Sadly, this feels like Google's approach to product management: change for the sake of change, driven behind the scenes by people chasing being noticed or their next promotion rather than by need and good sense, and (likely due to politics and power structures) no-one in a position to say "hold on, this doesn't work".
I'm generally no fan of Steve Jobs, but what he did offer was a single point of (dictatorial) good taste, and a willingness to stamp on bad ideas. Unfortunately, it's exceptionally rare in modern business that you have someone (who is allowed to be) in such a position of power to act dictatorially when needed, and who also has the right set of taste/experience/knowledge such that their decisions are on balance more usually good ones. CEOs are far more usually MBA drones than product people, and it doesn't appear that we've figured out a way to 'scale' taste and good decision-making throughout an organisation in a reliable manner.
I worked for nine years as a senior product manager, including a radical UX overhaul. I can speak to this.
There is a saying among PMs: when you're not sure what to do, you do a UX refresh.
(It's a bit like the same one for CEOs: if you're not sure what to do, drive an acquisition.)
UX rework needs to be done with real care -- not primarily care for looks, but care for function.
I _love_ Snow Leopard's UI. It was clear. Watching the videos on Liquid Glass, I was really hopeful we'd see a return to a similar design. Old OS X gave me joy, and I am sure I heard the word 'joy' used in the Liquid Glass video... and I was so happy! But what I see when I installed last night, and from this article, is glass and shadows in the background of windows, very low contrast ratios, and confusion between window areas.
Backgrounds are the wrong place for fancy effects. You need to be able to see foreground content clearly.
Foregound elements, like buttons, are great for fancy effects. They are small and isolated.
That's why pinstripes were awful (difficult background) and Aqua as a whole was great (blue gel buttons were clear.) Look at the comparison screenshots in this article: a list view in Finder, which is sorted, has a blue header on the sorted column. That is a fancy gel effect, but it is isolated and readable. If liquid glass were used the same way in Tahoe, we'd really be on to something. It's what I hoped for, and what I don't see.
However: one good thing in Tahoe is how fast UI elements interact. There is no animation on mouseover transition. It snaps in and out. This is excellent.
Last night, I started a small test project in Xcode to try to change how Tahoe controls render, swizzling. The idea is: use glass for foreground elements. Basically, use glass tech to drive a Snow Leopard-like UI.
Changing something like a checkbox is ok. Changing something like the side panel, or a set of toolbar buttons to resolve the background/floatiness/shadow issues in the article, is going to be hard (for me, with my level of AppKit and SwiftUI knowledge.) If I get far enough, I'll share with HN.
Tastes in design are unique to individuals and change over years and decades; judged in 2025, it’s easy to find past examples one might not agree with.
But I’m not thinking of the superficial design so much as the underlying ethos informing such decisions. Early OS X got a lot right by focussing on usability. Skeuomorphism might not be in vogue today, but the iPhone was much more usable, approachable and discoverable compared to most mobile phone OSs of the day. The Apple UI guidelines have mostly stood the test of time.
I hope that Jobs (or Ive, for that matter) would’ve taken Liquid Glass in a very different direction, as the current offering seems to make things worse for users.
I'm generally no fan of Steve Jobs, but what he did offer was a single point of (dictatorial) good taste, and a willingness to stamp on bad ideas. Unfortunately, it's exceptionally rare in modern business that you have someone (who is allowed to be) in such a position of power to act dictatorially when needed, and who also has the right set of taste/experience/knowledge such that their decisions are on balance more usually good ones. CEOs are far more usually MBA drones than product people, and it doesn't appear that we've figured out a way to 'scale' taste and good decision-making throughout an organisation in a reliable manner.