Pushing iOS
jaymachalani.com
jaymachalani.com
The only thing I definitively agree with is that I hope Apple supports multiple profiles for iPad. As someone that uses both Android and iOS pretty regularly, I don't think widgets add much that the Notification shade and Action Center don't handle capably. I mostly hope that iOS 8 is invisible - add some APIs for Siri and hooks into home automation, improve performance.
Just one data point, but it was "keyboard" by far for me. The iOS keyboard is horrible and very difficult to customize so I took a risk and switched at my last update (and FWIW, I'm finding Android streets ahead in terms of functionality). Digging the larger screen size is something that came later for me but would definitely be another reason not to go back for me now.
For example, iOS7 totally broke the keyboard so that fast touch-typists just can't type on it any more. This doesn't matter on something small like a phone, but on an iPad it is super-frustrating. Apple fixed it somewhat in recent updates but it's still broken in a few basic ways, all having to do with the fact that the person who programmed the new keyboard doesn't know how typing works.
It is confusing enough that a non-power-user probably doesn't have a clear idea why typing sucks now, they just know that letters don't come out with the right capitals any more, sometimes extra spaces show up, and damn that shift key is confusing. etc. It is not so much "Android is better" as it is "iOS is not a nice experience any more".
There are similar things to do with web browsing. Web browsing is supposed to be one of the few things these devices specialize in, but on my iPad Air it is terrible. If I go to a web site with images on it and scroll down, most of the images don't load for a LONG time, leaving me with mainly a blank page. When iOS7 came out the browser crashed all the damn time. Now that is mostly fixed but it still crashes sometimes.
Meanwhile there are all these timing-based gestures that are thrown off by browser performance problems, leading to bad user experiences. For example, I want to scroll down a page, so I press on the screen, drag, and release. Well oops, some piece of JavaScript ran right then or something, causing the browser's timing to get confused (maybe it counts frames and only a couple of frames went by), so instead of a drag it interprets this as a tap, which for some reason causes me to select some garbage on the page that I don't care about. Well now I am in select mode and things get only more confusing from there (especially if more performance hitches are happening). This happens all the time.
When you can't even scroll down a web page reliably, and yet that is one of the main use cases you are selling your product for, you can't claim it is a luxury product. You aren't delivering a luxury experience so you can't charge a premium.
Apple has gotten away with this in the past, in similar situations, though, because of newness and shininess. As Marc Andreesen pointed out recently, for the first few years you could barely even make a call on an iPhone, and when you did it was super-frustrating. But still it caught on. I think this is just because it was so new and exciting and there weren't real competitors yet. Once the bloom is off that rose, in order to be perceived as a premium brand, you have to actually deliver quality. But Apple is not delivering quality with the OS, they are just delivering some kind of skin-deep attempt of an appearance of quality.
I consider iOS7 to be a huge misstep and a giant missed opportunity, much bigger even than Siri or Maps. I am not sure if fixing iOS7 would solve all Apple's problems, but it is where I would start.
However, I don't think the thesis of this article -- lack of UI features -- would be my first step. Because I don't agree with the article that iOS 7 is simple. In reality it's a mess, it just tries to appear simple. So the first step is making it really, actually simple, and make it deliver a solid, quality experience. Then you can think about adding UI features, which I would claim people don't care about as much.
I think Apple's not used to having competition as agile as Google. Maybe their slow-and-steady approach was enough for them to power past Microsoft but much more rapid evolution on the hardware and software front is going to be necessary if they want to beat the entire Android ecosystem. Let's see what they come up with next week.
I do some work with an org that offers a choice among iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry for thousands of company phones.
I find that 'normal' people are barely aware of any difference between iOS and Android. They care about screen size as you note and really practical things like battery life and reception. The only time OS becomes relevant is when someone wants to switch and worries about losing stuff in the transition.
Personally, what locks me into Android is the keyboard. Having used Swype for years now means that I can't even consider iOS until it has an equivalent.
