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Why iOS 7 Is Making Some Users Feel 'Sick'
dryriver sends this story from The Guardian:
"The introduction of fake zooms, parallax, sliding and other changes in Apple's new iPhone and iPad software has a very real effect on people with vestibular disorders. ... It makes frequent use of zoom and slide animations; the home screen boasts parallax, with icons apparently floating above subtly animating wallpaper. And it's making people sick. Triggers and symptoms vary, but TidePool mobile app developer Jenni Leder's experience is not uncommon. A self-professed power-user, she frequently switches apps; but on iOS 7, this has caused headaches and feelings associated with motion sickness. 'I now have to close my eyes or cover the screen during transitions, which is ridiculous,' she told The Guardian, adding that there's nowhere to hide: 'It's not apps that affect me, but accessing them. Tap a folder and the view zooms in. Tap an app and it's like flying through the icon and landing in that app's micro world — and I'm getting dizzy on the journey there.' Reactions to screen-based systems — especially those utilizing 3D effects — aren't new. Cynthia Ryan, executive director of the Vestibular Disorders Association, says 3D effects can cause 'intense nausea, dizziness and vertigo,' sometimes from general vision problems, but also from visual-vestibular conflict. She added symptoms 'manifest more severely if a viewer already has a disorder of the vestibular system.'"
I am not an iOS user, but i know in Android these effects are very easily toggleable by the user.
It's now been replaced, with a brand new phone of the same configuration at no cost to myself. That is brilliant customer service, Apple. Cheers.
... wait, what?
Not a cheap stab at all. Now we just need to ban all first-person shooters to achieve complete political correctness.
What Would Jobs Have Said?
Love him or hate him, heads would have rolled.
Is there really no way to disable the animations? Could you customize the wallpaper to be a single colour so there is no visible movement?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
...and now I feel sick too!
You're looking at it wrong.
What Would Jobs Have Said?
"They're looking at it wrong." "Apple products just aren't for everybody." etc.
This is the guy who wanted all media apps to look like the current trend (at the time) brushed metal of stereo gear, but I thought skeuomorphism was dead under new Apple?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Apple needs to add two sliders to the Settings:
Disable Animations OFF - ON
Layout Style Classic iOS vs iOS7 Fisher Price addition
Why is Apple copying the look and feel of MS WinPhones ?
I decided to at least wait to upgrade to iOS7, after the pre-launch pictures made it look like the cum rag after a clown orgy. Perhaps if they fix some things in the next point release, including letting people go back to iOS6 style look-and-feel settings, then I'll upgrade. Not until.
I've found I have to not upgrade any apps, either, as all of them are moving to the flat style icons. Meanwhile, I can try to figure out how to move all the stuff I have in iTunes to Android equivalents, because that's looking like the way to go for the future.
Blame it on Jobs all you want, but if he said it, Apple users would have been parroting the same thing within hours.
I'm pretty sure this is a violation of Microsoft's patent on Software as a Sickness.
YES you can turn them off in the settings in iOS7. By the way the next version of Android will have a screen lock wallpaper of hypnotoad. You can turn it off but strangely you feel compelled not to. Everyone would be talking about this but hypnotoad tells them not to.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
TidePool mobile app developer Jenni Leder's experience is not uncommon. A self-professed power-user...
She's a mobile app developer. Why would she give up a phone whose users comprise the bulk of her earnings. Android users don't buy as many apps. I would say that makes you the "dumbass".
Where she falls down is first, didn't she have the developer versions to test, and second, why didn't she report it back then.
It's when I look at the price tags for Apple products compared to similarly specced non-Apple hardward that I begin to feel sick knowing how gullible the American public has become.
Johnny Ive may be a genius at engineering airflow through amazingly small cases and whatnot but he doesn't know dick about interfaces apparently...
Bring back Scott Forestall!
This is not new. Apple does not seem to have any competent GUI people anymore, just "designers". And of course, competent testing would have found that problem. I expect in a while we will be hearing that thy did know this but management did not took it seriously. Like the the one time where Apple management thought thy knew more about antenna design that the guys that do it for a living.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Lucille Austero was an iPhone user?
