Apple’s latest software updates may offer an unexpected clue about its foldable-phone plans. Apps running on an iPad or Mac have been shown resizing into an unusually wide, squat window that matches the rumored dimensions of the internal display on Apple’s next foldable iPhone. The design also helps explain why Apple’s Liquid Glass interface, introduced as a broader visual overhaul, appears particularly suited to a device that changes shape and orientation.
Designed to flow
When Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo, its passport-like display stood apart from the increasingly tall screens used by the iPhone and competing phones. The Duo is wide and relatively squat, and when opened it naturally defaults to landscape orientation, matching the iPad mini’s display.
Apple also sought to avoid the distracting transitions between screens that are common on rival foldable devices. Instead, content is designed to move seamlessly from one display to the other. The approach begins with the hardware. In a keynote speech in September, Molly Anderson, Apple’s vice president of industrial design, said: “To achieve this continuity, we designed iPhone Duo around the same consistent aspect ratio on both displays.”
The software, built around Liquid Glass, helps create that continuity. Its most noticeable feature is a series of prominent animations, an approach that has also appeared in various forms elsewhere in the Android ecosystem. Together, the animations reinforce the idea of a flowing interface.
Liquid Glass also gives Apple more flexibility over where important controls appear. On the Duo, controls can sit beside the content when the phone is open, while closing the device creates more space for the content itself. When the phone is opened again, the controls remain in predictable positions instead of requiring users to search for them. Changing the device’s orientation is intended to make the rest of the interface adapt naturally.
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The relationship is not simply a matter of form following function. Although the Duo and its flexible interface do not strictly require the Liquid Glass design language, the two appear well matched. Liquid Glass makes more sense on the iPhone Duo, while some of Apple’s other software changes are beginning to make more sense in the context of the company’s broader hardware plans.
Clarity of purpose
It is difficult to determine how much of this is coincidence. Given Apple’s long hardware and software development timelines, it seems unlikely that the fit is entirely accidental. At the same time, Liquid Glass may have been designed to work well on the Duo even if the Duo was not its original purpose.
Liquid Glass feels more deliberate than a single, universal aesthetic imposed across every device. Apple continues to adjust it for individual products. As a result, the operating system can feel more robust and less brittle, while the interface is less likely to compete with the user’s content for attention.
On the Mac and iPad, the redesign resembles a return to Aqua, Apple’s water-themed interface introduced in 2000. The look is also available on the iPhone, where it takes on a more playful character with the Duo.
That does not mean the design is perfect. “There are some oddities that haven’t been fully resolved. We need to make all of this material consistent, or the metaphor breaks down,” McCarthy says. “But overall, liquid glass is a huge improvement.”
The Duo may be new, but Liquid Glass is still relatively new as well. As developer Steve Troughton-Smith wrote, “For some iPhone apps, even the most dedicated developers will need six months to a year of work to properly support iPhone Duo. Many developers are still completing the transition to liquid glass that we started last year.”
That is a reminder that platform transitions take time. For now, however, Apple’s direction appears clear: its software is being shaped to move fluidly across different screens, sizes and orientations.
Source: www.wired.com
