Sunday, September 22, 2013
iOS 7
Design
Arguably the most important aspect of any graphic user interface (GUI) is the design. Design can refer to a number of aspects in the realm of a modern operating system. Visually pleasing aesthetics are extremely important when appealing to a mass market, and Apple is renowned as a company who cut their teeth on good product design. From the elegant minimalism of their hardware and the clarity and ease-of-use of their software, down to the beautiful frustration-free packaging, Apple knew eye-candy very well. Even their advertisement campaigns had a "shut up and take my money now" atmosphere to them.
Another trait of excellent design is usability. Apple's iOS received unanimous recognition as the operating system that no one actually need to know how to operate. The philosophy behind iOS held that anyone, young or old, could pick up the device and begin using it without any prior experience doing so. Apple accomplished this by creating an intuitive experience driven by a simple grid of icons, unified in-app layouts, and natural animations on a multi-touch, gesture-based glass surface.
But have these same design hallmarks carried-over to iOS 7? Yes...and no. Respectively.
I think that the new visual style that Apple has adopted is gorgeous. I have a deep love of color and how it influences one's thoughts, feelings, and perception. The move away from emulating familiar textures such as leather, metal, and glossy surfaces in the design language of iOS was long overdue. I believe that it was a great idea when they first introduced iOS in 2007 (then called iPhone OS) because that was the right design for the time. During the "birth" of the modern mobile OS and smartphones. However, if after just a few years design language becomes conventional, it therefore becomes old, stale, and seemingly obsolete. And so, the flatter, brighter, and more colorful aesthetic found an immediate home on my iPad.
While I can't say that Apple's primary competitor on the mobile market, Google, has reached much greater heights visually, but their Android platform did not start out looking as spiffy as iOS. As a result, Google has been forced to innovate at a more aggressive pace than Apple, and they now have a very clean and functional OS that is now, in many ways, ahead of Apple. But that is another blog post...
What exactly were the influences of iOS 7's redesign? Unsurprisingly--their competitors. Aaron Souppouris, a writer for tech news website, The Verge, made a whole article on this, so I won't bore you with it in my own. This, as Souppouris point's out, was done in the classic spirit of the late Steve Jobs' paraphrase of artist Pablo Picasso's saying that "good artists copy, great artists steal." I'm more than OK with this philosophy, but I must say, I was really hoping for something more revolutionary and original as hype for the iOS 7 was building just before the unveiling at Apple's 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Unfortunately, the new design was a mere evolution of the old one, rather than something brand new. But at the same time, I was not the least bit surprised. A drastic redesign that looked and behaved totally different from what their customers were used to would be shocking, and very bad for business.
A revolutionary redesign is usually rare on operating systems. The most drastic one that comes to mind is Microsoft's leap from their Windows Mobile 6.5.5 to Windows Phone 7 (a horrible name) in 2010. WP7's new design language was largely inspired by what was seen on Microsoft's failed Zune product line. That is also another blog post for the future. Microsoft's Windows Phone line has not experienced much success, but that has little to do with the design. By the time WP7 was introduced, Apple and Google already grabbed the vast majority of the smartphone market with massive app libraries already developed. And thus, they have a comparatively small app library. Any Windows Phone device owner will tell you that the main (if only) dislike that they have of the OS is the "ghost town" app store. As I'm sure everyone familiar with Microsoft's grip on the PC market for the past few decades can relate--it is shocking to find that the mighty Microsoft is the respective "David vs. Goliath" against Apple and (even more surprisingly) Google in the software market. But design-wise, it is my opinion that Microsoft has both Apple and Google blown way out of the water.
