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Ars Technica Reviews iOS 7
Ars Technica has posted a pretty thorough review of iOS 7, which brings a few radical changes to at least the visual design of the system. From the article: "In one sense, iOS 7 changes nearly everything about iOS. A couple of wallpapers have made the jump, but otherwise you'd be hard-pressed to find anything in iOS 7 that looks quite like it did in iOS 6. In another sense, iOS 7 is the latest in a string of incremental updates. It adds a few new features and changes some existing ones, but this doesn't radically alter the way that you use the OS from day to day."
Breaking with the design trajectory of the last few releases of most of Apple's software, the oft maligned skeumorphism of the interface has been considerably toned down.
Is there a staggered release for ios7? I'm hoping this update fixes some of the stupid behavior of Siri on my work phone, but don't see the update as being available yet.
My problem with my wife's iPhone is that everything about the app has to be on-screen - no "menu" or "back" buttons like android. Clutters up the screen needlessly in some apps - and getting to the settings for the app means leaving the app, something I really dislike. Apparently I'm not the only one who dislikes that - my wife, who should fit the ideal iPhone use profile, dislikes it too - to the extent that she prefers to use my phone and doesn't want an iPhone anymore. Has Apple added extra buttons for a menu and a back button? That would be the most useful UI design change.
"iOS 7 changes nearly everything about iOS..." "...but this doesn't radically alter the way that you use the OS from day to day."
mind blown
I RTFA'ed. The short version seems to be:
1) Icons and dialogs are "flat" (similar to Windows 7, etc.)
2) "iOS 7’s animations are the kind that will prompt an 'ooh, neat' upon first use and then a slowly increasing sense of frustration as you begin noticing that trivial tasks take just a bit longer than they used to."
3) There's more content on the screen when browsing because common toolbars are shorter or disappear when not in use
4) Safari's new tabs view is cool because it displays content on multiple tabs at once (think looking down from a 3d perspective on the old tab views)
1) Multi page stories are really annoying.
2) I guess I never read Ars a lot before but there is so little technical detail in the article I don't really understand how Ars can consider itself a technical oriented website. Seems more like a huff post story.
3) Skip to page 6 if you want to see anything about performance/benchmarks. Most of the other 5 pages are thoughts on UI changes.
Blocking on a number is pretty pointless, unless you actually want to block a specific person. If you're wanting to block a spam SMS message, then you'll be out of luck since they're sent from throw away numbers (well, at least in the UK they are).
Summation 2
Not sure I like the new look, but I'll have to wait and see it on my phone/tablet before I pass judgment. Looks very clean and very flat and very.. Different.
I guess people were bitching about the look of iOS getting dated and crufty and full of unnecessary "skewmorphisims" or whatever. Flat shading, flat shapes, and pastel colors are what's in now. I guess we have Microsoft to thank for that, which is pretty funny. Everyone loves the look and feel and UI of metro, but hates the lack of apps... ...So Microsoft has the new UI hotness and a lack of apps.. Apple now playing catchup on the look/feel but having all the apps? Fucking surreal.
Of course some people are going to bitch that apple is copying everyone. These are the same people that would have bitched and blasted Apple for stagnating if the 7's look/feel remained the same.
Did not see iBeacon noted in the excellent review & the implications for new apps and hardware accessories. I'll ave to read it several times.
That is a recent change. Most android devices (except maybe the very new) have menu keys. My old Motorola did, as did the HTC and the Samsung I currently own.
Bull. Home puts the app into the background. Back goes back to previous screen of the app, unless there isn't one - in which case it exits the app.
Most of the reviews I've read just parrot what Apple said which is sad.
Been using it for a couple months. The control panel is great. They killed the calendar, much less usable. I don't use siri so I can't comment there. Being able to have more than 9 icons in a folder is nice.
The rest is fluff. They exchanged textures for a bunch of superfluous animation and transparency. It looks a lot different obviously. No easier or harder to use though. I'm not a big fan of the new look but was tired of the old look. Other than getting used to a different look, I didn't notice a big improvement or drop off in the other apps.
In the end, if you already have an iphone, I would recommend it for the control panel.
The only reason skeumorphism is maligned is because it's become unfashionable, not because of any inherent flaw in the aesthetic. Mind you, I've a big fan of Microsoft's flat look, but I also think Apple's former approach was distinctive and quite good. All it needed was a refresh, akin to what Google has done with their aesthetic. Instead, Apple goes and dumps the design resulting in a design that looks like Android with a bit of Windows Phone mixed in. Fortunately for Apple, unlike any other company on Earth, they're being lavished with praise instead of maligned for coming up with such a derivative design.
