Bad news for software. He should not have influence over software.
So you think iOS 11 was a success without him?
Not that you're necessarily saying this, but how do we know he had absolutely nothing to do with iOS 11? Just because he isn't sitting in his design studio in Cupertino, doesn't mean he can't have an influence on design at Apple.
Are people getting used to it? Yes, but that's besides the point. People can get used to a really horrible UI. Apple's principal on UI, though, was always that it should be as usable as possible to a brand new user, while still being powerful for the advanced user. They've been breaking that in tons of ways, from visual to operation to inconsistency.
What is missed here imo is that the alternatives to Apple's UI is what is commercially available. - With iOS iPhones/iPads, it's still true that they can be picked up, and a new user can quickly know where they are and use the device. The iOS grid is simple/consistent. The most important icons have a standard shape and design. - This UI philosophy of consistency goes back to the Lisa and the early Mac. It is a desirable feature as IS staff I worked with wanted standard/limited home page customization on Windows 7 on work PCs. * In debates the common criticism of the iOS UI is that it is boring, too simple, too basic. All those "criticisms" are a strength of iOS.
* The competition to iOS; - Windows 8/10, the phone and finger touch tablet mode; The UI approach with finger touch is customization of tile size/color location. The UI shape in finger touch Windows looks like Legos spread across the screen. This riot of color/size/location/design in finger touch Windows applies to the key concept of consistency. A stranger can pick up a touch Windows device and not know where they are.
* Android, Samsung and Pixel; - Samsung Galaxy; Samsung adds several apps which do the same task. So, the app draw is flooded with apps. - Carriers can add their own set of apps on top of the ones put in by the OEM. - Pixel; is more "Apple like". Yet, by its very nature Android allows each phone's home page to look completely different. - Stock Android and OEM Android can have different shapes / colors with the icon for the same task. Of course someone familiar with Android would know to get to the app drawer but in my experience, Android phones don't have the almost immediate recognition/understanding by a stranger compared with iPhones.
* While someone can compare the iOS UI with an imagined perfect UI, to me the choice depends on what's commercially available. iOS remains the most intuitive UI compared with the finger touch OS competition.
Bad news for software. He should not have influence over software.
BS. He did a great job with the design of IOS 7. He cleaned it up, and made it much more consistent across all of Apple's applications. Prior to him taking over, many of Apple's own applications weren't consistent in the use of the same types of functions. IOS 7 was a great foundation to build from.
bells said: Agreed. Ive made iOS much better, not only visbly, but in the way it functioned. Further, simplifying the design also used less system resources. Prior to him taking over, the OS was cluttered, busy, and inconsistent.
This is almost completely opposite of my experience with it. I had an iPad 2 at the time (and iPod Touch that couldn't upgrade) and the iPad 2 went from being usable to not. I so wish I hadn't updated. Yes, **visually** it looked simplified, but it wasn't simplified from a UX perspective. Buttons became pieces of text or non-descript icons. You had to just tap around at stuff and see what worked, and hope it didn't do something wrong or destructive w/o a pop-up confirmation. Around this time was also when the consistency between apps, cloud functionality, and macOS platform was at a very bad point (it's finally starting to improve in the last couple of updates... but still has a way to go).
GeorgeBMac said: Where Apple is no longer the bleeding edge innovative leader, but the solid, dependable rock that you can depend on because you know you're getting a quality product backed by a quality organization.
... I can only wonder if there was a single visionary behind that, or if it just sort of happened that way...
But then, maybe he did have something to do with that: Perhaps it evolved out of the example he set of putting thoughtful quality into every detail of every product and making every product a joy to use.
I just don't know what to say. It's like we're living in opposite universes. Are you using the same products and OSs I am? I'm one of the many banging the drum to turn your last line back into reality, instead of just marketing slogans!
k2kw said: Every few years it seems that Apple comes out with a new UI design on the iPhone then they spend the next couple year doing little corrections to make things look and work better. I figure things will be the same with ios11 which has 3 flavors (iPad, iPhone 8 and below, and iPhone X). Love the iOS 11 on the iPad.
