The UI I could take or leave. Apps finally being able to process in the background- that's something else. But by and large, it feels like they're catching up to Android, but not surpassing them.
Not really, I promised myself I won't go back to using iOS as a phone OS. For the next iPad Mini it'll be great but I'll just wait for Paranoid Android to innovate and get the HTC One Mini's successor. I admit though, that Android is going to be behind doing a full revamp like this.
You're gonna switch just because they changed the UI? Aren't all of those new features available on Android? Plus, Google must be cooking some good stuff for next Android, so you should hold your horses :)
I was thinking the exact opposite. I have been thinking about switching to Android for some time now. I think it is safe to say that I'll be switching to Android for sure now. I was not impressed with a lot of the changes to iOS 7 and think a lot of them are down right ugly (icons, blurred background everywhere).
Weather appears to be a de-branded Yahoo Weather, but instead of local backgrounds pulled from flickr, there are generic animated backgrounds. I hope Yahoo Weather continues to exist.
The choice of colors and gradients look terrible. They made iOS look worse. They swung too far away from skeuomorphic design. Even the art on the icons, without considering the colors, look like an amateur drew them. Look at the SDK icon:
As opposed to the Generic Blue Square icons Apple used for everything previously?
iOS < 7 had totally non-distinctive icons for Safari, Mail, App Store, Weather and Stocks. I don't think a lack of distinction compared to previous editions is a valid complaint here.
The more I see screenshots, the less I like it. I agree the icons look amateur. The padding inside the edges of the icons is too small. I also don't like the color palette, they are far too in-your-face and gaudy.
They tried to get away from skeuomorphism, but still some remains. Just look at PassBook or the ugly 3D browsing through tabs.
The whole design simply is not well thought out. This has clearly been rushed, which is not something I expect from Apple. If iOS 7 was leaked, people wouldn't believe it's the real thing. Sadly, it is.
I didn't know what Microsoft meant in their description of Windows Phone as "Authentically Digital" until I just saw the ugly bombshell Apple just left.
The new iOS looks half-baked, they can't do anything too bold, else they lose their metaphors, yet they can't do anything radical like Microsoft did without redefining their platform and re-educating their users.
Yes. Along with those high profile designers in Cupertino.
>Tell me you like those new icons.
You don't seem to understand how design works.
It's not about "liking" the icons. Icons are not pretty pictures for you to "like" or not. It's about how the thing works, and if they fit their role.
"Liking them" has little to do with it. If you check top downloaded themes for Gnome, KDE, or Windows theme managers, you'll find out that people "like" all kinds of BS junk.
Yes. Along with those high profile designers in Cupertino.
>Tell me you like those new icons.
You don't seem to understand how design works.
It's not about "liking" the icons. Icons are not pretty pictures for you to "like" or not. It's about how the thing works, and if they fit their role.
"Liking them" has little to do with it. If you check top downloaded themes for Gnome, KDE, or Windows theme managers, you'll find out that people "like" all kinds of BS junk.
I didn't know what Microsoft meant in their description of Windows Phone as "Authentically Digital" until I just saw the ugly bombshell Apple just left.
The new iOS looks half-baked, they can't do anything too bold, else they lose their metaphors, yet they can't do anything radical like Microsoft did without redefining their platform and re-educating their users.
>They tried to get away from skeuomorphism, but still some remains. Just look at PassBook or the ugly 3D browsing through tabs.
What's ugly about those tabs?
And what's ...skeuomorphic about them? They remind you of real life huge rectangles with webpages on them that you browse through 3D space at home?
>The whole design simply is not well thought out. This has clearly been rushed, which is not something I expect from Apple.
BS, if they didn't make any drastic changes the same people would say "oh, they didn't go far enough" etc.
The new UI looks extremely polished and well thought out. And it wasn't just a design overhaul, they changed tons of behaviour and added lots of features too.
>I'm staying with Windows Phone.
Well, if you already have a Windows Phone, I don't think you're the kind of person that would appreciate iOS, anyway.
> Well, if you already have a Windows Phone, I don't think you're the kind of person that would appreciate iOS, anyway.
That's an arrogant and elitist thing to say. Your iWhatever doesn't make you a better human being, it just makes you think you have the right to tell that to others.
Skeuomorphic vs. flat is a red herring. Either one can be tastefully or tastelessly done. Today's iOS 7 unveil was unfortunately the latter.
The sad truth is: once Steve Jobs passed on, the quality of designs coming out of Apple started to decline. The ousting of Scott Forstall and the rumored eschewing of anything resembling skeuomorphic design was heralded as the coming of a great new era, however now that we can see the first results it's apparent that Apple is no longer capable of producing great design at all, no matter where it lands on the skeu vs. flat spectrum. The new designs are still as ugly as the Forstall-era stuff; it's just a different kind of ugly.
It makes me really sad, because the original iPhone was an incredible triumph that led the way of the industry for the next several years. I fear we will not see something of such high quality for a very long time after this. Nothing will change until there is once again someone in place at the top of Apple's hierarchy who can enforce the notion of good taste, regardless of the current fashion or style.
It's ugly because nobody gives a fuck about the SDK icon. It's not even an icon anyway -- there's no "SDK" app.
