It just gets worse and worse (the UI that is). No Ive does not sit at a computer terminal designing UI. But he gives overall direction to UI and that is a progressive disaster for the ordinary user.
You think a SVP is designing user interfaces? I highly doubt it.
He's either setting the tone or signing off on UI designs in which he has previously explicitly stated he has no interest (see his very recent on-stage interview with Vanity Fair). He stated he became an industrial designer, not a graphic designer, because he's not good at graphic design and he has no interest in it. Tim Cook put him in charge of an area in which he has no interest. That needs to change.
"puts focus on imagery and content rather than page design elements, much akin to the look of Apple's new iTunes 12"
"text is simply floating in free space"
Yes, it puts the focus on Ive's non-existent understanding of user interface design, since it just removed all visual differentiation, any user interface elements that made it easier for users to navigate, scan, and choose quickly, forcing all of us to over-focus and read every element of text to browse for something we might want. This is similar to what happened to the OS X sidebar which forces you to read through every piece of information as there's no color and hardly any icon visual differentiation.
Brilliant, modern design seems to equal removing any user interface and just putting up a list that looks like it was made in MS Word by an accountant. It looks like it was designed by someone who has no clue about design. Yey!
Just pondering... (or just venting this time, Sorry.)
Fully agree. It now does look cleaner and all, and for people accustomed to all kinds of IT, gadgets and web, the new look might even work as well as the old.
But for the elder generation who still does not live in the digital world but in the real one and who uses computers and gadgets only rarely and simply as tools (oh horror!), it is getting even more difficult by this "simplification" and clean up.
The iPhone was praised for its intuitive user interface when it was released, but if you never had any kind of smartphone and start with an iPhone 5 or 6 and a current iOS version, this has grown to a hugely complex (and complicated) user interface.
I personally love Swiss design, the Bauhaus aesthetic, the work of Richard Saul Wurman and minimalism in general. Minimalism as the basis for a UI requires more work than simply removing elements.
Jony, please bring in a world-class UI team to refine the desktop and iOS in a way that makes sense across all languages and markets Apple serves. I think the size of the job has become bigger than what Apple's current team can handle, to be honest.
I've not looked closely, but hopefully this isn't as bad as the redesign of iTunes. The latter is so dreadful, it's now a contender with the Skype app of a few years back as the "worst Mac app ever."
I've got a lot of tools out in my garage that I use for working on my house or garage. They are absolutely marvelous. Every time I pick one up to use it, it's unchanged from the time before. That, I like. The tool does precisely what I bought it to do. It doesn't need to change.
Not so with Apple's tool-like apps. They change for reasons that make no sense to me. Perhaps it is to enhance Jony Ives' already enormous ego. Perhaps it's make-work for people in some departments.
But whatever it is, it ticks me off. There's nothing, to my knowledge, that the new iTunes does that the old iTunes didn't do%u2014and certainly not anything I need it to do. The many, many changes are simply an irritation, much as if a socket wrench I use to work on my car suddenly grew a strange appendage.
Worst of all is the mindset that seems to underlie the changes in general. The mindset behind them seemed to be "We're smart, you're stupid. You must do it our way." That certainly explain why iTunes makes it so hard to do simple things. Hit one of the too-many buttons, and one thing doesn't change, several things change unbidden.
And weeks after this OS X upgrade was released, I'm still finding things I set and liked were changed. The upgrade should have respected all my preferences and not displayed this 'we know better than you' attitude.
By the way, when I was studying engineering, we call these sorts of changes "artsy, fartsy." They run counter to one of the most basic of all design principles, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Apple's target customer seems to be:
1. Stupid enough to go along with whatever Apple doesn't.
2. Childish enough to think pretty babbles are important.
3. So lacking in other things to do that he is delighted to have to a new toy to explore.
This is a legacy from the mid-1990s when, apart from a few creatives, the only people who bought Macs fit that description. Anyone with work to do turned to Windows. You still see that split in Apple's ads, which typically target twentyish but childish people at play. They jump up and down. They snap pictures. They never stay still. In short, they act like little children.
