Look at this notification on iOS 26. Can you read it? No. And that's the problem. Apple just made the iPhone unreadable. After 18 years of perfecting the clarity of its interface, making every pixel sharper, every interaction more obvious, they come from all its beauty. But it's not a bug, it's intentional. Their new interface is called Liquid Glace, liquid glass. A system that makes every menu translucent, every notification foggy, to the point where they even become difficult to read. Why does a company obsessed with perfection have 18 years of progress? Because it conditions you to get used to something that doesn't exist yet. This is how Apple has been manipulating us for 17 years. The first iPhone interface mimicked the real world. The note app was a yellow sheet of paper, the dictaphone a metal microphone. Today it's kitsch. At the time, it was vital. Imagine you just spent 10 years with a physical touch OK. You know exactly which key to click, how much pressure to apply, and how much resistance to expect. And overnight you go to this cold glass slab with few buttons, no relief, just glass. Scheomorphism, this design approach that imitates reality, was not a style; it was an educational program integrated into the interface. The role of each texture was to recreate a familiar landmark. Touching an icon should evoke an action you already knew. Apple maintained this illusion for 6 years, long enough to teach an entire generation to trust green. 6 years to get people to accept that a pixel rectangle replaces a physical button. Then in 2013, with iOS 7, Apple flattened everything. Gone are the wood and leather textures, the icons lose their texture and the buttons become flat. The public hates it, but Apple doesn't care because in 2013, everyone has mastered touch. The problem is no longer there. The real challenge at this time is the growing complexity of the iPhone. Notifications, multitasking and thousands of apps. Skeomorphism with its heavy textures is smothered under the weight of all its features. So Apple created a universal language that could adapt to any situation. Flat design was a functional necessity. You're starting to see the Apple model always imposes a design to prepare the user for something. Scheomorphism has educated us to touch. Flat design has channeled its complexity. With iOS 26, Apple is doing it again. But this time, it doesn't prepare you for touch or the complexity of the smartphone. It prepares you for the interface to disappear. But before we explain how Apple is preparing for its future, here's 50 seconds to explain how to prepare for yours with Trade Republic. Trade République is a bank in an app that puts your money to work for you. In fact, every euro left in your Trade République account earns you 2% gross interest per year without you having to do anything. But every euro you spend also earns you money if you invest €50 per month in an Apple, Nintendo or more stable ETF share, you unlock the SafeBack which reinvests 1% of the amount of your purchases. For example, you pay €100 at a restaurant, €1 goes back into your savings plan and is automatically placed in the action of your choice. It's a simplified automatic investment system designed to be a financial first step in which every coffee you pay for adds up to compound interest. Investing involves risks, including the total loss of the capital invested. Only invest what you are willing to lose. Saving is a long-term project; there is no easy money. The goal of Trade République is to raise awareness among people about making their money work for them. They have over a million customers in France and the link in the description takes you directly to the app to open your account. Thank you Trade Republic. Well, Liquid Glace isn't just transparency, it's simulated physics. In classic blur, the OS takes an image of the background and applies a filter to it. The different surfaces don't really interact. The content in the back is just blurred. To create the ice quid, Apple uses a real-time graphics engine that simulates how light bends and diffuses across a green surface. Each menu becomes a glass lens that deflects light as if seeing through curved glass. Tilt your iPhone and the virtual light changes angle as if it were real. It's subtle but it's everywhere. The interface becomes organic, it comes alive, it's hypnotizing and it's quite beautiful but it's sometimes impossible. Apple designed this material so that the interface disappears to make room for the content. Transparent layers let you see what's behind while keeping secondary controls hidden until you need them. Design guides your attention without you realizing it. This idea of a contextual interface that disappears when it shouldn't be the focus of attention and subtly reappears when it's needed. She is elegant but clumsy. It is based on the delicate balance between aesthetics and function. To help you focus on the content, Apple has created an interface so realistic that it draws attention and becomes a distraction itself. Sometimes it's very successful, especially on small details, but on larger elements it becomes grotesque. Take the Control Center. Before, it was a simple, clear grid of well-defined buttons. Not necessarily beautiful, but it was practical. Now it's a collection of translucent bubbles with light and transparency effects in every direction. The problem with transparency is that in excess, it becomes not only vulgar but also illegible. The Control Center is a good example because between the first and second betas, Apple had to strengthen the background to improve readability. So they created a glass effect that they now have to sabotage a bit to make it usable. The more blur they add to compensate for transparency, the more they betray