I'll come out and say it. With iOS 7, Apple took a step backward and started letting others lead. Microsoft debuted late in the game with an also-ran platform, and suddenly everyone had a flat boxy design. Meanwhile Apple had lost Steve Jobs and fired Scott Forstall, the two people who were pro skeumorphism and would have never allowed Apple to go down that path.
A lot of people liked the skeumorphic designs. It made the technology feel polished, beautiful and natural. Not to mention textures work way better than transparent colors when you're watching, say, a video with a white background so you can't even see the controls. Oh and hey, try swiping up from the bottom in the Camera app - Whoops!
And what's with the puke neon green for status bars during phonecalls that you can hardly read white text on? What's with the complete breakage of the browser UI with a subsequent "minimal-ui" apology all of which is then reverted back in iOS 8?
For that matter, sending group messages in apps is still horribly broken since iOS 7. And iOS 8.1 was a disaster and was recalled quickly.
Yeah, Apple's design changed, and not for the better.
> With iOS 7, Apple took a step backward and started letting others lead.
What do you mean by that? iOS 7 saw the introduction of a new design, with new design language, created entirely by Apple rather than mimicking other companies. Superficially it may appear more similar to other companies because of the loss of skeuomorphism, but once you look past the fact that it's flatter than before, it's still quite distinct from Microsoft and Google and everyone else. So given all that, what does "letting others lead" mean?
> suddenly everyone had a flat boxy design
Apple's design is flatter than before, but it's not flat. If anything, the blur and parallax create an even deeper design than it was when it was skeuomorphic. Microsoft is definitely going with the very flat design. Google's new design language I haven't looked at very much, but I think it's safe to say it's relatively flat as well, though probably not as flat as Microsoft.
> Meanwhile Apple had lost Steve Jobs and fired Scott Forstall, the two people who were pro skeumorphism and would have never allowed Apple to go down that path
I find it rather distasteful to invoke the memory of Steve to try and make a point like this. Did you know Steve personally? I doubt it. Similarly, I doubt you can predict what he would have done. Steve was rather (in)famous for his ability to change his mind and do things he'd previously said would never happen. Without Forestall, I think it's quite possible that Jony could have convinced Steve to go with the new design.
As for Forestall, yes, he would have never let this happen. But that's usually considered to be a point against Forestall, not a point for him. The Mac / iOS dev community, and the wider tech press, generally had the opinion that Apple kept going with skeuomorphism for much longer than they should have, and that it was Forestall's fault, and that the ousting of Forestall was a change for the good. So I find it quite odd to see you implying that Forestall's ousting was a bad move.
> A lot of people liked the skeumorphic designs.
Who are these people? Serious question here.
Skeuomorphism is generally considered a good thing to have when introducing new interaction metaphors. It allows people to recognize the widget and instinctively know how to manipulate it. See a button? Push it. A slider? Slide it. Etc. But skeuomorphism is also considered to hold back design and be visually clunky and distracting once users have learned to feel natural with the interaction. This can be seen time and time again in the evolution of GUI platforms. Take for example Mac OS X. The original OS X was full of skeuomorphic touches, such as the very blobby shadowed buttons. And successive versions of OS X slowly kept reducing it, removing the visual distractions, removing the excess skeuomorphism. It was a slow evolution, but if you go back and look at screenshots of OS X 10.0, and try to imagine a new platform introducing that look today, it should be obvious that it would be widely ridiculed.
The iPhone introduced a brand new interaction metaphor to the general population. Yes, the technology existed before, but almost exclusively stylus-based, mimicking desktop OS interaction, and only used by a fraction of the population. The iPhone was, almost everyone, their first experience with handheld touchscreen devices (and many of those hadn't used stylus-based devices either). Beyond the novelty of actually touching the screen, Apple also had to come up with new gesture-based interactions that they had to teach users. In this context, skeuomorphism is very useful. It makes it obvious to users what can be tapped or dragged or swiped. But as the years went by, and as every other smartphone manufacturer immediately started copying Apple, the skeuomorphism became a hindrance. People didn't need the visual affordance to tell what was a tappable button anymore, or to understand that the colored navigation bar at the top was a distinct UI element from the content below it. Skeuomorphism outlasted its utility, and thus, once the last holdout (Forestall) was gone, it was excised from the OS.
