2. I still can't believe how bad Android looks when I see comparison shots. I mean, Android 4.x is a huge improvement over 2.x, but it's still a huge mess.
That's Samsung's doing in the second photo stock Android is much cleaner than that.
Words can't describe just how fine I would be with that.
Watch their stock halve overnight.
Yes it might but it's much better to control one's destiny than to have it forced upon one. It would be wise for Google to backstab Samsung before Samsung stabs them in the back.
A variety of other iconic things that have defined iOS since 2007 are also getting stripped away in one massive housecleaning. The strong borders of buttons, the heavy bevels, gloss effects, dark shadows and the earthly colors of leather and felt are all being retired like last season's fashions.
In its place, Apple has put together a luminous, clarified and light user experience where actions are highlighted with distinctive color. Anyone copying iOS 7 will not be able to do so with subtly. iOS 7 looks different. It does not, however, really work differently in ways that are difficult to learn and discover. Apple didn't hide the Start menu.
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.
The reason why Windows 8 Metro and Android adopted simplified and textureless interface designs is very simple : these OSes have to target a variety of screen sizes and scale the interface gracefully. They didn't do this just because they thought it looked better and "modern", it was just the obvious way to go for them.
iOS was stuck in supporting only one screen size until the iPad, but the transition to iPad apps was not handled via auto-layout APIs and devs had to manually redo and rethink their interface for the iPad (which is a good thing and why there are much less tablet optimized apps on Android, and note how MS kept Windows phone 8 a separate entity). So devs had the luxury of being able to make texture rich apps without having to care about dealing with scaling issues on iOS.
It was only with the iPhone 5 release that iOS devs were forced to remake their interfaces with flexible layouts (using the new auto-layout APIs introduced in iOS 6) but even then it was only vertically, which is something many apps were already dealing with (because of double-height status bars). And since it only meant two different screen sizes for iPhones, they could still keep using textured navigation bars bitmaps by targeting at most four different widths (two screen sizes, portrait and landscape) if their app supported device rotation.
To me it's very obvious that the iOS 7 design and auto-layout APIs aims at freeing iOS from its fixed screen size paradigm before anything else. This was the real "technical hurdle" behind the lack of bigger screen iPhone from Apple (and split screen multitasking), and it will be fixed with iOS 7.
Note: I conveniently left out 2x retina transitions from my post, has they don't really affect apps layouts. I also think that if Apple introduces a bigger screen iPhone it will keep the same 324 dpi, but extending the pixel width and height.
A brilliant exposition on why Apple's whole ecosystem strategy will always beat the 'cheap and nasty' strategies adopted by the vast majority of IT suppliers for the last 40 years. Companies like Microsoft and Google, and the companies that ultimately depend on them, deserve all the pain they are currently suffering, and will continue to suffer, until they learn the lessons that Steve Jobs taught us all - design, re-design and re-re-design until the product is good enough to produce and market in the first place.
Do you really think Samsung would do a truly dedicated fork of Android? Or even switch to their old software?
Why not? Amazon did it quite easily. Samsung already has some proprietary apps so how hard would it be for them to create their own app store? Going with their own OS would be suicide. A new OS at this point would only come from a new player with little to lose.
A brilliant exposition on why Apple's whole ecosystem strategy will always beat the 'cheap and nasty' strategies adopted by the vast majority of IT suppliers for the last 40 years. Companies like Microsoft and Google, and the companies that ultimately depend on them, deserve all the pain they are currently suffering, and will continue to suffer, until they learn the lessons that Steve Jobs taught us all - design, re-design and re-re-design until the product is good enough to produce and market in the first place.
I think it's rather late for them to adopt that philosophy.
I'm a pretty big Apple fan, but reading this was pretty embarrassing. The concensus is, Apple was just keeping up with everyone else with iOS7.
No, it's partially a defense against those "experts" who say that ALL of what's new in iOS is stolen from others, whilst completely ignoring all the other new improvements, or what iOS already brings to the table.
I made an account just to tell you how excellent this article is. Thank you for putting things in context, and getting right to the heart of what makes Apple special.
Why not? Amazon did it quite easily. Samsung already has some proprietary apps so how hard would it be for them to create their own app store? Going with their own OS would be suicide. A new OS at this point would only come from a new player with little to lose.
I just think if they'd planned to do that, they would have done it by now. They're sort of in their stride right now, and a huge upheaval would...
On second thought, I'm all for Samsung doing that, too.
Why not? Amazon did it quite easily. Samsung already has some proprietary apps so how hard would it be for them to create their own app store? Going with their own OS would be suicide. A new OS at this point would only come from a new player with little to lose.
Supposedly Samsung has scrapped Bada, but Tizen is still lurking in the shadows in case the opportunity presents itself.
No, it's partially a defense against those "experts" who say that ALL of what's new in iOS is stolen from others, whilst completely ignoring all the other new improvements, or what iOS already brings to the table.
