More Details on Jony Ive's Flat iOS 7 Design: Heavier on Black and White

[scapegoat81]

I'm glad we can all stay on topic guys. Keep it up.

 

[Rogifan]

Those guys from Tableau are probably weenies. Never ask and IT guy or any nerd what's cool, because generally speaking they don't have a clue. Or at least, even if they are right, what they say has no meaning so far as the rest (99% of the planet) is concerned. Nothing Apple has ever done that was wildly successful ever had weenie-appeal.

You saw it with the mac. All the weenies said the mac was stupid and a waste of money, all you needed was DOS. They mocked mac users and their cute little garbage cans and said DOS was what real computer users use. Then Windows 3.1 came around. The UI sucked. The weenies said that to be a cool computer user, you had to know how to fool around with Regedit, and it was still better than Mac. It wasn't. It sucked. Then came windows XP. It was basically a mac. Then the weenies immediately went to their control panels and changed their OS theme to the old Windows NT one, instead of the slicker XP one, because real nerd don't need fancy color and they believed it was essential for the ordinary user to save a couple GPU cycles on rendering. Which is a load of crap.

Then came the iPhone. The consensus among weenies was that to have a good smartphone, you had to have a physical keyboard (like the Blackberry), or you had to have a pen input device (like the Palm). Because all weenies know, any serious person types on a keyboard where you can feel the keys with your fingertips, or, if writing, uses a more precise instrument to point like a pen than your finger and learns to write in a heretofore never described hieroglyphic (Palm). Nerdy little guys everywhere were keeping little plastic pens for their Palm computers in their pocket protectors, and they felt this was important to have the finest pointed pointing device possible. Because precision is very important! Then the iPhone came out, and someone decided that all the weenies were just weenies, it's much easier to just point with a finger. They didn't include a pen, because to do so would have been a problem for a capacitive touch screen, and because they knew that if they included a pen, all the weenies would write programs for the iPhone with 50 or a hundred tiny buttons the size of sprinkles on every screen that you could only press with a very tiny weenie-pen that the ordinary person didn't want to bother to keep around. As always, the weenies were completely wrong about what ordinary people wanted. Weenies wanted a precise technological device. Ordinary people wanted something with the lowest intimidation factor possible that could be used without frankly having to engage their brain any more than possible. Because really, they've got other things to do.

Then came the iPad. Once again, weenies thought this must have a keyboard or some other sort of physical input device, because obviously if you're going to pay more for something more useful, it has to be more powerful and allow for faster, more efficient input. Once again, the weenies were wrong. Apple released the iPad, which was basically just a big iPhone. One of the biggest weenies of them all, Steve Ballmer, laughed. Then Apple sold a gazillion of them, and it wasn't so funny anymore. Engineers were disappointed to see such a "stupid" product sell so well, since it would be so much more engineering-chic to have a lightweight device with a tiny keyboard to type on at their engineering meetings. Meanwhile, ordinary people sat on their couches using their iPads, slovenly chowing down Cheetos and spilling crumbs all over the impervious surface, poking their fingers around the web for an hour or two before falling asleep with their more or less indestructible panel-shaped ipads falling between the cracks of their couch. Little two-year old kids poked around at their ipad screens giggling, spilling juice on them, and watching reruns of Barney the Dinosaur.

Weenies are almost always wrong about what 90% of the world wants.

GRANTED, I do think that the iPhone skeumorphism could use some refreshment. From my perspective, the most important thing would be to update / regionalize it in some way. For example, I'm pretty sure that everyone in the US knows what the general use of yellow lined paper is, but that may not be the case elsewhere in the world. In Japan, I seriously doubt they use yellow lined paper for much of anything. But that's a regionalization problem, not a general interface problem.

