[SchemaLoad]

Isn't this the case for all UI redesigns? When youtube changed to their current design there were posts about browser extensions to restore the old interface. I remember hating it myself at the time yet now I don't have an issue with it and probably prefer it to the old design.

Some people are always upset with change.

[GuB-42]

Yes, people are upset with every UI redesign that is not an incremental change.

So stop redesigning your damn UIs!

I know why they do it. That's because if you don't change the UI, it is like you didn't change anything, and people don't feel the need to upgrade. It is important for marketing and therefore I don't expect it to change.

But if you really care about usability, don't change your UIs without a good reason. Also, keep in mind that not every user is a young tech addict, it is hard enough to explain to my grandparents how to use a computer/smartphone without them being thrown off by UI changes. Ok, it may not be where your money is, but that's part of accessibility.

[pflenker]

I don’t see how your argument applies to Apple‘s transition to Liquid Glass. Apple only did incremental design changes for years, IIRC this is only the third major UI/UX iteration since the early 00s.

UX is not timeless, features emerge or go out of fashion, user behavior and expectations change, the hardware on which the UI/UX is operated changes. You only can incrementally evolve your ui/UX so far, as you can’t know what the future will look like.

[array_key_first]

Liquid glass is objectively worse than what came before it. It's literally harder to see what the fuck is going on, and everything takes more time to do.

There are zero legitimate benefits to it. It's just neat and cool, which is a very poor reason to do something.

They should've just... Not done it.

[Arrath]

> Yes, people are upset with every UI redesign that is not an incremental change.

Speaking for myself, it's also annoying when the redesign is half assed. I think it's awfully embarrassing that you can still dig deeply enough into settings panels in Windows and get XP themed panels. Hell, dig deep enough and there's probably even older ones lurking still.

[1718627440]

To me that is more a sign that I finally arrived at a dialog I can trust to do what it says and which actually achieves what I have been looking for the whole time. To me trying to change something in Windows seems to be a hunt for that old window first, before I can do anything useful.

[Arrath]

You're not wrong, and I share the sentiment. "Modern" panels are near worthless, I have to dig down to something crusty to actually expose useful settings I can tweak.

[1718627440]

That's true about the stuff you reach from Settings. But I also learned that Windows has a nice way to adjust the settings, every setting is described by a few paragraphs, it is structured in a tree and actually understandable. And you even can enumerate them and know you have considered all of them, there is nothing playing hide and seek with you. Really crazy that this is built in into MS Windows. It's called Group Policy Editor. Not sure why not everyone is using that instead of the crappy slow Settings app.

[GuB-42]

Windows 8+ UI is just plain incompetence.

You may like or may not like the new settings panels, but making them incomplete and redirecting you to the old ones for the missing features is just wrong. Even worse, they have been gradually adding the missing features for more than 10 years, breaking all familiarity, and they still didn't manage to finish the job.

I don't know what happened internally but Microsoft went from being arguably the best in the world to something that is objectively terrible. You may not like liquid glass, but at least, there is intent behind it. With Microsoft today, it looks like a collection of internship projects.

[OldOneEye]

Hah! I've seen the same TCP/IP Advanced Networking config ugly panel since Windows 95, up to Windows 10. It makes me feel at home, but it confirms your assessment.

[close04]

> Some people are always upset with change

You defended "change" in general, not in this particular case. "Change could be good so this change must be good" is a weak argument that can be used to defend any change. This is a shallow dismissal of the complaints instead of a solid defense of the change.

The poor contrast of the UI strains the eyesight, all the transparency and glass effects are distracting and tiring, so are many of the animations which just introduce a delay for no reason, and so on. I unlock my phone and the top row of icons is "thrown" on the screen with a big delay and a very ample motion to the point it was disturbing.

These aren't useful changes, they cause a loss of practical value to many users even if they bring esthetic value to others. The changes most brought up in complaints are objectively worse that what we had before. It's form over function and tells the world the designers had no ideas how to practically improve the UI so they added visual bells and whistles, flashes and sparkles.

[irjustin]

> Isn't this the case for all UI redesigns? When youtube changed to their current design there were posts about browser extensions to restore the old interface.

Yes but UI redesigns usually involve UX redesign as well. It's not just visual so you actually gain something from it (even if at first it feels like a regression).

But liquid glass helps me do what... see my background?....!?

[fodkodrasz]

It helps Apple sell bigger phones: even wider margins and less readable text (it was already borderline unreadable because we had to showcase Retina hyper-resolution, now we can even do that without contrast!) When you buy a 10" phone maybe you'll be able to read an iMessage...

