Lorenzo Palaia

🍎 Overview

Over the years, I've found myself increasingly drawn to the intricate world of UI and UX design. What started as casual interest has evolved into a genuine passion for understanding the psychology behind user interactions, visual hierarchy, and the delicate balance between aesthetics and functionality. This fascination has led me to closely follow Apple's design evolution, a company that consistently sets the gold standard for digital interfaces.

With the announcement of iOS 26 at WWDC 2025, Apple has once again pushed the boundaries with their new "Liquid Glass" design language. As someone who has watched Apple's design journey unfold over decades, I find myself both impressed and concerned by this latest evolution. Let's dive into what makes Liquid Glass both revolutionary and potentially problematic.

🔍 Understanding Liquid Glass: Apple's Most Ambitious Design Update

Apple's Liquid Glass represents what the company calls its "broadest software design update ever". Alan Dye, Apple's vice president of Human Interface Design, describes it as combining "the optical qualities of glass with a fluidity only Apple can achieve". This new material is translucent and behaves like real-world glass, with its color adapting based on surrounding content and intelligently switching between light and dark environments.

The design system extends across Apple's entire ecosystem for the first time, unifying iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and tvOS 26. This universal approach demonstrates Apple's commitment to creating a cohesive experience across all their platforms, drawing inspiration from the depth and dimensionality of visionOS.

Liquid Glass utilizes real-time rendering and dynamically reacts to movement with specular highlights, creating what Apple describes as a "lively experience". The material extends from the smallest interactive elements like buttons and switches to larger components such as tab bars and sidebars.

✨ The Positive Side: Innovation and Visual Cohesion

🎨 Aesthetic Excellence and Animation Quality

From a pure aesthetic standpoint, Liquid Glass delivers on Apple's promise of creating something that feels "natural and alive". The fluid animations and glass-like effects represent some of the best animation work in the industry. Individual UI elements feel dynamic with soft bounces and context-aware interactions that respond beautifully to user input.

The redesigned app icons look stunning in their new glassy style, moving away from what some critics called "marketing committee" designs to something more organic and visually appealing. The way Liquid Glass overlays blur and stretch background icons creates an impressive effect that truly mimics having an actual piece of glass pulled over the interface.

🔗 Ecosystem Unification

One of Liquid Glass's most significant achievements is its role in unifying Apple's design language across all platforms. This universal design approach creates unprecedented harmony between iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV experiences. The visual coherence across the ecosystem continues to strengthen Apple's competitive advantage in creating seamless multi-device workflows.

⚡ Technical Innovation

The real-time rendering capabilities showcased in Liquid Glass demonstrate Apple's continued mastery of integrating hardware and software. The system's ability to adapt dynamically to content and context while maintaining smooth performance (in its final form) represents a significant technical achievement.

⚠️ The Dark Side: Accessibility and Usability Concerns

🚨 The Contrast Crisis

However, my enthusiasm for Liquid Glass is significantly tempered by one critical flaw: contrast and readability issues. This problem is particularly evident in the notification center, where the translucent nature of the interface creates serious legibility challenges.

Early testing reveals that notifications become extremely difficult to read when white text aligns with bright areas of background wallpapers. Users on social media have shared screenshots showing text that nearly fades into the background, making the interface almost unusable in certain lighting conditions.

The Apple Music interface, even in Apple's own press materials, shows concerning readability issues where artist names appear in light gray fonts on translucent bars, requiring users to squint to parse the information. This is particularly troubling because these are images Apple approved for official marketing materials, suggesting this level of contrast may be considered acceptable by the design team.

📱 Control Center Usability

The iOS 26 Control Center presents perhaps the most glaring usability issue, with insufficient background blur failing to hide Home Screen icons and widgets behind the Center's controls. Early beta testers report that the Control Center is "almost unusable" due to the lack of visual distinction between foreground controls and background content.