To speculate, what could we get from "screen size?" Maybe they mean number of icons / elements on screen. Maybe they mean larger media viewing. Maybe they mean ease of physical manipulation. Maybe they mean a different DPI point. There are lots of factors that screen size affect, some of them would apply to any device with a larger screen, some of them apply to qualities that differ across mobile operating systems (iOS' handling of resolution, for instance).
My personal wish list:
- customizable url scheme handlers (e.g. set Google Maps the default map app)
- API for communication between apps
- API for Siri
- API for live icons
- User profiles for iPad
- Fingerprint reader for iPad (this plus profiles would be awesome!)
- Biometric API - fingerprint and/or facial features
- split-screen multitaskingReally? Have you checked well written apps and what they can do?
>The Google Chrome browser scrolling is horrific at times with a HUGE delay.
How is that an iOS's "performance problem"? Use Safari. It's not like iOS doesn't offer the best scrolling experience compared to Android/Chrome.
Jailbreakers have had this for a while now with Nitrous, a tweak which unlocks the Nitro engine to all apps.
I'm assuming that the drive to stay as close to the current experience as possible influenced that - there's currently no "free" one-finger gesture/action on the home screen. I don't know how to pull it off, but needing to use two hands seems like it kills off the notion of doing things quickly.
edit: Although it's worth pointing out that while it's a cool party trick, it's not something I'd use day-to-day. Changing the Control Centre to let me keep applets open within it for things like 1Password or composing a message? That would get used every day.
- Weather info. Before heading out for the day I can see instantly if I might need a jacket or umbrella later.
- Tube status. I can see at a glance if there are any problems on any underground lines. If there are, I can click on the problem line to get more detailed information with a single touch.
- Calendar. Shows me my schedule for the day.
- Music. Control playback without having to launch an app.
I also have widgets I tend to only use when I'm travelling, showing currency and timezone information.
> It's just a swipe down or a swipe up.
That's why I prefer a widget (or lockscreen), there's no swiping required at all. As for getting push notifications for the subway... No thanks, I don't want a notification every time some subway line is running a little slow. I only want notifications for events I care about, with few or no false-positives.
Swipe down: the screen is full of today's date, the weather, a note telling me that it would take me about 4 minutes to drive somewhere (why? I'm not going anywhere today? And why is it telling me it'd take 4 minutes to drive to the local Urban Outfitters store? Oh wait that's also a bus stop I walk to a lot, GOOD JOB APPLE), and telling me the next thing up on my calendar. At the very bottom of the screen is an icon and the very top of my calendar.
And this calendar only shows me a couple things for today, because it insists on showing me the hour grid around them. In the future? It just says "It looks busy tomorrow. There are 7 events scheduled."
Back on the Android, I would have seen something like this floating on my home screen the moment I unlocked the thing:
Today: 9:00am refresh con signs 11:30am change patch! 6:30pm Jason's game night 8:59pm Sunset
Saturday: 5:13am Sunrise 9:00am Market day! 3:00pm Yoga 8:00pm Sunset
Sunday: 5:13am Sunrise 5:45pm Intermediate pole
etc, etc, etc. There's my next few days, constantly there for me to glance at and have a chance to think "oh I have this thing coming up, I should prepare for it today". Doesn't tell me how long an event is but that's not a thing I actually care about most of the time.
1. Unlock your phone
2. Press home to go to the homescreen
3. Swipe to the screen that contains the widget
4. Possibly scroll the widget itself
Android itself has several better alternatives for such glanceable information that are quicker to access:
- Google Now / other search plugin
- Lock screen widgets / lock screen "now playing" info
- Lock screen app quick links (available using Play Store lock screens or some vendor software)
- Persistent notifications in the notification bar
- The recent apps menu (to actually go to the app you want!)
Don't get me wrong, I love Android. I've used it for the last 5 years. It's just that I've never understood why people use widgets. They're too clunky to be useful even for the most basic of things.