Yes, iOS 7 was a big move, and they've certainly fixed a lot of its dysfunction. But, IMO, a more skeuomorphic design (not felt and wood, but real buttons or experience analog) is better than flat-design on the whole. What Apple did is go from some poor implementations of some aspects of skeuomorphism to an extremely poorly implemented flat-design that they've now brought back more towards a good implementation, as far as flat goes.
fastasleep said: You want that stupid reel to reel tape player back?
No but it needs expandable storage, but not SD cards, I'm talking punch cards & reader.
They meant the visuals of the player that looked like a tape deck. It's fine to let that stuff go, but that isn't really the big difference between skeuomorphic and flat. The biggest difference example I can think of that most people quickly understand is instead of having a button that looks like a button where you can tell 'pressed' state, to just some grey text on a white background, that if you 'touch' it, it acts like a button.
The latter is certainly 'lighter' in terms of implementation and visually, but comes with the downside of lack of intuitiveness, quickness of recognition, etc.
bb-15 said: What is missed here imo is that the alternatives to Apple's UI is what is commercially available.
... * While someone can compare the iOS UI with an imagined perfect UI, to me the choice depends on what's commercially available. iOS remains the most intuitive UI compared with the finger touch OS competition.
I agree with what you've said, which is why I'm still an Apple user. I'm comparing Apple to previous Apple. My argument is that they are no longer employing a bunch of the UI/UX knowledge they used to. I'm not sure if that's just because they've gotten lax with it, don't care about it anymore, or the new talent is unaware. Yes, Apple is still ahead of the competition for the OS/UI, but if the trends I'm seeing continue, they won't be at some point.
Bad news for software. He should not have influence over software.
BS. He did a great job with the design of IOS 7. He cleaned it up, and made it much more consistent across all of Apple's applications. Prior to him taking over, many of Apple's own applications weren't consistent in the use of the same types of functions. IOS 7 was a great foundation to build from.
Apple is good at design, where it needs help is coding. IOS 11 is buggy as hell.
Consistency? Which locations in iOS have edit modes for lists? Which ones actually function the way this is intended? Not the one in the Safari settings for saved content. Who cares about that rarely used interface, you ask? Ok. Well, also Not the one in the reminders app. Do you even know how that's actually meant to work? Clearly there are developers in Apple who are utterly clueless about this, and no one has taken them to task for it.
How about that full slide to the left to delete a list item? Exists only in Mail right? The rest of the apps with this gesture only reveal a button.
i could go on, but if you're talking about iOS having MORE consistency since iOS 7, you clearly aren't detail oriented and none of this means anything to you.
Everyone who brings up felt and wood trim as the argument against skeumophism has completely missed the plot of sensible GUI design. iOS 7 killed what made iPhone the dominant device, but not entirely. It's mostly a skin, since most of the functionality didn't change. Apple just removed all the visual cues to tell people what the controls are and how they work. So long as the majority of the market have already used iOS before version 7, they could figure it out and adapt. The thing is, new users are screwed and we shouldn't have to adapt to change for the sake of change. We shouldn't have a GUI become a hard to read mess of low contrast visuals, hard to read text, invisible controls, and so many gestures that they cannot be intuited and are conflicting with each other.
Those who say Apple have been doing great despite people's complaints about iOS 7 don't understand the power of hype and the iPhone's initial cultural success. That was an incredibly deep first impact. Apple have continued with success because of the strength of those first years between 2007 and 2013 before iOS 7 came along to mess things up for people who care about or need good UI design. There's no way iOS 7 would've immediately ruined Apple with all the hype (which I contributed to, and now I regret), unless it had simply not worked at all. Despite the huge number of bugs (numerous of which have STILL NOT BEEN FIXED), it persisted. Apple are still riding that wave of success and the market dominance it provided. That continued success is not to be credited to iOS 7's arrival. Continued success was absolutely in spite of iOS 7.
