I am still having mixed feelings about that re-design. And I am fairly certain that it will take one or two years before it will really shine.
They have moved back on some of the more terrible font decisions, most things are readable again, but for now (beta 4) there is a huge hodgepodge of font weights and sizes throughout the core OS and the stock apps. It is not unusable at all, but it does create some confusion.
The use of font colours and text weights to mark "touchable" areas (instead of e.g. buttons and back arrows) does look more elegant, but it sure is less obvious. (Anecdotal evidence only, but I handed my iPad 4 with beta 3 to my mother, she is using an iPhone 4S with iOS 6 all the time without problems, and she was lost many times, e.g. could not navigate the calendar, could not figure out the new icons in Safari and could not differentiate between blue, grey and black text elements where e.g. blue was meant for a "clickable" action.) Yes, people will get used to it, but so far it was one of iOS's core strength that there was no need to figure anything out.
Then there are design / logic flaws. Things do sound convincing when Ive explains them, until you actually try them. Take that layered / dimensional approach in iOS 7. We do away with gloss and shadows for dimensionality, but we use layers, translucency and dimming. Now, translucency always causes readability problems. We saw that when OS X first received a translucent menu bar. Does it work better on iOS 7? No. It does not. Depending on the colours used in your background image, the text in the "Slide to Unlock" control, or even the text in expanded folders becomes unreadable. The lock screen does now contain this hard to read animated text and three additional touch sensitive border areas (notification center, camera, control center), three of those cramped into a few millimetres. Manageable? Yes, but I pull up the wrong thing at least 1/10 times... never happened under iOS 6. Better? No.
And the logic flaws? One example. Under iOS 6, to change the screen's brightness, I double tapped the home button (or made the four fingers upward gesture on the iPad), got the multi-tasking bar, swiped right and adjusted the brightness. As the multi-tasking bar was hovering over the home screen (using shadows and bevels for clarity), the home screen was still in its original state, and I could set the brightness accurately. Now in iOS 7: I pull up the control center (almost impossible on my iPad, as its case makes the gesture about impossible without pulling the case's lid back a bit first), control center shows up and the layer below (the home screen) gets dimmed. So, now I am adjusting the brightness of the dimmed home screen! I do not even see the level of brightness I am setting. Once I discard the control center, the home screen goes back to its undimmed state and I usually find that it is too bright now. Trial and error. Not control. Not progress.
Sharing sheets in iOS 6 were usable for everyone. Clear icons, clearly "clickable" buttons, clear captions. The buttons in iOS 7 are as self-explanatory as those in MS's damned Charms Bar. And the sharing sheets are a mess. Built-in social services use coloured icons, system functions use arbitrary monochrome ones, arranged on a strip that is wider that the sheet but showing no scrollbars (the majority of people will never see them). To make that "just perfect", the hint/help texts on the sharing sheet are so small that I, with 20/20 sight, can't read them on the iPhone 5. Again. Different, yes. Better?
Change comes with some hurdles. We will have to accept that iOS 7 at release will be far less polished than iOS 1 was. Most things will certainly improve over time, but I see no real need to brag about many things in it yet. Icons are bland and sometimes confusing and usability is, overall, down. The days where you just handed an iDevice to a 3-year old or a very senior citizen and they just will figure it out, will be gone. I expect a measurable impact on user satisfaction levels, too. That is not to say that change was not needed, but to me it feels extremely rushed and imperfect for now.
Another big article to justify ugly home screen icons.
Another useless comment to justify trotting out a tired old meme.
Hint: There is a lot more to iOS7 than home screen icons. Either you already knew that, making you yet another useless troll, or you actually DIDN'T know that, making you appear rather foolish.
Good stuff, the fact does remain it is looking more like Windows Phone. Don't know how long this update has been in the works, so I don't have anything else to say on that front.
I personally this it will end up like most things Apple does: Some people will bitch about it lacking ___ or not doing ____ properly, but it the end it will be a well polished product that is easy and enjoyable to use.
