A longer than usual feature deserves a longer than usual reply.
I disagree with the thesis that Apple made these changes to make iOS 7 hard to copy (or at least obvious if it is copied). If you watch the WWDC video "What's New is iOS User Interface Design," they take you through step by step an example redesign (the Mail app) and you can see that the reason they are doing what they are doing is to achieve minimalism. They start with a blank screen and try to figure out the essential minimum stuff to add.
It's Jony Ive's "essentiality" design aesthetic applied to GUI. But the problem is, the real world faces certain limitations that the virtual world does not. It's hard for things to be perfect in the real world, so when Jony makes a Macbook Pro with beautiful lines and insanely minute tolerances and tiny speaker holes drilled by laser, it's bloody impressive. You combine that with a minimalist design, where all the clutter is gone, and suddenly there's nothing left for the eye to go to *but* the sheer quality. And that works great.
But in the virtual world, perfection is free, and therefore not impressive. There are no laws of physics to overcome: if you want a perfectly straight line, or a perfectly circular circle you just draw one. Forget tiny laser holes being impressive: in the virtual world there are mathematical points that have *no* dimensions . So if you take the approach of ruthlessly stripping away all the clutter, until all there is nothing to look at but the precision/quality, people are not impressed.
So what *does* constitute "impressive" in a virtual world? Well, the most impressed I've seen people looking at a computer screen is seeing very realistic simulations: such as a simulation of a human face, or weather, or realistic physics. That's right, we have stumbled upon a great universal symmetry: the real world is impressive to the extent it approaches the perfection of the virtual world (e.g. Macbook Pro design), and the virtual world is impressive to the extent it approaches (or mimics) the real world.
In other words Steve was right, the way to make an impressive GUI (and he was the commensurate salesman) is skeu.. skeu... that other thing.
I haven't read them all but this is the best post ever. Then again I'm pretty stoned. It made sense and zipped right along.
DED's piece looks promising too. Maybe later. Who says iOS 7 is meant to be hard to copy?
One major point of this article is that because Google makes no money on Android, we shouldn't expect much innovation out of them. However, in comparison to the other companies mentioned, Google has enough revenue from other sources that they could continue to lose money on Android forever while still innovating.
Of course, how long they'll keep doing this is another question. We have recently gotten quite used to Google pulling the plug on projects which don't make them [m]any profits (oh, Google Powermeter how I loved thee!).
Even the architect for Android has moved on to other projects... what does that say about Android's long term innovation?
I am relaxed. I just said that on 4/4S it's unsuabale.
My iPhone 5 with iOS 7 crash at least three times a day. Last night alone it crashed 5 times. One of reasons it is worst on the 4/4S is because their RAM is half that of the 5. Looking at my iPhone 5 logs I can see between 3 and 6 Low Memory warnings PER DAY since I installed the beta. Wait until the GM release before making such statements.
Daniel Eran Dilger (DED) - a known cheerleader of Cook's misguided leadership - goes overboard in verbosity trying to hide the obvious - Cook's policies led to one of the largest shareholder losses in the history and.... And Cook is not done yet. Soon AAPL price will fall under $400 and will have $3XX prices tag.
DED uses every tactic under the sun - from the decade old failings of Wintel to the unquestionably gloried and revolutionary accomplishments of Apple during Job's era - to cover up Cook's recent losses and portray iOS as the best thing in mobile platforms.... Gimme a break!
Cook - an undisputed chain-supply guru and a spreadsheet genius - coasted on Job's vision for a year, which got AAPL above $700. Having no guts to make radical changes - like increasing iPhone screen size above 4" or fixing unreliable iCloud - Cook just continues to coast while AAPL tumbles to $600 to $500 to $400 to... over $250 billion lost and counting.... I guess the next DED piece will be even more prolix and defensive.
My iPhone 5 with iOS 7 crash at least three times a day. Last night alone it crashed 5 times. One of reasons it is worst on the 4/4S is because their RAM is half that of the 5. Looking at my iPhone 5 logs I can see between 3 and 6 Low Memory warnings PER DAY since I installed the beta. Wait until the GM release before making such statements.
Do you even read and understand? I just said it's unsable on 4/4S. I perfectly undersdtand that it's a beta software, just stated that it is worse on these specifi models than on iPhone 5 for example. What the hell is wrong with you.
