8 ms·

"iOS is stagnant" iOS only seems stagnant because they don't have to trumpet every year about how they've finally gotten rid of ui lag or completely overhauled

by Steko 14y ago

"iOS is stagnant" iOS only seems stagnant because they don't have to trumpet every year about how they've finally gotten rid of ui lag or completely overhauled the system appearance. These are points in it's favor to most people.

ChrisClark 14y ago
I'd say it is stagnant because when you look at the design, it just feels old. I'm not much of a designer, I can't tell you why, but it just seems dated. Perhaps it is the skeuomorphism, maybe something else, but something is off about it now.
- qq66 14y ago
  It feels old because it hasn't changed in 5 years, but I personally appreciate that. All of the original mechanics make perfect sense, and the new mechanics (such as app folders and multitasking) have been introduced in a way that minimizes interference with the existing look and feel. As someone who uses a lot of music production apps that can't talk to each other, I do wish there was something like a filesystem, but I also want it to be introduced in a way that does not change the basic look and feel of the device. What's amazing is that an original iPhone and iPhone 5 look and feel largely identical for basic uses, even though the latter is a far more capable device. That's a testament to the strength of the original design.
  - angryasian 14y ago
    >All of the original mechanics make perfect sense this is the same thing thats spouted by fans of the iphone. We don't need a smaller ipad 10" is the perfect size. We don't need a bigger phone screen, this fits the perfect size for all hands. All this is said till Apple actually does it.
    - qq66 14y ago
      I'm not saying that there's no room for improvement. Frankly, I want a smaller iPhone, a pressure-sensitive display, and a physical button to take a picture that's always active. What I don't want is for any of these improvements to fundamentally change the way the phone UX works (i.e. moving to a menu system or something). The only "bad" design elements, in my opinion, were notifications and Siri. They fixed notifications but I had to turn Siri off.
  - gurkendoktor 14y ago
    > It feels old because it hasn't changed in 5 years, but I personally appreciate that. And I think Apple is betting on a "conservative" majority that does not want change for the sake of change (I'm certainly part of it) - just observe how similar all the iPhones look, or all the laptops, displays... The only exception I can think of are the cheaper iPods.
    - bluesaunders 14y ago
      And that's because they are cheap enough to buy on impulse, and/or to make an affordable gift for the holiday season that is clearly the hottest and newest available.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
- brudgers 14y ago
  It's more or less Symbian or Palm Pilot with touch. What was groundbreaking in terms of interface was the method of input not the way the OS was designed. It's still just icons and a pointer.
- Steko 14y ago
  I don't see much stagnation: (1) Maps is probably the biggest thing they've done since the original phone's launch; (2) they are moving more and more of the interaction to voice every year; (3) they are moving more and more of the users' data to the cloud every year.
  - chc 14y ago
    It was pretty clear that he was talking about visual design and interaction. None of the things you list here are in that domain. One is a new app, one is a voice UI and one is an Internet-based storage service.
    - Steko 14y ago
      "None of the things you list here are in that domain. One is a new app ..." Since the very sentence I was responding too was about apps ("iOS is stagnant, reviews of recent Apple designed skeuo-heavy apps bemone the lack of functionality") I fail to see how talking about app functionality is some huge leap of logic on my part. "he was talking about visual design and interaction. None of the things you list here are in that domain" How is voice control not about interaction?
      - killahpriest 14y ago
        Perhaps it should be read as "visual design and [visual] interaction."
    - bennyg 14y ago