I just can't be bothered.
You're not holding it right!
Not to be insensitive to people with vestibular disorders, but why is this the first I'm hearing about this? OSes from Windows to OSX to Linux to Android, etc. etc., have employed various zooming/sliding/wobbling/parallax animations for years now. I've only played with iOS 7 that smallest bit, but is it really so different from everything else that's it's causing a sudden wave of heretofore unseen motion sickness?
YES you can turn them off in the settings in iOS7. By the way the next version of Android will have a screen lock wallpaper of hypnotoad. You can turn it off but strangely you feel compelled not to. Everyone would be talking about this but hypnotoad tells them not to.
hypnotoad told me to say that.
Eric Zeman | September 28, 2013 09:06 AM
I've spent a week using the Apple iPhone 5s as my primary device. In general, it is a solid effort on Apple's part, but it is not without its faults. Here are some of the strong points and weak points I've observed over the last seven days.
iOS 7 is a bit buggy on the 5s. I've installed iOS 7 on an iPhone 5, an iPad 3, and an iPad Mini. It runs best on the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini. On the iPhone 5s, iOS 7 is prone to app crashes. Third-party app crashes aren't too awful, but when native apps such as the Settings Menu and Safari crash, you know something's not right.
The hardware is fine, if unexciting. The 5s is a solid little device. Apple designed it with care and everything about it exudes quality and class. The display is great, even if it is smaller than I'd like, and the small form factor makes it easy to carry around and use.
It's not the best voice phone. I've been testing an AT&T model of the iPhone 5s and am not impressed with its phone calls. I heard lots of interference and the earpiece speaker doesn't get quite loud enough. The speakerphone produces plenty of volume, but it also amplifies the interference. The iPhone is a better voice phone.
The battery hasn't given me any trouble. The first few days were a bit iffy, but that's true of most smartphones. Once the battery cycled through a few charges, it settled into a good rhythm. I routinely got a full day out of it, despite heavy use. It's worth noting, though, that the battery cannot be removed or replaced, so you're stuck with what's sealed in the iPhone 5s.
The camera is great. The new software, combined with the improved sensor, go a long way toward making the iPhone 5s one of the best camera phones available. The camera app is simpler to use and includes more features, such as burst mode and slow-motion video capture, and the results are on par with today's best devices. The improved gallery app is far more powerful when it comes to organizing photos, and some of the editing tools are a welcome addition.
iOS 7 is still inflexible. Apple's simple smartphone/tablet user interface may win usability awards, but it is nowhere near as flexible or customizable as Android or even Windows Phone. The inability to control exactly where apps are positioned is frustrating, and the lack of resizable home screen widgets and apps leaves the OS looking too homogenous. I'd love to see some truly dynamic content on the home screen.
Control Center is convenient. Apple's new dashboard for controlling some of the iPhone 5s's features is a big help. It makes simple tasks such as turning on and off the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth radios a breeze. I also like the fact that it includes controls for the music player as well as apps like the flashlight, calculator, timer, and camera. This is definitely a time saver, considering that it took several steps to reach many of these controls in previous versions of iOS.
There's plenty to like about the 5s, but at the end of the day it offers only a slightly different experience than last year's iPhone 5. The Touch ID fingerprint sensor is the biggest difference. The camera and processor improvements in the 5s, though very real, aren't all that much better than the iPhone 5. We can only hope that Apple will make significant changes in next year's iPhone 6.
Link: http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/handheld/apple-iphone-5s-my-first-week/240161890
To stop idiots from looking only at their iphones for hours while walking and even driving.
Sorry, your body has been found to be incompatible with this Apple product, please upgrade your body before continuing.
Ah--they want everyone to feel nauseous like Steve Jobs was.
When are they going to patent this effect?
Awesome, all we need for those that text and drive.