...but again, you don't care about the details. I'm just here to make it be known that the details still matter. Apple are going to run themselves into the mud just like Microsoft if they don't reverse course. This is not the Apple that I promoted for over six years. This is some Wall Street monster that's sucking the value out of the prior entity. For quick mad profits.
Edit: the person who said that Jony Ive's redesign made iOS use fewer resources... have you been asleep for the last five years? iOS keeps getting slower and more bloated. iOS 7 was the first dramatic shift in that direction. This has been public knowledge for years and has gotten to be such an issue that we now have scores of diehard Apple fans using the usual computer industry special pleading to excuse it, writing long opinion pieces on news sites to try to convince people that Apple isn't knowingly pushing people to throw away their phones every couple of years.
Bad news for software. He should not have influence over software.
So you think iOS 11 was a success without him?
I don't think iOS 11 is a success. Frankly, I don't think any iOS has been a clear "success" for several versions. iOS 11 is continuing what iOS 7 started. Almost nothing that happened in 2013 has been walked back. Some text has been enlarged and some minor contrast has been reintroduced, but it's far too little. Don't throw iOS adoption numbers at me. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who points to that is naive on the reality of why people update... or being willingly deceptive.
Bad news for software. He should not have influence over software.
Oh yes, let's have marketeers and engineers in charge. We all know how great iTunes is. Not.
We need Ive, or some kind of hybrid interaction designer, someone who feels at ease challenging both the software and hardware engineers in a constructive dialogue.
dysamoria said: ... We shouldn't have a GUI become a hard to read mess of low contrast visuals, hard to read text, invisible controls, and so many gestures that they cannot be intuited and are conflicting with each other.
Those who say Apple have been doing great despite people's complaints about iOS 7 don't understand the power of hype and the iPhone's initial cultural success. That was an incredibly deep first impact. ... ... Edit: the person who said that Jony Ive's redesign made iOS use fewer resources... have you been asleep for the last five years? iOS keeps getting slower and more bloated. iOS 7 was the first dramatic shift in that direction. This has been public knowledge for years and has gotten to be such an issue that we now have scores of diehard Apple fans using the usual computer industry special pleading to excuse it, writing long opinion pieces on news sites to try to convince people that Apple isn't knowingly pushing people to throw away their phones every couple of years.
Sorry to chop your quote up so much. I strongly agree with what you've said until the last paragraph. I especially notice the difference you're talking about with older people (the kids just seem to quickly adapt to whatever). But, iOS initially created a device someone with no computer experience could pick up and use far more easily than Mac or WIndows. But, you're right, since iOS 7 that isn't necessarily the case any longer. Mac is still more confusing with apps behind apps or such, and certainly harder to manage from an IT perspective, but it isn't necessarily as non-intuitive to a new user anymore. iOS has lost *significant* ground on that. (I think Apple's response is that the majority of people are familiar enough that they could just move on. But, that's not good UI/UX design talking... that's the marketing dept.) (Also, unfortunately, it brought some of that mess over to the Mac UI as well.)
re: resources - Agreed, except that I don't think it's a purposeful slowdown, just a sloppy one. And, a lot of people (especially Apple enthusiasts here) don't notice it because they quickly buy the newest devices with enough faster hardware to compensate, and then some. I think much of this hits in terms of RAM, so for example, iOS 7 really needed 1GB of RAM, so anything with 512MB was relatively bricked (which was a good bit of the userbase and Apple was still selling new models at the time with 512MB.) For those people, it was a pretty dramatic and bad experience. Imagine if you bought a brand new iPad Mini and then hit the nearly unusable performance along with a kludge of an OS as your first Apple experience?
mr o said: Oh yes, let's have marketeers and engineers in charge. We all know how great iTunes is. Not.
We need Ive, or some kind of hybrid interaction designer, someone who feels at ease challenging both the software and hardware engineers in a constructive dialogue.
How about a UI/UX designer... Apple used to have some of those.
mr o said: Oh yes, let's have marketeers and engineers in charge. We all know how great iTunes is. Not.
