I've been using the developer preview version for a couple of days now and I have to say that the experience is pretty nice, except for the fact that the home screen is unusable if you have a light background (white labels on white background, YAY). My main issue with it is how choppy it gets every now and then (I'm running it on an iPhone 4S) but they'll probably fix that by the final release. I've uploaded some screenshots to [1].
iOS 7
251–260 of 284 posts
Re: iOS 7
#252Man, iOS 7 feedback is incredibly frustrating for no reason that actually matters. I feel like I spent the past few years falling in love with flat design, on mobile and on the web -- and I read article after article from historically pro-Apple bloggers/authors explaining that no, flat design was fundamentally a bad move: the strongest metaphor is that of the phone as a tool -- that we needed skeumorphism, we need hi…
Then just don't read about it.
You clicked on the iOS7 article, read it fully an then made a huge comment about it. Every opinion about the design is so subjective that we can't really discuss it. You don't like the design? Well then don't upgrade or buy an Android phone. Lots of people are pleased with it, complaining about it isn't really going to help.
Why do you think that iPhone users were still happy with the design of iOS6. I heard lots of users complaining about how tired they were of the green playfield and that the address book doesn't really have to have the rings in them to know that it's an address book. This was an early trend, now flat design is a trend. Will you then also make a post about how happy people were with the flat design and that they should stick with it instead of upgrading it?
Every app of them is re-written, as a developer I understand the amount of work they had to put in to achieve this, to align every app for the new design, to think about every app. Really I understand the effort they put in to achieve this, but now you want all this with the latest design and you want it without a single bug?
Re: iOS 7
#253Man, iOS 7 feedback is incredibly frustrating for no reason that actually matters. I feel like I spent the past few years falling in love with flat design, on mobile and on the web -- and I read article after article from historically pro-Apple bloggers/authors explaining that no, flat design was fundamentally a bad move: the strongest metaphor is that of the phone as a tool -- that we needed skeumorphism, we need hi…
I didn't have the same experience you did. I saw a lot of dislike for the skeumorphism in earlier versions of iOS both online and in real life, even among Apple enthusiasts. Speaking for myself, I was really impressed with Windows Phone when I first saw it, and I'm glad to see Apple moving more in that direction.
Re: iOS 7
#254"Gone are embellishments like gloss and bevelled edges, shadows and borders. Visually dead areas that provoke tension rather than inspiring relaxation. Weight that suffocates, rather than open air to breathe." Interesting review but silly comments like this are, well, silly! When I see an area of a screen or GUI, I do not feel tension if there is a "visually dead" area. Does anyone else? How come nobody complained ab…
People have been complaining about skeumorphism and generally outdated looks in the GUI department for iOS 6 for ages, where have you been?
The author's comments aren't "silly", they're just an example of an expert talking about his field. Novice programmers don't feel "grimy" when they look at code that should clearly be refactored, but that doesn't mean that programmers who talk about ugly code are "silly" either. If you haven't studied design to a certain extent you probably won't ever be aware of tension in an interface unless it's extremely evident. That does not mean it's not there.
Re: iOS 7
#255Man, iOS 7 feedback is incredibly frustrating for no reason that actually matters. I feel like I spent the past few years falling in love with flat design, on mobile and on the web -- and I read article after article from historically pro-Apple bloggers/authors explaining that no, flat design was fundamentally a bad move: the strongest metaphor is that of the phone as a tool -- that we needed skeumorphism, we need hi…
I completely agree that the new icons look much worse than their predecessors. Even if they wanted to embrace Flat Design they could have done a much better job. For example, this designer seems to have nailed it: http://www.behance.net/gallery/iOS-7-Redesign/9271243
Re: iOS 7
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, folks are far too critical for a beta release that has yet to evolve. Of course, there are still major improvements that need to be addressed, but people need to understand that Apple will not ship anything shitty when it comes time to release it to the general public.
> people need to understand that Apple will not ship anything shitty when it comes time to release it to the general public The apologists said this about Apple Maps as well
There wasn't much they could do to improve Maps without getting it in the hands of millions of people.
Re: iOS 7
#257Man, iOS 7 feedback is incredibly frustrating for no reason that actually matters. I feel like I spent the past few years falling in love with flat design, on mobile and on the web -- and I read article after article from historically pro-Apple bloggers/authors explaining that no, flat design was fundamentally a bad move: the strongest metaphor is that of the phone as a tool -- that we needed skeumorphism, we need hi…
It's a common mistake on the web to take entire groups of individuals, with varied and nuanced individual opinions, and to group them together and then complain about inconsistency and hypocrisy. People say things like, apple users are foo or the new york times is bar or americans are baz . Well, of course any large group of people with divergent opinions will be self-conflicting when examined as a whole. I understan…
Here's an example of inconsistency from the the very article under discussion:
Why did Android and Windows Phone move away from photorealistic buttons? "partly just for differentiation’s sake".