Not having used the beta, I can't comment on functionality (though much of it looks very promising to me). However, I'm still struggling with the icons. The grid doesn't bother me, it's the colours and some of the designs.
About 7:12 into the video in the story, just take some examples:
The red in the Music icon is much too dominant; every designer knows that warm colours come to the perceptual front but this just shouts, in fact it shouts that there's something that just failed at bottom right on the screen. Many of the colours are too primary to achieve a harmonious whole, exacerbated by little shading or texture. Ironically, the example 3rd party icons in the story use more subdued colour and a simple white-icon-on-coloured-field design that (to me, at least) works fine.
Some of the icons themselves are incomprehensible: icons always run that risk but two icons composed of coloured blobs (Game Center and Photos) are surely too abstract. Why would photos have orderly colours and games have disorderly ones? If there is a reason, it's surely less obvious than the iOS 6 icons (here's a set of games, here's a flower we just photographed). A pair of dice would be an improvement for Game Center if the previous set of example games is too complex (it is, and no, I'm not seriously suggesting dice, jet making a point). Others have raised the 'two compasses' issue too (Safari and, ahem, Compass) - this would be a good time to resolve that.
I am very much looking forward to iOS 7 and an iPhone with a finger-print sensor is a must-have but I do hope the icons improve. If they don't lead a user to deduce their function quickly and intuitively then they've failed.
Obviously that's a photoshop you did that make the bottom icons smaller. For I know what Apple needs to do and what works best. Apple should take all their design advice from me as a professional internet user.
The Jonathan Ive is a fool who doesn't understand design and makes shitty looking designs that other People at Apple have to redo to make good.
Anyone who use iOS 7: after a few weeks, are you annoyed by the candy-color?
I'm, using it now for 2 days. Didn't need it before. I started with old app transition development. I like many things: vivid colors, parallax scrolling, very nice transitions and actually most of the stuff. What I can't cope with are still those buttonless buttons, some extremely ugly and stupid icons like Safari, Settings and Photos, too much simplified icons in settings that make options less recognizable as others that have small actual app icon and of course: big ugly drawn icon in connectivity panel (Copy, Slideshow,...). It is also less responsive on 4S as iOS6.
So for me, iOS7 is from design point of view sort of like learning field for Jonny. It certainly didn't fill the expectations for such big overhaul.
New UI isn't really that beautiful like old UI but it is still million times better than Android and WP UI.
I think the iOS 7 UI is good, from what I have seen, and I agree that Android (every version I have ever used) looks horrible. But have you ever used W8P UI?
Once more, if you have not used a product can you not criticize it? That is all I ask.
And, I will say it again: People will bitch about Apple's design/products when a new one comes out. Change! EVIL! But Apple knows how to make something that is easy and enjoyable to use, and they have always had a very good sense of aesthetics in the past.
I am surprised that with iOS 7 and Mavericks being scheduled for release around the same time that the icons don't share a more similar design. Up until this new iOS 7 revamp the two OSs were very similar in appearance especially the icons. Sort of a family resemblance but now they look more like distant cousins.
You know, I've read every single positive iOS7 UI article I could find, trying to brainwash myself into loving it. But it hasn't worked. Justify and bash the skeumorphic icons portrayed in this article as much as you want, and try to explain the thinking behind the new ones, but at the end of the day, I simply find the current style MUCH more visually pleasing that the new stuff. The settings icon is a prime example. Does the author REALLY prefer the new one, that looks like a torture device or something? Really? It's still representing gears, which is skeuomorphic for settings, but it just LOOKS infinitely uglier.
Not having used the beta, I can't comment on functionality (though much of it looks very promising to me). However, I'm still struggling with the icons. The grid doesn't bother me, it's the colours and some of the designs.
About 7:12 into the video in the story, just take some examples:
The red in the Music icon is much too dominant; every designer knows that warm colours come to the perceptual front but this just shouts, in fact it shouts that there's something that just failed at bottom right on the screen. Many of the colours are too primary to achieve a harmonious whole, exacerbated by little shading or texture. Ironically, the example 3rd party icons in the story use more subdued colour and a simple white-icon-on-coloured-field design that (to me, at least) works fine.
