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We have these brilliant high resolution displays, and these powerful, energy efficient GPUs that are always running and compositing frames like a game engine 12

We have these brilliant high resolution displays, and these powerful, energy efficient GPUs that are always running and compositing frames like a game engine 120 times a second. It's about time we start seeing more physicality in our user interfaces! We can make things look convincingly like glass, or metal, or even materials that don't exist in reality. One reason for flat design is because it was the lowest common denominator and easy for devs to implement. If Apple makes it easy to implement this liquid glass stuff - Rectangle().background(.glass) or something - then it's going to be really successful.

snarf21 1y ago
Highly dynamic frames makes sense for an immersive game. It doesn't make sense when I'm trying to read my email or what the name of the song that is currently playing is.
WillieCubed 1y ago
This is the Jevons paradox [1] in full display here. It's much easier to take advantage of hardware to run software at 120 FPS, so why not? And I agree about liquid glass being successful iff they make the developer tooling for this as easy as additional modifiers to components, or even the default for SwiftUI. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
noosphr 1y ago
>It's about time we start seeing more physicality in our user interfaces! I'm not sure if this is a joke or not. We had that, it was called skeuomorphism: https://miro.medium.com/v2/da:true/resize:fit:1200/0*6DRkHp3goMcRGI6C https://miro.medium.com/v2/da:true/resize:fit:1200/0*6DRkHp3... Then we got rid of it because it looked too 2010 now we are bringing it back because flat looks too 2020.
pcurve 1y ago
I don't mind physicality, but not glass. Please. There are reasons why most controls are NOT made of glass in real life.
- RollingRo11 1y ago
  I mean probably because they would break, no? I think glass-looking buttons are great (think Sony's Dualsense controller, Xbox controllers, tbh many controllers have glass-ish buttons) I think it's a nice aesthetic. It obviously needs some tuning (contrast, transparency, etc.), but the idea is nice! I've installed the beta, and it isn't as bad as it looks, just takes some getting used to. I also theorize this may be some grand transition phase to prepare everyone for the visionOS future apple wants to happen, but that could just be a stretch.
- 9dev 1y ago
  There are myriads of glass controls around you, just pay attention to it. From car interiors to elevator buttons, it's there. Glas actually makes sense, given its an extension of the device's hull.
- Gigachad 1y ago
  Probably the main reason is because they have ugly electronics behind them instead of pretty dynamic colors.
tsimionescu 1y ago
By this token, why not add particle systems and fancy explosions to every button click? Why stick to squares or rounded squares etc, when you can use voxel shading to generate complex n-gons with thousands of edges? The problem with all this - and 'liquid glass' as well - is that far from adding anything to the experience, they take away from it. They muddy and visually complicate what should be a visually clear and simple interface, one that gets out of your way as much as possible while allowing you to reach what you really care about - the content in your apps.
vijucat 1y ago
> One reason for flat design is because it was the lowest common denominator and easy for devs to implement. The 3D buttons in Windows 98 (Start button, for example) must have be harder to develop due to the animation involved. Yet, that was perfectly fine on hardware much older than those on which flat UIs were developed. I think you are missing the main point, which is that designers maul designs every season exactly like in the fashion industry due to merely being employed to do so and feeling a need to produce something new all the time (, which is sub-optimal for the humans who have to bear the UX consequences, to say the least). https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98 https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98
kylehotchkiss 1y ago
so what you're saying is that we need to resurrect skeuomorphism?
- lukebuehler 1y ago
  yes, I think this is exactly what's happening.
- gaze 1y ago
  I get the sense that the Scandinavian minimalism thing has worn too heavy on everyone and now we're taking a collective step back to explore things that are a bit more fun and maximalist. So yeah, maybe a little more skeuomorphism but done differently? That was a fun era!
  - mrweasel 1y ago
    > I get the sense that the Scandinavian minimalism thing has worn too heavy on everyone As a Scandinavian: I don't feel like we tried that since Braun. Apple has tried to mimic a Scandinavian sort of minimalism, but only in appearance. The iPhone UI is way to busy and is to hard to navigate for me to classify it as minimalism.
- wartijn_ 1y ago
  I would be happy with that. After years of using iOS with the current design it still takes me a few moments before I’ve found the Photos app with its meaningless icon that looks way too much like some other icons.