Do you even read and understand? I just said it's unsable on 4/4S. I perfectly undersdtand that it's a beta software, just stated that it is worse on these specifi models than on iPhone 5 for example. What the hell is wrong with you.
There's a very specific bug that affects iPhones that have been restored using an iTunes back up (something that you should not do anyway). It has to do with the iTunes/app store process getting stuck in a loop, using 50-70% CPU and quickly draining battery in the background even when the device is sleeping. It will most likely be fixed in Beta 2.
Until then, if you have this bug and don't want to reinstall: disable auto-updates, avoid the store apps and reboot whenever you see unusual background CPU activity/battery drain (you can use a system monitor app for this). If you listen to music, you better disable iTunes in the cloud or iTunes match since it will activate the process each time you listen to music.
It's Jony Ive's "essentiality" design aesthetic applied to GUI. But the problem is, the real world faces certain limitations that the virtual world does not. ....
So if you take the approach of ruthlessly stripping away all the clutter, until all there is nothing to look at but the precision/quality, people are not impressed.
....we have stumbled upon a great universal symmetry: the real world is impressive to the extent it approaches the perfection of the virtual world (e.g. Macbook Pro design), and the virtual world is impressive to the extent it approaches (or mimics) the real world.
In other words Steve was right, the way to make an impressive GUI (and he was the commensurate salesman) is skeu.. skeu... that other thing.
Very, very insightful! After Job's death only Scott Forstall could stand up to Ive's boundless "essentiality." But Tim Cook fired him. So we will continue to see Sir Ive "ruthlessly stripping" iOS... Sad.
iOS 7 isn't as surprising as the first iOS, but it still feels as though it is taking us forward to a new 'future'. The clarity of the user experience is still light years ahead of Android which remains continually confusing and ugly even in its best Nexus implementations.
By the way, theres nothing wrong with adapting Helvetica, theres a long and wide tradition of this. Android's variation is quite nice, though for me a little too machine-like (I mean who really wants a robot in their pocket, that's the basic problem at the root of the Android brand, most of us prefer a phone or a music player than something reminding us of borgs, terminators and fictional things that generally want to replace, steal our souls (Glass) or just want to destroy us).
Do you even read and understand? I just said it's unsable on 4/4S. I perfectly undersdtand that it's a beta software, just stated that it is worse on these specifi models than on iPhone 5 for example. What the hell is wrong with you.
My issue is with people complaining about how unstable iOS 7 when they know the damn thing is nowhere near finish. We all know it is unstable. We all know it might be worst on older devices as Apple mentioned under "iOS 7 Release Notes". There is no reason to complain every time iOS 7 is mentioned.
I disagree with the thesis that Apple made these changes to make iOS 7 hard to copy (or at least obvious if it is copied). If you watch the WWDC video "What's New is iOS User Interface Design," they take you through step by step an example redesign (the Mail app) and you can see that the reason they are doing what they are doing is to achieve minimalism. They start with a blank screen and try to figure out the essential minimum stuff to add.
[snip] That's right, we have stumbled upon a great universal symmetry: the real world is impressive to the extent it approaches the perfection of the virtual world (e.g. Macbook Pro design), and the virtual world is impressive to the extent it approaches (or mimics) the real world.
In other words Steve was right, the way to make an impressive GUI (and he was the commensurate salesman) is skeu.. skeu... that other thing.
Brilliant analysis. And certainly much of this UI isn't hard to copy. For kicks, I recreated the Mail mailbox screen in 20 minutes using nothing but Microsoft Word. There's minimalism and then there's blankness. Too often ios 7 is the latter. So while they didn't make iOS hard to copy, they sure seem to have tried to make it something nobody would _want_ to copy.
Every now and then I'll play around on an Android device just to see what the grass is like on the other side. What strikes me is how ugly the icons are and how jittery the scrolling is.
I love how Apple draws me in. I feel like I'm manipulating things under my finger. I'm completely sucked into their world.
I find iOS 7 bold and inviting. Except the light font. I have to wait and see how it actually looks in its finished form on my own iPhone and iPad.
