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Yay change for change's sake. This is exactly the wrong attitude in my opinion. How does it help users to all of a sudden have most apps feel ancient? Is it re

Yay change for change's sake. This is exactly the wrong attitude in my opinion. How does it help users to all of a sudden have most apps feel ancient? Is it really something to be proud of? That for the next year we'll be working on replacing existing utilities so that they feel "right" and "fresh" instead of doing what we should be doing: thinking of actual new software that is worthwhile to write. I've been saying this for a while but I think what is happening, and what many developers haven't noticed yet, is that we have exhausted the utility of software for software's sake. The interesting stuff happening in mobile now has nothing to do with "design" in the traditional sense any more. Its not enough to just have a coder and a designer on the team. The really cool stuff is all about what your phone actually allows you to do in the real world. Look at apps like uber, postmates, spotify, and twitch.tv. Most of these have terrible UI's, but that's not the point. The point is that they allow you to do things. I can have a car on my doorstep! I can listen to almost any song I want. They're not just another calculator app or news reader, so who cares if its not the prettiest or easiest thing to use in the world. They are an interface to actually useful services. Software was interesting on its own a decade ago, but the industry has grown up, its time to do things now. That doesn't mean that "UI and UX" don't matter, it just means their definition changes and grows beyond just how you tap things on glass and what pixels you choose to animate. The reason that iOS 7 seems comforting in the way its described in this article is because it gives developers who haven't realized this something to do again. Marco is absolutely right, for a long time it has felt like all the major categories have been covered on the app store. That's a good thing! It means we've solved lots of problems. We shouldn't daydream of a day when those problems get artificially unsolved so we can have another shot at them. We should move on.

mchanson 13y ago
Cause, like, I still use Visicalc and it works great.
ben336 13y ago
I think Marco is saying this is good from an independent ios developers perspective, not necessarily from a users perspective. As somebody who makes his living as an independent app developer, I'm sure he's thrilled about this. Its undeniably an opportunity for independent developers who don't have to maintain an existing app. Whether its good for users or the ecosystem in general is a totally different discussion.
- fpgeek 13y ago
  Indeed. One of the things Marco is glossing over is how the iOS 7 overhaul makes iOS development riskier: - Will I (and the apps I'm planning) be able to adapt to the UI changes smoothly or not? - How are these changes going to play out on the iPad? - Does Apple have any other foundation-shifting changes planned before iOS 7 comes out? - Will these changes impact user behavior? - And so on. From the perspective of an independent developer starting out, none of this matters. Their risk is already off-the-charts (and the downside limited by time and effort, for the most part), so all they care about is the increased reward potential. They don't even really care if that increased reward potential is coming from changes in absolute rewards and/or relative rewards vs other developers. For everyone else, the risk vs reward calculation might look quite different.
  - jakobe 13y ago
    Who is everyone else?
    - jaredsohn 13y ago
      Anyone who isn't an independent developer starting out (i.e. those with existing apps and larger organizations who perhaps have other apps that will require additional work just to maintain their current state.)
rustydoorknobs 13y ago
I agree with you, but I think that an occasional design shakeup hits people on a different level, subconsciously. A new look affects the feel of an application, which can actually affect how people view the substantial portions of an app.
LowKarmaAccount 13y ago
> I've been saying this for a while but I think what is happening, and what many developers haven't noticed yet, is that we have exhausted the utility of software for software's sake... > Software was interesting on its own a decade ago, but the industry has grown up, its time to do things now. Smartphones are important because they allow people to use computers in a manner that wasn't feasible in the past because of the size of computing devices. However, smartphones have not produced any important innovations from a software point of view. They are not innovative because they don't need to be; they are simply the logical consequent of the advances in the miniaturization of hardware. The market saturation you describe is not the result of a glut of innovation, but rather is just a consequence of developers porting existing desktop functionality onto a smartphone. You can take pictures and use voice recognition software to ask where nearby restaurants if you carry around a desktop or a laptop; you just probably wouldn't want to. Actually, smartphones are a good example of how non-innovative and illogical the computing world can be. Underneath the touch-based interfaces, they run on a kernel written in a memory-unsafe, non-garbage collected, insecure, and inexpressive language that was designed to target the PDP-11. Because the operating system is so flawed and incompetent that it can't be trusted to prevent rogue processes from stepping on others, you end up with a lack of a useable file system and awful communication between apps. Of course, the joke is that these restrictions are almost worthless because you can almost always bypass the system security and jailbreak the device; then maybe you can do something useful with your phone without. Its part of a larger trend in the computing world to ignore history and reinvent wheels, and call it innovation. Case in point: web apps, which, unless you are replacing a legacy application, are a terrible idea. Not only will they always face latency issues, but they also use awful languages designed to serve and manipulate text and are at least twice as slow as native code. Software on smartphones is interesting in the same way that a "Hello world!" program is interesting to C programmer; the programmer is so surprised that he has fought an unfriendly, unintuitive system full of kludges and managed to output text to the screen without the program crashing and dumping core that he doesn't notice how trivial the output is. Of course, what we have today is better than nothing. In a way, the massive and unnecessarily resource intensive process that we have now is uplifting because it shows the determination of the human spirit; just imagine what we could accomplish if we invested in the right things.
- 13y ago
Skywing 13y ago
That's a valid point, but isn't this a forum of mostly developers and tech-savvy people? While your point stands, I have a feeling that a lot of readers of HN will be looking at this from the OP's point of view.
huhtenberg 13y ago
"Why be you, when you can be new."
lloeki 13y ago
> How does it help users to all of a sudden have most apps feel ancient? It helps users in that the "new design" is an improvement over the "old design". A case study, the Windows file picker dialog: Win3.1 dialogs felt foreign to 95, while XP-style apps feel foreign to Vista-style apps. There is no debate that from win3 to win7 the file picker dialog got improved each time. Easier item selection, easier reading, easier tree traversal, quicker arrival to favorites... What is true for this dialog is true for the whole system. rundll32 tabbed preference panes survive in Win8 to this day. They felt like they came from the future back then on win95, while today they're old and crufty, alien and inscrutable. This is not change for the sake of change. Design is how it works. Good design is thorough and holistic. If you only improve part of the system, you end up with a hodgepodge of UI versions with no conventions across the board and only results in an overall bad usability and maintainability.