      You think voice integration isn't interaction? That's literally a form of interaction with the device that was not there in iOS 1.
      - chc 14y ago
        I feel pretty sure there was a "visual" in there you're ignoring.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  I see a lot of this type of sentiment here on HN, and I think it is because we are people who build technology and therefore study technology obsessively. Anything that stays the same for 5 years will feel ancient. Most people, though, just want to use technology to accomplish other things. For them, radical interface changes reduce rather than improve value.
hellmans 14y ago
Your out of place defensive reply (I assume you work on the Apple team?) notwithstanding, iOS is absolutely stagnant. They're in the unenviable position of being lauded and popular because of the simplicity of design, but that strangleholds them into a limited ability to change and improve.
bane 14y ago
I suppose, iOS hit a higher quality product much earlier than Android. But to me it feels like an evolutionary dead-end. Sure they aren't fixing any problems, but they sure aren't really adding anything to make my life better. Or another evolutionary analogy: crocodiles have more or less been around forever -- they don't have to trumpet about solving calorie intake problems, or overheating in the summer, but it took mammals to invent fire and get to the moon. Saying more or less "iOS is fine" is also saying "we're not interested in pushing the envelope anymore".
- Steko 14y ago
  It'd help me if you gave examples what you think iOS could be doing that's it not. The big ticket feature that iOS didn't have 60 days ago was built in turn by turn maps. Since they added that with 6.0 I guess I'm wondering what else you're pining for? A weather widget? NFC? Fjords?
  - bane 14y ago
    I'm principally talking about look and feel. iOS looks and operates great, let's get that out of the way. But it's essentially the same core design that was laid out in 2007 + Androidish notifications + multitasking-lite. At a glance can the average user tell the difference between iOS 2 or 3 and 6? I acknowledge that that's not necessarily an entirely worthy goal in and of itself, but keeping a design focused product fresh does have its merits. Here's iOS 1 and 5 side by side http://pocketnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ios1ios5.png http://pocketnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ios1ios5.png Other than the obvious lack of a wallpaper I'm not really sure that there's been any fundamental work on improving the user interaction and look & feel of the thing in 5 years. I find it unbelievable that there's nothing that could be done better and that iOS was launched with perfect interaction design, fully formed from the heads of the designers, or perfect visual design, reverently propagated to the modern day and on into the future. Is this really the penultimate in volume slider design? There's no more work to be done here? http://www.uiparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/clean-ios-volume-slider-ui-design.jpg http://www.uiparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/clean-ios... I think this recent shakeup is Apple signaling that it's time to evolve again and that excites me much more than the last 2 or 3 product launches have. If anybody can put out a new way of pushing electrons around and making it "just work" it's going to be Apple and I want to see what they come up with.
twism 14y ago
Obviously you haven't spent any significant amount of time using Google Now.
zachinglis 14y ago
iOS has barely changed in UI since it's inception. That's not a good thing. No one designs the perfect design the fist time, nor the 100th time, nor ever. The goals and targets change and the design evolves. There has been no evolvement. Sure, there's more precise releases than it's competitors, but that doesn't negate the fact that Windows has a more functional-looking (whether or not it is, is an entirely different matter) phone. The Notification centre was a step in the right direction, but people are wanting data quicker more and more, and the notificiations aren't great for every app. After all, a big reason people cite for going for Android is customisation. When the iPhone was released it was the absolute leader in mobile iOS among other things. Now it's a solid competer but it lacks the originality it once had.