Perfect exhibition of why engineers should never be allowed to get even close to the people that design UX communication devices. You're just not wired for "subtle intuition", intuitive visual navigation, or future workflows that take guessing or memory out of the learning curve.
What many don't realize is that these are the baby-steps and first iterations of obfuscating the user interface completely or as much as possible, which in probably 1 or 2 more versions will prove this. The future is not clicking on things or menus, but designing human interfaces that change and evolve depending on the task at hand. Remembering where something "should be" or was, will not be necessary because only obvious functions will be displayed in a HUD-style "yes, no, or here's your choices" type of overlay, to be replaced with successive overlays based on your choices. Menus and right-click context menus will disappear, as will simple icons be replaced with previews, action states, and "what would you like to do now" actions,, supplemented be extensions.
If the above as a short "preview" is not to your liking, I truthfully don't believe you're going to enjoy working on devices that the only forward thinking company on the planet with "balls" big enough to affect change is planning on designing. Apple has rarely been accused of standing still in regards to GUI design, and I don't expect them to start now. If anything, they're pushing even faster than they ever have in their history, to put distance between themselves and any other company that thinks they know better where future devices are leading us.
The day of Minority Report or Mission Impossible types of interfaces are not as far off as you think they are.
I have to agree with you. Not only is the text too small particularly on the updates page, the grey text bizarrely virtually disappears when you try to increase the contrast via the accessibility preference panel. Clearly Jonny Ive and his team all have 20/20 vision.
Perfect exhibition of why engineers should never be allowed to get even close to the people that design UX communication devices. You're just not wired for "subtle intuition", intuitive visual navigation, or future workflows that take guessing or memory out of the learning curve.
What many don't realize is that these are the baby-steps and first iterations of obfuscating the user interface completely or as much as possible, which in probably 1 or 2 more versions will prove this. The future is not clicking on things or menus, but designing human interfaces that change and evolve depending on the task at hand. Remembering where something "should be" or was, will not be necessary because only obvious functions will be displayed in a HUD-style "yes, no, or here's your choices" type of overlay, to be replaced with successive overlays based on your choices. Menus and right-click context menus will disappear, as will simple icons be replaced with previews, action states, and "what would you like to do now" actions,, supplemented be extensions.
If the above as a short "preview" is not to your liking, I truthfully don't believe you're going to enjoy working on devices that the only forward thinking company on the planet with "balls" big enough to affect change is planning on designing. Apple has rarely been accused of standing still in regards to GUI design, and I don't expect them to start now. If anything, they're pushing even faster than they ever have in their history, to put distance between themselves and any other company that thinks they know better where future devices are leading us.
The day of Minority Report or Mission Impossible types of interfaces are not as far off as you think they are.
Minority Report-style interfaces have extremely limited utility. They demand far too much energy and interaction from the user, relative to a mouse, keyboard or even voice or eye tracking input. Ideally, a hand wave or simple gesture will be made available to execute and replace a complex series of steps, such as shutdown or preparation of a tool for an upcoming task. Gestures are no way to interact full time with a computer.
Perfect exhibition of why engineers should never be allowed to get even close to the people that design UX communication devices. You're just not wired for "subtle intuition", intuitive visual navigation, or future workflows that take guessing or memory out of the learning curve.
What many don't realize is that these are the baby-steps and first iterations of obfuscating the user interface completely or as much as possible, which in probably 1 or 2 more versions will prove this. The future is not clicking on things or menus, but designing human interfaces that change and evolve depending on the task at hand. Remembering where something "should be" or was, will not be necessary because only obvious functions will be displayed in a HUD-style "yes, no, or here's your choices" type of overlay, to be replaced with successive overlays based on your choices. Menus and right-click context menus will disappear, as will simple icons be replaced with previews, action states, and "what would you like to do now" actions,, supplemented be extensions.
If the above as a short "preview" is not to your liking, I truthfully don't believe you're going to enjoy working on devices that the only forward thinking company on the planet with "balls" big enough to affect change is planning on designing. Apple has rarely been accused of standing still in regards to GUI design, and I don't expect them to start now. If anything, they're pushing even faster than they ever have in their history, to put distance between themselves and any other company that thinks they know better where future devices are leading us.