- LoganDark 1y ago
  Skeuomorphism in the sense of exactly mimicking existing physical interfaces probably mostly not, but skeuomorphism in the sense of using physically-inspired visual effects to add depth to a virtual interface I think so for sure. Liquid glass is so damn pretty.
  - keyringlight 1y ago
    I think modern skeuomorphism must be in a weird spot compared to a few decades ago. Right now our real world devices designers would be inspired are less likely to have physical controls, so the virtual versions are pulling from a more distant original source that's already been through a few degrees of separation. If the original industrial design that computer interface graphics was pulling from was the rise of industrial and consumer electronics through the 20th century (the various switches, dials, indicators, tuning knobs, etc), what new physical design is there to inspire that isn't feeding on itself.
cosmotic 1y ago
Just because we can doesn't mean we should. Using this new design language as an example, things are now harder to read, identify, and understand. That's a huge loss to productivity and ease of use.
- nlarew 1y ago
  > things are now harder to read, identify, and understand What makes you think that? Do you have a specific example from the keynote in mind? There must be something since you've never actually used this design system yourself. Or is this just your pre-judgement?
  - zerocrates 1y ago
    Even in their animations on this page there are things where the user scrolls the interface and the part under one of these glass buttons looks more exaggerated and draws the eye in an unpleasant way, and depending on where they land with it, the text on the button isn't particularly readable.
  - yuehhangalt 1y ago
    In the keynote, they showed an app, I think it was Messages, where the UI at the bottom was illegible because it was translucent and the background image and text were showing through too much. There are other examples that I was able to find were legibility was negatively impacted.
  - Prickle 1y ago
    Just the short demo videos on their website. Their example of the music app. You have a translucent bar showing the currently playing music app. It gets harder to read when it overlaps with the background music album covers. I can very easily see a situation where you need to scroll to an empty bit, just to be able to read what it is actually playing. Now, imagine you have a visual impairment. It's already hard to read with mostly normal eyes. This will be impossible for anyone with bad vision, probably even worse if colorblind. It is genuinely unreadable, and a mess visually.
  - Micrococonut 1y ago
nottorp 1y ago
> that are always running and compositing frames like a game engine 120 times a second Which is complete idiocy if you ask me. Why update a static screen at 120 fps? Are our batteries too large?
- kllrnohj 1y ago
  They don't. GPU rendering only happens when something changes. Even composition only happens when something changes thanks to panel self refresh (this is independent of the more recent VRR that also lowers refresh rate when idle, this is a relatively small savings compared to the other two)
- satvikpendem 1y ago
  > Why update a static screen at 120 fps? Good thing it doesn't do that then, variable refresh rate displays that go down to 1 Hz are fairly standard now on phones as well as other displays.
  - Pulcinella 1y ago
    Even before that, mobile UI frameworks are retained mode GUIs, not immediate. They aren't drawing to a blank framebuffer 120 times a second if they don't have to. Redraws only happen when something changes (e.g. "Dirty" rects).
    - tuetuopay 1y ago
      Oh even immediate UI framework don't paint non-stop. If the UI has not been interacted with, or if there are no animations/gifs, it has no blimey reason to repaint, and it will not. It will repaint the whole screen, of course, but that's already a win.
satvikpendem 1y ago
> It's about time we start seeing more physicality in our user interfaces! It's actually quite resource intensive to have translucency, in many implementations across the web and mobile.
- pzo 1y ago
  apple need to persuade people somehow to buy new iphone.
beAbU 1y ago
Microsoft did glass with windows 7, maybe even vista. Can't remember. Kinda old hat at this point tbh. And just because we have all this powerful hardware, does not mean we need to waste it on physically accurate glass surfaces on UIs. If this rolls out to all iDevices, how much energy (in other words CO2) will be expended worldwide on rendering things like this?
pzo 1y ago
only if each iOS app experience wasn't worse with each release. SwiftUI apps feels much slower than UIKit. My iPhone 13 experience with latest iOS overall feels very sluggish to old iPhones. This design feels not bringing much benefits but only drawbacks - more energy wasted, slower performance on older iPhones (apple want you buy new phone) and IMHO is just worse UX.

snarf21 1y ago

Highly dynamic frames makes sense for an immersive game. It doesn't make sense when I'm trying to read my email or what the name of the song that is currently playing is.

