These arguments always strike me as coming from people who don't actually understand what design is. The folks who think that design is the font face, the weight of lines, the colors used. Those are all facets of design, but they are essentially just tools to accomplish the goal: experience and engagement. What you are noticing are just trends, and this is nothing new. Look back over the history of even just twentieth century graphic/print design, and you will see how marked trends define periods in time. The fact that one product or group uses the same or similar elements to another does not say that one is the copy of another, simply that they are both products of the same era.
I haven't used iOS 7 yet, so I can't say this with certainty, but based on my experience with Apple, I feel pretty confident to say that they may have integrated similar graphic motifs you're familiar with from other platforms, but the end experience will be leaps and bounds better than others who've tried to implement the same elements. There is real thought put into how a person will best use this product, not just how clean and pretty the UI can look.
No, this isn't true this time. I have been using iOS 7 on iPhone 5 for a day now, and I have mixed feelings. I have always trusted Apple to 'get it right' and be delighted with thought-out details and just no-frills great UX.
I know it's Beta, but it honestly looks and feels like Android with a bit of lag here and there, some stuttering animations, confusing unlock and answer call screens, too thin fonts for my taste, icons and iconography aren't that great either (opinion), completely unnecessary eye-candy with animated parallax background which doesn't even work very well, etc.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that bad, but 'leaps and bounds better', I say no. I'm sure they'll redefine the design for final product though.
I've been playing with iOS 7 on my iPhone 5 for a day now as well.
It's utterly fantastic. What is surprising is how much all the apps have changed - all the functionality was seemingly ripped apart and put back together.
It's definitely rough. This is a beta, not a Google "let's call it beta even though it's actually finished". A real beta. With plenty of bugs; occasional crashes. Lots of graphics glitches esp. when using 3rd party apps. Seems to use tons of battery.
If you don't understand what a beta is, better don't install this. Beta means buggy.
But as far as the UI is concerned, it's fantastic. It's beyond that - it feels as if a great weight has been lifted from iOS and I can feel the blood, sweat, and tears, as well as enthusiasm and sheer euphoria, of the people putting this together in an insane timeframe. 7 months!
Sure there's inconsistencies in the design - those will get fixed over time, probably before the GM; there's so many glitches - I expect some will remain past GM. There's some weirdness that'll only get fixed next year.
But all in all, this is one fantastic update. This is Apple at its best. If you can't see that, I feel sorry for you, but I also feel confident that you will see it in hindsight, next year, when everyone will talk about how Apple re-invented itself yet again with iOS7.
Samsung meanwhile is already hard at work copying all those features, expect them to pop up in Android within the next 6 months. Parallax background will be first.
Samsung meanwhile is already hard at work copying all those features,
expect them to pop up in Android within the next 6 months.
Parallax background will be first.
It is quite ironic you would say that, since parallax backgrounds were available for all Android devices in app form before Apple demoed them.
But the cynic in me will not be surprised to read more stories about how Apple revolutionized and invented multitasking, flat UIs, quick settings and file sharing on mobile.
Apologies for not closely following the thousands of different UX improvements / add-ons / tweaks available for Android. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in Cydia as well.
But that's not the point. The point is Samsung will copy it. Just wait, I am pretty confident here ;) I mean they could just buy that existing app but something tells me that they won't... past behavior and all that...
Frankly I don't think Apple is taking any design clues from anywhere. They don't care what Android is doing - they do their own thing. And with iOS 7, they have revolutionized iOS. That's a fact.
Apologies for not closely following the thousands of different UX improvements / add-ons / tweaks available for Android.
You should apologize, though clearly you're being sarcastic. If you're going to claim that Samsung is copying what Apple has done, you'd better know what Samsung, stock Android, and probably at least a couple other flavors, have already done.
The point is Samsung will copy it.
Copy what, exactly? The look and feel of iOS 7 (at least from a few initial screenshots; I haven't tried it myself yet) looks how Android has looked for over a year and a half now.
Certainly the UX of iOS 7 is (presumably) still distinct from Android, but that doesn't seem to be what you're talking about.
They don't care what Android is doing - they do their own thing.
You clearly -- by your own admission -- aren't qualified to make this statement. Multitasking on iOS is a watered-down, shittier version of multitasking on Android. Notifications on iOS were basically ripped from Android. You may claim that Apple never saw what Android was doing and happened to come up with similar solutions, but that seems a bit naive to me.
And I frankly don't think that Samsung is taking any design clues from anywhere. They don't care what Apple is doing - they do their own thing. And with the next Touchwiz, they will revolutionize Touchwiz UX. That's a fact /s
But seriously, the amount of snark (and hypocrisy imo) in your comment was too much to take.
>>And I frankly don't think that Samsung is taking any design clues from anywhere. They don't care what Apple is doing
Uhh... the whole idea with the present generation of smartphone (software) comes from the iPhone. That (and applying it to create pads people were willing to pay for) was new.
Everyone should be able to agree on that, at least.
> Uhh... the whole idea with the present generation of smartphone (software) comes from the iPhone.
Oh come on. It's an evolution of what was there before; Palm OS was already very clearly moving in that direction. There is very little that is conceptually new in the first iPhone.
The execution was superb, and everyone certainly got shaken awake by the fact that that level of quality was even possible... but the core ideas were already there.
I leave the subject, since I assume you'd argue the same thing about the iPad, even though others had tried to build xPads for many years without anyone wanting the results... :-)
I disagree. This seems to me like something that wouldn't have happened under the supervision of Jobs. I feel like the redesign of their UI hasn't gone far enough, that there attempt to copy other trends is different than what apple has done before.
I believe that with this update, apple has put the final nail in the coffin to remove the stigma of "it's apple, so it's better."