Because it's a notepad. For taking notes, and clipping and pasting little bits of information from here and there into one place for future reference. Having a notepad that uses multiple fonts is actually a pain in the ass, because then every time you cut and paste a little piece of information from the web into your notepad, it comes out with a different font and a different font size, designed for a web page ten times the size, looking quite retarded and illegible. Then, you'll find when you continue on typing, you're typing with the same font as the last letter of the last thing you pasted into your notepad, which is probably huge and taking up 10 times the space that you want it to. Then you have to dick around trying to get the font back to some semblance of something uniform and orderly (organized). It's a huge pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, the genius who made the NotePad for OS X didn't get this, so if you cut and paste things from elsewhere it comes out looking like crap.



Eventually? Why should a UI adopt something that people will "eventually" get used to, rather than something that is immediately apparent and uses little or no thought?

Frankly, I'm not interested in wasting any brain cells to have to remember what color scheme is more in-keeping with a calendar than an e-mail. I have better things to do.

... Clearly, kids love skeumorphism, older people love skeumorphism, and probably the majority of people in between would rather use it. In my opinion, mostly, the people who find it offensive are probably weenies.

I'll reserve judgment on the new UI until I see it. But, if remembering colors are an important component of thinking about how to use it, I can tell you, that already pretty much sucks. I'll hope there is something else to go on.

Sorry we're going to have to agree to disagree. I think Skeuomorphism is fugly and I'm glad Apple is getting rid of it. And I don't think people are as in love with it as you say. Skeuomorphism can be removed without making the device harder to use.

 

[The Phazer]

Your comment makes absolutely no sense and I don't think you understand what iMessage is. Where exactly is the negative in automatically having SMS sent as free iMessages where available, falling back to SMS when iMessage is available, all fully automatic from within one app called messages. Doesn't get any easier than that. Where is data robustness 'lost'?

Falling back takes between 7 minutes and twenty four hours depending on how badly the iMessage servers are performing at that point, and it won't fall back at all if you happen to lose signal entirely on your handset in the meantime.

iMessage is a fundamentally terrible protocol because it relies on IP, and the IP header in and of itself is bigger than the header and message of an SMS message. Therefore an SMS message will send in vastly more areas of poor signal quality than an iMessage one will.

In addition, there are significant latency problems with iMessage as everything must be routed through Apple's servers which are in a different continent to me and the identifier is not robust enough, linked as it is to handset and not to the sim-ID. Which means if someone uses a virtual number or regularily changes their handset but not the accompanying SIM the message will silently fail.

I don't think *you* understand what iMessage is.

 

[seveej]

This sounds very good!
I hope he managed to deforstall most of it.

Agent Ive - for deforstallization.



RGDS,

 

[chadley_chad]

1. The majority of users don't use their optical drives.

2. Stop being dramatic.

Wow, its great you have the data to prove most users don't use their optical drives; because every mac owner I know uses them and its the reason why our company (of about 80 iMacs) are looking at alternative products. you obviously speak for everyone ... thats very clever!

 

[chadley_chad]

An optical drive takes up "zero space"?

Don't be so ridiculous, of course it takes up space. It's a component.

Sorry, I forgot, I'm dealing with Apple fans here; let me explain ... because you obviously didn't get the gist of what I was saying ...

Take my current iMac, make it slimmer by removing the optical drive (delivering 100% zero benefit to me or anyone else other than bragging rights of 'look how thin it is'), charge people more for the latest iMac, then make them outlay further £'s for an external optical drive that takes up more desk space ... when my old optical drive took up zero (free) space as it was inside the casing. Its simple if you engage some thought.

Also, before any sheep or other closed minded people ask, I use an optical drive to:

Load music to itunes
Burn music discs for myself and others
Burn DVD's
Back-up data to disc
Load software to my mac

Yes life can go on without one if you have all the pre-requisit kit and are happy to live your life by the cloud. Sorry though, i like to do things my way, not that dictated by people like Apple (because I'm sure they're not doing it to make my life easier (as opposed to making money!)

 

[subsonix]

Because it's a notepad. For taking notes, and clipping and pasting little bits of information from here and there into one place for future reference. Having a notepad that uses multiple fonts is actually a pain in the ass, because then every time you cut and paste a little piece of information from the web into your notepad, it comes out with a different font and a different font size, designed for a web page ten times the size, looking quite retarded and illegible. Then, you'll find when you continue on typing, you're typing with the same font as the last letter of the last thing you pasted into your notepad, which is probably huge and taking up 10 times the space that you want it to. Then you have to dick around trying to get the font back to some semblance of something uniform and orderly (organized). It's a huge pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, the genius who made the NotePad for OS X didn't get this, so if you cut and paste things from elsewhere it comes out looking like crap.

