week I have seen someone make the mistake in believing Federighi is in charge of UI design. He’s not.

He absolutely is, though. You are right that there is a dedicated design team with their own chief (Alan Dye) - who is not in the C-suite and absolutely reports directly to Federighi. At the C-suite of the company, Federighi is heading macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and tvOS. He is responsible for both system architecture and the user interface design.

He signs off on what those that work under him produce. Federighi ultimately has executive responsibility.

 

[JMalone]

He absolutely is, though. You are right that there is a dedicated design team with their own chief - who is not in the C-suite and absolutely reports directly to Federighi. At the C-suite of the company, Federighi is heading macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and tvOS. He is responsible for both system architecture and the user interface design.

He signs off on what those that work under him produce. He is ultimately responsible.

No ultimate responsibility is Tim Cook and the board. This circles and rounded pill shaped nonsense is coming from outside the company. Google, YouTube and Reddit were already there when the Tahoe beta started.

I presume extremely rich outside investors are pressing these tech companies to make a unified augmented reality and touch screen UI even though it is not suitable for macOS and Windows.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

If you think Cook cares what macOS looks like, you're in for a rude awakening, lol. It's entirely Federighi's decision at the end of the day. If he tells Cook, the spreadsheet boomer, that this looks awesome, Cook will not blink twice before signing off on it. That's why you have an entire C-suite - to delegate decision making.

We can argue what Alan Dye's team was smoking when they "designed" this, though.

 

[KALLT]

He absolutely is, though. You are right that there is a dedicated design team with their own chief (Alan Dye) - who is not in the C-suite and absolutely reports directly to Federighi. At the C-suite of the company, Federighi is heading macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and tvOS. He is responsible for both system architecture and the user interface design.

He signs off on what those that work under him produce. Federighi ultimately has executive responsibility.

What about Jeff Williams? He's SVP Design, Watch and Health. Marketing could have also had a role to play.

It's all speculative and might as well be a decision by committee involving decisions made by multiple SVPs and Cook himself.

 

[thebart]

I don't love it and I don't hate it. I use only the out of box settings, which I understand is not even the full glass experience, so I don't notice much changes.

In additions, I basically don't use any Apple apps besides Finder, System Monitor, and Settings, so most things I use haven't been updated to use glass UI anyway

Edit: I do hate the stupid round pill buttons, though

 

[mackard]

I like it. Switched straight to clear and drinking up the dock and menubar. I fundamentally love computer graphics and gaming so eye candy is definitely welcome for me.

The issues i have are there's something about the white color of the windows that feels wrong, i can't put my finger on it, but i don't like it.

I think they should have left the option in for further transparencies if they ever were there.

Its definitely debatable whether the bubbles are too round, and whether they are attractive universally applied (they would be great in some areas).

There's something wrong with entirely translucent to feeling entirely opaque. If this was done from community feedback boooo.

EDIT: The delete button is pink now? Apple have lost their minds. That's just oddball. Alright back to ventura...
Yep... sadly the corner radius is objectively worse. In an instant reboot test. I really wanted to like the transparences and bubbles, really i did. When you're used to bubbles/tahoe, the first reaction when back in ventura was "oh this is the good one". Sadly its a fail.

 

[Snow4maen]

I'm cautious of making this comment, as it may be well known, apart from unto me. I have not seen anyone make this comment, but could have missed it. Surely I'm not alone in thinking that the new Tahoe UI has taken big cues from Vision OS? I am not sure if I agree with unifying these two things. Vision OS has a boundary less visual scene, but Mac users are using screens, that are and will for some time remain rectangular and limited in size. I'm not sure the design language carries over quite so successfully on a Mac. Besides, doesn't Apple Vision still have to justify it's existence, it's pretty early days yet, or has it taken off and I didn't notice? Apple are putting a lot of care into Apple Vision, they believe I am guessing that it's the future. In time the cost will come down, it won't be so niche. But I have zero interest in it. Who really wants to strap that thing to their head for more than ten seconds anyway?

 

[chrono1081]

I think it looks nice on Mac, but not on iOS.

 

[33355]

I think it looks nice on Mac, but not on iOS.

opposite for me. I like it on iOS but MacOS looks meh, especially safari looks like a cheap android knockoff now :/

 

[F1Mac]

Well, after a few days, I can say that I really like the new look. I use it in dark mode on my Mac, it looks fresh and new and the OS is enjoyable to use. On my iPhone 12 PM, which is indeed an "old" model now, iOS 26 is noticeably faster than 18, so that only is already a plus (and I don't see battery drain, it's just like before, same battery usage). I like the Liquid Glass effects on iOS and I do like that they are a bit more subtle on macOS.

I read a lot of the comments on MR, they just show that there are pretty much all possible opinions out there. There are valid criticisms and since Tahoe is at the moment a .0 release, there is no doubt that refinements will come, there is no doubt that there are things that need to be adjusted, just like any OS release.

(September is also the time of our yearly dose of "return to skeuomorphism"... Well, to me, that would really make things look like a toy in 2025. But that's just me of course)

I'm glad flat UI has taken a step back.


