So I figured, I could just install the public beta, try it out for myself, get a first-hand impression, and assess whether the Journal app is good enough to sacrifice a stable & better designed OS...

I went ahead and installed the public beta on my iPad, tried the Journal app, was completely dissatisfied, got motion sick from all the Liquid Glass pointless effects, personally witnessed the many poor design decisions, and began migrating all my journal entries back to Day One right away.

Now I'm back on iPadOS 18, and for the first time ever, I don't personally feel like it's outdated or a downgrade in any way.

I've been following this closely ever since the updates were announced at WWDC, but I never had a reason to try the betas.

Now that I have, I can officially and confidently say: it’s baaaaaaaaad. You don’t even need more than 30 minutes to realize just how rough it is. There are plenty of examples out there, so I’ll just share 3 I haven’t seen mentioned yet.

#Accessibility has come up plenty of times during the Liquid Glass convo, but check this out. Just a basic example, something even a barely-skilled designer should be able to easily get right.

You need a contrast ratio of 3:1 to meet WCAG AA for large text (4.5:1 for small text like this). Ideally, you’d aim for AAA, which requires 7:1.

The labels on the Reminders buttons don’t even hit 3:1. They're not accessible at all. You don’t even need a visual impairment to struggle when reading these.