WillieCubed 1y ago

This is the Jevons paradox [1] in full display here. It's much easier to take advantage of hardware to run software at 120 FPS, so why not? And I agree about liquid glass being successful iff they make the developer tooling for this as easy as additional modifiers to components, or even the default for SwiftUI. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

noosphr 1y ago

>It's about time we start seeing more physicality in our user interfaces! I'm not sure if this is a joke or not. We had that, it was called skeuomorphism: https://miro.medium.com/v2/da:true/resize:fit:1200/0*6DRkHp3goMcRGI6C https://miro.medium.com/v2/da:true/resize:fit:1200/0*6DRkHp3... Then we got rid of it because it looked too 2010 now we are bringing it back because flat looks too 2020.

pcurve 1y ago

I don't mind physicality, but not glass. Please. There are reasons why most controls are NOT made of glass in real life.

RollingRo11 1y ago
I mean probably because they would break, no? I think glass-looking buttons are great (think Sony's Dualsense controller, Xbox controllers, tbh many controllers have glass-ish buttons) I think it's a nice aesthetic. It obviously needs some tuning (contrast, transparency, etc.), but the idea is nice! I've installed the beta, and it isn't as bad as it looks, just takes some getting used to. I also theorize this may be some grand transition phase to prepare everyone for the visionOS future apple wants to happen, but that could just be a stretch.
9dev 1y ago
There are myriads of glass controls around you, just pay attention to it. From car interiors to elevator buttons, it's there. Glas actually makes sense, given its an extension of the device's hull.
Gigachad 1y ago
Probably the main reason is because they have ugly electronics behind them instead of pretty dynamic colors.

tsimionescu 1y ago

By this token, why not add particle systems and fancy explosions to every button click? Why stick to squares or rounded squares etc, when you can use voxel shading to generate complex n-gons with thousands of edges? The problem with all this - and 'liquid glass' as well - is that far from adding anything to the experience, they take away from it. They muddy and visually complicate what should be a visually clear and simple interface, one that gets out of your way as much as possible while allowing you to reach what you really care about - the content in your apps.

vijucat 1y ago

> One reason for flat design is because it was the lowest common denominator and easy for devs to implement. The 3D buttons in Windows 98 (Start button, for example) must have be harder to develop due to the animation involved. Yet, that was perfectly fine on hardware much older than those on which flat UIs were developed. I think you are missing the main point, which is that designers maul designs every season exactly like in the fashion industry due to merely being employed to do so and feeling a need to produce something new all the time (, which is sub-optimal for the humans who have to bear the UX consequences, to say the least). https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98 https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98

kylehotchkiss 1y ago

so what you're saying is that we need to resurrect skeuomorphism?

lukebuehler 1y ago
yes, I think this is exactly what's happening.
gaze 1y ago
I get the sense that the Scandinavian minimalism thing has worn too heavy on everyone and now we're taking a collective step back to explore things that are a bit more fun and maximalist. So yeah, maybe a little more skeuomorphism but done differently? That was a fun era!
- mrweasel 1y ago
  > I get the sense that the Scandinavian minimalism thing has worn too heavy on everyone As a Scandinavian: I don't feel like we tried that since Braun. Apple has tried to mimic a Scandinavian sort of minimalism, but only in appearance. The iPhone UI is way to busy and is to hard to navigate for me to classify it as minimalism.
wartijn_ 1y ago
I would be happy with that. After years of using iOS with the current design it still takes me a few moments before I’ve found the Photos app with its meaningless icon that looks way too much like some other icons.
LoganDark 1y ago
Skeuomorphism in the sense of exactly mimicking existing physical interfaces probably mostly not, but skeuomorphism in the sense of using physically-inspired visual effects to add depth to a virtual interface I think so for sure. Liquid glass is so damn pretty.
- keyringlight 1y ago
  I think modern skeuomorphism must be in a weird spot compared to a few decades ago. Right now our real world devices designers would be inspired are less likely to have physical controls, so the virtual versions are pulling from a more distant original source that's already been through a few degrees of separation. If the original industrial design that computer interface graphics was pulling from was the rise of industrial and consumer electronics through the 20th century (the various switches, dials, indicators, tuning knobs, etc), what new physical design is there to inspire that isn't feeding on itself.

