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Sloppy UI – A collection of sloppy iOS7 UIs
- dasil003 13y agoAlthough I'm a perfectionist and I believe a lot of these issues should be addressed, the tumblr itself bothers me. It's the logical culmination of Fail culture where hipsters in armchairs laugh at the inadequacy of everything while producing nothing. All these things could have been constructive criticism in another context, but here they just serve to further someone's twitchy compulsion to be entertained for another 5 seconds on the internet. Yes I'm getting surly in my old age.
- lechevalierd3on 13y agoWell we don't say Parisien are unpleasant persons for no reason.
- lewispollard 13y agoNot everyone can offer constructive feedback, but most people can have the problems brought to their attention and understand them. Even if you had constructive criticism, how exactly would you go about alerting a developer at Apple?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- romain_dardour 13y agoMy point exactly. We love all things Apple, and I want to see those fixed.
- vvhn 13y agoI've only been running iOS since it GM'ed ( which wasn't too long ago) but havn't seen some of the stuff shown there. iMessages certainly do that on my 4S. The notification badge on the Applications icon is always on top. I run into the battery low notification every day and it hasn't yet disagreed between values shown at the status versus the 20% and 10% thresholds you get these alerts from. Are these possibly from an earlier beta ?
- romain_dardour 13y agoThis is GM
- iclelland 13y agoThe battery notification looks identical to that in iOS6, and probably has the same behaviour. If you run your phone with the display off, say from 21% battery down to 11%, then it will cross the 20% reporting threshold. The next time that you unlock the phone and activate the display, you will get the notification. It's not inconsistent; nor is it just being "optimistic" -- it may be poorly worded, but it consistently displays that same message every time you unlock the phone after the battery drains to 20%. If the person who took that screenshot had waited another ten minutes, then the battery would probably have reached 10%, and the 10% notification would have been shown instead.
- selectodude 13y agoIt doesn't show that message every time you unlock. Just once, after it hits 20 percent. And then again, once, after it hits 10 percent.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- marrs 13y agoSurely this is constructive. There is nothing there that cannot be acted upon. Any dev could treat these as a collection of bug reports.
- janlukacs 13y agohere's the thing though, If google would have released an UI as bad as this (just my oppinion as an iphone user) all the tech press and the hardcore apple fanboys would have trashed it online and offline for months. Who will be the role model from now on for "near perfection", "attention to detail"? Just look at this: http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/hon.jpg?w=600&h=600 http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/hon.jpg?... and tell me how you feel about it :)
- marrs 13y agoYou're upset that the cover is obscuring the word "iPhone"? Or is "hon" a euphemism for something and I'm not getting it?
- scep12 13y agoIt's very sloppy. Especially for Apple.
- arrrg 13y agoEh. Apple has always been phoning in their accessories. They were never particularly good. I don’t see this as indicative of anything, it's just Apple being sloppy as they always are with these kinds of things. Where it counts Apple does not typically exhibit this behaviour, as evidenced by both new iPhones.
- somebehemoth 13y agoI don't agree. Most of Apple's accessories are extremely stylish and complement their hardware: iPad smart cover, keyboards, mouses, chargers, ear buds, and monitors. I think the iPad smart cover alone demonstrates that Apple has the capability to make cases/covers for their mobile devices that are both functional and stylish. What accessories, besides the iPhone case discussed here, do you think Apple has made that are sloppy?
- jfarmer 13y ago
- cdash 13y agoAs opposed to hipsters in armchairs proclaiming every release the greatest thing since sliced bread.
- jcutrell 13y agoI think the visual explanation here offers credence to the criticism. This certainly isn't "hipster" culture - this is design critique. The worse thing would be if people blindly said things like "iOS7 is just not intuitive" and went on to drink their PBR and evangelize about Phonebloks - instead, these are real examples of why iOS7 could be better. At the very least, this thread is instructive for learning designers. I know as a younger programmer and designer, when someone said that "JavaScript has the weirdest quirks", it was useless unless someone showed me the quirks. Along came Douglas Crockford's Good Parts, which, while critical of the bad parts, was very instructive. I think this can function in similar ways. It's not just "Fail" culture rearing its stupid head - the tone is far from embarrassing to Apple, and instead is generally descriptive of legitimate design failures.
