I'd like to see a phone app in the iPad for instance, which would be the beginning of the end for the carriers and one thing they could do that would truly deserve the "innovative" moniker, but it will never happen until Apple gets some balls.
I'd like to see a grander vision for Apple messaging services. We have iMessage, we have Facetime, I think a TalkTime or iTalk integrated into the phone app (and a rebranding of the odd-wheel app) would fill out that offering, and would add even more value to the Apple ecosystem.
Viber does it already, but a native solution would carry much more weight.
While we are at it, it would be nice if the names of the applications were aware of the dictionary and localisation too so "Game Center" would show as the (more correct), "Game Centre" instead of having to stare at irritating mis-spellings all day.
It's a proper noun not a misspelling or as you say mis-spelling.
What is the difference between Swype and gesture typing, for the unenglightened among us?
Swype is a perpetually-in-beta-not-in-the-Play-Store keyboard app that does "gesture typing," i.e. you touch the screen and move from letter to letter to form words. The Note 2 stock keyboard had gesture typing like Swype, but it worked much better (in my experience).
An overhaul would be a huge mistake, but they've been sitting still for too long.
Everyone keeps asking what Apple could improve:
Home screen. It works fine for <50 apps, but when you're up to 200+ it gets really clumsy. You either put in constant effort to keep it rationally sorted (folder size limit and lack of nested folders means re-categorizing as apps get added and deleted), or end up with 8+ unorganized screens like my wife.
Multi-tasking. Which apps are still running? What if there's an app I want to keep running, and others I want killed immediately? Automatic management is great, but the ability to give manual hints would be fantastic. Yes you can manually kill an app but its SLOW to get to. What about a fast way to flick back and forth between a pair of apps rapidly? Currently the double-press on home is really cumbersome. Gestures on the iPad are great but the iPhone needs a parallel.
Rapid access to settings. Ie toggles for bluetooth, wifi, tethering, airplane mode, airplay etc... This has been something people have wanted forever.
Document management. The current system works for now, but it's already starting to get unwieldly. You have to go into the app that "owns" the document, and count on that app to give you a (sometimes very long) list of other apps to open it in. Then each app has its own copy, and you have to remember which is newest. There is no way of picking a default app to handle a document type.
How could these things be improved? (not all ideas are compatible with each other)
Home screen
Add a section (ie half a page, or even a full page) that gets automatically populated with the most used apps, not the most recent apps.
Make the far-right page be all your apps in an automatically-categorized list. Make it so that apps no longer have to live on other pages, this can be the only page they exist on for lesser-utilized apps.
Multi-tasking
Swipe up from the bottom to show the multi-tasking tray. Only show apps that are still running. Add a check to each app icon that means "try to keep me running at the expense of other apps". Change double-press home to "immediately quit the foreground app".
Allow interacting with the foreground app while the multi-tasking tray is still open on "tall" devices. All apps already support the shorter aspect ratio for legacy devices anyways.
Settings
Add a notification center widget for the main toggles.
Make a new splash-page for the main settings app that puts these settings front and center right away
Add a screen that can be popped up at any time without interrupting the current app with access to these toggles, perhaps launched from the multitasking tray or notification center.
Documents
Obviously security is a huge concern here, but you could implement an implied-consent system based on a system-controlled "open file" screen that only grants an app access to a document when a user picks it. Automatic versioning would limit the damage an app could do, since the user could always roll back the document. "Recent documents" for each app could be built into the open file screen, adding convenience while maintaining the consent system.
To keep user friendliness, make it a document library sortable based on document type, name, date saved, saved by app etc... similar to the "Music" interface. No direct filesystem exposure to the user. Only documents openable by the app show up in that app's open dialog. Obviously there would be a master "Documents" app that allows the user to see them all, manage them and perform a "Open With..." and "Share" functions. Apps like Mail could use the same interface to pick attachments.
So don't say there's nothing Apple could improve.
1/. What percentage of Apple's customers have 200+ applications?
2/. What percentage of Apple's customers care which apps are running?
3/. What percentage of Apple's customers spend all day switching wifi, bluetooth, tethering, airplane mode etc.?
Actually, I'm going to stop there. Your list reads like someone who wants a desktop operating system running on a phone. You need to buy a PC and strap it to the side of your head.
Retina is not a UI, its a display technology. That's like saying a new monitor is part of a UI and incorrect.
Yes and no. Retina caused UI changes because the code that to be written for the 2X sizing and with images that needed to be 4x as large so that everything still "looked" the same, only crisper, but that is all an effect from the causal HW changes.
From the company that didn't think people wanted phones with touch screens and that is still making phones with physical keyboards.
