Steve Troughton-Smith

"In fact, [Steve] Lemay — along with Dye and Sorrentino — was a driving force behind Liquid Glass and was deeply involved in its development.

Liquid Glass was a massive undertaking across Apple’s entire design organization, and I haven’t been able to find any evidence suggesting there were designers internally opposed to it during development. Apple’s executive team was also fully behind the interface."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-03-15/apple-s-liquid-glass-ui-isn-t-going-anywhere-siri-home-hub-foldable-iphone-mmrpcylx

Mar 16 at 12:38pmIvory for Mac
Show threadSteve Troughton-Smith5d ago
"The idea that iOS 26 and Liquid Glass represent a crisis for Apple — or some unforgivable offense against good design that customers around the world despise — is greatly overblown. The vast majority of users appear happy with the update, and adoption of the latest operating systems has steadily climbed in recent months after a slightly slower-than-usual initial response."
Show threadDer Teilweise5d ago
@stroughtonsmith “adoption of the latest operating systems has steadily climbed” … after heavily pushing the update to users, implementing several dark patterns to trick people to install it against their will, and actively breaking support of older OS versions.
Show threadDHa5d ago

@stroughtonsmith Sounds like two narratives are being pushed here:

1. Apple thinks it is great and there are no issues, and
2. The sky is falling

All of the negative coverage (and my personal opinion) is that it’s fine on iOS, but the further away from that (iPadOS and then macOS), the more issues it has.

It feels rushed for the sake of having everything using the new design language despite significant issues introduced by it.

Show threadPenguin4d ago
@stroughtonsmith I don’t mind it, in fact love the look of glass over my 40-year-old digitized film photos. But to each their own 🙂
Show threadIvan Mir5d ago

@stroughtonsmith

> “Glass has some really useful properties when it comes to user interfaces,” Federighi told Joanna Stern.

Such as…?

> “It just looks super cool.”

Ah.

Show threadJosh Delman4d ago
@stroughtonsmith hasn’t the most pointed criticism - not knee jerk reactions - been less about liquid glass itself and more about the “death by a thousand cuts” changes it ushered in? Inconsistent corners, further deviations from the HIG of yore, etc