Brendon Bigley on Liquid Glass

Brendon has a fantastic post on Wavelengths on his literal first impressions of installing the iOS 26 beta without seeing the keynote beforehand.

In this post, Brendon lands perfectly on what I am feeling about the Liquid Glass aesthetic:

My designer brain sees Liquid Glass applied to elements like Control Center and thinks “That looks terrible. This is almost illegible.” But I also find myself smiling? Because Liquid Glass is legitimately fun to look at, and fun to use. It’s a huge swing and one I didn’t expect to land in a way that makes me truly feel like I have an entirely new phone from another universe where iOS 7 never happened and flat design never supplanted skeuomorphism and tactile aesthetics as the dominant visual identity of the technology we use on a daily basis.

I think this is what is so good about this new design — it has a strong opinion. It’s an opinion that many people are going to feel unsure about, but it’s definitely different.

There is a lot of discourse right on seeing how things fare over the next few months. Things will change, but I think it would behoove you to not think it’s going to be reversed. The amount of work Apple has done here, in touching every OS, tells you that they are dead certain on this being the future of their design language. They want to change the way their platforms feel to use — I am sure for many reasons we can’t foresee just yet.

I think this is one of those moments that would be most beneficial for people to just try to move through and handle in the way you need. For me? I remain genuinely excited. I have been poking around on this iPad for the last 12 hours and I am fascinated by how the UI works and interacts. There’s so much jankiness, but I can’t stop myself wanting to try out more.