Magic of the Apple Watch

[Plett]

First I am aware that we all love to bash the h$$! out of Apple, I am right there in the trenches with you.

Today during a walk with my dogs with only my Apple Watch and AirPods II listening to a podcast on Apple Podcasts that I had started earlier on another device, and when it ended I kinda had that panic feeling, ya know the one where you find yourself isolated in the wild without sufficient entertainment for the mile or two back to your personal command center... Anyway I opened the podcast app and of course magically my podcasts were up to date and a library of fresh entertainment was available to me, I made my selection and continued on. Then my Watch rang, and my lovely bride asked me a simple question, to which I answered and the connection broke and my podcast resumed, during a commercial I said "hey siri, fast forward 60 seconds" and I was back in the game without listening to how amazing the Casper mattress it (I bought one a few years ago, and admit they are great).

Anyway long story short, considering where some of us have been from trying to figure out how to get spoken word content on our original iPods to today it really is kind of magical.

All the best in 2020!

 

[nickdalzell1]

I just tested the 'chill mix' on my Watch Series 5 paired to my old reliable Bluetooth LG Tone Pro headset. Never had more appropriate walking music on an otherwise cloudy gloomy day in a long time. So nice to discover new songs I actually like.

Don't really hate or want to crap on Apple myself but I still miss the magic of skeuomorphism. I've found apps to compensate that offer it but they're rare today. It made using an iPhone fun and different.

 

[Plett]

I just tested the 'chill mix' on my Watch Series 5 paired to my old reliable Bluetooth LG Tone Pro headset. Never had more appropriate walking music on an otherwise cloudy gloomy day in a long time. So nice to discover new songs I actually like.

Don't really hate or want to crap on Apple myself but I still miss the magic of skeuomorphism. I've found apps to compensate that offer it but they're rare today. It made using an iPhone fun and different.

I agree, I have always hoped the flat look of today would be a very brief fad.

 

[matrix07]

Anyway long story short, considering where some of us have been from trying to figure out how to get spoken word content on our original iPods to today it really is kind of magical.

Indeed. I’m in awe every time I lift my wrist and say “time it for 5 minutes and twenty seconds” (without Hey Siri) and it’s done. That is what I love most about my watch: I don’t have to say Hey Siri anymore.

 

[HandsomeDanNZ]

... I still miss the magic of skeuomorphism. I've found apps to compensate that offer it but they're rare today. It made using an iPhone fun and different.

I used to be a huge lover of the Skeumorphic "old" apple style - until I cranked up my old Original iPad (yes it still works) and saw the Skeumorphic wonders displayed on that screen...I have to say it looks quite old-fashioned now - even to me.

 

[nickdalzell1]

I used to be a huge lover of the Skeumorphic "old" apple style - until I cranked up my old Original iPad (yes it still works) and saw the Skeumorphic wonders displayed on that screen...I have to say it looks quite old-fashioned now - even to me.

See I'm old enough to have the opposite opinion. I remember when flat UI design was all any computer could do because the hardware wasn't with it just yet. Remember CGA? Hercules? Amber text on a black screen? BATMenu? DOS Shell? Quantum Link?

I was progressively amazed when PCs and such started getting deeper and more detailed graphics over time. The High Color look of the icons on Windows 98, the way the UI was in Windows XP, Vista, 7, all improvements over what came before it. The iPhone in 2007 was a huge difference from the flat mono UI of my Nokia 5185i and Ericsson T30. To say nothing about the flatness of old Palm OS (NOT WebOS, that was a Skeuo wonder in comparison)

To me skeuo was the future. It sure made the iPhone and iPad far more fun to use. What's more fun than multitouch on a volume knob on a radio app? The closest I got to that now is the haptic feedback on the crown of my Apple Watch.

I miss the fun of skeuo. There is a demand for it, you'd expect someone to cater to it. Flat has been done before in the 80s-90s and now it's been done again. When will the design shift again? Eventually the Flat UI of iOS will become as old as skeuo was, but where do you go from flat? flatter? a command line? The only other direction to go is back to skeuomorphism. I'm seeing a lot of that slowly coming back today with the way the icons are getting some of the shine back, the way the status bar has reverted to the iOS 6 status bar, the buttons returning to macOS.

My mother had a BlackBerry Torch in 2011, which had what seemed like a flat UI but had relevant minimal skeuomorphic touches, like the buttons in dialogs, a bit of shine in the icons, chrome playback scrubbers, etc. the rest was flat. could that be the next shift in UI design?

I guess to me skeuomorphism would be evolved to a holo UI or part of AR later on. It wouldn't have stagnated like everyone thought it would. I never really understood why folks kept complaining about the way Game Center looked--a poker table makes sense for 'games' of sorts. What on earth did floating rainbow bubbles have to do with games?

We have screens capable of so much depth and color, possibly 4K in the future, yet we keep pulling off a UI that dates back to EGA. I don't get it. Never will. It hurts to look at most flat UI designs but it was easy on my eyes to view depth. The way the world all is.