cosmotic 1y ago

Just because we can doesn't mean we should. Using this new design language as an example, things are now harder to read, identify, and understand. That's a huge loss to productivity and ease of use.

nlarew 1y ago
> things are now harder to read, identify, and understand What makes you think that? Do you have a specific example from the keynote in mind? There must be something since you've never actually used this design system yourself. Or is this just your pre-judgement?
- zerocrates 1y ago
  Even in their animations on this page there are things where the user scrolls the interface and the part under one of these glass buttons looks more exaggerated and draws the eye in an unpleasant way, and depending on where they land with it, the text on the button isn't particularly readable.
- yuehhangalt 1y ago
  In the keynote, they showed an app, I think it was Messages, where the UI at the bottom was illegible because it was translucent and the background image and text were showing through too much. There are other examples that I was able to find were legibility was negatively impacted.
- Prickle 1y ago
  Just the short demo videos on their website. Their example of the music app. You have a translucent bar showing the currently playing music app. It gets harder to read when it overlaps with the background music album covers. I can very easily see a situation where you need to scroll to an empty bit, just to be able to read what it is actually playing. Now, imagine you have a visual impairment. It's already hard to read with mostly normal eyes. This will be impossible for anyone with bad vision, probably even worse if colorblind. It is genuinely unreadable, and a mess visually.
- Micrococonut 1y ago

nottorp 1y ago

> that are always running and compositing frames like a game engine 120 times a second Which is complete idiocy if you ask me. Why update a static screen at 120 fps? Are our batteries too large?

kllrnohj 1y ago
They don't. GPU rendering only happens when something changes. Even composition only happens when something changes thanks to panel self refresh (this is independent of the more recent VRR that also lowers refresh rate when idle, this is a relatively small savings compared to the other two)
satvikpendem 1y ago
> Why update a static screen at 120 fps? Good thing it doesn't do that then, variable refresh rate displays that go down to 1 Hz are fairly standard now on phones as well as other displays.
- Pulcinella 1y ago
  Even before that, mobile UI frameworks are retained mode GUIs, not immediate. They aren't drawing to a blank framebuffer 120 times a second if they don't have to. Redraws only happen when something changes (e.g. "Dirty" rects).
  - tuetuopay 1y ago
    Oh even immediate UI framework don't paint non-stop. If the UI has not been interacted with, or if there are no animations/gifs, it has no blimey reason to repaint, and it will not. It will repaint the whole screen, of course, but that's already a win.

satvikpendem 1y ago

> It's about time we start seeing more physicality in our user interfaces! It's actually quite resource intensive to have translucency, in many implementations across the web and mobile.

pzo 1y ago
apple need to persuade people somehow to buy new iphone.

beAbU 1y ago

Microsoft did glass with windows 7, maybe even vista. Can't remember. Kinda old hat at this point tbh. And just because we have all this powerful hardware, does not mean we need to waste it on physically accurate glass surfaces on UIs. If this rolls out to all iDevices, how much energy (in other words CO2) will be expended worldwide on rendering things like this?

pzo 1y ago

only if each iOS app experience wasn't worse with each release. SwiftUI apps feels much slower than UIKit. My iPhone 13 experience with latest iOS overall feels very sluggish to old iPhones. This design feels not bringing much benefits but only drawbacks - more energy wasted, slower performance on older iPhones (apple want you buy new phone) and IMHO is just worse UX.