Personally I think the argument about who copied whom is missing the point. Frankly, I wish iOS 7 had stolen a bit more from BlackBerry, who strangely enough on their apparent deathbed have shown more innovation than anybody lately with their keyboards (which Apple desperately needs to improve) and the photo Time Shift feature.
I don't care who used Helvetica first; I care that the choice of it as a font is boring (it's so ubiquitous they even made a documentary about it for crying out loud), and the ultra thin weight combined with all that white makes things harder to read and less pleasant to look at. Combine that with the lack of any kind of polish to the buttons, etc., and iOS 7 is less of a pleasure to use.
All but the most ardent Apple fans must admit that any advantage they may have had in mobile features is gone now. They certainly have a long way to go to catch Google in web services (and I say this as an Apple fan who has hated Google for years). Aside from the number of apps available in the iOS ecosystem, design was its main and crucial preeminence. But Apple's own keynote showed that they're reacting even there. All the skeumorphic jokes from Federighi et al show they've been listening to the complaints, that people got under their skin. But in trying to correct the skeumorphism they've thrown the baby out with the bath water. That visual sumptuousness was their hallmark. Now, there is little to distinguish the look and feel of iOS from its competitors.
One last thing: "our side makes more money" and "our side has way more apps" used to be arguments that Apple fans scoffed at back in the days of Microsoft dominance. I am no more inclined to resort to them now simply because they work in Apple's favor.
Very, very insightful! After Job's death only Scott Forstall could stand up to Ive's boundless "essentiality."<span style="line-height:1.231;"> But Tim Cook fired him. So we will continue to see Sir Ive "</span>
<span style="line-height:1.231;">ruthlessly stripping" iOS... Sad. </span>
"At this point, the WinTel partnership is now more like a ball of greasy hair saturated in Drano, eating it self up as it sucks itself down the sewer pipes and out of relevance."
greasy, greasy ... quite true, actually ... (hair style comparison "Hello, I'm a Mac." versus "And I'm a PC")
I can appreciate the changes Apple made to the features of iOS 7. But you're either blind or brainwashed not to see that these are "catch up" features. You aren't leading by implementing catch up features.
Airdrop is the only feature worth mentioning. Aside from that, iOS 7 is adding what other os's are already doing. Well that and horribly design icons. And Siri doesn't even appear to be getting smarter. I'm afraid Google Now has won the personal assistant war.
Love my iPad and iMac. But I think this fall I will be looking at a Nexus for my phone for my needs.
Just make sure to play with one in a store before you do so, because trust me, as a long time iOS user having to constantly keep your finger on the screen to prevent momentum scrolling and therefore sparing yourself having to experience jittering and lag even in simple lists such as the settings interface will make you want to cry out loud. ;-)
All but the most ardent Apple fans must admit that any advantage they may have had in mobile features is gone now. They certainly have a long way to go to catch Google in web services (and I say this as an Apple fan who has hated Google for years). Aside from the number of apps available in the iOS ecosystem, design was its main and crucial preeminence. But Apple's own keynote showed that they're reacting even there. All the skeumorphic jokes from Federighi et al show they've been listening to the complaints, that people got under their skin. But in trying to correct the skeumorphism they've thrown the baby out with the bath water. That visual sumptuousness was their hallmark. Now, there is little to distinguish the look and feel of iOS from its competitors.
I actually believe that iOS 7 has a very distinct user interface. Certainly some features might look distantly similar to other operating systems but the design is essentially unique. However, it is also perfected to the detail (apart from some oddities, which will probably go away before it hits the market).
Android Fans and others try to keep on telling people that it is in reality all stolen and that the design is ugly. When taking a close look however and comparing screen for screen, it becomes apparent that iOS 7 is simply beautiful with a lot of focus on little details and Android just aged 10 years over night. If you look at the Android notification center and it doesn't remind you of how software looked like in the mid 90's, then I don't know. Take at look at the Android homescreen, which why similar just looks cheap in comparison now. Take a look at Windows Phone fonts, especially headlines, where the end portion of a words always floats out of the screen. Those design decisions simply look cheap and ridiculous when compared to the new iOS, which has taken on those design clues but refined them into an interface probably both other platforms actually aspired to get.
I'm also sure that this new interface will draw in a lot of new users, which disliked iOS for its looks...
