It seems to me the Liquid Glass transition for Mac is a sacrifice for visionOS. Today, you can run iOS apps on an Apple Vision Pro, or create a virtual Mac display, but these are lesser spatial experiences: You still use a trackpad when interacting with Mac apps in Vision Pro, and you can't position their windows freely in space.
In Tahoe, hit targets are huge — toolbar buttons are 5,000 square pixels, ridiculous when using a precision pointer but maybe appropriate for eye tracking. Translucent materials make slightly more sense in augmented reality than a 2D desktop environment where no one ever complained about a lack of depth (before Apple went ultra flat and minimalist, anyway).
So despite to the apparent dud of the Apple Vision Pro as a consumer product, I doubt Apple would aggressively push a design "inspired by the depth and dimensionality of visionOS" a year and a half later without a strong reason. The recent Meta Ray-Ban Display shows the category is reaching a viable size and weight. I predict will soon see whether Apple's design gambit for spatial computing pays off or if they start to roll back towards a pointer-first UI on the Mac.
I assume the native Mac-app ecosystem will die from this update. iOS will recover, but for Mac it's gonna be custom designs and electron all the way.
- I haven't dealt much with SwiftUI myself, but several developers mentioned¹ a buggy and unstable migration process to the new design.
- Most pro users (aka devs) are probably not convinced by this design language anyways
- Even before Tahoe, cross-platform apps had been eating away at the native market (Obsidian, Figma, VSCode, 1Password, ...).
- Apps that are still native are usually not best-in-class anymore - especially Apples own apps.
Their reasoning may be that, if Mac apps are dying anyways, they could at least get iPad apps to replace them. If it didn't work for Microsoft, maybe it will work for Apple.
On the bright side, I feel less locked into MacOS now.
I finally figured out how to make the Music app look like iTunes with column browser, track listing, and no huge space wasted with album art. I used to have my tracks meticulously rated with 1-5 stars but they got lost copying the files to numerous newer Macs.
Also long lost is Front Row and the Apple remote that used to come with Macs.
I don't understand the title. Wasn't this the dude who grew younger from old age to infancy? Tried searching for the name but it only appears in the title. What am I missing?
I was quite confused by this article. I'm not familiar with the macOS codenames and it's only once I made it to the end and looked at the title again that I finally got it. Brilliant.
Eh, not nearly as thought-provoking as it thinks it is. The sections about the old Settings app and how making all of the icons gray was an improvement contradict the complaints made about the current versions.
The old single-view Settings app was more mobile-device like with all-or-nothing visual context, whereas the current Settings app with the sidebar and main display pane gives the user immediate understanding of where they are in the settings tree. It takes advantage of the larger display size of a desktop device.
The all-gray icons everywhere mirrors the same monochromatic issues of the current macOS version.
However, seeing all of the OS versions side-by-side made me realize that Catalina's visual design was probably my favorite, combining minimalistic visual flair and functionality while holding onto rich gradients and color palettes that made it easy to scan and find controls and actions.
This is brutal.
It seems to me the Liquid Glass transition for Mac is a sacrifice for visionOS. Today, you can run iOS apps on an Apple Vision Pro, or create a virtual Mac display, but these are lesser spatial experiences: You still use a trackpad when interacting with Mac apps in Vision Pro, and you can't position their windows freely in space.
In Tahoe, hit targets are huge — toolbar buttons are 5,000 square pixels, ridiculous when using a precision pointer but maybe appropriate for eye tracking. Translucent materials make slightly more sense in augmented reality than a 2D desktop environment where no one ever complained about a lack of depth (before Apple went ultra flat and minimalist, anyway).
So despite to the apparent dud of the Apple Vision Pro as a consumer product, I doubt Apple would aggressively push a design "inspired by the depth and dimensionality of visionOS" a year and a half later without a strong reason. The recent Meta Ray-Ban Display shows the category is reaching a viable size and weight. I predict will soon see whether Apple's design gambit for spatial computing pays off or if they start to roll back towards a pointer-first UI on the Mac.
I assume the native Mac-app ecosystem will die from this update. iOS will recover, but for Mac it's gonna be custom designs and electron all the way.
- I haven't dealt much with SwiftUI myself, but several developers mentioned¹ a buggy and unstable migration process to the new design.
- Most pro users (aka devs) are probably not convinced by this design language anyways
- Even before Tahoe, cross-platform apps had been eating away at the native market (Obsidian, Figma, VSCode, 1Password, ...).
- Apps that are still native are usually not best-in-class anymore - especially Apples own apps.
Their reasoning may be that, if Mac apps are dying anyways, they could at least get iPad apps to replace them. If it didn't work for Microsoft, maybe it will work for Apple.
On the bright side, I feel less locked into MacOS now.
¹: https://www.lux.camera/the-road-to-halide-mark-3/
I finally figured out how to make the Music app look like iTunes with column browser, track listing, and no huge space wasted with album art. I used to have my tracks meticulously rated with 1-5 stars but they got lost copying the files to numerous newer Macs.
Also long lost is Front Row and the Apple remote that used to come with Macs.
Swinsian
Great article. Loved the bit where they decided to split off their desktop OS from their phone OS.
I don't understand the title. Wasn't this the dude who grew younger from old age to infancy? Tried searching for the name but it only appears in the title. What am I missing?
Read the entire post and I get it now. Weird post though.
I hope someone at Apple is listening.
I was quite confused by this article. I'm not familiar with the macOS codenames and it's only once I made it to the end and looked at the title again that I finally got it. Brilliant.
Eh, not nearly as thought-provoking as it thinks it is. The sections about the old Settings app and how making all of the icons gray was an improvement contradict the complaints made about the current versions.
The old single-view Settings app was more mobile-device like with all-or-nothing visual context, whereas the current Settings app with the sidebar and main display pane gives the user immediate understanding of where they are in the settings tree. It takes advantage of the larger display size of a desktop device.
The all-gray icons everywhere mirrors the same monochromatic issues of the current macOS version.
However, seeing all of the OS versions side-by-side made me realize that Catalina's visual design was probably my favorite, combining minimalistic visual flair and functionality while holding onto rich gradients and color palettes that made it easy to scan and find controls and actions.
This deserves more upvotes!
That was a very enjoyable read, great article.
Brillant.
No notes.