Luka and I FaceTime a fair bit, and while most of it is about work and personal projects, we also sometimes chat a bit about where the tech industry is artistically.
For the last year, leading up to what would eventually be known as Liquid Glass, we talked a lot about Apple’s sudden and drastic style change in iOS 7. I kept notes on little things Luka said, mostly because they make me laugh.


Luka
Are they like “fall in line” or something?
They were supposed to fall in line with us.

There are hundreds of thousands of third-party developers and designers. But a small team in Cupertino can force an entire industry to fall in line with their aesthetic opinions.


Luka
I was in the trenches.
I thought… This will not last.
And now I’m 30 years old and the icons are still bad. I’ve been looking at these every single day. Make it stop.
The things we get used to in this life. Capitalism, genocide, the fucking Safari icon.

When iOS 7 was introduced, my friends at Apple privately messaged me, “Don’t freak out about the icons. They’re not done yet.” But the truth is that almost nothing changed about app icons from 2013 until 2025.


Luka
Apple should provide alternate icons that are just good app icons.
Every generation’s gotta learn the same fucking lesson.

A few years ago, kids started customizing their Home Screens via Siri Shortcuts. Even though Apple knows users want to do this, all they did was give us tinted icons, which only makes bad icons worse.


Luka
I feel like I’ve been living with a pebble in my shoe for 12 years.

Luka said this a few months before iOS 26 with Liquid Glass was introduced. And what’s endlessly disappointing is that we have to live with these same icons, just now with edge effects.

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