- roc 13y agoThe number of obvious bugs [1] included lends a lot of weight to the impression of it being more about sniping than criticism. [1] z-index, text overlap, mixed states, etc. These are not questionable design choices. They're bugs. And lumping them in only detracts from the site and the many legit design gripes (problems of focus, alignment, contrast, usability, etc.)
- HelloMcFly 13y agoAre bugs in the UI not themselves part of the UI? If their goal is point out "sloppiness" in the UI, why should obvious or slightly less-obvious bugs be excluded?
- derefr 13y agoBecause it's very likely that anything that would be seen as a "bug" will be fixed in updates; whereas things that are the result of intentional (bad) design, like lack of information hierarchy, probably won't be fixed, because they won't be seen as incorrect. (Which is, nominally, what this tumblr would be for pointing out.)
- 13y ago
- ahunt09 13y agoI think that it's more complicated than just criticism of a less than perfect UI. I think it's an expression of the Apple community's concern that without Steve Jobs, Apple will no longer be able to produce the highly polished products that the community has come to expect.
- madeofpalk 13y ago> Apple community's concern that without Steve Jobs[...] The Apple community isn't concerned about a lack of Jobs, it's a portion of the non-Apple, Tech community that likes to shout this one out.
- ynniv 13y agoCriticizing Apple for poor design is like criticizing IBM for being unreliable: rather important because that's why people chose them in the first place. I'm still hoping that iOS 7 is an elaborate prank, and will be replaced by something worthy of Apple before the majority upgrades.
- mcphilip 13y agoThat's a super cynical way to interpret this. I found the tumblr useful in aiding me in my decision whether to immediately upgrade to iOS 7 or not.
- slantyyz 13y agoPutting the "meh" UI esthetic aside, I didn't want to upgrade because my iPhone 4 had become a pig under 6, and 7 performs a hair worse than 6 in terms of speed and battery life. There are, however, some valid reasons to upgrade in spite of iOS 7's drawbacks (don't get me started on how the new lock screen keypad makes it harder for me to unlock my phone with just my thumb). * Call blocking has "finally" (gruber's favorite line lately) been implemented properly -- if you are one of those people who are increasingly getting more telemarketer calls on your cell number, this is a huge deal. * Safari runs faster on iOS7 than iOS6. 90% of what I do is browsing, so this can be a tradeoff that is well worth making.
- MartinCron 13y agoYou're not getting surly, you're being empathetic. It's a good thing to rebel against the cheap comedy that is Fail culture.
- wehadfun 13y agoIt probably took hours to create this tumblr and the author did not get paid. I think this tumblr is fantastic. We need more people like this. Ready to call out crap.
- sxcurry 13y agoCrap? Really? I upgraded yesterday and think it's amazingly good, in spite of a few minor issues. Do you have any concept of what it took to imagine, develop, implement, test, and distribute something like this to 100 million devices? Crap, really?
- awj 13y ago> We need more people like this. Ready to call out crap. We already have plenty of people ready to call out crap. Half the discussions on this site devolve into someone arguing about perceived flaws in something. What we actually need is people pushing up the level of discourse. A stream of pictures and pithy sarcasm isn't useful until someone else comes along and responds to it. The world needs more thoughtful analysis and advancement, we probably have enough tumblrs full of snarky images.
- chrislomax 13y agoAnother one, if you go to the timer app from the slide up control center, the "pause" is 2 pixels out of being centered. You can just about tell with the naked eye but if you open it in photoshop it's 2 pixels out. It's not a big deal but I thought Apple would be well on top of stuff like this
- coldtea 13y agoThis is quite bad -- only a small percentage are genuine examples of sloppu UI. It seems to be put together by one guy (instead of user submissions like similar sites) and not quite design savvy at that. Case in point: 1) http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61441688489 http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61441688489 (this is supposed to show "poor alignment") 2) http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439801745 http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439801745 (this is supposed to show "stray dropshadows" -- didn't they guy get the memo that the iOS 7 UI uses them to show a 3D layer hierarchy?) 3) http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439835569 http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439835569 (this is supposed to show "poor contrast". Isn't it obvious that the top bar should not be visually striking and distracting?) 4) http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61440586435 http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61440586435 (... this is considered "sloppy"). 5) http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61440527405 http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61440527405 (flat information hierarchy -- one of the few genuine sloppy UI examples).
