> I’ve said this before, but Apple is forcing third party devs to be in service of Apple. The guidelines and rules are meant to sublimate the brands of the third party, and replace it with Apple.
I have the same impression. Frankly I believe the whole purpose of "Liquid Glass" is to create an exaggerated version of the GUI Apple intends to use later-on in AR glasses, which is then toned back again in later releases to match the feasible implementation on the glasses.
The expected migration curve seems to be to force all applications now to become more bland and less distinguishable from the OS (and Apple services), so that at the end of the journey (in a future AR-product) Apple can #1 render those apps consistently without disrupting their UX and #2 present itself as the user-facing service provider for all the value created by those apps (with the app-developer being responsible for the integration and UX-compliance).
It's a dream-scenario. Need a ride-hailing service? Let "the Apple glasses" do it for you. Under the hood the apps are then hopefully so streamlined already that service-providers will compete to be the fulfilment entity for this task.
It is a direct response to developer feedback - that they only are going to make iPhone apps because redoing design to support even just iPad, let alone a watch, TV, Mac, and AR variant is work. Even Facebook hasn't found the resources to port the Instagram app to have a proper UX on iPad.
This started with the separation of iPad OS (and release of Catalyst, and SwiftUI 1.0) in 2019. iPad OS is effectively the mother platform - an iPad app can be adapted down to target iPhone, or to target macOS and visionOS (with both those platforms also supporting running iPadOS apps natively without modification). The L&F changes in 2020 to macOS (with release 11) were heavily about making iPadOS and macOS more visually similar.
It doesn't surprise me at all that a team at apple tasked to make a consistent HIG and L&F across all products is borrowing heavily from the most recent HIG/L&F they worked on (Vision OS).
> Under the hood the apps are then hopefully so streamlined already that service-providers will compete to be the fulfilment entity for this task.
Probably going to be against the hivemind on this one, but I for one welcome this. Public transport, taxis, flights, hotels, to a degree even restaurants are fungible. I want to get from A to B, I want to have a bed for a few nights in some other city, I want to get some specific food.
That's what I need. What I do not want is to waste time to get what I need with bullshit.
That's why I love the "evil B" of hospitality - I see all available hotels for my travel, the associated price and pictures. I select an offer (usually the cheapest one that still has decent reviews), I click on "book", I confirm my data, that's it. I don't need to wade through dozens of websites, enter my data a dozen times, and then finally enter payment data on yet another shady website that's probably gonna get hacked sooner or later.
I don't want to waste my time researching the phone number of the local taxi company, so taxi.de it is, I only select where I need to go and a few minutes later a taxi shows up, no need to call someone, spell out the street name I live in to someone barely understanding me on the phone because Germany's phone service is dogshit.
I don't care about which specific Chinese restaurant I want, so I go on Lieferando, and half an hour later a nice load of fried rice with greens shows up at my door. And every time I have to go to a specific place (say for an anniversary) I know exactly why I despise the old way - everyone does seat reservations differently, no integration with anything.
What still irks me is flight booking, because while Google and a fair few other resellers/brokers do at least compare available options of different fulfilment providers, the actual booking I have to do is still on each airline's different web page. And rail travel is similarly annoying once you try to leave Germany.
This is very valid, I also don't like to install an app for every service. And I don't think there's a "hivemind" on this at all.
But it's reasonable that the merchants offering in the marketplace of that ecosystem start to observe how their opportunity to become the next "evil B of X" are increasingly diminished, in favor of being the fulfilment entity for the "benevolent A".
I neither need an "evil B" nor a "benevolent A", and substituting one for the other is not a solution either...
I have the same impression. Frankly I believe the whole purpose of "Liquid Glass" is to create an exaggerated version of the GUI Apple intends to use later-on in AR glasses, which is then toned back again in later releases to match the feasible implementation on the glasses.
The expected migration curve seems to be to force all applications now to become more bland and less distinguishable from the OS (and Apple services), so that at the end of the journey (in a future AR-product) Apple can #1 render those apps consistently without disrupting their UX and #2 present itself as the user-facing service provider for all the value created by those apps (with the app-developer being responsible for the integration and UX-compliance).
It's a dream-scenario. Need a ride-hailing service? Let "the Apple glasses" do it for you. Under the hood the apps are then hopefully so streamlined already that service-providers will compete to be the fulfilment entity for this task.