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Former iOS Chief Scott Forstall Surfaces After Quiet Year of Traveling and Philanthropy
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Good riddance to a pariah. He did nothing good for the last 6 years of iOS and his toxic personality will ensure an early demise to his new company.
And I think that's why Jobs like Forstall so much. They thought alike. Jobs wanted technology to feel instantly familiar, and Forstall was able to bring that to both Mac OS and iOS. There was an enjoyable whimsy to the interfaces.
Ive, on the other hand, is more of an industrial designer and the new OS reflects that. It's clean and sparse, reflecting his philosophy. But it's also less friendly and less useable.
I'm hoping that Apple will listen to feedback and refine iOS 7 so that it's more intuitive and has more visual clarity. Right now, the more I use it, the more frustrated I become. And that's not the kind of experience that Apple is supposed to be know for.
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Unemployment with boat loads of money in his back accounts....guy worked hard time to enjoy life and relax for a bit
Massively better? I'm not so sure. I would not want to go back to iOS 6 though, for certain. It's because there are a lot of great features in iOS 7 that I would never want to give up. That's a good thing. But there's also a lot of features in iOS 7 that worked better in iOS 6, and there's clearly some design elements that simply don't work as well in practice as they sound in theory or perhaps look on paper. I'm not really worried about them sorting many of these things out, but given that there's been clear downgrades in certain areas, I can't sit here and say iOS 7 is massively better than iOS 6.
Another thing that I've found interesting about iOS 7, though not entirely surprising, is that almost everyone I know with an iPhone or iPad has quite a few beefs with it. What's more intriguing though is that many of the complaints I heard came from people who initially loved iOS 7 for the opposite reasons you suggested; they were excited about the changes. But as time's gone on and they've had to use it every day, frustrations have emerged.
Some frustrations stem simply from bugs, but to be clear, there's a lot of bugs, especially on the iPad. I don't think my iOS 4, 5 or 6 betas were ever as buggy as even iOS 7.0.4. I have a 5s and an iPad Air, and my Safari crashes all the time, multitasking gets stuck quite often, orientation gets stuck on the iPad all the time requiring a restart to fix, battery life has been a mess on all of the devices I've tried it on, clean installs or not, and on and on, the App Store crashes all the time, and I had to do multiple clean installs of iOS 7 on my iPhone 5s before I could even buy apps in the App Store without getting an error and a failed download. Bottom line, there are a lot of bugs that significantly affect every day use, definitely more than we've been accustomed to lately, and while they'll likely get ironed out in due time, it leads to this being the first iOS release that's felt unfinished, despite the many great new features and improvement. They sacrificed a lot for change.
But there are other problems that are cause for more concern, such as the focus on clever visuals that don't lead to improved performance or usability, and in fact in many cases they complicate and confuse users. The whole move to text instead of buttons is the first thing that I think really needs to go. It's just far too inconsistent of an indicator; some text is clickable, some isn't, and it's oftentimes not obvious. Not only that, it ends up looking sloppy in far too many cases and working poorly in others.
I could go on and on about the problems, and I could go on and on about the good stuff, but to keep things in context, it really brings home to me how frustrating it must have been dealing with Forstall at Apple. Clearly, Ive and Federighi have a lot of interesting ideas that really work, and they did a great job of cleaning up some of the problem areas in the previous iOS design language. I can't help but wonder how much better off iOS would have been or could be if Forstall was still involved and working as a team player as opposed to isolating himself among management and playing politics too hard. iOS 6 was stale, but there was a lot about it that worked great, and Forstall had a big hand in that. If he'd been more open to working with others, helping to shape some of Ive's ideas and balance them with his own valuable insight into user interface designs, I think we'd truly have an iOS 7 that is massively better than iOS 6. I half-suspect that iOS 8 will indeed be massively better than iOS 7, but I think it's going to make this year with iOS 7 feel like a long beta period.
But if iOS 8 continues to struggle with bugs and continues to feature user interface elements that simply don't work well, it's time to worry. iOS 7 is getting a lot of grace from me and countless others because it was a first run for Ive as a software design guy, it was put out on a rushed schedule, and it's trying something new. I think it's totally reasonable to give it a chance based on how much of it works great, but iOS 8 is going to have to show that they can release a stable OS, do some serious polishing work, and most importantly, completely rethink some of the areas that are simply bad ideas and prove that they're able to change and adapt.
Come back Scott! We apologize for demonizing you and calling your Skeumorphism a "thing of the devil". We retract it! All of it!
Please come back. Save us!
Not sure if that's sarcasm, but I and everyone I know, love the new iOS look. Skeumorphism must die
But I understand that some older people might find it harder to see things on the new design. iOS 8 with a toggle to switch between iOS 7 and iOS 6 look would satisfy everyone, but Apple would never allows that :roll eyes:
Again, I hear this sentiment from people far too often. At first it's easy to get excited because it's new and shiny and fresh, but as you use it more, it can become increasingly frustrating, especially when previous versions worked so well.
And I'll tell you what, all the white didn't bother me too much at first. I thought in some areas it was a bit plain and lacking in contrast, but I wasn't zeroed in on something so singular as "white." Now I am really starting to hate white. It's really made using iOS devices at night in dimmer lighting a miserable experience. And I don't mean that in a small way. I've flipped on my iPad too many times only to feel blinded by it. I've never found myself saying I really hate something about iOS for any significant period of time, but almost six months in now if you count the betas, I can safely say that I really, really, really hate that everything is so damn white. I get why they're doing it. I get that it helps the blue colored text be more noticeable as input areas, and that white is pure or whatever, and content is at the forefront, blah, blah, blah. But that's all pointless if it's so hard on the eyes that I literally don't want to use my iPad as much as I did before.
