iOS 7

http://mattgemmell.com/2013/06/12/ios-7/

by llambda • 13 years ago

648 278 13 years ago

mattgemmell.com

bcks• 13 years ago

Why yes, I would like to enhance text legibility: http://i.imgur.com/5XhQsM9.png

bluthru• 13 years ago

I agree, the default type is too thin to use for body text. I have a real problem with the gmail app doing just this.

mikeash2• 13 years ago

What a bizarre setting. If that's "enhance text legibility", then the "off" position is "make text harder to read, please"?

sp3325• 13 years ago

"Off" means "prettier".

Flying_Dwarf8• 13 years ago

You just made the most important comment in this entire thread. This should be the top post. Apple: your move.

rogerbraun• 13 years ago

This seems like a compromise. Someone knew that the standard text was somewhat hard to read, so he tried to change the standard setting, but someone with more power wanted to keep it. So they implemented the larger size as an option.

epochwolf• 13 years ago

It's not larger, it's bolder.

Coincoin• 13 years ago

They could have named the option "Make text bolder" instead.

snowwrestler• 13 years ago

If I built iOS 7, I would have created these settings specifically for the dev beta and instrumented them. Knowing that 58% of dev users turn on the extra legibility setting is good info for how heavy to make the text in the production release.

bane2• 13 years ago

I've been waiting for blog posts like these, the ones that used to criticize everything that wasn't Apple until Apple starts to do them also, and now they're the best thing ever.

jacobparker• 13 years ago

Is this really the most interesting comment you could think to leave?

Author of the blog: an interesting and insightful read, thank you.

sheri• 13 years ago

Your comment adds nothing other than expose your bias. Do you have any constructive criticism of the article itself?

ryanstout• 13 years ago

Hopefully I'm not the only one that thinks this is going to kill usability. The reason old people can figure their way around <=iOS6 is that everything that can be tapped looks like a button. A more "mature" audience isn't what apple's good at appealing to.

This article seems to sum up some of my other complaints fairly well: http://wolfslittlestore.be/tasteless/

mintplant• 13 years ago

I'm volunteering at a center that teaches senior citizens various computer skills. One of the courses we teach is on how to use their iPhones. I'm dreading the moment that iOS7 is released: all of these people are going to have to start right back at the beginning in their understanding.

ja27• 13 years ago

I think Apple would be happy to lose all the "silver surfers" and regain their cool with teens, tweens, and young adults. Teens don't want the same phone that their grandmother has and they don't want the same tablet they're forced to use at school.

jlmendezbonini• 13 years ago

Would you mind sharing more details about why you think it's going to be painful for seniors to adjust? The answer might be obvious, but I'd love to hear more about the difficulties that you've faced teaching seniors.

klancaster• 13 years ago

Old or not, I really don't get the whole "flat design" trend. Its ugly, at least to me, and reduces usability overall.

cclogg• 13 years ago

This is honestly a valid critique. While many push flat or semi-flat as the successor of skeuomorphic/textured design (in terms of looks and use), I think in many ways it doesn't provide a completely better experience. An example for myself: it took me several minutes on the (flat) Google Maps app to figure out I could pull up the bottom card to do Street-View. Good luck non tech-savvy people!

These comments about the older generation dealing with flat design are also VERY valid. Apple hasn't gone too far into Metro territory, but it will be interesting to see how the useability end of iOS 7 goes over (never mind the criticisms of the look).

Either way, I think Apple needs to polish what they showed at WWDC. Let's start with the arrow pointing up on the lock screen lol.

wvenable• 13 years ago

I agree. I think my parents can easily use iOS 6 on the iPhone or iPad while they have trouble with other computing devices. Same goes with my toddler. I actually thought Apple purposely kept this style because they're aware of the great usability it was compared to what other manufacturers are doing.

It turns out that perhaps I was giving them too much credit.

daughart8• 13 years ago

Linked article is one of the worst offenders I've seen for unsubstantiated whining.

I'm sorry I just don't see why many of these things are so terrible. It's like every designer thinks their personal taste is an objective standard...

FanboyAlert• 13 years ago

Your comment is one of the worst offenders I've seen for unsubstantiated whining. Stop posting fanboy.

pdeuchler• 13 years ago

If you go to the Apple Developer forums (https://developer.apple.com/devforums/ Dev account needed) the "Getting Started" sub-forum is filled with devs, from just signed up to veterans with multiple apps under their belt, asking usability questions.

I think it's telling when your own developing base has to post to forums asking simple questions like:

  Where did my spotlight search go?
  How do I rate songs?

daughart8• 13 years ago

This is not encouraging... Hopefully they can resolve many of the usability issues before release.

For me usability is probably the best way to substantiate a design criticism.

threeseed2• 13 years ago

Yes. It's almost like this is a beta version of the biggest ever change to the OS and some people will have to learn new ways of doing the same tasks.

The only thing 'telling' is that somehow you're surprised by this.

jcc80• 13 years ago

Agreed - this design is very disappointing. I want to be able to glance at my phone and understand what I'm looking at as easily as possible. Another person in this thread mentioned waking up from sleep and looking at their phone - that's exactly it for me. I'm not getting AARP magazine yet (early 30s), just want using my phone to be easy.

methodin• 13 years ago

It is certainly possible to de-clutter without making it look like complete shit. It's the odd decisions all over that just don't make sense, for example using red for primary actions or providing no contrast. Those are basic things even non-designers would know.

I think the reason for the backlash, and rightly justified, is that these seemingly capricious design decisions would seem to underpin a larger fundamental flaw with the overall direction - one that Apple historically is not known for. You can justify the goal, which is of course a good one, but there is not way in hell you can justify the implementation.

angrydev• 13 years ago

This is my issue with the redesign. I'm all for less clutter but I really don't think this is how apple should go about doing it. On the whole it looks far uglier than the previous style, and that's what most people care about. I think they have not reached a balance of minimalistic while being pleasing to the eye.

drivebyacct2• 13 years ago

So now that Apple has moved on it's acceptable to call the old UI dated and ugly. Cool, glad we can be honest about it now.

bane2• 13 years ago

and it seems like just a few months ago people were quickly rebutting this simple fact.

Of course we went from old and tired, to ugly and nearly unusable so...

illicium• 13 years ago

In the field of user experience, there’s a huge and unhelpful overemphasis on similarity, familiarity, and the ability to formally reason about interfaces. People are more nuanced. We respond based not only on experience or reason, but also on emotion and intuition.

So, it's okay to sacrifice similarity and familiarity because you can force people to understand a UI through emotion and intuition? Without familiar cues, a user will have to blindly poke around the interface until they understand it, and then rely on that experience to use it in the future.

There's nothing wrong with a visual overhaul (even if it does make the system look like a cheap Android reskin), but it's not right to throw users off the deep end of the pool because they are used to interactive elements that look... interactive.

larrykubin• 13 years ago

Ah, so if I don't like it, I'm not a "mature consumer" and don't understand digital surfaces.

publicfig• 13 years ago

I don't think that's what it said at all.

grandalf• 13 years ago

I can't believe anyone likes the old one. I think the IOS audience just might be getting a bit old and stodgy.

Afforess3• 13 years ago

What happened to the Don't fix what isn't broken mantra?

aroman2• 13 years ago

Said no one at Apple ever?

I'm being facetious of course, but really, Apple changes their designs up on the regular, even if it isn't "broken". See: the iMac product line.

damoncali• 13 years ago

They could have toned down the affordances and gloss without totally removing the cues. They went to far to fast IMO. The market is not techies in Silicon Valley.

Flying_Dwarf8• 13 years ago

Ha! Those exact words are going to bite Apple so hard when iOS 7 is released.

Old people love ornamentation. My 91 year old grandmother can barely distinguish buttons on her iPhone 4, I pity how she'll use iOS 7.

900022• 13 years ago

"Well, to be honest, she can always sign up for One to One if she needs to learn how to interact with iOS 7's magical new interface." - Apple employee's response in a few months.

gfodor7• 13 years ago

It's cold, but "old people like it" is not a compelling reason to maintain something if there are no other good reasons to do so.

Aloisius• 13 years ago

It reminds me of the Windows Phone. The specifics of the UI are different, but the philosophy behind the UI seems to be the same.

It seems inevitable, when I first saw the original WP7, I thought it made the iPhone look old and that one thing that Apple does not like is looking dated.

sp3325• 13 years ago

Microsoft also has a better term for their philosophy than "flat". They call it "authentically digital".

dylangs10302• 13 years ago

I'm glad someone wrote a blog post like this.