I really don't know why so many geeks are holding out for Apple... Apple is all about pretentiousness, they only care about how stuff looks. Should we really care about those stupid animations that only slow down everything you do? That consume more battery while achieving only this WOW effect when you first use the device? The only reason for Apple to use some "new" technology is to wow people into their shitty walled iGarden. They hired the CEO from Yves Saint Laurent for gods sake...
As usual on /., many commenters above failed to either read the article or actually try it themselves.
You can turn off the background paralax effect. But, really, that is quite subtle and not that objectionable. I turned it off, simply because I figured it eats CPU, GPU or both unnecessarily.
The new animations are gratuitious - they don't seem to serve any useful purpose. They are just plain silly-looking. Home-page icons now fly-in from all different angles. Drag a page, and now you are no longer dragging a skewmorphic piece of paper, but a skewmorphic sheet of silly-putty - drag at the right side, and the page warps, your finger "stretches" the right-hand side of the page. This kind of stuff was all the rage on Linux desktops - about 5 years ago. By now, everybody still running Linux has gotten tired of it and turned that nonsense off. The "bounce" now has a "warp" effect as part of it as well - the page deforms when it bounces.
It's like playing a bad ho-hum video game where they amped-up the effects because of lack of compelling content.
No, you can't disable these effects.
I'd imagine that if there is a medical issue with this, it is worse on iPad, because it fills more of your field of view when you are using it.
Well, yes you can. You can downgrade to a device that Apple has deemed incapable of rendering these effects. I think you need, say, an iPhone 4.
Apple seems to have become recently brain-dead when it comes to practical aspects of UI. And I hate to say it, but it must be due to Ivy, because they were quite good about it before. He is really, really good at designing appealing surfaces and finishes and packaging. UIs, not so much.
Another example of the non-functionaly of the new UI - buttons. It seems now that many buttons have absolute NO feedback that you have pressed them. I imagine the concept here is that the button is meant to perform some action, and the action itself is the confirmation that the button was pressed.
(Of course, a button is a skewmorphism, and we don't want skewmorphisms, right? So, I guess I shouldn't say "button" but "that word that's a bit bigger and fatter than the other words, and is off by iteself, that if you touch it something happens"...)
Somebody should have telegraphed that message to the poor developers who were given the impossible task to insure that the "action" happens soon enough for the user to connect their touching something on the screen with the "action" - regardless of the amount of work the action might take, and, oh, regardless of any other background processing that might be going-on in the device. Well, actually, I suppose somebody did, and those developers probably now feel like shit for having failed, even thought they could not have possibly suceeded.
I stopped beta testing for Apple when the firmware bricked my phone for a month and a half in which neither Apple nor the carrier wanted to hear anything from me: beta means at your own risk. It was the best way to learn about Android.
Poor Apple! Don't you realize all these GPU-intensive effects are the bulk of the issue that slows down iOS7 on the older phones? Add a toggle to turn of the slide/zoom and suddenly those poor, cripplingly-slow 4G handsets appear to survive the new OS transfer rather well. Leading to 4G users who won't trade up their model because they think it's slow?
Bitches thought they could make money slowing down oldphones with silly untoggleable effects and incentivizing users of a perfectly good phone to upgrade it. Proof in the pudding is yanking the rollback option - who the fuck doesn't allow a downgrade?
Sweet, sweet chocolately crunch legacy karma.
First world problems.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I don't have a vestibular disorder, but Apple products have always made me sick. Or is it annoyed? Yeah, I think that's the word I am looking for.
Many visually impaired individuals can't use anything but a terminal off a refreshable braille display... Are we to ban all GUIs now?
Those "features" are nothing more than visual bling. This suggests Apple is running out of great ideas and resorting to fancy instead of functional? I can name a whole list of UI features that would be awesome and seem innovative, while actually doing useful stuff easier.
Parallax? That's so Angry Biirds.
...but it's not because of the 3d effects.
Been running iOS since early beta and didn't notice the parallax effect for "still" backgrounds until.... This article pointed it out. Now it's impossible to miss.
IPhones use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation (PWM) to dim its display cycling on and off rapidly above the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold not only is this annoying and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asthenopia inducing to some it is wholly unnecessary.
