One major objection I had to iOS 7's removal of iOS 6 design elements is that they were replaced with a barren, blinding, plain, stark face-roll of whiteness. It felt like going from a nicely-lit cafe into a fluorescent-lit doctor's office waiting room. Cold. Clinical. A few items for children in the corner. Some expensive furniture and a nice view, but just doesn't feel inviting. About to get my pulse checked.
I criticized this use of white as actually not being minimalistic at all, but rather, maximalistic. The minimum RGB value is <0,0,0>, which is black, not white. A true minimalistic interface on a backlit screen should therefore be based on black, like dpreview.com is.
So when Apple Watch debuted, I noticed they went from stark white permeating the design, to jet black! Funny, that was a suggestion I made here, and I just want to say thank you to Apple for using black there, instead of white. Not that I think Apple actually reads these forums.
Of course this begs the question of why iOS remains white, even in 9. Why can't there be a black version? Inverting colors using Accessibility sucks; images turn negative, icons turn negative, and it all feels alien. There should be a night mode but there isn't.
It dawned on me that perhaps Apple, being the perfectionists they are, don't want to use a black-based interface on non-AMOLED screens. You see, on AMOLED displays like the watch, black really is black. There is no backlight. But on IPS (LCD) displays, the backlight is on whether the pixel is black or white. Perfectionists like Apple might feel black would look kind of cheesy in that case, or at least be a philosophically impure black.
Maybe if they went AMOLED at some point with the iOS devices, they would go black with iOS's scheme. Until then, however, I wish they'd have a platinum gray option, like in the old days... So much easier on the eyes. Maybe it's just me though.
I criticized this use of white as actually not being minimalistic at all, but rather, maximalistic. The minimum RGB value is <0,0,0>, which is black, not white. A true minimalistic interface on a backlit screen should therefore be based on black, like dpreview.com is.
So when Apple Watch debuted, I noticed they went from stark white permeating the design, to jet black! Funny, that was a suggestion I made here, and I just want to say thank you to Apple for using black there, instead of white. Not that I think Apple actually reads these forums.
Of course this begs the question of why iOS remains white, even in 9. Why can't there be a black version? Inverting colors using Accessibility sucks; images turn negative, icons turn negative, and it all feels alien. There should be a night mode but there isn't.
It dawned on me that perhaps Apple, being the perfectionists they are, don't want to use a black-based interface on non-AMOLED screens. You see, on AMOLED displays like the watch, black really is black. There is no backlight. But on IPS (LCD) displays, the backlight is on whether the pixel is black or white. Perfectionists like Apple might feel black would look kind of cheesy in that case, or at least be a philosophically impure black.
Maybe if they went AMOLED at some point with the iOS devices, they would go black with iOS's scheme. Until then, however, I wish they'd have a platinum gray option, like in the old days... So much easier on the eyes. Maybe it's just me though.