mchanson 13y ago

Cause, like, I still use Visicalc and it works great.

ben336 13y ago

I think Marco is saying this is good from an independent ios developers perspective, not necessarily from a users perspective. As somebody who makes his living as an independent app developer, I'm sure he's thrilled about this. Its undeniably an opportunity for independent developers who don't have to maintain an existing app. Whether its good for users or the ecosystem in general is a totally different discussion.

fpgeek 13y ago
Indeed. One of the things Marco is glossing over is how the iOS 7 overhaul makes iOS development riskier: - Will I (and the apps I'm planning) be able to adapt to the UI changes smoothly or not? - How are these changes going to play out on the iPad? - Does Apple have any other foundation-shifting changes planned before iOS 7 comes out? - Will these changes impact user behavior? - And so on. From the perspective of an independent developer starting out, none of this matters. Their risk is already off-the-charts (and the downside limited by time and effort, for the most part), so all they care about is the increased reward potential. They don't even really care if that increased reward potential is coming from changes in absolute rewards and/or relative rewards vs other developers. For everyone else, the risk vs reward calculation might look quite different.
- jakobe 13y ago
  Who is everyone else?
  - jaredsohn 13y ago
    Anyone who isn't an independent developer starting out (i.e. those with existing apps and larger organizations who perhaps have other apps that will require additional work just to maintain their current state.)

rustydoorknobs 13y ago

I agree with you, but I think that an occasional design shakeup hits people on a different level, subconsciously. A new look affects the feel of an application, which can actually affect how people view the substantial portions of an app.

LowKarmaAccount 13y ago

> I've been saying this for a while but I think what is happening, and what many developers haven't noticed yet, is that we have exhausted the utility of software for software's sake... > Software was interesting on its own a decade ago, but the industry has grown up, its time to do things now. Smartphones are important because they allow people to use computers in a manner that wasn't feasible in the past because of the size of computing devices. However, smartphones have not produced any important innovations from a software point of view. They are not innovative because they don't need to be; they are simply the logical consequent of the advances in the miniaturization of hardware. The market saturation you describe is not the result of a glut of innovation, but rather is just a consequence of developers porting existing desktop functionality onto a smartphone. You can take pictures and use voice recognition software to ask where nearby restaurants if you carry around a desktop or a laptop; you just probably wouldn't want to. Actually, smartphones are a good example of how non-innovative and illogical the computing world can be. Underneath the touch-based interfaces, they run on a kernel written in a memory-unsafe, non-garbage collected, insecure, and inexpressive language that was designed to target the PDP-11. Because the operating system is so flawed and incompetent that it can't be trusted to prevent rogue processes from stepping on others, you end up with a lack of a useable file system and awful communication between apps. Of course, the joke is that these restrictions are almost worthless because you can almost always bypass the system security and jailbreak the device; then maybe you can do something useful with your phone without. Its part of a larger trend in the computing world to ignore history and reinvent wheels, and call it innovation. Case in point: web apps, which, unless you are replacing a legacy application, are a terrible idea. Not only will they always face latency issues, but they also use awful languages designed to serve and manipulate text and are at least twice as slow as native code. Software on smartphones is interesting in the same way that a "Hello world!" program is interesting to C programmer; the programmer is so surprised that he has fought an unfriendly, unintuitive system full of kludges and managed to output text to the screen without the program crashing and dumping core that he doesn't notice how trivial the output is. Of course, what we have today is better than nothing. In a way, the massive and unnecessarily resource intensive process that we have now is uplifting because it shows the determination of the human spirit; just imagine what we could accomplish if we invested in the right things.

13y ago

Skywing 13y ago

That's a valid point, but isn't this a forum of mostly developers and tech-savvy people? While your point stands, I have a feeling that a lot of readers of HN will be looking at this from the OP's point of view.

huhtenberg 13y ago

"Why be you, when you can be new."

lloeki 13y ago

> How does it help users to all of a sudden have most apps feel ancient? It helps users in that the "new design" is an improvement over the "old design". A case study, the Windows file picker dialog: Win3.1 dialogs felt foreign to 95, while XP-style apps feel foreign to Vista-style apps. There is no debate that from win3 to win7 the file picker dialog got improved each time. Easier item selection, easier reading, easier tree traversal, quicker arrival to favorites... What is true for this dialog is true for the whole system. rundll32 tabbed preference panes survive in Win8 to this day. They felt like they came from the future back then on win95, while today they're old and crufty, alien and inscrutable. This is not change for the sake of change. Design is how it works. Good design is thorough and holistic. If you only improve part of the system, you end up with a hodgepodge of UI versions with no conventions across the board and only results in an overall bad usability and maintainability.