Hacker News Reader

Two theories are that Apple had to put something together quickly as a headliner because Apple Intelligence was clearly going to be a dud. So this is basically a hacked-together panic project.

Or someone high up has a Vision™, and they're so set on that Vision™ they're not listening to what underlings and users are saying.

Consider a parallel reality in which Apple did the next round of updates as a maintenance release and added some minor new features and UI tweaks. Would that have been a more positive outcome for the company?

My guess is there would have been some grumbling about not having anything new to offer, but also relief that bugs were being fixed. It would have been a bit of a non-event.

This seems more like a seismic negative event, with a lot of criticism from all quarters. (And some stanning, but less than usual.)

> My guess is there would have been some grumbling about not having anything new to offer, but also relief that bugs were being fixed. It would have been a bit of a non-event.

Depending on what Google has to say about Pixel & Gemini in August, I think it would have been much more than grumbling. Apple is in a damned if they do damned if they don't situation. Under the surface of liquid glass, there really isn't even anything new coming unless they have some hardware limited features planned for the iPhone 17 launch.

It's clear this "redesign" was as you said, a panic project to cover for not delivering on AI, again for a second year and having nothing to show for WWDC. Just coming out with "we fixed some bugs" would cause a PR shitstorm. Even more so if Google gets any further ahead integrating Gemini into Pixel w/ personal context like what Apple wanted to achieve with Siri/AI, plus their own redesign (Material 3 Expressive, which is actually looking really nice IMO).

> This seems more like a seismic negative event, with a lot of criticism from all quarters.

Except from normal users/non enthusiasts. My kids and her friends all installed the dev beta and are absolutely enamored with liquid glass and think it's the coolest thing ever. Mind you, these are generations of folks that weren't around for Vista/7 Aero, etc and are now obsessed with that era from a fashion and design POV. "Fruitigier aero aesthetic" and all that. These are also people that would never switch platforms no matter what Apple does because of iMessage and social status/social pressure, so Apple is in no danger of losing any marketshare over this unless Google/Android somehow becomes "cool" again and can generate enough social pressure amongst the youth.

> Except from normal users/non enthusiasts.

My wife is emphatically not a tech enthusiast. She hates what she's seen on the screenshots and demos so far, and is dreading the moment when it's out and she'll have to update.

> It's clear this "redesign" was as you said, a panic project to cover for not delivering on AI, again for a second year and having nothing to show for WWDC.

Hm... So is their current system universally regarded as absolute shit, or what? Or does everyone[1] think it's pretty great now, but will switch to "it's shit!" immediately as of the WWDC?

Like, WTF is wrong with "We have a great system, it's still just as great, and even better now that we've worked mostly on stability and bugfixes."?

Are corporations nowadays all freaking Cinderella, or what?

___

[1]: Well, everyone who would consider buying into the Apple ecosystem.

> someone high up

Has to be. It has that Musky smell of banning yellow safety paint i.e. too stupid to be a team effort.

Legibility issues with translucency is such a basic thing and I expect Apple designers have gone deep on the topic e.g. mathematical models using human colour perception to determine hard limits for different type weights. I don't think the heavy frosting in past versions was an accident.

But form over function is the core of why Apple is such hugely successful company with just few products. Focus on emotions rather than technical aspects. Design over usability. Less choices for users, just compare how much you can tweak in android vs ios. Removals of buttons, 3.5mm jack, sim card, removable batteries and so on and on just in phone area.

You may not like it (certainly I don't) but its extremely well received behavior. Humans are mostly emotional beings, just look at politics if you think otherwise.

> The first beta came out and it was _very hard_ to see the lock screen if you had notifications. How was that missed?

It’s a beta for a reason.

Past betas have also had graphical weirdness in certain new features, too. They iterate on it before release.

Why has everyone suddenly forgotten what beta means?

I understand betas very well, but something as critical as that seems more fitting for an alpha. Liquid glass notifications on top of a bright wallpaper, bleeding together so you couldn't read or see anything shouldn't be in a beta.

The initial beta design had so many obvious issues that it's wild that it made it as far as it did. Hell, the readability of many UI elements was obviously terrible in the initial reveal, where you'd expect everything to be shown in the best possible light.

Obviously Apple can improve things for the final release (and it seems like they're taking some steps in that direction). But these issues should have been identified long before the beta was released, and the fact that they weren't does not inspire confidence.

The first beta often ships with core features missing or broken. It exists to get as many new features in front of third party developers as soon as possible, because Apple has very little time to accept feedback before they are locked in for shipping.

At the same time, there seems to be precious little time between when Apple decides a feature is going to ship in the next release, and when WWDC happens.

Even if there was common knowledge inside the company that a new UI was coming, it may have not been merged into mainline until closer to WWDC. At that point, individual teams will need to alter their code to build and be usable on top of the UI as part of continuing their own development - but were likely still focused on the death march for their own WWDC-launched features.

This isn't the first beta, though.

So are we not supposed to criticize a beta at all? How are they to know what to fix unless someone actually looks at it and makes clear what's wrong? Obviously they missed a pretty critical readability issue here.

You apparently have. Beta releases are supposed to be "we believe this to be ready to ship, but need to sort out bugs." What you describe has traditionally been alpha or even pre-alpha releases.