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Comment by Steko | Hacker News Reader

It'd help me if you gave examples what you think iOS could be doing that's it not. The big ticket feature that iOS didn't have 60 days ago was built in turn by turn maps. Since they added that with 6.0 I guess I'm wondering what else you're pining for? A weather widget? NFC? Fjords?

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I'm principally talking about look and feel. iOS looks and operates great, let's get that out of the way. But it's essentially the same core design that was laid out in 2007 + Androidish notifications + multitasking-lite. At a glance can the average user tell the difference between iOS 2 or 3 and 6?

I acknowledge that that's not necessarily an entirely worthy goal in and of itself, but keeping a design focused product fresh does have its merits.

Here's iOS 1 and 5 side by side

http://pocketnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ios1ios5.png

Other than the obvious lack of a wallpaper I'm not really sure that there's been any fundamental work on improving the user interaction and look & feel of the thing in 5 years.

I find it unbelievable that there's nothing that could be done better and that iOS was launched with perfect interaction design, fully formed from the heads of the designers, or perfect visual design, reverently propagated to the modern day and on into the future.

Is this really the penultimate in volume slider design? There's no more work to be done here?

http://www.uiparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/clean-ios...

I think this recent shakeup is Apple signaling that it's time to evolve again and that excites me much more than the last 2 or 3 product launches have.

If anybody can put out a new way of pushing electrons around and making it "just work" it's going to be Apple and I want to see what they come up with.

All of what you've listed is just repeating the same point: iOS hasn't changed much since its inception. But you're still not answering the question: what needs to change?

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I think it can't be improved, because I can think of a few needed improvements myself. But I hear people continue to say this about Apple -- "They aren't innovating lately." -- without saying what needs to change.

So, without just comparing iOS1 vs. iOS6, what about the current state of iOS needs to change?

I'd like to see Intents or Contracts or something so that apps can reasonably an reliably communicate. The walled gardens that iOS has is fairly obnoxious.

I have both an iPhone and Nexus 7, and I keep forgetting on N7 that sharing to Evernote doesn't require laborious app switching and cut and pasting. It's a very real, important piece of the puzzle that Apple hasn't even bothered trying to attempt.

Well, actually they are aware of this and they might introduce an interesting concept in iOS7: http://oleb.net/blog/2012/10/remote-view-controllers-in-ios-...

Thanks for posting that, I wasn't aware that they were using XPC for the Mail sheet, etc. Hopefully we'll see some neat things next year.

I want widgets on the desktop and/or on the lock screen (as a developer api), sideloading applications, some way to store data accessable to any app, a phone number black or whitelist, and a way for users to allow an app to do arbitrary tasks in the background or refuse any app from doing the Apple-allowed tasks in the background. Oh, and keyboards, developers should be allowed to make keyboards.

Then there are a ton of stupid UI issues they have, like when I open a new tab in mobile Safari, I don't want it to gain focus.

I'd like to be able to update the software on it without needing to rearrange apps into the order I want them yet again, I don't have any idea if that is possible or not.

you want an...android?

Yes, but without the complete lack of consistency between what the home button does in an any given app.

It always, without a single exception, returns to the launcher.

I believe he meant that he wishes android would have a universal home button.

I don't understand. How is a universal home button different from the home button it has now?

I don't know what the proper name of the button is, but my colleague's android doesn't have consistent behavior across all apps. I really meant it to mean that there are also a lot of things I'd want to change in Android also, but the topic was iPhones.

I'd like to an "Add to Home Screen" feature for phone contacts for one-tap dialing (like you can with browser bookmarks).

Wouldn't this just clutter up an already crowded home screen? I like the Favourites list in the phone app as it is.

I suppose you could put Favourites as a folder on the home screen, but that would defeat the purpose since you're back to two taps for a call.

You could make the same arguments that adding browser bookmarks or more apps would clutter your home screen. I'm not suggesting that all contacts be added to the home screen, just a few that I call every day.

As a counterpoint, I want none of those things.

Thanks for the insightful comment.

Look and feel-wise...the iOS look is getting dated. I don't think they should parrot the flat square look Microsoft is going for nor the Tron look in Android. But this

http://dribbble.s3.amazonaws.com/users/3331/screenshots/1108...

is getting old (OS X is even worse)

I'm not a visual designer so I'm not sure I'm entirely qualified to offer suggestions, but there are other button styles, even completely new ones that would work.

Some ideas:

How about some variation on the one in the upper right here?

http://www.colourbox.com/preview/2584456-712013-exit-beautif...

VST interfaces are usually choking with ideas

https://www.google.com/search?q=beautiful+buttons&hl=en&...

Or why buttons at all? I should just be able to interact with the direct metaphor of what I want.

Or a pop-up circular button system like in Palantir? http://www.palantir.com/wp-content/static/techblog/2007/08/s...

The interface looks like candy, instead of trying to outshiny the competition, maybe it should be matte? Then use shiny bits sparingly.

http://remodelista.com/img/sub/uimg/Janet_Images/suga-black-...

etc. etc. etc.

Let's not go for shiny kitsch, let's go for expensive sports car with a matte paint job.

Other than that, cross app communications (intents) and resolution independent layouts as an option would be nice and get Apple out of this weird resolution multiplier lock it seems to be trying to bust out of (with the exception of the iPhone 5).

