If you open any social media these days and search for “Liquid Glass,” you’ll find a flood of criticism. That it’s hard to read. That it’s pure visual makeup. That Apple lost its way again.
And they’re right: it’s annoying, hard to read, many find it useless.
But this time something doesn’t add up.
Because for the first time in over a decade, Apple did something that Steve Jobs would have approved. Not for what it is, but for what it points to becoming.
An uncomfortable move. Inevitable. Almost as if they had no other choice.
A zugzwang move.
Like in chess, when you have only one possible move left and you have to make it even if you don’t like it. Liquid Glass doesn’t look good today.
But you can see it coming.
Apple: A Decade of Empty Perfection
Since Jobs died, Apple remained the world’s most elegant brand. But also the most predictable. And worst of all: the most conservative.
They did many things right, but also many things that he would never have allowed.
The mouse that charges from the bottom. The Apple Pencil with no way to attach to the iPad. The butterfly keyboard: an ultra-thin mechanism that seemed revolutionary, but jammed with a breadcrumb.
And Siri. My God, Siri.
An assistant that struggled with everything. You’d ask it to set an alarm and it would respond that it hadn’t found that on the internet. You’d say “remind me to call mom” and it would open Safari. You’d ask how many days until Christmas and it would answer: “I’m not sure I understood. Do you want me to search for that on the web?”, as if it were a philosophical question.
Visually impeccable products, but soulless.
What was lost wasn’t the aesthetics. It was the functional obsession.
That madness that made everything make sense from the box to the last gesture. From the sound of the click to the curvature of the edge.
The Perspective from Design
This isn’t written by an Apple fan.
It’s written by someone who comes from design. Who grew up with this company as a reference and spent over 20 years among graphics, animations, screens, and computer-generated worlds.
Today I dedicate myself fully to art. I paint.
But it’s impossible to detach from the old love for art direction, for visual decisions that aren’t just seen, but felt.
And precisely because of that, something in me was activated when I saw Liquid Glass.
Not because of the aesthetics. Not because I like it.
But because no one else seems to notice what’s really happening.
Everyone discusses whether it reads well or not. Whether it’s usable. Whether it’s pure smoke. Whether it drains more battery.
But very few realize that this decision isn’t made to work today, but to prepare for what’s going to happen tomorrow.
Because there’s something no one wants to say out loud, but it’s already evident: screens, as we know them, are about to disappear.
The Era Change
We’re entering a new stage.
One where it’s no longer just about seeing screens, but about living with them. Talking to them. Having them understand us. Or at least, having them try.
We’re in the era of LLMs.
Models that converse, infer, suggest. Systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude that no longer wait for your click: they listen to you, look at you, respond to you.
And with devices like Vision Pro or Meta Quest, they already follow you with their eyes and react to your gestures.
Until a few years ago, using a computer meant typing, clicking, moving through menus. Now, the center of interaction has shifted.
We talk to machines.
We ask them for things. We tell them how we feel. We ask if they understood us correctly. And they respond. Sometimes, even with sense.
Still don’t use technology this way? Perfect. It doesn’t matter. You didn’t need to have internet in the 90s for it to change your life anyway. This is similar. You don’t have to “be there” for it to still end up running you over.
But the future isn’t about removing screens.
It’s about adding another one. One for each eye.
With devices like Vision Pro, we’re already starting to see where we’re going: two screens glued to the face, creating worlds that overlap with reality. Or that directly replace it.
And after that, the next step is obvious: we enter the screen ourselves.
Total immersion. Gradual, but inevitable.
It’s no longer about using technology. It’s about inhabiting a digital space. Living between two worlds. Having the line between real and virtual become increasingly blurred.
I always say this in my paintings, though few pay attention. And I don’t care about them. I care about my son.
Because this transformation isn’t just technological. It’s existential.
And this time, we’re not just going to talk.
We’re also going to gesture. Point, frown, raise an eyebrow, move our hands. The system will watch us. It will interpret us. And it will react.
That’s why continuing to discuss whether the button reads well or if the background is too blurry… is like worrying about a misplaced comma in a letter while the entire language is changing.
The interface is no longer a set of icons.
It’s not a window. It’s not a list.
It’s a conversation. A flow. A reaction to your presence.
Jobs’ Madness (and the Signal He Left On)
When I say that Liquid Glass is something Steve Jobs would have approved, I don’t mean the visual style or the final result. I mean the move. That uncomfortable, absurd decision that seems unnecessary… but gets made anyway. Because it responds to a deeper logic.
To understand that kind of madness, you have to remember certain stories.