That's really all that needs said here. RIM can be given the benefit of the doubt only so far, then you have to start thinking about why they got where they are.
I wonder how many of those using the "stale" or "outdated" meme have been:
[LIST=1] [*] put on Ritalin or Adderall [*] diagnosed with ADD [*] diagnosed with a reading disability [/LIST]
It is also probably generational. Younger users are more easily bored, older users value their time more and want get more done than playing with their phones.
And it's cultural. There really is a geek class that likes to tinker with stuff. They are not, never have been, Apple's ideal customers. Naturally they have a minority presence here.
I know many here aren't fans of Widgets, and its true that some Widgets can be written in unoptimized ways that can reduce battery life, which may be critically important for those who live in areas without ready access to electricity.
And I wouldn't say that supporting Widgets is necessarily better, but neither is disallowing them.
On Android, Widgets are a choice. Currently, those who find them useful are required to choose something other than iOS, but I'd wager Apple will add support for something very much like Widgets by iOS 7, so those who don't want them can continue to not have them, but those who do will no longer be required to choose a non-Apple device.
Perhaps Apple thinks that if iOS has widgets, a lot of people will start using them and not make the connection between that and the worse battery life they get from their phone. Then they'd complain how the iPhone has such terrible battery life.
As it is, I still have to charge my iPhone pretty much every day, just like I've had to do with all the smartphones I've owned. When I can go 5 days without charging, then maybe I'll start considering widgets again. I stopped using them on Android when I saw what battery hogs they were.
iOS outdated? Compared to what? Android still looks like crap and their rows of icons looks worse than iOS's row of icons. Windows 8 with those huge tiles and ugly colors looks ridiculous and seems to be targeting toddlers.
An OS is not a video game, and if anybody thinks that iOS is "boring" then go pop some pills before using it, because the problem lies with you, not the OS.
People with the attention span of gnats is not who Apple should be catering to. Go and use another OS, because your kind is not the kind that Apple should be targeting and making devices for.
Maybe they have a history, but they're not repeating history right now. I have yet to see anything within the past couple of years. Before, it was one after another and now its nothing. Hardware bumps don't keep you in front.
Nonsense. Apple has made major changes in their OS - iOS 6 was a major improvement.
They just don't believe in changing the UI as often as you change your socks. There's no need for it - and it probably hurts more than it helps.
Apple also has a history of resting on its laurels when the going is good: IBM PC crushed the Apple II; the Mac OS (Finder) was obsolete within two years (some would say at inception), and apple papered it over with the kludgy and buggy multifinder -- the first real innovation was with Jobs second coming and NeXT, which gave us OS X. This took 15 years, by which time Windows had improved greatly; linux was created roughly midway through this period.
Nonsense. Pure, unadulterated nonsense from someone who obviously never used a Mac or lived through all the years of changes and UI improvements.
Wow. The day Apple takes advice is the day.. I can't even think of anything ridiculous enough. The company is the very definition of epic failure if there ever was one. The most they can hope for is a sliver of marketshare at this point.
Whenever I hear people talk about the iOS interface being stale, I really wonder why so much attention is being paid to the home screen rather than the apps themselves. Seriously, who is spending the majority of their time on the iPhone looking at the home screen? The apps are where the real interface innovation is happening, with or without Apple's involvement.
Also the no true multitasking line is getting to be a bit much -- this isn't 1995 again, folks. iOS has had true pre-emptive multitasking support since 1.0 for all processes running on the system, iOS 4 added APIs to allow 3rd party apps to continue to run in the background for specific tasks like audio playback, VOIP, finishing user initiated tasks, and a few other cases that I've forgotten at the moment. In addition, iOS will keep apps in memory when possible to allow quick resumption of apps when switched back.
Now if what's being complained about is that the device only shows one app at a time on the screen, then I find that to be incredibly nitpicky. Perhaps on the iPad there could be an argument for having more than one app on the screen at a time, but it would require a complete overhaul of how iOS works. Right now, apps get the entire screen for themselves. This has pretty much been proven to be a much easier to use model than the multi-window model that we've been using on Macs and PCs for ages now.
Apple isn't trying to make the geek dream OS here -- they are trying to make an OS designed for normal people. And normal people expect things to behave in certain ways. Having multiple overlapping windows isn't immediately obvious. If you have doubts about this, sit down with someone who hasn't grown up using a PC or Mac and see how they do trying to use a computer. Or go watch how a non-tech person will launch a browser, maximize the window and never switch away from it because to them, the browser is the computer.
