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Two things. First, I think it's pretty universally agreed that Apple's trend toward skeuomporphism is bad. But that doesn't mean that Apple hasn't created a con

Two things. First, I think it's pretty universally agreed that Apple's trend toward skeuomporphism is bad. But that doesn't mean that Apple hasn't created a consistent set of UI standards for iOS. Both because of culture and because of the built-in toolkit, UI elements among apps on iOS are very standard. This is especially true of Apple-built apps, which is why the blog post detailing Google's inconsistencies is so strange to me. Secondly, Apple does in fact still publish Human Interface Guidelines, and while they're not followed to the degree that they were pre-OS X, they are still taken seriously by most developers and designers of Mac software. http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/Intro/Intro.html http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserEx...

bane 15y ago
* Apple does in fact still publish Human Interface Guidelines, and while they're not followed to the degree that they were pre-OS X* Right, which is the problem IMHO. Even Apple can't muster up enough will to follow them these days with their own apps. Are the apps generally good looking on their own? Most of them are, there's a few "what were they thinking" moments. The problem though is that even Apple isn't following the HIG these days and that spells doom and gloom for anybody who wishes to hold them up as the high water mark for design houses to follow. Pre-OS X it was a very solid design language. Pretty much everything looked like everything else, and it all looked pretty good. You really had to work hard to make an ugly piece of software. Both because of culture and because of the built-in toolkit And you are also right with this, having a built-in toolkit, with all sorts of good looking, consistent, well-behaved interface elements is the key here. Android gives you layout control (great for different screen sizes/resolution) but doesn't seem to provide anywhere near the level of toolkitting needed, while iOS takes up the lessons learned in the pre-OS X days and provides an awesome toolkit. Then Apple manages to ignore the whole thing and try to make everything look like something I threw away 15 years ago because computing devices were better.

bane 15y ago

* Apple does in fact still publish Human Interface Guidelines, and while they're not followed to the degree that they were pre-OS X* Right, which is the problem IMHO. Even Apple can't muster up enough will to follow them these days with their own apps. Are the apps generally good looking on their own? Most of them are, there's a few "what were they thinking" moments. The problem though is that even Apple isn't following the HIG these days and that spells doom and gloom for anybody who wishes to hold them up as the high water mark for design houses to follow. Pre-OS X it was a very solid design language. Pretty much everything looked like everything else, and it all looked pretty good. You really had to work hard to make an ugly piece of software. Both because of culture and because of the built-in toolkit And you are also right with this, having a built-in toolkit, with all sorts of good looking, consistent, well-behaved interface elements is the key here. Android gives you layout control (great for different screen sizes/resolution) but doesn't seem to provide anywhere near the level of toolkitting needed, while iOS takes up the lessons learned in the pre-OS X days and provides an awesome toolkit. Then Apple manages to ignore the whole thing and try to make everything look like something I threw away 15 years ago because computing devices were better.