BlackBerry CEO Says Despite a 'Fantastic Job' With iOS Design, Apple Now Lacks Innovation

[Jetson]

What's really pathetic about this is that Blackberry's CEO is proudly showing the interface on his product and it's essentially the SAME as Apple's!

Icons lined up in rows, etc. Apple created this model with the object oriented HyperCard decades ago. I built many apps with icons just like this back in the 80s.

All these companies, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Blackberry COPY Apple's original innovations, then the copycats claim that Apple is not innovating.

Apple currently has the best products hands down. Sure you read forums like this and find all kinds of bellyaching. But this is usually from non-creative people who habitually find fault.

When Apple screws up (in my opinion) I will definitely point that out. But to claim that Apple isn't innovating??? Utterly ridiculous.

 

[Technarchy]

What exactly is BB or Android doing that is so innovative?

 

[apple_iBoy]

It's not about battery sucking animations, but time wasting flaws.

One anecdote I experienced w/ a friend who is a complete computer goof: she bought an iPad because she wanted something easier and didn't really need a home computer. She wanted to make a slide show of a group of photos. Easy enough. BUT Photos won't let you reorganize the photos in a specific order. It's FIFO only.

Here's another... say you want to directly open a PDF. You can't just go to search and type in the name of the PDF. Search will come up blank.

Or say you have all your apps organized by page. You want to go to your productivity apps on page 3, and you are currently on page 6. You have to swipe to get to page 3. Why isn't there a way to tap to bring up a page index so you can directly go to a specific page? Why isn't there a way to directly access recent documents like on a computer w/o having to punch up the app then open the doc.

I don't think you and I would disagree about a bunch of deficiencies and areas for improvement in iOS. My whole point is that I think much of the public at large is looking for "improvements" in areas that you and I don't necessarily think are the most critical. I think much of the recent backlash against iOS is because of these more superficial concerns.

 

[andy9l]

What exactly is BB or Android doing that is so innovative?

Google Now is the only thing that I've seen in the past few years and thought "cool". Turns out, it's next to useless in the UK, in real-life - I've actually turned it off.

Before anyone says it, no, Siri is not better than Google Now. GN is proactive, Siri is reactive.

 

[paul4339]

Well Apple is doing something right... their sales keep going up and people are still eager for their products. The same can't be said for BB.
.

 

[oliversl]

iOS is the older, real smart phone OS. The maturity is what makes it strong.

 

[roxxette]

I will take quality over quantity any day.

Apple could easily crank out updates every week with flashy gimmicks galore (Hello Samstolen) however Apple prefers to only release finished (not Beta) quality products to market that customers actually use.

I feel very good about Tim & Jony at the helm, I'm pretty sure they still live and breathe this philosophy at Apple:

"We just want to make insanely great products"
Steve Jobs

So sad

 

[glap1922]

What exactly is BB or Android doing that is so innovative?

Well from Android some recent innovations were their notifications, larger/better screens, NFC functionality, as well as others.
WebOS introduced a phone with inductive charging and a great multitasking solution.
Windows Phone 8 has a completely restyled home screen that works completely differently than anything else out there.

Those are just a couple of examples, there are many more.

 

[w0by]

Yea

True, I've been pretty bored with my iPhone. It's like the same as the 3g with some better specs and Siri.

 

[Lesser Evets]

Apple is slipping, but all these other companies say things they wish were truth rather than stating actual reality.

Shut up and sell something, Blackberry.

 

[Yixian]

What annoys me about this comment is that whilst it's true Apple hasn't majorly innovated the smartphone market in the last few years, neither have ANY of the other manufacturers. Apple came along and created the iPhone, now it's the archetype and every other manufacturer more or less is just producing clones or slight evolutions, and now they are whining because Uncle Apple is taking too long to come out with something new for them to steal.

Until very recently, sales figures gave Apple no reason to make any drastic changes and it's always been Apple's philosophy to wait until real innovation can be made before implementing it, because an oversized screen and this or that esoteric feature with a flashy trademark that only survives one generation is NOT innovation.

