it’s very easy to dunk on liquid glass for looking like shit and being inaccessible trash but now that I’ve been forced onto a new version of iOS and have first-hand experience with it, I feel it’s important to tell the truth:
it works like absolute shit too. who the fuck’s idea was it to make notifications work like this? who fucking sat there and decided what I wanted from the keyboard was for someone to fuck with its layout for no apparent reason?
not since the 90s have I interacted with a system UI whose animations were apparently designed to be as distracting as possible. I just looked at a masto notification and wondered why it had a weird tattoo (it was the UI of my active app showing through in bright blue, and I’ve got liquid glass on the “tinted” setting)
all my icons are fucking ugly now but the updated ones are worse. the calendar widget is a weird blob now. everything on my widget page is a weird blob.
what in the fuck did they do to the calendar, in general
who in the fuck is this for
holy fucking shit they made the CarPlay UI’s buttons smaller and made the daytime theme a set of colors that maximizes reflections and glare
I’d ask who decided this but “our users want smaller controls, more buttons, somehow also more whitespace, and less visibility for their driving interface” is a thoroughly LLM-brained decision
so who prompted ChatGPT and followed its instructions? I just want to talk (I’m going to run you over with my fucking car)
here I am severely disliking Apple’s UI for being materially the worst modern UI I’ve ever personally used (none of my computers run windows 11 and none of them ever will) and also disliking the macbook neo for being, by the numbers, a bad deal for everyone except Apple
maybe we can stop rewarding this company that’s doing a shit job of everything but increasing their share price with lipservice and thonkpieces about how the neo is great actually?
(I submitted the previous post too early because of liquid glass jank!)
maybe when we see a company like Apple capitulate to fascists in front of our own eyes and fuck up on security (the exploit kit that pushed me onto liquid glass) we shouldn’t reward any of that?
and like, you can punish Apple without leaving their ecosystem if you must stay. I get it. buy a used device. they’ll fucking hate if you buy a used macbook and it’s better and cheaper than the neo.
nah I must just be a hater
all I see when I look at this dreadful fucking UI is the big boy trophy they gave that fucker when they capitulated
and you want me to clap when they do things that increase their share price
also I still cannot get over how the new CarPlay UI made everything I use CarPlay for harder
the “go home” button is gone because now I guess I want to scroll a dreadful list of nearby food or gas or whatever?
app switching is fucking tiny for no reason
if I want to “end route” in maps, a thing I do constantly because maps can’t ever tell when I arrive (self-driving any day now I’m sure) I now have to swipe up on my arrival time (what) and tap a tiny end route button
sometimes the iMessage send button just glows instead of sending the message and I have to tap it again??
like I get it probably wants me to open the context menu I never use but like, I’ve tapped that button a lot and it never had this bug before and now it just keeps happening
oh dear fuck I opened the context menu and it can’t be closed by tapping the background, you have to find the tiny little close button and tap that or else you’re trapped
believe it or not Apple I don’t use these
I figured out the reason for this and it’s fucking worse than the context menu thing
they made the tap target for the send button tiny, roughly the size of how big the icon is (don’t ever do this on mobile, your touch targets need to be bigger than their visual representation)
if you miss the tap target due to muscle memory it pulses the entire text bar and if you do it next to the button, it makes the button glow bright white
it does this instead of tapping the damn button
what’s worse is if it’s a multi-line text: the button shifts position and instead of making the tap target the height of the text box as anyone with mobile UI experience would, your finger now has to track down where the button went
which it won’t because you aren’t looking for the button with your eyes. why would you?
“zzt how dare you. I bet you’re not even compiling a kernel right now”
jokes on you I’ve been compiling BSD since 1998. the same kernel, on a vax. it’s not done compiling yet
and as with the other liquid glass animations it isn’t subtle and it just can’t fucking stop
like who in the fuck’s idea was it to make the animation this fast and this visible? previous iOS animations were successful because they were relatively subtle and now I have fucking glowworms crawling around my icons in the most distracting way possible
@zzt just curious… is all of what you report with default accessibility settings?
(I wonder how much of this gratuitous animation goes away if you enable “reduce motion” or “reduce transparency” and so on.)
(Even pre-liquid glass I have to turn on these settings to make things legible for myself. Yes, I am getting too old for reading light gray 8pt text on a full white background, why do you ask???)