Some of the icons themselves are incomprehensible: icons always run that risk but two icons composed of coloured blobs (Game Center and Photos) are surely too abstract. Why would photos have orderly colours and games have disorderly ones? If there is a reason, it's surely less obvious than the iOS 6 icons (here's a set of games, here's a flower we just photographed). A pair of dice would be an improvement for Game Center if the previous set of example games is too complex (it is, and no, I'm not seriously suggesting dice, jet making a point). Others have raised the 'two compasses' issue too (Safari and, ahem, Compass) - this would be a good time to resolve that.
... I do hope the icons improve. If they don't lead a user to deduce their function quickly and intuitively then they've failed.
This is exactly the issue I have with iOS 7. The user interface is not intuitive. Apple has resolved some of my concerns such as the "End" stripe on the Phone app rather than a "End" button.
The functionality is fantastic. Frankly, I think the majority of the jailbreak community will be gone with one more iteration of iOS, iOS 8. I only removed iOS 7 since my Apple developer account is up for renewal and I am not currently profiting from the App Store.
After a decade of fully exploiting iconic decadence to the point of exhausting it of its novelty, Apple is now pursuing a new direction where app icons return to being the expertly distilled, abstract representations of functionality they originated as on the first Macintosh, the designers of whom which coined the term "icon" as an allusion to representational images used in religious veneration.
The Mac GUI came after the Lisa GUI, which came after the Xerox Star GUI, which was the first to use icons and call them by that name.
Here's an interesting overview of the way that computer icons have changed over the years:
Whether you like or dislike the new colour scheme, there is a significant flaw with iOS 7's updated UI... the additional effort required for it to be learned by young children who are new to a touch interface, and particularly those who aren't old enough to read yet.
In 2010 I introduced the iPad to my 3 year old. I was absolutely astonished at how little training I had to provide to her (unlocking, tapping an icon, swiping between pages, rotating the device). The UI, including its gloss and skuomorphic design intuitively did all of the heavy lifting for me. Having supported and trained customers on Macs, PCs, and different smartphones for over 15 years, I'd never seen anything like this and decided to conduct an experiment. My job involves making iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and at one time Windows mobile devices work in the Enterprise, so I was able expose my child to an Android and BlackBerry smartphone (and later the Playbook and Z10). It was obvious that these UIs required significant training compared to iOS. It's possible that's partly due to being exposed to iOS before the other OS' UIs, but the Playbook's "slide to unlock" being spelled out instead of animated with an arrow (just like in iOS 7 betas 1-3*) and the need to swipe from an edge to reveal options, were simply less intuitive.
When my now 5 yr child (who has learned to read at at Kindergarten level) picked up my iPhone with iOS 7 on it, I was shocked to be asked "Daddy, what do I do?". My child can probably read the words "slide to unlock" but wasn't expecting that. I quickly explained that the words have replaced the arrow, which posed the rhetorical question "why require someone to be able to read in order to use your device?". Making the UI simple enough for any age group speaks volumes about a device's ability to be adopted in all kinds of non-traditional markets.
I've demo'd the UI to a few of my non-technical customers and the feedback is that the changed UI elements (setting dates and time for a calendar appointment, sharing a webpage, creating a reminder) just don't offer an intuitive transition from old to new.
I like others, enjoy the new features and workflow improvements. However to me the flat and overly simplified icons, buttons, and elements, the removal of skuomorphic elements, the additional use of text (implying the requirement to be able to read), and the general simplification of the UI doesn't translate as effectively to the young, and that was a huge differentiator for Apple that no one else offered. The new UI presents an unnecessary learning curve and, to me, comes across as a self indulgent change for the sake of change. Perhaps that's harsh, but it bothers me to think that my support team will have to re-train people on how to perform the same tasks because a new UI, rather than spending that time training people on how to get more value out of the new features.
