Apple will get to the in iOS 19 or 20. Their designers are all inept as evidenced by iOS 16 notifications and the dynamic Island.
My god it took them until iOS 13 to add Dark Mode. They are so ****** bad and stupid I can’t believe it.
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iOS 16.1 Beta Adds More Pronounced Gray Border Around Dynamic Island When Using Black Wallpapers or in Dark Mode
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My god it took them until iOS 13 to add Dark Mode. They are so ****** bad and stupid I can’t believe it.
Then why do you continue to buy their products? You have to be a customer and a fan of the company since you're a regular user here. There's no other logical reason someone would frequent an Apple enthusiast website as you do.
I was relieved to find that it’s only there to let you know where to touch, when it’s available. It’s not there 100% of the time. At least I hope that is the case… 🤷
I buy a few of their products because they do still have some very intelligent people making some very good decisions and they do still have the best phone with the smoothest and cleanest OS.
The hardware quality is extremely good.
However, both the hardware designs and iOS designs have been degrading for several years now. Some embarrassingly bad decisions are coming out of the iOS design teams, like Dynamic Island and the notifications. The fact that notifications (referring to iOS 16 and to a lesser extant iOS 15), was given the go-ahead is unbelievable, I would have fired the person who brought that idea forward.
Dynamic Island needed a word written on the whiteboard but Apple had no one intelligent in the room apparently. That word? Subtlety.
Dynamic Island is highly, highly distracting. See, the status menu has always been done correctly (aside from iOS 6 when they colored it). The status menu absolutely has to be static, and not provoking…eg, not distracting. The Dynamic Island is simply utilizing a portion of the status bar to show some near-useless information about background apps. The problem isn’t Dynamic Island itself…a dynamic status bar is fine, and it’s pretty obvious. In fact, the status bar has always been slightly dynamic by way of incorporation momentary location indicator, or current call status, the previous app button, etc.
The problem with it is that they did not use subtlety. Here’s what it should do: all font and all icons should be black/white. This guarantees you aren’t drawing attention to secondary information. No numbers should be larger than the clock in the status bar, as it’s by far the most important thing that can ever be placed up there. The Timer should only show the ring that slowly disappears because it is maximally subtle!!! You can glance up to see the relative remaining time. I would allow customization in Settings to add hours and minutes, but never seconds. Seconds is unbelievably distracting because it changes every….second. The waveform during audio is also highly distracting and useless.
Sort of. It seems to show up whenever there's something in the Dynamic Island — even if that's just the padlock icon when the iPhone is sitting on the lock screen, although it's pretty faint on the always-on display.
As others have pointed out, there are quite a few things that can end up on the Dynamic Island. Any audio you're listening to, for example, or even something you're watching on an Apple TV will appear there as part of the standard "Now Playing" controls. Live Activities will presumably make that spot even busier, although it's fair to say folks will have a lot more control over those.
I don’t find it distraction and find it useful, easier to change music that’s playing and at a glance can see what albums playing, I can see timers etc more easily, all those UI elements take up less space with DI than on the old notch.
It's funny how every few years Apple comes out with something that's very polarizing. I guess the Dynamic Island is it this year 😏
I fully respect your opinion, but it's unreasonable to assume that everybody else shares it. I suspect many people are divided on this one. Different strokes for different folks, as they say. While Apple's designers and engineers are far from perfect and have made more than a few blunders over the years, I don't think it's fair to lump Dynamic Island into that category.
Personally, I kind of like the new design, and don't find it distracting at all. Perhaps that's because the only information I ever have up there is stuff I don't mind being distracted by. Maybe that will change when Live Activities come along, but I also figure I won't use Live Activities for anything I find too distracting; it will presumably be something I can control on a per-app basis, and I can turf an app to the curb if it misuses it.
I'm not necessarily a fan of the lock screen notification changes but at least there's a choice there, and it's not too hard to return mostly to the pre-iOS 15 way of doing things (e.g. disable summaries, set to list view). I suppose what Apple could eventually do to appease those who intensely dislike the distraction of the Dynamic Island is provide a way of disabling all Live Activities systemwide, reducing that area to only transient notifications like Face ID and other things that have already lived in the status bar for a long time like the call-in-progress indicator.
It has to be. It defeats the entire purpose of the thing. All they did was go on and on about "blend software with hardware" just to put an ugly line around it? No way they're that dumb.
I understand I just think we disagree on whether or not they should have done it.
Yeah, I get it. It would be nice if Apple allowed it to be turned on or off. 🚥
Plus like I mentioned earlier here, they said they were working on DI for years. Why wouldn't they have done this with it initially? Makes no sense they'd decide to make a relatively big change right after launching it.