>I feel like the redesign of their UI hasn't gone far enough
In 7 months (after Ive got in charge)? Let's see any team in the world do better in the same time. Not to mention that if they had gone further, people would also complaint ("oh, this is not the iOS we knew and love at all anymore").
People talk about Windows Phone similarities. It took Microsoft 4-5 years AFTER the iPhone was introduced to copy all the basics (that all modern smartphones copied anyway) and get something out there compelling enough to consider buying (and it's not like many people did buy it, anyway).
In contrast, this redesign took Apple only 7-8 months. Along with new features and lots of behaviour changes in the UI.
This is essentially version 1 of the new UI. It will be polished further in iOS 8.
>that there attempt to copy other trends is different than what apple has done before.
Didn't Apple adopt the Delicious Library skeuomorphic real-life look around 6 years back? Including snatching the Delicious Library graphic designer from the company he worked in?
How do we know this is about "copying other trends" instead of what Ive would have liked to do all along, if he was in charge for the UI?
This wasn't supposed to be read as a bash against apple or the iphone, just an observation.
When the original design was done, the world was a very different place where apple was very clearly ahead.
With this UI it seems to me that the differences between ios android and windows phone are pretty minor. I used to tell people that you'd get an easier experience with apple, and a better experience with the right android phone. More recently, I've found myself telling people that it really doesn't matter as they are all awesome phones, but if you could get an iphone at the same price as others, it's probably worth it to you. Now it seems like that last clause isn't true anymore, at least not to me.
>This wasn't supposed to be read as a bash against apple or the iphone, just an observation. When the original design was done, the world was a very different place where apple was very clearly ahead. With this UI it seems to me that the differences between ios android and windows phone are pretty minor.
Well, as Jobs said, the iPhone was ahead of the industry by about 5 years. Those 5 years have passed.
Did anyone think the competitors would never catch up? It's not like Windows for the desktop is like XP anymore. It has also seen much more refinement and maturity, and could be compared far more favourably to OS X.
That said, Apple / iOS retains the benefits of the 5 year head-start: iOS is more coherent and mature, the whole ecosystem is bigger (from apps, to accounts on file, to third party peripherals, etc), etc etc.
Exactly. Also, as they are becoming more similar to Android, it won't take much for users to actually switch to it. I am sure Google is happy to see this development.
I don't think it's Android's busy, ... unique interface that keeps Apple owners from switching. It's the hundreds of dollars in apps they've invested in that won't transfer.
I don't know that that's true, I think it's general consensus that an android phone is not as good as an iPhone. I'd wager that this update removes a lot of that divide and gives people a reason to look at the alternative.
This is just speculation, I haven't run the iOS 7 developer preview yet.
>I know it's Beta, but it honestly looks and feels like Android with a bit of lag here and there.
This sort of lag has been a common artifact throughout the iPhone's history. Crashing apps, lag, and outright unresponsiveness are daily occurrences on my iPhone 5. It's honestly gotten to the point where, if I didn't have an astronomical amount of money tied up in their ecosystem, I'd switch to a Nexus 4 tonight.
Umm it is beta, ios 6 was painful to use until about beta4. Even then the GA release had all that removed.
I'll bet the entire os has debug symbols and other things turned on that never reach production.
That said, the jerky animations are annoying in use. But its mostly spit and polish things nothing overly broken. I did set this up on a 4s with a new install and not restore (i'm not putting a beta on my main phone).
I have one that I would be happy to trade for your iPhone 5. While the nexus is a great device, it has tons of lags, and hangs. Android seems to be an amalgamation of rough edges - and I love google! For goodness sake, to add a telephone number to a contact you need to select 'add field' and then select the field type before you can enter the value. Okay, I'll stop with my rant, but seriously, I would live to trade. The screen and FF of the nexus are perfect IMHO.
At least you are in agreement that all of those devices are buggy! I for some reason just can't stand the rough edges, and am still waiting for a smartphone that I want - and I've been waiting for a long time.
Having said that I do use a Blackberry (but not really out of choice,) and it also drives me nuts!
I'd have thought that the number one priority for most of these UI developers would be to make something that was intuitive and very usable. Getting the phone part of the phone nice would be a good start.
Adding contacts, viewing call logs, checking balance, turning on and off answerphones etc.
Being able to read the display in sunlight. Being able to use it as a clock, and it be readable. Not having the thing beep at 4am to tell you that it's running out of battery etc.
There's loads of directions these UIs could go in. And they could be completely different to one another, but share some underlying principles. Like intuitive computer game interfaces, that you pretty much pick up immediately.
What I have been most impressed with is watching babies/toddlers play with iPhones. Which suggests the interface is pretty good. Though there have been cases of kids racking up huge account costs. But how about an easy way to child lock the damn thing, or make this harder.
And how about a phone that doesn't crack when you drop it. I watched someone destroy his Galaxy S the other morning, and he wasn't that pleased about it.
You clearly have never used a pre-ICS Android device. A "flagship" Motorola Dext/Cliq/Droid felt like a chinese toy phone next to an iPod/iPhone runing iOS 1.
Eh, quite the opposite actually. Even pre-ICS Android made me feel like I could actually do something with the OS. I could completely change the way it looked by simply downloading a new homescreen from the store. iOS feels like being locked in jail, in comparison.
What phone are you using? How much system memory do you have left? There's a lot of reasons for lag beyond just a new OS. Some of those things could be exacerbated by the new OS, but for another datapoint, I'm running an iPhone 5 with 3.1/16GB used and I'm not experiencing any lag. The animations are a delight.
I am, however, not a fan of some of the graphical choices they made. A few subtleties like a thin 1px inset color on the NavBar text would do wonders for UI and contrast - but I'm not hired by them to make those decisions.
Which is funny after seeing Apple bash fragmentation at the WWDC. Apple has their own version of fragmentation, newer OS versions don't work on older devices.
