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iOS 19 Redesign Now Widely Rumored
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I dont want "simplified translucent". This is a bad idea. I want legibility and ease of use, not having to squint to see if there's a semi translucent button or not. Or white text on a light background. I also didnt want ultra light fonts in iOS 7, and that was eventually walked back over time too. I hate to think "I'm old" but I want to see my device and use it, not admire it.
This is what drives me crazy with them. Example after example of basic, basic functionality they are just ignoring. But every year it's genmoji and image playground and stickers and color filters and OS interface shuffling and everything BUT improvements to core functionality.
the article itself also points out that the proposed trajectory takes usability backwards and instead buries more and more in contextual menus or other more-taps-to-do-anything places.
and that bears out my increasing frustration with apple (and most tech). they seem to think people just want to fiddle around with their devices rather than accomplish a task and move on.
my bigger fear is that they're right, that IS what modern audiences want. and maybe its good for me too because it makes me want to engage with tech less
I still think Apple should drop the visual change with iOS 19. Make iOS 19 more a Snow Leopard-style bug fix upgrade with the full integration of the new Apple Intelligence features in Siri first.
Apple Vision Pro’s success, or lack thereof, has absolutely nothing to do with its software design. visionOS is inarguably gorgeous.
I get this. I have to wonder if focusing on gimmicky things like stickers and genmoji appeals to the group who loves to buy the latest phones with all these new “features.” I really hope so; otherwise, what’s the point?
Am I really the only one who mostly likes the design of visionOS? I’m not saying I like everything but the skeuomorphism design is actually quite interesting looking to me. I’m not sure how I would like rounded app icons though, except maybe rounded icons in settings as presented in the photo in the article. One thing though, they need to have a healthy balanced approach to the design language that takes the best of iOS/macOS and the best of visionOS as not all of visionOS’s designs will work well on an iPhone or even more so a Mac. I think you’ll see something more interesting than what we have today honestly… A lot of design elements look like my 10 year old or more even my 6 year old could have drawn up.
This is a whole other issue. Apple needs to make an Update Guide that runs through all the new features after an update. Burying it in the Tips app and having those tips pop up at inconvenient times is ineffective.
Those were the days.... back when girls were girls and men were men, we'll probably never see another Herbert Hoover again.
It definitely does. And I'm definitely Principal Skinner wondering why there are no children at the 4H club.
I had just hoped that a trillion dollar world class company could do both.
Horrible look or not, it would impart less information per icon, if they're still in the same row/column grid format. They could improve that by going to a hexagonal (honeycomb) arrangement, but I don't see that happening.
I disagree. The watch uses something like that and it is difficult to navigate, IMHO.
I think you're misinterpreting - going to a hexagonal pattern would be an attempt to recoup the space wasted by going to round icons - I'm not recommending it as superior to to a row/column grid; I'd rather have them stick with rounded rectangles, which carry more information (more pixel's to differentiate one icon from another, among the, easier to recognize) in the row/column grid format.
Yea, I misunderstood what you were advocating. I agree the current layout works just fine and tinkering with it just to be different is not a good idea, IMHO.
As someone who sees this issue through the eyes of thousands of end-users ranging from kindergarten-age through geriatric I agree with you 100%. I am very much on the "bring back skeuomorphism, consistency, and usability" end of things. A non-trivial number of these users have accessibility issues as well, so I've seen how these machines have transitioned (i.e. gotten harder to use, often because the UI elements are harder to differentiate and inconsistent) over the years. I can't even begin to explain how truly significant the usability issues are in the current iOS and MacOS operating systems compared to what they used to be. Apple should go back to adding features only when they can be made to be intelligible by "Joe Average."
Now, on the 'personal' level I love the aesthetic of the UI example in this thread. It's lovely to look at. I also used to jailbreak my phone to use the "glass" style UIs that were available. You know how many people I would have recommended do that? Maybe 1% of them, at the most. That's it, because 99% of my end-users are perfectly normal humans who need their computers to function as tools, not fanboys or enthusiasts or any other form of tech-savvy person. They don't care if their UI looks any specific way, they just want it to be easy to see, easy to understand, and consistent.
Apple could resolve this by offering a choice of two or three different interfaces which are extremely similar except in their appearance. Not just a dark-mode, but let's say a "clarity" mode, an "enthusiast" mode, and maybe something in-between (or something new that someone a lot smarter than me comes up with.) That way we would have a 'best of both worlds' option: A lovely but harder to see and harder to use interface, or an interface that focuses instead on clarity and usability.
A “visual refresh” of anything is never overdue. User interfaces, iPhones, etc. Change for the sake of change is how we end up with broken, regressive design.
AR is coming, and will one day be in glasses. With this redesign they can start to get all iOS apps “AR ready” and extend Continuity to enable apps to move seamlessly between hardware devices and AR.