Microsoft (officially) details how iPad app development compares to Windows 8 | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft (officially) details how iPad app development compares to Windows 8

msdn.microsoft.com

34 pointspowertower4 comments

Even discounting the cruddy resolution of iPad screenshots, I'd say that I much prefer the Metro aesthetics even though I'm a big fan of Apple products in general. I think Metro is really a nice design paradigm since they focus on fonts and pictures, in other words the same elements of great web design and print. There are no gradients or design elements that would look dated 5 years from now. Whereas Apple designs need to be constantly refreshed and refined to keep the polish (it's a hard thing to pull off and for the most part they've succeeded at it).

While Apple seems more refined in many ways and pull off consistency with simple but rich designs, I feel like they've been going overboard with rich textures in the post Jobs era. Applications like Find your Friends on the iPhone, iCal and AddressBook on OSX Lion sacrifice simplicity and east of use to emulate "real world"-ish look and feel with faux leather textures that serve no other purpose than to "look" nice.

The more I see Metro the more I like it.

I tend to agree with you overall (although I think Metro has some serious shortcomings right now, but this would take several paragraphs to expound on and is not my goal with this comment), but I do disagree with one statement you make:

"There are no gradients or design elements that would look dated 5 years from now."

Using just pictures and fonts does not make your design timeproof— for example, the classical IBM ad definitely looks antiquated nowadays:

http://www.designers-books.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/3F...

There is no such thing as a design which can always preserve its polish, because design always inscribes itself within a greater cultural trend which is inexorably a product of its era.

Touche to that. I suppose I should have said that there are less design elements in Metro that are susceptible to trends as long as we're talking about nice typefaces and clean layout.

The point in question is my uneasy feeling at the increasingly intricate designs dominating the iPhone for both third-party and Apple's default apps that seem to distract from a focus on utility and functionality. Of course, that's not entirely a valid logical position but my subjective opinions so I do concede.

What amazes me is how Microsoft consistently explains design with obviously aliased images using nasty, bandy palettes.

I hope the explanation is that their web publishing framework just sucks and has no oversight, because it would be troubling if the designers/bloggers missed this.

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