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iOS 7 looks familiar

chris.millr.org

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Re: iOS 7 looks familiar

#51

Post by dschep »

kunai wrote: post #48
myko wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The keyboard could easily switch between upper and lower case depending on what the user is actually entering. Why wouldn't they do that? It just seems like an easy win.

I don't really see how this is a huge step up in terms of usability...

Dunno about myko, but every time I use an iOS device it really confuses me. Comparing it to a physical keyboard isn't fair, since on software keyboards shift is stateful. lower/UPPER casing the keyboard is a much larger (very convenient) indicator of that state than the altered shift button.

Re: iOS 7 looks familiar

#53

Post by snprbob86 »

kunai wrote: post #48
myko wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The keyboard could easily switch between upper and lower case depending on what the user is actually entering. Why wouldn't they do that? It just seems like an easy win.

I don't really see how this is a huge step up in terms of usability...

I think I'd actually find it quite distracting while I am typing.

Re: iOS 7 looks familiar

#54

Post by Samuel_Michon »

cheald wrote: post #12
sosuke wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The text slide to unlock has a shine animation that moves from left to right.

I get that, but I think it's very difficult to make an argument that given a new user, it would be interpreted as an interaction cue rather than just visual polish. The presence of the up arrow is actively misleading, from a UX perspective. It's like having a slide toggle that you have to double tap to activate!

iPhoneOS/iOS has been around for 6 years. 600 million devices have been sold that all have the same ‘slide to unlock’ mechanism. Now that the majority of phones being sold are smartphones, Apple must’ve felt that it’s OK to remove some of the training wheels. Whether that’s wise remains to be seen. Microsoft finally removed the ‘Start’ button from Windows, but that has been met with quite some resistance, from new and experienced users alike.

Few people read user manuals, which Apple knows. It doesn’t even ship a physical user manual with their iOS products (just a thin quickstart guide). There are in-depth user manuals available for download[1], but the percentage of iPhone owners who read it must be negligible. I often meet iOS users who don’t know that double-tap on the Home button brings up the app switcher.

As the OSes on these mobile devices become more capable over time (and the interaction model grows more complicated), users may need to start treating them as computers that require learning beyond trial and error.

[1] http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iphone_user_guide.pdf

Re: iOS 7 looks familiar

#55

Post by taktix »

I have the Lumia 920 and Microsoft absolutely nailed the design of the OS. It works seamlessly with Office Live/Online/365 whatever the heck they call it too. The home screen of the phone agitates my OCD something fierce because I have to get it just right or... I'll... die...

Seriously though, its a great phone and if you need one for work like I do, might as well get one you really like.

Re: iOS 7 looks familiar

#56

Post by tolmasky »

Finster wrote: post #50
tolmasky wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for other people, but I can perhaps share some insight from my feelings. Just to get it out of the way, it is a bit annoying to see a company that is normally absolutely obsessed with others copying them now doing the same. But as eyebrow raising as that is, its not really my main concern. My personal issue with this design is that it signals the coming of a boring lull in mobile design. Its the death o…

I feel like your argument basically distills down to: "All flat designs look alike." Surely, that's not the case. And as I've been messing around with IOS7, I'm noticing a lot more than just a graphical redesign. This is also a usability redesign. Little things like including a contact button at the top of the Messages app itself rather than at the top of the message view. IOS7 is full of these little tweaks that hav…

I think you may have made my point better than I did: I'm just not that impressed with Apple finally cribbing off the jailbreak community, and I sincerely hope that the future of iOS is not endless tweaking held up as some paramount of interaction design. Am I happy with these changes? Sure, the same way I'm happy that Mac OS X has finally fixed the multiple-display bug that has plagued it for 3 years. But these (long overdue) changes a bold OS do not make. And perhaps the argument is that Apple is not trying to make a bold new OS. However, that is definitely what it is presenting iOS 7 as, so I feel that I have a right to disagree.