It's getting to be somewhat annoying how many people are whining about Windows Phone and Android similarities. Design and engineering decisions are not made in a vacuum. Android copies from iOS and vice versa - they each follow the cultural trends of smart design.

I would much rather see blog posts like this - where the author considers the iOS in its own right instead of insisting on nitpicking what's original. Now I can actually see the innovation that went into designing the iOS 7 interface. And as someone typing this comment on iOS 7 beta, I've come to a deeper appreciation of what's already in my hands.

It's not helpful to accuse large design houses and engineering teams of copying each other. That's like saying supercars aren't original because they universally use sleek, aerodynamic ("sexy") design features. No, that's just what sells and what makes sense. It's a natural maturation and trend towards intelligent design. It's just iteration.

It's true that touch interfaces no longer need to be "taught" really. We intuitively know that gestures will do things in the same way (and more efficiently) than buttons. It's all about reducing cluttered design and adding more functionality without reducing usable space. I'm glad we're moving towards this.

runjake2• 13 years ago

It's getting to be somewhat annoying how many people are whining about Windows Phone and Android similarities. Design and engineering decisions are not made in a vacuum.

I agree, but the similarities are being pointed out precisely because Apple (and their major pundits like Marco and Gruber) makes a big deal about how others have borrowed ideas from them.

For example, the infamous "Redmond/Mountain View, start your photocopiers" lines, and Marco/Gruber's frequent quips like "Hmm, I've seen something like this before..." in regards to something Google or Samsung has done.

Apple's smugness is what's getting them, not their borrowing of ideas, itself.

Domenic_S4• 13 years ago

Borrowing ideas is only a big deal if you're ripping on those you borrow from. Like if someone from Apple were to say "MS just can't do design right, Metro is terrible start to finish" and then they borrow from Metro, that's newsworthy.

Following current design trends and adding a splash of your own flavor to them... that's status quo, isn't it?

cromwellian• 13 years ago

Worse than Apple fans going ballistic on even the tiniest similarities on something that Apple was first on, Apple, let us remember, patents designs and sues people in court for similarities.

They need to be called out on this. "Everything is a remix" was brilliant in exposing Apple hypocrisy in this regard.

cheald• 13 years ago

This is it, really. There is, IMO, nothing wrong with borrowing inspiration from what your competitors do well. I think that iOS7, on the whole, is much prettier and more modern than prior versions. I think that the platform desperately needed the refresh, and if they get some of the weaker parts worked out, it's going to be a solid across-the-board upgrade for people.

The thing is, Apple fan(atic)s (the pundits and those who echo them, really) love the "Apple innovates, never copies, only bad companies without any talent copy" routine, and here we have an example where Apple has pretty blatantly ripped design elements from their competitors. For the people riding the "everything Apple produces is unique and amazing" train, iOS7 is a deep betrayal specifically because it is so familiar to things that others did first.

joeblau• 13 years ago

I agree, but the similarities are being pointed out precisely because Apple (and their major pundits like Marco and Gruber) makes a big deal about how others have borrowed ideas from them.

That is the primary reason I think Apple is getting so much crap. Apple claims to be the industry leading innovators; Tim Cook even said during the D11 conference "I don't like copying. It's a values thing." in reference to Samsung patent litigation. Apple partly built it's reputation on bashing the Microsoft (Switch campaign) and Android (WWDC's and MacWorlds). Now that Apple is playing catch-up in the mobile space that they essentially pioneered, they are getting the same snide back-handed remaks that they were dishing out.

weiran• 13 years ago

It would be absurd to expect Apple not to be influenced by the rest of the industry, but the scale of the similarities by Android (compare pre- and post-iPhone Android) and especially Samsung (the Galaxy S with TouchWiz was essentially a 3GS clone) is much more than just skin deep.

While iOS 7 may look more like WP and Android, anyone who uses it can tell it still feels and works like iOS. Apple harp on about how design is more than how it looks, and it especially applies in this case as it doesn't work anything like Android or WP. But use a Samsung Galaxy S, and you can immediately tell that their apps menu is a wholesale ripoff of the iPhone's Springboard with next to no effort put into differentiating or improving the original design.

prollyignored• 13 years ago

I love half eaten apples !

mtgx• 13 years ago

I think that is happening because Apple is usually the one to cry foul, and now everyone wants to expose them for the shameless hypocrisy. That is all.

hawkw• 13 years ago

I for one think the icon design (especially Safari) looks great.

daughart8• 13 years ago

I can't tell if you're trying to troll or not, but I, too, think that the new icons are at least as good as, if not better than, the old ones.

The old Safari icon reminded me of the Netscape Navigator 2.0 splash screen.

Domenic_S4• 13 years ago

The thing is, we’ve grown up. We don’t require hand-holding to tell us what to click or tap. [...] iOS 7 foregoes borders, instead relying on colour to indicate interactivity

Relying on color to indicate interactivity... like we've done on the web forever? That's been a best practice since I-don't-know-when.

I disagree with the "we've grown up" idea. I'm not sure there's a Platonic ideal for UI/X, but clearly we're moving away from the idea (created by whom?) that a touchscreen phone needs to harken back to its button-clad counterparts. Think about it, we've made calls, drawn pictures, posted Facebook updates, & sent emails with our computers for ages, why is the phone interface so different?

The new design is a function of current style combined with a smidgen of better understanding about HCI. Everyone and their grandma was putting plastic shines on their buttons in 2008, now everyone is going "flat".

Afforess3• 13 years ago

Relying on color to indicate interactivity...That's been a best practice since I-don't-know-when.

I guess screw color-blind people then.

daughart8• 13 years ago

Colorblind people can tell the difference between color and black, which is how color is used to indicate interactivity in iOS7.

jquery• 13 years ago

I'm colorblind and as long as the contrast is good (i.e., it doesn't really on red/green differences) it's not a problem per se. But the thin font might present a challenge because it reduces effective saturation.

headShrinker• 13 years ago

Relying on color to indicate interactivity

I disagree. We reply on context and content to indicate interactivity. Color has been a pseudo indicator and is now inaccurate at best and misleading at worst. Just take a look at the header of this comment; the username timestamp and link are all the same color, yet only two of the three are actually links or clickable at all. Thus, the content and the context indicate clickability, not color. This is why UI design is harder than everyone thinks.

Domenic_S4• 13 years ago

HN is full of UX antipatterns, I really wouldn't recommend using them as a template for what works.

msoad• 13 years ago

New design is nice. What makes me wonder is that Apple used all their resource for past 6 months for this graphical redesign and no new future came out of iOS teams. That seems inefficient.

antidaily• 13 years ago

The thin fonts and thin border icons are just ugly in my opinion. They dont represent clarity or a lighter feel; they look cheap. I like flat design. It's possible to create beautiful flat icons: http://asianmack.com/homescreens

iOS7 just doesnt get that aesthetic right. I've only been using it for two days but I doubt I'll change my mind.

czhiddy• 13 years ago

When did HN become such a cesspool of snarky low-quality comments?

Every time I see a Glass/iPhone/WindowsPhone/etc article nowadays, I prepare myself for a deluge of shitty YouTube-caliber posts.

Embarrassing.

pault• 13 years ago

They're just slightly more obnoxious than the deluge of comments lamenting the decline of hacker news comments.

Afforess3• 13 years ago

Pot, meet kettle.

Flying_Dwarf8• 13 years ago

Like you.

kraemate• 13 years ago

I cant believe how quickly UI and design have fallen now that Jobs is gone. Things like childish gradients and terrible icons. Don't even get me started on the contrast -- light text on fluorescent green background and the really thin font. I could only draw one conclusion from the comparison of iOS 6 vs 7 --- it's as if Apple has done everything possible to make it unusable.

Steve would probably have fired the tasteless "designer" who came up with this utterly broken redesign.

daughart8• 13 years ago

People on here are nuts.

How are the new gradients any different than the old gradients?! Any more "childish"?! (Look at the Messages app for example.) Is there any consistency between the old Voice Memos, Apple Store, Videos, iTunes, and Stocks apps? Do these icons really strike you as fundamentally better than the new ones?

Flying_Dwarf8• 13 years ago

People on here are nuts.

Funny, I think people who LIKE this design are nuts. People are nuts indeed!

How are the new gradients any different than the old gradients?!

OMG?!?111 Well, it's not that the gradients are different, it's that the colors are bright and vivid and each icon has little distinction from the next. Oh, and it looks like something my 6-year-old nephew would draw with his colored pencil set.

dsego• 13 years ago

Old gradients served the illusion of a glassy material with depth. And they weren't so obvious, so it looked like sun beams hitting the icon, reflecting and scattering and whatnot. The new gradients serve no purpose, they're just gradients and they're too obvious and evoke an amateurish look.

blub2• 13 years ago

They are too simple, to the point of looking amateurish. I think they stopped somewhere in an awkward place between metro (the so called flat style that I am not a fan of) and their original style.