 

[perpetuity]

I don't visit comment threads often and I'm glad.

The critique is ridiculous. Take the below statement about switching on/off wifi and airplane mode ... it takes too many steps? According to what measure?! When building a UI you do research into how often a function is accessed, guess how many times I've turned off wifi this year? ONCE. Airplane mode? Not once.

I flew a ton last year, guess how much of a pain it was to turn on Airplane mode? Not at all...

And maps is still your complaint? Install Google Maps or Mapquest for crying out loud.

Don't be ridiculous.

It's true, iOS is still lacking basic features I can find on a 4 year old Blackberry. The interface is a newton like icon manager. Turning wifi, Bt, airplane mode on and off takes too many steps. My phone app freezes weekly and has on every single iPhone. The auto spell is horrible and does not learn. Home screen is a totol waste, pull down doesn't do much for me, and Siri is only so helpful outside the USA. And most of all Maps is completely useless outside of major markets like the USA. I spoke to an IT Manager at a public Japanese firm and he said his entire org is still on ios 5 because of the maps issue. They are now looking to get away from ios because of maps, it's useless and they are unable to upgrade their fleet. Maps has totally destroyed my ios experience as I am traveling globally 95% of the year.. Might be getting the new Samsung

 

[BigJohno]

Says the guy who did nothing to innovate in the last 6 years. Not going to make me join BB.

 

[GuitarDTO]

This is hilarious. If you actually read the entire article, this headline is WAYYYY overly sensational and not what the CEO was saying AT ALL. If anything, he was very complimentary of Apple and was pointing towards how the industry as a whole requires constant innovation. He's right too, the basic UI is 5 years old now and has remained unchanged, and if they aren't careful it will bite them. Blackberry should know, they have went through that sting first hand.

Sensational headline just to get the fanboys up in a flame, which has succeeded. In fact, I'll dare say this is just an additional marketing move by the Blackberry CEO, and it is succeeding because it is now a headline all over the news

 

[GQB]

It's true.

Because having a bigger screen or tarting up the interface to appeal to people with attention span deficit is 'innovating'?
Please.

 

[maninhat]

Agreed

I completely agree. iOS 6 was a complete disappointment - pretty much no new features. There are things that should have been implemented long time ago: like switching on/off wifi and 3g in notification panel, the possibility for apps to share content, icloud documents being accessible by 3rd parties, the clock icon actually displaying time, the top bar displaying new notifications... I could go on and on.

Designwise I can live with the old gui, not exciting but I actually quite like it.

Hardware is good. But would I say no to a bigger screen? Certainly not.

And whoever says they can't distinguish the pixels on their iPhones - yes, you can't see them from 30 cm, you definitely can from 15. But so what.

 

[AppleInTheMud]

This reminds me SOOOO BAD about the Amiga times.

Commodore Amiga had everything the others didnt. Took overprices. And then they made the mistake. They where to slow to reinvent themselves and excactly this is happening to my big love Apple right now.

iPhones iOS is so outdated. And prices keep rising. The same with the pc's from Apple. The design from the old MacBook pro is supirior to the new one.

And even the desktop has no dvd drive anymore ? "People dont want that" - Hey Tim Cooks - YOURE SOOOOO WRONG.

In our store most people ignore the macs now because of small things like that.

Tim ? YOU FAILED.

 

[anim8or]

I was going to open with how surprised I was at the closed mindedness about these comments but these days this forum rarely surprises me.

I love apple as much as the next mac user but the Blackberry CEO is right, and just because his product is still not cutting edge in terms of design or functions he can still give his opinion.

I am just hoping that Jony Ive's involvement with UI will bring a new look iOS in the near future.

I think if apple were to revamp the UI and also make it more universal and less device centric then it may win over some of the people who have disliked the slow merge of osx and iOS... Windows had the right idea with windows 8 and windows mobile but as always they have just poorly executed it!

 

[Michael Scrip]

iOS has gotten stale. A lot of us have been complaining prior to iOS 5. Yes it just works but a lot of it doesn't just work as well as it could.

