5 ms·

The Latest Apple Scuttlebutt

39 points by mactitan 14y ago

george88b 14y ago
Apple hasn't had a significant iOS UI change in too long. I know people who have left the iPhone just for that reason. About time.
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. I know some people will always look for something new, but just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s better. Every major version of Windows looks completely different, while OS X receives UI tweaks in smaller increments. I do think it would be good to simplify the look of some apps, like Find Friends and Game Center on iPhone, and Calendar and Contacts on iPad. I believe the recent redesign of the Podcasts app[1] shows what we should expect from iOS 7: less textures, less color, dark gradients – but nothing that could be described as ‘flat design’. [1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/03/hands-on-apples-podcasts-app-loses-reel-animation-gains-playlists/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/03/hands-on-apples-podcast...
  - FireBeyond 14y ago
    "Every major version of Windows looks completely different" Except for XP to Vista... Except for Vista to 7... 7 to 8... I'll somewhat grant you, but a lot less so after you hit the desktop.
    - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      XP and Vista look completely different. Not only was Aero introduced in Vista, the taskbar and Start menu were redesigned. Vista and 7 look very different. The UI was cleaned up a lot, the taskbar was redesigned again, Live Thumbnails and multitouch support were added. Let's compare that to OS X: most people won't be able to tell Mountain Lion (released 8 months a go) from Leopard (released in 2007), just by looking at the desktop. Here are two screenshots. One is Mountain Lion, the other is Leopard. See if you can tell which one is which. http://i.imgur.com/VDVPvV2.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VDVPvV2.jpg http://i.imgur.com/0fG7xNu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/0fG7xNu.jpg
      - rkudeshi 14y ago
        Wow, I didn't realize how little the basic interface has changed. I mean, I know there's been no radical changes, but I still didn't expect it to take me nearly as long as it did to tell the difference between a 1-year-old and 6-year-old OS. Amazing how much they've improved "under-the-hood" while keeping the basic interface the same. PS. If you can't tell the difference between the two, look at the dock - the only way I could figure it out is spotting the new/changed app icons (Launchpad, iTunes, etc).
      - FireBeyond 14y ago
        It'd be a lot easier if there was any real UI on the screen at all in your examples. Of course "just looking at the desktop" is not going to provide much hint. Not sure what relevance multitouch has to the appearance of the UI. That's like saying that there's almost no difference between XP and 7, mere polishing, because of http://i.imgur.com/yZcifMF.jpg http://i.imgur.com/yZcifMF.jpg vs http://i.imgur.com/Z4TqGSV.png http://i.imgur.com/Z4TqGSV.png Vista and XP looked pretty close. The real difference was the Gadgets: http://i.imgur.com/kYt9Xqm.jpg http://i.imgur.com/kYt9Xqm.jpg which can be turned off (and if that's a big difference, well, "Mission Control" and "Launchpad" mean a big difference for OS X).
- anotherbadlogin 14y ago
  Apple's GUIs have looked dated for quite a while. Come on, the multicolored gumdrops are a vestige of the acrylic-G4 era. Not to mention the late-'80s inverse color scheme that the Mac OS forces on you, while other OSes have let you create your own color scheme for over 20 years. Why keep pretending that it's a good idea to read black text off the surface of a glaring light bulb all day? And that's not getting into the functional design errors in the Mac OS. iOS works well, but the look was dated from day one. And WTF is up with the only buttons available to developers being the crap-ass flat, rounded rectangle circa OS 7? "will also apparently make rich-texture-loving designers sad." YAY YAY YAY! Down with horseshit skeuomorphs that never made sense in the first place.
- hayksaakian 14y ago
  This seems like a disadvantage in the medium-term, but imagine what happens if the iOS UI reaches appliance level of familiarity. I don't know if it's possible, but if they're constantly making changes it certainly won't be.
  - george88b 14y ago
    I would argue it already has reached appliance level familiarity. Do you know anyone between the ages of 7 to 60 that doesn't know how to use an iPhone (or iPod, or iPad) with ease? Probably not many. But the UI feels stale after a while. I would argue that a significant UI refresh that peaks the interest of your users and excites them to upgrade is better than appliance level familiarity. If the familiarity is the measure of success then why do car companies constantly redesign their interiors, or why do appliances change their colors or button layouts from year to year?
    - mblakele 14y ago
      Are they wise to do that? I recently replaced a broken microwave with as similar a model as I could find, from the same company. But I would have paid more to avoid continuously stubbing my fingers on their design regressions.
