Mastodawn

Much digital ink has been spilled today freaking out over Gurman’s “Liquid Glass isn’t going anywhere” take. I think we’re all talking about the same thing.

Aqua was around from 2001 to 2014. The Aqua of Mac OS X Public Beta is hardly the same as the one in Mavericks, but it’s still Aqua.

Several good innovations in physical coherence and interaction mechanics went into Liquid Glass. Unfortunately, the first visual execution of the concept has some egregious flaws. But give it 12 years!

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Tuomas Hämäläinen 🇺🇦

@radu Genuine question: what are examples of these good innovations in physical coherence and interaction mechanics? Asking because in all my experiences with Liquid Glass so far, I have not perceived these things.

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Radu Dutzan 5d ago

@tuomas_h Really good question. I think the controls that morph into menus or sheets can help users understand semantic relationships and the expected next step in a flow. Pinchable sheets might seem silly, but they get us closer to an ideal of directly-manipulable, always-zoomable UI, same as the visionOS feature that lets you pinch any window. Pinching is a powerful interaction that remains underutilized. The liveliness of a UI that’s hyper-reactive to touch and expresses …

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Radu Dutzan 5d ago

@tuomas_h …intrinsic physicality (see: iPhone Shortcuts editor bottom sheet) does feel like it’s pushing the state of the art, and definitely helps the user know a touch device is responsive to input in a way we couldn’t do before. Yes, lots of these lack polish, taste, consistency, or all of those, but the underlying concepts are good, IMO. If they can keep pushing on the positive aspects and reel in the crazy and weird visual distractions, I think this could be net-positive.