Very, very insightful! After Job's death only Scott Forstall could stand up to Ive's boundless "essentiality." But Tim Cook fired him. So we will continue to see Sir Ive "ruthlessly stripping" iOS... Sad.
Thanks. Yes, I think Steve put Ive in charge of the physical and Scott in charge of the virtual for a reason.
I am not against Tim to the extent you are, I think he's not just a logistics genius but a great businessman in general. But he is also a very practical man whereas Steve was more deep and philosophical (even going to India to find himself). Tim has some deeply held political beliefs surrounding civil rights, but he's not philosophical to the extent Steve was. He asserts Steve's principles ("Apple's values") at every keynote, but knowing a set of principles and knowing how to apply them to a given situation are not the same... he shouldn't have fired Scott.
Thanks. Yes, I think Steve put Ive in charge of the physical and Scott in charge of the virtual for a reason.
I am not against Tim to the extent you are, I think he's not just a logistics genius but a great businessman in general. But he is also a very practical man whereas Steve was more deep and philosophical (even going to India to find himself). Tim has some deeply held political beliefs surrounding civil rights, but he's not philosophical to the extent Steve was. He asserts Steve's principles ("Apple's values") at every keynote, but knowing a set of principles and knowing how to apply them to a given situation are not the same... he shouldn't have fired Scott.
Steve Jobs want iOS to be so easy even a child can use it. And a child certainly can. Jony want iOS to be a well-designed, beautiful piece of art that don't get in your way. Right or wrong I think it'll be exciting for us to have a chance to try both approaches.
Comments
I haven't read them all but this is the best post ever. Then again I'm pretty stoned. It made sense and zipped right along.
DED's piece looks promising too. Maybe later. Who says iOS 7 is meant to be hard to copy?
Quote:
Originally Posted by TokyoJimu
One major point of this article is that because Google makes no money on Android, we shouldn't expect much innovation out of them. However, in comparison to the other companies mentioned, Google has enough revenue from other sources that they could continue to lose money on Android forever while still innovating.
Of course, how long they'll keep doing this is another question. We have recently gotten quite used to Google pulling the plug on projects which don't make them [m]any profits (oh, Google Powermeter how I loved thee!).
Even the architect for Android has moved on to other projects... what does that say about Android's long term innovation?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Povilas
I am relaxed. I just said that on 4/4S it's unsuabale.
My iPhone 5 with iOS 7 crash at least three times a day. Last night alone it crashed 5 times. One of reasons it is worst on the 4/4S is because their RAM is half that of the 5. Looking at my iPhone 5 logs I can see between 3 and 6 Low Memory warnings PER DAY since I installed the beta. Wait until the GM release before making such statements.
Daniel Eran Dilger (DED) - a known cheerleader of Cook's misguided leadership - goes overboard in verbosity trying to hide the obvious - Cook's policies led to one of the largest shareholder losses in the history and.... And Cook is not done yet. Soon AAPL price will fall under $400 and will have $3XX prices tag.
DED uses every tactic under the sun - from the decade old failings of Wintel to the unquestionably gloried and revolutionary accomplishments of Apple during Job's era - to cover up Cook's recent losses and portray iOS as the best thing in mobile platforms.... Gimme a break!
Cook - an undisputed chain-supply guru and a spreadsheet genius - coasted on Job's vision for a year, which got AAPL above $700. Having no guts to make radical changes - like increasing iPhone screen size above 4" or fixing unreliable iCloud - Cook just continues to coast while AAPL tumbles to $600 to $500 to $400 to... over $250 billion lost and counting.... I guess the next DED piece will be even more prolix and defensive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NasserAE
My iPhone 5 with iOS 7 crash at least three times a day. Last night alone it crashed 5 times. One of reasons it is worst on the 4/4S is because their RAM is half that of the 5. Looking at my iPhone 5 logs I can see between 3 and 6 Low Memory warnings PER DAY since I installed the beta. Wait until the GM release before making such statements.
Do you even read and understand? I just said it's unsable on 4/4S. I perfectly undersdtand that it's a beta software, just stated that it is worse on these specifi models than on iPhone 5 for example. What the hell is wrong with you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Povilas
Do you even read and understand? I just said it's unsable on 4/4S. I perfectly undersdtand that it's a beta software, just stated that it is worse on these specifi models than on iPhone 5 for example. What the hell is wrong with you.