You can certainly argue they went to far in some cases. For example, the navigation bar buttons lost their borders and just became text. Was that a mistake? Well, that's a highly subjective question. But from a usability perspective, it certainly seems like it wasn't, since everyone has already learned that content on the left and right edges of the navigation bar is tappable.
> Not to mention textures work way better than transparent colors when you're watching, say, a video with a white background so you can't even see the controls.
What are you talking about? The OS-provided video controls are displayed on top of a neutral grey background (with blur). This is easily readable no matter the video content. The only video player that comes to mind that might have this issue is the YouTube app, which uses custom controls (which has no relation to the OS design).
> Oh and hey, try swiping up from the bottom in the Camera app - Whoops!
Whoops? What whoops? It behaves exactly like I thought it would; the little arrow control shows up indicating that a second swipe will pull up Control Center. That's exactly what I expected to happen, since the Camera app hides the status bar. And in the Camera Roll it brings up Control Center with a single swipe, since the status bar is visible there.
What are you seeing that elicited the "whoops"?
> And what's with the puke neon green for status bars during phonecalls that you can hardly read white text on?
I hope you aren't seeing "puke green", because if so you might need your eyes checked. As for reading text, that's fairly hyperbolic. White text isn't as readable as it is on a black background, but it's still quite readable. I just tried it out, and the text was just as readable on that green background as it is across most of the OS. Besides, what are you actually trying to read on it? The only text on it besides the status bar is "Touch to return to call".
> What's with the complete breakage of the browser UI with a subsequent "minimal-ui" apology all of which is then reverted back in iOS 8?
I have no idea what you're referring to here. Can you elaborate?
> For that matter, sending group messages in apps is still horribly broken since iOS 7.
I don't know what you're talking about here either. It works fine for me and everyone I know (and we use group messages a lot).
> And iOS 8.1 was a disaster and was recalled quickly.
What are you talking about? Perhaps you're referring to 8.0.1, which was replaced a day later by 8.0.2? The issue with 8.0.1 has not even the slightest shred of relation to design.
What do you mean by that? iOS 7 saw the introduction of a new design, with new design language, created entirely by Apple rather than mimicking other companies.
Apple has always had a distinctive style and design language. It had to do with aesthetically pleasing skeumorphic appearance. Look at most of the articles written after iOS 7 came out, people were horrified. Don't get me wrong, iOS 7 was still progress, but despite the design, not because of it. It had things like the new control center, more WebOS-like app switching, etc.
Apple's design is flatter than before, but it's not _flat_. If anything, the blur and parallax create an even deeper design than it was when it was skeuomorphic.
People had to get used to the blur and parallax, because they had no choice. Some people got vertigo and seizures from all the movement, so Apple had to tone it down a bit (but not get rid of it).
And if all you can say is that apple's design is flat but not AS flat as Google, which isn't as flat as Microsoft ... that's not saying a lot. I think iOS 7 was Apple's Vista. Look at the exodus to Android when it came out.
Minor point: You can find tons of articles hating the new icons. Many people thought the white background of Safari was a placeholder icon. Nope.
I find it rather distasteful to invoke the memory of Steve to try and make a point like this. Did you know Steve personally? I doubt it. Similarly, I doubt you can predict what he would have done.
I've watched a lot of Steve Jobs videos - interviews and documentaries and back-and-forths from when he came back to Apple, and I'm going off of what he explicitly said and valued. I think I'm being pretty true to what he explicitly said and pushed for.
Steve Jobs used to praise when things on screen looked "familiar", and famously called the new iOS buttons "lickable".