I, and everyone I know has had a flawless upgrade experience. There have been a couple of exceptions -- the iPhone 3G (not 3GS) suffered with some point releases, but it was a horrifically underpowered device anyway.
When we talk about fragmentation (as developers), we mean API/display size fragmentation. My iPhone 4 doesn't have Siri, but developers can safely use iOS 6 APIs, knowing I can upgrade.
THe iPhone 5 and the 4" display was a step backwards in that regards, but still, you can safely target iOS 5+ and reach about 95% of active, current app-buying iOS users, or target iOS 6+ and reach 90%. But you can't do that with Android (yet) - targeting 4.0+ would lose you a lot of sales.
This will be fixed in the Android market in the next couple of years though, but until then, iOS users/developers/lovers can rightfully boast about "less fragmentation".
It's fascinating how completely different people's experiences with the same thing can be.
I've been using it on my phone and I love it. I always had to jailbreak my phone, but I don't feel like I need to with iOS 7. Though I wish they'd add Quick Reply and then I'd be set.
But, so far, for me, it's been very fluid and smooth.
Drains battery like crazy though. I went to bed 100%, woke up at 3% six hours later.
Have you had a chance to beta-test any of the previous iOS releases? It is possible that other iOS releases had lag issues that were fixed before the release to the general public.
No, I haven't tried beta releases before. I'm sure they'll get rid of all minor annoyances such as bit of lag or weird layout reflows. It was reported that they are working on the new design behind schedule, so I think this release was made in a bit of hurry.
Exactly. You should have seen the Leopard nightlies. The top bar translucency was off for a while and it was basically non-functional. The dock would crash regularly, etc.
The lion beta was a nightmare as well. I have never seen an os with that many kernel panics (definitely not custom driver related), lag and just random flakiness. And safari was just in a league of its own - although I do miss the tabs on top.
I have been testing the beta on my iPhone 4S and the animations do indeed seem sluggish compared to iOS 6, but I don't doubt that Apple is aware of this and is working on to restore snappiness in the next few months.
It's beta 1. What do you really expect? The lag is because the code just isn't done, let alone optimized. I'm using it on an iPhone 5, and it doesn't feel like any Android I've ever used, and I was in the Android world from 1.5 on a Sprint HTC Hero through the Nexus 7. This feels like the first seed of every beta - there are problems, and they will be addressed.
These arguments always strike me as coming from people who only spend time with Apple's designs. The folks who think that only Apple designers are leaps and bounds better, are the only thoughtful producers, and are the sole visionaries beyond just the UI.
Let's face it; look to the Samsung vs. Apple case to see how it is the laymen making billion dollar calls. Not designers. It's not designers that Apple has a majority rule over.
>Let's face it; look to the Samsung vs. Apple case to see how it is the laymen making billion dollar calls.
The damages were reduced to $600 million after the judge ruled that the jury's used an "impermissible legal theory" to award damages, and ordered a new trial.[1] The jury foreman had a technical background and lied during voir dire by failing to mention that he had history of suing others for patent abuse.[2] He was the one he told the other jurors to ignore prior art and assume that Samsung had violated the patents.[3] So it isn't fair to say that laymen decided the damages.
After the trial, a patent('380, bounce-back) that Apple relied heavily upon during the trial to prove that Samsung was "infringing on their innovative designs" was invalidated by the USPTO.[3] This means that if the jury had been competent and searched for prior art (which the foreman with technical experience told them to ignore), or if Samsung had been allowed to present evidence demonstrating prior art, it is probable that no damages would have been awarded at all.
I think it's fair; I don't think you rebuke my point. Take out the foreman, and the jury is even more lay than prior and less biased, as you point out. The very nature of juries is to "educate" a lay jury, but the lawyers aren't likely designers, nor the judge, nor the USPTO. I don't disagree with the OP on there being design eras, everyone freely building atop prior art, but laymen rule the trade/dress rulings and the sales of products. The entire hoopla surrounding Apple lawsuits has to do with them insisting laymen are confused into thinking other products are "that Apple thing my daughter needs."
S/he's illustrating how meaningless it is to say "this is the kind of argument made by people like x", and how easily such an 'argument' can be turned on its head.
Is it even? Over the last 30 years haven't we seen Apple follow plenty (in addition to leading). Is it possible to both be hyper-focused and also always be first?
Following what trend? "Non-skeuomorphism"? This looks like what Ives would have done all along, even since 2006, if he was in charge of the UI.
The most important features of the new UI are the behavioural and conceptual changes.
Not the icons or the hues. Those can and will be fine-tuned easily in upcoming versions, just as OS X went from lickable glowing candy buttons, pronounced stripes and metal windows to today's look.
Noone should see this as Apple copying anyone.
There are designs that work well with phones - and to be honest, there aren't too many of them within today's technology. If something works, designers use it.
There should be no better argument that software patents (in most instances) are idiotic.
The argument would be reasonable if Apple hadn't exacted hundreds of millions of dolars from competitors for "copying" superficial and trivially obvious UI elements from iOS.
No one is arguing that this sort of copying is wrong. Instead, they are merely identifying the inherent hypocrisy and irony in Apple's actions over the past year.
I agree that patents are imbecilic and Apple v. Samsung was one of the lowest points in the industry's history, but it just seems absurd that Apple can lament how other's have "copied" them, only to turn around months later and "copy" wholesale many features from other platforms.
Can Apple take elements from Windows Phone and Android? Yes, that is reasonable and benefits the industry as a whole. Do I, as a current Apple user, benefit from this process? Yes; good design trends make for a better experience. Does it seem dickish? Yes.
Everyone should see this as Apple copying. That's what they're blatantly doing. It shouldn't be viewed negatively so long as it improves the product. There's no possibility that Apple is going to lead 100 times out of 100 on design trends.
