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Ask HN: Does Apple's Liquid Glass hint to upcoming AR glasses?

by divan on 6/11/25, 10:42 AM with 4 comments

Liquid Glass design unveiled at WWDC is facing global backlash and is obviously making things harder to read, etc. It's hard to imagine Apple didn't understand it. But it does make sense if Apple is trying to prepare people to upcoming AR glasses experience, where most of UI will be overlayed over the reality images. In a way, they want to train users before the tech arrives. Does it make sense or something else is going on?

  • by deafpolygon on 6/11/25, 10:31 PM

    > is obviously making things harder to read

    I don't think it's hard to read, honestly. I checked all the photos, videos, etc. of the new UI and it looks great.

    But, training the users? I don't know - I think they wanted to before (the translucency in iOS 7) but couldn't- so they waited until they could.

  • by solardev on 6/11/25, 7:52 PM

    That sounds terrible. They're already hard enough to see/read over other UI elements, how are they going to be visible at all over random things in your field of vision?

  • by 3cats-in-a-coat on 6/13/25, 8:26 AM

    Thing is you can't refract and diffract light in actual AR glasses, as light passes through, all you have to play with is opacity.

    This means you need something like Vision Pro which fakes transparency via cameras, which are then blended into the final image (which then you can process with "Liquid Glass" etc.)

    So given this, what do we mean by "upcoming AR glasses". How are they upcoming? Vision Pro came out and it failed. You can be certain Apple started work on Liquid Glass before they could process their failure, they were anticipating Vision Pro to be their Next Big Thing, and aligned everything to it.

    Now it just looks tone deaf. They forced their most successful platforms to look like their least successful platform. Awkward.

  • by colesantiago on 6/11/25, 12:47 PM

    the clue is in the name.