The closed box room
Apple had a room where a designer spent months opening hundreds of iPod boxes. The objective: for the opening tab to provoke a specific sensation.
It wasn’t about functionality, but emotion. The millimeters didn’t matter. What mattered was how it felt.
The invisible motherboard
In 1981, Jobs ordered the Macintosh circuit to be redone because “the memory lines were ugly.” It cost over $5,000 to redo it. No one was going to see it. But for him, the interior also had to make visual sense.
It had to be “beautiful inside.”
The crystal cube
In 2011, he redesigned the facade of the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue. It went from 90 glass panels to just 15. 75 joint lines were eliminated. The result: a purer cube. Cleaner.
It cost him $6.7 million. Out of his own pocket.
None of that is justified by logic. These aren’t efficient decisions. Not even rational ones.
But there was his vision.
A deep aesthetic obsession. Almost spiritual. A way of understanding design as something that doesn’t need to be explained, but changes everything.
Sound exaggerated? Come on… my Dyson V8 sounds like a laser when I pull the trigger, and the discharge system looks more like a weapon than a vacuum cleaner. That’s not accidental.
Just as it wasn’t accidental that Yamaha adjusted the sound of the Lotus Esprit in the 80s so the engine would “sound sexier.”
Products get tuned too. Sometimes to look better. Other times to sound better. And others… to feel better, even if you can’t explain why.
And if you don’t believe me, ask Tesla. And no, I’m not talking about fart mode. I’m talking about PWS: that deep, futuristic hum, a cross between Blade Runner and Star Wars podracer, that sounds when the car moves slowly.
Functional? Yes. Accidental? Not by chance.
Liquid Glass as Preseason
Liquid Glass isn’t just a visual layer. It’s a symptom. A clue. A message embedded in the operating system that doesn’t say “look,” but “get ready”.
Because when they surround you with transparencies, blurs, and refractions, they’re not selling you style. They’re tuning your eye. They’re training you for something that hasn’t arrived yet… but is already underway.
And it’s not the first time they’ve done this.
Remember Aqua?
That design that appeared with Mac OS X in the early 2000s: glossy buttons, liquid textures, deep shadows. It looked like a candy factory. Many hated it.
But it forever changed the way we interact with a computer.
It was the entry of skeuomorphic design: an approach where digital elements mimic real-world objects. Buttons that look like glass, switches that feel mechanical, textures you could touch.
The interface was no longer an abstraction: it was almost physical.
Steve Jobs had it crystal clear. So much so that in a meeting with his design team, he entered with a bottle of blue translucent shower gel. He put it on the table and said the interface should look like that: bright, wet, tactile.
And when they showed him the final version of Aqua, he said: “It’s so cool, you want to lick it.”
It wasn’t a metaphor. It was his way of saying that the interface shouldn’t need explaining. It had to provoke.
Liquid Glass, although it seems the opposite —more subtle, more diffuse, more abstract— is playing the same game.
It doesn’t seek comfort. It seeks to reconfigure your way of seeing.
Because what’s coming isn’t a new aesthetic. It’s a new way of inhabiting technology. Buttons, windows, icons… all of that is going to start getting in the way. It’s going to become old. Overloaded. Literally in the middle.
We’re going to need it to disappear. And to appear only when it needs to appear.
As if the system knew what you want before you say it.
That’s what Liquid Glass begins to rehearse. It’s not a style. It’s a preseason.
The Perfect Trap
Exaggerated? Maybe. Liquid Glass feels weird, uncomfortable, halfway there. But so was Aqua in its time. And yet, it changed everything.
The difference is that now we’re not talking about shiny buttons, but about systems that interpret gestures, looks, intentions. Interfaces that are no longer on the screen, but between you and what surrounds you.
That’s why Liquid Glass isn’t just a design. It’s a signal. A transition. It doesn’t seek to please you: it seeks to get you used to it.
Because what’s coming isn’t a new aesthetic. It’s a new way of inhabiting technology.
And although I tip my hat to the vision, I can’t quite applaud completely. Because I know what this means. And it’s not just design. It’s something deeper. More addictive. More dangerous.
Maybe that’s why I paint. Because there are things I can’t say with words. And this —this— is one of them.
But I also know that after so many years of doing the right thing, Apple is again doing something wrong with sense. Something that doesn’t make sense today, but will be obvious in five years.
We don’t need more features. We don’t need more devices.
We need another crack. Another discomfort. Another madness.
Until that happens, we continue walking inside the crater left by one guy. And hopefully, someday, someone will dare to do what he did: break everything and reinvent it.
Maybe it’s already happening. Nobody knows exactly what Ive and Altman are working on, but $6.5 billion gives room to imagine quite a bit.