I get the impression that Apple well aware of how derivative the OS feels, hence the low contrast aesthetic and heavy use of blur filters. The problem is that there isn't enough contrast throughout; at times it feels like trying to use the phone through a frosted screen protector. This isn't helped by the fact that Apple's designers generally seem a too impressed with themselves. So they approached the design with the mindset that too much of a good thing is a great thing. And they're so intent on your savoring their design that they actually hinder usability, as evidenced by the slower animations.
There are plenty of things that iOS has never done right. The argument Apple fans inevitably use to defend iOS is that it "just works". But all that means is that they're used to Apple's particular set of quirks and are unwilling to learning anything new. With Windows Phone, personal preferences aside, at least it's evident that Microsoft placed clarity of the UI and user experience as high priorities. They dropped the ball in a few aspects, the lack of a traditional notifications list and quick-access control center being two examples. But otherwise the experience is excellent. It seems Apple's only goal was to make iOS 7 look relevant by following prevailing design trends which, ironically, Microsoft helped establish.
If the future of smartphones is at the software level, then Apple is screwed because that's where they're furthest behind. The only thing they've still got going for them is the App Store and even there their days are numbered.
The actual usability improvements in iOS 7 are mostly good. The task switcher copied from Palm is nice and the quick settings copied from Android is also a welcome change. But man, I just can't get past the way the whole thing looks. It looks like someone took iOS, Windows Phone 8 and Tandy's Deskmate (an old DOS GUI RadioShack's brand of PCs shipped with) and threw them into a blender.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
The interface looks more or less the same as I remember on my wife's iphone 3G years ago.
My Nexus (the only Andriod phone worth owning, imo) has no menu keys.
In the post-WWII era, there was an architectural trend called Brutalism. This school of thought held that ornamentation was unnecessary and that buildings were "machines for living in". They should therefore be made out of raw, unadorned concrete. These buildings are still around, especially in large cities, and most people hate them. Turns out that functionality isn't enough; people actually want things to look nice.
It appears that UI designers are in the process of making the same mistakes that architects did decades ago. The new crusade against "skeuomorphism" is, in practice, a campaign for ugly square boxes with low-color icons. It's basically a return to the graphics of the early 1990s, except this time there isn't the excuse of technical limitations to justify it. I had hoped that this trend would stop with Windows 8, but for some inexplicable reason, Apple seems to have decided to degrade their far superior touch OS to a similar degree. The sublime beauty of Aero and iOS 6 gives way to the stark ugliness of Metro and iOS 7. For God's sake, why?
From a interface stand point I find the Windows Phone to provide the best experience. The new iOS does nothing but pretty up and old way of using a mobile device. I know I'm going to get the boot for mentioning an MS product on /. but if you try one you will agree with me that it is a very good experience. Like the Android phone it has a back button.
FYI, I have owned all 3 phones. More recently I have purchased an S3 but use a Ativ day to day. Best phone I owned.
Apple just put lipstick on the pig and expect everyone to embrace iOS 7 as some significant leap forward.
While I am sure there are some efficiency improvements in iOS 7 UI and features, overall people should be keenly aware that not much has really changed under the hood. I mean turning on 64bit when compiling iOS 7 is not innovative, neither is a 64bit CPU. Apple is pulling the wool over everyone's eyes and making it seem like iOS 7 and iPhone 5s are significant upgrades, when in reality they are barely incremental updates. Apple needs this deception if they want to improve their stock performance.
Basically iOS 7 represents the first divergence of the legacy left by Steve Jobs. Once he left the planet, the internal rifts between skeuomorphism vs UI simplicity shifted weight over to Jony Ives, who simply ripped all the leather, glass, metal and felt out of iOS free from any repercussions because Tim Cook is a spineless half-wit who is barely aware of anything Apple does these days except what he is told to regurgitate in a keynote.
Look, Apple is even aware of all this. They spent exactly 5 minutes talking about iOS 7 at the iPhone release. No real weight to its release. They spent the next 20 minutes talking about the beautiful colors if plastic (again, the ONLY thing new about iPhone 5c), and then raved about how fast and 64 bitty their new CPU is and how they brought their camera into the 21st century by focusing on quality rather than simply "having a camera" on a phone like their competition has already realized. Finally while the iTouch is cool, without support for User Profiles iTouch is just a useless contrivance for people too-stupid to remember a 4 digit passcode. There is no point "knowing" who is using the iDevice when there is no simply no iOS feature that is aware of who is using the device.
