[chartered_stack]

The main issue I feel is that Apple's internal threshold for what quality of software is acceptable to be launched to the public has dropped a lot in the years since the last major redesign.

Yes, they iterate through versions and drop things that don't work with their design philosophy (parallax effects on iOS 7) but the first major version they released always seemed well thought out and solid from a design perspective.

I don't get that feeling from this redesign. I'm sure that this Liquid Glass redesign would look and work great next year or the year after that or even by the public launch of iOS 26. They'll fix the issues with readability, control center etc. But the fact that the first version of Liquid Glass doesn't look good is what's problematic.

[madeofpalk]

iOS 7's first beta design was worse than this. They walked back some pretty distinctive parts of the design - mainly the ultra thin fonts - during the betas and following releases.

[jeffgreco]

Agree to disagree I guess - iOS 7’s initial preview wasn’t perfect but not incoherent and illegible to this degree.

If anyone wants to refresh their memory: https://youtu.be/6jBK3Dggkwg

Not to mention way more functionality added to the OS that year than this.

[avalys]

This hasn’t been “launched to the public”. It’s a developer beta so that developers can start working on testing and updating their apps for the new OS.

[chartered_stack]

You're right that this isn't "launched to the public" and is just a developer beta. However, I meant it in a more "outside of Apple" kind of way. I guess that should have been clearer.