People didn't need the visual affordance to tell what was a tappable button anymore, or to understand that the colored navigation bar at the top was a distinct UI element from the content below it. Skeuomorphism outlasted its utility, and thus, once the last holdout (Forestall) was gone, it was excised from the OS.
No, Forstall was gone because Tim Cook fired him, after Steve Jobs passed away. Tim Cook explained that he did this to increase collaboration after Steve Jobs. Note that Steve did NOT fire Forstall and replace him with Jony Ive even after Forstall had messed up royally after being placed in charge of Maps (to be fair, Maps was almost impossible to pull off in time, and Forstall took the blame).
I think there were two iPhone fiascos under Steve, one was the battery and the other was Maps. Compare with the number of fiascos now (iOS 8.1 anyone?) ... my company makes an app called Groups, and iOS 7 broke group messaging for EVERY app on iOS and Apple just flat-out never fixed it. It's STILL BROKEN. Yes, the iOS lies to the apps and says the message is sent, but sometimes it just doesn't send it. What is that? I would have emailed sjobs@apple.com and he would have had it fixed in the next version.
What are you talking about? The OS-provided video controls are displayed on top of a neutral grey background (with blur).
In the camera app, it appears that I could swipe up to reveal the control center with the flashlight. But instead, it just takes a photo!
Oh yeah while I'm on the camera app, remember how in iOS 7 Apple just decided to make a non-obvious control that you had to SWIPE instead of tapping? That took a while to figure out. Also Apple decided to replace the beautiful-looking option-selectors with a "3d fisheye" version that made it hard to see anything and couldn't fit as many items anymore. etc. etc. The new design decisions were hardly consistent, and seemed to be done "just because it's cool to do translucency".
As for reading text, that's fairly hyperbolic. White text isn't as readable as it is on a black background, but it's still quite readable.
after:
http://i.stack.imgur.com/bPcm8.png ... what genius signed off on making the status bar show white text on light neon green during a call? compare the readability to the previous.
I have no idea what you're referring to here. Can you elaborate?
Apple broke a lot of mobile websites and lots of web designers gave it zero love after iOS 7. They had just figured out how to make their apps go fullscreen with scrollTo(0, 1) that worked across iOS and Android. And then Apple ruined it all, touting how their interface "gets out of the way" when it fact it would pop in whenever a person tried to, say, touch a button on the bottom or top of the screen, making the person do a double-take and have to tap AGAIN.
Then they kind of conceded by adding "minimal-ui" to the HTML which would make the UI disappear. But then in iOS 8 they took it away again, and went back to something like iOS 6. No consistent direction, just experimenting and apologizing. That's not what Apple was before.
Oh and in iOS 8, they broke file uploading... so yeah, you can't even upload photos anymore.
What are you talking about? Perhaps you're referring to 8.0.1, which was replaced a day later by 8.0.2? The issue with 8.0.1 has not even the slightest shred of relation to design.
Right, but it speaks to how the company now pushes things out, and what processes are in place to assure quality and consistency through the whole development process.
> Look at most of the articles written after iOS 7 came out, people were horrified.
Some people were horrified. It's a gross exaggeration to say most people were horrified. I think the tech press in general tended towards the "horrified" angle because the tech press loves to magnify any seeming flaw in what Apple is doing. It makes for good page views. But the tech press is not the same thing as Apple's customer base. And like any sweeping design change, some people love it, some people hate it, most people are probably pretty indifferent but will tend to lean towards criticizing anything new for the sake of it being new (and then very quickly getting used to it and completely forgetting they pooh-poohed it to begin with).
> People had to get used to the blur and parallax, because they had no choice.
What does that mean? Every design choice in a product "forces" people to get used to it. This statement is pretty meaningless, except in that you're trying to imply that people had to be forced to use the new design, which is as stupid as it is untrue.