      - george88b 14y ago
        That is a good point. New is not always better but consumer products need to be "new and improved!" in order to give the customer a sense they are buying something better than the model from five years ago. But at the same time I can't help but feel that progress can only be made with change and at this point Apple can't keep relying on minimal hardware advances to keep their marketshare.
        gurkendoktor 14y ago
        > consumer products need to be "new and improved!" in order to give the customer a sense they are buying something better than the model from five years ago Where is the proof of that? I feel that it's an "internet truth" where early adopters have the loudest voice. Yet Apple is full of cash earned on machines that look almost like their predecessors (iPad 1-4, iPhone 1-3GS & 4-5, similar for the Mac).
- MrFoof 14y ago
  In all honesty, my guess is the "flat" design for iOS is going to be no different than the evolution of OS X. Compare 10.2 to 10.8. Gone are the pinstripes, much of the jewel-like gleams and candy coating, as well as many gradients and brushed metal. Mountain Lion is far more "flat" than when I started out with Jaguar. You can walk through the past 12 years of OS X to see how the design language has evolved since the turn of the century: http://www.iotechie.com/macintosh-2/the-12-year-evolution-of-os-x-on-the-macintosh/ http://www.iotechie.com/macintosh-2/the-12-year-evolution-of...
fpgeek 14y ago
Wow. Even though they must be (given the realities of software development and the time windows they want to hit), it is still mind-boggling to think of a company like Apple (with its vast cash hoard) as resource-constrained with respect to what is probably the most important component of their flagship products.
- wiredfool 14y ago
  I think Apple is a much smaller company than they look, by profile or even employee count. I think their core OSX/iOS developer staff is small, and rather mobile in terms of what they're working on. Those core devs have been shifted around before, delaying an OSX release to help out on iOS. I think that the constraints are not cash, so much as bandwidth and team size.
  - m_mueller 14y ago
    It seems to me that the 'Jobsian' management style has some inherent boundaries in how large such an organisation can get. By that I mean if you have a) a micro manager that wants to be involved in all important and medium important product and marketing decisions and b) this micro manager as the actual CEO of the company you will run into some limitations. There's only so much a man can review and decide on. Now, of course, Tim Cook is probably not that person, but the Jobs legacy seems to live on in how the 'second line' (Ive, Schiller,..) and everyone after them still acts. In the longer run, from what we can see from the outside, only Ive has the potential to step into Steve's shoes when it comes to designing new product lines. I'm very curious about how he will manage iOS, at the least we're in for a few surprises in the near future I'd say.
    - jwilliams 14y ago
      Software teams rarely scale well -- sure management styles and culture will come into it -- However, scaling and layering up software teams is horrendously inefficient. I'd argue that's a bigger boundary. If you take software out of the equation - Apple is pretty huge. Both in their own right & positively massive when you consider their contractors and partners.
nubela 14y ago
Honestly, why is this being upvoted?
seivan 14y ago
"but will also apparently make rich-texture-loving designers sad." Thank God! As an iOS designer and developer. I love using non-textured design as it's easier to do code wise instead of having manage multiple versions of assets. What is commonly refereed to a flat UI is really better to do as it's mostly possible to do with code instead of images. Go Ive! Think using css3 instead of images on the web.
- pazimzadeh 14y ago
  Easier to code is not necessarily better for the user. What do you mean by manage multiple versions of assets? If you use the @2x naming scheme for double resolution images, there is nothing to manage.
  - digikata 14y ago
    Fewer images loaded might lead to less memory in use and less load time which could lead to faster apps though..
    - pazimzadeh 14y ago
      You're probably right, but do you know of any heavily textured apps that suffer from slowness? iOS apps don't use much more images than they did back in 2008, but the iPhone 5 has a lot more memory than the iPhone 3GS did.
      - seivan 14y ago
        It also has a faster CPU which makes code based design perform better. That was the downsides pre iPhone 4, slow cpu made images necessary. Memory has yet to be concern. So not using images because of memory concerns is a bad idea.
    - seivan 14y ago
      Not true. Code based design is heavy on the CPU and not as fast as images. The part of load time might be true, but in general image based design is easier on the CPU. Images run under cache. So images that are not currently in use usually get purged. Not using images because of memory is not a good idea.