It's just a picture they put on the slides to represent the new SDK.
Don't you think if you want to make sweeping statements you'd better start with the icons people will actually see everyday? How about the home screen?
The icons are awful. They are midway between photorealistic and pictograms, ends up looking childish, tacky, unpolished.
John Ive has a minimalist approach on hardware that works really well, because the hardware is not at the center, it's the software. But on UIs, you can't be too minimal, since you only have one sense to work with (vision), so you have to work with strokes, textures, depth and color (the full gamut, you're not limited to primary colors).
It has better usability in many areas, but it was a bad idea making a 180 degree turn on the UI design with Ive at the wheel. Jobs would never let this out so unpolished.
I really can't believe they released this. The pictures are sometimes full of everything, the colour choices are especially weird (white and blue, why?) and overall I really understand Jobs' and Forstall's vision of the iOS UI better than Ive's.
The color choice is one of the least weird things in this announcement. White and blue have been Apple's (and most of the internet's) go to colors for a decade.
That's what I was thinking. I've had WinMo8 for about 6 months and a lot of the interface reminded me of applications on my device. It was WinMo8 with a splash of Android.
Not liking the design. The flat design mocks that were made by random people on Dribbble are better. The gradient in the mail icon is too much. It's like someone's first design in Photoshop back in 2000.
I actually like the new look, a few of the icons seem off, but I bet they grow on me. The transparency and layers makes a ton of sense to me. Really love control center, I can't wait to have easy access to my brightness. New Photos app looks amazing. Airdrop will be fantastic. New background / multitasking is a huge win.
Biggest let down, no inter-app communication improvements. I think that's a huge problem on iOS now, one I was hoping would be addressed.
The control center on the lockscreen is pretty hilarious to me. I can't wait to put my friends' iphones into airplane mode when they aren't looking, and see how long it takes them to figure it out.
At first glance, iOS 7 looks like a hybrid of Android and WebOS. Especially the card multi-tasking approach.
Notification center is cleaner but the colors are all over the place.
Lock screen is pure Android (animated wallpapers, etc.)
They might have made it too flat actually. A lot of text everywhere (the user will definitely get confused on what to tap and what not to tap) Cupertino might be used to UI but a lot of "ordinary" people are still pretty clueless when it comes to interacting with devices whether physical or virtual.
The Safari icon is simply atrocious, although the new Mac Pro looks like a really expensive trash can - I CANNOT believe Ive designed that product. It is just godawful.
Flashlight app? OK cool (RIP Flashlight app people)
Activation lock is a neat feature, probably a top-5.
Oh yeah, and photo filters - PHOTO FILTERS!!! They even included a square Instagram-like camera UI. Are you kidding me?
Apple did a great job of selling a BRAND much less so than selling great new products and features.
Activation lock is definitely the coolest bit in there, but from a technical perspective, what does that mean? You're still talking about client-enforced security; will jailbreaks (/similar classes of exploits) be able work around it?
This one is a big question mark, since it means that the device is either really locked down, or activation lock is just a marketing bullet point that won't mean much in reality. I'm not sure which of those choices I prefer.
Agree 100% with you on the Mac Pro. It's a novel design, but I have no idea why they went with AMD processors instead of the upcoming Ivy Bridge E Xeon E5s, which will run circles around the best AMD has to offer...
I don't know why someone would use a liveblog when they offered a very capable livestream. Also quite the rookie mistake considering the AMD logo they showed had "FireGL" written right on it.
Seriously, that was a little absurd. Why exactly does Apple want to limit its audience by only allowing people using Safari on OSX to watch it? I doubt all the markets are so saturated that every potential iPhone, Macbook, and Mac Pro customer is already on OS X.
If I didn't happen to have a Macbook as a work PC for the summer, I'd have missed the Macbook Air announcement. But god, do I want one.
It's not about limiting the audience. HTTP Live Streaming is just a better technology. Watching the keynote it was blatantly obvious. I have more outright pauses in the average Youtube video than an HTTP Live Stream. It required some rapid and noticeable quality changes but I would much prefer that over the video simply dropping out entirely.
Most just choose not to. That's not Apple's fault, nor is it a reason to fall back to a worse technology that degrades the experience for all watching to help out those on other platforms.
For the record, it wasn't at all limited to "Safari on OS X". Any device or program that properly implements HTTP Live Streaming could easily view the keynote. Apple listed Safari on OS X, the Apple TV, iPod touch, iPhone and iPad as all being verified, but other devices supported it too.
Whether or not HLS is supported by Chrome is quite confusing. I'm not surprised they blocked it at a User Agent level (which Google does all the time for their services, Reverse Image Search & Maps being good examples).
While Chrome has supported HLS for a WebM backend for some time now, documentation on their support for HLS with an MP4 backend is unclear. It seems to work now as of Chrome 26, but that wasn't always the case. It also works fine on Android devices past 3.2 because of Google TV.
>They might have made it too flat actually. A lot of text everywhere (the user will definitely get confused on what to tap and what not to tap)
Yea, that's one thing which Skeuomorphism does well is I know instantly what I can interact with and what I can't. I still may not know what to 'tap-and-hold' but at least I know what scrolls, what turns, what swipes.
