So I am now living the Liquid Glass Horror, and…it’s not what I expected.

Based on the screenshots and the complaints, I was expecting special effects overkill, a phone trying to look like a PS5 game trying to look like Minority Report.

But…

…it’s not even that. It’s just ugly. Bad layouts. Bad margins. Bad proportions. Awkward animations. Flickers and flashes. Content peeking through all the negative space so that the screen is filled with visual noise. It feels designed by committee. It feels pasted together.

The feel of Apple products has covered a lot of ground over the decades. They’ve felt elegant. They’ve felt basic. They’ve felt bauble-y and cute. They’ve felt futuristic. They’ve felt practical. But this is the first time I can recall an Apple product feeling •cheap•.

Please take a moment to study this horrifying screenshot.

Ask:

- What here is negative space?
- What is information-bearing space?
- What space is neither of the above: usefully conveys no information, but adds visual noise?

And…wtf is that horizontal gray bar doing there?!

Now look at what •should• be negative space around the address bar and X button (highlighted in the second image). Does it add any useful information? No. Does it make the screen visually harder to parse? Yes.

My dudes, what are you even.

Let’s turn those gaps into actual negative space. Better.

The margins are all screwy here still. The layout manages to be waste space •and• still somehow be too tight. And don’t even get me started on having •two• “X” buttons right next to each other that do completely different things! But hey…I’m just some rando with an image editor and 10 minutes, and I’ve managed to bring it halfway back to looking as good as the previous iOS version.

Note that none of the complaints above are about the much-maligned transparency effects (which I have turned off). This is just basic, ground-level 2D design stuff that even this not-a-real-designer rando can pick apart.

The flagship product of one of the wealthiest companies on earth. Seriously.