From what I know, iOS 6 was a lot of people’s favorite iOS version, with iOS 7 not being that great. anyone know what was so good about iOS 6 and hated about iOS 7 and later?
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What was so good about iOS 6?
- Thread starter nintendoswitch
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velocityg4
macrumors 604
Newer versions are technically far more capable. But the redesign was far less intuitive. To me, iOS 6 stands out as the last. Thus the most technically capable iOS with an intuitive interface.
dysamoria
macrumors 68020
The visual design. It looks better, is easier on the eyes, icons have more detail & distinctiveness, and controls look like controls.
You’ll see people constantly calling the current flat UI design fad “clean”, but that word really doesn’t mean anything (it’s like music people saying “analog sounds warmer”). They might mean ”uncluttered”, but the lack of bevels & other depth cues, drop shadows, dividers, and other details aren’t clutter by default. Good design uses them all in various ways for good reasons. There was research done proving these things help, and Apple (who did some of that research) abandoned all that knowledge to go for arbitrary change, driven by the print marketing team, totally ignoring the existing UI experts already at Apple (you can thank Joni Ive).
You’ll see people constantly complaining about iOS 6 having skeuomorphism, but there’s very little validity to the complaints. Game Center looked ugly then and it still looks ugly today. The notes app... eh. Whatever. It’s harder on the eyes today, regardless.
Also: the features and functionality were more discoverable, and didn’t rely so much on gestures you can’t know about unless someone tells you about them, and the existing gestures didn’t interfere with each other like they do today (scrolling in iMessage edit boxes closes the keyboard, sliding on the 123 or shift keys on the keyboard also pulls up the control center, and various other issues).
You’ll see people constantly calling the current flat UI design fad “clean”, but that word really doesn’t mean anything (it’s like music people saying “analog sounds warmer”). They might mean ”uncluttered”, but the lack of bevels & other depth cues, drop shadows, dividers, and other details aren’t clutter by default. Good design uses them all in various ways for good reasons. There was research done proving these things help, and Apple (who did some of that research) abandoned all that knowledge to go for arbitrary change, driven by the print marketing team, totally ignoring the existing UI experts already at Apple (you can thank Joni Ive).
You’ll see people constantly complaining about iOS 6 having skeuomorphism, but there’s very little validity to the complaints. Game Center looked ugly then and it still looks ugly today. The notes app... eh. Whatever. It’s harder on the eyes today, regardless.
Also: the features and functionality were more discoverable, and didn’t rely so much on gestures you can’t know about unless someone tells you about them, and the existing gestures didn’t interfere with each other like they do today (scrolling in iMessage edit boxes closes the keyboard, sliding on the 123 or shift keys on the keyboard also pulls up the control center, and various other issues).
OneGrit
macrumors member
What I liked about iOS 6 was its extremely stable and well-optimised nature. It ran well on everything that could run it, including the iPhone 3GS from 2009. In a sense, iOS 6 can be considered the Windows 95, XP or 7 of iOS.
dysamoria
macrumors 68020
Ha ha ha That’s kind of insulting to iOS 6. Windows 95 was far from stable or optimized (still being a GUI shell shoehorned onto DOS, with various kludges & hacks to provide a better user experience than DOS 6.22 & Win 3.11).
XP was acceptable (though it really pushed the fad of putting cheap-ass web design into non-web interfaces that Windows 98 began, breaking proper GUI design forever as it got picked up and copied by everyone).
Vista would actually restart a crashed graphics subsystem if the GPU crashed, while Windows 8.1 & 10 will kernel panic for same. I have no experience with Windows 7.
ThomasJL
macrumors 68020
Excellently put.
I despise Apple jumping on the current neumorphism trend which is a mixture of flat design and skeuomorphism. I want Apple to go back to full-fledged skeuomorphism and expunge all traces of flat design.
Apple should go back to the exact same UI design used in iOS 6 because it was based on decades of research. While I passionately support skeuomorphism and fully oppose flat design, I think Apple should not create a new type of skeuomorphism just for the sake of making something new. They should go back to the research-backed skeuomorphic UI of iOS 6.
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T'hain Esh Kelch
macrumors 604
iOS6 was noticeably faster than iOS7. And some people liked the skewmorphism.
zorinlynx
macrumors G3
It's not that iOS 6 was really a lot better. It was just the last version to use Apple's older skeuomorphic design, so a lot of people have an emotional attachment to it.
iOS 7 was also garbage, as it was buggy and had all kinds of issues after such a massive redesign, so a lot of people remembered iOS 6 as a paragon of stability and performance. Also it had some really questionable, weird design decisions, such as the signal "dots" instead of bars. Apple eventually got the new design optimized and looking better, though, so it's a moot point now.
iOS 7 was also garbage, as it was buggy and had all kinds of issues after such a massive redesign, so a lot of people remembered iOS 6 as a paragon of stability and performance. Also it had some really questionable, weird design decisions, such as the signal "dots" instead of bars. Apple eventually got the new design optimized and looking better, though, so it's a moot point now.
It certainly had its controversies: The Google Maps and YouTube apps disappeared, and Apple Maps was much derided at the time.