Is it just me, or is Apple's ability to create attractive UI styling gotten pretty poor?

[ultmtfloydian]

When iOS 7 first landed, I nearly blew a head gasket. I do UX design for a living, and many aspects of the new flat design language (at least Apple's take on it) just rubbed me the wrong way. I think they got some things right and (in my option) other things pretty wrong. This point is basically shown in a smaller yet more complete scale when looking at the iconography. Is it just me, or do some of the iOS icons look pretty half baked and inconsistent? The overuse of the glassy transparency and bright colors are a little overkill. Again, this is just my opinion. I think a more subtle transition should've happened. Personally, I didn't mind the skeomorphic metaphor..though yes, the green felt was pretty gross. A hybrid between these two designs would've been nice.

Now, the thing that really gets me going is what happened with the design of OS X..I mean macOS. I really loved the design of (hold on to your butts, it's a time warp) Aqua prior to the Yosemite UX style overhaul. The use of the grey gradients were quite pleasing to look at. Don't get me wrong, I think it did need some polishing here and there, but again, a full overhaul? Eh. Before Yosemite landed, I saw some people come up with some pretty beautiful renderings of pre-Yosemite and current Aqua style converged together quite nicely (does anyone even call it Aqua anymore? Because it certainly doesn't resemble anything Aqua anymore). I know some people found it kind of corny, but I actually really liked the 3D dock and those shiny icons. The current iteration of "Aqua" I think suffers from the same issue iOS' UX has..too many inconsistencies and quite frankly, too steep of change for what seems like just for the sake of change. The consistency and the general ideology of Apple these days feel like a person suffering from major black and white thinking and even possibly multiple personality disorder.

Again, I do UX design work and these opinions just come from my own experience and professional opinions. Nonetheless, they are just opinions. I'm certainly not saying I'm right or am trying to discredit anyone else's views. Anyway, enough ramblings. Anyone have similar thoughts or anything to add?

 

[amagichnich]

Snow Leopard is Tha last "real" Aqua, Lion changed it all. I'm primarily into PPC Macs and that's not just because of the price tag. I love the 10.2,10.3 and 10.5 Interfaces a lot (not 10.4,it is way too inconsistent, though UNO fixes that pretty good)
iOs wise I have no experience but always felt a need to have the first iPhone for its cool look

 

[bluecoast]

I know what you mean (btw I’m not a professional UI/UX designer).

As the ‘time well spent’ movement has grown in prominance, people are more away that the use of dazzling white space and bright almost over saturated icons ‘hack’ our brains into interacting with our phones and devices more and more.

I’d hope that next year we see a significant design change with the use of ‘dark modes’ (black & sepia) and a subdued look for icons that drops the saturated look for something more like pastels.

 

[wordsworth]

MY first OS experience was with System 7, if my memory serves me correctly. My personal favourite is Snow Leopard and I liked the early OSX Aqua period very much indeed. These days I think the OS UI is very poor. It's had much of the user-friendliness designed out of it, I feel. It's not a patch on the Snow Leopard way of working, for me. I can't read the fonts very easily, the colours are insipid and misleading and the way things are set up is not at all user-freindly in my opinion. I'm currently using El Capitan.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

I find their UX attractive. But I also find that it often prioritise that over functionality, which is a flat out wrong direction to go.

 

[amagichnich]

I find their UX attractive. But I also find that it often prioritise that over functionality, which is a flat out wrong direction to go.

Best example is iTunes. 9 is IMO the user friendliest version, everything thereafter is *** and it's becoming worse

 

[theluggage]

I find their UX attractive. But I also find that it often prioritise that over functionality, which is a flat out wrong direction to go.

That's exactly the problem: UI design has turned into graphic design and the result looks great, but has lost sight of things like discoverability and consistency of functionality. You'd think, for instance, that there would be some commonality of function between (say, looking at iOS) the music player, the photo browser and the file browser - they're both browsing collections of objects that are normally stored in a directory-tree structure, but can also be sorted by various metadata tags. The UI differences should only really start once you've drilled down to the object that you want to open/play/edit.

Then there's all the "hidden" functionality: options on context menus that need a long press to reveal, but with no visual clue as to which objects have long-press actions. Content that can be revealed by scrolling but - since the scroll bars only appear when you scroll - no clue that they are there (pro tip: if you don't have scroll bars, try and arrange things so that there's always a bit of the hidden content visible).

How long did it take you to find the "Up Next" list in iOS Music...?

Big problem with the iOS Music app: they've turned it from a tool to play your personal music collection into a shop window for Apple Music, sweeping the original functionality into a corner. Its always important to decide whether you are designing a shop window (has a few seconds to grab your attention as you walk past), a brochure (you're interested and want more information) or the product (never let the marketing department design this). A lot of modern UI design (especially websites) treats everything as an advertising hoarding (but you've at least clicked on the link, if not typed the URL - you're standing in the shop now and want some meat).

Also, the whole "flat UI" thing threw a lot of babies out with the bathwater because of some really bad skeuomorphic/pseudo-realistic design: the point of skeuomorphism done well was to distinguish controls from eye candy and suggest how the interface was supposed to work. Older versions of iOS included some crimes against skeuopmorphism (e.g. the Contacts app that looked like a physical address book with turnable pages, but didn't function like one).

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Best example is iTunes. 9 is IMO the user friendliest version, everything thereafter is *** and it's becoming worse

Amen to that. My personal stance is that iTunes 10, but without Ping, and with iTunes 9s colors, would be the best iTunes. iTunes 11 was a step down, and iTunes 12 was a huge cluster****, useability wise. I have no idea what they thought there, except 'lets change it for the sake of change!'.

I am still looking forward to that iTunes that rumors said they were thinking about in 2014 (!). Give me the UX of iTunes 10 and I'll be quite happy.

 

[bluecoast]

Amen to that. My personal stance is that iTunes 10, but without Ping, and with iTunes 9s colors, would be the best iTunes. iTunes 11 was a step down, and iTunes 12 was a huge cluster****, useability wise. I have no idea what they thought there, except 'lets change it for the sake of change!'.

I am still looking forward to that iTunes that rumors said they were thinking about in 2014 (!). Give me the UX of iTunes 10 and I'll be quite happy.

I suspect by fall 2019 we'll have Marzipan Apple Music on the Mac with iTunes stripped down to its pre Apple Music state (and minus the App Store).

So we may all get a little bit of what we want - although unfortunately even a simple version of the current iTunes app will be a mess.