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Not sure if that's sarcasm, but I and everyone I know, love the new iOS look. Skeumorphism must die
But I understand that some older people might find it harder to see things on the new design. iOS 8 with a toggle to switch between iOS 7 and iOS 6 look would satisfy everyone, but Apple would never allows that :roll eyes:
As much as people don't like the new icons and certain parts of the new look, what will ultimately be problematic about iOS 7 are the areas where the new looks compromise the user experience. The new icons don't compromise usability, and leather with stitching wouldn't make text for buttons any less inconsistent or frustrating. People dwell on the look early on, but like it or hate it as time goes on, what will prove most important is how well it works, and that's where iOS 7 needs to see improvement.
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re Scott
Scott ,please come back and take away the crazy ios 7 cheery flat colours ,bring us some shading and reflections ,some skeumorfism ,i think ill be hanging on my ios 6.1.2 jailbroken phone for a long time or until the ios 7 jailbreak come to save us from the dumb ios 7 flat icones , and cheery colours and especialy the thin fonts with no contrast at all .I hate ios 7 with a vengeance, thats what i thing about it .
Scott ,please come back and take away the crazy ios 7 cheery flat colours ,bring us some shading and reflections ,some skeumorfism ,i think ill be hanging on my ios 6.1.2 jailbroken phone for a long time or until the ios 7 jailbreak come to save us from the dumb ios 7 flat icones , and cheery colours and especialy the thin fonts with no contrast at all .I hate ios 7 with a vengeance, thats what i thing about it .
This is exactly what I thought. Even the small "now playing text" was reaching for something to complain about. Because of the high PPI screen it's easy to read even at further than normal viewing distances.
Those complaints were petty. I've had no problems figuring out which text is clickable or when a setting is active/off. I especially was confused why he thought the second row of buttons was disabled. The first row simply correspond to an app, the second row corresponds to an action that can be taken. Not hard to figure out. And the time stamp on the FaceTime. I don't really know too many people who are able to FaceTime in a completely dark environment. I could only replicate that level of darkness/unreadablity if I covered the camera with my palm and lowered my brightness to about 30-40%.
A rare thoughtful post. And yes, obviously there are more bugs in iOS 7. You can only do so much in 8 months. That will get fixed, and Forestall is the main culprit. By preventing any real work from getting done on the UI overall before November 2012 that is.
As for other iOS 7 UI glitches, they too will be fixed, but not by going back to iOS 6 concepts (big ugly buttons, drop shadows, etc). Apple will keep moving forward. A good case study is OS X. It still doesn't have a customizable Apple menu! The defective app launching process in 10.0.0 was instead fixed by spotlight (for competent users) and launchpad (for grandma). Likewise, you will never see a return of non-retina fonts or purely sentimental skeumorphism. You will see alternatives such as even better accessibility options.
Finally, a lot of issues, such as the obtuse people not knowing what to tap (as if you really don't know after using a smartphone for however many years), can be fixed by proper iOS 7 app design. iOS 7 apps are supposed to have a control color, eg. yellow for Find My Friends. EVERY control should have that color, and non control text should be black. Apple's most recent updates do this well.
iOS 6 upgraded with Scott would have been much better than a whole iOS redesign with ive.
Scott had things more consistent and design elements that didn't contradict itself like iOS 7 does. 7 feels very unfinished or 'not thought about'..
Scott should join a JB team and sell his iOS design. We could coin a new term. 'Im going to forestall my iPhone'
Scott had things more consistent and design elements that didn't contradict itself like iOS 7 does. 7 feels very unfinished or 'not thought about'..
Scott should join a JB team and sell his iOS design. We could coin a new term. 'Im going to forestall my iPhone'
That was after he left Apple and before iOS 7 was released.
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Right on. Apple needs to stop f*n around with customers patience.
MBP antiglare, FinalCut changes, Pages/Numbers features removed, moving around and changing use and feel interface for the sake of changing. iOS7 with no roll-back. Fiasco after fiasco. Pro's are abandoning Apple in droves.
As eccentric as the guy is known to be, iOS was much better with him. Ive is a master in design, but iOS 7 is a disappointment. Not a surprise though as industrial design is not the same as software design.
Don't care about skewmorphism but I surely miss him.
Don't care about skewmorphism but I surely miss him.
Redesign fine, but only if you're making it better than it was. It's so hard to make out buttons, text, the keyboard just to name a few. I don't think they made it better. The original look is what made it an iPhone and gave it it's character. Now my phone doesn't know what the hell it is. Actually, it does know what it is... sluggish
It was Scott's own arrogance that led to his removal from Apple.
"His arrogance" is what we are told in order to justify ousting him.
Cook and Ives went on to change everything just to prove they are better than Jobs. I am sure Forstall would have fought them every inch of the way, and rightly so.
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As much as I would want to see Scott come back, I don't think he has that choice anymore. It's pretty obvious he was let go, with a little push.
I immensely respect the guy and what he brought to Apple. His talents should not be wasted. He deserves to be working on cutting edge technology and with a company that can give him the resources to do it. I think Apple is afraid of what could happen if he went to work for a rival. I'm sure his exit plan included am agreement to not compete and was peppered with plenty of incentives not to compete.
Regardless of elitist opinions, general public isn't impressed by icons that look like created by a 3rd grade. Honestly, I haven't talked to anyone who thought iOS 7 looks impressive. I know what you're talking about and understand where you're coming from, but the overall UI visual concept is too out of touch from the general public who don't share the same delicate taste.