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iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do

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Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do

#41

Post by rbritton »

The sweet point for me has been iOS 6-7 support. There's little that iOS 7 has that I need to use, so a few conditionals here or there haven't been a huge deal (tintColor has been the only significant one). This contrasts immensely with trying to support back to iOS 5 where so many new things were added after (e.g., autolayout) that you end up with huge chunks of redundant code that differ only in the approach taken to get the end result.

My apps' interfaces are entirely customized, so everything looks roughly the same across the major versions. I've shifted to a flatter appearance since iOS 7, but I've held onto certain things from older ones that I like better such as borders on buttons where the button status is not clear from the context, filled toolbar icons (I hate the stenciled ones), and a shadowing level somewhere between iOS 6 and 7.

Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do

#42

Post by fit2rule »

Touche wrote: post #7

> When we added pull to refresh to our app there weren’t many apps using this technique and it added a premium feel to our app. This makes me want to vomit. I can't wait until implementing flashy UI is so trivial and common that shallow things like this don't actually affect an application's perceived value. I don't remember the transition to GUI in the 80s as being as shallow as the mobile app market is.

I'm using MOAI. Implementing flashy UI's is so trivial, its not even funny. What I'm finding though, is that its very much better to keep things simple, and well .. for my clients at least, its working.

Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do

#43

Post by Touche »

slowernet wrote: post #34
Touche wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contest the idea that any two apps are so similar that something as trivial as list-refresh mechanism could push one over the top.

I look forward to competing with you one day! Seriously though, you contest the idea that an interface with interactions which hide complexity and have been shown to be pretty intuitive could be decisive in how users value a product?

No, I agree that in the current mobile app world UI flourishes really do make a difference in how users perceive an application. I'm hopeful for the day when such flourishes are so common that they are no longer perceived as valuable and we can get back to working on things that matter.

Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do

#44

Post by guptaneil »

mikeash wrote: post #40
cncool wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah good too know. I guess that is new in iOS 7.

My memory is fuzzy, but I think it happened around iOS 5.

Nope, it's an iOS 7 feature. Retina iPads have done this since iOS 5, since that is when the iPad 3 was introduced, but non-retina iPads used non-retina graphics until iOS 7.

See http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/07/ios-7-uses-retina-assets-... and http://bendodson.com/weblog/2013/10/16/dropping-non-retina-s...

Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do

#45

Post by zackmorris »

I still target 5.1 because it does 90% of what 7 does but still works on first gen iPads. Apple has a tendency to only implement software features on their newest OS instead of back porting to earlier versions, because it sells more devices. It's unleet for developers to encourage this.

I think a reasonable prime directive for API developers is that if hardware can do something then software shouldn't be prevented from running on it. Sure there are arguments for speed/responsiveness but most of these are straw men because the real bottlenecks are somewhere else (reading from flash memory, internet lag etc). The only real hardware constraints I hit daily are limitations in OpenGL or limited ram (which wouldn't be an issue if proper virtual memory had been in place from the beginning so we didn't have to use mmap).

This kind of software "truthiness" is taking us further and further from computer science.

Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do

#47

Post by mikeash »

guptaneil wrote: post #44
mikeash wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My memory is fuzzy, but I think it happened around iOS 5.

Nope, it's an iOS 7 feature. Retina iPads have done this since iOS 5, since that is when the iPad 3 was introduced, but non-retina iPads used non-retina graphics until iOS 7. See http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/07/ios-7-uses-retina-assets-... and http://bendodson.com/weblog/2013/10/16/dropping-non-retina-s...

That must be my confusion. Thanks for the info.

Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do

#48

Post by rsynnott »

guptaneil wrote: post #13
MaxGabriel wrote: post #5

There isn't anything in this article that explains why you can't support both. The only sentence about this is "We can’t leverage what iOS 7 has to offer and a lot of the UI is compromise.", which doesn't cite any difficulties they've run into. The only iOS 7 features they mention are UIDynamics and the receding keyboard—the rest are iOS 5/6 features.

I agree that the article could've gone into more depth about the difficulties they faced, but most developers will agree "a lot of the UI is compromise" is the key point. Supporting iOS 6 and 7 visuals at the same time just means your app looks out of place in both versions.

> Supporting iOS 6 and 7 visuals at the same time just means your app looks out of place in both versions.

If you're using the native UI stuff, it will, generally, look native on both versions. If you're doing your _own_ UI, of course, it gets messier.

Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do

#49

Post by rsynnott »

Touche wrote: post #43
slowernet wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look forward to competing with you one day! Seriously though, you contest the idea that an interface with interactions which hide complexity and have been shown to be pretty intuitive could be decisive in how users value a product?

No, I agree that in the current mobile app world UI flourishes really do make a difference in how users perceive an application. I'm hopeful for the day when such flourishes are so common that they are no longer perceived as valuable and we can get back to working on things that matter.

This isn't just a cosmetic thing; it makes it substantially easier to perform an operation (in this case refreshing) and to see the status of that operation.

Don't bet on UX enhancements ever going away, by the way; people come up with new things all the time. Pull-to-refresh didn't come from any platform vendor; it came from a third party Twitter client.

Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do

#50

Post by rbritton »

zackmorris wrote: post #45

I still target 5.1 because it does 90% of what 7 does but still works on first gen iPads. Apple has a tendency to only implement software features on their newest OS instead of back porting to earlier versions, because it sells more devices. It's unleet for developers to encourage this. I think a reasonable prime directive for API developers is that if hardware can do something then software shouldn't be prevented fr…

I still support iOS 5.1 for the same reason on my main app, but it's getting harder to do so. The status bar change with iOS 7 introduced a ton of conditional code for me because iOS 5 doesn't support autolayout and unfortunately that's the easiest way to deal with the topLayoutGuide.
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