All in all I can find apps to replace the ones that are ugly enough to offend me. I got a skeuo calculator on my iPhone and Watch, I've replicated the Dashboard on my MacBook Pro with third party widgets, the only issue is finding such apps. I have to spend an hour in the App Store constantly finding the proper searches to come across what few skeuomorphic apps remain.

 

[PugMaster]

Oh dear, I hated it when fake wood and other stuff like that was trendy in interface design. Some apps were so ugly, they were unusable. I am so glad it’s over and I hope it will stay over for a looong time. I decline clients when they want me to design something like that, because it’s just too ugly. BUT for a watch, I can see that a really well designed and produced classic watch face can look incredibly beautiful. Just not on a desktop computer with fake wood panels or curtains or whatever they had a few years back.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Personally I loved that fake trim and the interface buttons. It was fun, every app was unique, it felt well made and was different than anything else at the time. Now I feel like we've gone back in time to 1994 again. All that graphics capability to be wasted on EGA again. yay...

I kept wondering though what app would be next? I wanted more apps because each one was fun to use. I sadly missed out on the wooden shelves era of iBooks (although on Android I used Aldiko which was similar), or the Podcast player oh how I wish I could revisit that. I always just downloaded my Podcasts as MP3s from a website then and played them on Music. None of my favorite Podcasts were available on Apple's app. Or if they were, none went far enough back in the archives to listen from the beginning of the series. Even today, Podcasts won't go back to any year before 2016 for Go Vegan Radio.

 

[staggerlee41]

Cool post. You're right, there can be a lot of Apple bashing going and sometimes deservedly so. Take for example the rushed releases of iOS --yeah you iOS 11 and 13 and potentially some of the other products that simply don't work as intended or are downgrades by comparison to other rock solid Apple products. And let's not forget the premium we pay for these products which seem to be going up year over year. Apple is and should be held to a higher standard, this by their own way of doing things. There are plenty of successes though and the most special of them really make you feel that magic as you've pointed out.

I am somewhat late to join the Apple family, my first device was a gifted iPod Shuffle. While the iPod Classic had long been out, the Shuffle is what got me hooked. As an avid music lover, it was leaps and bounds better than any of the other MP3 players I'd tried. It was also a gateway to other Apple purchases. While I really like my iPhone, MBP, iPad the most magic of devices for me personally have been the iPod and the Watch. I'd long been wearing watches throughout my life but since I purchased an Apple Watch I have not worn anything else. I'm sure there's more that I can do with it that I'm not taking advantage of and I'm certain there's more Apple can do with them to improve functionality.

Happy New Year to all.

 

[jonnyb098]

I agree, I have always hoped the flat look of today would be a very brief fad.

As usual Apple has methods to their madness. There’s a reason they got away from skeuomorphic design. One of them was the Apple Watch. They couldn’t afford to waste pixels on such a small screen so things had to be srtipped downed and simplified. We are past all that and skeuomorphic design had its time and purpose. No longer. Besides lately Apple has been slowly adding some more shadows and movement and such back to the flat design to find a happy medium.

 

[nickdalzell1]

As usual Apple has methods to their madness. There’s a reason they got away from skeuomorphic design. One of them was the Apple Watch. They couldn’t afford to waste pixels on such a small screen so things had to be srtipped downed and simplified. We are past all that and skeuomorphic design had its time and purpose. No longer. Besides lately Apple has been slowly adding some more shadows and movement and such back to the flat design to find a happy medium.

I think we're actually moving away from flat these days. But flat wasn't due to the watch. It was some argument with Scott Forstall over Maps or something, and Steve dying made it even more possible. iOS 7 came out two years before the Watch.

Although, if flat design had been confined to the Watch it wouldn't nearly bother me as much. I just hope flat isn't forever. Now that would get even more stale than leather or felt. Oh the irony that Animojis/Memojis are fully-skeuomorphic!

 

[jonnyb098]

I think we're actually moving away from flat these days. But flat wasn't due to the watch. It was some argument with Scott Forstall over Maps or something, and Steve dying made it even more possible. iOS 7 came out two years before the Watch.

Although, if flat design had been confined to the Watch it wouldn't nearly bother me as much. I just hope flat isn't forever. Now that would get even more stale than leather or felt. Oh the irony that Animojis/Memojis are fully-skeuomorphic!

You’re partially right. The story was that Forstall was already pushing a more middle ground design. But when he got fired, Jony Ive took over the whole design aesthetic and went pure flat. And the watch had to be flat weather or not iOS was anyway. Like I said there no room for wasted skeuomorphic pixels on a one inch screen

 

[nickdalzell1]

Well, except for watch faces--there's some very nice skeuo faces on the Galaxy Watch side. Eventually Apple will have to do something to compete--they've mostly had the same face options since 2015--it can't remain that way forever.

