A New System-Wide UI Look for iOS – Let Alone MacOS, Too – Would Be a Huge Deal

Tuesday, 11 March 2025

Ben Lovejoy, writing at 9to5Mac:

Our editor-in-chief Chance Miller wryly commented that a radical new look would serve as a great way to distract from the ever-slowing progress on the new Siri. But in truth, I think many more Apple users will be wowed by a new look than would ever care about Siri.

If that’s the way it works out — with a new visual look drawing attention from lackluster progress on the AI front — surely the timing will be coincidental, but some accidents are happy accidents, as Bob Ross used to say.

Sure, the new look introduced with iOS 7 was a massively controversial one, and many thought that then Apple design chief Jony Ive should never have been allowed anywhere near the software side of the business. But love it or hate it, you certainly couldn’t ignore it.

The same will be true of a new 3D look, which might even include some (much more modern) skeuomorphic elements. Probably as many will hate it as love it when it’s first introduced, as that seems to be true of any significant change made by the company, but it will likely make more of a bang than any improvement to Siri the company may introduce, then or later.

There should be no question that all of what Lovejoy is saying here is true. If Apple launches an all-new systemwide UI theme for iOS 19, something even half as radical a change as iOS 7’s theme was, it will be the only thing most users notice or opine about. Humans are fundamentally visual creatures and we notice visual changes. And, most humans are resistant to change. A lot of people simply dislike change, even changes for the better. (Honestly, I think that’s what the iOS 18 Photos complaints are about. Complaints about change itself.)

Part of what makes Apple Apple is that the company is (or at least should be) led by people who both have great taste and trust their own instincts. No one’s taste is perfect. Even Steve Jobs pushed through a few clunkers. But if you have great taste and confidence, you’ll do what your gut says is right.

When a company only pushes out changes that avoid controversy, it leads to paralysis. Then stagnation. Earlier today, Cabel Sasser wrote:

One of my strongest early developer memories was being in the “UI Feedback Forum” at WWDC after they introduced Aqua. Think of a live Q&A, but developers giving notes to a team of Apple engineers.

To these veteran Mac coders, the reaction to Aqua was universally negative. People were actively very angry. It’s a waste! It’s ugly! It’s confusing! How could you. It went on and on, and I was surprised because Aqua looked cool and fun to me.

After that WWDC, they never did another Feedback Forum.

It’s true. What a lot of Mac users wanted was a Mac OS X that looked like Mac OS 9.¹ The Aqua look and feel was definitely polarizing. And Apple dialed back its most exuberant details with each subsequent Mac OS X update — less transparency, subtler pinstripes (pinstripes!), etc. But iOS 7 was equally polarizing, and its excesses also got dialed back (or perhaps better, said, dialed back up) with each successive iOS release — a little more depth, some subtle hints of texture.

Either Apple is never going to ship an altogether new UI theme, or they’ll ship one and a large number of people will declare it utter garbage and proof that Apple has completely lost its way. Maybe it will be garbage and proof that Apple has lost its way! Or, maybe it will actually prove to be a great new look that starts a decade-long industry-wide trend that all other companies will soon follow — which is what happened with Aqua’s 3D “lickability”, and happened again with iOS 7’s austere flattening. But either way, you won’t be able to judge it by asking for a show of hands from the general population when it’s unveiled. You either have taste or you don’t, and most people don’t, at least for judging something new and unfamiliar.