Apple had certainly gone too far in some cases (the Podcasts app is my personal favorite with a reel-to-reel acting as UI), but many apps were finally striking a good balance. The Google Search iOS app, for example, uses dimension and light beautifully to represent what's part of the chrome, what's active, what's tappable, etc. Facebook is also finding a decent rhythm.
At first glance the multitasking UI looks like Palm's. But, if you listen to the keynote there is a whole lot of logic built on how it's done.
Unlike my understanding of Palm/Android the apps are not continuously running and draining battery. Instead the OS chooses when to give the app cycles. E.g. the heuristic explained is something like: The radio is on and there is a strong connection, the phone just went into standby, so before powering down the radio give the most frequently used apps a few cycles to update their content.
To me that seems utterly brilliant. My phone retains its battery life while the apps stay up to date. To me that is brilliant design and why I appreciate Apple products.
> To me that seems utterly brilliant. My phone retains its battery life while the apps stay up to date. To me that is brilliant design and why I appreciate Apple products.
Apple is a lot like the old Mercedes: simultaneously innovative and conservative. Mercedes used to have a lot of new features in R&D years before the competition, but would still roll some things out after the competition, after they got it right.
> To me that seems utterly brilliant. My phone retains its battery life while the apps stay up to date. To me that is brilliant design and why I appreciate Apple products.
Apple is a lot like the old Mercedes: simultaneously innovative and conservative. Mercedes used to have a lot of new features in R&D years before the competition, but would still roll some things out after the competition, after they got it right.
At first glance the multitasking UI looks like Palm's. But, if you listen to the keynote there is a whole lot of logic built on how it's done.
Unlike my understanding of Palm/Android the apps are not continuously running and draining battery. Instead the OS chooses when to give the app cycles. E.g. the heuristic explained is something like: The radio is on and there is a strong connection, the phone just went into standby, so before powering down the radio give the most frequently used apps a few cycles to update their content.
To me that seems utterly brilliant. My phone retains its battery life while the apps stay up to date. To me that is brilliant design and why I appreciate Apple products.
Obligatory flamebait response to your flamebait comment:
Android is a great R&D department. As long as it takes Apple less than three years to develop and deploy a feature they copy, Apple will still have it in the field on their devices before Android vendors do!
I'm not sure whether you've had a look at the API diffs from 6.0 to 7.0 (or for that matter, 5.0 to 6.0) but they introduce a lot of incredible functionality with each release.
I code on competing platforms and the only one I truly enjoy creating on is iOS — I can make things move, manipulate video and audio, images and typography in ways that are simply not possible on other platforms.
If you play with the scrolling in the new messages app, for example, you will notice discrete physics and collision for each UI element within each table cell. It feels fantastic to scroll through. The new UIDynamics APIs are innovative and so simple to use.
Irrespective of how you feel about the consumer facing side of the OS, the developer facing side is really a thing of beauty (with the occasional warts like Core Data over iCloud, and Core Data migration models).
I watched the key note with my girl friend - she is technical but still very much has a girls perspective and can be taken as a good representation of her friends.
She flipping loves this redesign and I'm pretty certain my not techie iPhone/iPad using parents will too - and that, is was really matters to Apple, that 98% of their market will love it and not just the 2% of us who build for their platform.
I like most of it, the colours are a bit much for me but in the main it will be refreshing to move on to something new. I have been toying with moving to Android but this redesign is enough to keep me on board - if I'm going to have to learn a new OS I may as well plump for the one most similar to what I already know
Agreed, my "the colours are a bit much for me" is an initial reaction. I'm sure my opinion will change once I get it in my hand as will many others I'm sure
I've never thought a screenshot of a mobile device's screen felt even remotely like holding the thing in my hand.
Exactly why it's foolish to only test mobile development on the Simulator/Emulators. I never use the Simulator for app development - it's not even remotely close to the same experience.
You take issue with the assumption that "being technical" may lead you to a less gender specific view of tech?
Or do you take issue with gender specific viewpoints in general?
In either case, simply quoting an excerpt is fairly pointless, as individual readers will make their own assumption, as I have that you did so because you have a problem with the statement.
I won't point out just how much is wrong with the excerpt that OP has quoted (because HN is a gender-troll breeding ground unworthy of my time), but you should definitely research gender-based descrimination. It will make you a better person and a more successful leader!
"because HN is a gender-troll breeding ground unworthy of my time"
It's pretty impressive to discount the views of thousands of other people and pontify yourself in the same sentence - all while adding nothing to the conversation too!
I'm going to assume you meant this as an aside, and not in response to my comment, as to do otherwise would be... uncharitable of me.
I believe there are interpretations of the OP that are not discriminatory or sexist, assuming you believe there can be any difference in the point of view of a particular gender given the culture they are brought up in.
I believe it's our responsibility as participants in the discussion to attempt to understand one another before levying charges, not only because it's the charitable thing to do, but because I wholeheartedly believe it leads to better, more rational discourse.
To do otherwise leads to, to paraphrase you, a gender-troll breeding ground unworthy of our time.
