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iOS 7

mattgemmell.com

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Re: iOS 7

#171

Post by coldtea »

mitchty wrote: post #150
coldtea wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People arguing 'its just a beta, it'll obviously change over time': what happened to Apple's relentless pursuit of quality before introducing something to the public? Nothing. They were always pragmatic about it, not "relentless". And it's not a beta. The final version is coming in very short time, so it will be 98% the same. What it is is a FIRST version (iteration) of the new design. It will improve in iOS 8 and…

Wait, you're saying a beta release of ios7 isn't beta? Even if it is mostly the same for gA that doesn't discount it being beta software right now.

>Wait, you're saying a beta release of ios7 isn't beta? Even if it is mostly the same for gA that doesn't discount it being beta software right now

Sure, it's beta, as in "buggy, still under development, and not released yet".

What I mean it's not beta in the way the parent mentioned it (and some people use it): that there is any chance in hell it will change in any substantial way.

They might fix some bugs and add/remove a few things, but 99% of what you see now will be there in the fall release.

OS X/iOS betas shown in WWDC are not like some website or app beta that iterates between point releases and can be very different by the time it comes out. They are pretty much baked.

RC would be a better name for it.

Re: iOS 7

#173

Post by threeseed »

pdeuchler wrote: post #67
ryanstout wrote: post #5

Hopefully I'm not the only one that thinks this is going to kill usability. The reason old people can figure their way around This article seems to sum up some of my other complaints fairly well: http://wolfslittlestore.be/tasteless/

If you go to the Apple Developer forums ( https://developer.apple.com/devforums/ Dev account needed) the "Getting Started" sub-forum is filled with devs, from just signed up to veterans with multiple apps under their belt, asking usability questions. I think it's telling when your own developing base has to post to forums asking simple questions like: Where did my spotlight search go? How do I rate songs?

Yes. It's almost like this is a beta version of the biggest ever change to the OS and some people will have to learn new ways of doing the same tasks.

The only thing 'telling' is that somehow you're surprised by this.

Re: iOS 7

#174

Post by jgrall »

I agree with the author of the article that overall iOS 7 represents a big step forward in terms of design.

However, there are some glaring warts that weren't discussed. Most notable among the goofs is the new "Control Center" feature. What's odd is that Apple seems particularly proud of it judging by how frequently it appears in their iOS 7 marketing materials. To be clear, I think that the idea of giving quick access to frequently used controls is a good one. However the current visual design execution of this idea is abysmal.

IMHO, the current design of iOS 7 Control Center is a jumbled mess that doesn't seem consistent with the rest of the new design. It violates a bunch of the new design conventions, and conceptually represents a grab-bag of misfit controls that have little reason to be together on the screen at the same time.

The controls shown in Control Center don't use the new convention of tinting to a bright color to indicate interactivity, but instead opt for inverting between light and dark to indicate on/off. Additionally, some of the buttons have borders, while others don't. Some are circles, some are rounded rectangles, others are floating in whitespace. Some less important controls (AirDrop) are big, other more important ones (WiFi) are small, and they're all stacked on top of each other in a big jumbled mess.

Here's how I propose Apple improve the design of iOS 7's Control Center:

- Adopt a consistent control element design: no borders, color hinting etc.

- Remove the bottom row of app shortcuts. Except for the flashlight these are not controls, they're links. - Remove AirDrop and Airplay. Not controls either.

- Refine that ugly down arrow on the top of the pane. It's too chunky and is encroaching on the icons below.

- Increase the opacity on the panel to improve readability.

Re: iOS 7

#175

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #148
toyg wrote: post #61

I don't care about flatness or skeutransmogrification or whatnot, but the damn thing must WORK. Look at his iMessage screen comparison [1]: yes, the old screen looks a bit geocities, but you can actually read text very well; the new screen is almost unreadable. The prime aim of iMessage is to make people read text, not to look cool. It doesn't matter if there are options to thicken the font -- the whole point of OSX/…

You can't possibly determine the legibility of font rendering designed for a 727k pixel display based on a 115k pixel screenshot. Have you tried the current Gmail app? It uses thin fonts, and I don't find it to be a problem.

The thing is fricking white Helvetice Neue on a light blue bubble. You don´t need a retina display to conclude this is unreadable. You just need common sense.

