Seems like you're conflating translucency and transparency, and Apple is being a bit imprecise with those terms too. As in, if you turn off what Apple is calling "transparency", is the interface still arguably "translucent" in the way that's implied by the Carmack quote, which I take to mean some Minority Report barely frosted-glass effect in the background.
> If I can see through it, it's transparent.
Yes, if you can clearly make out the details behind whatever it is you're looking through.
> If the color changes behind the thing, and I can somehow intuit that -- good chance's we're dealing with transparency.
This would normally be translucency, akin to a shower door or curtain that lets you see that someone is in there and maybe who, but not much more.
In this case though, it's a bit weird, and it seems like the person you responded to did have a relevant question, because as far as I've seen it's kind of pseudo-transparent but not quite translucent in different contexts, in the sense that you can more clearly see through to detail that's sometimes there (slider position, magnifying glass) and sometimes only derived from the bottom layer, like colors changing.
To me, it's less like a shower door vs window, and more like a window vs looking through the bottom of a shot glass, but im some cases closer to opaque than translucent if the transparent gimmick is turned off, based on how the question was asked.
> If I can see through it, it's transparent.
Yes, if you can clearly make out the details behind whatever it is you're looking through.
> If the color changes behind the thing, and I can somehow intuit that -- good chance's we're dealing with transparency.
This would normally be translucency, akin to a shower door or curtain that lets you see that someone is in there and maybe who, but not much more.
In this case though, it's a bit weird, and it seems like the person you responded to did have a relevant question, because as far as I've seen it's kind of pseudo-transparent but not quite translucent in different contexts, in the sense that you can more clearly see through to detail that's sometimes there (slider position, magnifying glass) and sometimes only derived from the bottom layer, like colors changing.
To me, it's less like a shower door vs window, and more like a window vs looking through the bottom of a shot glass, but im some cases closer to opaque than translucent if the transparent gimmick is turned off, based on how the question was asked.