Sadly, I'm not sure this qualifies as a "relatively big change." As the original article notes, the Dynamic Island has had a faint border around it under the same conditions since the iPhone 14 Pro was released with iOS 16. It appears that iOS 16.1 just increases the contrast to make it more visible, particularly on true black backgrounds. It's clearly too visible, though, so perhaps Apple will realize it needs to dial it back down.
#1: dynamic island is not just a software feature, it’s also a hardwarefeature. Did you miss that all of the Face ID components are in a 30% smaller area, and the proximity sensor is now behind the display? Those are hardware features that certainly cost more and certainly add to the production of the product.
#2: your argument that it’s going to stretch the software teams even thinner so they should’ve brought it to all of the new iPhones is irrelevant, because Apple still has to develop software for older iPhones.
iOS 16 still runs on foreheaded iPhones, large notched iPhones, smaller notched iPhones, and dynamic island iPhones.
That wouldn’t change, even if the standard 14 had a dynamic island.
Also as cool as I think the dynamic island is, let’s not kid ourselves. It’s not changing notifications that much, certainly not enough that people without it are getting a drastically worse experience.
In fact general notifications are basically the same, I don’t think there’s any difference with text messages or emails or anything like that.
Lmao the album artwork is absolutely tiny. Only certain artwork can you tell what it is due to contrast or distinctiveness in the artwork…
Easier to change music? Are you unaware of swiping up from the bottom and going back to your music playing app, or swiping down control center which reveals the music player…
It’s literally slower to tap and hold on the island than to swipe down control center.
Well I can see what album artwork it is so it is helpful to me. A quick hold on DI opens players, which is quicker then a swiping up, going to music app, changing controls then going back to original app… or swiping down from control center, expanding that widget.
Works quicker for me so yeah don’t tell me what works well for me. Also I can change music without changing my current app or blocking visuals of what I’m doing, bonus for me.
Just because it doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean it’s wrong lol and other don’t find a use in it lol.
Does the waveform constantly move while music is playing, regardless of what app you're in?? That would be hideous.
Yes. It’s not especially bright and I personally don’t find it distracting, but I can see how others might. I don’t usually listen to music while I’m trying to focus on something else, which is probably why it’s not a big deal for me.
The more I use the phone with this, the more I dislike it. And also the more I become convinced, it is a bug and not intended behavior.
Thanks for the reply. Having a moving graphic on an otherwise still page sounds like horrible design to me.
Hahaha you would scorch earth defending that piece of trash objectively highly distracting feature. It’s objectively faster to swipe down control center and tap to switch a song so yeah I will tell you that because it’s a fact and I don’t care that your bias disallows you from admitting to facts.
Objectively, factually dynamic island is highly distracting and adds almost nothing useful to the iOS experience. I’m sorry your bias won’t allow you to admit objective truths.
I on the other hand only care about reality. Despite the fact that I’m typing this statement on an iPhone 14 Pro, I can admit that dynamic island is a piece of garbage highly distracting near-useless feature.
The waveform constantly moves during any audio playback in the background. It is highly distracting and entirely useless. Think about it for a moment. Literally the only utility in that would be if you had your volume all the way down for some reason and you noticed the extremely distracting waveform still jumping around…. If you didn’t have your volume muted you don’t need a stupid god damn waveform since you know… sound waves themselves tell you that audio is playing… LOL.
But does the distraction stop there? Ohhh noooo oh dear no it certainly does not. If you set a Timer it places the entire numeric countdown in the Dynamic Island…EVEN THE SECONDS. So it’s literally rotating numbers every single second up there and you can see it in your peripheral vision as you’re reading the rest of the screen which is totally static of course…. What’s more? The numbers are larger than the clock in the status bar, and they match the Timer aesthetic so they are orange on a black background.
I’m not finished… if you add a Timer over 1hr, it will show the numeric hours, minutes, and seconds countdown in the dynamic island and this is so large, and takes so much space that it pushes the CLOCK out of the status bar until the Timer drops below 1hr (but it’s even bugged right now so it messes that up and the numbers don’t reposition so the clock usually still stays off).
Apple designers are among the stupidest imaginable. I actually can’t believe it.
I am 100% confident people would prefer my designs…I can guarantee you wouldn’t be getting distracted from it. The status bar needs static or near-static content, and strictly black/white font and icons so as not to provoke the attention of the user toward background information. The user must actively think to look up there, not be drawn up there from movement in their peripheral vision.
You certainly think highly of yourself. But at the same time refuse to provide a single sample of your genius design. So much "talent" going to waste.
“And if you look here in this grey area, that’s the part where we cleverly hid the thing you’re not supposed to see”
— Apple designer on crack
— Apple designer on crack