Re: iOS 7

#176

Post by baudehlo »

blocking_io wrote: post #101
paganel wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a fellow know-nothing when it comes to "flatness" and skeu-something I was a little bit surprised when the author complained that the old "receive a call" interface was full with alert-like buttons. They are supposed to be "Alert" buttons, for crying out loud, as in you're asleep in your bed, the phone starts ringing which means you have been "alerted", you're now woken up and ready to answer the call or deny it…

You have always been able to deny calls using the power button on top. Presumably that method is now compulsory.

That doesn't deny the call. It just turns the ringer/buzzer off until they give up.

Re: iOS 7

#177

Post by encoderer »

FireBeyond wrote: post #142
k-mcgrady wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "(People arguing 'its just a beta, it'll obviously change over time': what happened to Apple's relentless pursuit of quality before introducing something to the public? What's the point of secrecy if you're showing off v0.8 and not v1.0?) " They haven't really introduced it to the public. They introduced it to developers at a developer conference so they can prepare their software for it. Every single iOS release…

Err. They also have placed imagery and video of it all over their (general, not developer) pages for iOS. They've provided high res imagery and video for the media. It's effectively introduced. And I say that as someone now running iOS 7 and OSX 10.9. I see a lot of potential in both, but iOS needs a fair amount of polishing.

I read there are still a huge number of show-stopping bugs in iOS7. Things like using a date picker causing a kernel panic. How are you running it? On a tertiary device or on your phone? Just curious.

Re: iOS 7

#178

Post by canthonytucci »

inthewind wrote: post #156
Flying_Dwarf wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple will take a note from Xbox at E3 and tell its customers with impairments to "Stay with iOS 6".

Ouch! When someone first described the idea of theming, as in something like CSS and HTML, I totally got it. Can't apps use a descriptive semantic language underneath and just have the OS skin most of it for you? Swapping themes and making applications and the OS more accessible thereafter would surely be much easier. I know I'm simplifying things somewhat, but isn't this the next evolution in responsive design? I'd…

This is essentially what the OS does if you use the standard controls. You say "I want a title bar at the top of the screen with a back button" and iOS 6 interprets this as the shiny ones you're used to, while 7 sees this as the new version. The problem is that the amount of variation you're allowed by apple is pretty slim. You can change the tint of the bar (UINavigationBar) and the text, provide an image to be the title instead of text....and that's about it before it might start breaking when they go from one version to the next.

Because things were the same for so long (IMHO that's why anyway) we've seen a lot of devs bringing their own ui items that looked similar but slightly different to the standard elements, I assume in the attempt to stand out visually. Apps like tapBots' TweetBot will likely be OK because they most likely don't use ANY of the standard UI elements, but apps that use a little custom and a little standard stuff have a lot of work cut out for them.

Re: iOS 7

#179

Post by kryten »

inthewind wrote: post #81
fudged71 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's me! I was browsing the new UI guidelines and couldn't understand what was and what wasn't a link/action in the screenshots that they used for examples! And I shouldn't need to turn on accessibility services for slight colorblindness... the design should accomodate for us. The navigation looks lik the same color as the "Home" and "Phone" labels. Are those actions?

I'm worried about this. My experience of Windows mobile is Windows 8 on a tablet, and I had pretty much nothing but contempt for it. And failed to see anything stylish about it at all! I want links/buttons/actions to stand out. That doesn't mean it has to look like a button. It could be text with a halo, a shadow, or an effect that comes into play as you begin to interact with the device so the controls jump out at y…

The Metro interface works well for a phone format device. Literally everyone I know picks up my Lumia and just uses it as if they've been using it for years. It just makes sense and is really intuitive. Also, apart from a big chunk of 3rd party apps written by morons, it's 100% consistent and smooth as anything even on the shittiest of handsets.

I've had at least 4 people I know toss their iOS device in favor of a WP8 handset in the last couple of months.

Windows 8 however is a stinking turd. It doesn't work for that in the same way that your metro signs aren't 40' advertising boards. Most of the UI is empty and pointless padding resulting in no visual cues and terrible usability.

Go and play with a phone sized device for a bit and see how you get on.

Re: iOS 7

#180

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

threeseed wrote: post #65
smacktoward wrote: post #27

iOS 7 foregoes borders, instead relying on colour to indicate interactivity Good thing there aren't people out there who are color-blind, then... Oh, wait.

There is a high contrast mode. And the entire web mainly uses color to differentiate between links and normal text ie. many omit the underlining. So not sure what makes iOS so different in this regard.

"the entire web mainly uses color to differentiate between links and normal text"

I sense hyperbole, but would love to know what the actual proportion is. I suspect the majority of text links (as opposed to, e.g. menu navigation) are underlined.

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