I was comparing to MeeGo, and the icons there look much more polished, because they smartly use gradients and shadow when needed while keeping it simple when it comes to colors and symbols. Apple just simplified everything.

blocking_io4• 13 years ago

Do you really think that removing the 'rich Corinthian leather' (which Steve Jobs loved) from iCal is a bad thing? If anything, I think the real world textures are more childish.

kmfrk• 13 years ago

The redesign is broken, but part of the motivation was cleaning up after the felt, wood, and leather fetisch, even though Forstall somehow managed to get all the blame for that.

Steve Jobs was probably great on a more holistic design level, and that's the sense of design awareness we tend to give him credit for. It still allowed weird and outright design trends every now and then, though, but not in a way that tainted the entirety of the design.

smacktoward• 13 years ago

iOS 7 foregoes borders, instead relying on colour to indicate interactivity

Good thing there aren't people out there who are color-blind, then...

Oh, wait.

fudged712• 13 years ago

That's me! I was browsing the new UI guidelines and couldn't understand what was and what wasn't a link/action in the screenshots that they used for examples! And I shouldn't need to turn on accessibility services for slight colorblindness... the design should accomodate for us.

The navigation looks lik the same color as the "Home" and "Phone" labels. Are those actions?

inthewind2• 13 years ago

I'm worried about this.

My experience of Windows mobile is Windows 8 on a tablet, and I had pretty much nothing but contempt for it. And failed to see anything stylish about it at all!

I want links/buttons/actions to stand out. That doesn't mean it has to look like a button. It could be text with a halo, a shadow, or an effect that comes into play as you begin to interact with the device so the controls jump out at you, or are overlayed or something. Don't just present raw text at me. Though having said that, I'm sure Apple will make it work, where others haven't.

iOS 6 looks pretty infantile by comparison, but the new screenshots and icons don't look that nice or that cohesive either.

(I was hoping that they might just drop the old school 'i' from iOS and just call it Apple mobile OS or something, it grates my ears and eyes, the name is like soo 1999.)

The thing that I notice from the stills is that the typeface appears quite weak. I had the same issue with Windows 8, my eyes just can't read it comfortably, I'm not sure why that is - and it looks more diluted now - and there is less contrast in general. Though perhaps it will look okay on a retina display.

Flying_Dwarf8• 13 years ago

Apple will take a note from Xbox at E3 and tell its customers with impairments to "Stay with iOS 6".

gte910h2• 13 years ago

Looking at examples using XScope color blind modes, the default colors, and a few different colors (such as reds and greens), iOS7 is far more legible in color blind reduced palettes than iOS6 is that I can see.

If you turn on the "thicken text" (not the actual name) in accesability, they stand out even more.

aroman2• 13 years ago

I thought about this too, but then realized it's a completely moot point unless you are black/white color blind (which virtually nobody is).

Differing colors are NOT being used to indicate differing actions. They're just being used to indicate interactivity in general, and it doesn't matter if you see that indicator as red or green (the most common form of colorblindness).

gknoy• 13 years ago

You hint at it, but there are more flavors of color blindness than red/green. When I learned that my (former) boss was color-blind, I spend an hour on wikipedia and learned way more about color blindness than I had realized there was to know.

speeder• 13 years ago

A friend of mine that do not see green will love it (she sees mostly only red, green she sees as 100% colorless, and blue she sees partially)

bmcmahen• 13 years ago

As someone who is colour blind, I don't see this being much of an issue. If the colours are strong and stark enough (which it looks like they are) the vast majority of people who are colour-blind won't have any issues.

threeseed2• 13 years ago

There is a high contrast mode. And the entire web mainly uses color to differentiate between links and normal text ie. many omit the underlining. So not sure what makes iOS so different in this regard.

blub2• 13 years ago

Not underlining links is a web anti-pattern, a concession made in the name of looking nice while at the same time being more confusing. Looking nice is very important for web designers at this time, so usability is neglected...

oneeyedpigeon• 13 years ago

"the entire web mainly uses color to differentiate between links and normal text"

I sense hyperbole, but would love to know what the actual proportion is. I suspect the majority of text links (as opposed to, e.g. menu navigation) are underlined.

gte910h2• 13 years ago

mgerals• 13 years ago

Finally, an author is doing a deeper analysis than complaining about the icon-set or font weight.

We'll see how this pans out but maybe this is that "the iPad is just a big iPod Touch" thing all over.

moogleii• 13 years ago

I feel he focuses on the best parts of iOS 7, which I admit are quite nice. But there are definitely a few things that, to me, don't meet the old Apple standards of great usability.

Just a few things I noticed: The confusing unlock and initial welcome screen. They lack clear indication on which way to swipe or that you're even supposed to swipe at all (welcome screen). It's a subtle and momentary weakness that is addressed the moment you figure it out, but truly excellent design should avoid such issues; minimalism doesn't mean zeroing things out.

The month view being useless for showing upcoming events in the calendar app (the previous version would show you a scroll of upcoming events for the currently selected month).

Spotlight is summoned via a downward swipe, but is dismissed by an asymmetric action (either x out your search field to clear your search results, or hit the physical home key).

All minor quips, but it's the difference between UI designed by, say, your avg coder who trivializes the UX domain, and UI designed by a truly talented UX guy. But I'm hopeful since it's only the first beta.

jmduke3• 13 years ago

Man, iOS 7 feedback is incredibly frustrating for no reason that actually matters.

I feel like I spent the past few years falling in love with flat design, on mobile and on the web -- and I read article after article from historically pro-Apple bloggers/authors explaining that no, flat design was fundamentally a bad move: the strongest metaphor is that of the phone as a tool -- that we needed skeumorphism, we need hints for interactivity, we needed polish.

And now iOS 7 is out! And I'm excited, because the flat (okay, 'mature') design philosophy that I've been told is a bad idea is finally here -- and now it's suddenly a great leap forward because Apple decided to do it? When Microsoft decided that the average consumer understood what a smartphone was for and no longer needed the physical cues, they were wrong and fools -- but when Ive decides it, its because its time to move to mature and modern?

Here's the thing, though: I think iOS 7, on the whole, looks worse than iOS 6. The stock icons look outright ugly; interfaces like the call-answer screen and the calculator look poorly designed, and everything has the sense that it just needs another run or two through the review process. Not that it's irreversibly bad, but I don't think it's executing as well as WP or MIUI are. (With exceptions, of course: I think the translucency paradigm looks great, as well as the changes to the UI Kit.)

(People arguing 'its just a beta, it'll obviously change over time': what happened to Apple's relentless pursuit of quality before introducing something to the public? What's the point of secrecy if you're showing off v0.8 and not v1.0?)

I imagine actually using the new iOS won't be bad at all. It's just reading about it that frustrates me, which is definitely a sign I should be doing less of it.

(I own an iPad, iPhone, and MBA.)

shawndumas• 13 years ago

FTA: "The thing is, we've grown up. [...] The new iOS is designed for a different environment, and a different maturity of mobile user [...]"

jamesaguilar• 13 years ago

Most people are saying the same things about Apple as they said about Microsoft with the flat design stuff. This is one of the few positive articles I've seen on HN about iOS 7. I don't understand why you are frustrated reading about this OS when the vast majority of what's been written so far essentially agrees with what you've said. You'd prefer no dissenting articles rather than a handful?

Anyway, even if Apple were broadly being lauded for it now, that would be expected. Microsoft pioneered this look in the mobile space. Obviously they were going to catch more flak for it. The first one to try something new always gets criticism from the essentially conservative press and public.

jmduke3• 13 years ago

I don't understand why you are frustrated reading about this OS when the vast majority of what's been written so far essentially agrees with what you've said.

Perhaps our browsing history is different: I've read negative feedback about iOS 7 but it's mainly from the Dribbble crowd. I'd say the majority of the feedback from the tech press/blogosphere has been gushing.

Anyway, even if Apple were broadly being lauded for it now, that would be expected. Microsoft pioneered this look in the mobile space. Obviously they were going to catch more flak for it. The first one to try something new always gets criticism from the essentially conservative press and public.

I completely agree, but this is what frustrates me so much.

dylangs10302• 13 years ago

This is not a fair response to the industry in my opinion.

iOS 7 is not just "flat" - at the risk of sounding like a fanboy, it's so much more than that. You're judging it based on the most obvious first impression - the icons and such.

