How important is a shift? You probably haven’t thought much about the small settings that you find scattered throughout iOS. But what if a shift can shine a light on how a system is designed and priorities for its creators? It’s something I think we can learn about Apple’s floating glass native design, and it’s not an encouraging lesson.
Don’t misunderstand me there is much to love by liquid glass. I think it looks fantastic in MacOS Tahoe and there are plenty of places in iOS 26, where it’s a real step up over the designs we saw in iOS 18 and before. But it is hard for me to deny that I am often annoyed by it and leaves the feeling that it is an indulgence on the part of Apple, an example of the company trying to signal how wise its designers are rather than adding some of real, consistent value.
And this is where the humble shift comes in. Because in iOS 26, the transparent illustrates everything that is wrong with floating glass – and how far Apple has been distressed from Steve Jobs’ indicative philosophy.
Steve Jobs Effect
I know I know and invoke “What would Steve Jobs think?” Meme is one of the cardinal sins in technical journalism. But Apple co-founder and all-round design belly left some tremendously important rules for what makes a design really good, and I’m pretty sure Liquid Glass breaks many of them.
So let me explain what’s wrong with the shifts in iOS 26. As an example, open the Settings app and go to Camera Paragraphs where you see a bunch of these shifts. Try pushing your thumb over one and holding it in place. You will notice that the button is transformed into a larger, glass -like knot that breaks light as it moves. It looks pretty attractive and almost breathtaking the first time you use it ..
But when you first try to press it, the shift seems to jump as it moves across the screen, with the glassy and scaling effects that now feel much more prominent. The button becomes so large that it is distracting and feels almost sluggish as it moves. The animation is impossible to miss and it may be the poengget.
Apple’s design philosophy has always been to reduce extras and distractions to let the purpose of the product shine through. What is the purpose of a change? To make it possible for something to happen (or not happen). It enables, and it disables. In other words, its purpose is to be a means of ending, not the ending itself. You would think it should therefore be slim, minimal and never distracting – something that quickly comes out of your way so you can go back to what you did before.
Jumping around as the shift does in the floating glass nest design is explicitly and very obviously distracting. It violates Apple’s own design philosophy. And that contradiction has left me a troubled feeling: that the most important inspiration behind Liquid Glass is form of function, to look cool instead of serving a useful purpose.
Compete about your attention
I will not come across as a kind of firm, joyful grimpler. Products should Look enticing, bold and interesting, just as liquid glass does. But just looking good shouldn’t be the primary motivation. If so, it risks neglecting the benefits that come with a design that works well and instead ends up with something that looks elegant but is not fun to use. Like Steve Jobs’ Maxim Famous Going, “Design is how it works.”
Think about how Apple beat floating glass on WWDC. Alan Dye, Apple’s VP for human interface, summarized it this way: “Our goal is a beautiful new design that brings joy and joy to any user experience.” He repeatedly highlighted floating glass’ “specular highlights”, “beauty, craftsmanship and joy” and “vitality” that “creates a more lively experience that we think you find really lovely.”
The liquid glass changes are cool to look at, but also slower and more distracting than before.
Foundry
Still, dye rarely talked about what concrete improvements this new look would bring to everyday use. Many of those he highlights, such as warnings that are now displayed when you press, could be obtained without Liquid Glass’s visual signals and are not inherent to its design. It told me that Dye placed to create a “lovely” experience in front of being well known and easy to use when noting Liquid Glass’s advantages.
Dye also explained that floating glass is aiming to put “greater focus on your content.” But with all its shining, breaking properties and leaping, water -like animations, liquid glass often takes focus away from your content and on yourself. It is an awareness of attention, not a design that is exhaustive for your work.
For example, is it important that a contextual menu extends when you pull it? Or that a text that enlarges glass is cradling when it moves? These effects are definitely pretty amazing when you see them in action. Still, they are also qualities that draw your attention, not the ones that allow these random elements to get out of the way and put “greater focus on your content.” They want you to pay attention to them, not at your work.
Cause of concern
It can feel like I’m doing a lot of fuss over nothing that all this is a storm in a pretty small teacup. And I admit that the motivations behind liquid glass may not look like the most shiny problem with iOS 26 – or even with liquid glass itself. But this problem feels important to me because it seems to reveal some of Apple’s thinking when it comes to interface design.
Really, this is not about whether floating glass looks good. There are many parts of what is undeniably lovely, from the slider that appears when you roll over navigation buttons to the frosted glass mode selector in the camera app.
Liquid glass is beautiful, but can also interfere with ease of use.
Apple
Instead, it’s about Apple’s priority here. Is it to make insanely good products that improve users’ lives? Or is it just doing something that catches their eyes? No doubt there are still plenty of the former found in iOS 26, but I am concerned that there is also an unpleasant level of the latter.
Just looking beautiful should not be the basis of a design. A great design is great because of how it works, not just what it looks like. Steve Jobs summarized it best when discussing the endless IMAC G3 imitators who misunderstood what its design was about: “What all our competitors lack is that they think it’s about fashion, they think it’s about surface look … They say:” We want to throw some color on this piece of junk computer and we have one too. “And they miss the point.”
Or take Jony Ive, which detests products that used “Swoopy forms to look good, things that are so aggressively designed, just to catch the eye. I think it’s arrogance, it’s not in favor of the user.”
To do some of the fashion is one thing, but when these decisions aggravate the user experience, which sometimes happens with liquid glass, what I have a harder time to tolerate. The fact that something similar has made itself into iOS 26 should be cause for concern.
Still time for adjustments
Of course, making beautiful interface elements is a valuable persecution. Great art makes you feel things that you can’t explain after all. But when this art begins to adversely affect the experience – to distract you or to get in the way, for example – then it has not benefited the user.
And that brings us back to the modest shift. If Apple can design one that contains liquid glass of beautiful visual effects without the jumping, distracting, “Hello look at me!” Persistence of the current iteration, it will be a sign that it still understands Steve’s Golden Rule of Design. And if it can bring the new way of thinking about the rest of floating glass, iOS 26 and what is coming will be a much better overall experience.
Liquid Glass is a multi-year project, so there is still plenty of time for Apple to make adjustments, and I have undoubtedly based on the changes we have already seen in the first few beta updates. I just hope Apple can also temper the thinking that lies under its recent design decisions before things come out of hand.