There's a very specific bug that affects iPhones that have been restored using an iTunes back up (something that you should not do anyway). It has to do with the iTunes/app store process getting stuck in a loop, using 50-70% CPU and quickly draining battery in the background even when the device is sleeping. It will most likely be fixed in Beta 2.
Until then, if you have this bug and don't want to reinstall: disable auto-updates, avoid the store apps and reboot whenever you see unusual background CPU activity/battery drain (you can use a system monitor app for this). If you listen to music, you better disable iTunes in the cloud or iTunes match since it will activate the process each time you listen to music.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
It's Jony Ive's "essentiality" design aesthetic applied to GUI. But the problem is, the real world faces certain limitations that the virtual world does not. ....
So if you take the approach of ruthlessly stripping away all the clutter, until all there is nothing to look at but the precision/quality, people are not impressed.
....we have stumbled upon a great universal symmetry: the real world is impressive to the extent it approaches the perfection of the virtual world (e.g. Macbook Pro design), and the virtual world is impressive to the extent it approaches (or mimics) the real world.
In other words Steve was right, the way to make an impressive GUI (and he was the commensurate salesman) is skeu.. skeu... that other thing.
Very, very insightful! After Job's death only Scott Forstall could stand up to Ive's boundless "essentiality." But Tim Cook fired him. So we will continue to see Sir Ive "ruthlessly stripping" iOS... Sad.
iOS 7 isn't as surprising as the first iOS, but it still feels as though it is taking us forward to a new 'future'. The clarity of the user experience is still light years ahead of Android which remains continually confusing and ugly even in its best Nexus implementations.
By the way, theres nothing wrong with adapting Helvetica, theres a long and wide tradition of this. Android's variation is quite nice, though for me a little too machine-like (I mean who really wants a robot in their pocket, that's the basic problem at the root of the Android brand, most of us prefer a phone or a music player than something reminding us of borgs, terminators and fictional things that generally want to replace, steal our souls (Glass) or just want to destroy us).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Povilas
Do you even read and understand? I just said it's unsable on 4/4S. I perfectly undersdtand that it's a beta software, just stated that it is worse on these specifi models than on iPhone 5 for example. What the hell is wrong with you.
My issue is with people complaining about how unstable iOS 7 when they know the damn thing is nowhere near finish. We all know it is unstable. We all know it might be worst on older devices as Apple mentioned under "iOS 7 Release Notes". There is no reason to complain every time iOS 7 is mentioned.
Brilliant analysis. And certainly much of this UI isn't hard to copy. For kicks, I recreated the Mail mailbox screen in 20 minutes using nothing but Microsoft Word. There's minimalism and then there's blankness. Too often ios 7 is the latter. So while they didn't make iOS hard to copy, they sure seem to have tried to make it something nobody would _want_ to copy.
Every now and then I'll play around on an Android device just to see what the grass is like on the other side. What strikes me is how ugly the icons are and how jittery the scrolling is.
I love how Apple draws me in. I feel like I'm manipulating things under my finger. I'm completely sucked into their world.
I find iOS 7 bold and inviting. Except the light font. I have to wait and see how it actually looks in its finished form on my own iPhone and iPad.
I don't care who used Helvetica first; I care that the choice of it as a font is boring (it's so ubiquitous they even made a documentary about it for crying out loud), and the ultra thin weight combined with all that white makes things harder to read and less pleasant to look at. Combine that with the lack of any kind of polish to the buttons, etc., and iOS 7 is less of a pleasure to use.
All but the most ardent Apple fans must admit that any advantage they may have had in mobile features is gone now. They certainly have a long way to go to catch Google in web services (and I say this as an Apple fan who has hated Google for years). Aside from the number of apps available in the iOS ecosystem, design was its main and crucial preeminence. But Apple's own keynote showed that they're reacting even there. All the skeumorphic jokes from Federighi et al show they've been listening to the complaints, that people got under their skin. But in trying to correct the skeumorphism they've thrown the baby out with the bath water. That visual sumptuousness was their hallmark. Now, there is little to distinguish the look and feel of iOS from its competitors.
One last thing: "our side makes more money" and "our side has way more apps" used to be arguments that Apple fans scoffed at back in the days of Microsoft dominance. I am no more inclined to resort to them now simply because they work in Apple's favor.
