7 ms·

iOS 7 was clearly designed to show off what’s possible in 2013. I absolutely agree with this point. And, while I disagree with the post's main thesis — I beli

iOS 7 was clearly designed to show off what’s possible in 2013. I absolutely agree with this point. And, while I disagree with the post's main thesis — I believe the changes were in no way directed towards the web — it's a pretty entertaining take on the updates, OP.

josteink 13y ago
I'd rephrase that as ios7 was clearly made to catch up with android 4 and holo, but maybe that's just me. there's nothing revolutionary in ios7 shown so far. that said, I can't wait for Apple to sue Android over the things they just stole from them.
- guywithabike 13y ago
  In your estimation, what did iOS "steal" from Android? For example, a common iOS 7 feature cited as "stolen" is the app switching interface. But that's the same interface Safari has used for switching tabs since the very first iPhone. They simply repurposed their Safari UI for the OS.
  - daeken 13y ago
    I'm a bit baffled by this myself. I'm on the iOS 7 beta, and it's far closer to WP7 than Android. (Which is awesome -- I loved WP7, just wished it had apps.)
  - hrwl 13y ago
    I think you could argue the control center is borrowed from Android (although the iOS 7 version looks kinda spiffier). The interface for moving between apps is similar. I had to open Safari to see your comparison. The demo I see on the product page for iOS7 reminds me more of Android than Safari. I remember seeing a few other things in the WWDC presentation but I don't remember what they were. All that said, I hope both sides "steal" good ideas early and often.
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    I make my living writing iOS apps, but come on - there's plenty here that has been "borrowed". Off the top of my head: - The insta-airplane-mode-wifi-bluetooth buttons in iOS7. These are a straight lift from Android, and have been hotly demanded by users for a long time. - Notification Center is an incredibly uncanny look-and-feel-alike of notifications in Android. It's basically an outright clone - though this isn't an iOS7 development. - The new app switcher is a takeoff from webOS. Swipe to close an app is also implemented almost precisely like it was on webOS. Claims that this came from Android are IMO off the mark. I don't think it's fair to say they repurposed the Safari tab-switcher, considering the gestures bear such an uncanny resemblance to the webOS implementation.
    - hnriot 13y ago
      "hotly demanded by users for a long time." I never need to switch to airplane mode, or bluetooth on/off in a hurry? I wonder who these people are they find setting/slide airplane mode so time consuming.
      - potatolicious 13y ago
        People who use Bluetooth regularly find themselves having to turn it on and off for the sake of battery life. It's great to be able to do so without diving through multiple menus. It's also not just airplane mode - do-not-disturb mode is also really useful, and it should be fairly obvious why someone would want to toggle it without menu-diving. Ditto orientation lock. In iOS6 is tap-tap-swipe-tap-tap, now it's just swipe-tap. This last one is kind of a platform problem though - orientation lock is useful in part because some apps excel at landscape mode, while others suck at it but insist on enabling it.
- alayne 13y ago
  There is some "flat" design that is similar to Android, but the similarities are fairly superficial and not what the article was addressing.
  - rimantas 13y ago
    And it is not even flat. Apple talks about three things regarding new design: depth, deference and clarity. Nothing about flatness, on the contrary, it's about establishing visual hierarchy via layers. Also, even bigger part will be not in the static appearance but in subtle motions when interacting, thanks to UIKit Dynamics.
    - myko 13y ago
      > Nothing about flatness, on the contrary, it's about establishing visual hierarchy via layers. This is exactly what the Android design is about as well.
- gfodor 13y ago