The day of Minority Report or Mission Impossible types of interfaces are not as far off as you think they are.
I hope the Minority Report interface never arrives. It's one of the most inefficient interfaces ever designed, and it serves no one except the viewer of a film who's entertained by the really cool dance and imagery. When Apple designed the original Mac OS, it studied the efficiency of muscle movements throughout its interface during the course of a standard workday. The result of that type of thinking is things like the MacOS menu bar being an object you can't overshoot, because over the course of a day, having to focus and use your muscles to move a mouse to perfectly stop and hit a small button in the middle of the screen is less efficient and more tiring (one of many reasons why people prefer the MacOS to Windows, because it just "feels" easier to use or better).
The future as you describe it is actually a terribly inefficient, fashion driven redesign for no purpose than to entertain people with short attention spans who can't stand that someone else "innovated" with something different than theirs, even if it was inefficient and the majority of people were unsatisfied with it. Apple has had the highest satisfaction of any other company, why break what wasn't broken? Apple isn't moving forward or innovating with this new design. It's going backwards towards pre-digital designs that are not as efficient in an electronic device such as a computer (they're not that great or pretty on paper either). If your users have to read through an entire list of words to find what they're looking for, as in the MacOS Sidebar, whereas before you had color icons to visually instantly differentiate an item, that's simply stupid thinking, and shows a lack of attention to the user interface. It's backwards not forward and is more akin to what Microsoft would do.
Think of it this way: If it's not intuitive and you need to browse the web for "tricks" that help you achieve basic tasks, there's a UI design problem. If you need to read in a visual interface, there's a design problem. If you use Windows, ... ok, sorry... hahaha.
Anyway, Apple has always been forward thinking in usable design, but it would seem now they're focusing only on a specific fashion trend. It's almost as if they're ignoring their users and buying Samsung's marketing hype about a lack of innovation. That's the main complaint here. It is exactly that "subtle intuition" that's missing in their recent design choices. It's not asking they move backward, but that their forward choices continue to be both beautiful AND intuitive AND efficient.
You are vey right in what you said about Ives . I think Ives has taken the fun that was always there when you used a apple product OS (X) it's just so boring and white . I use to love the ipad now I just don't use it that much . it's like a sheet of white paper with a bit of blue. I was lucky to revert back to itunes 11 after finding a way on the internet from the mess of itunes 12.
I love change and refreshes and constant improvement. That's what keeps Apple interesting. Most of the time, I really get the new and have no problem dropping the old. But I have some issues with Ive and I can only guess that he never saw snow when he was a child. Then one night, it did snow and he was overjoyed. He never got over that dopamine rush and now his utopian vision is all white, all the time. He simply abhors Contrast.
iTunes 12 is the biggest offender but here are my gripes all around:
- light gray text on a white background is just cruelty to aging eyes
- TINY light gray text on white backgrounds is twisting the dagger
- Sidebars are an awesome paradigm for information management. Steve Jobs referred to its brilliance during a keynote on having already invented the perfect interface. The Finder still utilizes it because it's critical for file management. Besides all that, our screens are not width challenged. I run iTunes and there is half a foot on either side of the window to utilize...
- Tiny buttons on vast windows of white are difficult to hit. To navigate iTunes, clicking the left and right arrow buttons requires jedi knight skills. I don't want to use the force.
- Too much white is ugly. I have known many graphics artists who love white space but I like design space. I understand it's a yin/yang thing but it has gone too far towards stark.
- Clickable buttons should be differentiated from text.
- On a huge open window, such as when in iTunes or iPhoto, it would be awesome to have all the navigation and clickable buttons and options all in one area. Why is the Check for Updates button in Siberia? It is an important button yet is thousands of miles from all the other buttons. It's placed as if it's never clicked.
It just feels like a mistake. If Ive designed kitchen appliances, his stove would be white and bare and the temperature controls would be tiny with no labels and would be rerouted to behind the fridge.