*iOS 7 beta 4 has added an arrow to the left of the "slide to unlock" wording. I'm sure many others have shared feedback with Apple, as I have, that possibly resulted in this "compromised" update to the UI. iOS 7 beta 4 is an improvement and I'm hopeful the final release re-establishes Apple's UI as a differentiator, like the iOS 6 and before had, over other OS' UIs.
iOS 7 is going to be so awesome. A true minimalist design philosophy will take some time to get used to by some (a lot of people do not like change), but in the end this is the way forward for Apple, and people will begin to love it sooner rather than later.
What's so minimalistic about rainbow colored icons, a moving purple background by default and so much white in an interface it hurts your eyes?
Comments
They have moved back on some of the more terrible font decisions, most things are readable again, but for now (beta 4) there is a huge hodgepodge of font weights and sizes throughout the core OS and the stock apps. It is not unusable at all, but it does create some confusion.
The use of font colours and text weights to mark "touchable" areas (instead of e.g. buttons and back arrows) does look more elegant, but it sure is less obvious. (Anecdotal evidence only, but I handed my iPad 4 with beta 3 to my mother, she is using an iPhone 4S with iOS 6 all the time without problems, and she was lost many times, e.g. could not navigate the calendar, could not figure out the new icons in Safari and could not differentiate between blue, grey and black text elements where e.g. blue was meant for a "clickable" action.) Yes, people will get used to it, but so far it was one of iOS's core strength that there was no need to figure anything out.
Then there are design / logic flaws. Things do sound convincing when Ive explains them, until you actually try them. Take that layered / dimensional approach in iOS 7. We do away with gloss and shadows for dimensionality, but we use layers, translucency and dimming. Now, translucency always causes readability problems. We saw that when OS X first received a translucent menu bar. Does it work better on iOS 7? No. It does not. Depending on the colours used in your background image, the text in the "Slide to Unlock" control, or even the text in expanded folders becomes unreadable. The lock screen does now contain this hard to read animated text and three additional touch sensitive border areas (notification center, camera, control center), three of those cramped into a few millimetres. Manageable? Yes, but I pull up the wrong thing at least 1/10 times... never happened under iOS 6. Better? No.
And the logic flaws? One example. Under iOS 6, to change the screen's brightness, I double tapped the home button (or made the four fingers upward gesture on the iPad), got the multi-tasking bar, swiped right and adjusted the brightness. As the multi-tasking bar was hovering over the home screen (using shadows and bevels for clarity), the home screen was still in its original state, and I could set the brightness accurately. Now in iOS 7: I pull up the control center (almost impossible on my iPad, as its case makes the gesture about impossible without pulling the case's lid back a bit first), control center shows up and the layer below (the home screen) gets dimmed. So, now I am adjusting the brightness of the dimmed home screen! I do not even see the level of brightness I am setting. Once I discard the control center, the home screen goes back to its undimmed state and I usually find that it is too bright now. Trial and error. Not control. Not progress.
Sharing sheets in iOS 6 were usable for everyone. Clear icons, clearly "clickable" buttons, clear captions. The buttons in iOS 7 are as self-explanatory as those in MS's damned Charms Bar. And the sharing sheets are a mess. Built-in social services use coloured icons, system functions use arbitrary monochrome ones, arranged on a strip that is wider that the sheet but showing no scrollbars (the majority of people will never see them). To make that "just perfect", the hint/help texts on the sharing sheet are so small that I, with 20/20 sight, can't read them on the iPhone 5. Again. Different, yes. Better?
Change comes with some hurdles. We will have to accept that iOS 7 at release will be far less polished than iOS 1 was. Most things will certainly improve over time, but I see no real need to brag about many things in it yet. Icons are bland and sometimes confusing and usability is, overall, down. The days where you just handed an iDevice to a 3-year old or a very senior citizen and they just will figure it out, will be gone. I expect a measurable impact on user satisfaction levels, too. That is not to say that change was not needed, but to me it feels extremely rushed and imperfect for now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland
Another big article to justify ugly home screen icons.