What he says is true. I keep thinking, what would Apple do with a larger screen iPhone? Just add more rows and columns of icons? Boring. This is clearly a problem for Apple. An interface designed for 480x320 badly needs to be rethought in a world of 720p and 1080p phones. However, lack of a larger screen iPhone also costs Apple business and they have been ignoring that one for the past two years.
The CEO of BlackBerry has criticized Apple for failing to overhaul the user interface of the iPhone to keep up with competing smartphone platforms.
Since the iPhone launched in 2007, it's had largely the same interface with a grid of icons making users' applications accessible. While that was adequate with the first-generation iPhone, BlackBerry's Thorsten Heins believes it's now antiquated, he said in an interview withAustralian Financial Review (viaAllThingsD).
Yup. Sure worked well at Blackberry huh. Oh wait a minute that was those other CEO's.
I think if you go back and compare he UI for 1.0 to 6.1+ you will find that along the way a lot has changed. You ned not completely change the UI just for the sake of making it different. Another computer comes to mind, made by Apple, that would be the various Macs -- changes were made from System 1.0 all the way thru 9.x, and some of them included major things (like MultiFinder, Control Panels, HFS, Finder views like the columns) but at the heart it remains a grid with icons to access applications (even in the 10.x OS X world).
iPhone (and iPad) have evolved to add things like a folder system, multitasking (granted, limited, to what makes sense in a mobile system and quite flexible), cut, copy and paste, a notification system (yes I know there are things that many would like to tweak), Anyway there are many of Apple's apps and tweaks all over the place.
iOS outdated? Compared to what? Android still looks like crap and their rows of icons looks worse than iOS's row of icons. Windows 8 with those huge tiles and ugly colors looks ridiculous and seems to be targeting toddlers.
An OS is not a video game, and if anybody thinks that iOS is "boring" then go pop some pills before using it, because the problem lies with you, not the OS.
People with the attention span of gnats is not who Apple should be catering to. Go and use another OS, because your kind is not the kind that Apple should be targeting and making devices for.
Android looks like crap? Android has beautiful home screens and there are a million different options out there if you don't like stock. All you have to do is download the one you like from the play store.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
I'd like to see a phone app in the iPad for instance, which would be the beginning of the end for the carriers and one thing they could do that would truly deserve the "innovative" moniker, but it will never happen until Apple gets some balls.
I'd like to see a grander vision for Apple messaging services. We have iMessage, we have Facetime, I think a TalkTime or iTalk integrated into the phone app (and a rebranding of the odd-wheel app) would fill out that offering, and would add even more value to the Apple ecosystem.
Viber does it already, but a native solution would carry much more weight.
deleted
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
While we are at it, it would be nice if the names of the applications were aware of the dictionary and localisation too so "Game Center" would show as the (more correct), "Game Centre" instead of having to stare at irritating mis-spellings all day.
It's a proper noun not a misspelling or as you say mis-spelling.
Quote:
Originally Posted by igriv
What is the difference between Swype and gesture typing, for the unenglightened among us?
Swype is a perpetually-in-beta-not-in-the-Play-Store keyboard app that does "gesture typing," i.e. you touch the screen and move from letter to letter to form words. The Note 2 stock keyboard had gesture typing like Swype, but it worked much better (in my experience).
Quote:
Originally Posted by ascii
Retina was quite a big advance in user interface.
Retina is not a UI, its a display technology. That's like saying a new monitor is part of a UI and incorrect.
I'm sure Alicia Keys will have some pretty innovative UI updates for us soon as well...
Quote:
Originally Posted by bluefish86
This.
An overhaul would be a huge mistake, but they've been sitting still for too long.
Everyone keeps asking what Apple could improve:
Home screen. It works fine for <50 apps, but when you're up to 200+ it gets really clumsy. You either put in constant effort to keep it rationally sorted (folder size limit and lack of nested folders means re-categorizing as apps get added and deleted), or end up with 8+ unorganized screens like my wife.
Multi-tasking. Which apps are still running? What if there's an app I want to keep running, and others I want killed immediately? Automatic management is great, but the ability to give manual hints would be fantastic. Yes you can manually kill an app but its SLOW to get to. What about a fast way to flick back and forth between a pair of apps rapidly? Currently the double-press on home is really cumbersome. Gestures on the iPad are great but the iPhone needs a parallel.
Rapid access to settings. Ie toggles for bluetooth, wifi, tethering, airplane mode, airplay etc... This has been something people have wanted forever.
Document management. The current system works for now, but it's already starting to get unwieldly. You have to go into the app that "owns" the document, and count on that app to give you a (sometimes very long) list of other apps to open it in. Then each app has its own copy, and you have to remember which is newest. There is no way of picking a default app to handle a document type.