39 points by mactitan 14y ago

Apple hasn't had a significant iOS UI change in too long. I know people who have left the iPhone just for that reason. About time.

Samuel_Michon 14y ago
If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. I know some people will always look for something new, but just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s better. Every major version of Windows looks completely different, while OS X receives UI tweaks in smaller increments. I do think it would be good to simplify the look of some apps, like Find Friends and Game Center on iPhone, and Calendar and Contacts on iPad. I believe the recent redesign of the Podcasts app[1] shows what we should expect from iOS 7: less textures, less color, dark gradients – but nothing that could be described as ‘flat design’. [1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/03/hands-on-apples-podcasts-app-loses-reel-animation-gains-playlists/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/03/hands-on-apples-podcast...
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  "Every major version of Windows looks completely different" Except for XP to Vista... Except for Vista to 7... 7 to 8... I'll somewhat grant you, but a lot less so after you hit the desktop.
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    XP and Vista look completely different. Not only was Aero introduced in Vista, the taskbar and Start menu were redesigned. Vista and 7 look very different. The UI was cleaned up a lot, the taskbar was redesigned again, Live Thumbnails and multitouch support were added. Let's compare that to OS X: most people won't be able to tell Mountain Lion (released 8 months a go) from Leopard (released in 2007), just by looking at the desktop. Here are two screenshots. One is Mountain Lion, the other is Leopard. See if you can tell which one is which. http://i.imgur.com/VDVPvV2.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VDVPvV2.jpg http://i.imgur.com/0fG7xNu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/0fG7xNu.jpg
    - rkudeshi 14y ago
      Wow, I didn't realize how little the basic interface has changed. I mean, I know there's been no radical changes, but I still didn't expect it to take me nearly as long as it did to tell the difference between a 1-year-old and 6-year-old OS. Amazing how much they've improved "under-the-hood" while keeping the basic interface the same. PS. If you can't tell the difference between the two, look at the dock - the only way I could figure it out is spotting the new/changed app icons (Launchpad, iTunes, etc).
    - FireBeyond 14y ago
      It'd be a lot easier if there was any real UI on the screen at all in your examples. Of course "just looking at the desktop" is not going to provide much hint. Not sure what relevance multitouch has to the appearance of the UI. That's like saying that there's almost no difference between XP and 7, mere polishing, because of http://i.imgur.com/yZcifMF.jpg http://i.imgur.com/yZcifMF.jpg vs http://i.imgur.com/Z4TqGSV.png http://i.imgur.com/Z4TqGSV.png Vista and XP looked pretty close. The real difference was the Gadgets: http://i.imgur.com/kYt9Xqm.jpg http://i.imgur.com/kYt9Xqm.jpg which can be turned off (and if that's a big difference, well, "Mission Control" and "Launchpad" mean a big difference for OS X).
anotherbadlogin 14y ago
Apple's GUIs have looked dated for quite a while. Come on, the multicolored gumdrops are a vestige of the acrylic-G4 era. Not to mention the late-'80s inverse color scheme that the Mac OS forces on you, while other OSes have let you create your own color scheme for over 20 years. Why keep pretending that it's a good idea to read black text off the surface of a glaring light bulb all day? And that's not getting into the functional design errors in the Mac OS. iOS works well, but the look was dated from day one. And WTF is up with the only buttons available to developers being the crap-ass flat, rounded rectangle circa OS 7? "will also apparently make rich-texture-loving designers sad." YAY YAY YAY! Down with horseshit skeuomorphs that never made sense in the first place.
hayksaakian 14y ago
This seems like a disadvantage in the medium-term, but imagine what happens if the iOS UI reaches appliance level of familiarity. I don't know if it's possible, but if they're constantly making changes it certainly won't be.
- george88b 14y ago
  I would argue it already has reached appliance level familiarity. Do you know anyone between the ages of 7 to 60 that doesn't know how to use an iPhone (or iPod, or iPad) with ease? Probably not many. But the UI feels stale after a while. I would argue that a significant UI refresh that peaks the interest of your users and excites them to upgrade is better than appliance level familiarity. If the familiarity is the measure of success then why do car companies constantly redesign their interiors, or why do appliances change their colors or button layouts from year to year?
  - mblakele 14y ago
    Are they wise to do that? I recently replaced a broken microwave with as similar a model as I could find, from the same company. But I would have paid more to avoid continuously stubbing my fingers on their design regressions.
    - george88b 14y ago
      That is a good point. New is not always better but consumer products need to be "new and improved!" in order to give the customer a sense they are buying something better than the model from five years ago. But at the same time I can't help but feel that progress can only be made with change and at this point Apple can't keep relying on minimal hardware advances to keep their marketshare.
      - gurkendoktor 14y ago
        > consumer products need to be "new and improved!" in order to give the customer a sense they are buying something better than the model from five years ago Where is the proof of that? I feel that it's an "internet truth" where early adopters have the loudest voice. Yet Apple is full of cash earned on machines that look almost like their predecessors (iPad 1-4, iPhone 1-3GS & 4-5, similar for the Mac).
MrFoof 14y ago
In all honesty, my guess is the "flat" design for iOS is going to be no different than the evolution of OS X. Compare 10.2 to 10.8. Gone are the pinstripes, much of the jewel-like gleams and candy coating, as well as many gradients and brushed metal. Mountain Lion is far more "flat" than when I started out with Jaguar. You can walk through the past 12 years of OS X to see how the design language has evolved since the turn of the century: http://www.iotechie.com/macintosh-2/the-12-year-evolution-of-os-x-on-the-macintosh/ http://www.iotechie.com/macintosh-2/the-12-year-evolution-of...

