They thought it was an i-Sore.
The preview of Apple’s much-anticipated iOS 26 update has been ripped up and down by critics, many of whom dubbed the new look “ugly” and difficult to read.
Dubbed Liquid Glass, the facelift was unveiled at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, along with other features, marking the tech giant’s first interface makeover in a decade, Wired reported.
The design overhaul — which is available for developers with a public beta slated for next month — makes app icons, menus, pop-ups and more appear translucent like frosted glass so background colors appear blurry as if refracted through them.
The new design will roll out across the whole catalog of Apple products, from iPads to Smartwatches to the Apple TV.
“The new material, Liquid Glass, is translucent and behaves like glass in the real world,” Apple explains on the site. “Its color is informed by surrounding content and intelligently adapts between light and dark environments.”
Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, hailed the Liquid Glass design as “gorgeous.”
However, users were less than enthused about the increased transparency.
“Liquid Glass Design is the ugliest thing @Apple has ever done!” fumed one unimpressed Apple fan, while another wrote, “Steve Jobs would have never approved this.”
“Apple’s new glassy UI (user interface) design literally hurts my eyes to look at,” vented a third. “The notifications are a literal eyesore. It’s the definition of form over function. This OS update is going to be the worst thing Apple has done since iOS 7. No joke.”
One critic griped, “Apple has done it again; they have managed to make their UI worse than last year. I don’t know who is in charge of the Apple aesthetics, but whomever they put in charge should be fired immediately.”
Even designers are skeptical about the anticipated Liquid Glass.
“It’s hard to read some of it,” Allan Yu, a product designer currently building the workplace messaging app Output, told Wired. “Mainly because I think they made it too transparent.”
Josh Puckett, cofounder of Iteration, which helps startups with designs, said that the design was a bit “distracting” and “challenging to read,” but remained optimistic that they’d improve the legibility over time