> Some people got vertigo and seizures from all the movement, so Apple had to tone it down a bit
Apple had the switch to tone it down from the beginning. All they "had to do" was slightly increase the effect of the switch. But the fact that you're criticizing Apple for providing a switch to reduce motion effects is ridiculous. That would be like criticizing them for providing the "Increase Contrast" option, which incidentally is right next to the "Reduce Motion" option under Accessibility settings. Except it's commonly accepted that people have vision problems and benefit from accessibility options geared towards them (side note: Apple is famous for the rich accessibility support they provide in both iOS and OS X), the only thing different here is that having an accessibility option for people with vertigo has not previously been something that anybody ever thought about.
> And if all you can say is that apple's design is flat but not AS flat as Google [...]
That's not all I can say. It's completely incorrect for you to make that assertion, and it suggests that you are not arguing in good faith.
> I think iOS 7 was Apple's Vista. Look at the exodus to Android when it came out.
Wild hyperbole is not an effective arguing tactic. Nobody would ever seriously consider iOS 7 to be equivalent to what is widely considered one of the highest-profile tech flops ever, especially given that iOS 7 reached a staggering 87% adoption rate after less than 7 months[1]. And there was no exodus to Android, I don't even know where you got that idea from and I highly suspect you made it up on the spot.
> Minor point: You can find tons of articles hating the new icons. Many people thought the white background of Safari was a placeholder icon. Nope.
You can find tons of articles hating every new design that's ever been produced for anything popular. People dislike change in general, and the press in particular find that articles critical of popular new things become popular articles. This is one of the reasons why the tech press tries to magnify every possible perceived issue as much as they can.
And again with the "many people". Some people thought that. Or actually, I seem to recall seeing one person suggest that, which was quickly forgotten. That was not a generally-accepted possibility.
> [...] I'm going off of what he explicitly said and valued. I think I'm being pretty true to what he explicitly said and pushed for
Absolute bullshit. I already told you that trying to invoke Steve's ghost was distasteful, and now you're doubling down. As I already said, he was quite infamous for his ability to change his mind and directly contradict previous claims he'd made, and he did so quite regularly. You cannot possibly think to speak for him. The fact that you're continuing to do so is rather repulsive.
> yadda yadda yadda more claims about group messaging being broken with zero evidence, and a laughably absurd claim about being able to email sjobs@apple.com and having it be fixed immediately
...
> In the camera app, it appears that I could swipe up to reveal the control center with the flashlight. But instead, it just takes a photo!
No it doesn't. It takes a photo if you tap the photo button. But if you're putting your finger down on the photo button then that's already too high to display Control Center. Trying to claim it's taking a photo means you are blaming the OS for your own complete incompetence in the act of swiping up from the bottom of the display. Everybody else seems to have figured out that you start with your finger off the bottom of the screen and swipe upwards and onto the screen. But I guess you thought trying to make up completely invalid "bugs" in iOS for internet arguments was a better idea.
> links to pictures for the in-call status bar
That picture is wrong. The color shown there is wildly off. Measuring the picture, the color it's showing apparently doesn't even display in sRGB, but the closest I can get is #21EF00. The actual color of the status bar as measured from the iOS Simulator (running 7.1, since that's the earliest sim that works with current tools) is #44DB5E. And I'm pretty sure this is a fault with the image, not a difference between iOS 7.0 and 7.1, because not only have I never seen such a neon green ever show up on my iPhone before, but the Facebook blue color is also wrong.
So yeah, if you go by images found on the internet that have their colors messed up, then you can make all sorts of incorrect claims about the usability of the OS!
> Apple broke a lot of mobile websites and lots of web designers gave it zero love after iOS 7. They had just figured out how to make their apps go fullscreen with scrollTo(0, 1) that worked across iOS and Android. And then Apple ruined it all, touting how their interface "gets out of the way" when it fact it would pop in whenever a person tried to, say, touch a button on the bottom or top of the screen, making the person do a double-take and have to tap AGAIN.
I'm having a hard time believing that you're serious with this. Apple made MobileSafari significantly easier to use. It moves the chrome out of the way while still retaining full usability. From a usability perspective, it's so nice to use it almost feels like magic. I was genuinely gleeful when I realized that even though the bottom bar was hidden, tapping on the bottom edge of the the screen brought it back so I could use the controls on it.