Those can be improved, yes (especially Safari's...) but you're not reviewing the actual interface. I'm typing this comment on iOS 7 and I assure you it feels smoother. There are kinks to be worked out but the operating system's interface is more intuitive, which allows for more usable space and memory dedicated to features.

You sound kind of bitter about bloggers being fickle; getting past that, I think the design's interface actually looks very polished. It's "smarter" and only has a very small learning curve. Even apps like news:yc (what I'm using now) feel faster and "lighter" despite not yet being optimized for the iOS yet.

The whole thing feels like a more lightweight, versatile experience. I encourage you to download iOS 7's beta and try it out if you can.

k-mcgrady3• 13 years ago

> "I encourage you to download iOS 7's beta and try it out if you can"

I wouldn't be encouraging anyone to do that unless they are a developer, need to do it, and have a spare, non production device to do it on.

FireBeyond2• 13 years ago

As another user of iOS 7, one of those kinks - the "new" keyboard is only available in Messages.

nish15005• 13 years ago

The liberal use of fluorescent colours makes it an eyesore. Apply (or Ive) simply does not understand graphic design anymore. It's a disaster of epic proportions.

Pxtl4• 13 years ago

I don't think it's the color, I think it's the backgrounds. With less spacing between elements on the home-screen, putting a background - even a simple gradient - makes it insanely busy. Spots where they show a more elaborate background are cringeworthy. There's a reason WP switched to solid colors.

I think the bright elaborate icons would look fine on a jet-black or solid white background.

zw• 13 years ago

Things that are "disaster[s] of epic proportions": floods, genocide, NSA spying

Things that are not: fucking betas of mobile telephone software

sbuk5• 13 years ago

"The liberal use of fluorescent colours makes it an eyesore. Apply (or Ive) simply does not understand graphic design anymore."

I take it that you are a world authority on graphic design to cast such aspersions. Up there with the likes of Vigelli, Brody and Müller-Brockmann?

"It's a disaster of epic proportions."

No, it really isn't.

mark_integerdsv• 13 years ago

I really have to agree with this. As a 30 something male, I feel like Aple has made something my 12 year old daughter will love but that leaves me very much out in the cold.

I was hoping that some UX issues would be addressed in 7 but alas, it's fonts and colours that seem most important to I've and co.

I'm literally shopping round for an Android after using only iPhones since 2007.

Experia Z seems like the front runner at the moment.

baddox2• 13 years ago

This is the first article I've read that has a mostly positive view of iOS 7, so I'm not sure what articles or comments you've been reading.

nostromo• 13 years ago

It's a common mistake on the web to take entire groups of individuals, with varied and nuanced individual opinions, and to group them together and then complain about inconsistency and hypocrisy.

People say things like, apple users are foo or the new york times is bar or americans are baz. Well, of course any large group of people with divergent opinions will be self-conflicting when examined as a whole.

I understand why we do it; our brains pattern-match people into camps and construct narratives on our behalf to make sense of the world.

But, in general, I think it's a waste of everyone's time to complain that Apple bloggers all hated flat design before Apple decided to use flat design. Instead, perhaps you could show an example of an individual who has frustrated you in their inconsistency.

MatthewPhillips• 13 years ago

We do it for 2 reasons, I think:

1) We want to broadly dismiss a group of people.

2) We want to call out people who were wrong (huge thing on the internet is not ever being wrong; nothing is worse than changing your mind), but it's too hard to keep track of everyone you disagree with, and worse you can't as easily get away with calling out an individual as you can a group.

dionidium• 13 years ago

Thank you for explaining exactly what the parent's comment made me feel better than I could. If you read a bunch of different people's opinions, then you shouldn't be surprised that what you get is a bunch of different opinions.

Furthermore, why is the parent so interested in this idea of "Apple Users" as a group, anyway? There isn't really any such group (or, to the extent that there is, it's a very small group).

ZeroGravitas2• 13 years ago

Here's an example of inconsistency from the the very article under discussion:

Why did Android and Windows Phone move away from photorealistic buttons? "partly just for differentiation’s sake".

Why did Apple (eventually) do the same:

"... we’ve grown up. We don’t require hand-holding to tell us what to click or tap. Interactivity is a matter of invitation, and physical cues are only one specific type. iOS 7 is an iOS for a more mature consumer, who understands that digital surfaces are interactive, and who doesn’t want anything getting in the way of their content."

Got that, this is the way forward, it's the right thing to do, it's better than what iOS < 7 was doing, and it broadly reflects design trends in other fields like the web but we can't quite bring ourselves to admit that the competition might actually be able to hire a random interface designer that is aware of this. No, they have to accidentally stumble into a better way to do interfaces just because they were trying so hard to look different from iOS6.

This childish sophistry is SOP for Apple blogs, it's the number one reason I (someone who adopted OSX and iPods as soon as they were available) think the Apple-sphere is mentally diseased and worth distancing yourself from.

tjoff• 13 years ago

what happened to Apple's relentless pursuit of quality before introducing something to the public?

I has never existed.

The secret is to not focus on versions. In time the quirks will get sorted out and if your users don't know when or at what version it became better they will assume that it has always been working well.

First OS X? Terrible, barely usable even if there had been any applications for it. Current OS X? Decent. But since they have the same name it has always been decent because people can't even distinguish between them. At best they know the code name for the up and coming version or the previous one but definitely no more than that.

Remember Vista? Yeah, people still believe windows 7 was a big leap and Vista was just some candy on top on XP. But only because you can refer to it as Vista people remember it as a failure. If windows 7 would have been a service pack to Vista (which it, compared to the XP-Vista leap, kind of was) people wouldn't have so strong feelings about it.

ghshephard2• 13 years ago

Agreed and Disagree.

I agree, that Of course, Apple doesn't have a "Relentless pursuit of quality" before introducing something to the public. They ship Operating Systems fast, and fix problems as they discover them.

I'm still stuck on OS X 10.7.5 because of how screwed up my Operating Environment became when I (idiotically) upgraded from a wonderfully stable 10.6.8 to 10.7.0. So traumatized was I by the six months of kernel panics, hard freezes, and application problems (Mail, Finder, Spotlight - you name it) that were only mostly resolved by 10.7.4, and now, with only about 3 exceptions, 10.7.5, that I won't even consider upgrading to a new OS X until it's been out for at least 6-9 months AND has had a 90 day window with no major reports of problems. The 90 day clock just started for 10.8.4 on June 3rd - I'll consider upgrading in September.

I disagree, because clearly the versions "10.6.8", "10.7.0" and "10.7.5" are burned into my poor traumatized brain, and I continue to be nervous about 10.8.x - though there are a number of features I'm looking forward to (Better Exchange Support, iCloud support, messages, syncing with reminders (which I use quite a bit on my iPhone), Safari Syncing with my iPhone, etc...)

leoc3• 13 years ago

It's been true of their second-Jobs-era mobile gadgets though. The first iPod and iPhone both delivered a polished experience from day 1, and their successors did too. The same was true of most Apple products since Jobs' return, including the Mac hardware. OS X was the big exception, but that was partly because Apple didn't have the luxury of time: it had to get out OS X as quickly as possible, while also continuing to patch up MacOS, in order to save the company.

rimantas• 13 years ago

iOS 7 is anything but flat. In fact, one of the core concepts is "depth". Layers and new navigation patterns emphasise this.

Flying_Dwarf8• 13 years ago

Flat has always been about ornamentation and not layers. Plenty of flat websites have layers. Modals. Pops outs. Sliding menus.

I don't know why people think flat is about not having layers. Did Apple just start this bizarre thinking?

Pxtl4• 13 years ago

As somebody who's been using Windows Phone for the past year or two, I like it. I think it works as a best-of-both-worlds between iOS and WP7. Android is going to look incredibly antiquated in a year or two (especially since tilting homescreen and lockscreen widgets, while useful, made it ugly), and I'm a complete Android fanboy.

Yhippa3• 13 years ago

When I look compare WP8 and iOS 7 the thing that's the biggest difference is that iOS 7 seems to be much busier. WP8 apps definitely take a "Metro" approach and keep it simple: squares on simple backgrounds, rectangles around buttons that do things, and the buttons that are icons enclosed in circles.

I was on the Montréal metro this weekend and really like the flat design they use which WP8 really took to heart. It will be interesting to see if the way iOS does it leads to more confusion for users or if skeuomorphism was the way to go.

k-mcgrady3• 13 years ago

> "(People arguing 'its just a beta, it'll obviously change over time': what happened to Apple's relentless pursuit of quality before introducing something to the public? What's the point of secrecy if you're showing off v0.8 and not v1.0?) "

They haven't really introduced it to the public. They introduced it to developers at a developer conference so they can prepare their software for it. Every single iOS release has been like this. Buggy as hell for the first few betas with several feature changes along the way. When it's released 4 months down the line it's usually solid (excluding Maps).