On my old feature phone, I switched from the red color theme to the blue every other week. It looked good every single time just because it was different.
(Of course, nothing under the hood has changed. So all the reasons for going Android are still valid.)
Although clearly not completely resolved, there are a number of really interesting ideas at play. The programmatic and reactive color schemes that we first saw in iTunes for album art, for example is really nice.
The parallax effect looks fun but it will have to be subtle enough to not be gimmicky after a week or two.
Still not moving back from Android (love my Nexus 4, 7, and 10) but this will be nice to play with on the iPad Mini I picked up a couple of weeks ago so I can stay current on iOS and help Mom with stuff remotely.
It's interesting to see how iOS and Android each go back-and-forth swiping features from each other (or from popular accessory apps; Apple's the worst at doing that).
Oh God why. I've got nothing against flat design done well, but this just makes everything so much harder to SEE.
Look at the example screen for "Control Center" -- it looks like a geometric indistinguishable mess. The line around buttons is the same as the line dividing sections is almost the same as the line in sliders.
The example screen for weather shows thin white text against a light blue background, which I can barely make out on my monitor, let alone on a phone.
If anything, phones need extra affordance as what is a label and what is tappable, since we have fat fingers, hold phones faraway where things are small, and often in bright sunlight where there's little contrast we can make out. Phones need extra contrast, not less.
I'm really not one for hyperbole, but Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave. This isn't about an aesthetic choice, it's just about common-sense usability and quality control. That weather app looks completely useless in the real world, and the fact that Apple's internal processes have allowed this to be launched does not bode well.
Then use one of your friends that has the developer account, or wait till it's on every phone in the Apple Store. Either way, the point is to reserve judgment until you use it. Just like everything else.
You can absolutely pass valid judgement on quality of usability on sight alone.
If I showed you a picture of a 4 foot wide ship wheel and said I was going to install it in my Mazda Miata - you'd know instantly that it would be unusable, right? How about a screen-shot of a text editor that only shows you one giant character at a time?
Even as we move away from the ridiculous end of the spectrum of examples - you can know how usable something is based on past experience with similar environments.
That nobody in the real world has actually tried it yet?
Fair enough. But I remember when Apple first made the iTunes icons monochromatic, and everyone complained that they'd no longer be able to distinguish the icons. People seemed to adapt pretty quickly though.
Some things, like the alarm app, really annoy me, but overall the interface is nice. If only there were more third party apps, we don't even have facebook or skype on the marketplace my phone supports (which is hardware locked dammit!).
We have full-featured instagram (3rd party app call led instance), we have a Facebook app and you can definitely upload pictures, and there's even a snapchat client too. But I agree, the app situation is undoubtedly worse on WP. I don't use very many apps personally, so it works for me.
Ah, I only have experience in the US store where there is Facebook, Skype and a ton of other good stuff. I suppose its only a matter of time, but for now I agree that is kind of unacceptable .
I love my new Nokia 928. Windows 8 phone is really smooth and everything can be accomplished using one hand. iOS 7 also looks pretty nice so it will fun comparing the two when it gets released.
Yeh, I have a friend that went from a Lumia 920 to an S3 and then an HTC One and he want's to come back. I live in San Francisco so I get joked a lot about my phone until it's time to take a picture :)
I have. I'm typing this from iOS 7. My opinion has changed little from seeing it on the Keynote to actually using it. Some graphic details don't seem as bad in person and others are much worse.
On the plus side, it's very speedy. Plus, it makes existing 3rd party apps look glorious, with their attractive, last-generation looks.
I have a theory that the accelerometer-linked 3D "layer" effects might make the flat interface more usable in person. As in, the subtle perspective shift would make it obvious that a button is a button, etc. Can you comment on that? Are those effects extended to all of the UI elements?
It seems like a pretty gimmicky effect right now, although if you hold it in a certain way it does have a cool 3D effect. The scrolling animation stutters quite a bit currently. I anticipate they'll have that fixed by release.
They aren't, and even the little layer effect on the home screen is nothing but a gimmick. I don't wave around with my phone while I use it and would never have noticed the iOS6 volume slider effect if blogs hadn't pointed it out.
Yep, it's much speedier than iOS 6 on my Verizon iPhone 5, and I'm coming from the bias "WTF are you doing Apple?!". Like I said, the only performance issues I've noticed are with the parallax scrolling background, it's still a bit stuttery.
Yep, it's much speedier than iOS 6 on my Verizon iPhone 5, and I'm coming from the bias "WTF are you doing Apple?!". Like I said, the only performance issues I've noticed are with the parallax scrolling background, it's still a bit stuttery.
yeah, the thin, light text didn't look great during the presentation, but i can't imagine they wouldn't test it in bright sunlight/normal mobile phone situations, so I'm gonna wait til its actually out and in front of me to judge.
I'm inside and I find it straining to read the labels of the four dock apps. Of course I know what they are, but I always find low-contrast, Helvetica Superthin designer porn very insulting to the user. Either show something or don't.
Agreed. Did they do any kind of usability / legibility studies on the thinner typeface? I mean, I mostly use my phone to read email. Why would they reduce contrast on the default text and make it even harder to read?! Just because you have higher resolution screens, doesn't mean you can get away with a thinner sans serif. What's the point if everyone has to increase the size of the text to read it?