  I haven't used Android since it first came out, but does it have the dynamic physics, layering, dynamic image compositing (blur, etc), parallax, etc, that all are in iOS 7? iOS 7 seems to me to be very much about how it feels and behaves in motion. The current beta still isn't performance tuned, so my guess is the final build is going to be a pretty futuristic experience on the iPhone 5S. I think a lot of people are getting hung up on lack of textures/lighting as "copying Android" but I would love to hear how Metro and Android are comparable on the things that are going to define iOS 7's experience: motion, dynamics, translucency, layering, and depth.
  - bengotow 13y ago
    I agree, but it's funny. iOS 7 is all about dynamic, physical interfaces - so much so that they built a physics engine into UIKit. At the same time, they're ripping apart the user experience so that nothing onscreen _looks_ like a physical object. Before, interfaces looked like a bunch of real-world objects. Now, they look like a bunch of thin-ass lines and boxes, but behave like real-world objects. I agree that iOS is all about motion, dynamics, translucency, layering and depth. But the verdict is still out on whether those things make for better interfaces.
    - madoublet 13y ago
      Motion, dynamics, and depth are a hallmark of the Windows Phone Metro experience.
      - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
        Windows phone metro doesn't include a physics engine. The motions are all tweened. Windows phone metro includes no depth at all, it truly is flat and 2D spatial. Dynamics?
        madoublet 13y ago
        I don't know (or frankly care) how it is implemented. While the UI is flat, the apps use transitions and a parallax effect to build the illusion of the depth (similar to how Apple does it using their gyroscopic parallax effect on the home screen).
- coldtea 13y ago
  >I'd rephrase that as ios7 was clearly made to catch up with android 4 and holo, but maybe that's just me. Catch up? Actually it was more of a "let's go another 100 miles ahead, Android seems to be catching up finally to were we've been the last 3 years".
  - FireBeyond 13y ago
    To quote you: "Citation"? What iOS features have been present for three years that Android is just now getting? Let's be clear too, three years ago, iOS was at version 3.1.3. I would love to be enlightened, as an iPhone 5/iPad 4/rMBP owner.
    - Cookingboy 13y ago
      60fps scrolling? A semi-decent animation framework for developers? Low audio latency and good power management? Pretty much all the advantages Apple has from their decade of experience of developing OS X frameworks?
      - myko 13y ago
        > 60fps scrolling? It's pretty easy to make UITableView's chug if you do something stupid when populating cells as well. > A semi-decent animation framework for developers? The property animation system introduced in Honeycomb and backported to what, 2.2? works very nicely. > Low audio latency Audio has been an issue on Android. I've not delved into it myself but this is certainly something that only seems recently fixed. Not sure this warrants calling the platform far behind though. > and good power management? I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
        Cookingboy 13y ago
        There is a property animation system on Android, but it's woefully lacking when compared to iOS. IIRC it doesn't even support 2.5D transform with a Z axis and variable camera distance (which is useful for perspective transform). On iOS 7 they now have a full rigid-body physics engine built in and comes with a nice high level API for developers to take advantage of.
- Cookingboy 13y ago
  Catch up? People like you really have no idea how much behind Android is as an OS. It's until very recently it's got close to 60fps scrolling, and low audio latency and decent power management. One example on the advancement of iOS 7, how about take their animation framework a step further (which is already ahead of whats available on Android) and introduces a full rigid-body physics engine that's easily at the developers' disposal? What Apple has always done is good developer support in the form of great APIs
apike 13y ago
Thanks Zach. I don't think the changes were directed towards the web either - they were a side effect: > As a side effect, they’ve embraced conventions that will be hard to emulate with commodity hardware or web tech.