900022• 13 years ago

Agreed, folks are far too critical for a beta release that has yet to evolve. Of course, there are still major improvements that need to be addressed, but people need to understand that Apple will not ship anything shitty when it comes time to release it to the general public.

FireBeyond2• 13 years ago

Err. They also have placed imagery and video of it all over their (general, not developer) pages for iOS. They've provided high res imagery and video for the media. It's effectively introduced.

And I say that as someone now running iOS 7 and OSX 10.9. I see a lot of potential in both, but iOS needs a fair amount of polishing.

coldtea2• 13 years ago

People arguing 'its just a beta, it'll obviously change over time': what happened to Apple's relentless pursuit of quality before introducing something to the public?

Nothing. They were always pragmatic about it, not "relentless".

And it's not a beta. The final version is coming in very short time, so it will be 98% the same. What it is is a FIRST version (iteration) of the new design. It will improve in iOS 8 and later versions.

People always go crazy when discussing Apple and forget basic facts.

Like, the original iPhone, and ALL subsequent models, where chastised for this pain point or the other. And all pain points (from lack of third party apps, to multitasking, to copy/paste, to the 4's antenna etc) where addressed, in a satisfying matter, in later versions.

People also forget how OS X went from barely usable (10.1) to highly capable and mature (10.4 and forward) functionality wise, or how the UI changed from "lickable candy buttons, heavy stripes and metal windows" to the subdued 10.8 look we now have.

People only remember "relentless pursuit of quality". But they forget that that "pursuit" comes in iterations and years, not just on every first version they introduce.

Actually, a decade old advice among Apple faithfuls, at least with regards to hardware, is: avoid buying a 1st iteration Apple product -- it will likely have some issue to be fixed in later versions or production runs.

mitchty• 13 years ago

Wait, you're saying a beta release of ios7 isn't beta? Even if it is mostly the same for gA that doesn't discount it being beta software right now.

kunai2• 13 years ago

To me, this feels like OS X Public Beta all over again. Aqua was polarizing and many of the changes were met with elation, hostility, or utter despair. The stability and UNIX features were welcomed but everything else was shunned.

In about a year when the final release shipped, many things were fixed and polished, but people were still polarized, and many refused to budge from OS 9. About a year later, Jaguar was released, and OS X began coming into its own.

I predict the same thing will happen with iOS 7.

archagon• 13 years ago

What Apple bloggers have you been reading? John Gruber, who is arguably the most famous Apple blogger of all, has always been a proponent of the Metro look, as well as an opponent of the kitschy skeuomorphic elements in iOS. I mean, he's been anticipating the "flattening" of iOS7 ever since Forestall went out the door!

And personally, I love the way iOS7 looks and feels from the videos, way more than my current iOS6. (Except for Game Center, don't know what's up with those bubbles.)

MsFuntereds• 13 years ago

Out of all the 'historically pro-Apple bloggers/authors' John Siracusa stands out as an exception: on the [recent episode of the ATP podcast](http://atp.fm/episodes/17-cant-innovate-anymore) (starts at 34:55) he gave proper credit to Windows Phone for paving the way — even though he's a confessed Microsoft hater.

Matt Gemmell's continual dismissal of the Microsoft designers who created Metro is incredibly disrespectful. He's repeatedly made snide remarks about Metro as merely change for the sake of being different. Given the [sweat, blood and tears](http://mashable.com/2012/03/29/microsoft-metro-is-a-philosop...) that it for the Metro UI folk to convince the execs at Microsoft to take design seriously, it's dispiriting to see a loud voice in the community like Gemmell be so snarky and flippant.

antimagic2• 13 years ago

I don't think that's what Gemmell has been saying at all. He has been dismissive of the Windows 8 "No Compromises" approach, but Metro, as found on Windows Phone and the Surface (not Surface Pro), he has always seemed rather positive to me. Some examples:

"It’s not quite minimalist, though; it’s more like finding yourself living inside an infographic. The presentation is flat and high-contrast, but there’s little that’s familiar in the surroundings. It eschews skeuomorphism utterly. It’s hip, razor-edged and as modern as it can be without surrendering to the whims of futurism.

It’s almost perfectly digital, and is focused on information and content above all. Metro presents the device as little more than a viewport into a digital information space – indeed, the idea is immediately shown to the user via the concept of the horizontally moving viewport. If there’s a current mobile user experience that should most appeal to Star Trek’s LCARS apologists like myself, then it’s surely Metro rather than iOS." http://mattgemmell.com/2012/04/13/augmented-paper/

"Much of the lavishness of iOS (and its imitator, Android) feels like an artefact of the desktop era; a time when we were all still learning how to think about computing devices. By contrast, Windows Phone leaps to the other extreme, being as different as possible for the sake of it. Clear boundaries, sleek lines, and a kind of overt zen futurism." http://mattgemmell.com/2013/05/12/tail-wagging/

That second one may seem like it's supporting your point, but Gemmell is deliberately contrasting the iOS style as "an arteface of the desktop era", whilst Metro gets "Clear", "sleek" and "zen" as its adjectives. In other words, Metro is clearly the approach getting the thumbs up here.

uptown• 13 years ago

This article gives a lot more context about the icons:

"many of the new icons were primarily designed by members of Apple’s marketing and communications department, not the app design teams. From what we’ve heard, SVP of Design Jony Ive (also now Apple’s head of Human Interaction) brought the print and web marketing design team in to set the look and color palette of the stock app icons. They then handed those off to the app design teams who did their own work on the ‘interiors’, with those palettes as a guide."

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/06/12/why-does-the-design-o...

etler2• 13 years ago

My impression was that people responded favorably to flat design. Look at the web as a whole and you can see that much if not most of it is embracing flat design. Sure there was backlash for it, but skeumorphism also had tons of backlash as well.

The thing that I have noticed about the iOS 7 feedback is that people think that Apple implemented a flat design in a very ugly way. Maybe it's because they're behind the curve because they're late to the party. Maybe it'll get better, but everything I've heard so far is about the poor use of colors, gradients, and unnecessarily noisy effects, not about flat design being bad.

nnash• 13 years ago

This has less to do with flat design than it does with mismanagement and communication issues. Type flat design in on dribbble and you will be hard pressed to find generic rainbow-barf gradients, and helvetica neue ultra light. iOS 7's default icons were "designed" by Apple's marketing team.This is what happens when you put an industrial designer and marketers in charge of designing an OS.

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/06/12/jony-ive-put-apples-mark...

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2013/06/12/why-does-the-design-o...

timcederman• 13 years ago

Please link 1 major article that says that Apple's skeuomorphism is superior to flat design.

shellehs• 13 years ago

As some one said(I forgot the reference ), it's not Flat design, it's flatter than previous version.

I agreed with "I think iOS 7, on the whole, looks worse than iOS 6." The icons look weird, and most of all, harder to be recognized than pre-version, that's why they lose their elegant.

I prefer to say, Flat design does not mean a flat element, flat appearance, flat interface. We should feel flat, the interactive should be flat, not just only our eyes see it is flat.

jgeerts• 13 years ago

Then just don't read about it.

You clicked on the iOS7 article, read it fully an then made a huge comment about it. Every opinion about the design is so subjective that we can't really discuss it. You don't like the design? Well then don't upgrade or buy an Android phone. Lots of people are pleased with it, complaining about it isn't really going to help.

Why do you think that iPhone users were still happy with the design of iOS6. I heard lots of users complaining about how tired they were of the green playfield and that the address book doesn't really have to have the rings in them to know that it's an address book. This was an early trend, now flat design is a trend. Will you then also make a post about how happy people were with the flat design and that they should stick with it instead of upgrading it?

Every app of them is re-written, as a developer I understand the amount of work they had to put in to achieve this, to align every app for the new design, to think about every app. Really I understand the effort they put in to achieve this, but now you want all this with the latest design and you want it without a single bug?

swift• 13 years ago

I didn't have the same experience you did. I saw a lot of dislike for the skeumorphism in earlier versions of iOS both online and in real life, even among Apple enthusiasts. Speaking for myself, I was really impressed with Windows Phone when I first saw it, and I'm glad to see Apple moving more in that direction.

arocks• 13 years ago

I completely agree that the new icons look much worse than their predecessors. Even if they wanted to embrace Flat Design they could have done a much better job. For example, this designer seems to have nailed it: http://www.behance.net/gallery/iOS-7-Redesign/9271243

hosh2• 13 years ago

Flat vs. Skeumorphism aside -- I agree, those iOS 7 looks like someone's overzealous puke from last night's binge drinking.

