Apple’s Jony Ive Pushing iOS Interface Team For ‘Flat’ Design
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
"Some suggested that in Apple’s next mobile operating system, Ive is pushing a more “flat design” that is starker and simpler, according to developers who have spoken to Apple employees but didn’t have further details. Overall, they expect any changes to be pretty conservative."
I wouldn't exactly say that switching to a completely flat design as implied in the headline is a 'conservative' change.
It's quite obvious that they are unlikely to go down the overly skeuomorphic route as seen in the Podcast app, so this is a fairly 'safe' rumor to spread. But of course, it incites the usual skeuomorphic vs flat arguments with the added bonus of accusations of 'copying' the Metro style.
There are many misconceptions in regards to categorizing flat vs skeuomorphic design, here is a good article that explains the differences pretty well.
The worm has already turned - the reel-to-reel tape deck is gone from the podcast app, replaced with a simpler cover art + buttons view.
and I too sort of miss it, now the app looks lifeless
I for one will miss the current iOS design. I'm 1 year into Android and I'm still way faster on iOS. There is a clear distinction between what is interaction vs. what is not and my eye instantly maps out the interactive elements on the screen.
This is incorrect, and cannot be so for technical reasons. Even the Android OS team agrees on that.
Perhaps you had the "new toy" effect?
Given the way older iOS devices are often sluggish on newer OS releases, it seems entirely possible that the animations on the switched-from device were slower and less smooth than the animations on the switched-to device.
Android 4.1 and 4.2, codenamed "Jelly Bean", have been released since that time, with a "Project Butter" specifically aiming at GUI smoothness.
I haven't had a chance to use anything newer than 4.0, myself, so I'm merely pointing this out. It could be the same for all I know.
What I was going for here is that even though they didn't CREATE the movement of flat UI design, they most certainly helped its most recent resurgence in the "collective mind" by placing it back on the map with their Metro interface (which I think is actually pretty sweet yet still bears the marks of the older OS UI designs of the XP/Vista/7 era).
And I somehow feel that there's a difference in treatment between Microsoft and Apple (case in point is Microsoft brilliant technology for on-the-fly translations in video conferences which blew my mind). Just to be clear about my intentions with this here comment, I dislike Windows as an OS, switched to Linux about 10 years ago and I am currently and happily running OS X, this is not fanboy-ism.
The IM button with my old email address magically taking me to Facebook was one thing, still no freaking clue why it took me to Facebook. And then I couldn't go "Back", because there is no "Back". I tried the in-app back button - no, that was a huge mistake. So I double-tapped the home key and choose Phone or Contacts or whatever it is... and guess what? It was a completely different contact. What the hell? How am I supposed to get back to where I just was?
Android Police has a great writeup on Android design weirdness with a section titled 'The Back Button - Let's Just Rename It "Shuffle" '
http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/02/04/stock-android-isnt-p...
Contact app -> app an email address -> Gmail Compose window -BACK-> Contact app on the contact you were just on.
It takes you backward, it is what makes intents and app interaction work. I can understand why its confusing to an Apple user because there is no equivalent functionality in iOS.
Here, pretend there is no back button, yay! Android works like iOS and I'd go freaking insane. It sure as hell beats what happened to me in iOS tonight, who on Earth finds that usable? Every time one app invokes another I'm expected to go back to the homescreen and drill back down into the original app? Just shoot me.
And there's no way to tell if you're at the first "point" of the current application(in which case it will switch you to the previous one), or if it will go back to another place within the app.
And the Android OS doesn't determine what the back button does. Individual applications do. So you're dealing with an OS control button that's extremely context sensitive and application specific. You don't know what the button's going to do until you use it in any app.
I mean, come on, someone give me an example of going app->app and the back button not getting you back to where you came from.
It's not Android's fault but it does frustrate me that different apps treat the hard button differently. FWIW I would rather have it this way than the way Apple handles it.
That's not really true. The vast majority of iOS apps with nested pages will have breadcrumb navigation at the top, with a big button either saying "Back" or telling you exactly where you will be going back to.
When you launch from one app into another, that's a different matter. I agree that can be annoying/confusing. But no more annoying/confusing than I've found with Android, where I've had some apps go back to the calling app and others going back up their internal chain (to what would normally be the parent screen of the one that you've landed on).