What is happening with the animations at certain brightness levels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_cycleof the PWM creates a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance
with screen movements shadowed by the moving appendages. You can see this effect by turning down brightness on your monitor and waving your finger rapidly in front of the screen. If you see distinct fingers rather than continuous blur through the motion you too are being made http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasicknessby the effect of http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cut_corners. The solution is to jack up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminance to 100% until your phones battery melts into a pool of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithiumlithium ions...no seriously just turn off the stupid animation feature. So much whining can be avoided with so few seconds of googling. Just take my advice and stay off the crack formerly known as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia.
Yah, what is really funny is that when a Linux desktop does wobbly windows nobody gets ill, but when Apple does it, there is no end of hypochondriacs coming out of the closet.
When Linux did wobbly windows, everyone complained and now they're gone. What's your point? Did your iDildo get stuck too far up your ass?
whats a...
ZvZvZvZvZvZvZvZvZvZvZvZvZvZvZvZv...
...or just don't update to ios7. I mean, no one forced them to. Now that they have, they're stuck. Oh well.
Because trial lawyers can see down into the deepest pockets on Wall Street.
Maybe it was all the other B.S. "U/X" crap that you cannot change...like the emaciated font for the lock screen time/date
The reason is "U/X"...or more specifically, to justify all the money they budgeted for 'user experience designers' in the design process.
Everyone knows the user is the most important part of the equation and that 'good design' is good. After that, its like debating the definition of 'feminism' at a gun show. There is absolutely no guiding *science-based* ontology to digital design. There are attempts, sure (looking at you Ben Shneiderman) but it is far too abstract to formalize.
The trend now is to have a "U/X" division sort of grafted into existing development pipelines of large companies. Like a sort added appendage. They spend millions hiring these grads with tech degrees but no actual design work experience. The result is essentially a bunch of psychobabble that describes common design decisions that are handled somewhere else in the process. It's a trainwreck. Here's why:
"U/X" is just a continuation of the industry's tendency to recycle concepts with new nomenclature every time anti-user design becomes industry standard.
They spend the money so they have to justify its existence. It comes from the project leaders, who have to justify every budget item to the big big bosses (accountants). Hence these animation features and such are all by default turned 'on' and not easily disabled.
Putting the user first is easy. Microsoft (and a host of others) **know** what the user wants. That's not the problem. The problem is their business model! They have to bottleneck features (reduce usability) in order to profit somehow. Facebook is the same with user data. Their IPO lists 'user privacy initiatives' as a threat to revenue.
Don't get me started on what passes for 'usability research' in Silicon Valley. People talk like "A/B testing" is some sort of hot new tech thing...it's not...in the research science world the types of "A/B" tests companies like Apple and Microsoft do to test their products on everyday users is mind numbingly reductive and small scale.
It's all a product of bad management and flimsy academic science.
The *real* usability innovation is in crafting business models that do not require bottlenecking features to coerce the user.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Microsoft Zune & Windows Phone had this parallax feature for years. It was on the first Zune HD back in 2009.
Why didn't we ever hear about people getting sick on their Zunes and Windows Phones?
Oh, wait, nevermind.
Kriston
I would be sick too if I spent $600 on a phone.
The "IOS 7 is making me sick" campaign is a brilliant example of social advertising engineering by a competitor. I began seeing the "sick" posts in various Apple related forums about a week ago and noticed them immediately because of their unusual (imho) wording. Now it's gone to /. and the Guardian apparently. Bravo M$oft or Samsung (or whomever) ! Someone in marketing should get a raise for this.
In the meantime, no Guardian reporter (or anyone else it appears) appears to question why IOS 7 is apparently responsible for a rash of nausea yet we have no epidemic of people vomiting while playing video games.
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
Thankfully, I don't have any of those disorders, but I did experience disorientation for a about 3 days or so, getting used to the UI motion. I still don't care for it, even when you reduce it in the preferences, it's still comes across as flashy, like an annoyance. I'm actually not a big fan of the interface redesign. Overall, my experience of this phone (5S) is not like going from a 3GS to 4S. It was neat, but not exciting. Apple can (and should) do better.