I've always been told that a 'expert' is only a person that's done something before you and seeing as how none of these 'experts' have actually had a hand in developing a OS I never give much weight to their opinions.
Here in Portugal (and Spain) Android is much more mainstream than iPhones, for a variety of reasons. One of them is that the nearest Apple Store is in another country (Spain), and the second is that Samsung and their ads are everywhere.
One of those things that every android user knows (and must know, really) is how to switch Wifi, 3g, bluetooth, etc. on and off. It's actually easy, and they have to do it... you will realize why, soon enough.
A few days ago, a few americans arrived here to study during the semester. iPhones everywhere! Since I own a mac and am a good-looking son of a b*cth, the girls (and the boys lol) approached me and asked if I knew how to set the internet on their iPhones. On iPhones, the process is very easy because you don't even need to configure the network, it's only username and password.
First question (by me):
-Ok, I know how to do it. Can you please go to settings and Wifi? They answered...
-"How do you do that?!".
After a brief conversation, they (all of them!) said that they never got that deep into the settings app (lol). The bluetooth was always on. The Wifi was always on. GPS was on. 3G was on. One of them was really hot so I was turned on too. Everything was on.
For an Android user, it is unthinkable to have the phone in those same conditions and have more than 2h battery life, even on "high end" devices. Things like that are only a privilege to iPhone users, so when they complain that their phones only hold a charge during 8h, I laugh.
It's like people saying that the S4 and the note have much bigger batteries, so they have a much better battery life... Meanwhile the iPhone and iPad wins every test when both screens are on, and on extensive tasks there is no contest.
Apple is doing a great job with their mobile processors and batteries. The a6 was a marvel, the things that they manage to do with small batteries are great. Can't wait for the end of the year...
Interesting observation. I am American and I do know how to turn on and turn off all of my iPhone's features, however, as you observed, I leave everything on all the time. Because frankly, it feels like something one ought to be able to do. Same on my Mac: wifi and Bluetooth are left on, and the battery life is as Apple promised.
Many, many years ago, I had a Compaq iPAQ, which was an early color Windows CE-based PDA. This was one of the early models that had a reflective color LCD, but with a CCFL backlight (well, technically it was side-lit). The iPAQ could be used for several hours with the backlight turned off, but if you turned it on, it would drain a fully charged battery in less than 1 hour. Basically, it wasn't really designed to be used with a backlight constantly on. Compaq sold an external battery pack--which added a CF card slot (and doubled the thickness of the iPAQ). Your story of forcing the user to manage power manually feels like my experience with the iPAQ: it sucks when coaxing usable battery life out of a device is the user's responsibility. The device ought to be designed to just work, and when necessary, manage its own power.
It's a well considered article. So the author isn't a writer per se, but he has a lot of really thoughtful things to contribute, and i'll concede him the snarkiness -- why are only Android fans allowed to be snarky? The fact is if you took the "who's copying who more" thing to court, Google would be put away for life. I think you're gonna see dramatic UI changes in upcoming Android skins like Touchwiz etc. Android will be redesigned too for the next Nexus device too.
iOS 7 is a very strong release, and I've found that much of the design has already disappeared after a week of use. My only concern is that some of the GPU intensive flourishes have dramatic affect on battery life in the final release. As of right now, iOS 7 absolutely crushes my iPhone 5's battery.
Comments
That's Samsung's doing in the second photo stock Android is much cleaner than that.
Yes it might but it's much better to control one's destiny than to have it forced upon one. It would be wise for Google to backstab Samsung before Samsung stabs them in the back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
A variety of other iconic things that have defined iOS since 2007 are also getting stripped away in one massive housecleaning. The strong borders of buttons, the heavy bevels, gloss effects, dark shadows and the earthly colors of leather and felt are all being retired like last season's fashions.
In its place, Apple has put together a luminous, clarified and light user experience where actions are highlighted with distinctive color. Anyone copying iOS 7 will not be able to do so with subtly. iOS 7 looks different. It does not, however, really work differently in ways that are difficult to learn and discover. Apple didn't hide the Start menu.
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 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.
Do you really think Samsung would do a truly dedicated fork of Android? Or even switch to their old software?
The reason why Windows 8 Metro and Android adopted simplified and textureless interface designs is very simple : these OSes have to target a variety of screen sizes and scale the interface gracefully. They didn't do this just because they thought it looked better and "modern", it was just the obvious way to go for them.
iOS was stuck in supporting only one screen size until the iPad, but the transition to iPad apps was not handled via auto-layout APIs and devs had to manually redo and rethink their interface for the iPad (which is a good thing and why there are much less tablet optimized apps on Android, and note how MS kept Windows phone 8 a separate entity). So devs had the luxury of being able to make texture rich apps without having to care about dealing with scaling issues on iOS.