- alxp 14y ago
  The original MacOS design wasn't 'perfect' but it was very, very good. And Apple messed with it at their peril. They gave themselves a similar bar with iOS 1.0 - they know a lot about interaction design, and how to make a UI feel smooth and intuitive, and they aren't going to scrap all of those good decisions for the sake of looking new. By contrast Microsoft have some interesting design ideas but they abandon them in the very next major version in favour of trying something else, which is jarring for users and doesn't inspire trust.
  - zachinglis 14y ago
    I'm not saying scrap, I'm saying iterate. (Wrote a wee bit about it here: http://zachinglis.com/2012/why-the-apple-reshuffle-could-prove-cooks-worth/ http://zachinglis.com/2012/why-the-apple-reshuffle-could-pro...)
- alxp 14y ago
  The original MacOS design wasn't 'perfect' but it was very, very good. And Apple messed with it at their peril. They gave themselves a similar bar with iOS 1.0 - they know a lot about interaction design, and how to make a UI feel smooth and intuitive, and they aren't going to scrap all of those good decisions for the sake of looking new. By contrast Microsoft have some interesting design ideas but they abandon them in the very next major version in favour of trying something else, which is jarring for users and doesn't inspire trust.
Zev 14y ago
iOS only seems stagnant because they don't have to trumpet every year about how they've finally gotten rid of ui lag.. You might not notice it, but, there is an eighth-of-a-second-ish delay between when you tap on most buttons and when the action occurs. An obvious (to me) example is when you tap on the back button on a navigation controller, and it takes a split second before anything happens.. It isn't much, but it is consistent across the OS, and it drives me crazy.
- alxp 14y ago
  I believe this is deliberate - giving a user a sense of what they did which results in the next action. This is especially important if the button you've pressed takes you to another screen.
- josephlord 14y ago
  Is that from touch down or touch up? Most controls respond on the release because holding down or dragging is a different action in many (maybe most) cases. I'm not perceiving much lag between touch up and animation start on the back button of the UINavigationController.
Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
iOS is stagnant or mobile OSs are stagnant? Android was listing screen capture as a new feature not long ago which hardly suggests a breakneck pace of change across the board. Windows phone tiles are interesting but they don't feel game changing. Is this an iOS thing or wider than that? Genuine question because if it was iOS alone then surely it would be eating Android's dust right now and that doesn't feel like it's the case, it feels like they're pretty much on a par. (Just say I'm not wild about the word stagnant given that this is a market that has gone from nought to sixty in about the same time as it takes MS to get a version of Windows out, but it does feel like that pace has somewhat plateaued in the last 12 months or so).
- johsoe 14y ago
  iOS IS stagnant. Windows Phone 8 has a totally different and new paradigm going with merging start screen and "notifications bar" with the live tiles. Rooms with its "all sharing feature". Kids stuff. Lockscreen apps. All of these are a totally new approach to the mobile platform. I feel the "new Microsoft" is really innovating(i hate that word) atm.
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    The Windows Phone UI is the one thing in my mind that actually is different, though I have a little skepticism about it as I'm not convinced that it's solving a problem many people actually have (certainly not one I or most people I know have) and it doesn't seem to be something consumers are queuing up to get their hands on. Meaningful innovation surely has to be something for which there is a demand? Kids corner I would love on my iPhone but it's a more polished version of what I can do with restrictions so I'm not really sold on it being that revolutionary.