Seriously unsure who thought it might be a good idea and why. Possibly just a diversion from the AI development falling behind schedule and competitors. I really cannot imagine a user cohort falling for this gimmich in large enough percentage to push this, I'd rather think no serious UX A/B testing was done.

Modern design is already pretty bad and usability and readability being almost ignored aspects, but this is the most arrogant step I met recently, despite the ambitious attempt by Posthog website redesign to be the champion in user-hostile UX category.

[stephen_g]

True, and it's the same with any big redesign that it should tend to be the worst it will ever be at the start and then be gradually refined. I expect it will end up quite good by the time they want to start over again in 10 or so years, and people will complain about losing it and how bad the new interface is! At least there are a few good years in the middle to end of each cycle!

[marginalia_nu]

I'm not an apple user, have used neither the old or new design, and if I had to choose, I'd pick the old one any day of the week. Liquid Glass very much feels like Apple's Boeing 737 MAX moment.

The Liquid Glass design has awful contrast, and seems really amateurish with how stuff on the screen overlaps. Looks like the stuff you'd see in KDE 10-15 years ago[1], back when compositing window managers were kinda hot and new.

[1] This is from 2012, and arguably deals with the transparency-induced readability issues better than Liquid Glass seems to: https://imgur.com/a/x1LmBAQ

[IAmGraydon]

No. This isn’t about preference for certain aesthetics. The new glass UI elements are objectively worse for readability.

[the_other]

> Isn't this the case for all UI redesigns?

This one is particularly bad because it's shit. It makes the device harder to use for most users. It introduces a load of utterly pointless, and/or confusing, patterns/motifs... like:

- why do some navigation buttons hover about 3 meters above the panel they control (the enormous drop shadow around back/next/close buttons)

- why is the settings sidebar floating above the settings panel content, such that only the image carousels but not the text slide under it?

- why are the rounded corners of panels and windows so round that about 40px of every window's height and width becomes unusable?

- why do I have to see my wallpaper, blurry, under every fucking control, icon, component, list and panel? It started with Lion where the wallpaper would bleed through the sidebars of windows, even when they had other windows beneath them

Someone at Apple decided the "desktop" paradigm that made their computers usable has become redundant, but they're taking it apart in tiny steps, drawn out over years and multiple releases. The desktop paradigm was really good: you could have multiple apps open side by side and drag & drop content between them, just like you could if you were assembling physical things on a physical desktop. With Liquid Glass, you wouldn't imagine that was possible, because parts of the apps hover 3m off the surface, making it visually unsettling to navigate your windows. And your windows are made of various grades of glass which is brittle, and smooth, and you can't stick anything to it. Glass isn't a work surface unless you're doing stained glass windows. To do work, you need the confidence the surface will hold up beneath your actions, and a little bit of friction so your materials and targets don't slide all over the place. Why on earth are Apple creating the illusion of an unworkable work surface?

I'm convinced they're trying to deprecate the menu bar entirely by making it less and less usable (thinner text, transparency), but they're not willing to move it to the tops of windows like on Windows. Are they hoping we'll all give up using (because they've made it shit) it so they can just let it go? (like iOS?).

[Telaneo]

Change for the sake of change is not a good thing.

I'm still mad at Youtube for their redesigns, to the point that I moved over to Freetube, since I found normal Youtube that hostile of an experience.

[marginalia_nu]

Yeah I stopped using Spotify because of their constant UI churn. This was around back when they subtly changed the hue of the Spotify logo for no clear reason.

Went to Youtube Music instead, which doesn't seem to ever get updates and likely has been relegated to Google's project limbo.

It's fantastic. It's arguably a worse service, but I'll take that over the frustration of having to figure out yet another new and improved music listening experience every other time I open the Spotify app.

Ultimately, good design stays out of the way. Design changes is design getting in your face, ... which is the diametric opposite of staying out of the way.

[coffeefirst]

Sort of. The difference is this one has real, objective UX issues with hit areas, inconsistent icon use, making every website with position fixed elements broken, and constantly drawing attention to itself.

All of these are fixable without backing away from the big idea. But it’s pretty rough so far.

[floundy]

I thought the hit area issues was just a Safari thing after moving over from Android to the iPhone 17 Pro. Idk how it’s selecting things so far from my finger and the actual links I’m clicking on. Interesting you’re saying it wasn’t an issue until iOS 26?

[globular-toast]

Yes, but that doesn't contradict the comment about innovation at Apple. They are now at a similar stage to Osprey backpacks. They release a new look every year but with all the same features and functionality that we had a decade ago.

[vosper]

Who are today’s innovators in the backpack space?

[perryprog]

For what it’s worth, I’m definitely leaning “Apple fanboy” and have been amenable to their past UI redesigns. This is the first that I truly think is a regression, and I immediately turned on Reduce Transparency after updating.