It was only with the iPhone 5 release that iOS devs were forced to remake their interfaces with flexible layouts (using the new auto-layout APIs introduced in iOS 6) but even then it was only vertically, which is something many apps were already dealing with (because of double-height status bars). And since it only meant two different screen sizes for iPhones, they could still keep using textured navigation bars bitmaps by targeting at most four different widths (two screen sizes, portrait and landscape) if their app supported device rotation.
To me it's very obvious that the iOS 7 design and auto-layout APIs aims at freeing iOS from its fixed screen size paradigm before anything else. This was the real "technical hurdle" behind the lack of bigger screen iPhone from Apple (and split screen multitasking), and it will be fixed with iOS 7.
Note: I conveniently left out 2x retina transitions from my post, has they don't really affect apps layouts. I also think that if Apple introduces a bigger screen iPhone it will keep the same 324 dpi, but extending the pixel width and height.
Why not? Amazon did it quite easily. Samsung already has some proprietary apps so how hard would it be for them to create their own app store? Going with their own OS would be suicide. A new OS at this point would only come from a new player with little to lose.
I think it's rather late for them to adopt that philosophy.
No, it's partially a defense against those "experts" who say that ALL of what's new in iOS is stolen from others, whilst completely ignoring all the other new improvements, or what iOS already brings to the table.
I just think if they'd planned to do that, they would have done it by now. They're sort of in their stride right now, and a huge upheaval would...
On second thought, I'm all for Samsung doing that, too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dasanman69
Why not? Amazon did it quite easily. Samsung already has some proprietary apps so how hard would it be for them to create their own app store? Going with their own OS would be suicide. A new OS at this point would only come from a new player with little to lose.
Supposedly Samsung has scrapped Bada, but Tizen is still lurking in the shadows in case the opportunity presents itself.
I've always been told that a 'expert' is only a person that's done something before you and seeing as how none of these 'experts' have actually had a hand in developing a OS I never give much weight to their opinions.
Last I saw Tizen it looked like the type of OS Playskool would use on a toy smartphone.
Modesty, thy name is DED,
come rule the day
with truth spake clear
Banished tempers—pass away.
The velvet mouth hath roared
So clear,
the voice-
the beast, King Kong
with tempered chest, pounds
"Take that"—ill-mouthed trolls.
Away!
Quote:
Originally Posted by pedromartins
I will tell you a story.
Here in Portugal (and Spain) Android is much more mainstream than iPhones, for a variety of reasons. One of them is that the nearest Apple Store is in another country (Spain), and the second is that Samsung and their ads are everywhere.
One of those things that every android user knows (and must know, really) is how to switch Wifi, 3g, bluetooth, etc. on and off. It's actually easy, and they have to do it... you will realize why, soon enough.
A few days ago, a few americans arrived here to study during the semester. iPhones everywhere! Since I own a mac and am a good-looking son of a b*cth, the girls (and the boys lol) approached me and asked if I knew how to set the internet on their iPhones. On iPhones, the process is very easy because you don't even need to configure the network, it's only username and password.
First question (by me):
-Ok, I know how to do it. Can you please go to settings and Wifi? They answered...
-"How do you do that?!".
After a brief conversation, they (all of them!) said that they never got that deep into the settings app (lol). The bluetooth was always on. The Wifi was always on. GPS was on. 3G was on. One of them was really hot so I was turned on too. Everything was on.
For an Android user, it is unthinkable to have the phone in those same conditions and have more than 2h battery life, even on "high end" devices. Things like that are only a privilege to iPhone users, so when they complain that their phones only hold a charge during 8h, I laugh.
It's like people saying that the S4 and the note have much bigger batteries, so they have a much better battery life... Meanwhile the iPhone and iPad wins every test when both screens are on, and on extensive tasks there is no contest.
Apple is doing a great job with their mobile processors and batteries. The a6 was a marvel, the things that they manage to do with small batteries are great. Can't wait for the end of the year...
Interesting observation. I am American and I do know how to turn on and turn off all of my iPhone's features, however, as you observed, I leave everything on all the time. Because frankly, it feels like something one ought to be able to do. Same on my Mac: wifi and Bluetooth are left on, and the battery life is as Apple promised.
Many, many years ago, I had a Compaq iPAQ, which was an early color Windows CE-based PDA. This was one of the early models that had a reflective color LCD, but with a CCFL backlight (well, technically it was side-lit). The iPAQ could be used for several hours with the backlight turned off, but if you turned it on, it would drain a fully charged battery in less than 1 hour. Basically, it wasn't really designed to be used with a backlight constantly on. Compaq sold an external battery pack--which added a CF card slot (and doubled the thickness of the iPAQ). Your story of forcing the user to manage power manually feels like my experience with the iPAQ: it sucks when coaxing usable battery life out of a device is the user's responsibility. The device ought to be designed to just work, and when necessary, manage its own power.
iOS 7 is a very strong release, and I've found that much of the design has already disappeared after a week of use. My only concern is that some of the GPU intensive flourishes have dramatic affect on battery life in the final release. As of right now, iOS 7 absolutely crushes my iPhone 5's battery.