Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

It's shocking how often other companies just outright clone what Apple does. That new start menu grid isn't just similar to the iPhone App Library, it's identical.

View on HN

And the iPhone is just a copy and evolution of the PalmOS paradigm. I'm not mad at Apple, because when they put up that UI, the PalmOS was basically dead.

Then (what remains of) Palm had cloned the UI of Apple Watch for their "small" phone.

I had a Palm Pre way back in the day, it was easily 5 years ahead of other phones. It's very clear that a lot of the iPhone's initial design language was inspired by PalmOS

It's not? The iPhone App library has a TERRIBLE UX with its mandatory (and confusing) grouping. The Windows 11 Start Menu grid is fine just the way it is, but I guess now there is a category mode for people who like to hide their apps.

It's closer to Android which has no grouping. Besides, Apple only did the library once they realized Android's approach of customizable home screens + library was superior to forcing every app to be on your home screens.

Both of which ripped off the Desktop, which goes back to what, the Xerox computing days?

Actually, Apple copied a ton of things and features from Android 8 and above.

To be fair to MS I remember almost everyone was copying aspects of the Metro UI in the early 2010s.

Yeah, it wasn't always the best experience on desktop, but on tablet and mobile, it helped small screens feel bigger and made apps feel more dynamic and organic with live tiles. The emphasis on typography was a nice touch as well. Although it's harder to tell now, a lot of the current UI design for apps draws from the Metro UI style with big, bold fonts for navigational elements, fluid, dynamic, animated content experiences, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com