the app store ceded a lot of the experience to other developers that apple couldn't control or hold to their standards, so it's not a surprise that they responded by just kind of giving up and chasing flashy aesthetics in order to compete.
it's one thing to belabor every little design detail when you know that you are shaping a holistic experience, but if you know that the user is going to spend half their time using some janky app that you didn't make, it's hard to convince yourself to spend a ton of time making your half better.
The answer to the "when" question is of course when they gave up the curved iPhone 3s design for the iPhone 4 which felt like a sharp brick and had antenna problems but only if you held it in an unapproved way. Oh, and God, now I'm hahaving traumatic flashbacks to the bad camera on the iPhone 4. I gave up after my third one and the Apple employee told me I was just thinking about it wrong.
Currently on an iPhone 12 mini and happy both that the clean straight edges came back, and that Apple's still making the occasional small phone.
Then, it turns out to be an ad for the author's notes app, which presumably has "good design", but we aren't told what is better about it.
On top of that, the article has some clickbait title which is just engagement bait for people who aren't gonna read the article.
This article is a microcosm of everything that's wrong with the Internet today: Clickbait, engagement farming, and ads, all rolled into one single, forgettable waste of time.
The only good thing I have to say about the article is that it was short.
zahirbmirza•2h ago
PaulHoule•2h ago
When I first saw Liquid Glass I had just gotten my first iPhone and was in that flush of attraction and thought “that looks pretty good” but there has been such an outpouring of scorn for it that I’m pretty shocked.
zahirbmirza•1h ago
I think there was a time, long ago, that I justifiably believed that some of Apple's design was forward thinking. But, I think they are now more like WhatsApp, who apparently have a unit that is charged with ensuring that the UI does not change for fear of unsettling users.
I think this translates to - 'Apple has to play it safe as it is too big a company to make risky changes'. Ie, it can no longer do revolutionary things for fear of a collapse in faith of the consumer masses rather than the avidly convinced first adapters.
chiefalchemist•1h ago
XorNot•1h ago
Imagine picking up a drill and it updates and now the trigger is somewhere new. And they've taken away the sped settings in the interest of simplicity?