They're living up to the motto of great artists stealing. It's done in every industry, and it's done by great designers. It's a myth that great designers don't 'steal' constantly, of course they do. Ditto great musicians, and any other artists.
omg, the new designs look hideous! steve jobs would never have approved these ... looks like apple is now following the footsteps of microsoft, so sad.
Chalk me up then as the only other person who likes the corinthian leather and green baize. Sure it was totally random and a bit ridiculous, but at least you never got confused whether you were in Maps or Find Friends.
In the past I managed a few remote Windows Servers, and to keep from confusing them, I gave each a unique desktop background colour (a pleasant pastel shade) for no reason other than to keep them visually distinct.
Taste is a different argument to your point (distinction). None the less, it is an extremely valid one. The point I'm making is that Jobs allowed some globally 'interesting' design decisions through, the 'skeuomorphic' textures being a example.
I'm really sorry to drag this up again, but the "rounded corners" thing isn't really as ridiculous as some people made it sound. There are two important points here.
First - Samsung was found not to infringe on design patent D'889, which is commonly criticized as the "rounded rectangles" patent. Most of the patents in the case covered other ideas ('381 patent - "rubber band" scrolling, 'D '305 patent - home screen design, '163 patent - double tap to zoom onto a specific block). The "rounded rectangles" issue had little bearing on the verdict.
Second - Read patent D'889 (Please note that it isn't a regular patent, rather, it's a design patent). The patent specifically (and only) covers a touch-screen handheld tablet shaped like a rounded rectangle, with a thin bezel, edge-to-edge glass, and minimal extras, a charging port at the bottom and no stylus. It's hardly as simple as a patent on "rounded corners" - it's a patent on very specific design features, and if a single one was changed, the patent wouldn't apply (and it didn't!).
I don't understand this obsession with complaining about copying or imitating in design. As long as good things are taken and worse things are left behind, the consumers benefit.
It's like being upset that the 2014 cars have the same steering wheel and pedal layout, or that a manufacturer "stole" the idea of using a USB port in a car.
I can't speak for other people, but I can perhaps share some insight from my feelings. Just to get it out of the way, it is a bit annoying to see a company that is normally absolutely obsessed with others copying them now doing the same. But as eyebrow raising as that is, its not really my main concern.
My personal issue with this design is that it signals the coming of a boring lull in mobile design. Its the death of distinction. Android, Windows, and iPhone now largely look the same (to me). In fact I think the Windows stuff actually looks better. Its upsetting because there are surely more than just two possible designs ("flat" or "skeuomorphic"). Did iOS need a design overhaul? I don't know (I'm personally of the belief that it was missing key features and services more than a new skin). But if for the sake of argument it did, then this just frankly feels lazy on Apple's part. It was the most obvious direction to go in, and its been done. Aqua and iOS 1 were different, fresh, and represented an original vision for UIs. Even if you didn't like them it provided something to contrast to. This just provides something to compare to :/
I feel like your argument basically distills down to: "All flat designs look alike."
Surely, that's not the case. And as I've been messing around with IOS7, I'm noticing a lot more than just a graphical redesign. This is also a usability redesign. Little things like including a contact button at the top of the Messages app itself rather than at the top of the message view. IOS7 is full of these little tweaks that have been standard fare in the jailbreak communities.
To boil it down to "a boring lull in mobile design" is to really ignore the quality of the IOS7 redesign.
I think you may have made my point better than I did: I'm just not that impressed with Apple finally cribbing off the jailbreak community, and I sincerely hope that the future of iOS is not endless tweaking held up as some paramount of interaction design. Am I happy with these changes? Sure, the same way I'm happy that Mac OS X has finally fixed the multiple-display bug that has plagued it for 3 years. But these (long overdue) changes a bold OS do not make. And perhaps the argument is that Apple is not trying to make a bold new OS. However, that is definitely what it is presenting iOS 7 as, so I feel that I have a right to disagree.
I think the community in general has felt that iOS 7 was Apple's chance to respond to the criticisms (fair or not) that iOS was stagnating, and I feel that that is what Apple feels it has accomplished. I feel they have done so in the shallowest way possible. To me they presented a corporate image of playing catchup: catching up to Windows and Android visual design cues, catching up to jailbreak experiments that have been happening for years, catching up to interactions we saw in Web OS ages ago. I'm not saying they shouldn't have done this, I'm saying that in my eyes these are bug fixes and there exists an Apple that pushed further. There are a million things I wish Safari did every single day that I use it, and quite frankly "3d tab organization" is not one of them.
This is my point, I think people are not seeing the actual usability improvements that could have taken place. You think design is more than just visual stuff, its usability. I agree, I just think its more than making things take 3 taps less. Remember the original iPhone and iOS, it was a completely different way of interacting with your phone that allowed you to do NEW things you couldn't before. Google is now exploring real new territory with their excellent services like Google Now. If Apple wants to keep fighting services and infrastructure with "design", that's fine, but its going to require more than endlessly spinning its wheels trying to figure out the "best" weather interface possible and micro-optimizing insignificant interactions with the OS.
"I'm just not that impressed with Apple finally cribbing off the jailbreak community, and I sincerely hope that the future of iOS is not endless tweaking held up as some paramount of interaction design."
I see the jailbreak tweaks as the alpha version of features that will one day make it into the main source. People who are not afraid to test things out play with and refine the tweaks until they're ready to be official.
I love the fact that at least eight tweaks have been integrated into the main source!
I'm surprised that many of the little tweaks that Apple has added weren't available sooner. For example, on iOS 5 you could adjust the screen brightness via the double-click home menu on the bottom on the iPad, but not on the iPod, which was bizarre.
