In addition to unveiling their redesigned Mac Pro, yesterday Apple also previewed their forthcoming iOS 7. This is the one many an industrial designer has been waiting to see; we all know Jonathan Ive can do hardware, but iOS 7 will be the first real indication of what software will look like under Ive rule—and if he'd be given free reign. Former Apple executive Scott Forstall was famously a proponent of skeuomorphism, the inclusion of real-world elements—stitched leather, lined legal pads, spiral bindings—that many in the design community found tacky and backwards-looking. Following his ouster, Ive was placed in charge of iOS design, and he's made it no secret that he intended to Think Different.
Well, based on what we're seeing, we're happy to report that it seems Ive's creative control is complete.
The first thing users will likely note is the change in typography. Just as Forstall's beloved word "skeuomorphism" has an unusual sequence of three vowels in a row, Ive has switched the font to what looks to be Helvetica Neue Ultra Light, which has an equally foreign sequence of contiguous vowels. The resultant look is undoubtedly more modern (though your correspondent prefers thicker fonts for legibility's sake).
"Flatness" is the adjective of the day, and the new iOS has it in spades. In the past decade-and-a-half icons have spun steadily out of control; what were once simple representations of objects, necessarily drawn in low-res due to computing constraints, unpleasantly evolved into overcomplicated, miniaturized portraits. Ive's flat design approach returns to the roots of the graphic icon, eschewing 3D shading and instead using line to tell the tale. With the exception of a couple of icons—the Settings gears and Game Center's balloons—shading is completely absent. The cartoonish highlights on the text message word bubbles are gone. Background gradations are the only non-flat visual variation allowed.
Interestingly enough, the keypad now looks like something graphically designed by the Braun of yore...
...while the Calculator now looks like something from the Braun of the future.
One user interaction feature I'm greatly looking forward to is Control Center, which enables the user to simply swipe upwards from any screen to quickly access the most-used (for me, anyway) features: The camera, the alarm, the calculator, the music player, the brightness, the on-off technical settings, et cetera. And in belated recognition that we've all been using cell phones like this since they first came out, a flashlight icon has been added as well.
There are, of course, many more features of iOS 7, which you can read about here. But we were more interested to see exactly how much juice Ive had with the final design, and even a cursory look would indicate Apple's letting the man do his thing. As another, almost surprising testament to Apple's belief in design, they released the following video. There is not a single product shot! It is instead a minute-and-a-half of general design philosophy, presented in plain text:
At press time the Ive-narrated video on what they're going for with iOS 7 was not yet embeddable, but we expect they'll rectify that shortly. In the meantime you can check it out (and see plenty of moving images that help you better understand the OS' design) here.
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By that regard this re-design while mostly a painted pig without any real coherent principles, my beef is in some of the interaction design decisions made.
While the new control center is awesome even well designed as a microinteraction, the thing that kills the design for me more than anything else is the "why did you do it?" change of swipe direction for engaging delete in mail and other OS lists like messages. Every app in the world has met Apple in its previous decision to go left>right, but now the Ive team has decided that well, that doesn't make sense, b/c what we are really doing is "revealing" the available action(s)" which we want to be on the right (were on the right).
Apple entrenched 6 years of muscle memory into that gesture and almost every application outside of their control has copied them further solidifying it. Changing that gesture alone has made the entire application unusable. No, I'm not quibbling. Go! use it! watch others fumble. I gave it 4 days and the confusion is just too much to overcome. That plus the instability (yes, I know it's a preview) meant I had to revert (and yes you can revert).
Oh! the camera features and overall foundation of the new design is interesting, but the lack of a noticeable affordance that tells you when the orientation of the camera changes (using the old image isn't working for me) makes the camera's main feature hard to use.
Anyway, I also agree w/ the above criticisms of the visual design but mostly on the grounds as it has almost no Apple brand to it, it is kludgy compared to Metro and most importantly it is unreadable.
I think that Apple's design team allowed themselves to get caught up in the non-debate of skeumorphism by the MS press machine. It was never an issue until MS made it an issue. Apple has allowed MS to create the frame of the design criticism debate of this period, instead of owning. It's like the way the Dems have allowed the GOP to do the same. Own the frame!
Apple is meant to be the premium product, this looks like an iphone with a dodgy Taiwanese android theme. I almost expext it to have spelling mistakes.
Apple, you can do better than this.
Same goes for app switching (android clone), basically every update to the iOS browser (chrome clone), message lists (hangouts, gmail, etc clone), and the pandora clone. Calendar is a WinMo clone with a couple of android features (which, if they were copying something should have gone with the last android calendar stuff. The date/time pickers are gorgeous and pleasing to use).
Swipe up for settings instead of down like on Android. Font looks like android. Weather looks like eye in the sky. Parallax looks like the old Evo skin.
Apple should be driving the industry, not the other way around.
On the other hand, the Mac Pro coffeemaker/thermos/whatever-the-internet-is-calling-it looks seriously cool. 2001 Space Odyssey re-imagined.
It feels as if there wasn't a clear design direction, the whole feels somehow disconnected. Control Center is being praised, with its translucent window. Not sure if I'm missing something, but it reminds me of Windows Vista...ugly and messy at the same time.
Sure there are improvements on the interaction part here and there but I feel they should unify the entire experience much better.
They have time...., just seems like Johny will be spread a bit to thin to oversee everything instead of just focusing on the Industrial design part...
This post fails to mention the number of design inconsistencies and functional elements that this OS redesign shares with other existing operating systems.
Many designers have criticized the inconsistent approach to icons, while others have discussed ways that the design of Control Center is functionally more confused than the similar Android counterpart.
I could do without some of the blatant Windows Phone rip offs, but its still has potential.