I would not mind it as much if they let me tweak some of the colors so I can have dark background.

In any case, eventually, the flat-UI proponents will realize that flat design is a subtle skeumorphism, one harking back to the days when graphics hardware were not capable of rendering more realistic images.

skc• 13 years ago

Must be annoying to be Google or Microsoft right now. There's something odd about all these platitudes for features and design decisions that were lifted from competing platforms.

Where were all these posts when Windows Phone or Android introduced these UI/UX ideas?

jkubicek• 13 years ago

I run primarily in iOS dev circles and everyone I know who has played with a Windows phone has gushed about it. I've always thought it was better than iOS in a lot of ways. For a while I had considered switching phones, but I couldn't deal with the lack of apps (at that time).

EGreg• 13 years ago

I am usually a fan of Jony Ive's design, but this seems to exhibit a lot of windows-envy. When did Apple start copying design from Microsoft?

The home-screen icons are probably the worst part of the design. There are certainly good parts as well. But Apple's skeumorphic borders and backgrounds were always distinctively Apple, and contributed to make people love the brand, now the iOS just looks like everything else. Android is flat. Windows is flat. And as people pointed out, what about the colorblind?

Yhippa3• 13 years ago

Cupertino, start your photocopiers!

tolmasky• 13 years ago

You will, however, probably find that it feels more fluid, responsive and modern.

Sounds like someone who hasn't actually installed it yet. Perhaps it will feel more fluid and responsive when it ships, but that is not the case today.

mullingitover2• 13 years ago

But at least battery life is also dramatically worse.

mjhagen• 13 years ago

Look in the dev forum there's a reason for it, not really a fix yet, but at least it's narrowed down. Also, it's a beta and these issues are to be expected at this time.

toyg• 13 years ago

I don't care about flatness or skeutransmogrification or whatnot, but the damn thing must WORK.

Look at his iMessage screen comparison [1]: yes, the old screen looks a bit geocities, but you can actually read text very well; the new screen is almost unreadable. The prime aim of iMessage is to make people read text, not to look cool.

It doesn't matter if there are options to thicken the font -- the whole point of OSX/iOS UI was that you should not need options, because defaults should be good enough for most people. This is clearly not the case with what we've seen of iOS7, and that's a problem.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattgemmell/9023510971/

jonahx• 13 years ago

+1, the old screen seems much more usable to me as well

Yhippa3• 13 years ago

I wonder what the use case was for fading the chat bubble color as you go later in time? I haven't seen iOS 7 in action yet but I wonder what happens when you scroll up: how do the colors change?

At a glance the earlier messages I would have sent look harder to read.

paganel• 13 years ago

From a fellow know-nothing when it comes to "flatness" and skeu-something I was a little bit surprised when the author complained that the old "receive a call" interface was full with alert-like buttons. They are supposed to be "Alert" buttons, for crying out loud, as in you're asleep in your bed, the phone starts ringing which means you have been "alerted", you're now woken up and ready to answer the call or deny it.

Which brings me to my second point, that is where is the "Deny" button/action in the new interface. ? I could only see "Answer" and "Remind me later".

blocking_io4• 13 years ago

You have always been able to deny calls using the power button on top. Presumably that method is now compulsory.

paul_f• 13 years ago

If Jony Ive had wanted you to deny calls, he would have given you a button for it. Now stop complaining and answer your phone.

jsz0• 13 years ago

Not sure why it doesn't appear in the screenshots but it's definitely there. Used it today on iOS7 B1.

bennyg5• 13 years ago

To me, reading messages is a more pleasant experience on iOS 7 compared with previous versions. It's actually one of my favorites of the new stock apps they created. Sure the design is a little lacking, but as far as usability goes - it's actually quite nice.

jcampbell1• 13 years ago

You can't possibly determine the legibility of font rendering designed for a 727k pixel display based on a 115k pixel screenshot.

Have you tried the current Gmail app? It uses thin fonts, and I don't find it to be a problem.

hcarvalhoalves• 13 years ago

The thing is fricking white Helvetice Neue on a light blue bubble. You don´t need a retina display to conclude this is unreadable. You just need common sense.

Vieira3• 13 years ago

I don't care about flatness or skeutransmogrification or whatnot, but the damn thing must WORK.

Absolutely. I don't understand how so many people are focusing on the highs and lows of the UI but are ignoring serious UX problems like the one you pointed.

Apple says "Nothing we’ve ever created has been designed just to look beautiful. That’s approaching the opportunity from the wrong end." but then they change the perfectly readable Messages screen to a less readable one that has the only advantage of arguably looking better. And it's not the only problem IMHO.

On that screen used to be a send button that invited interaction. You look there and you know that it's "actionable". Now in the new version there is no button, only a gray text with "No Perceived Affordance" that looks more like a description than an "actionable" element. The most important "action" on that screen happens when you press a gray text on a gray background!

And the call screen? On the iOS6 one it was easier to read the name of the person who is calling because the white text is above a black overlay giving it enough contrast. On the new one the text although bigger is lighter (as in less bold) and is directly on the image. Light backgrounds (sky, clouds, etc) will make the text barely visible. Also how can I reject a call? There is nothing on that screen supporting the second most important functionality that is expected from it. Even accepting the call is now more complicated. The size and position of the elements makes more sense now but the text is lighter (less readable) and it's now more complicated to accept a call: before you only needed to touch accept, now you need to slide.

The home screen: even ignoring the aesthetics that I personally don't like, it's undeniable that the text is much more readable with iOS6. The small border and shadow made it readable with virtually any background. Also the icons were easier on the eyes, the new bright colors tire/irritate the eyes more. Also the relationship between icons and the functionality they represent was already hard in some cases. For instance for someone that didn't know Safari it was not easy to tell which was the browser and which was the compass from just the icons. Also the photos icon was not obvious at all and the Music vs iTunes Store icons are almost the same with different backgrounds but now it got worse: none of the exisiting problems got any better and at least reminders, settings and game center got worse.

Of course there are a lot of screens that got better imho. Music, contact view, the calendar, clocks, compass, weather...

shock-value3• 13 years ago

I actually don't have anything to add to your comment, but I just wanted to say I agree 100% with literally everything you wrote here. These are my exact gripes with the new version, expressed better than I think I could have.

gfodor7• 13 years ago

I hate posts like this that lay out some first-order criticism of a design as if the designers did not consider their obvious concerns. It also sounds like you are making judgements based upon screenshots without actually using the software.

As far as messages go, it seems that the contrast is appropriate for the bubble at the bottom of the screen. The presumption, I think, is that users will scroll to read previous messages and the contrast will be fine where they are reading. The contrast for old messages is reduced to reduce the distraction from content the user is not reading, since it has already been read. How often do you read previous messages in a conversation vs. the last message? This difference clearly has dictated Apple's design.

Second, the concern about white text above the photo not being readable is laughable. If you really think Apple hasn't considered the idea that some photos will have lighter colors I don't know what to tell you. If you watch some of the intro WWDC videos it's very clear that Apple has thought through very carefully the various automatic treatments and text rendering they are applying to ensure they are readable by the user. Any places where things are not perfect will be corrected later.

If you want to criticize iOS 7 you can do better than conjuring up things that would only be true if Apple literally had zero design skills.

fallwithme• 13 years ago

The most important "action" on that screen happens when you press a gray text on a gray background!

The "Send" text is gray because the input box is empty. When you typed in something, it will turn blue. Still not as intuitive as a button though.

Also how can I reject a call?

It's exactly the same as in iOS 6. There've always been two different call screens since the first release of iOS. One is shown when your phone is locked, where you need to slide to answer and push the power button twice to reject. Another one is shown when your phone is not locked, where you have an answer button and a reject button. The screenshot causes the confusion because it is comparing the second call screen on iOS 6 with the first call screen on iOS 7.

cormullion• 13 years ago

As a counter-example (although I agree with you), the hideous and unusable directions on iOS 6 Maps (the all-capitals blue and white highway sign look) seems to have given way to something more readable.

kfury• 13 years ago

I really like the side-by-side comparison, buy why use a dark, non-default background for the iOS 6 home screen and a light one for the iOS 7 home screen? It looks like you're tossing objectivity to push a point.

adaml_623• 13 years ago

90% of the compared screens don't seem to be a like for like comparison. Seems to be a bit cherry picked.

lifeisstillgood• 13 years ago

Is it just me, or do I just fail to get the phone calls and texts and skypes from beautiful sun-kissed models with perfect spelling and fun filled lives?