We need Ive, or some kind of hybrid interaction designer, someone who feels at ease challenging both the software and hardware engineers in a constructive dialogue.
How about a UI/UX designer... Apple used to have some of those.
There's an animated discussion going on about the difference between UX, UI, and IxD (Interaction Design). Here's my take:
UI (User Interface design) is Graphic design.
UI + User interviews = UX (User Experience design), and IxD (Interaction Design).
IxD is more general than UX. An IxD ought to be able to communicate the designs with the software engineers, which implies a basic knowledge of, or some kind of familiarity with, software development. There needs to be some kind of dialogue.
Having said that, UX and IxD do get used interchangeably. However, I do believe there is some kind of distinction. It is hotly debated though.
mr o said: There's an animated discussion going on about the difference between UX, UI, and IxD (Interaction Design). Here's my take:
UI (User Interface design) is Graphic design.
UI + User interviews = UX (User Experience design), and IxD (Interaction Design).
IxD is more general than UX. An IxD ought to be able to communicate the designs with the software engineers, which implies a basic knowledge of, or some kind of familiarity with, software development. There needs to be some kind of dialogue.
Having said that, UX and IxD do get used interchangeably. However, I do believe there is some kind of distinction. It is hotly debated though.
Yea, I'm using the terms more broadly and generically I suppose. I know there are specialties within them, etc. I'd probably disagree that UI is graphic design, as I don't think a lot of graphic designers pay strong attention to user-interface unless they've been specifically trained in that regard, and say, design websites or app interfaces.
And absolutely, these disciplines cross boundaries (or at least should). Marketing, for example, isn't a bad thing, unless it is in the driver's seat w/o proper balance of UI/UX and engineering.
But, my big point is that Apple did a ton of work years ago and wrote human interface guidelines based on a lot of study and data. Since they seem to be breaking so much of this these days - mostly without explanation/justification - I question what the root cause of that is.
Does this mean that the iPhone design will be finally changed?
Yes, he said it’ll be triangular.
Heh, I always wonder what the fascination is with people expecting regular design change. Sure, when it's possible to make some advancement, then it makes sense (ie: unibody MBP), or the old iMac to the current design, etc. But, it seems some people just want a new design to have a new design. (That's true of the software/UI as well.) IMO, you ***don't want*** to change it, unless you truly can make a certain level of advancement. For UI/UX, it's better to not change any more than necessary.
Bad news for software. He should not have influence over software.
BS. He did a great job with the design of IOS 7. He cleaned it up, and made it much more consistent across all of Apple's applications. Prior to him taking over, many of Apple's own applications weren't consistent in the use of the same types of functions. IOS 7 was a great foundation to build from.
bells said: Agreed. Ive made iOS much better, not only visbly, but in the way it functioned. Further, simplifying the design also used less system resources. Prior to him taking over, the OS was cluttered, busy, and inconsistent.
This is almost completely opposite of my experience with it. I had an iPad 2 at the time (and iPod Touch that couldn't upgrade) and the iPad 2 went from being usable to not. I so wish I hadn't updated. Yes, **visually** it looked simplified, but it wasn't simplified from a UX perspective. Buttons became pieces of text or non-descript icons. You had to just tap around at stuff and see what worked, and hope it didn't do something wrong or destructive w/o a pop-up confirmation. Around this time was also when the consistency between apps, cloud functionality, and macOS platform was at a very bad point (it's finally starting to improve in the last couple of updates... but still has a way to go).
GeorgeBMac said: Where Apple is no longer the bleeding edge innovative leader, but the solid, dependable rock that you can depend on because you know you're getting a quality product backed by a quality organization.
... I can only wonder if there was a single visionary behind that, or if it just sort of happened that way...
But then, maybe he did have something to do with that: Perhaps it evolved out of the example he set of putting thoughtful quality into every detail of every product and making every product a joy to use.