After a morning playing with it, it doesn't really look or feel anything like Windows phone to me. I don't have enough experience with Android to offer much in useful commentary, but it doesn't seem like the Nexus 7 I once used. Has anyone put up a side by side compare and contrast against the other mobile OSes yet? I suppose that would be against the dev agreement.
I don't think it's a lull, I prefer to think of it as a spring cleaning. iOS 6 is great, but it has reached a visual saturation point, making it difficult to add more ideas.
Sometimes you need to step back in order to advance further. The Pentium 4 is a case in point.
I'm sure there will be ongoing refinement to the visual language, and will feel finished by the time iOS 7 ships. Then iOS 8 and 9 will be able to progressively layer new ideas into the new literal and metaphorical white space.
I think it has more to do with the particular company. Namely, a company that brags about how original their designs/products and is very sue happy towards anyone who imitates them in the slightest. On top of that, they have a lot of fans who think of Apple as a master of UI and general design (I'm not saying they're wrong) and will associate the design Apple and not the others who spearheaded it.
I didn't listen to Apples presentation, so I don't know if they tooted their own horn on this new design scheme, but if I was a designer who had been working on interfaces similar to what Apple is switching to, I would still be pretty pissed off right now. Because, once people switch to iOS 7, the general public will perceive your design as "Apple like" or "Apple inspired."
I couldn't care less how original or unoriginal something is, I mainly care about how good it is functionally and less so how pleasing it is visually. I wish more people paid attention to that rather than who created what first. All ideas are based on some other ideas to some degree.
I guess that's the difference. If Apple implemented something I created in their products, I'd be super happy that my idea is doing well and will benefit more people. I care about the ideas themselves, not about receiving credit.
The "Can't quite put my finger on it..." piece is in reference to a common catch-phrase for bloggers who have mocked Android, Samsung, and Microsoft for "copying" elements from iOS.
I agree the whole back and forth is a bit silly from both parties.
Frequently seen re: MBA and iMac knock offs as well. It's hilarious and worth pointing out in both directions although I think the popular notion that one cancels out the other is false equivalence.
I agree that there are situations where the borrowing is much more blatant, and I don't think pointing out influences is a waste of time. Conversations along these lines tend to devolve into flame wars, however.
>The "Can't quite put my finger on it..." piece is in reference to a common catch-phrase for bloggers who have mocked Android, Samsung, and Microsoft for "copying" elements from iOS.
Only this is not a copy. It's just a different flat design, just as Windows also uses a flat design.
It doesn't copy the look of Windows Phone -- it just uses a similar flat visual language.
We cannot say the same for, e.g., MBA look-alikes that you cannot tell apart from 5 feet away.
It's like the difference between two manga comics by different artists (of course there are similarities: they used the same visual language) and a cheap rip-off of an animated series (e.g Power Rangers vs Powerful Rangers).
Different people have different reasons for idolizing Apple, and one would be its role in the past half decade as the innovator, the leader, or the envelope-pusher. Taking cues from other companies' products goes against the refreshing originality we've enjoyed from Apple so much.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying I personally agree or even think this viewpoint is entirely true; just offering some insight.
There is nothing wrong with it. Unless of course you claim you revolutionized the space with your original designs - which is what Apple and co. do. I simply have a problem with people lying.
This Ars Technica piece http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/06/the-global-influence-of... has a similar piece which is good too, pointing out that the app switcher seems to trace back to WebOS. Actually, the big, high and centred, skinny-lettered and unbordered time display on the lock screen always reminds me of some Sony Xperia lock screens, though maybe that's just me.
Or did you mean when they took out a design patent for a touch screen device of iPad like dimensions with very specific rounding on their corners that is reflected in the rest of their product line as well.
I'm pretty sure, that particular patent of Apple's is EXACTLY what design patents were invented for.
Disclaimer: I don't believe in the patent system at all, but the system exists, so the players play it.
Great post. This is what I keep thinking. I couldn't care less about these companies copying each other. If it benefits me as the user, then let them sue each other into oblivion or make any marketing claim about being innovative. Why do people take these things so personally?
The thing that stood out the most for me was slide-up to unlock, that's been a Windows thing since they began their redesign with WP (from WinMobile).
Still I think that somehow Apple did a better job with the flat UI, I'm currently using Windows 8 (by choice) and my phone is a Lumia 521 (again by choice), and I always feel that something is off with the WP/W8 buttons, they just seem too flat or too... just off -- I can't explain it but I get this weird feeling everytime I see them, the buttons and controls just don't feel polished enough.
When I first installed W8 on my laptop, I thought it might be because it's a beta product and not finished, then when they shipped those icons, I thought it was just my screen (my laptop is a four year old dell inspiron that shipped with vista, incidentally it runs W8 better than it did W7, and better than vista before that), but now that I have a new smartphone the niggling is justified -- there is something odd about the buttons, especially when compared to the new iOS7.
Irony: it only looks like it's slide up to unlock. It's actually slide sideways. My twitter stream right now is full of people pointing out how deeply confusing that little arrow at the bottom of the screen is.
This is something that really, desperately confuses me. Apple is supposedly the king of intuitive design, and yet here, you have literally the first interface people will see on the phone, with an interaction model which is completely impossible to intuit, and only works for people who are already trained in how to complete the action.
I get the desire to eliminate depth, but that little slide gutter and right-pointing arrow tell you exactly what you need to know. The iOS7 UI instructs you to do the wrong thing!
I get that, but I think it's very difficult to make an argument that given a new user, it would be interpreted as an interaction cue rather than just visual polish.
The presence of the up arrow is actively misleading, from a UX perspective. It's like having a slide toggle that you have to double tap to activate!
iPhoneOS/iOS has been around for 6 years. 600 million devices have been sold that all have the same ‘slide to unlock’ mechanism. Now that the majority of phones being sold are smartphones, Apple must’ve felt that it’s OK to remove some of the training wheels. Whether that’s wise remains to be seen. Microsoft finally removed the ‘Start’ button from Windows, but that has been met with quite some resistance, from new and experienced users alike.
