Apple’s new design across all of its operating systems, dubbed “Liquid Glass,” is drawing sharp criticism from some corners online. A user on X, @Greggertruck, shared a screenshot of the new Control Center and wrote, “Steve Jobs would have fired everyone.” The post quickly gained traction, with investor Ross Gerber responding with a Hundred Points emoji.
— Ross Gerber (@GerberKawasaki) June 9, 2025
Ananya Gairola for Benzinga:
Other users echoed the sentiment, calling the design “a smeary mess of colors and overlapping functionality.” One said, “Looks like when you get someone to use Photoshop for the first time, every effect box is clicked.”
Wedbush analyst and longtime Apple supporter Dan Ives described the event as showcasing “slow and steady improvements,” but ultimately called it “a yawner.”
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, an Apple bull, said the event showed “slow and steady improvements” but was “overall a yawner.” 🍎🍏🔥📱@nypost https://t.co/Vm7NvtEFjq @nypost
— Dan Ives (@DivesTech) June 9, 2025
In 2019, Apple’s design legend Jony Ive’s departure seemed sudden, but reports from The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg suggested that it was the result of a years-long shift in the company’s priorities—from design to operations.
Ive and his team reportedly grew frustrated as design took a back seat under CEO Tim Cook, whose lack of involvement in product development led to discontent and departures within the design team.
MacDailyNews Take: Liquid Glass is a dynamic UI, not static. Therefore a still screenshot fails to accurately show the level of readability offered by the Liquid Glass design language. Only videos can accurately show how Liquid Glass works, reads, and looks.
As for WWDC 2025, yes, it was a yawner. Tim Cook’s lack of stage presence and boring-to-cringeworthy live stage presentations have the company continuing — sadly, desperately, and tellingly — to rely on overproduced, canned video keynote addresses in which Cook is clearly kept to a bare minimum.
Steve Jobs could make a power cord seem insanely great. Tim Cook could put a room to sleep while unveiling teleportation; he makes watching paint dry seem like must-see event.
Apple is currently helmed by a charisma black hole.
Lacking a charismatic leader who could sell ice cubes to eskimos, execution is the key… With excellent products and execution, the weak keynote presentations would be bearable. Apple’s issues with late, old, sometimes problematic products and services do more to dampen excitement and devotion than anything. – MacDailyNews, January 4, 2019
Apple is boring because it is headed by a boring operations manager who should have been a 3-5 year stopgap following the untimely death of visionary Steve Jobs and its next visionary, product-focused CEO. Alas, operations manager Cook clings on well past his sell-by date. The good news is that time continues to tick on and Apple easily has enough in the tank to make it through this period of incremental iteration and blindly missed paradigm shifts. This too shall pass.
Of course, the biggest announcement of WWDC25 wasn’t Liquid Glass, but that Apple’s on-device foundation models will be available to third-party applications as part of the Foundation Models API, a major tool enabling developers to seamlessly integrate the Apple Intelligence LLMs directly on-device.
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Without having read anyone else’s reviews I had already come to the conclusion that I do not like the new GUI. I’m running macOS 26, iOS 26 & iPadOS 26 and it doesn’t work. MacOS the corners are massive, system settings they somehow made it worse than it already was and the fonts there seem off.
For iOS the glass menus, notifications etc. don’t work. It’s harder to read the messages and the menus get lost.
Between AI and this new glass look I’m not looking forward to the ver. 26 OS’s
Whining about the first developer beta, really? I’m running 26 on my iPad Pro and it’s great, there are some rough edges but that’s to be expected with a substantial redesign which is both fresh but not jarring. The new windowing system changes the iPad experience completely for the better.
Ross Gerber is Elon’s cringe anklebiter and Dan Ives exists to either tank or shill pump his preferred tech stock.
Jobs would have left a long trail of carnage from firings over the last few YEARS…say nothing of this nifty visual.
Per glass, Jobs loved glass for simplicity, clarity and it being somewhat pristine…while simultaneously having strength (esp after strong-arming the Gorilla).
Glass also refracts and can result in mirage-like diffusions and READ; confusion.
Who in the world would instill ANY confusion when involving text for information/instruction/entertainment?
I believe Jobs would be aghast this confusion/diffusion/illusion where clarity is expected and essential. This superficial “innovation” would never have made it out of the lab and those thinking it was a grand idea would be vapor.
Soon I will have a few more reasons to leave “Reduce Transparency” and “Reduce Motion” toggled on.
They will refine it, they always do.
