what will it take for Apple to change its UI?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. What really needs fixing is the static icons. Make them dynamic... example:

Current temperature on the Weather App, moving clock hands on the Clock app...

 

It would take millions of people voting with their wallets, and even then it probably wouldn't change.

 

What is boring?

I can think of incremental things they could do. Both software wise that would improve the UI like active icons. As well, as hardware wise like a transflective screen so the UI needs a high contrast mode for no backlight use.

Neither of which are exciting, but practical.
So what non-boring thing would you like them to do.

So they might react to technology or market share, but the reaction are likely to be incremental and pretty boring, if your bored already.

Nose Ring maybe?

 

Bought out by Google?

 

I agree if it ain't broke don't fix it, change yeah if it's broke, but changing for changing sake when something is working so well as it is, is pointless IMO.

I think the only way Apple would change the UI would be if customers were moving away from them in MASSIVE AMOUNTS, and also they were not getting new customers too. And in both cases it was clear that it was because of the UI.

 

Whats so wrong with the UI. Works perfectly fine so if it's not broke, why fix it?

 

Having a bunch of icons animating and updating in real time on the home screen would kill the battery and kill performance. Is that really worth it to save one tap (or swipe for Notification Center) to get the temperature?

You can see the time in the status bar from any app. You can swipe down from the top of the screen and see the weather from any app.

 

The home screen already has some dynamically updating information. The calendar changes with the day. And badges appear as push notifications are received. Having the weather app icon change once or twice an hour shouldn't have a noticeable impact on battery life or performance.

 

...

 

I think the current iOS GUI is just fine.

I don't want to open my phone to a bunch of icons jiggling around in animation.

I don't want my battery life sucked to death because of a bunch of jiggling, changing dyamically-updating icons!

I don't need to spend hours on end customizing and tweaking the GUI.

I don't need Apple to "keep up with the Jones' when the Jones" house sucks anyways! Apple just needs to t be Apple and do their award-winning work.

The ONLY thing that NEEDS to happen is for someone to create an APP that simulates the home screen and lets you jiggle and move all kinds of things around! For cryin' out loud!

Perhaps then the naysayers will get their fix, and leave the rest of us alone to do what needs to be done: be productive with the apps, where most all of our time & productivity energy should be anyways!

 

I agree with everything you've said.. However; Apple giving us the OPTION to do these things would be nice. I LOVE the simplicity of iOS, but I've never been mad at having too many options...

 

Performance is one thing, but I'd say distraction and icon recognition are far bigger issues. The calendar icon changes once per day. The icon looks largely the same, just with a different number. The weather icon would drastically change depending on the weather, from yellow on blue on a sunny day to grey on black for a cloudy night. Personally, I think it would be better to scrap the app altogether and make tapping on the weather widget display an inline 5 day forecast in Notification Center. The app feels like a widget anyway, and this would solve the icon problem.

Ignoring the fact that the clock app isn't actually designed to be an app that tells you a singular time and is instead a world clock, alarm, timer and stopwatch, and that the current time in your locale is everywhere in iOS, and that nobody would ever even consider looking at the Clock.app icon to find the time: can you imagine how distracting it would be to have the second hand ticking away all the time? The movement would continually draw your eye to it. Ugh.

You can't possibly argue that it's worth the development time, battery drain, and user distraction just to have an icon of a clock that needlessly tells the time. Can you?

 

It is only boring I suppose as people have been using it for quite a few years now without any fundamental change.

Dynamic icons would be nice though.

 

Apple will only evolve the UI as it makes sense for ease of use.

They will never pander to the small percentage of users who feel the need to tweak stuff or have live icons running around their screens.

It's just not what they do....ever

 

Change to something completely different, most likely never.

Refine with small incremental changes adding polish and functionality, constantly.

You can give the people what they want or make them what what you have by adding delight.

 

Why would a company making billions change everything overnight? OS is always about updates and improvements. The UI is fine, just needs updates.

 

Maybe you don't, but some people like to be able to customize the look and feel of their OS. The OPTION to do those things would be nice. Then everybody's happy.

 

I am only guessing

I would bet that Apple introduces Launchpad and Mission Control for iPhone 5. You´ll have the ability to save notes, email/calender/people widgets to the home screen. I also believe that the phone will have improved cameras, NFC and a 4 inch screen.

Some doubt about email and calender widgets as the same information is shown in Notification Center.

 

I doubt it.

 

Nah, lauchpad is not needed, it's just the ios ui on the mac. Mission control, is not gonna happen either simply because it's a desktop feature that wouldn't be executed right on the touch screen. Also, neither is in the ios 6 beta and if they made it device specific these features would only be considered (note i said considered not definite) on the ipad because of the big display to work with.

 

UI is just fine just need to incorporate small things, I would also think that apple will just give us minimal update as to who they feel fit in each iOS update. Also peeps if apple did everything like android we would end up with android brother. I wouldn't mind an option where we can enable say weather to auto update and reflect it on the dashboard with the settings to customise and similar settings for some other essential day to day apps.

 

You don't think so? I think that is exactly what it would take. Critics can complain all they want, but as long as each iPhone is exponentially growing, apple isn't going to change. Now if numbers started to go down (and research indicates that one of the reasons is an old, antiquated interface) then you bet your butt, Apple's going to change. Go down with a sinking ship? Yeah right...

People really need to give it a rest with this argument!! Android and WP7 do these things fine. Maybe your argument was true a couple years ago, but with current hardware, battery etc, it can be handled just fine. Plus it's not like icons will need to be updating in real time. Think of it like push notifications; do you complain about those? The updates can come in batches every 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes depending on the preference of the user.

THAT being said... I think dynamic icons would have extremely limited use case... Weather app is a terrific example, but how many others can you really think of.... Maybe I'm just not thinking creatively enough, but I honestly can't think of any other apps that would dramatically enhance the experience.. The icons are just so tiny that it would just be cluttered and cramped. It works nicely on WP7, but I just don't see it being worth it in iOS. Weather app, sure... but I'd still MUCH rather have the weather widget on my lockscreen.

 

No. First of all, this is NOT something that would be an iPhone 5 exclusive. I believe we could see something similar in iOS 7 or iOS 8. I don't claim to know exactly how things will be implemented or what they will be called, but I expect some heavier, OS X-like, features to be making their way to iOS at some point. That's just about the only growth direction I can see in iOS.

I could potentially see Apple adding a 2nd dimension to their springboard. This would mean swiping up/down to access a "desktop" view of some sort. This page could have widgets or anything else Apple could come up with. For simplicity, apple would likely just have the 1 desktop meaning not a grid of two rows. You could access the desktop by an up/down swipe from any page. Swipe again to return.