How could these things be improved? (not all ideas are compatible with each other)
Home screen
Add a section (ie half a page, or even a full page) that gets automatically populated with the most used apps, not the most recent apps.
Make the far-right page be all your apps in an automatically-categorized list. Make it so that apps no longer have to live on other pages, this can be the only page they exist on for lesser-utilized apps.
Multi-tasking
Swipe up from the bottom to show the multi-tasking tray. Only show apps that are still running. Add a check to each app icon that means "try to keep me running at the expense of other apps". Change double-press home to "immediately quit the foreground app".
Allow interacting with the foreground app while the multi-tasking tray is still open on "tall" devices. All apps already support the shorter aspect ratio for legacy devices anyways.
Settings
Add a notification center widget for the main toggles.
Make a new splash-page for the main settings app that puts these settings front and center right away
Add a screen that can be popped up at any time without interrupting the current app with access to these toggles, perhaps launched from the multitasking tray or notification center.
Documents
Obviously security is a huge concern here, but you could implement an implied-consent system based on a system-controlled "open file" screen that only grants an app access to a document when a user picks it. Automatic versioning would limit the damage an app could do, since the user could always roll back the document. "Recent documents" for each app could be built into the open file screen, adding convenience while maintaining the consent system.
To keep user friendliness, make it a document library sortable based on document type, name, date saved, saved by app etc... similar to the "Music" interface. No direct filesystem exposure to the user. Only documents openable by the app show up in that app's open dialog. Obviously there would be a master "Documents" app that allows the user to see them all, manage them and perform a "Open With..." and "Share" functions. Apps like Mail could use the same interface to pick attachments.
So don't say there's nothing Apple could improve.
1/. What percentage of Apple's customers have 200+ applications?
2/. What percentage of Apple's customers care which apps are running?
3/. What percentage of Apple's customers spend all day switching wifi, bluetooth, tethering, airplane mode etc.?
Actually, I'm going to stop there. Your list reads like someone who wants a desktop operating system running on a phone. You need to buy a PC and strap it to the side of your head.
Yes and no. Retina caused UI changes because the code that to be written for the 2X sizing and with images that needed to be 4x as large so that everything still "looked" the same, only crisper, but that is all an effect from the causal HW changes.
Originally Posted by macxpress
Not much as changed since the original iOS.
"Sure". But since the original iPhone OS? HA!
Except for Siri (which isn't a big deal to me), there really hasn't been anything earth shattering coming out of Apple these days.
***Waits to get lambasted for this post***
Well, when you say things like that, what in the world do you expect?
Originally Posted by wubbus
…don't toe the line
It's not so much toeing the line that gets people attacked, it's toeing the lie'n.
Originally Posted by Selva Raj
Just granted UI patent and more
and more is coming..
i can not tell u more that for secret reason
Looks terrible. I don't like it. I already see what can be done with it, and I don't like it. At all. Maybe I should make a mockup…
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
1) They can never actually say what specifically about it is "outdated" or what they would change.
2) Those that say it are almost always competitors.
*nods*
Rules #28 and 31.
Originally Posted by igriv
The big UI upgrade was supposed to be Siri…
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
From the company that didn't think people wanted phones with touch screens and that is still making phones with physical keyboards.
That's really all that needs said here. RIM can be given the benefit of the doubt only so far, then you have to start thinking about why they got where they are.
Yes...Apple needs business advice from RIM
[LIST=1]
[*] put on Ritalin or Adderall
[*] diagnosed with ADD
[*] diagnosed with a reading disability
[/LIST]
It is also probably generational. Younger users are more easily bored, older users value their time more and want get more done than playing with their phones.
And it's cultural. There really is a geek class that likes to tinker with stuff. They are not, never have been, Apple's ideal customers. Naturally they have a minority presence here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacRulez
I know many here aren't fans of Widgets, and its true that some Widgets can be written in unoptimized ways that can reduce battery life, which may be critically important for those who live in areas without ready access to electricity.
And I wouldn't say that supporting Widgets is necessarily better, but neither is disallowing them.
On Android, Widgets are a choice. Currently, those who find them useful are required to choose something other than iOS, but I'd wager Apple will add support for something very much like Widgets by iOS 7, so those who don't want them can continue to not have them, but those who do will no longer be required to choose a non-Apple device.
Perhaps Apple thinks that if iOS has widgets, a lot of people will start using them and not make the connection between that and the worse battery life they get from their phone. Then they'd complain how the iPhone has such terrible battery life.
