iOS 26 Information Density

They're inventing a reason for you to buy a new foldable iPhone.

They're pushing you into 15" and 16" MacBooks.

Anything but the largest screen is the new 8GB of RAM. The way Tim Margin works.

Liquid Ass annoys me. Negative benefits and a lot of required work.

Note the devs who rightfully point out how much Apple abuses them (via App Store policies, refusing to cooperate, etc.) then rush to cuck to Apple's new UI demands. Now would be a great time to refuse. Make Liquid Ass a point of refusal. Develop for your users, not Apple's amateur UI design and agenda. But these devs aren't principled -- they just desperately want to be listed in the App Store. But that's a different rant.

@Hammer, can you be a *bit less* critical? I'm a developer too. I can also be sarcastic. But your comment reeks... and lacks anything constructive to say. So Apple places profits over what *you* think they should do. Was that worthy of this comment? Just look at your first three sentences, each posted as paragraphs.

Please, even I can be more constructive. Including my comment to you.

Peace. I know a hard thing to do in the present climate. Peace, nd tolerance of things outside of your control - like whatever Apple plans.

> Note the devs who rightfully point out how much Apple abuses them (via App Store policies, refusing to cooperate, etc.) then rush to cuck to Apple's new UI demands.

@Hammer agree, I have been surprised by listening to some Podcasts with very rationale Apple developers (who could be characterised as negative of Apple and their App Store policies) to then talk about how they are going to re-design their whole app for Liquid Glass.

Not sure if they've made the connection between the huge amount of time and effort required to implement this new UI design and the lack of additional product or user benefit it will bring them. From a competitive standpoint, it may be a minor benefit against other apps which don't update as significantly, but that value will be very short-lived.

You could understand if the new UI brought many usability or functional improvements, but even if you take Apple's rationale at face value, all the value the new UI brings is style and fashion. Which is not nothing, but hardly worth the significant effort it will take to support fully.

What's the alternative for developers though? I think the four approaches are:
1. Ignore Liquid Glass completely and keep your app looking like an app from a different time
2. Ignore Liquid Glass completely and move to something like a custom UI which doesn't try to follow platform look and feel
3. Adopt Liquid Glass iteratively, when it makes sense, but don't invest a huge amount of time or priority in the endeavour
4. Embrace Liquid Glass fully and accept the time and cost sink that involves.

@Anonymous respectfully, Hammer’s comments were far more constructive and productive than your light gaslight was. They’re right — developers should reject this, becuase that’s what is best for their app. But Apple has turned the App Store into a mob protection racket instead of a useful service that surfaces the best software on the platform, so they’ll play Apple’s game.

So the keyboard is now a single color for every key, instead of having shift, delete, return, 123 be a different shade? Why?

Also now they're cramming the emoji key into the keyboard, instead of the bottom left of the screen, which now makes the other keys have smaller tap targets? Why?

Also, this is not new, but why is there so much white space above the word "Settings" in the Settings app? It's like 1 cm of white space for no reason.

iOS 26 looks ridiculous and incoherent.

Content...They keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.

I would be ok with some larger touch targets in some cases.

But that Notes screenshot makes me sick. I do not understand their obsession with taking things that were just fine up against an edge and floating them out so that they cover up even more "content" and are no more usable than before.

They did the same thing with the Dock on macOS, they do the same thing with Dynamic Island. In both cases, the Dock and Notch were up against the side and left more usable space. Now in both cases they have a millimeter or so of dead space. They push more into the actual usable area now for no reason at all other than someone thought it looked cooler.

That seems to be the driving factor behind this deck chair re-arrangement. Looks cool, gives everyone busywork to distract from the real problems. Not much thought given to how it actually works, apparently.

Someone a few days ago posted here wondering if Apple execs just stare at their wallpapers all day and get mad when the computer part gets in the way and I think that sounds about right.

With regard to the developer discussion above, I don't think Apple is giving anyone a choice.

I think it was even posted here the other day how bad they mangle buttons that aren't updated. And don't get me started on squircle jail.

They seem to have purposely designed it to punish anyone who doesn't immediately update. If it wasn't on purpose, they clearly did not care for backwards compatibility in any way.

If nothing changes in that regard by time of public release, apps that haven't been updated won't just look like they're from a previous era, they may actually be broken. Solely because of things like text padding.

I'd much rather take (another) hit on information density, as long Apple is finally introducing a design that isn't ugly as sin, which it has been since 2013.

It baffles me that people see this new design and not give a thundering round of applause. It actually looks... attractive! Well-thought-out! Legible!

@Anonymous Hammer is right. my previous comment on this matter
(https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/06/30/assorted-notes-on-liquid-glass/#comment-4278690)

Turn that shit off unless you really really think the new design benefits your app (unlikely). Devs need to stop caving to Apple on everything.

For anyone wonder if “Someone” is serious:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

@Billy, please, read @Ben_G comment for what I meant about being constructive. Critical? Absolutely. But instead of calling something/someone "Liquid Ass" or "Tim Margin" (please note the quotes) I didn't think that should go without a comment. Even your comment was *clearly* more constructive - even if you call the App Store a "mob racket".

Life is too short. If you are a developer in the App Store as you claim, move on!

Oh, and please, my point was to be constructive like @bart is. This person may disagree with most of what "Liquid Glass" is (there I go with the quotes again), but the comments were expressed much more civilly than even mine.

@Léo Natan
I'm completely serious. it's one of the only stabs at "flat design" that I don't find absolutely horrible on a visceral level, and offends every design sentiment I can think of. except _maybe_ Windows Phone 7 - even that one was rather overrated, in my (strongly worded) opinion.