Another useless comment to justify trotting out a tired old meme.
Hint: There is a lot more to iOS7 than home screen icons. Either you already knew that, making you yet another useless troll, or you actually DIDN'T know that, making you appear rather foolish.
Quote:
Originally Posted by matrix07
Wow. Good points dreyfus2, especially the brightness adjustment one but I seem to remember the Control Center doesn't cover the entire screen?
Correct. It does not cover the entire screen, but it dims the rest of the screen.
The big thing is that iOS 7 FEELS a lot better in use than via static screenshots.
What in the world are you even talking about?
Good stuff, the fact does remain it is looking more like Windows Phone. Don't know how long this update has been in the works, so I don't have anything else to say on that front.
I personally this it will end up like most things Apple does: Some people will bitch about it lacking ___ or not doing ____ properly, but it the end it will be a well polished product that is easy and enjoyable to use.
-QAMF
Not having used the beta, I can't comment on functionality (though much of it looks very promising to me). However, I'm still struggling with the icons. The grid doesn't bother me, it's the colours and some of the designs.
About 7:12 into the video in the story, just take some examples:
The red in the Music icon is much too dominant; every designer knows that warm colours come to the perceptual front but this just shouts, in fact it shouts that there's something that just failed at bottom right on the screen. Many of the colours are too primary to achieve a harmonious whole, exacerbated by little shading or texture. Ironically, the example 3rd party icons in the story use more subdued colour and a simple white-icon-on-coloured-field design that (to me, at least) works fine.
Some of the icons themselves are incomprehensible: icons always run that risk but two icons composed of coloured blobs (Game Center and Photos) are surely too abstract. Why would photos have orderly colours and games have disorderly ones? If there is a reason, it's surely less obvious than the iOS 6 icons (here's a set of games, here's a flower we just photographed). A pair of dice would be an improvement for Game Center if the previous set of example games is too complex (it is, and no, I'm not seriously suggesting dice, jet making a point). Others have raised the 'two compasses' issue too (Safari and, ahem, Compass) - this would be a good time to resolve that.
I am very much looking forward to iOS 7 and an iPhone with a finger-print sensor is a must-have but I do hope the icons improve. If they don't lead a user to deduce their function quickly and intuitively then they've failed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
What in the world are you even talking about?
Obviously that's a photoshop you did that make the bottom icons smaller. For I know what Apple needs to do and what works best. Apple should take all their design advice from me as a professional internet user.
The Jonathan Ive is a fool who doesn't understand design and makes shitty looking designs that other People at Apple have to redo to make good.
/sarcasm
-QAMF
Quote:
Originally Posted by matrix07
Anyone who use iOS 7: after a few weeks, are you annoyed by the candy-color?
I'm, using it now for 2 days. Didn't need it before. I started with old app transition development. I like many things: vivid colors, parallax scrolling, very nice transitions and actually most of the stuff. What I can't cope with are still those buttonless buttons, some extremely ugly and stupid icons like Safari, Settings and Photos, too much simplified icons in settings that make options less recognizable as others that have small actual app icon and of course: big ugly drawn icon in connectivity panel (Copy, Slideshow,...). It is also less responsive on 4S as iOS6.
So for me, iOS7 is from design point of view sort of like learning field for Jonny. It certainly didn't fill the expectations for such big overhaul.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mir808
New UI isn't really that beautiful like old UI but it is still million times better than Android and WP UI.
I think the iOS 7 UI is good, from what I have seen, and I agree that Android (every version I have ever used) looks horrible. But have you ever used W8P UI?
Once more, if you have not used a product can you not criticize it? That is all I ask.
And, I will say it again: People will bitch about Apple's design/products when a new one comes out. Change! EVIL! But Apple knows how to make something that is easy and enjoyable to use, and they have always had a very good sense of aesthetics in the past.
