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Fertile Ground

marco.org

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Re: Fertile Ground

#41

Post by ruswick »

bitops wrote: post #19

I hope I'm not in some crazy minority here, but I actually value stability and UIs not changing radically all the time. I feel like there's a craze afoot at the moment to "redesign everything all the time" and I'm not a big fan of it. If you're in tech, sure, it's the "price of progress" but for the lay user (i.e. the people who pay us money for software) it's just annoying.

I agree with you. The iOS aesthetic, though imperfect, was stable and quite nice. In my opinion, Apple should have merely eliminated some of the more egregious skeuomorphisms and brought their apps more in line with the semi-flat look that the OS has had for years. This sort of total visual upheaval is superfluous, if not detrimental. From what I've seen, it looks insultingly bad.

There are better ways to allocate development time than reimplementing an already-fine OS.

Re: Fertile Ground

#42

Post by pazimzadeh »

smacktoward wrote: post #29
bitops wrote: post #19

I hope I'm not in some crazy minority here, but I actually value stability and UIs not changing radically all the time. I feel like there's a craze afoot at the moment to "redesign everything all the time" and I'm not a big fan of it. If you're in tech, sure, it's the "price of progress" but for the lay user (i.e. the people who pay us money for software) it's just annoying.

That was my thought too. I'm a bit agog at seeing a developer lauding a platform owner for burning down the platform. If you're going to invest time and money in a platform, the last thing you want is to find out after that investment has been sunk that the platform steward likes to periodically smash everything. Marco argues that while this behavior is bad for incumbents, it's good for new entrants, but that doesn't…

A platform that is popular or has the most apps is not necessarily the "best", as Windows proves. I'm not sure that Apple ever wanted 750,000 apps on iOS. It seems that they should prefer 100,000 great apps to 750k mediocre ones.

The platform was designed the iPhone platform between 2005 and 2007, and while it served its purpose very well I don't think that we should limit innovation for the sake of supporting old apps.

Re: Fertile Ground

#43

Post by cheald »

So when Android is fragmented, it is awful and is the reason the platform sucks. When iOS is fragmented, it's innovative and fresh, masterfully executed to bring new opportunities to developers. Got it.

Re: Fertile Ground

#44

Post by ruswick »

lostlogin wrote: post #40
kcoop wrote: post #20

So says the guy that just sold all his legacy apps.

Money where his mouth is? Although it would seem unlikely unless he had a prior glimpse of what was coming. Is this that unlikely?

Although he wasn't aware of the exact details or extent of the changes, rumors of a total overhaul have been circulating for months. He probably anticipated having to input hundreds if not thousands of hours of development time to prepare for iOS 7. At the very least, this must have been a factor in his decisions.

Re: Fertile Ground

#46

Post by ghshephard »

thisisdallas wrote: post #17
btipling wrote: post #10

It seems hypocritical to laud fragmentation when it happens in iOS and decry it in Android. These changes seem similar to the Android differences in gingerbread and post-honeycomb. The resulting effect on developers will be the same. iOS 7 has made it apparent which bloggers are unable or unwilling to be fair in their criticism when it comes to Apple. The mismatched gradients on the new icons are beautiful to them, t…

This is a very a good point. As a major Apple fan I completely agree with you. After looking over the iOS changes I see absolutely nothing that is more "revolutionary" than what we have now in iOS6, or even what Android and Windows Phone offers. At best, it looks like iOS7 is nothing more than a mix of Android and Windows Phone plus a few extra UI elements. I am not a big fan of Marco's obsession with drama but I do…

Combine Marco and Gruber's [1] insight - This is a major house cleaning/forest fire. Someone (Jony, et al.) has stepped back, looked at the confusion that has developed over the last 3-5 years on the iPhone, and has decided to recreate the iPhone as a conceptual platform. The introduction (and hopefully consistency) of multiple dimensions onto the phone, and a cross-system approach towards geometry, means that iOS7 will be a complete re-think of how applications work and behave on the iPhone.

And don't be so quick to say, "or even what Android and Windows phone offers.." - Those are awesome platforms, and Apple can learn a lot from them (as Android and Windows have learned from the iPhone.) Indeed, the "Cards" approach in multi-tasking is actually reminiscent of what Palm's WebOS did [2] - so Apple has learned from them as well.

I am very intrigued as to how well the Multitasking/Notification driven background/User-interaction-Dependent-CPU-scheduling-for-background-processess will work - That's pretty innovative solution to a common problem of Craptastic background apps that you don't think about sucking your battery dry. [edit: And all the discussions about Apps checking in when you've got the radios on, when you are powered up, etc... - I've been dreaming about exactly that for 2+ years. Finally! (Non-ironically)]

Don't kid yourself - iOS 7 is the big one, and, will likely be as ugly as the upgrade was from 10.6.8 to 10.7.0 was on OS X - My prediction is that iOS 8 will basically be fixing all the glitches and problems created from this complete platform rethink - but, sometimes, to make an omelet...

Forest Fire Indeed!

[1] http://daringfireball.net/2013/06/ios_7_signature [2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c20uhGxSxWo

Re: Fertile Ground

#47

Post by foobarbazqux »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #39
foobarbazqux wrote: post #32

> Fertile Ground I'm getting pretty tired of blog post titles that give no real hint at all as to the topic. My mind labels them as "pretentious" because they're pretending to be deep when they're not; by that I mean that rarely do the posts offer up any kind of non-trivial insight. (Compare with PG's similarly titled essays.) Earlier today we had "Two i's" from DHH's crew (where you had to infer from reading the pos…

I disagree that the title "Fertile Ground" gave no hint to the topic, but I agree about "Two i's".

I was only complaining because I literally had no idea whatsoever that it was about Apple, never mind iOS 7, and I wouldn't have opened the link if I had known that. Is "Apple's iOS 7 is Fertile Ground" really that atrocious?

I can understand how given the context of WWDC yesterday it might be more obvious, and that there is an argument for treating blog posts as ephemera, but in general I like it when things can maintain their meaning for months, years, or indefinitely.

Re: Fertile Ground

#48

Post by ja27 »

kcoop wrote: post #20

So says the guy that just sold all his legacy apps.

After seeing how mine look in the (hopefully very beta) iOS 7, I'm ready to sell half of mine rather than deal with UI updates.

Re: Fertile Ground

#49

Post by leoc »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #13
greendestiny wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are is support for physics effects in the UI now, I'm not really sure what navigational changes he could be talking about though.

One change highlighted in the keynote presentation: instead of tapping the ‘Back’ button on the upper left corner of a UITableView layout, in iOS 7 you swipe horizontally from the left edge of the screen. There are many more changes, you can read about them in the new iOS 7 Human Interface Guidelines: http://www.slideshare.net/evgenybelyaev16/mobile-hig-2278458...

The Back buttons have to be one of the weakest elements of the current UI. I know from experience that less-computer-literate people are blind to them. We'll have to see how easily they pick up on the new conceit.

Re: Fertile Ground

#50

Post by ghshephard »

dannyr wrote: post #38
chasing wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not fragmentation. Within a year, the vast majority of iOS users will be on iOS 7. It's evolution.

So fragmentation is ok as long as it's only for a year? I guess we're moving the goal posts again.

How many hours/days will it take to get 10%, 25% and 50% of the iOS platform on to iOS 7?

I'm betting over 50% installed base will be on iOS 7 in less than a month.

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