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| Then and now: Microsoft and Apple's mobile OS home screen changes from 2007 to 2013. From left to right: Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows Phone 8, iOS 1, iOS 7. |
As for the trademark ease-of-use of iOS, this was not carried over to iOS 7. It has been six years since iOS was first introduced to the masses, and Apple now assumes that you know how to navigate iOS. That is a clear departure from the underlying philosophy of the OS that I mentioned earlier. David Pierce, another writer for The Verge, describes this succinctly in his full review of the iOS 7:
"The key conceit of iOS 7 is simple: you already know how to use a smartphone. Where previous versions offered explicit visual guidance at every turn — this looks like a Rolodex, so it must be my contacts! — iOS 7 assumes you know to click on "Inbox" to go back to your inbox, or that you swipe from left to right to open your phone. You know how to use an iPhone, Apple seems to be saying, so we’ll just get out of your way.Except iOS 7 doesn’t get out of the way — not quite. Skeumorphs and guidepost icons have been replaced mostly by bombastic animations, which tell you both what to do and what’s happening. On the lock screen, light glides left to right across the words "Slide to unlock," hinting at the direction you should be swiping, in case the arrow pointing to the right wasn’t hint enough. When you tap to open an app, it appears to open from within its icon, expanding to fill the screen; when you close it, it disappears back into its icon once again. The animations are fun, but annoyingly slow — waiting a half-second for every app to open like a beautiful flower doesn’t feel good to me. It feels like lag."
I know exactly what he's talking about. The animations are indeed fun. But they get irritating after not too long. Perhaps in iOS 7.1 Apple will speed them up a bit. And the disappearance of 'guidepost' icons and other skeuomorphic elements within apps takes away the intuitive nature that iOS had. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, per se, but it is a divergence of Apple's former brand identity.- David Pierce, The Verge
Overall, I welcome the new design wholeheartedly, but not everyone feels that way. The color pallette of the redesigned core apps have been criticized by many as looking disjointed, confusing, and somewhat alien when accompanied by more subdued looking third-party apps on a home screen. Some have found the design so disagreeable that it brought them to tears. :)
Features
I got almost everything that I wanted. I did not get side-by-side applications (no surprise), Siri is a little better but still not up to spec with Google Now, and Apple did not introduce anything in iOS 7 that I didn't know I wanted. I also didn't get NFC, but Apple has a *mostly* better solution with Airdrop. No need to tap phones together, just select iOS devices in the vicinity that you wish to share a file, URL, etc. with from any share button via Bluetooth + Wi Fi. The problem with this is that its not universal--iOS only. With NFC, Android and Windows Phone users can share information cross-platform. But then again, there's that awkward phone touching...
So, there are all these new features that I wanted now. The verdict? iOS 7 is now *mostly* on par with what Android has had for quite some time now. iOS is a far more consistent experience than Android as a symptom of their closed ecosystem with less fragmentation slowing down app development and less hardware variation that causes instability, bugs and crashes amongst the vast majority of Android devices. Additionally, the iPad is still the gold standard for tablets because there are exponentially more apps designed specifically for the large, high-resolution screen. But for the smartphone market I still feel as though Apple is playing catch-up feature-wise. It doesn't help that they are stuck in their iPhone 3G to iPhone 3GS to iPhone 4 to iPhone 4S to iPhone 5 to iPhone 5S rut. A lot of Android users could be won-over to Apple if they simply offered a greater range of display sizes...namely a larger display. Going from 3.5-inches to an elongated 4-inches simply isn't going to cut it. And being that the iPhone is typically a yearly release--customers are going to have to wait yet another entire year before the iPhone 6 arrives with a potentially larger screen size available. They are lagging behind the competition in that respect as well.
Conclusion
I highly recommend upgrading to iOS 7. It brings fresh visual flavor to an otherwise aged user interface, and there are many much-awaited features brought to the table as well. That said, if you are an Android user who has wished to switch to the coveted Apple experience--iOS 7 can now go toe-to-toe with most of what Google's OS has to offer, but you'll most likely have to wait at least one more year for some more screen-real estate.
I realize that it has been well over a month since my first post, but until just last week I did not have internet service in my new apartment. I am now committing to post at least once a week hence forth. I also realize that this post was another FREAKING HUGE one, which I also promised not to do in my first post. But this is a topic that is on fire across the interwebs as I write, so it had to be fairly thorough (and believe me, I wanted to write *much* more).
Let me know your thoughts on iOS 7, in the comments section below!
Peace,
- Luke
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