I don't understand the fuss around liquid glass. I've been using Apple stuff since before OS X and this just feels like another redesign; I understand that there are some accessibility issues (that I thought Apple had at least partially addressed) but I don't have any problems using it. In fact, I kinda like it. It feels like many people latched onto an extremely negative narrative early on, and can't let go of it.
I have much more of a problem with the terrible window management on the mac and ipad OSs. Not being able to snap and resize windows to the edges of the screen, like every other standard window manager that exists, is insane (I know they added some version of this recently, but unsurprisingly it sucks). And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky. They completely ruined the cmd-space search in their most recent major release. They need to get their house in order.
If you're going to say Apple's reputational hit from Tahoe, and Tahoe's many problems, are merely narrative-driven, you need to at least provide support for that. For example:
- why the added transparency effects don't present accessibility/usability issues, despite what users report
- why the corner radius change (among other UI changes), including its absurd size and broken handle detection actually aren't a big deal (even though every other window toolkit NOT swiftui has to be updated for it)
- why it's okay that they added useless icons to menus that add visual clutter and violate of their own design standards
- why Rosetta is going away, even though so many things still depend on it
The bigger issue is that Tahoe was a frivolous cosmetic update with only a few actual improvements, despite all of macOS's bugs that haven't been fixed over the years. That's a long list, from broken keyboard shortcuts in most their newer apps (and System Settings) to persistent Airplay compatibility problems.
Why is Apple's hardware getting objective better over the years while the possible software gains are squandered year after year?
I am talking about "liquid glass", which I understand to refer to the recent design language updates that include the much-bemoaned transparent/translucent design elements. I will repeat that I simply have not experienced myself having a negative reaction to these changes, even if you include corner radius changes and what you call "visual clutter" under the umbrella of "liquid glass"; I hardly noticed the former and didn't notice the latter at all. As for accessibility issues, I explicitly called them out in my comment.
Re: the rest of your comment, it seems like a real stretch to suggest that any of the following (quoting you) are within the scope of "liquid glass":
* Dropping Rosetta.
* Broken keyboard shortcuts in most their newer apps (and System Settings).
* Persistent Airplay compatibility problems.
* Other bugs that haven't been fixed over the years.
* Possible software gains being squandered year after year.
I clearly articulated in my comment that I have other problems with the current state of mac OS, so I'm not sure why you're implying that I'm claiming all the issues mentioned in your post are in the scope of "liquid glass" and therefore mainly narrative-driven.
It suggests to me that you didn't really read my comment before composing your reply.
> And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky.
It appears you do indeed understand the fuss around Liquid Glass :)
The way I see it, "Liquid Glass" is used as a catch-all term to refer to all the UI changes across Apple's 2026 slate of user interfaces.
For one example, the annoying Apple Watch fitness app changes are "Liquid Glass" in my book because it exists only to show off the new wobbling refracting buttons,. The loss of performance and battery life is reasonably assumed to be tied to new Liquid Glass shaders Apple aspires to run 120 times a second on the phone.
The menu icons are really annoying, especially because some apps don't have them, and everything looks off-kilter. Finder sidebar morphing as the window resizes, also annoying.
But you're right, it's still usable, unlike the window management.
Lucky for me i convinced my boss to buy me a PC about a month after they forced the Tahoe update on my old work MBP
It's because it's vapid corpspeak coming from a class of people who have certainly spent time thinking about how they will deal with the rest of humanity in any number of nasty (however far-fetched) eschatological scenarios caused by them and in which they alone wield incredible power over nature and the human mind. And also because we all know the vast, vast, vast majority, possibly the totality of what people made with Sora did not matter at all.
You seem to have missed this part of the comment you replied to:
> This was many years ago and I freely admit today that I was wrong.
Personally I stopped using Windows for gaming because it literally doesn't work anymore. I installed Windows 11 on my gaming VM and DLSS and FSR were just completely broken, didn't work at all. Couldn't figure it out. Switched to Linux (Bazzite for now) and I have no regrets; the only games that don't work are the dangerous time-wasters (live service games with invasive anti-cheat) that I have less and less time for as I age.
> One controller overnight is completely reasonable.
Do you really think it's appropriate to have zero margin for handling unusually high ATC workloads? Because we just saw what happens when you have zero margin for handling unusually high ATC workloads: people start dying.
In this scenario, where the AI and robots no longer rely on human labor for maintenance and growth, their productive capacity exclusively serves the owning elite (including defending them with violence if necessary) and the rest of us are an inconvenient growth occupying land and consuming resources.
This is a scenario where the AI/capital owners complex has already survived the collapse of the consumer economy.
In this case, using a cheap(er) signal or heuristic as an initial filter before spending more resources on cases that pass the filter is a pattern that shows up all over the place, and LLMs are good at picking up on patterns like that and generalizing them. AFAICT.
I'm not sure how people say this so confidently. I have a rather esoteric haskell library that I've written and published for years. ChatGPT and Claude both know about it and frequently help me improve it, and propose completely novel approaches. I'm really not sure how people are so confident that they can't think of anything new. This seems like wishful confirmation bias.
I don't think Google really "rebranded" in the same kind of way, since Google is still their brand across the vast majority of their product offerings and the signs on Google offices still say Google. Seems like the Alphabet thing is more about letting the "other bets" be under a higher umbrella, and possibly other reasons related to financial engineering etc.
> I'm not sure if anyone in HN has any useful advice in this regard.
Self host. It's still possible to buy computer hardware and install FOSS replacements for most/all of the services you need, and plumb it all through to your mobile devices using wireguard/tailscale. If you're behind a CGNAT you can proxy it through a cheap VPS that won't fuck you on bandwidth costs. Thanks to Proxmox, I probably have better uptime on my services than e.g. Github these days.
When it becomes impossible to get open PC hardware, I don't know. I like to think I will just stop using the internet for anything besides the bare minimum NPC type activities that are required to engage with the institutions of society.
I have much more of a problem with the terrible window management on the mac and ipad OSs. Not being able to snap and resize windows to the edges of the screen, like every other standard window manager that exists, is insane (I know they added some version of this recently, but unsurprisingly it sucks). And the entire mac OS is starting to feel slow, bloated, and janky. They completely ruined the cmd-space search in their most recent major release. They need to get their house in order.
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