I think the most equivalent app on OS X is not NotePad but Stickies. It also pretty much goes back to the dawn of time, I'd say it's very much a part of the OS personality.

 

[chadley_chad]

I will always prefer optical drives because they're easier to manage and access, plus they're 'off the grid' rather than on the Cloud. I would NOT want all my data on the cloud servers because then it makes it easier for certain government agencies (ie. Big Brother) to snoop around on those servers to see what data we have stored up. That's what Apple is trying to shepherd us towards.

There is a new product out made by a company called Space Monkey that has an 'off the grid' hard drive as a personal Cloud that we can access to at home. Here is their site: http://www.spacemonkey.com/

It's a bit expensive but a great concept, although I'd take DropBox any day to move my files around and for clients to access to. But NEVER my entire hard drive. I would NOT even want an OS that is run off the Cloud server, either, which I would not be surprised if Apple attempts to pull this on us in the future (or any company).

Apple screwed up and should've put in an SSD card slot for the iPad/iPod/iPhone market for memory expansion to store in more apps or files rather than just buying a device with a locked set of storage capacity. That, to me, is a waste of material to produce just one product to sell with a uni-body design, which explains their motive for THAT reason to make money instead of empowering us to 'upgrade' the devices' storage capacities.

All great points (well put) and to add to that, its one reason why I've moved from the iPhone 5 to the S4 ... because I can control how much I spend to upgrade my phones memory when required, not Apple!

 

[Abazigal]

Sorry, I forgot, I'm dealing with Apple fans here; let me explain ... because you obviously didn't get the gist of what I was saying ...

Take my current iMac, make it slimmer by removing the optical drive (delivering 100% zero benefit to me or anyone else other than bragging rights of 'look how thin it is'), charge people more for the latest iMac, then make them outlay further £'s for an external optical drive that takes up more desk space ... when my old optical drive took up zero (free) space as it was inside the casing. Its simple if you engage some thought.

Also, before any sheep or other closed minded people ask, I use an optical drive to:

Load music to itunes
Burn music discs for myself and others
Burn DVD's
Back-up data to disc
Load software to my mac

Yes life can go on without one if you have all the pre-requisit kit and are happy to live your life by the cloud. Sorry though, i like to do things my way, not that dictated by people like Apple (because I'm sure they're not doing it to make my life easier (as opposed to making money!)

Apple has a history of rapidly obsoleting tech they have no interest in supporting, or if they want to quickly gather support for another similar service or product.

For example,
1) How they quickly transitioned everything from IBM to Intel (even though that required developers to recode from scratch)
2) Phasing out floppy disk drives in favour of USB?
3) Replacing all 30-pin connectors with lightning cables (and even going so far as to release a new ipad with the new port).
4) I suspect it is only a matter of time before firewire falls to the wayside as well.
5) The macbooks lacked any sort of display port except thunderbolt.
6) Even safari on macbooks ships without flash installed.
7) They are clearly trying to do the same for cd-drives as well (to encourage people to use their app store and iTunes services, no doubt).

Irritating, but that's the Apple way.

 

[subsonix]

1) How they quickly transitioned everything from IBM to Intel (even though that required developers to recode from scratch)

Universal Binaries, Rosetta.

 

[cmChimera]

Wow, its great you have the data to prove most users don't use their optical drives; because every mac owner I know uses them and its the reason why our company (of about 80 iMacs) are looking at alternative products. you obviously speak for everyone ... thats very clever!

Ah and clearly you do with your sample size of 80.

----------

Apple has a history of rapidly obsoleting tech they have no interest in supporting, or if they want to quickly gather support for another similar service or product.

For example,

4) I suspect it is only a matter of time before firewire falls to the wayside as well.
5) The macbooks lacked any sort of display port except thunderbolt.