So anyway, just my 2 cents, or 2 bubbles 😉

 

[NogbadTheBad]

Meh ...

What's with the black background when I open my network management console, I don't get it with anything else and never saw it in previous versions of Mac OS.

Don't start me on Recently Saved.

First thing I did was reduce transparency.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

My dock, with a spreadsheet behind it. I honestly couldn't care less how accurate the glass behaviour is, no asked for this crap.

 

[zenmacx]

At the end of the day Liquid Glass is rather dreadful. Across all devices it’s just dreadful. Fully immersed in the Apple ecosystem there’s no escaping it.

 

[chrono1081]

Meh ...

What's with the black background when I open my network management console, I don't get it with anything else and never saw it in previous versions of Mac OS.

View attachment 2551424

Don't start me on Recently Saved.

First thing I did was reduce transparency.

This is a peeve I have with it. I know Apple talks about having the design "float behind" panels like you have on the left, which is fine, if the application supports it and it looks reasonable...

Otherwise I think they need to get rid of the thick borders like you highlighted.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Voted for “Meh…” as I kinda like the some new looks, but in general… not really.

To me not as bad as on iOS and iPadOS. I really dislike liquid glass there I’m afraid.

 

[yellowhelicopter]

Too much design nitpicking I think. Whereas much more important things in macOS remain not sorted out. Why f.e. there is absolutely no consistency in what happens when close button is pressed? Some apps close window but remain running, some just hide window, others close themselves altogether (like in Windows). Isn't such inconsistence simply unacceptable? I'm on macOS for 3 years now and still can't get used to that. Paddings and edge radiuses bother me much less, it's still like 10x more beautiful, orderly and tidy than Win11.

 

[JMalone]

If you think Cook cares what macOS looks like, you're in for a rude awakening, lol. It's entirely Federighi's decision at the end of the day.

BS. You are giving a non-designer credit for macOS and iOS design.

Federighi has never designed any UI at Apple but as a VP he presents the operating system in its entirely at WWDC.

He is an engineer and his speciality is low level kernel stuff. You are giving him superhuman powers by stretching his ability to oversee engineering and UI design. Nobody, especially a non-designer, has time to do that.

Jonathan Ive was really super clear that he was in charge of UI design and hardware design. His successor has taken over those responsibilities.

 

[Comfortably Numb]

Federighi has never designed any UI at Apple

Precisely zero people claimed he designed anything.

You are giving him superhuman powers by stretching his ability to oversee engineering and UI design

It's not me who's assigning him anything. It's Apple. It's his role at Apple. He *oversees* the OS and hence, is ultimately the executive in the C-level who is responsible for literally everything in macOS. That's the burden you have to carry as a C-level executive worth 400 million in Apple shares.

This isn't complicated. At all.

 

[JMalone]

Precisely zero people claimed he designed anything.



It's not me who's assigning him anything. It's Apple. It's his role at Apple. He *oversees* the OS and hence, is ultimately the executive in the C-level who is responsible for literally everything in macOS. That's the burden you have to carry as a C-level executive worth 400 million in Apple shares.

This isn't complicated. At all.

There are qualified answers and there are people who throw words on the internet with nothing to back it up. The latter is what you are doing.

You don’t understand how a company like that is structured so you simplified it down to one person overseeing a lot more than he can oversee. He would be exhausted long time ago if he had to oversee engineering, developer kits, UI and hardware integration across the several operating systems that Apple has now.

That’s why you said ‘This isn’t complicated. At all.’

Because you’re completely ignorant of how complicated it really is and how several departments spread out across three buildings oversee macOS development. One person alone does not “oversee the OS”.

Why can’t you accept that Jonathan Ive’s successor took over his duties if you think “It’s not complicated at all”.

One person or even one department alone does not decide what macOS or iOS is going to look like, not even Ive when he took credit for the Yosemite design. Those decisions are spread out across the tech sector and also involve discussions with hardware manufacturers. This involves webs and networks of conversations.

A manufacturer says to a CEO ‘We will be able to develop large folding screens for a foldable tablet within two years’.

That CEO has a conversation about it over dinner with another CEO of another company about these new hardware developments.

Then they talk to the board about the ideas. Then they talk to seniors of every department to start designing concept interfaces for a large foldable touchscreen tablet and augmented reality devices. They start toying with the idea of unifying the interface across all their devices.

Within a short time we start to see pill shapes and circular buttons appear on several platforms at about the same time, not just at one company. This highlights how decisions are made sector wide and not at just one company. Conversations behind the scenes spread across companies so that no single person or single department is fully responsible for new UIs and interfaces. UI concepts spread like a virus and sometimes several people catch it unconsciously at the same time.

Now comes the downside. Sometimes the new UI ideas that spread across the sector turn out to be bad, but they move so fast that nobody can stop it until those bad ideas land on consumers.

That’s what’s happening now. This is when the entire sector gets feedback about what works and what doesn’t work.

This is cyclical and happens on average every 7 years. It was why Vista turned out to be a mess, then fixed in Windows 7, and then why Windows 8 turned into a mess which was fixed in Windows 11.

It has happened to macOS and iOS in the past too.