How about other interface bits? There's a button and the screen, how about capacitive edges that can be used for interface sliders or other things? I love capacitive buttons on Android phones (when they had them).

Or let's get crazy, a completely disappearing product all together. Jam the guts into a watch, and a small wireless earpiece, or maybe ear/eyepiece and voice controls and a capacitive touch panel on the watch, don't make it look gaudy like Google Glass, get top eyewear designers to pump out different headpieces (lots of upsale potential there) etc. etc. and top watch designers to design the handpiece and turn computing into ubiquitous wearable fashion driven computing (with sales cycles as fast as the fashion industry -- seasons) and people will buy 4 sets of devices a year instead of one every two years.

> Let's not go for shiny kitsch, let's go for expensive sports car with a matte paint job

The only cars I see with matte paint jobs are car modder's econoboxes, which look pretty kitsch.

https://www.google.com/search?q=matte+black&hl=en&sa...

This confirms it for me. Matte black paint jobs on cars show questionable taste.

> ...I'm not a visual designer...

> How about some variation on the one in the upper right here? http://www.colourbox.com/preview/2584456-712013-exit-beautif....

Yup, the 90's want their design inspiration back

Do you really think if iOS had had different buttons and intents people wouldn't have called it an incremental improvement?

"At a glance can the average user tell the difference between iOS 2 or 3 and 6?"

(A) Probably can't tell because iOS 6 is on all the phones, zing!

(B) If he's trying to cut and paste he can tell. iOS 2 won't let him do it, iOS 3+ will force him to copy the entire body text randomly, iOS 5+ will randomly offer a handful of options that generally do not include the one the user is looking for.

(C) Ok, so it's visually stagnant. I guess I'll agree here. Turns out, there's usually less to disagreements than first glance might indicate.

"any fundamental work on improving the user interaction and look & feel of the thing in 5 years."

There are certainly new gestures and there's voice. There's new functionality in the buttons and from the lock screen. I would not say this is totally accurate.

"I find it unbelievable that there's nothing that could be done better and that iOS was launched with perfect interaction design, fully formed from the heads of the designers, or perfect visual design, reverently propagated to the modern day and on into the future."

I don't see anyone claiming it's perfect but there's a good argument to be made that Good Enough + Consistent > Better. Which is to say that Apple users, who do get updated to the latest patch, might be jarred if Apple constantly yanked the UI here and there for the sake of slight benefits or "keeping the look fresh".

That's the advantage to great design, it doesn't need to change. Every year Android/Windows comes out with a new design that's finally supposed to make it not suck. Go find a 1984 Mac, look into the top right hand corner, whats there?

Agreed, I don't see the need for change, the incremental updates have gotten us to the point where iOS functions very well. If you're looking for innovative UI there are over 600,000 apps, many of them with amazing and novel UIs very well suited to the app's function.

Nothing...? http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm//wp-content/uploads/201...

Though your point is clear. Mac OS X is very clearly reminiscent of this interface.

I think it's a tremendous strength that the design hasn't needed to drastically change in 5 years and stay competitive. A lot of people are still getting their first iDevice. If you google "android home screen"

https://www.google.com/search?q=android+home+screen&qscr...

you'll get a cacaphony of different interfaces. Android may be "converging" on the right design, a potentially better design, but meanwhile people are suffering through all sorts of inconsistencies. For the vast majority of people who want their phones to "just work", Apple's approach is better [design it right, up front, in a way that can be used for years].

The biggest feature would be adding OS X/NeXT services/Android intents: currently it's impossible to have two apps interact without the developers explicitly baking in support. Allowing applications to establish some conventions for services ("Open web page", "View PDF", "Retrieve login information", "Subscribe to feed", "Post to {network}", etc.) would make the massive improvements from the integrated Twitter/Facebook support available for to all apps and services.

This would also be a smart move for Apple as de-privileging Twitter & Facebook would mean that they wouldn't be helping support the lockin for those services – if Google Plus came back from the dead and started eating Facebook's marketshare, Apple would benefit without changing a line of code.

Intents/services and lock screen widgets.

Home screen and notification center widgets don't interest me. But if you could put something like widgets/live tiles/google now-ish space on the lock screen? Particularly with the increased vertical space? That'd be slick.

And intents/services are overdue. Particularly now that they're basically "in" with twitter/Facebook integration. I'm all for having more app store approval scrutiny for third party "services" submissions. But it needs to be in.

while we're asking, it wouldn't hurt to add the "taller"/redesigned task switcher UI that made the rounds recently.

I'd call that all a decent update.

"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." -- Steve Jobs

That's not our job to think about what Apple could do to improve our lives. Personally, I've loved Don't Disturb Me since it came out but it sure wasn't an iOS-exclusive feature. Neither has been turn-by-turn navigation.

I don't want iOS to play the keep-up game. I want it to continue being the industry leader, the game changer, the OS everyone else looks up to.

And surely, you cannot disagree that iOS has kind of lost that status since iOS 4.x.

Text selection mostly still sucks, there isn't any ability for third-party developers to modify the systemic behavior, there isn't any ability to allow different user accounts, as most PC OS's do.

In a world of apps, who gives a rat's ass about whether turn by turn directions are built-in (pretending Apple incorporated them into the OS rather than just branding an app developed in house)?

What matters is the quality of the directions, not that they are marketed with a lower case "i".

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