One of the biggest takeaways from this week's WWDC keynote was the visual redesign Apple is bringing to all of its platforms later this year, which the company is referring to as Liquid Glass. Nearly 20 years after Windows Vista, it seems like glass is back to being a trendy design element, proving that time truly is a flat circle.

Liquid Glass is coming to macOS 26 Tahoe alongside Apple's other operating systems, but that begs the question: almost two decades later, can Apple do glass better than Microsoft did with Windows Vista? Sure, the company has a lot more hardware power to work with, but is the vision itself more interesting than before? Let's take a closer look.

Liquid Glass is everywhere

But it's a bit more subdued

One thing that's hard to deny is that Apple is typically a bit more consistent with implementing its design philosophies compared to Microsoft. Liquid Glass is only available through a developer beta, but already, the design elements have permeated the majority of macOS Tahoe, at least as far as first-party apps are concerned.

But let's start with the OS itself. Liquid Glass manifests itself in a few ways, naturally starting with transparency, which affects all the context and dropdown menus throughout the operating system and its apps. It's evident that these menus are slightly more transparent than before, allowing the background to shine through. Moving over to the right side of the menu bar, the system controls have all been affected by the glass as well. Notifications are also more transparent, but where the Liquid Glass becomes more apparent is in the Control Center. All the elements here are transparent, and this time, you can see how the edges of buttons are lit up to reflect the color of the content behind them, as if light is being refracted through a glass surface. This is also visible in the Wi-Fi flyout. One example where this is very visible is while sliding a volume slider or clicking a toggle, as the pill-shaped button also acquires the glass effect as you click it.

A similar effect is also present in the dock, but things get a bit more interesting here because the icons can also be transparent now, which is a major benefit for macOS over Windows Vista. You can choose between the classic icons, dark versions of them, colorless clear icons, or tinted versions that are still translucent. You can also switch between light and dark versions of the translucent icons. Right now, some icons don't conform to these new options all that well, particularly with third-party apps, but Apple itself has made them look pretty good for the most part. I kind of wish there was a tinted option that combined the transparency effects with the general icon color for each app, rather than using a unified color for all of them.

This may be because it's still an early beta, but icons also just don't look very good when set to tinted mode in some situations. For example, in the System Settings, all the icons in the menu are tinted the color you choose, but there's no transparency, and the color is kind of washed out. If you set the icons to Clear, they'll just look grey. This is small enough that it's not a huge deal, but the same problem affects the new app launcher, where these icons are much bigger, yet still look lifeless and pretty bad overall. The same transparent effect from the Dock would make a big difference here.

In apps, the glass effects vary a bit more, but one common element you'll see in most of Apple's own apps is that the left-side navigation panes also reside in a glass surface now, though it's not exactly transparent like other elements. You'll most notice this in the edge glow around these panes, which reflects the color of whatever is behind the active app window. It's pretty subtle, especially in dark mode. More noticeable are the floating menu bar buttons, which are also made of translucent glass so you can still get an idea of the content behind said menus. Right now, one of the best examples of this is the new Games app, where you can see how the glass changes its look as you scroll down.

Aero Glass was used in more impactful ways

Though it wasn't as prevalent at the same time

Looking back at Windows Vista, the implementation of Aero Glass definitely feels more impactful, though when you analyze it, it isn't applied as thoroughly as Liquid Glass seems to be. The main element of Aero Glass you'll probably remember is the title bar and window borders, which are translucent and have a shiny reflection effect on them. It's quite a bit different, though, because the transparency is only that: a transparent (or translucent) surface. The shine you see in these window elements is mostly a two-tone or gradient look based on the theme color of your choice, which adds a sense of depth to the way things look. This kind of look is also visible in the window commands (minimize, restore, and close), which aren't transparent, but still have that glass-like shine to them.

You'll see a similar kind of glass effect in the taskbar and the right pane of the Start menu. These elements consist of a dark translucent surface, with a two-tone or gradient design that conveys the feeling of looking through a glass pane. Again, it doesn't feel like it takes as much thought to execute, but the effect works surprisingly well and looks quite good.

You won't find Aero Glass elements in many more specific parts of Windows Vista, but many apps did have certain elements added that kind of tie back into that feeling. Windows Media Player, for instance, had playback control buttons that all tried to resemble glass with the same sort of gradient look and glare effect. You'd also find this in apps like the Windows Photo Gallery, and a lot of icons were redone at the time to match this sort of visual style, even if it's not exactly providing a glass effect per se. In fact, you can say that about a lot of elements in Windows Vista. While the glass itself wasn't that prevalent, many apps had icons or backgrounds that used gradients and light effects to create a sense of depth and liveliness that played into the overall visual identity of the OS.

But which one is better?

I might like Windows Vista a bit more

It's strange to say, but while I feel like Apple was a lot more thoughtful and thorough with how it implemented its design vision, I think the approach in Windows Vista actually ends up working a little bit better. Just by applying it to the taskbar and window borders — UI elements you'll see all the time — the Aero Glass effect was immediately more impactful and stayed with you a lot more. It also did a good job of still being customizable, since you could choose a theme color that would be applied to some of these translucent surfaces.

Liquid Glass has a bit more to it: the way the glass effects brings forward the color of your background throughout the OS and apps is clever and looks great, but it's almost too subtle for its own good, especially with dark mode enabled. And while the translucent icons for every app are also really cool to see, these are things you won't be looking at as frequently, and they feel a little less impactful. In fact, most of these glass effects are in areas you'll only occasionally see, which means it's less likely to give this operating system a strong identity. The exception would be the Dock, though if you're like me, you might have it set to auto hide anyway, which then makes it a less frequent sight as well.

It feels as though Apple wanted to add just a touch of transparency to its design, but not make it too much of a focus, to avoid it feeling like a totally new identity for its platforms. It still wanted to keep some of the principles of modern design, with a cleaner, flatter look, adding just a touch of depth. And while I believe this probably makes it more palatable for most modern audiences, it just doesn't evoke quite the same feeling as Vista did.

It's still early

My impressions of macOS 26 Tahoe are based on the first developer beta that was made available earlier this week, and it's not uncommon at all for this kind of design change to feel inconsistent and half-baked in this development stage. I'm fully expecting Apple to make some improvements by the time macOS 26 rolls out to everyone later this fall, and my opinion may change somewhat by then.

As it stands, though, I do think Microsoft knocked it out of the park with Aero Glass back in 2006. Even with far fewer hardware resources, Vista implemented a design language that looked beautiful, and while you may prefer the flatter look of most modern designs, I'd still argue that Aero Glass has aged very well. It was improved even further with Windows 7, but this first iteration was already great.

Either way, I'm excited to see how macOS 26 progresses, and I do like the look Apple is going for. With some polish, it could be truly great.