Not just Liquid Glass: 6 times Apple backtracked on a major design decision

Apple’s new Liquid Glass interface has been somewhat controversial since it was introduced in June at WWDC 2025. While some users like the bold new look, others are not fans of how the exaggerated transparencies and fluid interactions. In response, Apple is finally letting users choose whether they want Liquid Glass or not in iOS 26.1.

Apple is known for following through on certain decisions, so when the company reverses a major decision, it’s quite shocking, although this is not the first time Apple has done so. Even a company like Apple acknowledges that not everyone embraces radical shifts.

Read on as we revisit some other decisions Apple made that were later reconsidered.

Liquid Glass

Let’s start with the most recent change that ended up being reversed in some ways, which is also one of the boldest changes in Apple’s design language in recent years. 

Liquid Glass is what Apple calls the new interface in iOS 26, macOS 26, and its other operating 2026 systems. It was created as a “new material” to breathe new life into Apple software, which had otherwise been virtually unchanged since 2013, when iOS 7 introduced its polarizing “flat” interface.

Back in 2013, many people criticized the new look of iOS 7. Although the company has made a lot of tweaks since the first release, there has never been an option to go back to the skeuomorphic design of iOS 6 and earlier versions. Apple made it clear that flat design was here to stay.

With Liquid Glass, Apple has seemingly given in to the negative opinions about Liquid Glass and has decided to give users a choice. Starting with the latest iOS 26.1 beta, users can choose the intensity of Liquid Glass with a new toggle available in Settings.

The “Clear” option is the default Liquid Glass that Apple wants you to use, but there’s also a “Tinted” option that increases contrast and reduces transparency, making everything look like older versions of iOS.

While letting users choose how they want their phone to look is a nice thing (especially considering accessibility), it’s really intriguing to think that Apple spent months highlighting the new Liquid Glass look only to give users the option to turn it off just a few weeks after release.

Butterfly keyboard

Apple’s “butterfly” keyboard mechanism was introduced in 2015 on MacBooks, with the purpose of making laptops thinner. However, due to the ultra-thin design of the keys, they ended up being more susceptible to failure as dust accumulated under the mechanisms. 

At the same time, many users criticized the butterfly keyboard for its low key “travel,” which is the level of softness or hardness when you press the keys. Since the keyboard was super thin, typing on the butterfly keyboard became uncomfortable for some users after a while.

Apple stuck with the butterfly keyboard for many years, but the problems only got worse. It got so bad that it had to launch a replacement program for faulty keyboards, and it also faced many class action lawsuits because of this.

In 2019, Apple released a new 16-inch MacBook Pro that had a more conventional keyboard without the butterfly mechanism. All other MacBooks released since then have also abandoned the problematic ultra-thin keyboard.

Touch Bar

The Touch Bar is another design choice that has divided opinion among Apple users. Introduced with the bold redesign of the MacBook Pro in 2016, the Touch Bar replaced the row of function keys on the keyboard. Instead, users were given a thin touch display that displayed different buttons depending on the app being used.

For example, if you opened the Photos app, it let you scroll through all your images. If you were watching a video, you could fast-forward or rewind just by swiping your finger on the Touch Bar, just like on an iPhone or iPad. The idea was really promising.

To this day, Apple still argues against having full touchscreens on the Mac (although rumors suggest that this will change soon), so the Touch Bar aimed to bring touch to the Mac in a different way.

To be honest, the Touch Bar seemed really cool at the time, and it was probably way ahead of its time. However, not everyone liked the Touch Bar.

Since it had no tactile feedback, some people claimed they constantly pressed the wrong keys when trying to use the Touch Bar without looking directly at it. Also, since the Touch Bar had its own software, it was prone to becoming unresponsive from time to time, making it impossible to press the Esc key.

Apple kept the Touch Bar in many generations of MacBook Pro, but it also never expanded the feature to other Macs. In 2021, with the introduction of a redesigned MacBook Pro built with Apple Silicon, the Touch Bar was gone and replaced by the good old row of function keys.

During the keynote to launch the laptop, Apple said it brought back the “familiar, tactile feel of mechanical keys that pro users love” without directly acknowledging that the Touch Bar was gone.

Photos

With iOS 18, Apple completely redesigned the Photos app on iPhone and iPad. While the idea was to make the app more customizable, many users didn’t like the changes and argued that the app had become too complicated to use.

Instead of splitting the app into different tabs (Library, Albums, etc.), everything was shown on a single screen divided into multiple sections. The app also gained a large carousel to display featured photos and albums, but the feature ended up being removed from the betas even before iOS 18 was released to the public.

A large number of users complained about the Photos app on social media, but Apple never publicly acknowledged the overall disapproval of the new interface. Still, with iOS 26, the app was redesigned again to look more like the old version, now organized into two different tabs: Library and Collections.

Safari

Speaking of apps, Safari also had its moment of being disliked after a major redesign. With iOS 15, Apple introduced a new interface to Safari that moved the URL bar to the bottom of the screen. More than that, the bar became extremely minimalist, showing only the buttons to share and show all open tabs.

After receiving negative feedback, the company has tweaked the address bar again to bring back the navigation and bookmark buttons. Then it added the option to revert to the old Safari design, which is still present in the latest version of iOS.

Interestingly, iOS 26 brought back the “Compact” Safari interface from the early iOS 15 betas, so perhaps the world just wasn’t ready for such a drastic change at the time. But it’s still not fully committed and offers the option to keep things working like before.

MagSafe on the Mac

Another Apple design decision that was eventually reversed years later is the end of MagSafe on the Mac. The iconic magnetic cable charging solution was introduced with the first MacBook Pro in 2006, and it became one of the standout features of owning a MacBook.

Users no longer had to worry about someone tripping over the charging cable when it was plugged into their Mac. Thanks to magnets, the cable would simply detach from the laptop without causing any damage.

However, in the effort to make MacBooks thinner and more portable, MagSafe was phased out in 2015 with the 12-inch MacBook. The redesigned MacBook Pro and MacBook Air that followed soon after also ditched MagSafe in favor of USB-C charging.

It took years for Apple to bring MagSafe back to Macs, actually arriving on the iPhone first. It was finally added back to the 2021 MacBook Pro and is now back on the MacBook Air as well.

For longtime users, these rollbacks are a reminder that Apple really does listen, even if it takes years to act. Sometimes the company’s best innovations don’t come from introducing something new, but from knowing when to bring something back.