Transparent Ambition

> Apple's designers (and those of many other companies) come back to the idea of translucency giving order and imbuing personality. I cannot for the life of me understand where this idea comes from. When multiple layers of different imagery shine through each other, I am not helped by this. The user interface placed on a semi-transparent panel is not more effective because it is set against a smeared mess of colors, nor am I emotionally fulfilled as a human being for knowing that the mess comes from a treasured personal memory.

This article acts as though design choices which are sub-optimal from a purely informational perspective, but which add personality and attraction to a product, have not earned Apple hundreds of billions of dollars in the past 25 years. The fact that he cannot understand where the idea comes from is okay, since he's not a product, UI, or industrial designer for Apple: that's their job, not his. The deeper question of why people form attachments to things that look 'cool' but have lower performance in some areas is indeed mysterious. But relentlessly pursuing that phenomenon has worked for Apple pretty well so far.

Liquid Glass isn't immediately impressive to me either, but it will either succeed or fail not based on whether it is more effective or not, but whether people like it or not, and those are two different things.

People who used to be able to get by with default settings are now going to Accessibility -> Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast. Those are settings designed for disabled users. That so many will need those settings is Apple literally disabling users with their fashion choices. That's effed up.