Retina Macbooks don't have firewire, but have HDMI.

 

[Moonjumper]

Ever since i added a black wallpaper on my lock and home screen i've (no pun) noticed significantly greater battery life. It's probably just all in my head though.

If you have done that with a lower resolution image, then you might be putting less strain on the GPU, but the same would happen with any colour.

I also have a black wallpaper. It looks a lot neater than having the wallpaper fighting with the icons for dominance. It works much better. I'm surprised there isn't a standard dark wallpaper.

 

[kirk26]

Sounds like Jony Ive is trying to kill off iOS forever.

 

[flux73]

Sorry, I forgot, I'm dealing with Apple fans here; let me explain ... because you obviously didn't get the gist of what I was saying ...

Take my current iMac, make it slimmer by removing the optical drive (delivering 100% zero benefit to me or anyone else other than bragging rights of 'look how thin it is'), charge people more for the latest iMac, then make them outlay further £'s for an external optical drive that takes up more desk space ... when my old optical drive took up zero (free) space as it was inside the casing. Its simple if you engage some thought.

Also, before any sheep or other closed minded people ask, I use an optical drive to:

Load music to itunes
Burn music discs for myself and others
Burn DVD's
Back-up data to disc
Load software to my mac

Yes life can go on without one if you have all the pre-requisit kit and are happy to live your life by the cloud. Sorry though, i like to do things my way, not that dictated by people like Apple (because I'm sure they're not doing it to make my life easier (as opposed to making money!)

Apple has always tried to obsolete items that it feels isn't in their future and/or allows for a sleeker design. There is a growing number of people who don't use an optical drive, software companies are increasingly making their products available via download (this includes MS and Adobe), and music downloads over took CD sales last year.

Yeah, I get that you still use it, but face it, it's a dying technology. Blu-Ray will eventually fail (or at best become a niche product) for the same simple reason. Physical media is less convenient than downloads.

Also if you really need one that badly, you can easily buy one for quite cheap and just attach it. Ever have a built in SuperDrive break? Do you know how much it costs to fix it?? Happened to my Mac Mini and I refuse to get it replaced for $169. I hardly use it.

And if you think slimming down the iMac has zero benefit to anyone and was useless, then you have missed the whole point of Apple hardware design for the last decade.

----------

I'm glad we can all stay on topic guys. Keep it up.

Not much to discuss until something real is announced.

 

[iHEARTcartoons]

Sorry, I forgot, I'm dealing with Apple fans here; let me explain ... because you obviously didn't get the gist of what I was saying ...

Take my current iMac, make it slimmer by removing the optical drive (delivering 100% zero benefit to me or anyone else other than bragging rights of 'look how thin it is'), charge people more for the latest iMac, then make them outlay further £'s for an external optical drive that takes up more desk space ... when my old optical drive took up zero (free) space as it was inside the casing. Its simple if you engage some thought.

Also, before any sheep or other closed minded people ask, I use an optical drive to:

Load music to itunes
Burn music discs for myself and others
Burn DVD's
Back-up data to disc
Load software to my mac

Yes life can go on without one if you have all the pre-requisit kit and are happy to live your life by the cloud. Sorry though, i like to do things my way, not that dictated by people like Apple (because I'm sure they're not doing it to make my life easier (as opposed to making money!)

You don't have to go without an optical drive! I too burn discs once in a while and one of these comes in real handy. The best part is when I'm done using it, I can put it away so it does not clutter my desk.

 

[otismotive77]

seems a good idea to me. can't wait for the iOS7.

 

[Wicked1]

Image

LOL, I was waiting for someone to do this.....ROTFL

----------

Image​

• Flat: Check
• Black and White: Check
• No texture: Check

It's WP .. err .. I mean iOS 7 indeed ​

Please NOOOOO, then you will be calling it the wrong fruit instead of Apple it will be Blackberry, Yuck

----------

Just a 3rd party mockup (simplyzety.com) but I like the concept. It's clean. Aesthetic clean up is a good start BUT I hope iOS7 will bring in some improved functionality as well -- better app organization, search, and file storage, and a native mail app that can screen out spam for starters.