I guess that's the beauty of Android, you can use the phone whichever way you think is best. This particular feature is not something that Apple should be envious of however. It really isn't universally popular or considered useful on Android. Windows Phone's live tiles are much better, but wouldn't work on Apple home screens either, because you would still have to fiddle about swiping through your home screens.
I use widgets consistently on my phone. My to-do list, calendar, notes, and weather are all shown as widgets to the left and right screens of my primary homescreen. I don't necessarily have these apps running in app history all the time, so it is much easier to do 1 tap on the home button for the home screen followed by a left or right swipe to view the content I'm after.
They also are really useful if the app you have a widget for is slow to load or you have a slower device. Since you can view the partial information faster than loading the entire app, you can avoid the delay in getting information.
For me, it's very similar to the badges on iOS (which is something I miss when I use my Android work phone). I'm often not actively looking for the info, but it's a nice little prompt about it being there.
As for your alternatives
- Google Now is (at least for me) only useful when it's displayed as a widget
- the lock screen is fine for some things but less good for sensitive stuff - and with the fingerprint scanner on the 5S I rarely see my iPhone's lock screen these days
-persistent notifications on the notification bar quickly get cluttered and tell you nothing more than there is a notification of some description for that app
- the recent app menu still involves you going to a separate screen
Clearly they work for you, but also clearly they don't work as well for many others.
Well I don't really think that's a good use. iOS has the music controls on the lock screen
Widgets are a more general solution, and suit the fact that users have different things that they want that kind of quick access to.
Yes, otherwise it takes all 2 secs to do that.
I don't use weather widgets, but "looking outside" is hardly an effective way of seeing if you need an umbrella, especially now in the Spring.
No, I mean it takes all 2 seconds to open the weather app and check.
For weather and calendar, swipe down from the top to show the notification center.
For music control, swipe up from the bottom to show control center.
Tube status... sorry, you'll need to open an app.
I like nearly every other aspect of the iOS experience more than my old Nexus One, but this keeps on bugging me.
Still, I like this block concept... it's a good compromise between widgets & actually starting the app.
Given the way the Android community has picked up on these sorts of things in the past, I wouldn't be too surprised if someone creates a launcher that implements this relatively soon.
Implementation here is , when you swipe up on an app icon it opens the widget related to that app
Also, what's with this made-up title?
>UX/UI & Branding Architect
You're a designer.
Seriously, what does it matter to you how the guy labels himself?
Because everyone is mentioning that's like Android's Widget-Concept, and Android already solved this - that's not the case in my opinion. I think it's too complex for users to know what a "widget" excatly is. This is more the concept of: Show me a little bit more than the app-icon - and that's it. Imho the user would understand the concept immediately and don't have to know what actually a "widget" is, or how to remove it.
The designer here is suggesting that the tile contain specific interactive elements (quick reply, play/pause, next song, etc).
In the iOS Human Interface Guidelines, Apple suggests that your touch targets have a minimum size of 44x44 points. (https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userex...)
If you look at the icon size list at https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userex..., you'll see that iPhone 5 icons are only 60x60 points (divide the pixel sizes by two to get the point size). I imagine that 60x60 is simply too small for a two finger gesture to work well.
Maybe this would work better with a one finger touch and drag gesture where the drag direction dictates how the icon will grow into a widget (but with icons on the top and bottom rows only able to grow in one direction). It would need to be a quick gesture, though, since tap and hold triggers that app reorganization mode of Springboard.
Another thing that's bothering me about it being a two finger gesture is that the entire point of this feature idea is to be able to see things quickly at a glance. I would imagine, then, that in these scenarios most people would be holding their iPhones with one hand and only touching the screen with one thumb. This wouldn't be such a big deal on iPad, but I think it would be on iPhone. That makes me feel more strongly that some kind of one finger gesture may be a better way to do this.
