Yes I'm getting surly in my old age.
The worse thing would be if people blindly said things like "iOS7 is just not intuitive" and went on to drink their PBR and evangelize about Phonebloks - instead, these are real examples of why iOS7 could be better.
At the very least, this thread is instructive for learning designers. I know as a younger programmer and designer, when someone said that "JavaScript has the weirdest quirks", it was useless unless someone showed me the quirks. Along came Douglas Crockford's Good Parts, which, while critical of the bad parts, was very instructive. I think this can function in similar ways.
It's not just "Fail" culture rearing its stupid head - the tone is far from embarrassing to Apple, and instead is generally descriptive of legitimate design failures.
[1] z-index, text overlap, mixed states, etc. These are not questionable design choices. They're bugs. And lumping them in only detracts from the site and the many legit design gripes (problems of focus, alignment, contrast, usability, etc.)
I understand what you're saying, and perhaps the name of the Tumblr should change to "Issues with iOS7", but that sounds pretty boring to me. Instead, we can all agree that sloppy/bad decision-making, sloppy QA practices, etcetera can be learned from, and that there is value in identifying (and avoiding) these mistakes both in the works of others and in our own work.
Perhaps they made it past QA/testing because what is an obvious bug in a screenshot isn't necessarily obvious to generate or replicate.
I haven't seen any of those bugs in the time I've spent in iOS7.
This is fail culture masquerading as design critique, and it isn't even doing that well.
Critique that doesn't actually tell what's wrong ... isn't.
Let's talk about the z-index issue with the AppStore icon. How is this reproduced? I have never seen that. How do I know it's not shopped?
All it says is "z-index". Not useful. Not really a critique to me, it's just too terse.
I disagree that critique must inherently describe the problem. Sometimes, the problem is fairly self descriptive, especially with what this blog provides, which is obvious issues that most of the blog's audience will immediately understand as "sloppy" - that is, I shouldn't have to explain why the z-index issue is sloppy to justify my criticism, but if you want a bug report, I can explain how I got there.
Where it counts Apple does not typically exhibit this behaviour, as evidenced by both new iPhones.
My point was that controversies like these design hiccups, the shape of the case, etc. are not new to Apple.
In some ways the design issues are significantly less severe since they can be corrected without new hardware.
https://mobile.twitter.com/nerdtalker/status/380217872380739...
Again, this is not technically bad, but if you flaunt having a "staggering attention to detail" this is a sort of slap in the face of credibility.
Having them design a larger hole to encompass the "iPhone" logo (even while still half-covering the babble below) would have, instead, sent a very clear "we cared" message to users.
"hon" also is an informal diminutive for "honey".
I don't care what fanboys say or do online, on any side. I'm here to build good software. If someone has some constructive criticism, let me know.
That's kind of the interesting thing we're seeing here that doesn't fit your analogy: most of the people complaining this time around are the iOS people about iOS.
Google HAS produced a UI as bad as this. Actually worse. The Android UI, up until 4 was amateur hour. And still is not up there yet.
It's just held in much less scrutiny compared to Apple, because nobody expects much better.
https://www.google.com/search?q=chapter+and+verse&oq=chapter...
Nope.
https://www.google.com/search?q=free%20verse ?
Nope.
Something just random, that I didn't think would have anything interesting?
https://www.google.com/search?q=seventeen+verse
Nope. What search terms replace "verse" with "vs" for you? Or do you google comparisons constantly?
Or are you just a troll?
Seems Google does this for things that are likely comparisons (e.g. oranges and tangerines), which seems reasonable.
Wait what? When did that happen? When did Google get "superior engineering"? For search, web etc, perhaps. But as far as iOS vs Android is concerned that was never the case.
For starters, Apple design and engineered the iPhone first. Google's Android FIRST came out a whole year later. Early Android prototypes, shown by Google just before the iPhone was announced had half-size screens and physical keyboards, just like the rest of the smartphones of the day.
Since then Apple has consistenly beat Google on hardware features, from the retina display (with much better color rendition to boot) to camera innovations, the motion co-processor, a working fingerprint sensor (for a change), and 64 bit ARM (which means far more than "being able to see more memory which isn't even installed") etc. Consistently better battery life.
Well, maybe it's not a fair comparison, because Google is not a hardware engineering company. They had to buy Motorola, which wasn't the best in the business itself, anyway. But the above are still true for Samsung offerings too.
On the industrial engineering side, Apple's designs, machining, fit and polish is unsurpassed on the Android side. Including materials used.
In the software side it's the same story. The iOS Cocoa API is leaps and bounds ahead of the Android API. It was never plagued with issues with scroll lag and display latency (and also audio latency, which is why 90% of Audio/MIDI apps are for iOS). Doesn't have a nightmarish GC experience to tend to for more involved apps. More fit and polish overall. Heck, Android even gets 80%+ of all the mobile malware around.
