The best comment in the thread and of course, everyone ignores it. This guy has it right.
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iOS 6 UI: What Is Apple Thinking?
- Thread starter gladoscc
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The best comment in the thread and of course, everyone ignores it. This guy has it right.
I stumbled on my Galaxy S the other day, figured I'd charge it up, fool around with it a little bit (thought it might even be fun for the little person for watching movies in the car or something...).
Flashed the CM9 ICS, fiddled around, then tried a little enhancement using the latest Darky ROM (it was a favorite of mine when I still used this phone).
Thought it was a _mess_ in both the regular CM9 and Darky flavors. I know people carp about the flexibility of Android at the UI portion of the UI (configurable home, widgets, etc.), but I spend 99% of my time +in+ apps, and the UI mess was carried into most of the core apps. In the few apps that installed as default, I found three different back button and option button behaviors.
Now I do think that some of the UI level jumble can be resolved using 3rd party "shells", I had ADW and even the pay version of Launcher Pro (not sure what the current favored solution is), tons of folders/widget/icon tweakers, and eventually the UI was really neat to look at after hours of adjustments, which was fun for a while, but still didn't resolve the "in app" inconsistency and execution.
Ultimately my ol' school nature of wanting access to a filesystem was overridden by the want for a more consistent experience, better app selection, ease-of-sharing the device and general availability (that I'd call a blend of battery, speed and stability).
(FTR, the battery was decimated, so it went back into a drawer, not really worth spending any money on, she'll probably just get one of our 4s when we upgrade in a few months
)
Just my $0.02.
Flashed the CM9 ICS, fiddled around, then tried a little enhancement using the latest Darky ROM (it was a favorite of mine when I still used this phone).
Thought it was a _mess_ in both the regular CM9 and Darky flavors. I know people carp about the flexibility of Android at the UI portion of the UI (configurable home, widgets, etc.), but I spend 99% of my time +in+ apps, and the UI mess was carried into most of the core apps. In the few apps that installed as default, I found three different back button and option button behaviors.
Now I do think that some of the UI level jumble can be resolved using 3rd party "shells", I had ADW and even the pay version of Launcher Pro (not sure what the current favored solution is), tons of folders/widget/icon tweakers, and eventually the UI was really neat to look at after hours of adjustments, which was fun for a while, but still didn't resolve the "in app" inconsistency and execution.
Ultimately my ol' school nature of wanting access to a filesystem was overridden by the want for a more consistent experience, better app selection, ease-of-sharing the device and general availability (that I'd call a blend of battery, speed and stability).
(FTR, the battery was decimated, so it went back into a drawer, not really worth spending any money on, she'll probably just get one of our 4s when we upgrade in a few months
)Just my $0.02.
swingerofbirch
macrumors 68040
I haven't used iOS 6, but the new Podcasts app is not a good indication of Apple's direction in UI design.
It almost seems like it would take work to make a UI so difficult to use.
It almost seems like it would take work to make a UI so difficult to use.
Yup. He delivered a well reasoned reply and the majority of people likely agreed and had no qualms. A High quality post
Then we get ....
See the qualitative difference? The post above has absolutely no reasoning and assumes that what Apple cares about is something that can be known.
I wish we had more posts like the one from URFloorMatt and less like the ones Calidude consistently posts.
I'm sorry...are you seriously disagreeing with the FACT that the cartography HAS changed since the Beta 1 release? And dramatically so in some cases. The Maps threads on this site are full of examples.
I have not lost hope but I am unhappy with how much iOS has declined from the first gen to the sixth gen now. It's still top-notch but its competitors have exceeded it. (and Apple is still keep on saying it as the "best OS on the planet")
What the UI needs is consistency, simplicity and updates. The changing-color status bar is a bad sign of consistency. Why can't Apple make the iOS look like one OS? Apple does a great job in making the MacBooks and iPods, iPads and iPhones look alike. They all have the same Apple style (the color scheme, the fonts, the shapes etc.), thanks to Jony Ive. Why can't the iOS be the same? Same color schemes, same fonts, same shapes... Also with the skeuomorphism apps, just fed up with it. Make all the apps with the same font, color and style. It won't be hard for Apple's iOS design team I guess.
iOS is growingly complex. It is still simple in the basic UI, like you switch on your phone and swipe to browse and launch apps. But look at the Settings apps, just pure complexity. They add new features, but don't update old ones (by removing or updating their bad things), thus making the OS more and more sophisticated.