Just to balance things out, I like the burst of colors in the new icons. The dock looks terrific. There are preferences to spike the text and contrast. Some constantly used elements have more contrast like the blue 'select' color in the Finder as well as Finder folders. Various shades of gray still dominate Finder and App windows so there is still hope for better balance in the future.
I have to admit that the inability to merge our old MobileMe accounts with iCloud and AppStore accounts is incredibly baffling and inexplicably customer hostile. This wart destroys what should be very simple workflows when you have to remember which payment or delivery streams are tied to which account. I truly thought that having to deal with two different accounts was going to be a very temporary annoyance when the App Store and iCloud appeared on the scene. But no, this has lasted like a bad rash for several years now and there is no end in sight. What could possibly be the impediment on Apple's side to getting their s**t together on this? Those of us who were brave enough to jump into the MobileMe "experiment" will forever have to live with the pain and stigma via the fragmented way that we now have to interact with the current Apple ecosystem. We are the forgotten generation of customers that Apple doesn't want to deal with in an open and honest manner. All I can do is scratch my head and ask:
"Why Apple do you continue to punish us MobileMe'rs for your mistakes?"
On the new UI model: it's very white and is now a "sea of icons." Definitely a cleaner look with a much simpler and consistent aesthetic across the entire OS and product family that includes iOS. However, I found the previous shading/banding was rather helpful and not at all gratuitous fluff, especially when dealing with large collections. Also, the total lack of visual delineation between what is simply text and what is a clickable control element is a questionable choice, especially for newbies who aren't familiar with the navigation model. Just sitting back and looking at the presentation offers no visual clues or hints about how I should start to interact with the content. I have to start poking and actively discovering what is what and figure it out on my own. Maybe this is exactly Apple's intention, to provide no hints in an effort to force users to dive in and start discovering and learning on their own. Wax on - wax off. Once you do start poking around the scheme exposes itself so maybe it's not too bad to force the self discovery and learning step as part of the model. At least there's not a bunch of stuff buried behind right-click/context menus like on other operating systems. It's like navigating a web page where none of the hyperlinks are discernible as hyperlinks. Y'all good with that?
I'll punt for now and say "let's see how the UX plays out" for the next several months as more people find their way around the system and its simpler UI and starker and whiter aesthetic. Maybe it will be a raving success and Apple will be so delighted and empowered that they will spin off a few resources to finally fix the MobileMe account cluster fiasco.
One can dream.
I, too, have had two Apple IDs from the MobileMe days (and iTools before). I haven't had any problems with them, though. When I set up my new iPad Air 2, I skipped all the sign-ins and restored from backup. That way, everything was as it should be. As long as you keep one account solely for iTunes purchases, you should be okay. If you've spread purchases around multiple accounts, then I can see that would be a pain. I had the foresight to avoid that. Unless Apple can change metadata on purchased items, I don't think you'll ever be able to merge accounts.
Comments
It just gets worse and worse (the UI that is). No Ive does not sit at a computer terminal designing UI. But he gives overall direction to UI and that is a progressive disaster for the ordinary user.
He's either setting the tone or signing off on UI designs in which he has previously explicitly stated he has no interest (see his very recent on-stage interview with Vanity Fair). He stated he became an industrial designer, not a graphic designer, because he's not good at graphic design and he has no interest in it. Tim Cook put him in charge of an area in which he has no interest. That needs to change.
"puts focus on imagery and content rather than page design elements, much akin to the look of Apple's new iTunes 12"
"text is simply floating in free space"
Yes, it puts the focus on Ive's non-existent understanding of user interface design, since it just removed all visual differentiation, any user interface elements that made it easier for users to navigate, scan, and choose quickly, forcing all of us to over-focus and read every element of text to browse for something we might want. This is similar to what happened to the OS X sidebar which forces you to read through every piece of information as there's no color and hardly any icon visual differentiation.
Brilliant, modern design seems to equal removing any user interface and just putting up a list that looks like it was made in MS Word by an accountant. It looks like it was designed by someone who has no clue about design. Yey!
Just pondering... (or just venting this time, Sorry.)