by Steko 14y ago

ChrisClark 14y ago

I'd say it is stagnant because when you look at the design, it just feels old. I'm not much of a designer, I can't tell you why, but it just seems dated. Perhaps it is the skeuomorphism, maybe something else, but something is off about it now.

qq66 14y ago
It feels old because it hasn't changed in 5 years, but I personally appreciate that. All of the original mechanics make perfect sense, and the new mechanics (such as app folders and multitasking) have been introduced in a way that minimizes interference with the existing look and feel. As someone who uses a lot of music production apps that can't talk to each other, I do wish there was something like a filesystem, but I also want it to be introduced in a way that does not change the basic look and feel of the device. What's amazing is that an original iPhone and iPhone 5 look and feel largely identical for basic uses, even though the latter is a far more capable device. That's a testament to the strength of the original design.
- angryasian 14y ago
  >All of the original mechanics make perfect sense this is the same thing thats spouted by fans of the iphone. We don't need a smaller ipad 10" is the perfect size. We don't need a bigger phone screen, this fits the perfect size for all hands. All this is said till Apple actually does it.
  - qq66 14y ago
    I'm not saying that there's no room for improvement. Frankly, I want a smaller iPhone, a pressure-sensitive display, and a physical button to take a picture that's always active. What I don't want is for any of these improvements to fundamentally change the way the phone UX works (i.e. moving to a menu system or something). The only "bad" design elements, in my opinion, were notifications and Siri. They fixed notifications but I had to turn Siri off.
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  > It feels old because it hasn't changed in 5 years, but I personally appreciate that. And I think Apple is betting on a "conservative" majority that does not want change for the sake of change (I'm certainly part of it) - just observe how similar all the iPhones look, or all the laptops, displays... The only exception I can think of are the cheaper iPods.
  - bluesaunders 14y ago
    And that's because they are cheap enough to buy on impulse, and/or to make an affordable gift for the holiday season that is clearly the hottest and newest available.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
brudgers 14y ago
It's more or less Symbian or Palm Pilot with touch. What was groundbreaking in terms of interface was the method of input not the way the OS was designed. It's still just icons and a pointer.
Steko 14y ago
I don't see much stagnation: (1) Maps is probably the biggest thing they've done since the original phone's launch; (2) they are moving more and more of the interaction to voice every year; (3) they are moving more and more of the users' data to the cloud every year.
- chc 14y ago
  It was pretty clear that he was talking about visual design and interaction. None of the things you list here are in that domain. One is a new app, one is a voice UI and one is an Internet-based storage service.
  - Steko 14y ago
    "None of the things you list here are in that domain. One is a new app ..." Since the very sentence I was responding too was about apps ("iOS is stagnant, reviews of recent Apple designed skeuo-heavy apps bemone the lack of functionality") I fail to see how talking about app functionality is some huge leap of logic on my part. "he was talking about visual design and interaction. None of the things you list here are in that domain" How is voice control not about interaction?
    - killahpriest 14y ago
      Perhaps it should be read as "visual design and [visual] interaction."
  - bennyg 14y ago
    You think voice integration isn't interaction? That's literally a form of interaction with the device that was not there in iOS 1.
    - chc 14y ago
      I feel pretty sure there was a "visual" in there you're ignoring.
snowwrestler 14y ago
I see a lot of this type of sentiment here on HN, and I think it is because we are people who build technology and therefore study technology obsessively. Anything that stays the same for 5 years will feel ancient. Most people, though, just want to use technology to accomplish other things. For them, radical interface changes reduce rather than improve value.

hellmans 14y ago

Your out of place defensive reply (I assume you work on the Apple team?) notwithstanding, iOS is absolutely stagnant. They're in the unenviable position of being lauded and popular because of the simplicity of design, but that strangleholds them into a limited ability to change and improve.

bane 14y ago

I suppose, iOS hit a higher quality product much earlier than Android. But to me it feels like an evolutionary dead-end. Sure they aren't fixing any problems, but they sure aren't really adding anything to make my life better. Or another evolutionary analogy: crocodiles have more or less been around forever -- they don't have to trumpet about solving calorie intake problems, or overheating in the summer, but it took mammals to invent fire and get to the moon. Saying more or less "iOS is fine" is also saying "we're not interested in pushing the envelope anymore".

Steko 14y ago
It'd help me if you gave examples what you think iOS could be doing that's it not. The big ticket feature that iOS didn't have 60 days ago was built in turn by turn maps. Since they added that with 6.0 I guess I'm wondering what else you're pining for? A weather widget? NFC? Fjords?
- bane 14y ago
  I'm principally talking about look and feel. iOS looks and operates great, let's get that out of the way. But it's essentially the same core design that was laid out in 2007 + Androidish notifications + multitasking-lite. At a glance can the average user tell the difference between iOS 2 or 3 and 6? I acknowledge that that's not necessarily an entirely worthy goal in and of itself, but keeping a design focused product fresh does have its merits. Here's iOS 1 and 5 side by side http://pocketnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ios1ios5.png http://pocketnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ios1ios5.png Other than the obvious lack of a wallpaper I'm not really sure that there's been any fundamental work on improving the user interaction and look & feel of the thing in 5 years. I find it unbelievable that there's nothing that could be done better and that iOS was launched with perfect interaction design, fully formed from the heads of the designers, or perfect visual design, reverently propagated to the modern day and on into the future. Is this really the penultimate in volume slider design? There's no more work to be done here? http://www.uiparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/clean-ios-volume-slider-ui-design.jpg http://www.uiparade.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/clean-ios... I think this recent shakeup is Apple signaling that it's time to evolve again and that excites me much more than the last 2 or 3 product launches have. If anybody can put out a new way of pushing electrons around and making it "just work" it's going to be Apple and I want to see what they come up with.

twism 14y ago

Obviously you haven't spent any significant amount of time using Google Now.