I remember when the previous flat look came out and everyone screamed “fisher price,” and how all the icons looked the same.
First off, why was Tim Cook in old man jeans and old man sneakers. I was worried he would fall and not be able to get back up.
Second off, I don’t know the fella who’s in charge of design at Apple but WTF with his outfit?? An oversized shirt from the 90’s, weird giant swirly-colored buttons, some kind of neck beard and thick glasses? He should love design so much that his gear and look is from the year 3025. His geeky 1997 outfit gave me no confidence at all that he knows anything at all about design.
Third and finally, I actually do like Liquid Glass. If you consider it a UI for the next decade it tells you that every device is migrating toward being a light (and glowing-with-light) sheet of glass, which I think is accurate. If your iPhone was a smart piece of glass and you looked down at it…. do you imagine it would have the UI of iOS 7? Flat and saturated? Certainly not, it would look like, and reflect, glass.
So, somehow they got us there.
Nevertheless, TimCook needs to retire to a beach house with no stairs, DesignGuy needs to hire an image consultant, and LiquidGlass needs to just keep doing its thing.
He’s Joe Biden. And Cook is a disgrace along with Apple. There is no vision the Apple home pad will be useless. He wants to look at pictures on the wall. I’m an iPad like device make a phone and the Mac better. The iPad is just the way for Apple to get more money. They’re only intent. No need to have an iPad either.. These new HomePods nowhere near as good as the first version the HomePod mini is a piece of garbage. Apple is just a disgrace anymore.
Thank you MDN, these are the best critiques on Tim Cook yet, too funny! 😂😂
“STEVE Jobs could make a power cord seem INSANELY GREAT.
TIM Cook could put a room to sleep while unveiling TELEPORTATION;
he makes watching paint dry seem like MUST-SEE event.”
“Apple is currently helmed by a charisma black hole.”😂😢
So, MDN, is there any good candidate in or out of Apple, worldwide, to replace iSteve, with a smart, grounded, practical, creative, artistic humanized tech visionary?! These do not match much of this list (in no particular order):
1. John Ternus (SVP Hardware: strong presentation skills & leadership qualities)
2. Jeff Williams (COO)
3. Craig Federighi (SVP Software Engineering)
4. Eddie Cue (SVP Services)
5. Greg “Joz” Joswiak (SVP world Marketing)
6. Deirdre O’Brien (SVP Retail)
7. who from outside Apple could?
Jony Ive would’ve made the best choice, right? Steve Jobs left Apple but returned. Would Jony if offered $6.5b for I/O?
Apple 3.0, the future of Apple, is Craig Federighi.
He would be insanely great.
Ok, thanks, but why would he be gr8, how would he fit the criteria:
Smart + grounded + practical + creative + humanized tech + visionary etc? Does Federighi have the old Apple mojo?
He’s been at APPL for a long time and nothing has changed. There’s something–over-all–not will within the ranks.
Yes, he’s not CEO, but either he hasn’t ideas good enough to surface, nor enough leadership to sway.
He’s awful. the king of bloatware and crap design. No innovation and half the stuff does not even work right anymore from Safari to Mail to you name it. he should have been fired years ago.
Obviously: Steve Jobs would have approved this aesthetic!
In fact, one could even say that this UI is a way to honor his memory.
The flatness imposed by Yve has been a disgrace to Mac’s display qualities.
In Variety “ CEO Tim Cook has provided more detail on the company’s strategy behind its Apple TV+ streaming service, noting the company is a “toolmaker” at heart.
“We’re a toolmaker,” Cook told Variety in an interview ahead of the company’s upcoming F1 movie, referring to Apple’s computers, phones, tablets and other products. “We make tools for creative people to empower them to do things they couldn’t do before. So we were doing lots of business with Hollywood well before we were in the TV business.”
Has Tim Cook lost the tool box no significant products for years save for Vision Pro Tv Nd Movies have been here for decades
Time to move this lack of innovation shows he’s cooked
Bringing back the Aqua style? macOS taking over the linux GUI? Apple is pitiful and Lazy. They could have greatly improves the look of the GUI do wonderful things but, they got complacent. why pay their programmers for this shit? What the hell do they do all day? Fix their poor work? What upcoming NEW products do they have? oh NONE. Apple is failing and need a change. Fire Time cook and upend the whole Apple corporate culture. Get people inspired again!
as always, LESS will always be MORE. The old new Aqua… I mean Liquid Glass interface looks nice but it is very distracting and in some situations there is too much transparency, too much animation, too much reflection, too much light, too much distortion and too much “bubbles”…