Apple presents its new user interface, "Liquid Glass," at its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9, 2025 in Cupertino, California. Andrej Sokolow/dpa/Getty ImagesIf the extra navigation steps, weirdly overlapping windows, and inconsistently rounded corners of Apple’s “Liquid Glass” interface irritate you, well, there just might be hope for you yet.
Apple is reportedly working on a “slight redesign” of the translucent UI’s, um,
quirks ahead of the rollout of macOS 27, expected to be announced in a month and released in September.
What’s that entail? Readability improvements,
according to Bloomberg. Tweaked transparency effects so that icons and controls aren’t presumably fighting with what’s beneath them. And hopefully more polish so the “unified visual theme” is a bit more, well, unified.
The effort to clean up the operating system’s visuals parallels another to fix what’s under the hood in a reported attempt to address known issues, tighten up code, and unlock performance improvements (e.g. longer battery life).
It all comes mere months after the departure of Apple design executive Alan Dye, who led user interface design before jumping ship to Meta. His successor, Stephen Lemay, is known for his “attention to detail and craftsmanship,”
per longtime Apple observer John Gruber—a very necessary attribute at this point in the development cycle.
Apple has long oscillated between “new stuff” updates and “clean up” updates and it’s very much looking like its next Mac operating system will be the latter. Cheers to that.
—AN