Image​

NOOOOOO Please this one hurts my Eyes already, they might as well make everything Black and White if this is the case.

 

[ncaissie]

Cheer up! This one will have 201 small tweaks(useless apps) and bug fixes. And they can’t make the app store and maps any worse can they?

 

[Rogifan]

Cheer up! This one will have 201 small tweaks(useless apps) and bug fixes. And they can’t make the app store and maps any worse can they?

You can go Android, no?

 

[chadley_chad]

You don't have to go without an optical drive! I too burn discs once in a while and one of these comes in real handy. The best part is when I'm done using it, I can put it away so it does not clutter my desk.

Yeah, because having to buy that drive, get it out and connect it when needed, then pack back away in a draw after is far better than having the optical drive already built in like my current iMac (with the same desktop footprint as the new slimmer driveless model!)

 

[twigman08]

Falling back takes between 7 minutes and twenty four hours depending on how badly the iMessage servers are performing at that point, and it won't fall back at all if you happen to lose signal entirely on your handset in the meantime.

iMessage is a fundamentally terrible protocol because it relies on IP, and the IP header in and of itself is bigger than the header and message of an SMS message. Therefore an SMS message will send in vastly more areas of poor signal quality than an iMessage one will.

In addition, there are significant latency problems with iMessage as everything must be routed through Apple's servers which are in a different continent to me and the identifier is not robust enough, linked as it is to handset and not to the sim-ID. Which means if someone uses a virtual number or regularily changes their handset but not the accompanying SIM the message will silently fail.

I don't think *you* understand what iMessage is.

You do bring up some very valid points. While some of the points I myself haven't had a problem with (iMessage has always been virtually instant for me when it sends it as an iMessage, even for pictures), the major problem is when you have someone that used to use iMessage but maybe switched phones then iMessage fails. That point you brought up is the biggest flaw in iMessage.

My cousin recently got a new phone and no longer has an iPhone right now. When I text him it still wants to try to send as an iMessage. No matter what it fails and sometimes it will send as a text message then other times it just fails. It doesn't matter what my settings are or what I do to his contact. It still believes he can use iMessage. It wasn't until recently that it finally knew hat he no longer had iMessage. The whole thing was a pain and it kept us from receiving messages or receiving messages late.

That is my biggest gripe with iMessage. That and the bug (could of swore it was fixed but I still get it sometimes, even with a non jailbroken device) where it says it send a picture but in fact the other person never does receive it.

 

[Rogifan]

Yeah, because having to buy that drive, get it out and connect it when needed, then pack back away in a draw after is far better than having the optical drive already built in like my current iMac (with the same desktop footprint as the new slimmer driveless model!)

Wow first world problems.

 

[Steve J0bs]

If you have done that with a lower resolution image, then you might be putting less strain on the GPU, but the same would happen with any colour.

I also have a black wallpaper. It looks a lot neater than having the wallpaper fighting with the icons for dominance. It works much better. I'm surprised there isn't a standard dark wallpaper.

I use to use a solid black and then i came across a post about someone who used a black background but it had a slight hint of grey in it to make the icons pop a tiny more (it does). I wish i could link you. I like it a lot more than the pure dark black, but it is still dark enough to not distract me. maybe i can take a screenshot and show you so you could see what i am talking about.

 

[Renzatic]

Wow first world problems.

Why do you buy Apple products? What are they most known for?

Simplicity, right? As in "they just work"? They're elegant pieces of machinery you does everything you need them to do far better than the competition, which is one of the major reasons why you're all willing to pay a premium for their computers and devices.

So why is it when someone argues about Apple doing something that makes things a good deal more complicated than it should be, so many people here immediately dismiss their complaints as a non-issue?

...does anyone not see the inherit conflict here? You claim to like simple, but when things are anything but, you all give a flippant remark that does nothing to address the subject at hand and say it doesn't matter?

 

[840quadra]

Universal Binaries, Rosetta.

Both are long dead, Neither of which are supported in 10.8, or in 10.7 .