[btown]

My hot take on this is that there is a business goal to Liquid Glass that extends beyond ego - but it's about the restoration of Apple UI as an exclusive status symbol, not as a usable experience.

Apple looked at innovations in hardware form factor and, rather than trying to out-innovate in that sphere, said, instead: how do we make something in software that nobody would ever try to imitate, and thus position ourselves as the innovators once again?

And the monkey's paw curled and said: Liquid Glass is a set of translucency interactions that are technically near-impossible to imitate, sure, but the real reason nobody will try to imitate is because they are user-hostile to a brand-breaking extent.

And Apple had nobody willing to see this trainwreck happening and press the brakes.

[PufPufPuf]

The business goal is clear: visionOS. Liquid Glass is designed with AR in mind, that's the only place where it actually makes some sense. Pretty much the same thing as Microsoft did with Windows 8, trying to unify the UX and visual style across PCs and phones. And it's going similarly well.

[dbtc]

That's interesting and plausible.

It also contributes to obsolescing older hardware.

[ibero]

we saw this exact playbook with ios 7. i don't think you need to attribute malice or read into it much.

ios 7 relied heavily on blurring effects-- a flex at the time due to the efficient graphic pipeline vs android they had. this was coming off the heels of Samsung xerox'ing and they wanted a design that would be too expensive for competitors to emulate without expensive battery hit. liquid glass is following in this tradition.

and similarly to ios 7, the move to flat design was predicated on the introduction of new form factors and screen. flat design lent itself well to new incoming screen sizes and ratios. prior there was really one or two sizes and that was it, easy to target pixel perfect designs against. as apple moves to foldables and more, this design flexibility is once again required.

as for no one trying to emulate it, i'm not so sure, OriginOS 6 ripped it off back in October.

[gedy]

I honestly think they could have done that and still had some taste and considered usability much more than they did.