As it is, I still have to charge my iPhone pretty much every day, just like I've had to do with all the smartphones I've owned. When I can go 5 days without charging, then maybe I'll start considering widgets again. I stopped using them on Android when I saw what battery hogs they were.
iOS outdated? Compared to what? Android still looks like crap and their rows of icons looks worse than iOS's row of icons. Windows 8 with those huge tiles and ugly colors looks ridiculous and seems to be targeting toddlers.
An OS is not a video game, and if anybody thinks that iOS is "boring" then go pop some pills before using it, because the problem lies with you, not the OS.
People with the attention span of gnats is not who Apple should be catering to. Go and use another OS, because your kind is not the kind that Apple should be targeting and making devices for.
Nonsense. Apple has made major changes in their OS - iOS 6 was a major improvement.
They just don't believe in changing the UI as often as you change your socks. There's no need for it - and it probably hurts more than it helps.
Nonsense. Pure, unadulterated nonsense from someone who obviously never used a Mac or lived through all the years of changes and UI improvements.
IOS needs Flash capability so users can enjoy the full Internet experience. Also an anti-gravity feature for holding the iPad.
Whenever I hear people talk about the iOS interface being stale, I really wonder why so much attention is being paid to the home screen rather than the apps themselves. Seriously, who is spending the majority of their time on the iPhone looking at the home screen? The apps are where the real interface innovation is happening, with or without Apple's involvement.
Also the no true multitasking line is getting to be a bit much -- this isn't 1995 again, folks. iOS has had true pre-emptive multitasking support since 1.0 for all processes running on the system, iOS 4 added APIs to allow 3rd party apps to continue to run in the background for specific tasks like audio playback, VOIP, finishing user initiated tasks, and a few other cases that I've forgotten at the moment. In addition, iOS will keep apps in memory when possible to allow quick resumption of apps when switched back.
Now if what's being complained about is that the device only shows one app at a time on the screen, then I find that to be incredibly nitpicky. Perhaps on the iPad there could be an argument for having more than one app on the screen at a time, but it would require a complete overhaul of how iOS works. Right now, apps get the entire screen for themselves. This has pretty much been proven to be a much easier to use model than the multi-window model that we've been using on Macs and PCs for ages now.
Apple isn't trying to make the geek dream OS here -- they are trying to make an OS designed for normal people. And normal people expect things to behave in certain ways. Having multiple overlapping windows isn't immediately obvious. If you have doubts about this, sit down with someone who hasn't grown up using a PC or Mac and see how they do trying to use a computer. Or go watch how a non-tech person will launch a browser, maximize the window and never switch away from it because to them, the browser is the computer.
This is clearly a problem for Apple. An interface designed for 480x320 badly needs to be rethought in a world of 720p and 1080p phones. However, lack of a larger screen iPhone also costs Apple business and they have been ignoring that one for the past two years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
The CEO of BlackBerry has criticized Apple for failing to overhaul the user interface of the iPhone to keep up with competing smartphone platforms.
Since the iPhone launched in 2007, it's had largely the same interface with a grid of icons making users' applications accessible. While that was adequate with the first-generation iPhone, BlackBerry's Thorsten Heins believes it's now antiquated, he said in an interview with Australian Financial Review (via AllThingsD).
Yup. Sure worked well at Blackberry huh. Oh wait a minute that was those other CEO's.
I think if you go back and compare he UI for 1.0 to 6.1+ you will find that along the way a lot has changed. You ned not completely change the UI just for the sake of making it different. Another computer comes to mind, made by Apple, that would be the various Macs -- changes were made from System 1.0 all the way thru 9.x, and some of them included major things (like MultiFinder, Control Panels, HFS, Finder views like the columns) but at the heart it remains a grid with icons to access applications (even in the 10.x OS X world).
iPhone (and iPad) have evolved to add things like a folder system, multitasking (granted, limited, to what makes sense in a mobile system and quite flexible), cut, copy and paste, a notification system (yes I know there are things that many would like to tweak), Anyway there are many of Apple's apps and tweaks all over the place.
Apple just keeps evolving,
Quote:
Originally Posted by Apple ][
iOS outdated? Compared to what? Android still looks like crap and their rows of icons looks worse than iOS's row of icons. Windows 8 with those huge tiles and ugly colors looks ridiculous and seems to be targeting toddlers.
An OS is not a video game, and if anybody thinks that iOS is "boring" then go pop some pills before using it, because the problem lies with you, not the OS.
People with the attention span of gnats is not who Apple should be catering to. Go and use another OS, because your kind is not the kind that Apple should be targeting and making devices for.
Android looks like crap? Android has beautiful home screens and there are a million different options out there if you don't like stock. All you have to do is download the one you like from the play store.
http://mycolorscreen.com/