Few people read user manuals, which Apple knows. It doesn’t even ship a physical user manual with their iOS products (just a thin quickstart guide). There are in-depth user manuals available for download[1], but the percentage of iPhone owners who read it must be negligible. I often meet iOS users who don’t know that double-tap on the Home button brings up the app switcher.
As the OSes on these mobile devices become more capable over time (and the interaction model grows more complicated), users may need to start treating them as computers that require learning beyond trial and error.
Once people treat them as the complicated computers they are, we can start the countdown to post-post-PC devices.
Especially because there is no reason to drop the visual slider, or to make all the visual hints on the screen super low-contrast (on the new starry sky background at least).
The up arrow is to indicate sliding up - but for the control center, not to unlock. I agree that a new user may be surprised. But having seen all three work once - slide left-to-right to unlock, down for notifications, up for control - it makes sense to me.
I've been running iOS 7 for a day now and had some co-workers give it a try -- all of them current iPhone users -- and literally every single one of them tried to swipe up to unlock.
Unfortunately, in my experience so far, this isn't the only case of misleading and unintuitive design in iOS 7.
That doesn't mean the criticism is invalid, particularly given the preening that Apple did on stage yesterday about the precision and thought that they put into every pixel of the OS.
- Except in the bottom right corner where it will jump to the camera. Even after I'd noticed all the visual hints for this, I got it wrong for the first few times. I wonder if they should have dropped the direct camera shortcut in favour of the control panel, which is a swipe and a tap.
How do you know this if you haven't physically used it?
And why on earth do people assume Apple hasn't thoroughly tested this? They may get many things wrong, but it's insane to thing they overlooked that part.
Interesting - the animation for the unlocking is somewhat similar to the animation when swiping between pages in the app list on Android Jellybean (I'm not criticizing the copying, just noting the similarity). Given the focus on layers in the rest of the design (the control panel and notifications center, for example) I would have thought the unlock screen would slide off like a layer, as well (since they are using the visual metaphor of dragging the whole unlock screen, rather than sliding a specific unlock element, as in previous version of iOS).
Any thoughts as to why they did that differently? Am I just totally off base?
Particularly ironic since Apple made such a big deal out of their slide to unlock patent, being a competitive advantage etc. and specifically tied to moving something from two explicit points along a predefined path. Now after all that fuss they just threw it away and copied their competitors?
My two year old daughter figured out how to unlock my iPhone by sliding her thumb across the slider. Interested to see how she'll find the iOS 7 interface. Toddler usability testing :)
My son, also two years old, can unlock iOS6. He cannot, however, unlock my Galaxy S3, which offers no visual "unlock" slider. It's insane how well a two-year-old can interact with touch devices.
The similarity to Windows Phone and some concepts I first saw on Android were what caught my eye here. And do I think that's a bad thing? No.
I think what has everyone generally up in arms is that, with Apple, they never look like they're copying anyone. Until they do.
And what frustrates others is when users try to explain away how it's not really a copy, it's something different because it's done oh-so-much better.
I don't really care all that much, but one thing is certain -- the new iOS7 design looks more like designs of competitors than it does the previous iOS line.
In a general sense, this is natural design evolution - where Darwin's mutation and natural selection concepts can be applied (generally) to the evolution and advancement of good/effective design.
The windows phone likely took some of its design concepts from previous iOS and Android designs, and now iOS7 is 'evolving' the same way.
This (evolution) can be described as a recursive process: keep the things that work (natural selection), try something new (mutate) with the things that didn't work.
I would also like to note that I find iOS7's weather app design closely resembles Yahoo's weather app, more so than the Windows' phone.
In regards to the Yahoo weather app, if you look very closely in the bottom right you will see they are pretty much the exact same thing. Both taking from the same location (Yahoo Weather) and both formatting it similar to how Yahoo does already.
No sense in redoing something that is already well done.
The Yahoo Weather app is quite well done and I think one of the best weather apps on the iPhone. Apple couldn't have chosen a better weather app to "steal" from.
Apple likes Yahoo!’s Weather app so much they gave it a Apple Design Award. Their review:
“Yahoo! Weather stands apart with its simple, uncluttered, and beautiful visual design. This highly-rated app displays weather details with stunning photography based on time of day, location, and current conditions. Yahoo! Weather has great layout and typography, compelling animations, fast image processing, and clear iconography. This attention to detail means that in a saturated category, an app can rise above the crowd.”
Design always looks easier than it really is. Even the most shanzhai designers must work very hard to copy a design given other constraints (cost) they are limited by. And the imitation often misses many details.
Unfortunately, not many others would be willing to put much faith in someone with the grammar of a 6th grader to do a better job at UX design than a multi-billion dollar company.
It's actually not an ad hominem. A firm grasp of language, grammar, and communication is actually recognized, albeit informally, to be a good signal of technical skill and design effectiveness. If he can't refine his linguistic communication well enough to convey such a simple sentence, how can he be expected to refine his visual communication (i.e., UX design) well enough to surpass one of the leading UX teams in the industry?
There are further reasons it's not an ad hominem - I recommend you read The Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy [1]. I don't mean to criticize - I made the same mistake until recently, so I offer the article in a spirit of goodwill, not superiority.
I'm not saying that it is an ad hominem, but I've read through the page and I think the connection between grammar and design skills is a red herring. The page considers this an ad hominem too, even though having a grasp of logic is clearly important for making A's statement:
A: "All rodents are mammals, but a weasel isn't a rodent, so it can't be a mammal."
B: "Well, you've never had a good grasp of logic, so this can't be true."
Maybe I'm not seeing the difference though (not a native speaker, just curious).
