#macos 26

“Liquid Glass” is one material. It has one aesthetic and that’s it. You take the old minimal SVG files from the Minimalist era, slap a fancy filter on them, and boom: Liquid Glassified.

But “Aqua” wasn’t just “Aqua.” Apple’s intent behind the “Aqua” interface language was to relate software to a familiar place: reality. When Apple released Mac OS X, personal computing was a ripe, growing market. When Apple released the iPhone 2G, people weren’t accustomed to using palm-sized, touch-based computers. In both of these instances, Apple was trying to make a new way of life easy to understand and use. They did that by relating software to reality.

What Mac OS X started, iPhone OS (later iOS) continued. The materials in “Aqua” aren’t just the liquid Frutiger Aero-inspired blobs you see throughout the OSes (although they are the most iconic part). Certain UI elements look like they’re made from milled aluminum. Some look like real wooden bookshelves. Even the Notes app had a realistic paper texture. All of these small material choices come together to create Aqua: the design language. Aqua wasn’t limited to just Aluminum, Wood, Water, etc. It had all of these materials at its disposal coming together to create a unified language. Liquid Glass on the other hand? It starts and stops at glass.

It feels cheap. It feels lazy. It feels undercooked. To some, it even feels un-Apple-like. It feels like pre-Tahoe iOS with a fancy filter over it… because that’s exactly what it is. Apple saw people demanding realism, but wanted to do it in the most noncommittal, cheapest way possible: Take the minimalism of the outgoing era and add some extra lighting, shading, and transparency. Boom: realism.

Except not “boom.” What should’ve been Apple’s chance to cash in on the nostalgia Frutiger Aero boom is now just… a half baked, poorly implemented, lighting filter overtop of the boring, minimal SVGs were all used to at this point. This isn’t Aqua Reborn. It’s just Minimalism+.

And I don’t wanna say all this to dogpile and be like “Boooooo! Bring back the minimalism,” like a lot of people are. I think certain elements of iOS 26 are beautiful, and I’m glad to have realism back in any form I can have it. Specifically, the slider blob on the bottom tabs is gorgeous. But, I just think iOS 26 is underwhelming, and Apple’s rushed, underthought, greedy intentions behind “Liquid Glass” are more apparent than ever.

The actual implementation of Liquid Glass on iOS 26 feels very un-Apple-like with its inconsistency. But even more so, it just feels disappointing. I (among plenty of other people) were wanting realism back in OSes. So when Apple announced they’d be doing that for their Tahoe-era softwares, I was excited. But the reality of the execution is just… sad.

Like, this is it? This is all the “realism” we’re getting for the next ten years? This is our taste of “realism” before we inevitably go back to Minimalism once Maximalism falls back out of fashion? That’s a bummer, man.