josteink 13y ago

I'd rephrase that as ios7 was clearly made to catch up with android 4 and holo, but maybe that's just me. there's nothing revolutionary in ios7 shown so far. that said, I can't wait for Apple to sue Android over the things they just stole from them.

guywithabike 13y ago
In your estimation, what did iOS "steal" from Android? For example, a common iOS 7 feature cited as "stolen" is the app switching interface. But that's the same interface Safari has used for switching tabs since the very first iPhone. They simply repurposed their Safari UI for the OS.
- daeken 13y ago
  I'm a bit baffled by this myself. I'm on the iOS 7 beta, and it's far closer to WP7 than Android. (Which is awesome -- I loved WP7, just wished it had apps.)
- hrwl 13y ago
  I think you could argue the control center is borrowed from Android (although the iOS 7 version looks kinda spiffier). The interface for moving between apps is similar. I had to open Safari to see your comparison. The demo I see on the product page for iOS7 reminds me more of Android than Safari. I remember seeing a few other things in the WWDC presentation but I don't remember what they were. All that said, I hope both sides "steal" good ideas early and often.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  I make my living writing iOS apps, but come on - there's plenty here that has been "borrowed". Off the top of my head: - The insta-airplane-mode-wifi-bluetooth buttons in iOS7. These are a straight lift from Android, and have been hotly demanded by users for a long time. - Notification Center is an incredibly uncanny look-and-feel-alike of notifications in Android. It's basically an outright clone - though this isn't an iOS7 development. - The new app switcher is a takeoff from webOS. Swipe to close an app is also implemented almost precisely like it was on webOS. Claims that this came from Android are IMO off the mark. I don't think it's fair to say they repurposed the Safari tab-switcher, considering the gestures bear such an uncanny resemblance to the webOS implementation.
  - hnriot 13y ago
    "hotly demanded by users for a long time." I never need to switch to airplane mode, or bluetooth on/off in a hurry? I wonder who these people are they find setting/slide airplane mode so time consuming.
    - potatolicious 13y ago
      People who use Bluetooth regularly find themselves having to turn it on and off for the sake of battery life. It's great to be able to do so without diving through multiple menus. It's also not just airplane mode - do-not-disturb mode is also really useful, and it should be fairly obvious why someone would want to toggle it without menu-diving. Ditto orientation lock. In iOS6 is tap-tap-swipe-tap-tap, now it's just swipe-tap. This last one is kind of a platform problem though - orientation lock is useful in part because some apps excel at landscape mode, while others suck at it but insist on enabling it.
alayne 13y ago
There is some "flat" design that is similar to Android, but the similarities are fairly superficial and not what the article was addressing.
- rimantas 13y ago
  And it is not even flat. Apple talks about three things regarding new design: depth, deference and clarity. Nothing about flatness, on the contrary, it's about establishing visual hierarchy via layers. Also, even bigger part will be not in the static appearance but in subtle motions when interacting, thanks to UIKit Dynamics.
  - myko 13y ago
    > Nothing about flatness, on the contrary, it's about establishing visual hierarchy via layers. This is exactly what the Android design is about as well.
gfodor 13y ago
I haven't used Android since it first came out, but does it have the dynamic physics, layering, dynamic image compositing (blur, etc), parallax, etc, that all are in iOS 7? iOS 7 seems to me to be very much about how it feels and behaves in motion. The current beta still isn't performance tuned, so my guess is the final build is going to be a pretty futuristic experience on the iPhone 5S. I think a lot of people are getting hung up on lack of textures/lighting as "copying Android" but I would love to hear how Metro and Android are comparable on the things that are going to define iOS 7's experience: motion, dynamics, translucency, layering, and depth.
- bengotow 13y ago
  I agree, but it's funny. iOS 7 is all about dynamic, physical interfaces - so much so that they built a physics engine into UIKit. At the same time, they're ripping apart the user experience so that nothing onscreen _looks_ like a physical object. Before, interfaces looked like a bunch of real-world objects. Now, they look like a bunch of thin-ass lines and boxes, but behave like real-world objects. I agree that iOS is all about motion, dynamics, translucency, layering and depth. But the verdict is still out on whether those things make for better interfaces.
  - madoublet 13y ago
    Motion, dynamics, and depth are a hallmark of the Windows Phone Metro experience.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      Windows phone metro doesn't include a physics engine. The motions are all tweened. Windows phone metro includes no depth at all, it truly is flat and 2D spatial. Dynamics?
      - madoublet 13y ago
        I don't know (or frankly care) how it is implemented. While the UI is flat, the apps use transitions and a parallax effect to build the illusion of the depth (similar to how Apple does it using their gyroscopic parallax effect on the home screen).
coldtea 13y ago
>I'd rephrase that as ios7 was clearly made to catch up with android 4 and holo, but maybe that's just me. Catch up? Actually it was more of a "let's go another 100 miles ahead, Android seems to be catching up finally to were we've been the last 3 years".
- FireBeyond 13y ago
  To quote you: "Citation"? What iOS features have been present for three years that Android is just now getting? Let's be clear too, three years ago, iOS was at version 3.1.3. I would love to be enlightened, as an iPhone 5/iPad 4/rMBP owner.
  - Cookingboy 13y ago
    60fps scrolling? A semi-decent animation framework for developers? Low audio latency and good power management? Pretty much all the advantages Apple has from their decade of experience of developing OS X frameworks?
    - myko 13y ago
      > 60fps scrolling? It's pretty easy to make UITableView's chug if you do something stupid when populating cells as well. > A semi-decent animation framework for developers? The property animation system introduced in Honeycomb and backported to what, 2.2? works very nicely. > Low audio latency Audio has been an issue on Android. I've not delved into it myself but this is certainly something that only seems recently fixed. Not sure this warrants calling the platform far behind though. > and good power management? I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
      - Cookingboy 13y ago
        There is a property animation system on Android, but it's woefully lacking when compared to iOS. IIRC it doesn't even support 2.5D transform with a Z axis and variable camera distance (which is useful for perspective transform). On iOS 7 they now have a full rigid-body physics engine built in and comes with a nice high level API for developers to take advantage of.
Cookingboy 13y ago
Catch up? People like you really have no idea how much behind Android is as an OS. It's until very recently it's got close to 60fps scrolling, and low audio latency and decent power management. One example on the advancement of iOS 7, how about take their animation framework a step further (which is already ahead of whats available on Android) and introduces a full rigid-body physics engine that's easily at the developers' disposal? What Apple has always done is good developer support in the form of great APIs

apike 13y ago

Thanks Zach. I don't think the changes were directed towards the web either - they were a side effect: > As a side effect, they’ve embraced conventions that will be hard to emulate with commodity hardware or web tech.