iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, WatchOS 26

bisk89

Hi, yesterday, Apple unveiled their new operating systems at WWDC, showcasing a brand-new look — the first major visual redesign since iOS 7. The new style is called Liquid Design and it’s full of transparency effects, which, for people like us, is already a worrying sign.

I installed the developer beta on my 11” iPad Pro M1 just to test it, and honestly, it might be the worst system for the eyes they’ve ever released.

I’m really curious to hear your impressions and experiences, but so far — despite high hopes — this doesn’t look promising at all.

Take care, and let me know how it works for you!

Donux

bisk89 Well, there is hope. But, when you go through constant cycles of hype -> $$$ -> dissapointment, hype -> $$$ -> dissapointment, hype -> $$$ -> dissapointment, eventually your subconscious mind will start resisting. What I have seen in the presentation is a software layer, and most updates were at higher stack layers, so it does not address fundamental aspects of hardware and lower level software. Where I do have high hopes is that eventually some new display technology will replace old, and they will need to completely rewrite their lower level software stack, make it simpler etc. Just like it was with mobile phones replacing landlines in developing regions. This can happen, but this part is not orchestrated by Apple, this is all coming from China and Asia in general.

AshX

I had low expectations but somehow I’m still disappointed.

There will be an Accessibility option to reduce transparency, right? Right?? 🫠

bisk89

AshX Yes, there are quite a few options in Accessibility, but I haven’t tried disabling anything yet — especially since previous versions were fine and I didn’t need to disable anything, using the iPad relatively comfortably.

AshX

bisk89

The question I suppose other than readability is whether or not they are utilizing more or less dithering to render the UI. Or whether they’ve altered the dithering algorithm to be less aggressive.

Ultimately someone will have to test this on MacOS because I suspect that is where most of the problems will lie.

lukeb

I haven't installed the beta yet, but I'm not surprised by your experience. With all the transparency it looks like eyestrain hell.

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

interestingly, I tested ios 26 on an iPhone SE 2020 that used to have 17.1.2 and was already unusable on 17 with immediate eyestrain -- i installed 26 a few days ago and it actually made the device slightly better (!)

my SE 2 still has a really bad LCD at the panel level, but now it at least takes like 10-15 minutes for the bad eyestrain and brain fog to start (instead of happening immediately like it used to be on 17).

so this update MIGHT improve LCD iPhones, specifically, if you had an LCD iPhone that used to work until it was eventually ruined by an 17 or 18 update -- it actually might be worth a shot to try 26, because it made my previously unusable iPhone SE 2020 marginally better.

However, I would not install this on an already usable device though. If your e.g. iPhone 11 already works for you on its current version, don't install the update.