I just don't know what to say. It's like we're living in opposite universes. Are you using the same products and OSs I am? I'm one of the many banging the drum to turn your last line back into reality, instead of just marketing slogans!
k2kw said: Every few years it seems that Apple comes out with a new UI design on the iPhone then they spend the next couple year doing little corrections to make things look and work better. I figure things will be the same with ios11 which has 3 flavors (iPad, iPhone 8 and below, and iPhone X). Love the iOS 11 on the iPad.
Yes, iOS 7 was a big move, and they've certainly fixed a lot of its dysfunction. But, IMO, a more skeuomorphic design (not felt and wood, but real buttons or experience analog) is better than flat-design on the whole. What Apple did is go from some poor implementations of some aspects of skeuomorphism to an extremely poorly implemented flat-design that they've now brought back more towards a good implementation, as far as flat goes.
fastasleep said: You want that stupid reel to reel tape player back?
No but it needs expandable storage, but not SD cards, I'm talking punch cards & reader.
They meant the visuals of the player that looked like a tape deck. It's fine to let that stuff go, but that isn't really the big difference between skeuomorphic and flat. The biggest difference example I can think of that most people quickly understand is instead of having a button that looks like a button where you can tell 'pressed' state, to just some grey text on a white background, that if you 'touch' it, it acts like a button.
The latter is certainly 'lighter' in terms of implementation and visually, but comes with the downside of lack of intuitiveness, quickness of recognition, etc.
Yet in reality, we’re getting further away from raised physical buttons with a “pressed state” as those analogues become more scarce as technology advances, just like the old diskette icon to save. The arrows and text labels got us used to the contextual environment we now use gestures to navigate. Gestures are the new button.
fastasleep said: Yet in reality, we’re getting further away from raised physical buttons with a “pressed state” as those analogues become more scarce as technology advances, just like the old diskette icon to save. The arrows and text labels got us used to the contextual environment we now use gestures to navigate. Gestures are the new button.
I agree that it is a trend, but that doesn't mean it's a good one. Most UI/UX experts don't see it as such. Some argue the tradeoffs are worth it (mostly web simplicity/speed arguments), but I can't think of any I've seen that see it as some kind of pure advancement. And, there is nothing technologically more advance about it, aside from hardware gestures eliminating the *need* for buttons. But, again, it's poorer in terms of UI/UX fundamentals.
fastasleep said: Yet in reality, we’re getting further away from raised physical buttons with a “pressed state” as those analogues become more scarce as technology advances, just like the old diskette icon to save. The arrows and text labels got us used to the contextual environment we now use gestures to navigate. Gestures are the new button.
I agree that it is a trend, but that doesn't mean it's a good one. Most UI/UX experts don't see it as such. Some argue the tradeoffs are worth it (mostly web simplicity/speed arguments), but I can't think of any I've seen that see it as some kind of pure advancement. And, there is nothing technologically more advance about it, aside from hardware gestures eliminating the *need* for buttons. But, again, it's poorer in terms of UI/UX fundamentals.
People bring up the back button turning into the left angle arrow and text all the time, so I’m kind of using that as an example where there’s no need for it at all as we edge swipe back instead. The text labels provided context as a learning tool. It seems like that’s the general direction for a lot of major interface changes and to me swipes are infinitely better than pecking at little isolated “buttons”. People who think otherwise i lump in with people like a guy I work with who still uses a trackball and stacks dozens of slightly offset windows on a single Space in macOS and uses no gestures, does not know what Mission Control or Spaces do, and doesn’t know most keyboard shortcuts to navigate his pile of windows and instead hunts and drags and pecks because he refuses to learn a new way. I realize not everyone is that dense but there has to be some argument for pushing people to interact with an interface in a newer way, even if it requires some learning curve that is different than just identifying clearly marked buttons.
Folks pretending to be UX experts here are full of shit. The “buttons” they are bitching being flat gray text about are tabs and not buttons and lined up on the bottom of the screen.
Active text is largely blue like hyperlinks. Like the Done target currently on Safari as I edit. Simple blue text indicates it’s pushable without any sort of button around it.