The fact that some web designers had their ugly stupid workarounds broken is kind of a good thing. Websites that deliberately attempt to hide the browser chrome are a bad thing. It breaks usability, since the browser chrome is no longer predictable.
> [...] minimal-ui [...]
That was added in 7.1. And I don't think I ever actually saw it get used. It was presumably removed in iOS 8 either because of changes to the behavior of Safari's chrome that made it not usable, or because it didn't do the job right, or because Apple wanted to make the browser chrome even more consistent, or maybe some other reason entirely. I don't know. But the fact that I never actually saw it in the wild is suggestive that it really doesn't matter that it was removed. This is not the first time Apple has added something in one OS version and removed it in another. And it surely won't be the last.
> Oh and in iOS 8, they broke file uploading... so yeah, you can't even upload photos anymore.
Funny, I just uploaded an image to imgur.com just fine on my iOS 8 device: http://imgur.com/CRZ4dCU
> Right, but it speaks to how the company now pushes things out, and what processes are in place to assure quality and consistency through the whole development process.
No it doesn't. It only speaks to how people like you leap to conclusions based on a complete lack of any evidence whatsoever as to what went wrong and what, if anything, it indicates about their processes.
Some people were horrified. It's a gross exaggeration to say most people were horrified.
Most articles at the time were negative. If you take issue with this, then I'd like to know what design changes you can EVER say about that most people didn't like the change, but were forced to put up with it and eventually forgot about it.
What does that mean? Every design choice in a product "forces" people to get used to it. This statement is pretty meaningless, except in that you're trying to imply that people had to be forced to use the new design, which is as stupid as it is untrue.
It's not meaningless. Given a choice, people might have stuck with iOS 6, but eventually upgraded to iOS 7 for other reasons than design (e.g. new functionality, apps requiring it, having Apple nag them, inability to downgrade after a while). That is relevant when talking about design being more or less liked.
But the fact that you're criticizing Apple for providing a switch to reduce motion effects is ridiculous.
Now you're being disingenuous. I didn't criticize Apple for PROVIDING the switch, but rather for replacing the interactions with a 3d zooming paradigm that introduced the vertigo. It was a minor point, however.
That's not all I can say. It's completely incorrect for you to make that assertion, and it suggests that you are not arguing in good faith.
I'm pretty sure I am saying exactly what I think. As are you, and you appear to be quite the Apple fanboy. (Disclosure: I develop for and own many versions of iPhones.)
Wild hyperbole is not an effective arguing tactic. Nobody would ever seriously consider iOS 7 to be equivalent to what is widely considered one of the highest-profile tech flops ever, especially given that iOS 7 reached a staggering 87% adoption rate after less than 7 months
Yes it is true that Apple's whole ecosystem and platform has always excelled at making people upgrade -- even as it junks their existing laptops / iphones / ipods making them run slower with every OS version, people wind up caving and updating.
I should clarify to avoid pedantic misunderstanding: I am talking about Vista also introducing interface "innovations" in the form of Aero, and people not going for it.
You pretend like there weren't lots of people saying stuff like this, until it died down:
Absolute bullshit. I already told you that trying to invoke Steve's ghost was distasteful, and now you're doubling down. As I already said, he was quite infamous for his ability to change his mind and directly contradict previous claims he'd made, and he did so quite regularly. You cannot possibly think to speak for him. The fact that you're continuing to do so is rather repulsive.
What part of it is bullshit? So apparently I'm not supposed to discuss what views Karl Marx explicitly expressed or mention things he publicly extolled because I'd be invoking his ghost?
Apparently when a person dies their publicly stated views shouldn't be mentioned because it's distasteful? Or is it just too soon? I'm pretty sure Steve Jobs would want people to know what he said.