> Just because you have higher resolution screens, doesn't mean you can get away with a thinner sans serif.
Yes, it does, actually. As resolution increases, so does the Nyquist frequency, which means you can accurately convey higher-frequency signals. In spatial terms, more resolution means finer lines without aliasing errors.
Surely there is a hard limit on this though (unless we have bionic eyes and/or small expanding robot fingers (like in ghost in the shell (http://youtu.be/PkyZGZRnQb4)))
Certainly, there is. Laser printers print at about 300 dpi and most users can't see any visible pixels there, so at normal reading distance, that seems to be close to the maximum resolution you need to visibly pixel-free from the user's perspective.
Going higher than that probably means thinner blank lines will just appear fainter and not thinner.
Comments with "Really?" on the end are extremely disrespectful, and I see it all the time. Just because something is obvious and common-sense to you, does not mean it is to someone else. Offending someone is not a good form of persuasion. Please consider not doing that in future because you probably do have good ideas, and it would be nice if people heard them.
Speaking of this design, the icons are asymmetric. More so by the unharmonious colour selection. However, the notification centre and animations are well done.
Rabino - I'm not sure what you are suggesting here. I'm trying to understand if you are commenting on Apple's well known philosophy of not engaging in any form of end-user design engagement, or whether you believe that a company of Apple's stature would absolutely engage in usability testing.
A lot (many? most?) of Apple's design decisions are made by designers who create the best product, based on a combination of their intuition, design sense, and overriding design principles.
Some application (Podcast App) - have clearly never seen any form of usability testing prior to release.
I've seen more than one poorly designed, poorly executed product go to market with lots of user testing. I'd love to have someone from Apple comment on their design process, because it's really just conjecture that they do or don't usability test their products, but I'm not holding my breath.
I called out the Podcast App because it was unusable by almost everyone who tried it after it shipped. I personally spent 45 minutes trying to graph out on paper the interactions between various channels/tuner, and mastering the finicky little switches on it, to no avail.
I cannot believe such an App had even a single "average" user attempt to use it - it had to have been entirely the product of one or two individuals operating in a vacuum.
> Agreed. Did they do any kind of usability / legibility studies on the thinner typeface?
No, of course they didn't. Apple is widely acknowledged in the industry as having amateurish design and an utter lack of anything resembling perfectionism or attention to detail.
Seriously, this may be a flop from them, but I cannot comprehend the mindset that would surmise they did no usability testing off a few screenshots.
If they did usability testing with a wide range of people, I am pretty sure one of them would have leaked the design. I'm not sure how would have done usability testing with non-employees.
> Apple is widely acknowledged in the industry as having amateurish design and an utter lack of anything resembling perfectionism or attention to detail.
I would love to see your source on this one, because I never stop hearing the opposite.
Apple has significantly invested in accessibility technologies for iOS and OS X. The tail doesn't wag the dog, but I don't think they'll have out and out ignored accessibility concerns (legibility and usability for larger numbers) after convincing developers to go down that route.
It gets worse. In their design guidelines they say that instead of visual cues for buttons you should use COLORS. As a colorblind dude I'm fucking apalled.
They could have at least added a little shadow or something, like they would usually. I don't know what they were thinking. I usually trust Apple with these design matters.
Isn't the whole point of flat design replacing the loud superfluousness of skeuomorphism's textures with equally jarring psychedelic colour schemes? That's how designers prove their worth, by adding more stuff, right?
Sorry, I wasn't really agreeing with any of the GP comment - I think iOS7-UI was exactly what they needed. A very modern refresh and I think it's sharp (and I love Holo and WP8 has a very unique style certainly).
I don't like the background of CC myself, but I think that's actually because they're letting the hue of the homescreen icons below bleed through too much. It's "neat" but I think it's kinda visually gross :S
First feeling when i saw the icons: Shock! I still can't believe they came up with this mix of ios+windows+android UI.
The whole thing looks like the phone of a 16y old girl. with candy on top. and syrup.
As for the OS part, i think i no longer understand versioning.
But all the pundits will still lap this shit design up ...because its Apple. They've got some of the best designers on Earth, I just can't believe this is what they came up with for UI.
Wow. Apple basically took all the shitty parts of Google's design philosophy and scaled it to epic proportions of fail.
Take a look at the text screenshot. It is hard to tell where I should touch to start typing. It is hard to tell where the buttons are. Overall, this is incredibly shitty UI.
> Take a look at the text screenshot. It is hard to tell where I should touch to start typing.
My guess is, the text box below the message list, which in the same place as it is in every sms app on every modern phone platform, and which is the exact same shape as the text box was in the old iOS sms app (http://i.imgur.com/jSGZADn.png), and which has the word 'send' next to it.
It appears that they still haven't changed the keyboard layout. You'd think in 7 revisions that they'd make some adjustments to the keyboard. I am not a fan of the always uppercase.
I love how people are simultaneously describing it as un-original and a ripoff while also invoking Android, WebOS, Windows Phone and Windows 7 Aero as to what it's "ripping off".
