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.