- romain_dardour 13y agoPoster here: Indeed it's just me submitting. But it's open to submissions. I'm not answering every single case you mention. The examples I posted show how inconsistent the UI is. Taste is in the eye of the beholder and I didn't mention what I find ugly but what shows a lack of afterthought. Just one example here to answer, "Poor Contrast" (http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439835569 http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439835569) On an iOS device, this is not "Subtle" but unreadable.
- huhtenberg 13y agoFor what it's worth, I think nearly all your examples are spot on. These are sloppy jobs that I would've personally been ashamed of releasing to the public. That said, noticing alignment issues and font inconsistencies is not given and a lot of people won't give a damn about them.
- joering2 13y agoSteve Jobs would have. And then unconsciously everyone that ever bought or buy Apple products for that perfectionism that has been inbreed in their spirit. Jobs is definitely gone. Had he be around, you would've seen tons of cartoon boxes and pink slips delivered to One Infinite Loop. If he would've ever let update like that released into cyberspace (he wouldn't've). IOS7 clearly shows that John Ive is lost without Jobs.
- devx 13y agoMost things about iOS7 seem inconsistent, and like they were rushed - which they were. I mean Johny Ive was head of UI for like 9 months only, and had to change everything in iOS in that period. These changes should've arrived in iOS8 in order to be well thought out and mature enough, but for some reason they decided to push them to iOS7.
- threeseed 13y agoHe didn't have to change anything. He wanted to. And when you see the iPhone 5C with iOS 7 it's pretty clear why.
- untog 13y agoIf they removed the new design, iOS7 would be a really underwhelming release for users. The background downloading would clearly be the banner feature.. but aside from that?
- pietro 13y agoThey would have had time to improve existing apps and work out existing inconsistencies. iOS 6 was far from perfect, and there was plenty of room for improvement without a complete redesign.
- cageface 13y agoPersonally I would much rather they just removed some of the gradients and textures and instead focused on improving things like inter-app sharing, notifications, the keyboard, widgets/live tiles etc.
- tzaman 13y agoSo what - if I didn't visit the link, I wouldn't even know about these "sloppy" features. Done is better than perfect.
- hahainternet 13y agoFunny, because I thought that the whole point of buying an Apple product is that even if you lose features and interoperability, it's incredibly well polished and thought out. Seems they're losing that attribute without gaining the others.
- coldtea 13y ago>Funny, because I thought that the whole point of buying an Apple product is that even if you lose features and interoperability, it's incredibly well polished and thought out. Actually you only lose features you wouldn't want in the first place and would drag the whole thing down (less battery life, bulkier, etc). Not having FM radio for example is like not having a floppy disk drive an modern PCs. As for "incredibly well polished and thought out" it still is. For one, there's much more to a mobile OS than graphic design. How it works and feels is much more important than how it looks ("design is how it works"). Second, most of those are some guy's pet peeves, not genuine problems. If he cannot understand why a red carret matches blue text, that doesn't make it into a genuine problem. Same if he didn't get the memo that drop shadows are used to add a depth to the UI layers and thinks they are stray leftovers.
- hahainternet 13y ago> Not having FM radio for example is like not having a floppy disk drive an modern PCs. Tell that to my mother, who used her phone's built in FM radio daily until her retirement. It's clear from the tone of your post though that dissent is useless.