Apple has been known to get a lot of things wrong, sometimes really important things, but never anything along these lines. I expect to be blown away.
It will probably be closer to Google's newer designs: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id585027354?mt=8.
Android exasperates the problem by occasionally having interactive elements which look exactly identical to non-interactive elements. In "Settings>About>Phone Identity" I see 6 cells in a table. None of them look interactive. I would be 83% correct. One of them is. What is its behaviour? Tap to find out! Tapping "Phone name" results in a dialog with keyboard entry.
Also, in some menus the cells have a switch on the right side. Tapping the switch of course toggles it. But for some of them, tapping the cell that contains the switch will toggle the switch and for others, there's an entirely other context hidden behind that cell! Tapping the cell brings you to another screen, instead of toggling the switch. How are these discoverable? This is insane.
There's sparks of brilliance in Metro, but it's too goddamn flat. It's not obvious what parts of the UI can be clicked and manipulated.
Apple is also hailed as genius for "inventing the tablet" even though Microsoft tried to make tablets happen for a decade before the iPad. It's just an example of execution having more impact than conceptualization.
I just looked at the People app. I don't find anything confusing in it at all. Virtually everything in there is tapable. I didn't see a single thing in there that I thought someone would be confused about (at least with respect to the UI -- it's a bit confusing as to what content gets streamed in, but that has nothing to do with Metro).
The iPad has more in common with the Newton, which came years before the Tablet PC.
Tablet PCs, while great (I liked them anyway, especially with OneNote) might have been called a tablet, but it had little in common with the tablet concepts as presented in the iPad. Tablet PCs didn't even get capacitive touch until after iOS devices came out. They were wholly stylus-based until then -- no pinches or swipes.
That's not true, I own a HP Tx2 which was released before the iPad and it has a capacitive touch screen it works great and before it there was the dell XT2 too.
I'm not saying Apple is either but come on, dude.
Note how the wet paint mixes up on canvas.
More on mixing colors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
This app is really the best skeuomorphism out there.
The rest of the UI is an abject travesty.
I would be happy to see flat design, but in increments only. And maybe it is time for Apple to leave "best for beginners" ideology and care a bit about advanced users. Give us a little freedom, let me change my default apps, let Siri do more things and small things like that.
Then there s the amount of direct manipulation in apps. Viewpagers are nice, but there isn't a lot of drag-drop, especially on tablets where it provides feedback and trains muscle memory. Audio ques, haptic feedback, animation, etc. are all dimensions in which apps can expand interactivity where the visual interface, on handsets, is tiny.
Skeuomorphism that is just pictures of things is obviously dissatisfying, but so is a flat UI that doesn't go beyond simple touch.
Really, it's apple, they've peaked already. Show me the new cool thing.
Please don't read this as a suggestion apple is dead, it's anything but dead, in the same way Microsoft is.
That is just conventional wisdom. Who said they have "peaked already"?
Three objections:
1) People would have said the same thing pre iPhone ("oh, they have peaked with the iPod"), and pre-iPad. And they indeed said it.
2) This iPad thing isn't even 2 years old. Yes, you read that correctly. It was introduced LESS than 2 years ago (actually closing to 2 years any day now, it was on late march 2010). Since then they have also established hi-dpi displays for phones, tablets and laptops, and of course Air-style ultraportables.
3) All the "new cool things" I've seen from third party companies all these years have been ho-hum, me-too stuff (Surface, etc) or vaporware (Google Glasses). It's like, besides Apple, nobody introduces anything that is both successful AND interesting to the mass markets anymore.
Google, for example, had it's moments with Search and Gmail. Since then, what exactly have they put out that's interesting AND has caught on with people? Android: successful but not interesting. Glasses: interesting but not successful (or even "a product"). Etc.
? ;)
This isn't new. OSX has many different apps that still reflect trends and practices of the era in which they were made.
It's about functionality being consistent, and for the most part it is. Certainly more so than Android. Whether that's something you care about or not is up to you.
For example, using a desktop analogy, I'd rather not see the layout of my first page of code. I would like to know the filetype (icon is great for this often), and some other metadata so I can compare it with similar files.