-QAMF
I am surprised that with iOS 7 and Mavericks being scheduled for release around the same time that the icons don't share a more similar design. Up until this new iOS 7 revamp the two OSs were very similar in appearance especially the icons. Sort of a family resemblance but now they look more like distant cousins.
Although I am not the greatest fan of iOS 7, I do agree with this comment entirely.
This is exactly the issue I have with iOS 7. The user interface is not intuitive. Apple has resolved some of my concerns such as the "End" stripe on the Phone app rather than a "End" button.
The functionality is fantastic. Frankly, I think the majority of the jailbreak community will be gone with one more iteration of iOS, iOS 8. I only removed iOS 7 since my Apple developer account is up for renewal and I am not currently profiting from the App Store.
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/29223/width/200/height/400[/IMG]
[IMG ALT=""]http://forums.appleinsider.com/content/type/61/id/29224/width/200/height/400[/IMG]
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
After a decade of fully exploiting iconic decadence to the point of exhausting it of its novelty, Apple is now pursuing a new direction where app icons return to being the expertly distilled, abstract representations of functionality they originated as on the first Macintosh, the designers of whom which coined the term "icon" as an allusion to representational images used in religious veneration.
The Mac GUI came after the Lisa GUI, which came after the Xerox Star GUI, which was the first to use icons and call them by that name.
Here's an interesting overview of the way that computer icons have changed over the years:
http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/theory/know-your-icons-part-1-a-brief-history-of-computer-icons/
In 2010 I introduced the iPad to my 3 year old. I was absolutely astonished at how little training I had to provide to her (unlocking, tapping an icon, swiping between pages, rotating the device). The UI, including its gloss and skuomorphic design intuitively did all of the heavy lifting for me. Having supported and trained customers on Macs, PCs, and different smartphones for over 15 years, I'd never seen anything like this and decided to conduct an experiment. My job involves making iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and at one time Windows mobile devices work in the Enterprise, so I was able expose my child to an Android and BlackBerry smartphone (and later the Playbook and Z10). It was obvious that these UIs required significant training compared to iOS. It's possible that's partly due to being exposed to iOS before the other OS' UIs, but the Playbook's "slide to unlock" being spelled out instead of animated with an arrow (just like in iOS 7 betas 1-3*) and the need to swipe from an edge to reveal options, were simply less intuitive.
When my now 5 yr child (who has learned to read at at Kindergarten level) picked up my iPhone with iOS 7 on it, I was shocked to be asked "Daddy, what do I do?". My child can probably read the words "slide to unlock" but wasn't expecting that. I quickly explained that the words have replaced the arrow, which posed the rhetorical question "why require someone to be able to read in order to use your device?". Making the UI simple enough for any age group speaks volumes about a device's ability to be adopted in all kinds of non-traditional markets.
I've demo'd the UI to a few of my non-technical customers and the feedback is that the changed UI elements (setting dates and time for a calendar appointment, sharing a webpage, creating a reminder) just don't offer an intuitive transition from old to new.
I like others, enjoy the new features and workflow improvements. However to me the flat and overly simplified icons, buttons, and elements, the removal of skuomorphic elements, the additional use of text (implying the requirement to be able to read), and the general simplification of the UI doesn't translate as effectively to the young, and that was a huge differentiator for Apple that no one else offered. The new UI presents an unnecessary learning curve and, to me, comes across as a self indulgent change for the sake of change. Perhaps that's harsh, but it bothers me to think that my support team will have to re-train people on how to perform the same tasks because a new UI, rather than spending that time training people on how to get more value out of the new features.
*iOS 7 beta 4 has added an arrow to the left of the "slide to unlock" wording. I'm sure many others have shared feedback with Apple, as I have, that possibly resulted in this "compromised" update to the UI. iOS 7 beta 4 is an improvement and I'm hopeful the final release re-establishes Apple's UI as a differentiator, like the iOS 6 and before had, over other OS' UIs.
What's so minimalistic about rainbow colored icons, a moving purple background by default and so much white in an interface it hurts your eyes?