Thoughts on Apple’s new UI/UX

To say Apple’s System 26 (I am not writing out all of them when they share the same overarching design and updates) is divisive is hilariously underplaying how heated the discourse is online. I think that’s mostly a symptom of how utterly vitriolic online communication has become due in large part to radicalization via social media. But that’s not what this is about. It’s important for context, but not my focus today.

No, the focus today is how my experience has been using the developer betas for the past few days. Firstly, I like glassy UIs. I like rainbowy bubbly looking interfaces. It’s why I really liked the appearance of Windows Vista and 7 and part of why I felt Windows 8 was such a massive step back. I’ve mentioned before how I liked the simplistic, beveled design of Win9x, and that remains true as well. I find both languages to be compelling and pleasant in different ways. The old Win9x style is simple, uncluttered, and the end of the pixelated era of graphic design. Aero ushered in the modern language featuring vectors, transparency, and GPU acceleration on the desktop. It’s similar to what Compiz brought in that era as well to the X window manager and Linux systems; Compiz being far more featureful and customizable.

System 26 is the first major departure from the post-skeuomorphic design language that was introduced via iOS 7 and has dominated every version since through the current public iOS 18. That change came in 2013 and gradually matured to what ultimately ended with iOS 18. Initially I appreciated the change. It was new and different. It felt less cluttered in some areas versus the highly stylized skeuomorphism from before. The Notes app in particular felt full of wasted space due to that. But, as time went on and interfaces became flatter, mono-colored tiles, it felt soulless, uninteresting. Going beyond simply unobtrusive to completely lacking inspiration or that cute quirkiness that UI design had used since the earliest days of GUIs.

I liked those earlier days of Aqua. My first Mac was back in 2007, when they were in the transition era from PowerPC to Intel’s x86 architecture. It felt more centered, more grounded than Windows XP’s bright colors and simplified shapes. I specifically remember using WindowBlinds to change Windows’ appearance to look more like OSX at the time. When Vista came around, sleeker, cleaner, and all together glossier and glassier, I stopped using WindowBlinds. It felt like a new era. Graphics accelerated GUIs, smoother window management, transparency, and the transition to 64-bit processors made it all feel like we finally arrived in the future we had been shown for years.

Then came the first smartphones. They were small, slow, and underpowered for what potential we immediately saw in having a full computer in our pockets. Multitasking was either nonexistent or clumsy at best. Memory was such a premium that even phones which could multitask could only handle a couple of applications at once before having to dive into page memory and play musical chairs with memory management. That was helped somewhat by the tiny, low-resolution screens that those early devices used. The original iPhone for instance was a 3.5” 480x320 resolution screen. Absolutely tiny compared to modern phones, let alone the rise of phablets.

On those devices, partly because text rendering was so blocky, having simple, pictorial representations of real-world counterparts to what the apps did made sense. A calculator for that, a notepad, a camera, et cetera. That helped those early devices feel more intuitive and easier to figure out because they pulled from the world that had existed up to that point without such multifaceted tools. As society adapted, adopted smartphones by the billions, and completely changed how we interact and use technology, so too did that technology adapt. The UI became more abstract, more esoteric. That stark contrast was particularly well shown with Microsoft’s push into the phone space with their Metro UI in 2010. It was completely flat, single colored tiles with highly contracting shapes with extremely simplified iconography.

Gone were gradients, bevels, rounded corners, and skeuomorphism. The era of flat had begun. Design became less human-centric and more abstract. I never found it particularly nice to look at. It largely reminded me of a tessellated defragmentation progress screen. Just a bunch of brightly colored squares and rectangles on a black background. All the sharp edges gave it a harsh, cold appearance. And when you would peel that veneer back to use legacy programs or settings, the difference felt utterly jarring. That still exists today when pulling up Control Panel or Device Manager in Windows 11. Disk Management feels even more disconnected as that has largely been untouched since the Win9x days.

The pushback was strong, especially on the desktop. Such large icons and simplistic design could be argued to make more sense on a smaller, touchscreen device. But on the ever-enlarging desktop monitors? It felt clumsy and disjointed. The small CRTs of the 90s were gone and large LCD panels were becoming far more affordable. Even the small 19-21” panels felt wasted by that UI, let alone the exploding 27-32” market. I had a 24” Dell Ultrasharp from 2007, and by 2010-2011 I had one of those early, budget IPS 27” 1440p monitors and both felt so awkward to use with Windows 8.

Apple continued to be more conservative in their GUI refreshes. Some parts of that early skeuomorphic aesthetic still hang around even with System 26, such as the icons for drives on macOS. That feels more disconnected from the current transition to returning to transparency and glass. Those older icons, much like the older settings menus of Windows, feel out of place and at odds with the rest of the system. And they also reveal one of the more important components of clear UI design: color.

Color as a distinguishing feature of interfaces is crucial for fast, and easy, differentiation and usability. Human vision is complex and we are constantly inundated with visual stimulation. Using how our vision works to make smart decisions for interface design is crucial. As pretty as a whole screen of transparent, bubble-like icons is, it lacks easy and fast differentiation. That is an issue with all single-color style interfaces. It is why Metro felt clumsy, why both Android and recent iOS versions that let you use monochrome icons also felt more difficult to use. As nice as it looks in a screenshot, using it daily feels jarring and interferes with workflow.

So, even though I love how it looks on screen, I turn it off in favor of the high-contrast, and color-varied, dark mode icons instead. I am able to immediately pare down, visually, what I’m looking for through colors. Need to open Messages? I instinctively search for bright green. App store? Blue is where I go. Firefox? It’s that bright orange with a little blue accent that I know to seek. But when they’re all shades of gray and transparent? I have to resort to reading descriptions and looking at outlines, of which many are similar. Messages simple ovular shape blends with OneDrive, Steam, Safari, Firefox, and numerous others that fit the vague description of “roughly round shape in middle of icon”.

When it comes down to it, I like the general aesthetic Apple is going for with System 26. It’s smooth, calming, and simple. But it also lacks contrast, with poorly delineated edges for icons and a blur that makes them sink into the background. Stronger highlights with contrasting colors could help tremendously to make them stand out. But that also goes counter to the design language they are creating. The irony is that despite being bubbles, the design doesn’t pop, leaving it feel less clean and muddier than before.