You are as serious as calling this shite “legible”.

https://x.com/LeoNatan/status/1938365836642877832

“iT’s JuSt a BeTa”

@Leo (sorry for not being perfect - umlat? - on your first name). The truth? Fact? (At least for now.)

It *IS* just a beta. Period. Won't be released for a few months.

Look, call it "shite". Call it something worse. This week I'd expect a third beta with adjustments. With more to come.

Disagree. STRONGLY. But do not overlook that it's only the second beta. And not a public one - only developers. Probably *that* changes over the next week.

@Anonymous: To be completely frank, I think it is condemnation enough of Apple that any of this was released, beta or not.

I’m not a iOS developer, so don’t have a dog in the at side of it, but as a user of almost all of Apple’s platforms this design seems like a major step backwards. Even in theirs videos that show it in the best possible light.

If this goes through without drastic changes, I don’t see myself using macOS/iPadOS going forward. Don’t know how I’d get off of iOS, but would be looking.

If it changes, that's only *because* people complain like crazy.

The fact that Apple "designers" need this much complaining speaks volumes about the pinheads that run that department, Alan Death of Design at the top. That RND or product didn't put the breaks on this garbage and released the first two betas as-is speaks volumes how weak they are as orgs. Why people are willing to accept "it's just a beta" as a valid excuse for a three trillion dollar company speaks volumes about portions of the Apple community. All of the above shows a sickness in the ecosystem that makes me really consider if I should invest any further intellectually or otherwise with this company or community.

> Why people are willing to accept "it's just a beta" as a valid excuse for a three trillion dollar company speaks volumes about portions of the Apple community. All of the above shows a sickness in the ecosystem that makes me really consider if I should invest any further intellectually or otherwise with this company or community

“It’s a beta” doesn’t fly. Look at Swift.
Look at System Settings three years later. People complained like crazy during the Beta (clearly not enough people) and Apple just pushed forward with the buggy app because it was their way of announcing that SwiftUI was now major league (is it? No it isn’t).

They still haven’t bothered to fix or improve System Settings in a meaningful way since its release, still a mess. So fuck this pretty please with a cherry on top will you make my text readable…unload the fucking cannon

I was just looking at Riccardo Mori's posts that showed screenshots of iOS 6, and remarking on how clear, consistent, and functional it is, and lamenting that we ever lost that. The iPhone had one of the best, most thoughtful UIs ever conceived... for about five years.

Apple seems to forget that computing devices are for completing tasks, not for looking cutesy while doing so. I'm not saying UI has to be ugly, but UI shouldn't slow you down. There's plenty of room for innovation in awesome looking UI that isn't slow. Computer hardware has become so much faster in the past 10 years but the software is killing it. I don't think there are many tasks that I can do faster today than I could in 2015 -- at least, certainly not commensurate with how much faster the hardware is (sure, exporting 4K video is a lot faster but I'm mostly talking about UI-level things, not background processing). And a lot of software now is actually slower. Why do they do this? (besides the obvious reply of "planned obsolescence")

This reminds me of how in the early 90s, my dad's job transitioned from a DOS-based system to a Windows 3.x based system. My dad is no computer wizard, and his job had nothing to do with computers other than having to use them to retrieve and log data.

But when everything switched from keyboard-based navigation to Windows, he said it was 10 times slower for him to complete tasks even though the computers were technically faster (CPU and RAM speed).

For instance, in the old system, he memorized the key sequences needed to navigate the system to get to a particular screen or function. That might be something like typing F1, F6, type "N" to enter a quantity, type "2" as the quantity, then F2 to go back to the main screen which he could do in 3 seconds. On the new system, he had to pick up a mouse, move it to an icon, click the icon, wait for the next screen, move to a different icon in another part of the screen, click it, move the mouse to a drop-down menu, select "Quantity", then tab to the text field, enter "2", then move the mouse to another part of the screen to select "Main menu".

Apple has been doing the same thing to us for the past decade. Adding useless fluff, complexity, and delays in software for no reason. I feel like I can't get any work done on my iPhone or iPad, because iOS puts so much needless complexity in my way -- the wrong kind of complexity. Yet somehow Apple thinks iOS is simple. If I want to get any real work done, I always pick up my Macbook.

iOS is extremely tedious to do anything. Like the situation with my dad, I can do things in seconds on my Mac that would take minutes (or be completely impossible) on iOS.

@Ben_G... great comment. Let's talk about what's different from the early 90s versus the 2020s and beyond. Your dad... did he have a computer that had a screen size less than, say, 7 inches? Was it a touchscreen? These things matter.

In 1990 my work computer was keyboard-based, had a (I'm guessing) 18 inch screen with what we called a monitor. No laptop. On the backend wasn't "the internet" - it was a Honeywell mainframe. Touch? Well, that seems like a big complaint for MacBook owners nowadays. Like I said, great comment!

In 1990, the only person I knew that had a mobile phone was in a movie called Wall Street. (Really good movie. Dated, obviously. And no, the sequel wasn't nearly as good.) But think car phone... big... certainly not something you could ever put in your pocket.

In 1990 my job had everything to do with computers. Operator. Like I said, Honeywell. School district. Backups (by tape drive), card input (keypunch), and a printer for payroll/finance/budgets. (We finally got this printer called a "graphic printer, maybe around 1993.) Oh, and networking? LOL.

My point, it's no longer 1990, or the 90s. A keyboard ABSOLUTELY belongs on all laptops (I'm typing this on a 13" MBP). And what Liquid Glass IS dumbing down things for it. And yes, if I care to get ANY work done - even making this comment - I will ALWAYS pick up my MBP. And you nailed it - because it will take second instead of minutes. But to compare this to your dad? In the 1990s? Wrong comparison.