The major points for Android devices were not better engineering per se, but stuff like bigger screens, different configurations etc. And extra features that got marginal use, like face unlock and near field communication, stuff that Apple could have if that's how they rolled.
Some good stuff Android had first was because Apple went conservative to implement them when battery life better permitted them (like background apps -- Android just unleashed them and the hell with it, Apple trying to get the juice, and hence experience, right first).
There's one genuine thing Android had going for it, and that's the Intents system in my opinion. The "quick settings change panel" was also another good one. I don't think we can go much further.
Agree with your general points but the Moto X also has a pair of interesting co-processors: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/the-iphone-5s-the-mot...
Personally, I don't think Apple's getting anywhere enough credit for their in-house processor design at the moment. If that's not engineering talent I don't know what is. Just look at the Anandtech review for proof of that:
You sir/mam are a fanboy of the worst kind.
For the record, I feel IOS 7 lost its way. Jobsy would have shot it to pieces and buried it before it saw the light of day.
The HTC G1 was also one of the early prototypes shown off. Android definitely came later, but they were already working on a large, capacitive touch phone before the iPhone came out.
> Since then Apple has consistenly beat Google on hardware features, from the retina display
Uh, no, so very much no. Apple was sooo late to the high density party. Android was shipping high density, high resolution phones a year before Apple did. Apple did leapfrog on the density front with retina, but they were definitely, unquestionably playing catch-up on this front, not leading the way.
> camera innovations, the motion co-processor, a working fingerprint sensor (for a change)
All of this was done by other companies first, and in some cases better.
> The iOS Cocoa API is leaps and bounds ahead of the Android API.
This is such a stupid statement. Both APIs have their advantages and disadvantages.
> The major points for Android devices were not better engineering per se, but stuff like bigger screens, different configurations etc.
Which was enabled due to superior engineering in some respects. True density independence, flexible layouts everywhere, architecture-neutral designs, etc...
And now it is clear that you don't know a shit abouit what your talking
By the way, Apple also invented the wheel and the sliced bread
Looking at Google Map, Google Search. Those "defining" application of Google, in addition of incredible engineering they redefined what a map and search engine should even look like, so design. Similarly, the iPhone, iMac, iPod were as much about engineering and than design.
In reality, Apple is defined by making money on hardware and Google on cloud software. It is a quirk that they got to clash, because they very much complemented each other.
Google get some slack with Android because they do not sell phones and the vast majority of users do not use Android UI anyway. On the hardware side, Android world provides hundreds of models, there is at least 10 flagship model at any single time. Each get its own amount of nitpicking but eventually all get lost in the noise of other Android news (announcements, prototype, announcement of prototype, benchmark war, "megahertz" war of the day).
Android 4.0+ has fantastic design, in my opinion.
I very much prefer the UI of my Jelly Bean Nexus 7 to this thing they call iOS 7.
And before anyone says I don't like change -- the new UI does make iOS<=6 look very dated, but the odd icon proportions, color scheme and unbalanced use of fonts (sometimes the font is just too light, sometimes the mix just feels.. weird) don't appeal to me at all.
What I hate is when Apple apologists say "you just have to get used to" the new look. I'm already used to the new look, but I still don't like it.
That's kind of ironic given that the Android blogs and _some_ comments on forums (including hacker news) are all "The UI is Android ripoff" (while the Windows Phone camp is "The UI is a Windows Phone ripoff")
And this new skin at times burns my eyes, especially some of the nauseating color choices.
Thank goodness I don't use Game Center. The colours for the bubbles make me want to literally throw up -- I don't know if other people are like that, but certain colours have that effect on me.
Are these possibly from an earlier beta ?
If you run your phone with the display off, say from 21% battery down to 11%, then it will cross the 20% reporting threshold. The next time that you unlock the phone and activate the display, you will get the notification.
It's not inconsistent; nor is it just being "optimistic" -- it may be poorly worded, but it consistently displays that same message every time you unlock the phone after the battery drains to 20%.
If the person who took that screenshot had waited another ten minutes, then the battery would probably have reached 10%, and the 10% notification would have been shown instead.
The Apple community isn't concerned about a lack of Jobs, it's a portion of the non-Apple, Tech community that likes to shout this one out.
Crap, really?
We already have plenty of people ready to call out crap. Half the discussions on this site devolve into someone arguing about perceived flaws in something.
What we actually need is people pushing up the level of discourse. A stream of pictures and pithy sarcasm isn't useful until someone else comes along and responds to it. The world needs more thoughtful analysis and advancement, we probably have enough tumblrs full of snarky images.
There are, however, some valid reasons to upgrade in spite of iOS 7's drawbacks (don't get me started on how the new lock screen keypad makes it harder for me to unlock my phone with just my thumb).
* Call blocking has "finally" (gruber's favorite line lately) been implemented properly -- if you are one of those people who are increasingly getting more telemarketer calls on your cell number, this is a huge deal.
* Safari runs faster on iOS7 than iOS6. 90% of what I do is browsing, so this can be a tradeoff that is well worth making.