Lots of people have been saying some very smart things about iOS 7. Here are some of my favorites.
By Frank Chimero:
Designers are usually the most aware of the problems in their work, and I can imagine a bunch of them in Cupertino reading Twitter during the keynote saying, “I told you we had to fix that before we shipped!” Every time I assume a talented person isn’t painfully aware of the flaws in their work, I am wrong.
iOS 7 And The Transition To Flat
By Meng To
So far, the reactions I’ve seen at WWDC, MacRumors, Hacker News, John Gruber’s post have been overwhelmingly positive. Yes, designers will cry, but who can blame them? They’ve been thoroughly educated by the same company who aims to re-educate them. What we’ve known of Apple is no more. It’s a blank slate, lead by sir Jonathan Ive who is now leading both software and hardware design.
By Matt Gemmell
Apple’s philosophy – and particular genius – has always been in sieving the demands of users, technologies and the cultural zeitgeist, and finding the right hundred things to remove for every one thing to keep. I care about what my devices can help me do, and how they can enhance my life. I don’t care about patting a designer on the head, or being distracted from what truly matters.
iOS 7 is an interface’s coming of age, acknowledging that its users – and our industry – are now all grown up.
By Craig Hockenberry
But with major user interface changes such as Aqua or iOS 7, Apple has another tendency: they overshoot the mark. Their incremental approach then becomes one where unnecessary items are removed (such as Aqua’s stripes) or improved (excessive shadows and transparency are toned down.)
There’s a good reason for this: it’s much easier to take away elements from a design than it is to add them. Simplicity is achieved by removing that which is not really needed.
By Tristan Edwards
Tristan Edwards provides some thoughtful critiques of iOS 7’s design elements, and offers some carefully considered alternatives, complete with mockups. His is one of the best and most balanced critiques I’ve read.
Tracing iOS 7’s Influences: Apple Remixes Almost Everyone in the Industry
By Aaron Souppouris
Such is the nature of software design; we could go through Apple’s entire UI and pick apart the influences. Apple’s new incoming call screen, which calls on users to “swipe to answer,” is similar in function to Samsung’s TouchWiz, and looks just like Windows Phone 8. The playful “parallax” backgrounds, which shift when you move your phone, were demoed by now-BlackBerry-owned TAT in 2009. The Camera app now lets you take square pictures and apply filters — sound familiar? Speaking of the Camera app, that icon looks an awful lot like BlackBerry 10’s. Aren’t those “motion backgrounds,” which feature circles and lots of soft bokeh, just like the wallpapers introduced by Google in Android Ice Cream Sandwich? The list goes on. But let’s travel back to 1994, when Steve Jobs famously paraphrased Picasso, saying that “good artists copy, great artists steal.” Taking concepts and interpreting them as your own is something all creatives do. It’s this interpretation and improvement of ideas that’s key. With iOS 7, the question isn’t whether Apple’s artists are copying or stealing good ideas — it’s whether they’re doing a good job evolving them.