Likewise the active touch targets in mail are light blue like hyperlinks whether they are text or icons.
Real buttons like Close buttons are obvious buttons offset in color with a shape (circular, etc) in a flat profile. No need for beveling as cues.
Apple apps generally use the same interaction style that mirrors the web rather then desktop wimp interface and with more touch and direct interaction interfaces.
There’s been quite a bit of kvetching from UX folks like Tog about Apple after they left but honestly as much as I liked his work back in the day what Apple has today is just fine and no worse than the “glory days” when Apple maintained a human factors group. There were just as many rough interaction touch points back then as today that have faded from memory.
That the interface of today may not be to your liking doesn’t make it bad.
Comments
- With iOS iPhones/iPads, it's still true that they can be picked up, and a new user can quickly know where they are and use the device. The iOS grid is simple/consistent. The most important icons have a standard shape and design.
- This UI philosophy of consistency goes back to the Lisa and the early Mac. It is a desirable feature as IS staff I worked with wanted standard/limited home page customization on Windows 7 on work PCs.
* In debates the common criticism of the iOS UI is that it is boring, too simple, too basic.
All those "criticisms" are a strength of iOS.
* The competition to iOS;
- Windows 8/10, the phone and finger touch tablet mode; The UI approach with finger touch is customization of tile size/color location. The UI shape in finger touch Windows looks like Legos spread across the screen. This riot of color/size/location/design in finger touch Windows applies to the key concept of consistency.
A stranger can pick up a touch Windows device and not know where they are.
* Android, Samsung and Pixel;
- Samsung Galaxy; Samsung adds several apps which do the same task. So, the app draw is flooded with apps.
- Carriers can add their own set of apps on top of the ones put in by the OEM.
- Pixel; is more "Apple like". Yet, by its very nature Android allows each phone's home page to look completely different.
- Stock Android and OEM Android can have different shapes / colors with the icon for the same task.
Of course someone familiar with Android would know to get to the app drawer but in my experience, Android phones don't have the almost immediate recognition/understanding by a stranger compared with iPhones.
* While someone can compare the iOS UI with an imagined perfect UI, to me the choice depends on what's commercially available.
iOS remains the most intuitive UI compared with the finger touch OS competition.
I just don't know what to say. It's like we're living in opposite universes. Are you using the same products and OSs I am? I'm one of the many banging the drum to turn your last line back into reality, instead of just marketing slogans!
Yes, iOS 7 was a big move, and they've certainly fixed a lot of its dysfunction. But, IMO, a more skeuomorphic design (not felt and wood, but real buttons or experience analog) is better than flat-design on the whole. What Apple did is go from some poor implementations of some aspects of skeuomorphism to an extremely poorly implemented flat-design that they've now brought back more towards a good implementation, as far as flat goes.
They meant the visuals of the player that looked like a tape deck. It's fine to let that stuff go, but that isn't really the big difference between skeuomorphic and flat. The biggest difference example I can think of that most people quickly understand is instead of having a button that looks like a button where you can tell 'pressed' state, to just some grey text on a white background, that if you 'touch' it, it acts like a button.
The latter is certainly 'lighter' in terms of implementation and visually, but comes with the downside of lack of intuitiveness, quickness of recognition, etc.
How about that full slide to the left to delete a list item? Exists only in Mail right? The rest of the apps with this gesture only reveal a button.
i could go on, but if you're talking about iOS having MORE consistency since iOS 7, you clearly aren't detail oriented and none of this means anything to you.
Everyone who brings up felt and wood trim as the argument against skeumophism has completely missed the plot of sensible GUI design. iOS 7 killed what made iPhone the dominant device, but not entirely. It's mostly a skin, since most of the functionality didn't change. Apple just removed all the visual cues to tell people what the controls are and how they work. So long as the majority of the market have already used iOS before version 7, they could figure it out and adapt. The thing is, new users are screwed and we shouldn't have to adapt to change for the sake of change. We shouldn't have a GUI become a hard to read mess of low contrast visuals, hard to read text, invisible controls, and so many gestures that they cannot be intuited and are conflicting with each other.