So, while everyone is tripping over to glow about all the "new" things Apple released last week, investors are pulling out of Apple because they can see past the lipstick and realize Apple hasn't innovated since Jobs passed away.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The small minority of designers with an axe to grind about skeuomorphic interfaces does not deserve a shout-out. Interface design is just generally bad on consumer products, trading long-term productivity for short-term accessability. These designers who eschew skeuomorphic design rarely are proposing anything of real value aside from asthetic alterations; they don't like putting spiral binder holes on the interface, waah. If they were proposing real long-term productivity improvements and had decent arguments about how skeuomorphic details are impeding this, then I would be happy to listen, but comparing these designs vs. the sorts of designs I see the anti-skeumorphic community proposing and it just seems like they don't enjoy the asthetic.
New? Pre-4.0 is 2 years ago now.
That was one hell of an exhaustive review of the new UI. Kudos to Ars Technica. And thanks to the /. article submitter.
How slow will it be on an iPhone 4? Same as previous or will it slow things down even more?
I find the new interface enough of a change that it will alienate a lot of people used to the "old way". People don't like change and there's enough different in ios 7 that I can see people leaving in droves. It will be interesting to see what happens. Eye candy has always ruled userspace and Apple has effectively killed off most of it's candy in lieu of something resembling a monochromatic cousin of Metro.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
That's... not that long ago. You must be young.
And... it's in the wild! hit software update under general settings to grab it. Mine was a 750MB download.
For those with bad eyes, is the new OS easier to read, harder, or about the same? Several people in my family are now at the "hold phone at arm's length to read it" age, and initial screenshots of thin grey text on white have me worried.
Bumping up the font size only helps some, and it reduces how much text you can see on a screen at once. Also, it's not a system-wide setting -- you can make notes and texts bigger but not the names of icons on the home screens or the words in alerts.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
you have two phones? who are you, Walter White?
Welcome to reality, where *should* usually means *doesn't*
No it doesn't. It by default calls Activity.finish(). This does NOT close the app, does not clear it from memory, and saved variables and state still persist.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
And it wasn't commonly sold until 6 months to a year after that. Nor did most phone manufacturers change to the new style immediately with 4.0. Samsung still hasn't done so (hey and I don't totally blame them, I like the menu button). Plus 2.3 is still 30%+ of all phones. So yeah, 4.0 is still pretty new to most people.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
So it's even worse than pressing back at the first screen of an app exits the app. It's that is sometimes exits the app, and sometimes not. Depending on the app, and if the app has some other activities.
My Nexus (the only Andriod phone worth owning, imo) has no menu keys.
capacitive and onscreen(for saving money while building the device) buttons are still buttons functionally.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
And yet we still have Fandroids complaining that iOS doesn't have the buttons that were on old Androids and have been deprecated in new Androids.
It shows the mindlessness of those complaining about everything that is dissimilar with iOS.
No Nexus device is acceptable. Google insists on users relying on the cloud. No sd slot means very scant local storage.
This isn't helped by the fact that Apple's designers generally seem a too impressed with themselves. So they approached the design with the mindset that too much of a good thing is a great thing.
Which is EXACTLY the problem with the iOS 6 implementation of skeuo. They had a good thing and then kept adding more and more and more skeuomorphic touches until it was so over the top that it became intrusive and distracting. The little torn edge graphic at the top of Notepad was one well-known example and replacing the lines on the Keynote icon with legible text was another (albeit one that Apple fans lauded instead).
It's the kind of "know when to say no" situation that Jobs used to claim he was so essential for (reality, of course, being somewhat divergent from his claims).
iOS 7 tells me that Apple no longer has someone with the strength to oppose Ives and thereby create the tension necessary to force the best ideas ideas into the light.
Next thing we will see will be NeXTStep style black/white icons with a philosophy of "the content in the app is the stuff with colors, everything else is black/white/grey to support it."
Uhh, didn't Ive already suck all the color out of in-app icons starting with iPhoto 9.1 and extending further with Mountain Lion?
The superintendent of schools who testified in the Scopes Monkey Trial?
I don't remember anything about him having or needing two phones.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Skeuomorphism isn't entirely gone when words like "Trash" are used by iOS7 for deleting digital objects,
"Radio" is the name of a music service that isn't a radio, etc.
Where the hell is my app launcher motherfuckers?
The superintendent of schools who testified in the Scopes Monkey Trial?
I don't remember anything about him having or needing two phones.
Walter white is Heisenberg!
Will it crash Exchange servers like 6.1 did?
I know a lot of companies are telling employees to *not* upgrade to 7 until testing has been done. Of course, since security is so lax with iOS there's nothing that companies can do to actually enforce that policy. Unlike other real mobile OS's out there.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
iOS7, what a disappointment. After working with it for a few hours, I can't wait to dump my phone.
The HTC I owned in the past. Was meant to be past tense but lazy typing made it come out wrong.