Judging from the reaction to the UI, it seems like they make a lot of assumptions about customers and what they want.
Just switch the fancy effects off, dummy. Oh, wait, it's Apple, nevermind. And that kids is why some of us stick with Linux, no matter how quirky and buggy can sometimes interface (mis)behave.
Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
As much as I find Apple a disagreeable company, you really should have known better than to install a beta-quality OS on your phone. I don't think Google would have personally done any different in this instance, though it may have been easier to reverse yourself.
The new photo viewer's insanely bright white background will make you snowblind, too. Apple needs to give you an option to go back to the black background...!!!
What Would Jobs Have Said?
"They're looking at it wrong." "Apple products just aren't for everybody." etc.
Heh. He would have gone on to explain that Apple makes premium products for premium people, and if you are susceptible to motion sickness, then perhaps you are not worthy of owning the Apple brand... :-)
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Because since Linux is open, you can switch to thousands of different UIs or disable the animations altogether. Apple's philosophy of "we know what users want better than they do" continually proves to be a terrible burden on users due to lack of flexibility.
Whats next. Loud voices make people cry.
This could become worse than the Dancing Plague of 1518 or the June Bug epidemic of 1962!
Worse, this shows every sign of being a hysterical contagion, capable of being transmitted over the Internet and infecting it's victims through contact with their computers, tablets, and smartphones!
The good news is that I know of a possible cure, and if I can reach my Kickstarter goal of $500,000, I can begin work on a treatment for the unfortunate victims...
Nope, you can only switch off the parallax. Other "great" effect stays with you...
Form over function - its what selling Gold Plated Turds is all about.
When Im trying to get something done with my computer I dont need stupid distraction from the excremental bells and whistle these companies think they need to produce. But then in reality these things are largely just toys to most of the users.
Apple devices have always made me feel nauseous, even before being switched on.
The simplest solution is to simply avoid Apple products. You can argue about a lack of competition but I'm submitting that the lack of an Apple device is an improvement on ownership of such a device.
With me so that I may catch your limit to while you pray.
Who are these people? Are they trust fund babies? Do they not work for a living? Do they not have classes?
Put down the phone and do your work and/or course work. It might be that your body is trying to tell you something. You are an addict and you need to go outside and interact with regular people instead of wasting your life on Facebook and/or twitter. Seriously, get a life.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Why didn't we ever hear about people getting sick on their Zunes and Windows Phones?
Because it was a commonly accepted feature of Microsoft products?
It's been known for some time that visual effects can and will induce epileptic seizures in some individuals and once this update causes one, there will be a lawsuit against Apple. Oh well, Apple does design some decent hardware but in this case, the idiots need to be forced to use the new effects rapidly until they puke their guts out or die from a Gran Mal seizure,
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Clementine, a Gnome music player has the hypnotoad sound, you can set it as background sound. Strange enough, the other ambient sound is that of rain, and an album picture replacement with kittens.
Not a joke, look it up.
People who don't know they have the disorder can now get checked-out. It's a feature, not a bug !
You can turn all that stuff off, right ?
Plugging in an infernal Apple-approved cable into an infernal PC and dealing with iTunes in order to update or access a file made me sick a long time ago.
Yes, intending to be insensitive.. I'v seen this article playing out in major news media and all i can read it as is "not everyone likes the iphone"
IT'S A GODDAMNED SMARTPHONE.. NOT OBAMACARE!!!! YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO A HAPPY IOS EXPERIENCE.
Shut the fuck up, buy an android device and save your energy to complain about relevant things like illiteracy, religious oppression and domestic violence.
I heared that the guy who bought a Zune was getting sick by the interface. He never complained because, well... Would you make sure everybody knew you paid money for a Zune?
Personally, I like the parallax and the other zoomy things.... but I don't have a phone that will do iOS7.... looks nice though.
We had a term for it: Doom Induced Motion Sickness, an example of what doctors call simulator sickness.