Maybe it's actually original? If you think this is Windows Phone, you've never spent any time on that platform. Windows Phone is defined by solid colour tiles and typography. iOS 7 isn't, at all.
True, but this also isn't the case. Flat is just a quick descriptor for the icons, when really "simple" would be more apt. It's really not flat in practice.
I can't even read these comments. They swing too wildly from people loving the redesign to hating it. Apple was never, ever, going to be able to live up to everybody's aesthetic standards.
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That is ugly. So is the iTunes icon, so is the Safari icon. Not a fan.
iOS < 7 had totally non-distinctive icons for Safari, Mail, App Store, Weather and Stocks. I don't think a lack of distinction compared to previous editions is a valid complaint here.
They certainly have gone for a very bright look.
The whole design simply is not well thought out. This has clearly been rushed, which is not something I expect from Apple. If iOS 7 was leaked, people wouldn't believe it's the real thing. Sadly, it is.
I'm staying with Windows Phone.
(If you'll indulge me linking to my own article, I've tried to lay out a better framework here: http://interuserface.net/2013/05/flat-is-not-the-opposite-of...)
The new iOS looks half-baked, they can't do anything too bold, else they lose their metaphors, yet they can't do anything radical like Microsoft did without redefining their platform and re-educating their users.
Run away. Fast.
Towards an Applestore? I've been using an iPhone since 3GS, and this is the best release ever. Both in features and looks.
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2013/06/ios-co...
Yes. Along with those high profile designers in Cupertino.
>Tell me you like those new icons.
You don't seem to understand how design works.
It's not about "liking" the icons. Icons are not pretty pictures for you to "like" or not. It's about how the thing works, and if they fit their role.
"Liking them" has little to do with it. If you check top downloaded themes for Gnome, KDE, or Windows theme managers, you'll find out that people "like" all kinds of BS junk.
Yes. Along with those high profile designers in Cupertino.
>Tell me you like those new icons.
You don't seem to understand how design works.
It's not about "liking" the icons. Icons are not pretty pictures for you to "like" or not. It's about how the thing works, and if they fit their role.
"Liking them" has little to do with it. If you check top downloaded themes for Gnome, KDE, or Windows theme managers, you'll find out that people "like" all kinds of BS junk.
The new iOS looks half-baked, they can't do anything too bold, else they lose their metaphors, yet they can't do anything radical like Microsoft did without redefining their platform and re-educating their users.
Run away. Fast.
What's ugly about those tabs?
And what's ...skeuomorphic about them? They remind you of real life huge rectangles with webpages on them that you browse through 3D space at home?
What's ugly about those tabs?
And what's ...skeuomorphic about them? They remind you of real life huge rectangles with webpages on them that you browse through 3D space at home?
>The whole design simply is not well thought out. This has clearly been rushed, which is not something I expect from Apple.
BS, if they didn't make any drastic changes the same people would say "oh, they didn't go far enough" etc.
The new UI looks extremely polished and well thought out. And it wasn't just a design overhaul, they changed tons of behaviour and added lots of features too.
>I'm staying with Windows Phone.
Well, if you already have a Windows Phone, I don't think you're the kind of person that would appreciate iOS, anyway.
That's an arrogant and elitist thing to say. Your iWhatever doesn't make you a better human being, it just makes you think you have the right to tell that to others.
Don't be an iAsshole.
I like the overall new style, however a bit of redefining here and there would be good, like some of the icons. Great update.
The sad truth is: once Steve Jobs passed on, the quality of designs coming out of Apple started to decline. The ousting of Scott Forstall and the rumored eschewing of anything resembling skeuomorphic design was heralded as the coming of a great new era, however now that we can see the first results it's apparent that Apple is no longer capable of producing great design at all, no matter where it lands on the skeu vs. flat spectrum. The new designs are still as ugly as the Forstall-era stuff; it's just a different kind of ugly.
It makes me really sad, because the original iPhone was an incredible triumph that led the way of the industry for the next several years. I fear we will not see something of such high quality for a very long time after this. Nothing will change until there is once again someone in place at the top of Apple's hierarchy who can enforce the notion of good taste, regardless of the current fashion or style.
It's ugly because nobody gives a fuck about the SDK icon. It's not even an icon anyway -- there's no "SDK" app.
It's just a picture they put on the slides to represent the new SDK.
Don't you think if you want to make sweeping statements you'd better start with the icons people will actually see everyday? How about the home screen?
John Ive has a minimalist approach on hardware that works really well, because the hardware is not at the center, it's the software. But on UIs, you can't be too minimal, since you only have one sense to work with (vision), so you have to work with strokes, textures, depth and color (the full gamut, you're not limited to primary colors).
It has better usability in many areas, but it was a bad idea making a 180 degree turn on the UI design with Ive at the wheel. Jobs would never let this out so unpolished.
edit: And Apple made Bing the default search engine! http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/10/apple-slips-default-bing-in...
It's like Google's UI and Microsoft's Metro had a one night stand, then 9 months later dropped it off at the front-steps of the Jailbreak Orphanage.
Biggest let down, no inter-app communication improvements. I think that's a huge problem on iOS now, one I was hoping would be addressed.