Fully agree. It now does look cleaner and all, and for people accustomed to all kinds of IT, gadgets and web, the new look might even work as well as the old.
But for the elder generation who still does not live in the digital world but in the real one and who uses computers and gadgets only rarely and simply as tools (oh horror!), it is getting even more difficult by this "simplification" and clean up.
The iPhone was praised for its intuitive user interface when it was released, but if you never had any kind of smartphone and start with an iPhone 5 or 6 and a current iOS version, this has grown to a hugely complex (and complicated) user interface.
Jony, please bring in a world-class UI team to refine the desktop and iOS in a way that makes sense across all languages and markets Apple serves. I think the size of the job has become bigger than what Apple's current team can handle, to be honest.
Perfect exhibition of why engineers should never be allowed to get even close to the people that design UX communication devices. You're just not wired for "subtle intuition", intuitive visual navigation, or future workflows that take guessing or memory out of the learning curve.
What many don't realize is that these are the baby-steps and first iterations of obfuscating the user interface completely or as much as possible, which in probably 1 or 2 more versions will prove this. The future is not clicking on things or menus, but designing human interfaces that change and evolve depending on the task at hand. Remembering where something "should be" or was, will not be necessary because only obvious functions will be displayed in a HUD-style "yes, no, or here's your choices" type of overlay, to be replaced with successive overlays based on your choices. Menus and right-click context menus will disappear, as will simple icons be replaced with previews, action states, and "what would you like to do now" actions,, supplemented be extensions.
If the above as a short "preview" is not to your liking, I truthfully don't believe you're going to enjoy working on devices that the only forward thinking company on the planet with "balls" big enough to affect change is planning on designing. Apple has rarely been accused of standing still in regards to GUI design, and I don't expect them to start now. If anything, they're pushing even faster than they ever have in their history, to put distance between themselves and any other company that thinks they know better where future devices are leading us.
The day of Minority Report or Mission Impossible types of interfaces are not as far off as you think they are.
I have to agree with you. Not only is the text too small particularly on the updates page, the grey text bizarrely virtually disappears when you try to increase the contrast via the accessibility preference panel. Clearly Jonny Ive and his team all have 20/20 vision.
Minority Report-style interfaces have extremely limited utility. They demand far too much energy and interaction from the user, relative to a mouse, keyboard or even voice or eye tracking input. Ideally, a hand wave or simple gesture will be made available to execute and replace a complex series of steps, such as shutdown or preparation of a tool for an upcoming task. Gestures are no way to interact full time with a computer.
Perfect exhibition of why engineers should never be allowed to get even close to the people that design UX communication devices. You're just not wired for "subtle intuition", intuitive visual navigation, or future workflows that take guessing or memory out of the learning curve.
What many don't realize is that these are the baby-steps and first iterations of obfuscating the user interface completely or as much as possible, which in probably 1 or 2 more versions will prove this. The future is not clicking on things or menus, but designing human interfaces that change and evolve depending on the task at hand. Remembering where something "should be" or was, will not be necessary because only obvious functions will be displayed in a HUD-style "yes, no, or here's your choices" type of overlay, to be replaced with successive overlays based on your choices. Menus and right-click context menus will disappear, as will simple icons be replaced with previews, action states, and "what would you like to do now" actions,, supplemented be extensions.
If the above as a short "preview" is not to your liking, I truthfully don't believe you're going to enjoy working on devices that the only forward thinking company on the planet with "balls" big enough to affect change is planning on designing. Apple has rarely been accused of standing still in regards to GUI design, and I don't expect them to start now. If anything, they're pushing even faster than they ever have in their history, to put distance between themselves and any other company that thinks they know better where future devices are leading us.
The day of Minority Report or Mission Impossible types of interfaces are not as far off as you think they are.
I hope the Minority Report interface never arrives. It's one of the most inefficient interfaces ever designed, and it serves no one except the viewer of a film who's entertained by the really cool dance and imagery. When Apple designed the original Mac OS, it studied the efficiency of muscle movements throughout its interface during the course of a standard workday. The result of that type of thinking is things like the MacOS menu bar being an object you can't overshoot, because over the course of a day, having to focus and use your muscles to move a mouse to perfectly stop and hit a small button in the middle of the screen is less efficient and more tiring (one of many reasons why people prefer the MacOS to Windows, because it just "feels" easier to use or better).