No matter what the design looks like, a message from your boss looks like a message from your boss.

Its looks nice, can I get a better signal now.

jolohaga• 13 years ago

Most of these comments are silly including mine.

Flying_Dwarf8• 13 years ago

That last sentence is so bigoted. If you don't like flat then you're a child? Right.

I don't care about this whole debate, as I like flat and non-flat, and I actually prefer a happy medium.

What I wonder is if OS X is going to adopt iOS 7's new look in the upcoming years.

stdclass• 13 years ago

I really like the new designs, but since apple is all about "responsiveness" - they should REALLY reconsider the animation-durations of the different effects. It really slows you down in your usage.

sp3325• 13 years ago

I think the point about color is wrong. I like this article in general, but that section misses the point. Color is used to highlight important information, but it doesn't act as a divider between items in a list. The list is divided according to a perfectly-executed typographic hierarchy that lets the eye group lines together in space. https://d35lb3dl296zwu.cloudfront.net/uploads/photo/image/12... No color needed.

habitue• 13 years ago

I think it's getting very hard for bloggers to credit Apple with "genius" for making this interface change. It's a solidly done refresh of an aging UI theme, which everyone has to do from time to time because UI themes are fashion, and fashion changes. A good move on Apple's part, but it's not indicative of any particular genius.

therandomguy• 13 years ago

That first image says it all for me. We are on a iOS 6 contact page and I want to facetime. There is a button right there. I know I can click on it and what exactly it will do. The contrast on the text is right and my brain is scanning for a section/button to latch on to. It finds it. Okay, change of mind. I don't want to facetime but rather send a message. Brain scanning for "message" button starts and finds it in a fraction of a second (not just visual but the expectation that a related feature will have have a similar way to be invoked).

Now iOS7. Scanned for facetime. They don't have it on the contact sheet. Wait... they do. For some reason I didn't register that at all on the first glance. Now message. They definitely don't have it: home, mobile, facetime, iCloud and work. That's it. Wait.. that cannot be right. Re-scan slowly. I see a speech bubble next to mobile phone number. Maybe that is it. I hope it is clickable. Doesn't look like a button.

namank• 13 years ago

This was inevitable.

What bothers me is the disconnect between the icons for Safari, Settings, and Compass. They don't mesh with each other.

hop• 13 years ago

After using it for a day --

Great: Picture organization. Airdrop, this will be big. No more search field/page when you slide left on the home screen! Slide up settings is helpful (wish they had a link to settings.app there too. Screenshots of background apps are helpful. App store is back to vertical scrolling for the top charts. Safari top and bottom nav shrink when you are scrolling a site.

Not great: New keyboard is harder to see and type on, space bar got smaller. Not a fan of the icons and thin fonts. Wish messages were more compact. Calendar doesn't indicate events at the month view (or i haven't figured out how.) iRadio is a clone of pandora that's less simple.

Also, iOS7 now pops up a "This cable is not certified" when I plug in third party lightning cables. Looks like they are stepping up their proprietary authentication. Not a fan of that.

r00fus2• 13 years ago

Are your third party cables MFI certified? (e.g.: I just bought a bunch on monoprice that are MFI, I hope they work in iOS7)

ianstallings• 13 years ago

If our UIs get anymore modern we're not going to have any UI left.

fieldforceapp• 13 years ago

What percentage of these 'complaints' are just anxieties being surfaced? I for one am completely intimidated by the new iOS7 design paradigm: kerning? ligatures? color as a call-to-action? Rounded-rectangle buttons dying an untimely death? Man am I in trouble...

(I can almost hear Sir Jony hisself saying, 'keep calm, and carry on')

Just signed up for HackDesign and hope to hell they have an iOS7 focused segment soon!!

http://hackdesign.org

crazygringo• 13 years ago

The thing is, we’ve grown up. We don’t require hand-holding to tell us what to click or tap... iOS 7 is an iOS for a more mature consumer... who doesn’t want anything getting in the way of their content.

Even though the author is defending this, this hits the nail on the head for why I dislike this style.

I do want hand-holding to know what to click or tap. So does my mother. I don't want to have to guess what the designer wanted. I don't want to have a phone that requires me to be a "mature" consumer. I don't want to have to think when using it. And I want things to get in the way of my content -- things that help organize it, delineate it, and let me interact with it in clear and unambiguous ways. I didn't buy my phone to admire pretty pictures of my contacts -- I bought it to tap and swipe my way to getting stuff done quicker.

The original quote above isn't really about flat design -- I personally think flat design, done right, is great. The quote is about a different philosophy -- that just happens to have gone hand-in-hand with the new flat design movement. But I don't know what to call it -- an anti-interface movement? A make-the-user-guess movement? Microsoft's been doing this for a few years now; only now has Apple jumped on the bandwagon.

Karunamon• 13 years ago

Do you really think that you have to.. well.. think more, given the new design?

Look at the old vs the new - the chrome is still there, it's just taken backseat to the content. It's not at all unclear what to click on to accomplish what you want to do. The call screen for instance. It's still immediately obvious what does what.. slide to answer, and a couple of buttons to decline with a note.

Settings and contacts screen - the "<" cue on the top left which goes back, similar to every modern web browser.

Maybe I'm missing something here, is there a thing or two you can point out that seems harder or more confusing on IOS 7 than 6?

gfodor7• 13 years ago

read Tufte

ohwp• 13 years ago

The discussion about style is useless because everybody is different and has a different taste.

The only thing that matters is usability. And that's where iOS7 fails. Some examples:

  On the home screen "Reminders" is barely readable.
  Receiving a phone call: You can't read the name.
  Messages: white text on a light background: bad for reading.
  The weather: barely readable.

2mia• 13 years ago

You got to love this formula pattern. It implies so clearly that you are stupid and not mature if you feel otherwise. Is there a name for this psychological method?

"iOS 7 is an iOS for a more mature consumer, who understands that ... "

craigching• 13 years ago

I'm not sure what I think of the visual aesthetics yet, some of the icons are really bad (e.g. Safari), but I don't know if I'm ready to say I don't like it yet in general. I do actually like the glossy look of the iOS 6 and less icons.

One thing I'm concerned about, though, is usability. Getting rid of all the bevels off of buttons and making them not look quite so interactive ... my two year old son knows how to get around already and I wonder how much of that is because things look interactive on the iOS 6 UI. I might have to install the 7 beta and see what he thinks.

He knows how to unlock my wife's phone (I have a password on mine) and can get to any app he finds interesting. I suppose the only thing he'll need to overcome is unlocking the phone and then he'll be back where he started.

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

Reminds me a bit of Windows Phone (which I don't own, I'm just going by the visual aesthetic I've absorbed form ads etc.).

grendelt• 13 years ago

I'm just happy to see the Maps icon is getting fixed.

jgrall• 13 years ago

I agree with the author of the article that overall iOS 7 represents a big step forward in terms of design.

However, there are some glaring warts that weren't discussed. Most notable among the goofs is the new "Control Center" feature. What's odd is that Apple seems particularly proud of it judging by how frequently it appears in their iOS 7 marketing materials. To be clear, I think that the idea of giving quick access to frequently used controls is a good one. However the current visual design execution of this idea is abysmal.

IMHO, the current design of iOS 7 Control Center is a jumbled mess that doesn't seem consistent with the rest of the new design. It violates a bunch of the new design conventions, and conceptually represents a grab-bag of misfit controls that have little reason to be together on the screen at the same time.

The controls shown in Control Center don't use the new convention of tinting to a bright color to indicate interactivity, but instead opt for inverting between light and dark to indicate on/off. Additionally, some of the buttons have borders, while others don't. Some are circles, some are rounded rectangles, others are floating in whitespace. Some less important controls (AirDrop) are big, other more important ones (WiFi) are small, and they're all stacked on top of each other in a big jumbled mess.

Here's how I propose Apple improve the design of iOS 7's Control Center:

- Adopt a consistent control element design: no borders, color hinting etc.

- Remove the bottom row of app shortcuts. Except for the flashlight these are not controls, they're links. - Remove AirDrop and Airplay. Not controls either.

- Refine that ugly down arrow on the top of the pane. It's too chunky and is encroaching on the icons below.

- Increase the opacity on the panel to improve readability.

Gepsens• 13 years ago

So basically they admit that Google has better designers ? Not surprised really. What's next, iGlasses ?

6d0debc071• 13 years ago

To my mind this really comes down to the question of whether people who want a flat UI already have an Android or Windows Phone.