I think the community in general has felt that iOS 7 was Apple's chance to respond to the criticisms (fair or not) that iOS was stagnating, and I feel that that is what Apple feels it has accomplished. I feel they have done so in the shallowest way possible. To me they presented a corporate image of playing catchup: catching up to Windows and Android visual design cues, catching up to jailbreak experiments that have been happening for years, catching up to interactions we saw in Web OS ages ago. I'm not saying they shouldn't have done this, I'm saying that in my eyes these are bug fixes and there exists an Apple that pushed further. There are a million things I wish Safari did every single day that I use it, and quite frankly "3d tab organization" is not one of them.

This is my point, I think people are not seeing the actual usability improvements that could have taken place. You think design is more than just visual stuff, its usability. I agree, I just think its more than making things take 3 taps less. Remember the original iPhone and iOS, it was a completely different way of interacting with your phone that allowed you to do NEW things you couldn't before. Google is now exploring real new territory with their excellent services like Google Now. If Apple wants to keep fighting services and infrastructure with "design", that's fine, but its going to require more than endlessly spinning its wheels trying to figure out the "best" weather interface possible and micro-optimizing insignificant interactions with the OS.

Re: iOS 7 looks familiar

#57

Post by mattermill »

_progger_ wrote: post #24

It's a cross between WP and Android. It's a very strange feeling when you realise you could do a better job at UX design then a multi-billion company.

Unfortunately, not many others would be willing to put much faith in someone with the grammar of a 6th grader to do a better job at UX design than a multi-billion dollar company.

Re: iOS 7 looks familiar

#58

Post by gfodor »

tolmasky wrote: post #56
Finster wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like your argument basically distills down to: "All flat designs look alike." Surely, that's not the case. And as I've been messing around with IOS7, I'm noticing a lot more than just a graphical redesign. This is also a usability redesign. Little things like including a contact button at the top of the Messages app itself rather than at the top of the message view. IOS7 is full of these little tweaks that hav…

I think you may have made my point better than I did: I'm just not that impressed with Apple finally cribbing off the jailbreak community, and I sincerely hope that the future of iOS is not endless tweaking held up as some paramount of interaction design. Am I happy with these changes? Sure, the same way I'm happy that Mac OS X has finally fixed the multiple-display bug that has plagued it for 3 years. But these (lon…

Have you actually used the beta or are you another person basing opinions about an operating system based upon screenshots?

Re: iOS 7 looks familiar

#59

Post by mikestew »

myko wrote: post #23
gte910h wrote: post #17

The OS looks far better on a device in front of you than on a static picture on a website or on a projector on a wall.

Everything except the home screen icons/default background. Those are still fairly hideous. Still time to fix it though, I don't expect Apple to leave it in this state. I'm more concerned with why hasn't Apple made lower case keys show up on the keyboard yet? This is a no brainer.

I've used a iPhone since 2008, starting with the 3G. It wasn't until yesterday, after loading iOS 7, that I noticed the keyboard was always in caps. In fact, I thought it was bug in iOS 7. "Why in the hell is the keyboard all caps now? Surely it won't ship this way." Then I used my wife's iOS 6 phone and for the first time noticed that it's always been that way. There's something about the new UI/color scheme that brought this to my attention. Or maybe the shift key state isn't distinct enough to tell me whether it's caps or not (and hence I look at the keys to discern the difference, and they're of course no help).

My point, on topic with your objection, is that I never even noticed the lack of lower case keys before iOS 7. So for me it's not something high on the list.

Re: iOS 7 looks familiar

#60

Post by 1morepassword »

cheald wrote: post #4
kennywinker wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irony: it only looks like it's slide up to unlock. It's actually slide sideways. My twitter stream right now is full of people pointing out how deeply confusing that little arrow at the bottom of the screen is. See it in action: http://appadvice.com/appnn/2013/06/slide-to-unlock-appadvice...

This is something that really, desperately confuses me. Apple is supposedly the king of intuitive design, and yet here, you have literally the first interface people will see on the phone, with an interaction model which is completely impossible to intuit, and only works for people who are already trained in how to complete the action. I get the desire to eliminate depth, but that little slide gutter and right-pointi…

How do you know this if you haven't physically used it?

And why on earth do people assume Apple hasn't thoroughly tested this? They may get many things wrong, but it's insane to thing they overlooked that part.

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