"At this point, the WinTel partnership is now more like a ball of greasy hair saturated in Drano, eating it self up as it sucks itself down the sewer pipes and out of relevance."
greasy, greasy ... quite true, actually ... (hair style comparison "Hello, I'm a Mac." versus "And I'm a PC")
Quote:
Originally Posted by allenbf
I can appreciate the changes Apple made to the features of iOS 7. But you're either blind or brainwashed not to see that these are "catch up" features. You aren't leading by implementing catch up features.
Airdrop is the only feature worth mentioning. Aside from that, iOS 7 is adding what other os's are already doing. Well that and horribly design icons. And Siri doesn't even appear to be getting smarter. I'm afraid Google Now has won the personal assistant war.
Love my iPad and iMac. But I think this fall I will be looking at a Nexus for my phone for my needs.
Just make sure to play with one in a store before you do so, because trust me, as a long time iOS user having to constantly keep your finger on the screen to prevent momentum scrolling and therefore sparing yourself having to experience jittering and lag even in simple lists such as the settings interface will make you want to cry out loud. ;-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by djr12
All but the most ardent Apple fans must admit that any advantage they may have had in mobile features is gone now. They certainly have a long way to go to catch Google in web services (and I say this as an Apple fan who has hated Google for years). Aside from the number of apps available in the iOS ecosystem, design was its main and crucial preeminence. But Apple's own keynote showed that they're reacting even there. All the skeumorphic jokes from Federighi et al show they've been listening to the complaints, that people got under their skin. But in trying to correct the skeumorphism they've thrown the baby out with the bath water. That visual sumptuousness was their hallmark. Now, there is little to distinguish the look and feel of iOS from its competitors.
I actually believe that iOS 7 has a very distinct user interface. Certainly some features might look distantly similar to other operating systems but the design is essentially unique. However, it is also perfected to the detail (apart from some oddities, which will probably go away before it hits the market).
Android Fans and others try to keep on telling people that it is in reality all stolen and that the design is ugly. When taking a close look however and comparing screen for screen, it becomes apparent that iOS 7 is simply beautiful with a lot of focus on little details and Android just aged 10 years over night. If you look at the Android notification center and it doesn't remind you of how software looked like in the mid 90's, then I don't know. Take at look at the Android homescreen, which why similar just looks cheap in comparison now. Take a look at Windows Phone fonts, especially headlines, where the end portion of a words always floats out of the screen. Those design decisions simply look cheap and ridiculous when compared to the new iOS, which has taken on those design clues but refined them into an interface probably both other platforms actually aspired to get.
I'm also sure that this new interface will draw in a lot of new users, which disliked iOS for its looks...
Quote:
Originally Posted by enature
Very, very insightful! After Job's death only Scott Forstall could stand up to Ive's boundless "essentiality." But Tim Cook fired him. So we will continue to see Sir Ive "ruthlessly stripping" iOS... Sad.
Thanks. Yes, I think Steve put Ive in charge of the physical and Scott in charge of the virtual for a reason.
I am not against Tim to the extent you are, I think he's not just a logistics genius but a great businessman in general. But he is also a very practical man whereas Steve was more deep and philosophical (even going to India to find himself). Tim has some deeply held political beliefs surrounding civil rights, but he's not philosophical to the extent Steve was. He asserts Steve's principles ("Apple's values") at every keynote, but knowing a set of principles and knowing how to apply them to a given situation are not the same... he shouldn't have fired Scott.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
Thanks. Yes, I think Steve put Ive in charge of the physical and Scott in charge of the virtual for a reason.
I am not against Tim to the extent you are, I think he's not just a logistics genius but a great businessman in general. But he is also a very practical man whereas Steve was more deep and philosophical (even going to India to find himself). Tim has some deeply held political beliefs surrounding civil rights, but he's not philosophical to the extent Steve was. He asserts Steve's principles ("Apple's values") at every keynote, but knowing a set of principles and knowing how to apply them to a given situation are not the same... he shouldn't have fired Scott.
Steve Jobs want iOS to be so easy even a child can use it. And a child certainly can. Jony want iOS to be a well-designed, beautiful piece of art that don't get in your way. Right or wrong I think it'll be exciting for us to have a chance to try both approaches.