Olde' Vista Aero did this better.
At least iOS 7 cranks up the blur radius.
At first glance, iOS 7 looks like a hybrid of Android and WebOS. Especially the card multi-tasking approach.
Notification center is cleaner but the colors are all over the place.
Lock screen is pure Android (animated wallpapers, etc.)
They might have made it too flat actually. A lot of text everywhere (the user will definitely get confused on what to tap and what not to tap) Cupertino might be used to UI but a lot of "ordinary" people are still pretty clueless when it comes to interacting with devices whether physical or virtual.
The Safari icon is simply atrocious, although the new Mac Pro looks like a really expensive trash can - I CANNOT believe Ive designed that product. It is just godawful.
Flashlight app? OK cool (RIP Flashlight app people)
Activation lock is a neat feature, probably a top-5.
Oh yeah, and photo filters - PHOTO FILTERS!!! They even included a square Instagram-like camera UI. Are you kidding me?
Apple did a great job of selling a BRAND much less so than selling great new products and features.
This one is a big question mark, since it means that the device is either really locked down, or activation lock is just a marketing bullet point that won't mean much in reality. I'm not sure which of those choices I prefer.
If I didn't happen to have a Macbook as a work PC for the summer, I'd have missed the Macbook Air announcement. But god, do I want one.
The technology is there and can be implemented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming
Most just choose not to. That's not Apple's fault, nor is it a reason to fall back to a worse technology that degrades the experience for all watching to help out those on other platforms.
For the record, it wasn't at all limited to "Safari on OS X". Any device or program that properly implements HTTP Live Streaming could easily view the keynote. Apple listed Safari on OS X, the Apple TV, iPod touch, iPhone and iPad as all being verified, but other devices supported it too.
While Chrome has supported HLS for a WebM backend for some time now, documentation on their support for HLS with an MP4 backend is unclear. It seems to work now as of Chrome 26, but that wasn't always the case. It also works fine on Android devices past 3.2 because of Google TV.
-- Comes with an Intel XEON E5
Yea, that's one thing which Skeuomorphism does well is I know instantly what I can interact with and what I can't. I still may not know what to 'tap-and-hold' but at least I know what scrolls, what turns, what swipes.
It does it well when it is done well.
Then there are elements like the red book mark in Contacts. where you think - what the hell is that meant to do?
Most of these features are just copies of other popular apps/operating systems that came out over a year ago.
WebOS + Android into one and the fanboys clapping
At first glance the multitasking UI looks like Palm's. But, if you listen to the keynote there is a whole lot of logic built on how it's done.
Unlike my understanding of Palm/Android the apps are not continuously running and draining battery. Instead the OS chooses when to give the app cycles. E.g. the heuristic explained is something like: The radio is on and there is a strong connection, the phone just went into standby, so before powering down the radio give the most frequently used apps a few cycles to update their content.
To me that seems utterly brilliant. My phone retains its battery life while the apps stay up to date. To me that is brilliant design and why I appreciate Apple products.
Apple is a lot like the old Mercedes: simultaneously innovative and conservative. Mercedes used to have a lot of new features in R&D years before the competition, but would still roll some things out after the competition, after they got it right.
Apple is a lot like the old Mercedes: simultaneously innovative and conservative. Mercedes used to have a lot of new features in R&D years before the competition, but would still roll some things out after the competition, after they got it right.
At first glance the multitasking UI looks like Palm's. But, if you listen to the keynote there is a whole lot of logic built on how it's done.
Unlike my understanding of Palm/Android the apps are not continuously running and draining battery. Instead the OS chooses when to give the app cycles. E.g. the heuristic explained is something like: The radio is on and there is a strong connection, the phone just went into standby, so before powering down the radio give the most frequently used apps a few cycles to update their content.
To me that seems utterly brilliant. My phone retains its battery life while the apps stay up to date. To me that is brilliant design and why I appreciate Apple products.
It is indeed much simpler to lead a revolution that has already happened.
Android is a great R&D department. As long as it takes Apple less than three years to develop and deploy a feature they copy, Apple will still have it in the field on their devices before Android vendors do!
But ya, vendors taking forever to update Android is a big problem. That's why I stick with Nexus devices.
I code on competing platforms and the only one I truly enjoy creating on is iOS — I can make things move, manipulate video and audio, images and typography in ways that are simply not possible on other platforms.
If you play with the scrolling in the new messages app, for example, you will notice discrete physics and collision for each UI element within each table cell. It feels fantastic to scroll through. The new UIDynamics APIs are innovative and so simple to use.
Irrespective of how you feel about the consumer facing side of the OS, the developer facing side is really a thing of beauty (with the occasional warts like Core Data over iCloud, and Core Data migration models).
She flipping loves this redesign and I'm pretty certain my not techie iPhone/iPad using parents will too - and that, is was really matters to Apple, that 98% of their market will love it and not just the 2% of us who build for their platform.
I like most of it, the colours are a bit much for me but in the main it will be refreshing to move on to something new. I have been toying with moving to Android but this redesign is enough to keep me on board - if I'm going to have to learn a new OS I may as well plump for the one most similar to what I already know
I've never thought a screenshot of a mobile device's screen felt even remotely like holding the thing in my hand.