As I've mentioned in another comment I just posted (after your comment, that is), it's not an ad hominem regardless of whether the "poor grammar -> poor design" argument holds, because there is an argument present, not a simple dismissal of everything he has to say. It might be wrong, but it's still a valid argument, and not an ad hominem.
The example you show instead points to an attribute of the speaker to imply that what he says is categorically untrue, regardless of whether it's relevant or not. In this case, an attribute of the speaker is used to refute a specific argument of his (that he is such a demigod of UX design that he can design better than any of the top teams in the industry), while still allowing him to participate in the debate.
No argument can be made connecting someone's poor grasp of logic to the taxonomy of weasels, but an argument can be made connecting someone's poor grasp of grammar to that same person's ability to design.
Your argument falls apart when you realize that good design has nothing to do with being able to speak a certain specific language (in this case, English) really well.
(I agree with your gist though about ridiculing the idea it would be trivial to do a better job at design)
I may be assuming unfairly, but the than/then confusion referred to is a problem I have seen almost exclusively in native English speakers who try to spell phonetically. Non-native speakers have other problems, which I generally gloss over.
It seems a fair assumption that mattermill is a native English speaker when he's on a primarily English-speaking site, committing a primarily English-native grammar error, and echoing some very American hubris (not saying Americans are all terrible - I am one - but we do have a certain characteristic braggadocio).
You can make something pretty without the ability to clearly communicate and a strong attention to detail, but you can't effectively design for information and interaction purposes without those skills. Anecdotally, most of the excellent hackers and designers I've met have had excellent communication skills, and those native to English usually speak it impeccably.
Also, the kind of absolute mastery of UX design he claims (the ability to out-design all the best in the industry on his own, based only on screenshots) would require all but perfection of all the attributes of a good designer. Such a trivial mistake would not pass the muster of such a demigod of design.
Regardless of whether I'm right in that argument, it's still not an ad hominem, because there is an argument present, not a simple dismissal of everything he has to say because he made a grammar error. It's a challenge extrapolated from his grammar to his implicitly claimed mastery of UX design, not a dismissal of his ability to participate in the debate.
I actually first saw the new lock screen linked by some random comment poster on one of the tech sites and had to double-check that it wasn't some Android variant and that they weren't having me on. Not joking.
Apple clearly took ideas from Google/Android. However, Apple's offerings look to have a level of polish that the Android ones do not have. Each and every comparison on that page looks like Google's engineers' visuals vs Apple's artists' -- thats the thing that "regular" people will instinctively gravitate to -- the one that is pretty.
The only Android screenshots that look less pretty to me are the ones taken in the middle of doing something, e.g. the Android lock screen notifications which is in the process of being pulled down vs. the Apple one which looks a lot cleaner because it's fully extended.
Everyone is so quick to judge the static pictures. But Apple took great pains to point out how this is a reactive system, how movement, suggestion and gesture follow the user's interactions. Sure, the current culture of design appreciation that they played a big part in has now started moving faster than they are. But that's mistaking visual decoration for how something works. Based on past experience, I trust Apple to make it more than skin deep.
We can wax poetic about design and UX or we can accept that what they did was change the way something looks and feels, which is ultimately not the same thing as changing what something does.
I'm not underplaying the importance of design, but I think calling something that ultimately does not affect the capabilities of the device a 'revolution' is a bit of an exaggeration.
Repeat as you maybe missed it the first time around: "Design is not how something looks; design is how it works"
iOS 7 doesn't change the looks. It changes how everything works. All the built in apps have been changed completely. The entire OS layer has been changed completely.
A revolution is not poetic - it means a significant change where all the old paradigms are thrown out and replaced with new ones.
I was up until 1:00 am yesterday night finding more and more features and changes, and I am still finding more changes. I know it's not technically but it certainly feels like iOS has been re-written from scratch.
I'm not necessarily going to defend waxing poetic, but the visual changes (which everyone has been harping on) are being driven by some pretty significant changes in UIKit that really are a revolution in how iOS apps will be written and used.
I disagree that it's a revolution but think it's a much needed refresher. They also introduced some features that I think they've been lacking. It's a much better upgrade than 5 and 6 IMO.
You could put Android, WP and iOS side-by-side and they are going to look (and work) more alike than different in most areas. That's what happens when these products reach a huge mass market. There is too much risk (for established players) to diverge too far from what is familiar to so many people. Also why it's so difficult for non-established players to compete. They can't diverge very far from what people are familiar with. We're locked into basically the same SmartPhone flavors until the hardware changes so radically that the software has to change radically to accommodate it.
I've used a iPhone since 2008, starting with the 3G. It wasn't until yesterday, after loading iOS 7, that I noticed the keyboard was always in caps. In fact, I thought it was bug in iOS 7. "Why in the hell is the keyboard all caps now? Surely it won't ship this way." Then I used my wife's iOS 6 phone and for the first time noticed that it's always been that way. There's something about the new UI/color scheme that brought this to my attention. Or maybe the shift key state isn't distinct enough to tell me whether it's caps or not (and hence I look at the keys to discern the difference, and they're of course no help).
My point, on topic with your objection, is that I never even noticed the lack of lower case keys before iOS 7. So for me it's not something high on the list.
The keyboard could easily switch between upper and lower case depending on what the user is actually entering. Why wouldn't they do that? It just seems like an easy win.
Dunno about myko, but every time I use an iOS device it really confuses me. Comparing it to a physical keyboard isn't fair, since on software keyboards shift is stateful. lower/UPPER casing the keyboard is a much larger (very convenient) indicator of that state than the altered shift button.
You first have to start with the fact that every smartphone has copied the iPhone†
From there, it's impossible to see how Apple could possibly change anything without someone somewhere claiming that they've ripped off something from somewhere else. But the people they're allegedly ripping off have in turn ripped off Apple, rendering the entire debate pointless.