zachinglis 14y ago

iOS has barely changed in UI since it's inception. That's not a good thing. No one designs the perfect design the fist time, nor the 100th time, nor ever. The goals and targets change and the design evolves. There has been no evolvement. Sure, there's more precise releases than it's competitors, but that doesn't negate the fact that Windows has a more functional-looking (whether or not it is, is an entirely different matter) phone. The Notification centre was a step in the right direction, but people are wanting data quicker more and more, and the notificiations aren't great for every app. After all, a big reason people cite for going for Android is customisation. When the iPhone was released it was the absolute leader in mobile iOS among other things. Now it's a solid competer but it lacks the originality it once had.

alxp 14y ago
The original MacOS design wasn't 'perfect' but it was very, very good. And Apple messed with it at their peril. They gave themselves a similar bar with iOS 1.0 - they know a lot about interaction design, and how to make a UI feel smooth and intuitive, and they aren't going to scrap all of those good decisions for the sake of looking new. By contrast Microsoft have some interesting design ideas but they abandon them in the very next major version in favour of trying something else, which is jarring for users and doesn't inspire trust.
- zachinglis 14y ago
  I'm not saying scrap, I'm saying iterate. (Wrote a wee bit about it here: http://zachinglis.com/2012/why-the-apple-reshuffle-could-prove-cooks-worth/ http://zachinglis.com/2012/why-the-apple-reshuffle-could-pro...)
alxp 14y ago
The original MacOS design wasn't 'perfect' but it was very, very good. And Apple messed with it at their peril. They gave themselves a similar bar with iOS 1.0 - they know a lot about interaction design, and how to make a UI feel smooth and intuitive, and they aren't going to scrap all of those good decisions for the sake of looking new. By contrast Microsoft have some interesting design ideas but they abandon them in the very next major version in favour of trying something else, which is jarring for users and doesn't inspire trust.

Zev 14y ago

iOS only seems stagnant because they don't have to trumpet every year about how they've finally gotten rid of ui lag.. You might not notice it, but, there is an eighth-of-a-second-ish delay between when you tap on most buttons and when the action occurs. An obvious (to me) example is when you tap on the back button on a navigation controller, and it takes a split second before anything happens.. It isn't much, but it is consistent across the OS, and it drives me crazy.

alxp 14y ago
I believe this is deliberate - giving a user a sense of what they did which results in the next action. This is especially important if the button you've pressed takes you to another screen.
josephlord 14y ago
Is that from touch down or touch up? Most controls respond on the release because holding down or dragging is a different action in many (maybe most) cases. I'm not perceiving much lag between touch up and animation start on the back button of the UINavigationController.

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago

iOS is stagnant or mobile OSs are stagnant? Android was listing screen capture as a new feature not long ago which hardly suggests a breakneck pace of change across the board. Windows phone tiles are interesting but they don't feel game changing. Is this an iOS thing or wider than that? Genuine question because if it was iOS alone then surely it would be eating Android's dust right now and that doesn't feel like it's the case, it feels like they're pretty much on a par. (Just say I'm not wild about the word stagnant given that this is a market that has gone from nought to sixty in about the same time as it takes MS to get a version of Windows out, but it does feel like that pace has somewhat plateaued in the last 12 months or so).

johsoe 14y ago
iOS IS stagnant. Windows Phone 8 has a totally different and new paradigm going with merging start screen and "notifications bar" with the live tiles. Rooms with its "all sharing feature". Kids stuff. Lockscreen apps. All of these are a totally new approach to the mobile platform. I feel the "new Microsoft" is really innovating(i hate that word) atm.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  The Windows Phone UI is the one thing in my mind that actually is different, though I have a little skepticism about it as I'm not convinced that it's solving a problem many people actually have (certainly not one I or most people I know have) and it doesn't seem to be something consumers are queuing up to get their hands on. Meaningful innovation surely has to be something for which there is a demand? Kids corner I would love on my iPhone but it's a more polished version of what I can do with restrictions so I'm not really sold on it being that revolutionary.