@scott I need to give reduce transparency a fair shake but I’m not done torturing myself with liquid glass yet
I’ve heard reduce motion causes a litany of bugs due to apps and Apple’s APIs expecting animations to take a certain amount of time to complete so I’m a bit more resistant to switching that on
my remaining time on iOS is limited (I have replacement hardware and a cutoff date) so I’m fortunately not stuck with this crap for long
I made the iOS update this morning. Right from the "Hello" screen after the update, everything looked so cheap. 😭
A (very small) consolation: when you enable "Low Power Mode" in the battery settings, the ugly effect for the icon borders is disabled.
@duke_of_germany when I saw the hello screen I audibly groaned
it got worse from there but fuck, what a first impression
@zzt I remember Apple used to design for the 90% of users — as in, what would work for most all people most of the time? Sometimes, still, this is annoying to nerdier “power” users because things can’t be customized; it’s Apple’s way or the highway.
But this aspirational simplicity is at odds with [market demands / “innovation” / upgrade cycle / enshittification].
I’m not saying anything new here, but I hear you and I feel this all over the place — UI elements that used to be simple, as in they worked one way consistently (like a SEND button), thus lower cognitive load, low friction. But now many times a day while attempting tasks that were simple muscle memory, now it’s “are you sure?” and “oops we renamed that” and “haha we changed the entire conceptual model so good luck GTFO!”
I don’t know if Linux is any better but I swear I’m almost ready to try it. 😤
@scott I agree but it’s important to note that the cognitive load isn’t the problem in this instance, I’m used to the message send button having this context menu attached that I don’t use
it’s currently failing in its purpose of reliably allowing me to send messages in a way it never has before
the UI it pulls up feels broken because I’m used to dismissing menus by tapping in the background (maybe that was the case before but it’s sloppy)
the mechanism that hid the complexity is broken
@spinnyspinlock @zzt But since we are here… do you have an opinion on Linux Mint (with, I guess, “Cinnamon” desktop)?
I am not ready to make the leap but from what I deduce, this would be the least painful option for this Mac user
@scott @zzt I'm not sure I feel can give good advice, GNOME is pretty similar to macOS. Could be worthwhile to install a few distros in a virtual machine or take advantage of the fact most distros let you try them by booting off a USB without installing.
I feel Ubuntu could be worth a try, but hopefully someone else chimes in. You can always install a different desktop if you don't like it anyway.
@spinnyspinlock OK sounds like trial and error is the name of the game.
Certainly I’ll boot off flash drives before committing!
@zzt yes they'll fucking hate you for buying used but they'll also cut support for it so soon you'll regret it.
just get a fucking linux laptop, it'll be easier.
@dysfun @zzt They actually won't hate if you buy used because it weds you to the platform if you are the kind of person who actually upgrades.
The key is to get off the upgrade treadmill.
If you treat it like an iPod that you just *use*? Yeah, then you'll see articles like these: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/23/how-device-hoarding-by-americans-is-costing-economy.html
Be that person.
@dysfun @zzt Not really - I'm thinking about it like industrial machinery - like the computers attached to medical equipment or computerized lathes, or nuclear reactors.
If you remain on internet connected apps, you are undoubtedly on the upgrade treadmill, so my suggestion won't work.
From a user perspective, iMovie keeps working even if I can't upload the resulting video to the web. 🤷
@dysfun @zzt I have #retrocomputing in my bio and we're specifically talking about punishing Apple.
Being a git sometimes means suffering for it.
@yoasif @dysfun @zzt That fucking article... RAMpocalypse, the rise of the surveillance state, soaring prices, uncertain market conditions, manufacturers cutting back on production... But no, it's our fault we're not buying $2,399 laptops and PCs with the same fervor of similar machines that cost $1,199 not even A YEAR AGO.
May as well made the headline "Computers are going away because poor people ruined the marketplace." That's how they regard all of it. Trump notwithstanding (you didn't vote for him I can only hope) the implication that AI and billionaire mergers are both still we the people's fault somehow.
@zzt I repaired my old Macbook Pro just because SSD prices were going up.
Neo may hit a sweet spot for people, unfortunately. I think the way to really punish Apple is to leave the plantation with what you've got.
You need (or want) iMovie? Keep using it on that old hardware.
Upgrading just puts you back on the never ending treadmill.
You need to get off.
@zzt I liked The Verge's comparison: right now a MacBook Air M5 has as much punch as a MacBook Pro M1 Pro at the moment. So if a MacBook Pro M1/M2 Pro catches your eye, $700 used may be tempting. Yes, there is a shot that they'll leave Apple's OS Upgrade soon, but even then if you get one today, it likely has another 4 years of security updates before it is fully put to pasture.
So if you see a used MacBook Pro from any year back than the current (14" and 16" sold from 2021 forward) remember: every dollar of it isn't going back to Apple, that is unless you buy their refurbs or an authorized suppliers.
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