their own vision, and this is probably only the beginning. On this light wallpaper, which is a wallpaper offered by Apple, the text disappears. So, you might be able to read now, but I assure you that all day with the changing light conditions, it gets exhausting and you end up changing your wallpaper. Apple knew this risk. They have thousands of designers, usability labs, user testing everywhere. Every pixel of iOS is analyzed, measured, and optimized. But they still took the risk of destroying 18 years of progress in readability. For what ? Because they're no longer designing iOS for today's iPhone, but for the one in 2027. The internal code name for this iPhone would be Glass Wing. Like butterflies with transparent wings. Patents filed since 2019 converge towards the same vision. An iPhone with a mostly green chassis with a wrap-around screen and front-facing camera sensors hidden under the screen, creating the illusion of a crystal being held in your hands. It's a feasible project in the coming years and it's a technical breakthrough that poses some serious challenges in terms of interface. If Apple wants to erase the line between hardware and software, then the interface must appear physically integrated into the object. By simulating the optical properties of glass, Apple gradually accustoms your brain to the idea that the interface and a glass smartphone are made of the same material. Every micro-deformation, every reflection, every play of transparency, everything accustoms you to the idea that the interface and the physical object are one. You are no longer touching a screen, you are manipulating digital matter. It's also a liquid interface that can stretch, contract, adapt to the physical change of the screen and we know that Apple is working on a folding iPhone. So when your iPhone unfolds to become an iPad, the interface will flow naturally from one format to the other like water embracing its container. But there is one thing I haven't mentioned yet that is important. We've moved from iOS 18 to iOS 26. Why did Apple decide to align all its operating systems with the year of release? Because it now considers all its operating systems as a single unified ecosystem. All these software programs are now one. And when you look at Vision OS, the reason becomes obvious. When you open an app on the Vision Pro, the window appears as a floating glass bubble with the same curvature at the corners, the same way it reflects light, the same subtle opacity. They want you to perceive all these interfaces as a single visual language. Apple believes the future of computing isn't in screens, it's in space. In 5 years, maybe less, we will start bringing smart glasses that will superimpose digital information directly into our field of vision. The goal is to make switching between your iPhone and your glasses as natural as switching between Safari tabs. No learning curve, just the immediate recognition of an already familiar universe. But your brain will panic. For 40 years, we have been interacting with flat screens with a clear boundary between digital and real. How can we make him accept that a digital window can float in real space, that notifications appear in the air, that buttons exist without physical support? It's a much more abrupt transition than touch, more radical than flat design. It's literally taking the interface out of its box and projecting it into the real world. Making this transition a success is a major challenge, and Apple's solution is to gradually familiarize you with it . By making the interface translucent today, Apple is conditioning your brain to dissociate information from its medium. You learn that an interface doesn't need to be opaque to exist, that it can blend into the environment, that windows can float, that digital can have texture without having substance. Apple's real goal, the one that justifies this sacrifice, is total convergence with augmented reality. The schedule is precise. By the end of 2025, iOS 26 will generalize this interface on all iPhones. In 2027, the iPhone Glass Wing will be released for the 20th anniversary of the iPhone. And in 2028, launch of Apple Glace. If there is no technical delay, Apple has 3 years to condition 1 billion users. In fact, each step prepares the next. Liquid Glace gets you used to virtual green. Glasswing materializes this aesthetic in the physical object and the glasses project these same elements into real space. And Apple is getting ahead with technology that competitors can't really copy. These real-time rendering effects , complex optical distortions , dynamic light effects , all require enormous GPU power and perfect software optimization. Samsung and Google do not have this complete control of the chain, from processor to software. Apple is behind on AI, but ahead on the visual infrastructure of another revolution. When your future glasses display holograms in your living room, your brain won't panic. He will recognize his floating windows, he will have already seen them, already touched them, already manipulated them on a screen. It may seem like a small detail, but the bet is colossal. If it works, Apple will have succeeded in psychologically preparing its users for its biggest technical breakthrough. From the iPhone. Apple is preparing a world for you where the interface is just another layer of reality, as natural as the air you breathe. This is why Apple makes the iPhone unreadable. Not for aesthetic reasons to make it uncomfortable. An obvious fact. The stronger the resistance, the more transformative the innovation . 26 is not a new interface, it is the beginning of its disappearance and you will learn to live without it. Today it is unreadable. We'll see in 5 years. Thank you all. Thanks to TR Republic. It was Loduf.