Why did Apple (eventually) do the same:
"... we’ve grown up. We don’t require hand-holding to tell us what to click or tap. Interactivity is a matter of invitation, and physical cues are only one specific type. iOS 7 is an iOS for a more mature consumer, who understands that digital surfaces are interactive, and who doesn’t want anything getting in the way of their content."
Got that, this is the way forward, it's the right thing to do, it's better than what iOS This childish sophistry is SOP for Apple blogs, it's the number one reason I (someone who adopted OSX and iPods as soon as they were available) think the Apple-sphere is mentally diseased and worth distancing yourself from.
Re: iOS 7
#258I 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/…
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Re: iOS 7
#259I'm glad someone wrote a blog post like this. It's getting to be somewhat annoying how many people are whining about Windows Phone and Android similarities. Design and engineering decisions are not made in a vacuum. Android copies from iOS and vice versa - they each follow the cultural trends of smart design. I would much rather see blog posts like this - where the author considers the iOS in its own right instead of…
> It's getting to be somewhat annoying how many people are whining about Windows Phone and Android similarities. Design and engineering decisions are not made in a vacuum. I agree, but the similarities are being pointed out precisely because Apple (and their major pundits like Marco and Gruber) makes a big deal about how others have borrowed ideas from them. For example, the infamous "Redmond/Mountain View, start you…
It would be absurd to expect Apple not to be influenced by the rest of the industry, but the scale of the similarities by Android (compare pre- and post-iPhone Android) and especially Samsung (the Galaxy S with TouchWiz was essentially a 3GS clone) is much more than just skin deep.
While iOS 7 may look more like WP and Android, anyone who uses it can tell it still feels and works like iOS. Apple harp on about how design is more than how it looks, and it especially applies in this case as it doesn't work anything like Android or WP. But use a Samsung Galaxy S, and you can immediately tell that their apps menu is a wholesale ripoff of the iPhone's Springboard with next to no effort put into differentiating or improving the original design.
Re: iOS 7
#260Man, iOS 7 feedback is incredibly frustrating for no reason that actually matters. I feel like I spent the past few years falling in love with flat design, on mobile and on the web -- and I read article after article from historically pro-Apple bloggers/authors explaining that no, flat design was fundamentally a bad move: the strongest metaphor is that of the phone as a tool -- that we needed skeumorphism, we need hi…
Out of all the 'historically pro-Apple bloggers/authors' John Siracusa stands out as an exception: on the [recent episode of the ATP podcast]( http://atp.fm/episodes/17-cant-innovate-anymore ) (starts at 34:55) he gave proper credit to Windows Phone for paving the way — even though he's a confessed Microsoft hater. Matt Gemmell's continual dismissal of the Microsoft designers who created Metro is incredibly disrespec…
I don't think that's what Gemmell has been saying at all. He has been dismissive of the Windows 8 "No Compromises" approach, but Metro, as found on Windows Phone and the Surface (not Surface Pro), he has always seemed rather positive to me. Some examples:
"It’s not quite minimalist, though; it’s more like finding yourself living inside an infographic. The presentation is flat and high-contrast, but there’s little that’s familiar in the surroundings. It eschews skeuomorphism utterly. It’s hip, razor-edged and as modern as it can be without surrendering to the whims of futurism.
It’s almost perfectly digital, and is focused on information and content above all. Metro presents the device as little more than a viewport into a digital information space – indeed, the idea is immediately shown to the user via the concept of the horizontally moving viewport. If there’s a current mobile user experience that should most appeal to Star Trek’s LCARS apologists like myself, then it’s surely Metro rather than iOS." http://mattgemmell.com/2012/04/13/augmented-paper/
"Much of the lavishness of iOS (and its imitator, Android) feels like an artefact of the desktop era; a time when we were all still learning how to think about computing devices. By contrast, Windows Phone leaps to the other extreme, being as different as possible for the sake of it. Clear boundaries, sleek lines, and a kind of overt zen futurism." http://mattgemmell.com/2013/05/12/tail-wagging/
That second one may seem like it's supporting your point, but Gemmell is deliberately contrasting the iOS style as "an arteface of the desktop era", whilst Metro gets "Clear", "sleek" and "zen" as its adjectives. In other words, Metro is clearly the approach getting the thumbs up here.