fpgeek 14y ago

Wow. Even though they must be (given the realities of software development and the time windows they want to hit), it is still mind-boggling to think of a company like Apple (with its vast cash hoard) as resource-constrained with respect to what is probably the most important component of their flagship products.

wiredfool 14y ago
I think Apple is a much smaller company than they look, by profile or even employee count. I think their core OSX/iOS developer staff is small, and rather mobile in terms of what they're working on. Those core devs have been shifted around before, delaying an OSX release to help out on iOS. I think that the constraints are not cash, so much as bandwidth and team size.
- m_mueller 14y ago
  It seems to me that the 'Jobsian' management style has some inherent boundaries in how large such an organisation can get. By that I mean if you have a) a micro manager that wants to be involved in all important and medium important product and marketing decisions and b) this micro manager as the actual CEO of the company you will run into some limitations. There's only so much a man can review and decide on. Now, of course, Tim Cook is probably not that person, but the Jobs legacy seems to live on in how the 'second line' (Ive, Schiller,..) and everyone after them still acts. In the longer run, from what we can see from the outside, only Ive has the potential to step into Steve's shoes when it comes to designing new product lines. I'm very curious about how he will manage iOS, at the least we're in for a few surprises in the near future I'd say.
  - jwilliams 14y ago
    Software teams rarely scale well -- sure management styles and culture will come into it -- However, scaling and layering up software teams is horrendously inefficient. I'd argue that's a bigger boundary. If you take software out of the equation - Apple is pretty huge. Both in their own right & positively massive when you consider their contractors and partners.

nubela 14y ago

Honestly, why is this being upvoted?

seivan 14y ago

"but will also apparently make rich-texture-loving designers sad." Thank God! As an iOS designer and developer. I love using non-textured design as it's easier to do code wise instead of having manage multiple versions of assets. What is commonly refereed to a flat UI is really better to do as it's mostly possible to do with code instead of images. Go Ive! Think using css3 instead of images on the web.

pazimzadeh 14y ago
Easier to code is not necessarily better for the user. What do you mean by manage multiple versions of assets? If you use the @2x naming scheme for double resolution images, there is nothing to manage.
- digikata 14y ago
  Fewer images loaded might lead to less memory in use and less load time which could lead to faster apps though..
  - pazimzadeh 14y ago
    You're probably right, but do you know of any heavily textured apps that suffer from slowness? iOS apps don't use much more images than they did back in 2008, but the iPhone 5 has a lot more memory than the iPhone 3GS did.
    - seivan 14y ago
      It also has a faster CPU which makes code based design perform better. That was the downsides pre iPhone 4, slow cpu made images necessary. Memory has yet to be concern. So not using images because of memory concerns is a bad idea.
  - seivan 14y ago
    Not true. Code based design is heavy on the CPU and not as fast as images. The part of load time might be true, but in general image based design is easier on the CPU. Images run under cache. So images that are not currently in use usually get purged. Not using images because of memory is not a good idea.