I haven't seen the Voice Memos app update in a huge way since its release (except for its logo). I'm not saying that it's a bad app, but there are just lot more features that could be added that can improve the user experience. Look at how old the YouTube app looks. That is 2007, it is 2012 now. All of those apps - created then forgotten by Apple. If Apple made every app in the OS top-notch (with efforts by their designers and developers), it would easily make the OS the best.
And by updating your OS is not adding 200+ features every year. Not adding. But improving. I'm sure iOS users are satisfied by the amount of features we have now. But not the quality. Most of the complaints/negative reviews about iOS is about how bad its apps are - not how little features there are.
So update apps with new features and make the OS uniform and simple at the same time. And just please, stop the Skeuomorphism. Just please.
What the UI needs is consistency, simplicity and updates. The changing-color status bar is a bad sign of consistency. Why can't Apple make the iOS look like one OS? Apple does a great job in making the MacBooks and iPods, iPads and iPhones look alike. They all have the same Apple style (the color scheme, the fonts, the shapes etc.), thanks to Jony Ive. Why can't the iOS be the same? Same color schemes, same fonts, same shapes... Also with the skeuomorphism apps, just fed up with it. Make all the apps with the same font, color and style. It won't be hard for Apple's iOS design team I guess.
iOS is growingly complex. It is still simple in the basic UI, like you switch on your phone and swipe to browse and launch apps. But look at the Settings apps, just pure complexity. They add new features, but don't update old ones (by removing or updating their bad things), thus making the OS more and more sophisticated.
I haven't seen the Voice Memos app update in a huge way since its release (except for its logo). I'm not saying that it's a bad app, but there are just lot more features that could be added that can improve the user experience. Look at how old the YouTube app looks. That is 2007, it is 2012 now. All of those apps - created then forgotten by Apple. If Apple made every app in the OS top-notch (with efforts by their designers and developers), it would easily make the OS the best.
And by updating your OS is not adding 200+ features every year. Not adding. But improving. I'm sure iOS users are satisfied by the amount of features we have now. But not the quality. Most of the complaints/negative reviews about iOS is about how bad its apps are - not how little features there are.
So update apps with new features and make the OS uniform and simple at the same time. And just please, stop the Skeuomorphism. Just please.
The level of consistency you are talking about enters the the realm of a bad thing.
With that level of Consistency if I lose focus for a moment then a have to back track to find where I was. They could put text clues to remind me but those need dedicated space. Or they could use background clues. Maybe the choice of background themes isn't always the best. That is not reason drop app themes. If Apple stick to skeuomorphism they do leave lots of theme room for other developers.
Complaining about skeumorphism is the new geek complaint.
Realize that the very filesystem that so many love speak about is nothing but a skeuomorph of the venerable file cabinet with hanging folders and sub folders. Complaining about skeuomorphs is an inability to understand the simple fact that humans are not binary and thus how we process information is about recognition ...hence a vast majority of computer paradigms (as far as UI concepts) have skeuomorphic iconography because that's how people understand things.
It would be cool if Apple could come up with an app called iDocuments that uses a skeumorphic design to portray documents that exist in apps across the system (a file viewer, but limited to documents, doesn't let you mess with system files or app files that aren't document-related). Developers could implement the API in their apps to have the app's documents show up in iDocuments. The design would be friendly enough to allow anybody to manage their documents in iOS. Each app could have a shelf of documents. The documents could be dragged into "project folders" that would allow the user to easily find relating files quickly.
I agree, while it's what apple do with their incremental UI design with iOS and OS X. iOS 6 new features seems like the UI designer work very hard to impress but it doesnt make sense with the other UI. And the dialer is ugly imo.