Users describe the transparency as being "too much," creating a distracting visual experience where the wallpaper interferes with reading interface elements. The glass blur effect isn't strong enough to differentiate between overlaid content and background elements, fundamentally compromising the interface's functionality.

🔋 Performance Impact

The real-time rendering required for Liquid Glass appears to heavily tax the GPU, with early testers reporting frame rates that feel like "20fps" and significant battery drain. These performance issues, while expected in early beta releases, raise concerns about the system's impact on older devices and overall user experience.

📚 Apple's Historical Design Success vs. Current Missteps

History tells us that Apple rarely makes significant design missteps. From the original Macintosh GUI in 1984 to the iPhone's revolutionary touch interface, Apple has consistently demonstrated an almost supernatural ability to anticipate and shape user preferences. The company's design philosophy, rooted in simplicity and user-centered thinking, has driven innovations that competitors spend years trying to replicate.

Apple's approach has always been about making technology feel intuitive and natural, focusing on user experience over pure technical specifications. This philosophy has powered everything from the iPod's success in a crowded MP3 player market to the iPhone's dominance despite entering the smartphone space years after competitors.

💭 My Personal Take: Cautious Optimism with Serious Reservations

I genuinely appreciate the ambition behind Liquid Glass. The concept of a unified design language that adapts dynamically to content and context represents the kind of forward-thinking approach that has made Apple the design leader it is today. The visual effects are undeniably impressive, and the technical achievement of real-time glass rendering across an entire operating system is remarkable.

However, my enthusiasm is significantly dampened by the contrast and accessibility issues. In an era where digital accessibility is not just a moral imperative but often a legal requirement, shipping an interface with fundamental readability problems feels like a step backward. The fact that these issues are apparent even in Apple's own marketing materials suggests a concerning disconnect between the design team's aesthetic vision and practical usability requirements.

The notification center issues are particularly problematic because notifications are critical communication tools. When users can't easily read their messages, emails, or alerts due to poor contrast, the interface fails at its most basic function: conveying information clearly and efficiently.

🔧 Looking Forward: Accessibility Options and Potential Solutions

It's important to note that iOS 26 is currently in early developer beta, and Apple has historically used beta feedback to refine and improve their designs. The company has already included accessibility options like "Reduce Transparency" and "Increase Contrast" that can mitigate some of the readability issues.

Users experiencing difficulty with the Liquid Glass transparency can enable these accessibility features by going to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size and toggling on "Reduce Transparency". This doesn't completely remove the Liquid Glass aesthetic but adds more opacity to translucent elements, improving contrast significantly.

Potential solutions that Apple might consider before the final release include:

🔍 More aggressive background blur to improve foreground element distinction
🎨 Color tinting in Liquid Glass materials to enhance contrast
🌗 Drop shadows and tone mapping to improve readability
🔆 Dynamic contrast adjustment based on wallpaper brightness
♿ Enhanced accessibility options that maintain the Liquid Glass aesthetic while improving legibility

🎯 Conclusion: Beauty with Purpose Must Remain the Goal

Liquid Glass represents Apple's most ambitious interface design in years, and in many ways, it succeeds in creating something truly novel and visually striking. The ecosystem unification and technical innovation deserve recognition and praise.

However, the current implementation's accessibility shortcomings remind us that great design must always balance aesthetic innovation with functional excellence. Apple's greatest design successes have never been about visual impact alone—they've been about creating interfaces that feel magical because they work so intuitively.

As the beta process continues, I hope Apple will address these contrast and readability issues without compromising the ambitious vision behind Liquid Glass. The foundation is solid, and with proper refinement, this could indeed become another chapter in Apple's legendary design story. But right now, it feels like a beautiful concept that needs more practical polish to truly succeed.

The design community will be watching closely as Apple iterates on this system. After all, when Apple gets interface design right, the entire industry follows. The question is whether they'll prioritize the visual spectacle or remember that the best interfaces are the ones users don't have to think about—they just work ✨.