@louie@pdx.social
You know, I could write a whole blog post about this—and I might—but I think we need to start addressing the very likely possibility that the entire thesis that “UI should get out of the way” and “apps should focus on content” is wrong.
Apps aren’t just for looking at photos or videos. They’re for navigating through these things, organizing them, editing them. The tools to do those things should not get out of the way. They should be clearly defined and separate from the content.
The problem is not the introduction of glass as an element of the visual design language. If used as the Dock background alone, it would be totally fine! But because someone said “UI should get out of the way” and no one challenged it—instead of content literally being the focus, Apple has to intentionally put content out of focus (blurring) to make the glass elements visible. They have to put a gradient behind the glass so you can see it. That should’ve been the “oh, it doesn’t work” moment.
But here we are with a new visual design language that somehow manages to compromise on both the content area and the UI.
I’m living on macOS Tahoe and I’m here to tell you that the apps that are a pleasure to use are the ones that haven’t adopted Liquid Glass (in essence... all the third-party apps.)
This should be a blog post. But I need to collect my thoughts and write it all better. So consider this a beta version. lol
I'm taking away a lesson from this: UI should be visually apparent such that it is easily found and recognized when needed. The user needs UI to interact with the content, so why shouldn't it have a distinct presence?
UI usually shouldn't be so flashy that it draws attention away from the content, but simultaneously it should not fade into the background and become illegible. Somehow Apple seems to be missing the mark on both of these points.
Using the AVP as a point of inspiration for the UI of their other OSs is a big mistake I think. It's more of a neat science project than a successful product.