- coldtea 13y ago>Tell that to my mother, who used her phone's built in FM radio daily until her retirement. An older woman close on retirement is not exactly having her finger on the pulse of what's current, does she now? I mean, I'm giving an example of a similar obsolete feature ("like not having a floppy disk drive an modern PCs") and your counter-argument is what a retiree does? Might as well have replied "well, my grandfather rocks floppy disks on his 286 just fine".
- crb 13y agoI'd love to see a similar set of "'iOS 7-updated' apps running on iOS 6 or earlier." Before I upgraded yesterday, there were a couple of apps I saw (I think it was Shazam) where they must have emulated the iOS 7 feel, rather than using system-native widgets, so the result was a "business in front, party in the back" mishmash of UI on the same screen.
- mvkel 13y agoGreat examples. I hope you're sending these to Apple! One I noticed is a very slight difference in weight between the carrier text and the data status. It's so slight, almost the difference between "sharp" and "strong" in Photoshop. Also, people, easy on the "way to criticize but not offer any constructive criticism!" OP is effectively filing a ton of bug reports, which is a good thing.
- da_n 13y agoGood collection. iOS7 is an obvious improvement over previous iOS versions (perhaps with the exception of the icons) and has done a good job of bringing iOS up to date visually. Worth remembering that there are a lot of inconsistencies in Android, a good article is here: http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/18/ux-things-i-hate-about-android/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/18/ux-things-i-hate-abo... Don't get me wrong, I much, much prefer Android and can't ever see myself moving back to iOS, but always good to measure things in balance, nothing is perfect.
- leokun 13y agoI'm the same way. I love Android, and will probably never move back to iOS, but after having seen an actual phone with iOS 7 all my scepticism about the new UI disappeared. It's a very beautiful UI. I was right there though laughing at the ugly icons (which I still think are ugly) thinking iOS 7 was a disaster until I actually looked at a phone and swiped around. It's weird. The iPhone 5s seems to be without a doubt the overall best phone out there. The low light camera, the processor, all that stuff blows me away, but yet I don't want one. I think the iPhone is like a really fancy and nice race car, that I can do nothing but admire, but all I want is a truck. Android is my truck.
- bdcravens 13y agoI'm sure you won't have to wait too long for those hardware improvements to come to the Android platform. The rapid iteration of the Android platform means that hardware advantages are generally short-lived.
- methodin 13y agoI'd like to see an update to that article.
- nnnnni 13y agoSee, this is really frustrating... I mentioned this SAME STUFF (specifically the horrible lack of contrast) months ago just to be met with downvotes and handwaving dismissal. NOW people agree. Better late than never, I guess.
- yardie 13y agoThe username is fitting.
- miguelrochefort 13y agoI know that feel. My story is pretty much the same. The most frustrating part is that Apple fanboys now justify their love for iOS 7 using the exact same arguments they used to dismiss Windows Phone.
- noamsml 13y agoBut months ago these were quirks in a beta release. iOS7 is now released software, and it's expected to have matured.
- nnnnni 13y agoThe problem is that it looked like a very poor design decision rather than a beta version quirk even back then...
- chockablock 13y agothe sooner you stop caring about the up/downvotes of strangers on the Internet, the happier you will be.
- idProQuo 13y agoI didn't buy the "Go easy! It's still only beta!" stuff. The changes that happen in beta are along the lines of "Apps no longer crash while activating the radio while audio is playing." not "Complete icon redesign". However, some of these (Z-Index? What?) should've absolutely been fixed before GM.
- tharshan09 13y agowhy is he referring to web terms? Or does it just happen to be common terminology across design?
- romain_dardour 13y agoTo clarify things, we just posted this on the web site: We love Apple. We think this is the best way to point out what's not up to their standards so they can fix it. It's all about intellectual honesty, not trolling.
- whizzkid 13y agoIsn't Apple hiring the best/smartest/creative developers? How are these small/annoying issues are passing the test cases? Don't they have the same development cycle as they had while developing the first Iphone which was a huge thing at the time.
- coldtea 13y ago>How are these small/annoying issues are passing the test cases? Most of those are neither sloppy nor issues. The blog does a bad job of mixing a few real issues with a lot of stuff he just doesn't like personally.