Those who say Apple have been doing great despite people's complaints about iOS 7 don't understand the power of hype and the iPhone's initial cultural success. That was an incredibly deep first impact. Apple have continued with success because of the strength of those first years between 2007 and 2013 before iOS 7 came along to mess things up for people who care about or need good UI design. There's no way iOS 7 would've immediately ruined Apple with all the hype (which I contributed to, and now I regret), unless it had simply not worked at all. Despite the huge number of bugs (numerous of which have STILL NOT BEEN FIXED), it persisted. Apple are still riding that wave of success and the market dominance it provided. That continued success is not to be credited to iOS 7's arrival. Continued success was absolutely in spite of iOS 7.
...but again, you don't care about the details. I'm just here to make it be known that the details still matter. Apple are going to run themselves into the mud just like Microsoft if they don't reverse course. This is not the Apple that I promoted for over six years. This is some Wall Street monster that's sucking the value out of the prior entity. For quick mad profits.
Edit: the person who said that Jony Ive's redesign made iOS use fewer resources... have you been asleep for the last five years? iOS keeps getting slower and more bloated. iOS 7 was the first dramatic shift in that direction. This has been public knowledge for years and has gotten to be such an issue that we now have scores of diehard Apple fans using the usual computer industry special pleading to excuse it, writing long opinion pieces on news sites to try to convince people that Apple isn't knowingly pushing people to throw away their phones every couple of years.
We need Ive, or some kind of hybrid interaction designer, someone who feels at ease challenging both the software and hardware engineers in a constructive dialogue.
>:x
re: resources - Agreed, except that I don't think it's a purposeful slowdown, just a sloppy one. And, a lot of people (especially Apple enthusiasts here) don't notice it because they quickly buy the newest devices with enough faster hardware to compensate, and then some. I think much of this hits in terms of RAM, so for example, iOS 7 really needed 1GB of RAM, so anything with 512MB was relatively bricked (which was a good bit of the userbase and Apple was still selling new models at the time with 512MB.) For those people, it was a pretty dramatic and bad experience. Imagine if you bought a brand new iPad Mini and then hit the nearly unusable performance along with a kludge of an OS as your first Apple experience?
There's an animated discussion going on about the difference between UX, UI, and IxD (Interaction Design). Here's my take:
Having said that, UX and IxD do get used interchangeably. However, I do believe there is some kind of distinction. It is hotly debated though.
>:x
And absolutely, these disciplines cross boundaries (or at least should). Marketing, for example, isn't a bad thing, unless it is in the driver's seat w/o proper balance of UI/UX and engineering.
But, my big point is that Apple did a ton of work years ago and wrote human interface guidelines based on a lot of study and data. Since they seem to be breaking so much of this these days - mostly without explanation/justification - I question what the root cause of that is.
Some argue the tradeoffs are worth it (mostly web simplicity/speed arguments), but I can't think of any I've seen that see it as some kind of pure advancement.
And, there is nothing technologically more advance about it, aside from hardware gestures eliminating the *need* for buttons. But, again, it's poorer in terms of UI/UX fundamentals.
Active text is largely blue like hyperlinks. Like the Done target currently on Safari as I edit. Simple blue text indicates it’s pushable without any sort of button around it.
Likewise the active touch targets in mail are light blue like hyperlinks whether they are text or icons.
Real buttons like Close buttons are obvious buttons offset in color with a shape (circular, etc) in a flat profile. No need for beveling as cues.
Apple apps generally use the same interaction style that mirrors the web rather then desktop wimp interface and with more touch and direct interaction interfaces.
There’s been quite a bit of kvetching from UX folks like Tog about Apple after they left but honestly as much as I liked his work back in the day what Apple has today is just fine and no worse than the “glory days” when Apple maintained a human factors group. There were just as many rough interaction touch points back then as today that have faded from memory.
That the interface of today may not be to your liking doesn’t make it bad.