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Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

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Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#901

Post by idle_zealot »

I'm generally not a fan of the new design. I prefer my interface to be functional, consistent, and get out of my way rather than be flashy or attention-grabbing.

That said, I do greatly appreciate how the new guidelines and redesigned UIs make interactive buttons actually look like buttons. Each tappable element is visually distinct and represented in a consistent way. I just wish that Apple didn't insist on moving/hiding buttons in response to unrelated actions (ie WHY do I lose my action buttons when I scroll down, and why do they poof into existence when I scroll up? Why can I search on the root page of Settings but not on any subpage? Why does tapping a button that reveals a submenu hide that button?) Just stop moving things around, please.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#902

Post by MangoToupe »

leakycap wrote: post #664
MangoToupe wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they're currently flailing and so behind ...behind what? Siri doesn't have a meaningful competitor on iOS. Nothing else even has access to my personal data.

As far as I know, Siri cannot (by Apple's design) have a competitor on iOS. Unless you consider unlocking your phone, opening an app like Amazon, and tapping a microphone to talk to Alexa as a fair access for competition.

Sure, but that raises the question of what siri is falling behind if nobody else can fill that void.

Now I haven't owned an android in many years, but I haven't heard a peep from google about how they're using AI to improve their basic apps.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#904

Post by hombre_fatal »

austinl wrote: post #265
dimal wrote: post #148

Oh no. It looks like every button and menu is now a translucent layer, so that any noise from the background shows through and muddles the text. This seems like an accessibility nightmare. Translucent layers generally make software unusable for me. In the video, I saw several instances that would be really really bad for me, where I’d be straining to understand the text. Looks really cool and futuristic though. Just…

This is also likely a performance nightmare. Funny that they mention that "new hardware has enabled us to..." which means that this will perform poorly on old devices. At a previous company, we were forbidden from using translucency (with a few exceptions) because of the performance cost of blending. There are debugging tools we'd use fairly often to confirm that all layers were opaque.

This reminds me of disabling the Windows Vista translucent UI to claw back performance on my crappy Gateway laptop in uni.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#905

Post by hombre_fatal »

dimal wrote: post #148

Oh no. It looks like every button and menu is now a translucent layer, so that any noise from the background shows through and muddles the text. This seems like an accessibility nightmare. Translucent layers generally make software unusable for me. In the video, I saw several instances that would be really really bad for me, where I’d be straining to understand the text. Looks really cool and futuristic though. Just…

Also, Apple is already bad at translucent UX as if it were beneath their consideration.

If there's a bright blue background behind the control panel buttons (like the wifi button), you can't tell if it's blue because it's on or because it's off but the background is blue.

Slide down the control panel when the blue weather app is open to kinda see what I mean.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#906

Post by ARandumGuy »

stalco wrote: post #397

I installed it. I really wanted to love it but it’s bad. It’s very busy and the proportions in the Settings app are awful. It’s on the “cozy” side of things (as opposed to “compact”). This means you see less options at one time on the screen and have to scroll more around the OS to get where you need to. As for accessibility… It’s hell. Have a look: https://imgur.com/a/6ZTCStC

The accessibility for this design is pretty terrible. There's a reason the gold standard for closed captions is still white text with solid black background. That way, regardless of what's going on in the background, the text is still readable for someone with poor eyesight.

Out of curiosity, I used this site [1] to get the contrast of some text, specifically the artist name on the Apple Music now playing bar (in the "Updated App Design" part of the page). During parts of the video, the contrast of the artist name with the background was 1.7:1, which is terrible. For reference, the minimum recommended contrast by WebAIM is 4.5:1 [2].

Maybe there are accessibility options that improve things, but the defaults seem terrible. The goal for any design should be reasonably accessible as default, with robust options for people with more specific needs. As it stands, this UI is just too hard to read, and Apple needs to make a second pass.

[1]: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

[2]: https://webaim.org/articles/contrast/

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#907

Post by Someone »

dkarl wrote: post #889
slt2021 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

these performance hungry "improvements" are forcefully introduced to legitimately slow down older devices and force the device refresh across the user base. I have been using 8 year old iPhone just fine, but features like these over time will make the experience slower and slower and slower, until I am forced to refresh my iphone

More likely it's a result of pressure to ship highly visible "improvements," combined with a lack of ideas that could improve the experience in a meaningful way. What do you do in that situation? Ship an obvious UI update that wouldn't have performed on the last gen hardware.

I haven’t used the new UI, so don’t assume this to be an endorsement of it, but even if you have good ideas about UI improvements and implement them, there still is pressure to make the UI look different because that, at a glance, shows users that they get something new.

And yes, “looking different” doesn’t have to mean “requires faster hardware”, but picking something that requires faster hardware makes it less likely that you will be accused of being a copy-cat of some other product’s UI.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#908

Post by parsimo2010 »

stalco wrote: post #397

I installed it. I really wanted to love it but it’s bad. It’s very busy and the proportions in the Settings app are awful. It’s on the “cozy” side of things (as opposed to “compact”). This means you see less options at one time on the screen and have to scroll more around the OS to get where you need to. As for accessibility… It’s hell. Have a look: https://imgur.com/a/6ZTCStC

Oh yeah that's bad. I hope there is an option to disable translucency globally. I don't need to see a desktop/home screen under another menu, or even another app under the menu. I can't interact with something underneath the top menu and it really messes with readability from your screenshot.

Re: Apple introduces a universal design across platforms

#910

Post by pyinstallwoes »

stalco wrote: post #397

I installed it. I really wanted to love it but it’s bad. It’s very busy and the proportions in the Settings app are awful. It’s on the “cozy” side of things (as opposed to “compact”). This means you see less options at one time on the screen and have to scroll more around the OS to get where you need to. As for accessibility… It’s hell. Have a look: https://imgur.com/a/6ZTCStC

Yikes…
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