- jpea 13y agoIt's perhaps because they pushed a whole UI redesign out in the matter of a few months. And it's multilingual. And it cannot take into account 3rd-party apps and their inconsistent designs.
- vicbrooker 13y agoPersonally I think that it's a bit misleading to lump bugs and questionable design choices under the same 'sloppy' banner. Good quality criticism regarding choices developers and designers have made have lead to some of the best debate and discussion I've seen on HN. Conversations that focus on criticizing execution (for example the UI bugs in the tumblr) have been some of the worst. As a developer I would get huge value out of having a nuanced discussion about the pros and cons of iOS 7's language, particular as we begin (or have begun) redesigning our apps - hopefully that is something this tumblr can evolve into eventually.
- gurumeditation 13y agoWould they have preferred the metal and glass meets billiard room look of iOS6?
- gurkendoktor 13y agoThe major built-in apps in iOS 6 are just as 'boring' as the major OS X apps are. Safari, Music, Mail, Photos, Camera, Settings, Contacts, Messages - light grey chrome around content. The average iOS 6 app did not look like Game Center or Find My Friends (which was not even built-in). But I guess that's how it will be remembered now. =/
- ps4fanboy 13y ago"Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right." - Steve Jobs
- nextstep 13y agoThe "no return key in the twitter compose view" is intentional. That is a keyboard style option, and Twitter it using it to discourage users entering return characters in tweets. This is not even Apple's app. A lot of these "sloppy UI" examples are in non-Apple apps, intentional, or otherwise misleading from the screenshot.
- romain_dardour 13y agoNewlines are supported on twitter in 3rd party apps, but not in the twitter card nor twitter app indeed. Also, the blog is not called "Apple Sloppy UIs", but "Sloppy UIs". That still qualifies.
- awj 13y ago> Also, the blog is not called "Apple Sloppy UIs", but "Sloppy UIs". That still qualifies. Tagline to the blog: "We love Apple. We think this is the best way to point out what's not up to their standards so they can fix it." (emphasis mine) Do they expect Apple to fix the UI of other people's apps?
- matthewaustin 13y agoApple's idea behind their App Store is that every app is reviewed to make sure it's up to their standards. They also provide a myriad of built-in UI elements and a Human Interface Guide that is supposed to direct developers in the design of their app interfaces. One could postulate that Apple can fix third party apps by altering the available UI elements and interface guidelines. In fact, this type of alteration was done for iOS7 to guide developers into updating their app aesthetics to match iOS7.
- bane 13y agoMost of these are pretty good points, some are just taste differences. In a different world, if these things were fixed, they'd belong on a "Subtle UI Greatness" tumblr.
- thiagoperes 13y agoI'm really disappointed that Apple released the GM version of iOS 7 as final. So many bugs and glitches.
- potatolicious 13y agoI hear that. There is still one huge, gaping bug where UITextViews do not scroll if you type past their bounds. Seriously, Apple released that.
- Oletros 13y agoWll, GM version IS the final version :P
- happywolf 13y agoI agree with some of the reviews here: nothing is perfect, and I do think most of these are bugs. For example, the issue on facebook settings doesn't show up on my i5. Get a life, or show me what kind of non-sloppy you are able to produce.
- ttflee 13y agoHow many of these failures are due to insufficient testing on i18n? IMHO, using texts to replace icon based buttons is clever to simplify the working of screen resolution adaption, however, it does increase the possibility of inconsistency between different locales. I still remember NYTimes.app for iPad displayed ugly aligned date texts which is just too long to fit into the space left for them, only in Chinese locales, which they do not officially support, and I doubt that they really did testing on it.
- nvk 13y agoPoll: Changing to Android after iOS7 Update? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412046
- antonpug 13y agoHalf of these are from Beta versions and do no longer occur... But nice catches, there are definitely somethings that could be improved, but others are just up to personal preference and interpretation.