The future as you describe it is actually a terribly inefficient, fashion driven redesign for no purpose than to entertain people with short attention spans who can't stand that someone else "innovated" with something different than theirs, even if it was inefficient and the majority of people were unsatisfied with it. Apple has had the highest satisfaction of any other company, why break what wasn't broken? Apple isn't moving forward or innovating with this new design. It's going backwards towards pre-digital designs that are not as efficient in an electronic device such as a computer (they're not that great or pretty on paper either). If your users have to read through an entire list of words to find what they're looking for, as in the MacOS Sidebar, whereas before you had color icons to visually instantly differentiate an item, that's simply stupid thinking, and shows a lack of attention to the user interface. It's backwards not forward and is more akin to what Microsoft would do.
Think of it this way: If it's not intuitive and you need to browse the web for "tricks" that help you achieve basic tasks, there's a UI design problem. If you need to read in a visual interface, there's a design problem. If you use Windows, ... ok, sorry...
hahaha.
Anyway, Apple has always been forward thinking in usable design, but it would seem now they're focusing only on a specific fashion trend. It's almost as if they're ignoring their users and buying Samsung's marketing hype about a lack of innovation. That's the main complaint here. It is exactly that "subtle intuition" that's missing in their recent design choices. It's not asking they move backward, but that their forward choices continue to be both beautiful AND intuitive AND efficient.
Just pondering...
You think a SVP is designing user interfaces? I highly doubt it.
You don't know Apple. And you don't physically have to do it to decide how it will look.
I love change and refreshes and constant improvement. That's what keeps Apple interesting. Most of the time, I really get the new and have no problem dropping the old. But I have some issues with Ive and I can only guess that he never saw snow when he was a child. Then one night, it did snow and he was overjoyed. He never got over that dopamine rush and now his utopian vision is all white, all the time. He simply abhors Contrast.
iTunes 12 is the biggest offender but here are my gripes all around:
- light gray text on a white background is just cruelty to aging eyes
- TINY light gray text on white backgrounds is twisting the dagger
- Sidebars are an awesome paradigm for information management. Steve Jobs referred to its brilliance during a keynote on having already invented the perfect interface. The Finder still utilizes it because it's critical for file management. Besides all that, our screens are not width challenged. I run iTunes and there is half a foot on either side of the window to utilize...
- Tiny buttons on vast windows of white are difficult to hit. To navigate iTunes, clicking the left and right arrow buttons requires jedi knight skills. I don't want to use the force.
- Too much white is ugly. I have known many graphics artists who love white space but I like design space. I understand it's a yin/yang thing but it has gone too far towards stark.
- Clickable buttons should be differentiated from text.
- On a huge open window, such as when in iTunes or iPhoto, it would be awesome to have all the navigation and clickable buttons and options all in one area. Why is the Check for Updates button in Siberia? It is an important button yet is thousands of miles from all the other buttons. It's placed as if it's never clicked.
It just feels like a mistake. If Ive designed kitchen appliances, his stove would be white and bare and the temperature controls would be tiny with no labels and would be rerouted to behind the fridge.
Just to balance things out, I like the burst of colors in the new icons. The dock looks terrific. There are preferences to spike the text and contrast. Some constantly used elements have more contrast like the blue 'select' color in the Finder as well as Finder folders. Various shades of gray still dominate Finder and App windows so there is still hope for better balance in the future.
I, too, have had two Apple IDs from the MobileMe days (and iTools before). I haven't had any problems with them, though. When I set up my new iPad Air 2, I skipped all the sign-ins and restored from backup. That way, everything was as it should be. As long as you keep one account solely for iTunes purchases, you should be okay. If you've spread purchases around multiple accounts, then I can see that would be a pain. I had the foresight to avoid that. Unless Apple can change metadata on purchased items, I don't think you'll ever be able to merge accounts.