As for him changing his mind, that's you completely overstating the case in order to downplay the relevance his actual stated views. Nowhere did he express with words or actions that skeumorphism should be replaced with this stuff. That's like saying that mentioning Steve Jobs' position on two-button mice is distasteful and irrelevant because hey, he might have changed his mind later about it. And linking to articles which quote him is invoking his ghost? Come on now.
In a broader sense, are you lashing out at anyone suggesting that Apple's design direction changed after Steve Jobs passed away?
Look, YOU CAN FIND TODAY a growing consensus that Google's mobile app design is now superior to Apple's, in the last couple years. This is really sad to see, considering Apple was always a leader in interface design and Google was very utilitarian. Yet it's true, more and more people are finding Google's apps today more beautiful and consistent than Apple's.
No it doesn't. It takes a photo if you tap the photo button. But if you're putting your finger down on the photo button then that's already too high to display Control Center. Trying to claim it's taking a photo means you are blaming the OS for your own complete incompetence in the act of swiping up from the bottom of the display.
I just took out my iPhone and did it again just to make sure. I still have iOS 7 on my phone. Bring up the Camera app. Start with your finger BELOW the screen. Move it up. Yes, the drawer appears showing that you can swipe up a second time, but by that time WHOOPS a photo has already been taken!
Perhaps instead of insulting me you can try it for yourself. And after you do, come back and tell everyone what you saw.
That picture is wrong. The color shown there is wildly off. Measuring the picture, the color it's showing apparently doesn't even display in sRGB, but the closest I can get is #21EF00.
I had several iPhones and I have seen it for myself. Neon green. Are ALL these images wrong?
That was added in 7.1. And I don't think I ever actually saw it get used. It was presumably removed in iOS 8 either because of changes to the behavior of Safari's chrome that made it not usable, or because it didn't do the job right, or because Apple wanted to make the browser chrome even more consistent, or maybe some other reason entirely. I don't know. But the fact that I never actually saw it in the wild is suggestive that it really doesn't matter that it was removed. This is not the first time Apple has added something in one OS version and removed it in another. And it surely won't be the last.
I don't know how much you participate in web developer forums or Q&A sites but check on stackoverflow how many web developers have had gripes with iOS 7's redesign.
People were very happy that minimal-ui came out (see articles online) and from what I see here you're actually praising Apple for:
1) Taking the predictable iOS 6 browser and making the chrome hide as you scroll + hijacking clicks on the bottom of the screen to make it appear again
2) Introducing minimal-ui to address the many complaints from web developers
3) Deprecating minimal-ui in iOS 8 and bringing back the "predictable" iOS 6 UI
OK, if going back and forth is what you consider so great, what can I say.
Funny, I just uploaded an image to imgur.com just fine on my iOS 8 device: http://imgur.com/CRZ4dCU*
No it doesn't. It only speaks to how people like you leap to conclusions based on a complete lack of any evidence whatsoever as to what went wrong and what, if anything, it indicates about their processes.*
> yadda yadda yadda more claims about group messaging being broken with zero evidence,
DUDE I am a web developer and my company develops mobile apps. We took a lot of heat from our users because the iOS broke SMS messaging in EVERY app on the system, and hasn't fixed it to this day. Since iOS 7, the system LIES to the apps and says a message was sent, and there is NO WAY to determine that it wasn't. Users think it's our app until they realize that EVERY app has the same problem. And Apple hasn't ever fixed it until iOS 8.
A lot of people liked the skeumorphic designs. It made the technology feel polished, beautiful and natural. Not to mention textures work way better than transparent colors when you're watching, say, a video with a white background so you can't even see the controls. Oh and hey, try swiping up from the bottom in the Camera app - Whoops!
And what's with the puke neon green for status bars during phonecalls that you can hardly read white text on? What's with the complete breakage of the browser UI with a subsequent "minimal-ui" apology all of which is then reverted back in iOS 8?
For that matter, sending group messages in apps is still horribly broken since iOS 7. And iOS 8.1 was a disaster and was recalled quickly.
Yeah, Apple's design changed, and not for the better.