- nicholassmith 13y agoSome I definitely agree with (mixed font casing), some I don't, and some are plain bugs which are annoying but not a question of sloppy UI. There's a lot slipped through that it's slightly inconsistent, but there was plenty of inconsistent design through iOS1-6 as well and with OS X.x in it's various releases. Design over a large product like iOS or OS X is hard, it takes time to get all the edges smoothed down and given that iOS 7 is probably the result of a year to two years of work it's not a surprised it's rough. If it's a bug (or a UI niggle) report it to Apple, they may or may not be listening but it's a better solution to highlight it with them directly, as well as on Tumblr.
- joeld42 13y agoIf these are the worst things that people can find to complain about in iOS7, then Apple should feel pretty proud of themselves.
- electic 13y agoThe whole iOS7 UI is not intuitive at all. Look, I love flat UI but when I became and engineer and founder, started talking to customers, I realized that customers are simply not as aware as the people that designed and made software. They don't know what to click, they sometimes don't even know they can click something, and they often get lost. When you go to a Microsoft store and see people playing with Windows 8, you see this and it really hits you. People are lost, randomly clicking on text thinking it is a button. While Windows 8 and iOS7 look good in many ways, I think this release is a step backwards for people who might not be very tech savvy.
- rimantas 13y agoYeah, remember when noone could use the webe, because links were not in the form of buttons?
- reddit_clone 13y agoI agree. It is worse in touch devices. At least in a desktop webapp you have the option of waving your mouse cursor over suspect areas and can get some kind of feedback (a balloon text or some change in the status bar etc.) On a touch device, you won't know until you touch!
- bdcravens 13y agoMy only issue is that this is an OS that's been in beta for a few months, and yeah, the betas were pretty horrible in some ways. The OS has been live to the public for a day. How do I know what version these screenshots came from?
- hemancuso 13y agoFrom what I hear nothing has helped improve Apple's autocorrect more than http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/ http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/ I must imagine that this tumblr is already being poured over in Cupertino and radar's are being filed in right now. This tumblr is a good thing.
- lostlogin 13y agoThat site is hilarious. What blows my mind is how autocorrect so often defaults to lewd and totally inappropriate statements. It's like it's trying to cause amusement.
- efnx 13y agoMany of the problems with consistency (capitalization, placement, return key on keyboard, etc) seem to be in specific apps. In those cases it's the designers and programmers of the company that make the app that are at fault. It's important to be familiar enough with the iOS SDK that you know which bugs are OS territory and which ones are app territory. I'm not trying to dis their eye for bugs, I'm just trying to shrink the surface bugs live on.
- alecsmart1 13y agoI don't understand how changing the design adds to functionality. Instead of giving a new half baked look, Apple could have concentrated on adding features to its existing look. Flat design is good but like most things its just a phase. Why not add background downloading etc. to the current design. From design point if view iOS 6 is fairly good and very consistent.
- gfodor 13y agoUh, they did. They added a whole bunch of new features, actually.
- rjohnk 13y agoWhat will probably happen is a quick 7.1 release to fix most small alignment bugs, and then iOS 8 will refine everything. I'm guessing iOS 9 will be the polished version of this UI design. Not making excuses, just postulating what might happen.
- Felix21 13y agoAnd they said we wont miss scott forstall who would surely not let anything like this out of apple. But what do I know.
- 37prime 13y agoSome of them are bugs found in the beta releases of iOS 7. I am assuming that the “sloppy UIs” are from the general release. There were tons of changes from beta 1 to the GM and there are still some UI bugs, but they are not showstoppers.
- mikeleeorg 13y agoAnyone know how many UI bugs were reported or seen with previous iOS versions? I'm just wondering if this is a usual part of each major iOS rollout, or a unique instance.
- dgesang 13y ago> We love Apple. Stopped reading there ...
- aaronbrethorst 13y agoWithout Apple Radar numbers next to each and every one of these pictures, this is just unnecessary, mean-spirited trolling. "Hey, look, iOS 7 has bugs! LOLOLOL."
- enscr 13y agoThe most tangential looking OS ever. Maybe iOS 7s would fix it.
- _random_ 13y agoHire more/better designers? No-no! Let's put money in the hedge fund instead.