†Not that it's a bad thing, once the iPhone came out, everyone else had to copy it. The first iPhone was the starting point for how all smartphones from that point on shoud be.
Considering iOS 7 is a 'flat' redesign, it's hardly surprising that it bears stylistic similarities to other flat mobile UI designs.
The flat trend in web and app UI design has been building for the last couple of years. We're at a point where flat is simply the present zeitgeist of UI design.
However, 'flat' largely covers superficial aspects of design. Where iOS still differs is in the actual meat of the design; the interactivity and user experience.
In all seriousness though, there isn't any original design. To think that the goal of design is to snatch something from thin air in moments of lighting like brilliance is a gross misconception. Designing is solving problems.
Flat design has been around for a while. I remember seeing them on phones before iPhone 1, and also on various Linux desktops. People says Microsoft or Google did this first hasn't been around enough.
Personally, I like previous version better.
As for other features, iPhone jailbreaking community should take more credit then Google or others, quick access to wifi and other settings. I remember seeing them on jail broken iPhone way before Android.
Get over this already. "Flat" design or whatever the hell we all want to call it has been the application of the International Typographic Style to UI elements across phones.
If you are worried about somebody ripping somebody off, worry about the works from Jan Tschichold, Adrian Frutiger, or Josef Müller-Brockmann being ripped off, not MS, Apple, Android, or whoever else.
Microsoft and Palm have been building full-face touch-screen mobile devices since the late 1990s. Full-face Touch-screen PocketPC phones started coming out in 2002ish.
Yes, they were resistive rather than capacitative touch-screens. That wasn't because it didn't occur to anyone to use a capacitative touch-screen before Apple, it was because the technology wasn't mature enough before around 2006/7. And if even you want to make the (silly) argument that whichever manufacturer happens to be the first to bring out a full-face capacitative touch-screen phone can somehow claim to have invented the concept, that honour goes to the LG Prada.
Flat is beautiful, and easy to use, if it strips away non-functional chrome. It's even more beautiful, but a little hard to use, if it obscures the controls. A pro user (say, one who's trained on a previous version, and knows what functions are available) might feel at home, but it's just not intuitive anymore.
When I see the new screenshots, I can only think of the old, maybe 2003 era Microsoft Powerpoint themes. I haven't quite been able to pin down what about it is drawing the parallel for me, but it is.
Having an unfortunately difficult time finding a relevant link :(
You see the thing is that it's nothing like windows phone. Having had it all day, I can definately not see any such 'copying.' The style of the design is not the design itself. To copy is the act of replicating something.
The incoming phone call and last screenshots are unfair - the iPhone of today would look a lot more similar to Windows Phone and iOS 7 if there was a facial photo of the caller and if the background image was a bunch of dots.
I'm not convinced. They seem to share a very high level "clean" theme, but there are enough differences to make me feel it is not a knock off. It does make their old design look rather gaudy though.
You do realize that there is more to flat design than just removing gloss? If I were to agree with your statement then I would say the opposite is also true. Draw a rectangle, add some gloss and voila.. Apple's design right?
Put the iOS images side by side, shit even ignore the ios7 images, and the difference is gloss(and button shape). My point is that layout/placement of elements seem to be a constant, while it is actual dress that is the differentiator. Functionally it seems that iOS hasn't changed. The lock screen looks different, but seems to behave as it does now (the bokeh effect is the only thing that compares from this article). And I can't fault them for taking WebOS' multitasker, every small-screen os should use it.
I have the Lumia 920 and Microsoft absolutely nailed the design of the OS. It works seamlessly with Office Live/Online/365 whatever the heck they call it too. The home screen of the phone agitates my OCD something fierce because I have to get it just right or... I'll... die...
Seriously though, its a great phone and if you need one for work like I do, might as well get one you really like.
Lumia 900 owner here. OS is nice, but the apps... just as an example, I got really frustrated with IE this morning because it didn't recognize StartCom as a trusted certificate authority, and it doesn't cache my response (to ignore the warning and browse the page anyway). The https page loaded the first time, but subsequent pages just showed blank screens. And that stupid SSL warning page just kept popping up.
It's 2013 and I can't browse certain web pages with my expensive smartphone...
We are talking about smartphone screens. There are not lots of flexibilities for UI design. You either slide up or to the side for a lock screen. And what about time?
Sure there are. Android has seen a lot of different lock screen types - drag the small circle out of the big circle, drag the small circle into the big circle, "rotary dial" unlock, pattern unlock, and Samsung's (or was it HTC?) "fling the whole screen" unlock style.
Contextual gesture unlock/launch mechanisms are actually pretty popular. Here's an example with 4 options, but that is by no means the only option set.
The reason for all that creativity is to try and get around Apple's breathtakingly broad patent for unlocking a phone by moving along a "predefined displayed path".
You know, I can see that. If Android is ripping off iOS that really means that for iOS to step up and get modern, Android isn't the template to follow -- Android is stuck with innovating off of iOS's past accomplishments...it's innovating while walking backwards.
WM, being a ground-up re-imagining of how smart phones work is looking forward...better to co-opt some of those ideas instead...be in a position of innovating while walking forwards.
You obviously have not used modern Android, or are ignorant of Android's own innovations and design language. See here where iOS7 "borrows" a lot of stock Android features and design language.
Perhaps the same thing that seems to have convinced most every Apple user that their products are magical and categorically superior to every other product in existence: good marketing paired with illusory naivety on the receiving end.
I haven't used iOS 7 yet, so I can't say this with certainty, but based on my experience with Apple, I feel pretty confident to say that they may have integrated similar graphic motifs you're familiar with from other platforms, but the end experience will be leaps and bounds better than others who've tried to implement the same elements. There is real thought put into how a person will best use this product, not just how clean and pretty the UI can look.