Other people in this thread have pointed out some good points too about discoverability: which apps support the feature? How would the API be designed in a way that's performance and power efficient?
This is definitely fun stuff to think about :)
I don't think it was meant to be used frequently. More comparable to press-and-hold to enter the app removal/dragging state.
I don't think Apple is going to add functionality to the home screen. It's always done one thing, and I imagine UX leads at Apple would probably consider anything else to be overloading its scope.
That said, there is absolutely a good use case for widgets on iOS. The old iOS 5-6 weather widget was great, and the text-adventure version they replaced it with in iOS 7 is an inferior experience. Notification Center is almost certainly the best place for widgets: The iOS 7 calendar widget is a great example of the potential, and I really hope they finally open up the NC widget APIs in iOS 8.
There are two separate concerns here:
1. Notifications. Telling me that things have happened, when they happen. The notification center could (nay, should) excel at this, but currently it's only doing okay. I wish I didn't have to keep micromanaging my preferences to prevent apps from spamming me with useless stuff, but at least it works.
2. Persistent info. Stocks, weather, headlines, deadlines, etc. I don't want this stuff in the notification center. It gets in the way of everything coming at me from concern #1. I want to be able to find this elsewhere, without having to dig down into each app. And I definitely don't want apps trying to tell me persistent info in the form of a notification. I don't need to be notified that it's sunny out, or that something interesting (but not directly related to me, or actionable on my part) happened inside of one of my apps. But having to drill down into each individual app for this info is also a pain.
This is where I love Microsoft's live tiles. The ability to peek inside of an app from the homescreen is awesome (way better than having to add separate widgets, a la Android, each with their own design patterns and set of controls). I'd use Windows Phone for this reason if it had the same app ecosystem as iOS, but of course I wouldn't expect it to. Currently my primary device is running Android, which, for me, is a nice trade-off between app availability and base OS experience. But if iOS were to add that ability to "peek" into any existing app to see what's happening, I'd definitely consider switching back.
"But, if you want more information about an app, you can simply pinch the app icon bigger and it will now become an iOS Block."
I physically tried this and it just feels awkward. The 'pinch to zoom out gesture' on iOS (e.g. maps, photos) generally has your fingertips about 1-2cm apart in my experience. To pinch an app icon seems quite clumsy and difficult for my medium size fingers... if I had big beefy sausage fingers I can imagine it would be quite a challenge!
I really think it's a really great idea.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.actionlaun...
http://developer.blackberry.com/design/bb10/active_frames.ht...
Isn't that basically what Xerox Star did in 1981? http://www.digibarn.com/collections/screenshots/xerox-star-8...
Or -- the horror -- MS Windows 1.0 in 1985: http://fulupik.chez.com/perso4/Images/infor_win101tile2.gif
- the need to install something explicitly (separate from the app)
- the need to name them "widgets" (to the user they're just a fancier icon), which reduces the apparent complexity to the user
- they are completely invisible unless invoked by the user, thus preserving the simplicity iOS
- they have a natural and fixed size that helps preserve the visual aesthetic of the grid layout, without special efforts by the user
...and probably more - that's just off the top of my head.
I don't know if they're a good idea, by the way. But it's not good to just dismiss them as "android widgets".
Not the same concept, but still closer than normal widgets.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.actionlaun...
As widgets, apps provide them, you don't have to install them separately.
- they are completely invisible unless invoked by the user, thus preserving the simplicity iOS
As with widgets. You don't see them, until you start using them.
they have a natural and fixed size that helps preserve the visual aesthetic of the grid layout, without special efforts by the user
Actually, different sizes are nice, as widgets and Windows tiles have shown. Some like their calendar widget to be short, to just show the top 1 or 2 items. Others like their calendar widget to take up a complete screen, so that they can swipe to it.
I think the nice addition here is more how you create/invoke a widget and that it is restricted to one widget per app. But it's not all that different from Android widgets, WP tiles, or Blackberry's widgets.