1. Why is it always 73 and sunny?
2. Why is multitasking done so poorly?
3. Settings- should have items opened by 1 step not 3 or 4.
4. Remove worthless apple apps or at least apple should update them so that end users want to use them
5. System defaults-please let me choose which mapping system I want to use
6. Please stop the Facebook integration-what a waste of programming time and I use Facebook.
7. Why do I need to leave my current app (see a stupid switching animation) to reply to a text in 2013?

Those are just a few examples of things I'd like to see improved.

Those are the same things that bother me with iOS.

BUT... I'm still not running towards another OS because of them.

There may be 7 things on that list that annoy me... but there are countless things I do like about iOS.

No company can satisfy 100% of the people 100% of the time... you gotta take the good with the bad.

 

[hayesk]

Thats a lie. Other manufactures have higher ppi, and a larger screen. They know they don't have anything special, so they are trying to make the best with what they have.

Not quite. While yeah, they worded it wrong by only mentioning ppi specifically, the displays in the iPhone have a better colour gamut than the displays in the Galaxy SIII anyway, don't know about the 4.

 

[maninhat]

Well, just because you don't do it, it doesn't mean other people don't do it.

I have to switch wi-fi on/off every day twice and it is super annoying. It is a matter of 1s on a jailbreak phone, so why can't just apple get a grip and implement it...

I don't visit comment threads often and I'm glad.

The critique is ridiculous. Take the below statement about switching on/off wifi and airplane mode ... it takes too many steps? According to what measure?! When building a UI you do research into how often a function is accessed, guess how many times I've turned off wifi this year? ONCE. Airplane mode? Not once.

I flew a ton last year, guess how much of a pain it was to turn on Airplane mode? Not at all...

And maps is still your complaint? Install Google Maps or Mapquest for crying out loud.

Don't be ridiculous.

 

[perpetuity]

Features are not necessarily innovations.

Precisely, a larger screen is not "innovative" ... it's just a feature point.
NFC is a feature, limited.
Inductive charging is a feature, limited.

How notifications are handled in a UI could be innovative. I don't seem to care about how notifications are now handled in iOS... in fact because I work for a living I DON'T WANT TO BE BOTHERED WITH NOTIFICATIONS!

A UI for "multitasking" can be innovative.

A UI such as Windows Phone is innovation as well.

Don't confuse a simple feature with innovation.

Well from Android some recent innovations were their notifications, larger/better screens, NFC functionality, as well as others.
WebOS introduced a phone with inductive charging and a great multitasking solution.
Windows Phone 8 has a completely restyled home screen that works completely differently than anything else out there.

Those are just a couple of examples, there are many more.

 

[Colinwoods84]

i was just having a conversation the other day about how samsung is making the iphone less desirable. I really think they are on to something. I love IOS but yes it is "stale."

Also, why cant we can a smart cover for the iPhone? I hate screen protectors. Why are you going to sell me on such a great screen then expect me to degrade the integrity of retina with some screen protector. GIVE ME A SMART COVER!



for the record its like 52 and ***** out

 

[iamPro]

Well, just because you don't do it, it doesn't mean other people don't do it.

I have to switch wi-fi on/off every day twice and it is super annoying. It is a matter of 1s on a jailbreak phone, so why can't just apple get a grip and implement it...

Absolutely.
And there's most likely a lot more than 1% of the people who only toggle bluetooth when getting in a car. Toggling bluetooth and wifi shouldn't take 3 steps. A pull and a tap should be the maximum amount of steps required.

Heck, I hate having to toggle wifi at work. I don't want to be on my work wifi all the time. But certainly would love to use it when I want to. Disregarding the wifi network then having to type in a long password each time isn't "ease of use".

 

[maninhat]

Features are not necessarily innovations.
Precisely, a larger screen is not "innovative" ... it's just a feature point.

Maybe it's not - but it would be nice to have.

I understand Apple is trying to keep things not fragmented but I do envy my colleagues their S3s just for how light they are and how large the screen is.