Although I do like the square design--I really liked the Gear 2 when I used it, it had a remote app (Apple also does if you use Apple TVs) and it did what it needed to do and nothing more. the S Watches and Galaxy Watches today try too hard to do too much. I like the more understated watch as it brings back the Gear 2 style design far more--funny in a way I often got "Is that the new Apple Watch?" comments when I wore the Gear 2.

 

[minimo3]

The folks who claim they don’t like skeuomorphism in iOS seem to be totally fine with an old school phone handset in the phone icon, notebook lines in Notes, a compass in safari, a file folder in Files, etc. If you don’t want skeuomorphism then your OS should have a brutalist look. https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/31/15717534/brutalist-web-design-app-facebook-google-pierre-buttin

 

[nickdalzell1]

The folks who claim they don’t like skeuomorphism in iOS seem to be totally fine with an old school phone handset in the phone icon, notebook lines in Notes, a compass in safari, a file folder in Files, etc. If you don’t want skeuomorphism then your OS should have a brutalist look. https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/31/15717534/brutalist-web-design-app-facebook-google-pierre-buttin

There haven't been notebook 'lines' since iOS 6 sadly, although the slight leaturette texture that's ever-so-subtle is better than bland white background.

People who prefer flat UI probably have never lived through the first iteration of it in the 80s-early 90s. even the first BlackBerry phones had a flat UI. So did Palm Treos. Flat UI design is a throwback, not the future I hoped.

Skeuo definitely is making a comeback:

1. Animoji/Memojis are 3-D and very skeuomorphic

2. Though having nothing to do with games at all, the rainbow bubbles aren't flat in Game Center for devices that still have it

3. in iOS 13, many stock app icons are getting a hint of 'shine' or 'button-bevel' to them. The App Store and TV app (on tvOS) are the most noticeable.

4. status bar has reverted to iOS 6 style. No more signal 'dots' or 'iOS 7 battery graph' or 'iOS huge battery graph' on the lockscreen when plugged in.

5. Control Center has a lot more color and offers 3D/Haptic touch to make it feel more like buttons. Buttons now look like buttons over iOS 7-9 outlines and barren grey background.

6. iBooks/Books now have hardcovers with spines in the library view. Sadly, the page turn animation is gone. Still, Library view looks much nicer than it did in the iOS 7 keynote.

On Mac:

1. dynamic backgrounds that change with time of day feel 'livelier ' compared to static images, brings some depth to the wallpaper.

2. Some of the dock icons have gotten some 3-D shapes, such as Messages, and the Safari icon (Wish these came to iOS in version 13 but hoping either way). Buttons in dialogs now look like buttons

3. Apple Music app, while not bringing back the brushed metal look, its layout, with the sidebar on the left for categories and overall main window are reminiscent of the iTunes app on OS X 10.2 on my PowerBook G4.

4. Gradients have made a slight return on the toolbars and title bars in apps. Like a slow transition to the grey gradient in Mavericks.

 

[Regbial]

I never really understood why folks kept complaining about the way Game Center looked--a poker table makes sense for 'games' of sorts. What on earth did floating rainbow bubbles have to do with games?

LOL this bit made me chuckle (though I loved all your message) ... Yeah, what do those floating color bubbles have to do with games? 🤔 Seems like Jony Ive wanted innovation for innovation's sake, to really forget that other guy they fired.

In any case, I just miss the old Game Center app, skeuo or not... I miss being able to see all my achievements and my friends achievements. I've complained about it in these forums too.. I mean what's the point of ahcievements if you can't see your friends's achievements? (or even have a friends list for that matter)

All this supposed investment in Apple Arcade, and they don't bother to bring that back?... Seems half-baked to me, their interest in gaming. anyway.. /rant

 

[nickdalzell1]

Perhaps Apple Arcade is the 'new' Game Center?

It's not like we haven't seen redundant/repeat apps with different names from that 'company that shall not be named' (google **cough**) before.

Let's see, Wave became Google+, Talk became Hangouts, Notebook became Keep...etc

Nothing different other than having to learn a different UI design every other week. Got tired of that and prefer Apple--at least they support their 'failures' as well as 'successes'

Either way I found some skeuo apps to satiate my needs and help my eyes, I even broke out some old Android devices that were left rotting in drawers for fun (one old Gingerbread phone and a no-name Android 4.x tablet, none of which support Play Services or their privacy mess) and rediscovered some of my favorite Android skeuomorphic apps, one being a Podcast player that looks like a full-blown cassette deck with VU meters and volume 'knobs' that I'm playing my PodCasts with (which somehow don't have all the archives on the Apple app).

 

[Regbial]

Ahh the skeuo podcast app was pretty nice... I remember..

I remember also enjoying the Notes app on my old gen 2 ipod touch. As primitive as it was. It was skeuomorphic, but it was so basic. Ironic, considering what it is now. (or can be, I guess, if you stuff it with things)

 

[nickdalzell1]

True, I do like bulleted lists and iCloud sync. If it were bare white instead of that amber leatherette texture I'd have to adjust to trading features for proper eye care