I have no doubt that the team behind Liquid Glass had the same noble motivations as the team behind Microsoft's Metro Design Language in 2010.
In a crowded market, making a completely innovative visual identity is often the only option. One hopes that the result is that the words "forward-looking" and "trend-setting" and "loyalty-inspiring" and "inimitable" begin to apply. And if they pull it off, more power to them!
But there's a matter of taste as well as novelty. And while there were many incredible things about Metro, history bears witness to how much Zune and Windows Phone and Windows 8 have become beloved household names in the decade-and-a-half since.
I do think that Jobs would have signed off on the motivation behind Liquid Glass. I do not think he would have signed off on Liquid Glass itself.
> I do think that Jobs would have signed off on the motivation behind Liquid Glass. I do not think he would have signed off on Liquid Glass itself.
Agree. Jobs took big swings like Liquid Glass but, perhaps the most important part that’s missing in present Apple, he was obsessive about ensuring the swings were executed to a high standard. He was hands on in this pursuit.
It’s actually weird to me that a company so large, so well compensated, so profitable, so prolific, etc can’t seem to care enough about the details without a Jobs-esque foot on their neck type leader to be afraid of.
Without a Jobs-esque foot, the bozos have nothing to fear. They flourish and spread, gain power by impressing other bozos, and push out anyone with half a brain.
MobileMe’s devs were brought into an auditorium for a dressing down that included the lines “you should all hate each other for letting each other down” and in response to “what is MobileMe supposed to do” got a “Why the fuck doesn’t it do that”
The smug dopes that are left over in the design department are probably clapping each other in the back over shipping liquid glass. Tim doesn’t give a shit about how ugly, troublesome, and problematic it is. Stock price go up, whatever!
Bozos can still manipulate top-down executives. It might be argued they're the only ones who can influence them - technical domain experts will eventually give up or leave without middle management, like we saw from Woz.
There's merit in having a principled hardass, but most people end up glossing over the "principled" part to dissect the merits of hardass management.
I don't think Metro died because it was bad as a matter of taste. Quite the opposite actually, I wasn't a huge fan of its aesthetics but I was surprised by how many people liked it.
No, the real problem was functionality. Not of Metro itself - it was actually very good in that department, arguably still the best mobile UI as far as pure function goes. But the devices ended up being very limited overall because there were so few apps, and what was there was shoddy. Which was in part because Microsoft screwed up with the dev story, and partly because Google didn't play ball (so not only no official YouTube app, but they proactively killed third party ones that could do what the app does on oter platforms).
In a crowded market, making a completely innovative visual identity is often the only option. One hopes that the result is that the words "forward-looking" and "trend-setting" and "loyalty-inspiring" and "inimitable" begin to apply. And if they pull it off, more power to them!
But there's a matter of taste as well as novelty. And while there were many incredible things about Metro, history bears witness to how much Zune and Windows Phone and Windows 8 have become beloved household names in the decade-and-a-half since.
I do think that Jobs would have signed off on the motivation behind Liquid Glass. I do not think he would have signed off on Liquid Glass itself.