If they have, then I don't see them changing device. What would they do so for? The iphone's worst feature for a while now has been its handset - so they'd pay a penalty in accepting the device and unless the UI has a major advantage I don't see why they would.

(

I don't know how many of you get the Samsung adverts from Europe and the like but the iphone gets actively mocked as a fairly out of date dumb device:

http://youtu.be/mLd9hjl3Kds

And in use figures it's not doing well outside of the U.S.

)

Meanwhile it would alienate all the people who didn't want a flat UI.

If people who wants a flat UI have already gone elsewhere I don't see how Apple can do anything but make a loss on this change.

etler2• 13 years ago

I don't think there are many people that disagree with the points this guy has brought up. But he doesn't really bring up the things that people actually are complaining about. There are many aspects of the UI that are very garish and not very polished. Sure, the UX might be great but people notice the UI first, and that's where much of the backlash is coming from. I think it's compounded by Apple's history of having their initial UI unveilings showing a much more polished look than they have with iOS7.

vacri5• 13 years ago

I don't understand why one 'answer call' screen (the one with the woman) does not have a 'decline' option, and the other (with the man) does have 'decline'. How do you decline a call for the first caller? What's the difference between these two kinds of call?

r00fus2• 13 years ago

If you're talking about the collage with Bridget and Max then:

Bridget is from the lockscreen (if you look closely the green button says slide to answer), and is a Phone call.

Max is a FaceTime, and is likely when the phone is unlocked. There's already a UI difference in iOS6 for these use cases.

vacri5• 13 years ago

Thanks. Though it seems odd that the 'remind me later' - essentially the 'decline' - isn't particularly notable on the phone call screen. The typical scenario of being in a meeting and needing to decline a call is less facilitated by the second design than by the first, as it's not obvious where to perform the action.

leoc3• 13 years ago

Can some kind graphic designer or art historian pinpoint what the art style (including the colour scheme) of the new app icons is based on? (Most obviously Photos, Camera, Clock, Game Center and Newsstand.) I know that it's a (probably) mid-late '60s colour-printing, cartoon-art or children's-book style (based on cut-outs or stencils?) but I can't identify it any more precisely than that.

In a way it's strange that iOS would adopt these icons at the same time that it's ripping out the skeuomorphisms. After all, beyond the complaints about wasted space, distracting textures and so on, the fundamental thing people have against skeuomorphism itself is that it's a put-on, a kind of play-acting. But so is the self-consciously retro and "themed" style which has now been applied to the home screen. I really like the icons, on the whole, though the new default background is too much. But they're too much of a novelty for me to want them at the centre of my life and work - which is where they will be for iPhone users - for (say) ten years. Not that anyone is even contemplating leaving them on the home screen for even four years, of course. But that's just the thing: they may (or may not, flame away) be good design, but they're unequivocally not timeless design. Or really minimal, self-effacing design.

paulocal• 13 years ago

the icons in that mockup are so much better.

m3mnoch• 13 years ago

no. it's not flat. it's not beveled and skeuomorphic. it's splits the middle. that's always bad -- as our friend yoda says, "do, or do not."

ios 7 basically says "i can't decide what i want. i don't want to be all textured and stuff because flat is cool! but, i also don't want to go straight-up flat because then i lose all the affordance like metro did. hrm... i know! let's do a little of each!"

no, indeed. this will end poorly for apple.

m3mnoch.

dakimov• 13 years ago

"Content first, essence, clarity, bla bla bla..."

There is such a thing as AESTHETICS that everyone of those rationally-thinking-wannabe designers forget about.

People do not wear the same gray robes and do not live in an apartment with bare concrete walls.

To feel comfortable a human needs some visual complexity, this is a part of aesthetics.

Too much complexity is bad taste, too little is lifeless and primitive.

Also, people tend to have different taste.

Actually, the worst thing for me about iOS 7 design was that unexpectedly I perceived it as made with bad taste. It could be flat, focused, minimal, stylish — that would be fine, such type of design is not for everyone, but would be fine with me.

But the worst thing happened — bad taste. The problem with the design is that it is offensively and illogically colorful, and geometrically disproportional. It is not stylish, and it is not minimal.

I am appalled. And what is with the trash can Mac Pro design. Does Johny Ive really have bad taste?

rdouble2• 13 years ago

People do not wear the same gray robes and do not live in an apartment with bare concrete walls.

When I lived in the bay area I'd say 50% of my co workers lived in apartments with bare walls and wore the same outfit everyday.

gfodor7• 13 years ago

Complaining about icons is a bike shed. Commenting on screenshots and not actually using the OS is transparently dumb. iOS 7 is "Tufte Strikes Back", it's the death of the chartjunk of iOS6. I'd imagine in 5 years we will swing back a bit but for now the next gold rush is on.

eatitraw• 13 years ago

I wonder: where did this pictures come from? It looks to me like someone cleverly designed them to accentuate the (possible) beauty and novelty of the new design.

Just look at the first five pictures at the blog post:

1) The left part shows just apple logo. The right one shows a man smiling.

2) The left part contains no pictures at all - just some text, and the right part contain a picture of a nice girl.

3) Both sides of the picture contain a girl smiling. But the girl on the right is definitely looks more open and bright. Heck, even the teeth on the right photo seems more white.

4 & 5) The fifth picture(ios7 collage) contains more smiling people than the fourth picture(ios6 collage).

I am pretty sure there is no coincidence.

leoc3• 13 years ago

I think the iOS 6 screenshots are just quickly taken from the author's real phone, while the iOS 7 shots are from Apple's iOS 7 marketing. So it's unsurprising, but not intentional, that the iOS 7 screenshots look more carefully designed to please than the iOS 6 ones.

anuraj• 13 years ago

While I loved the general feel of iOS 7, there is too much white on the screen - which makes me increase contrast - and few parts feel less thought out and rough at edges - So overall a welcome change, but needs further work.

soemarko• 13 years ago

I think part of iOS 7 task is to create buzz. And it's doing it successfully (with hundreds of votes and comments on this and Marco Arment's thread). The last few iOS iteration, for lack of a better word, has been boring.

At this point, iOS is walking on the similar path to Windows Phone 7. Looking back at WP7, it did generate a lot of buzz, it rallies a lot of MS fan out to become the product's evangelist.

Time will tell whether iOS 7 will sell. I bet it will.

mactitan• 13 years ago

WOW. my first real look of the new design.(since most of the experts here are pro iOS 7 I would think it would be a dismal failure - if huge user base didn't exist) Don't get me wrong- i kindof like iOS7 better but if I saw both for 1st time i would guess os7 would have been 1st gen. Reminds me of lo bandwidth dialup days when I couldnt stand when graphics got in way of pure text. Apple must have consumer groups like ford, kellog,etc.. who give their 2 cents. No comments on what steve jobs would handle this (would he actually like the aesthetics - I guess it's the jobless era commencing. MS must be happy.

72deluxe• 13 years ago

"Gone are embellishments like gloss and bevelled edges, shadows and borders. Visually dead areas that provoke tension rather than inspiring relaxation. Weight that suffocates, rather than open air to breathe."

Interesting review but silly comments like this are, well, silly! When I see an area of a screen or GUI, I do not feel tension if there is a "visually dead" area. Does anyone else? How come nobody complained about iOS4 and 5 and 6 in the GUI department? Suddenly they are being seen as old and rubbish, and tension-inducing.

Daft writing is sadly colouring an objective review. Having said that, iOS7 does look brighter but some areas look difficult to read. The lack of indication when items are buttons or controls is frustrating, as experienced on Windows 8, aka. Visit To Flatland

ianstormtaylor• 13 years ago

People have been complaining about skeumorphism and generally outdated looks in the GUI department for iOS 6 for ages, where have you been?

The author's comments aren't "silly", they're just an example of an expert talking about his field. Novice programmers don't feel "grimy" when they look at code that should clearly be refactored, but that doesn't mean that programmers who talk about ugly code are "silly" either. If you haven't studied design to a certain extent you probably won't ever be aware of tension in an interface unless it's extremely evident. That does not mean it's not there.

Bogdanp• 13 years ago

I've been using the developer preview version for a couple of days now and I have to say that the experience is pretty nice, except for the fact that the home screen is unusable if you have a light background (white labels on white background, YAY). My main issue with it is how choppy it gets every now and then (I'm running it on an iPhone 4S) but they'll probably fix that by the final release. I've uploaded some screenshots to [1].

1: http://min.us/mjEw1CkvEbR80

hosh2• 13 years ago

It's not that flat design is a "grown up design". It's that we're establishing a pattern of design fashion, much like the cycle of clothing fashion. We'll come back to skeumorphism eventually.

iOS 7

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