Or do you take issue with gender specific viewpoints in general?
In either case, simply quoting an excerpt is fairly pointless, as individual readers will make their own assumption, as I have that you did so because you have a problem with the statement.
I believe there are interpretations of the OP that are not discriminatory or sexist, assuming you believe there can be any difference in the point of view of a particular gender given the culture they are brought up in.
I believe it's our responsibility as participants in the discussion to attempt to understand one another before levying charges, not only because it's the charitable thing to do, but because I wholeheartedly believe it leads to better, more rational discourse.
To do otherwise leads to, to paraphrase you, a gender-troll breeding ground unworthy of our time.
(Of course, nothing under the hood has changed. So all the reasons for going Android are still valid.)
The parallax effect looks fun but it will have to be subtle enough to not be gimmicky after a week or two.
It's interesting to see how iOS and Android each go back-and-forth swiping features from each other (or from popular accessory apps; Apple's the worst at doing that).
Look at the example screen for "Control Center" -- it looks like a geometric indistinguishable mess. The line around buttons is the same as the line dividing sections is almost the same as the line in sliders.
The example screen for weather shows thin white text against a light blue background, which I can barely make out on my monitor, let alone on a phone.
If anything, phones need extra affordance as what is a label and what is tappable, since we have fat fingers, hold phones faraway where things are small, and often in bright sunlight where there's little contrast we can make out. Phones need extra contrast, not less.
I'm really not one for hyperbole, but Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave. This isn't about an aesthetic choice, it's just about common-sense usability and quality control. That weather app looks completely useless in the real world, and the fact that Apple's internal processes have allowed this to be launched does not bode well.
"That is iOS7."
"It appears to be different from iOS6."
"That's an iPhone!"
"I see that Apple made this."
"Well this discussion is getting a little bit too heated for me, I think I will go and reserve my judgement somewhere else for a minute."
(Or has Apple closed this hole yet with timestamping?)
You do realize you are on a web site designed for commentary on tech matters?
If I showed you a picture of a 4 foot wide ship wheel and said I was going to install it in my Mazda Miata - you'd know instantly that it would be unusable, right? How about a screen-shot of a text editor that only shows you one giant character at a time?
Even as we move away from the ridiculous end of the spectrum of examples - you can know how usable something is based on past experience with similar environments.
._.
Fair enough. But I remember when Apple first made the iTunes icons monochromatic, and everyone complained that they'd no longer be able to distinguish the icons. People seemed to adapt pretty quickly though.
Surely someone somewhere has bought a Windows phone ;)
Really, all I want is a phone that will upload pictures directly to Facebook.
On the plus side, it's very speedy. Plus, it makes existing 3rd party apps look glorious, with their attractive, last-generation looks.
This early build doesn't seem to be optimized very much.
Indeed.
#slatepitch
Yes, it does, actually. As resolution increases, so does the Nyquist frequency, which means you can accurately convey higher-frequency signals. In spatial terms, more resolution means finer lines without aliasing errors.
Going higher than that probably means thinner blank lines will just appear fainter and not thinner.
Speaking of this design, the icons are asymmetric. More so by the unharmonious colour selection. However, the notification centre and animations are well done.
A lot (many? most?) of Apple's design decisions are made by designers who create the best product, based on a combination of their intuition, design sense, and overriding design principles.
Some application (Podcast App) - have clearly never seen any form of usability testing prior to release.
I cannot believe such an App had even a single "average" user attempt to use it - it had to have been entirely the product of one or two individuals operating in a vacuum.
No, of course they didn't. Apple is widely acknowledged in the industry as having amateurish design and an utter lack of anything resembling perfectionism or attention to detail.
Seriously, this may be a flop from them, but I cannot comprehend the mindset that would surmise they did no usability testing off a few screenshots.
I would love to see your source on this one, because I never stop hearing the opposite.
I mean, where do you see the: "jarring psychedelic colour schemes"?
If anything the grant-parent brings up the example of the Control Center, which is the opposite of that, just a two-color subdued thing.
I don't like the background of CC myself, but I think that's actually because they're letting the hue of the homescreen icons below bleed through too much. It's "neat" but I think it's kinda visually gross :S
Take a look at the text screenshot. It is hard to tell where I should touch to start typing. It is hard to tell where the buttons are. Overall, this is incredibly shitty UI.
My guess is, the text box below the message list, which in the same place as it is in every sms app on every modern phone platform, and which is the exact same shape as the text box was in the old iOS sms app (http://i.imgur.com/jSGZADn.png), and which has the word 'send' next to it.
That's just a guess, though. I could be wrong.
http://www.apple.com/ios/ios7/features/
Maybe it's actually original? If you think this is Windows Phone, you've never spent any time on that platform. Windows Phone is defined by solid colour tiles and typography. iOS 7 isn't, at all.
I'm going to wait until it's in my hands and can play around with it.
I'm going to wait until it's in my hands and can play around with it.
I'm going to wait until it's in my hands and can play around with it.
I'm going to wait until it's in my hands and can play around with it.