Liquid Ass

Hey, it's aqua! We've come full circle!

hey I had that winterboard theme like 15 years ago

These guys spend a billion dollars every couple years to invent the lock screen again

jfc. that is one ugly looking ui. really scraping bottom of the barrel. that is soo last years.

I'm sorry if it's a dumb question, but didn't Microsoft already do this with Vista and Win 7? And I'm pretty sure transparency has been a thing on Android for a good while now:-?

A kind of enshittification, out of boredom I guess...

Vista called and wants it’s ugly back

What’s the liquid glass exactly?

This is such a step back to 2005 and those glassy Winamp skins. It looks absolutely terrible. I wonder how Apple users put up with that

Honestly, it looks kind of terrible to me. Not to mention how unreadable text is since there's apparently no guaranteed contrast with black text due to the transparent backgrounds. I feel like I'm going crazy with all the random articles praising it.

I actually really like this…

Using the developer beta and my phone runs quite hot. Of course, it's a beta so they'll probably reduce the effects to make it less of drain on performance and battery life. There is a reduce transparency toggle which does help a bit, esp. for readability. Hopefully when iOS 26 is released there's an obvious option to reduce transparency.

My opinion on the "liquid glass" is mixed. Some parts look pretty cool. The apps (Mail, Photos, etc.) use it quite well, with only some parts are transparent making readability a bit better. I really like the change to the search bars being at the bottom, makes the phone more one-handable. Safari doesn't look too good in my opinion, the glass effects are a bit much. The camera app just hid all the buttons, which is a bit annoying. You can have it show flash and live photos toggles in settings, which is good.

The lock screen effect with the "3d" photos is very cool, but the phone runs extra hot when it's enabled so I turned that off. The glassy clock is pretty cool and there's the option to make it normal again if you select "solid". Swiping up from the lock screen makes a weird glass effect with the edges distorted and lots of rainbow fringing, which looks a bit odd. When you swipe down you can see the home screen app icons until it's all the way down, then they all pop out of existence and the background is replaced. Bit jarring. Similar effect with swiping up, background changes with no transition, but the apps appear in an animation this time. Weird. I'm assuming this is probably a bug with the beta, at least I hope it is...

Onto the home screen. I think the "liquid glass" themes make the tinted icons look a bit better than just colour on black, I like that bit of customisability. I still do not get the "clear" icons, it quite literally is transparent and you can barely differentiate the icons. You can always swap it to the default, but there is still some annoying glass effects on app icons where it clearly isn't natively built (I'm guessing the glass effects is applied to all icons automatically incl. third party apps, but it doesn't look too great with some of them). The app folders look terrible though and the reflection/refraction is really distracting. The pop ups when you select text is especially annoying, popping up a huge bubble. I'll need some time to get used to that vs just clicking right to share, translate, etc. The control center is not very nice to look at but it works fine.

Overall, in places where it's used tastefully (in a lot of Apple's apps, for instance) it works quite well if a bit distracting. I like the lock screen and home screen customisation and the ability to change it to "solid". The glass effects are still quite distracting though. The reduce transparency toggle does help a bit with readability, but it's annoying that it's buried deep in accessibility settings. Not very accessible at all. The lock screen 3d effect is cool but is a bit subtle, and it makes the phone uncomfortably hot. There are still plenty of bugs, but that'll hopefully be fixed in the public release. I like the option for the tinted icons but do not get the clear icons. Camera app isn't too functional, just hiding everything isn't better than before! The iOS 26 beta is quite fun, if very buggy, and the liquid glass works in some places but doesn't work in all places.

The announcement also marks a change in how Apple signifies its major updates to iOS. Under the previous marketing scheme, this year’s major release would have been iOS 19 — the direct follow-up to iOS 18. But now, Apple’s big iOS updates will be numbered based on the year following their introduction

Well that's interesting. I was certain The Verge was trying to be funny. But this tracks, now Apple has Biggest Number™.

Edit: This has to be a joke. Who the fuck thought this up? I can't take this seriously...

Android and ios are basically indistinguishable to me at this point

Guess this means Apple has run out of ideas on how to make iPhone better.

What can we do to distract attention away from the fact that we don't have any decent new features?

• "Rename the business unit so we can print new letterheads and business cards?" Our customer don't work here, sir. "Dammit!"
• "Release a new color that nobody wants? How about a light blue that is so close to the regular silver no one can tell?" We did that last year, sir. "Dammit!"
• "Oh, I know: Repeat the year 2000 mistake by naming our OS versions after the current year using only 2 digits. That will never bite us in the ass in the future." Brilliant, sir.