from Hacker News

iOS 7

by acrum on 6/10/13, 7:05 PM with 296 comments

by tenpoundhammer on 6/10/13, 9:05 PM
This comment thread is why the internet is bashing so hard on HN. This is so extremely negative and hyperbolic, It's hard to understand. There are certainly things to be criticized in iOS 7, but invoking a plea to the holy lord for answers, is a bit extreme.
Can't we at least temper our criticisms with a few things we found positive and a good attitude?
Let me give it a try.
I am really excited about the control panel. It has a lot of very useful features that will save me time and frustration. However, I am concerned that the design of the control panel is busy and may make it difficult to make the correct selection quickly, we'll see.
by crazygringo on 6/10/13, 7:23 PM
Oh God why. I've got nothing against flat design done well, but this just makes everything so much harder to SEE.
Look at the example screen for "Control Center" -- it looks like a geometric indistinguishable mess. The line around buttons is the same as the line dividing sections is almost the same as the line in sliders.
The example screen for weather shows thin white text against a light blue background, which I can barely make out on my monitor, let alone on a phone.
If anything, phones need extra affordance as what is a label and what is tappable, since we have fat fingers, hold phones faraway where things are small, and often in bright sunlight where there's little contrast we can make out. Phones need extra contrast, not less.
I'm really not one for hyperbole, but Steve Jobs must be rolling in his grave. This isn't about an aesthetic choice, it's just about common-sense usability and quality control. That weather app looks completely useless in the real world, and the fact that Apple's internal processes have allowed this to be launched does not bode well.
by simonbarker87 on 6/10/13, 7:21 PM
I watched the key note with my girl friend - she is technical but still very much has a girls perspective and can be taken as a good representation of her friends.
She flipping loves this redesign and I'm pretty certain my not techie iPhone/iPad using parents will too - and that, is was really matters to Apple, that 98% of their market will love it and not just the 2% of us who build for their platform.
I like most of it, the colours are a bit much for me but in the main it will be refreshing to move on to something new. I have been toying with moving to Android but this redesign is enough to keep me on board - if I'm going to have to learn a new OS I may as well plump for the one most similar to what I already know
by pinaceae on 6/10/13, 9:07 PM
has to be a homerun.
the last time the entire neckbeard web went apeshit like that was when they announced the iPad. and the iPhone before that. practically all forums are useless right now, including here.
guess that a lot of people also only see the screenshot, have not watched the screencast. iOS looks different in movement, the animations, parallax effect, etc. all add up.
the under the hood stuff is super, multitasking, app updates, per app vpn, etc. like christmas.
iOS7 will trigger a redesign of our own iPad app, it is a welcome agent of change as our (corporate) customers will not be able to hold these upgrades to iOS back as they did with Windows.
by btipling on 6/10/13, 7:13 PM
The choice of colors and gradients look terrible. They made iOS look worse. They swung too far away from skeuomorphic design. Even the art on the icons, without considering the colors, look like an amateur drew them. Look at the SDK icon:
http://i.imgur.com/JXw7KQA.png
That is ugly. So is the iTunes icon, so is the Safari icon. Not a fan.
by dakrisht on 6/10/13, 7:19 PM
Parallax is a nice touch.
At first glance, iOS 7 looks like a hybrid of Android and WebOS. Especially the card multi-tasking approach.
Notification center is cleaner but the colors are all over the place.
Lock screen is pure Android (animated wallpapers, etc.)
They might have made it too flat actually. A lot of text everywhere (the user will definitely get confused on what to tap and what not to tap) Cupertino might be used to UI but a lot of "ordinary" people are still pretty clueless when it comes to interacting with devices whether physical or virtual.
The Safari icon is simply atrocious, although the new Mac Pro looks like a really expensive trash can - I CANNOT believe Ive designed that product. It is just godawful.
Flashlight app? OK cool (RIP Flashlight app people)
Activation lock is a neat feature, probably a top-5.
Oh yeah, and photo filters - PHOTO FILTERS!!! They even included a square Instagram-like camera UI. Are you kidding me?
Apple did a great job of selling a BRAND much less so than selling great new products and features.
by jonhmchan on 6/10/13, 8:57 PM
I realize that a lot of people will be focusing on the UI redesign for iOS 7, but the standout thing for me was automatic updates from the App Store. I think it's a huge thing for developers.
One of the biggest pains I think we face as developers is software fragmentation. So far Apple has done a very good job of having users update versions of iOS and keeping consistent with hardware specifications - it's probably one of the top three main drivers for why I develop primarily for iOS (sometimes solely for iOS). I'm thinking this reinforces that build-for-iOS-first mentality for developers. If the quality of apps is such a large factor in what's keep users loyal to the platform, this is an important point.
by ampsonic on 6/10/13, 7:19 PM
I actually like the new look, a few of the icons seem off, but I bet they grow on me. The transparency and layers makes a ton of sense to me. Really love control center, I can't wait to have easy access to my brightness. New Photos app looks amazing. Airdrop will be fantastic. New background / multitasking is a huge win.
Biggest let down, no inter-app communication improvements. I think that's a huge problem on iOS now, one I was hoping would be addressed.
by 6thSigma on 6/10/13, 7:19 PM
Apple is continuously playing catch up with iOS rather than innovating like they were known for in the Jobs era.
Most of these features are just copies of other popular apps/operating systems that came out over a year ago.
by usaphp on 6/10/13, 7:36 PM
The more I read comments on HN the more I wonder - what kind of project does the company has to release in order to get a positive comments from HN readers. It just looks like there is a bunch of losers who hate everything that other people do and complain about everything they see, instead of just being happy for something...
by pimeys on 6/10/13, 7:17 PM
I really can't believe they released this. The pictures are sometimes full of everything, the colour choices are especially weird (white and blue, why?) and overall I really understand Jobs' and Forstall's vision of the iOS UI better than Ive's.
by 51Cards on 6/10/13, 7:38 PM
http://movies.apple.com/media/us/ios/ios7/f34c5445-5a9c-4b3a...
To me, that looks just like the Samsung UI. (yes, Samsung copied the icon layout but you could still tell them apart... now Apple seems to have come the rest of the way to Samsung's side)
by marknutter on 6/10/13, 7:28 PM
I can't even read these comments. They swing too wildly from people loving the redesign to hating it. Apple was never, ever, going to be able to live up to everybody's aesthetic standards.
by wamatt on 6/10/13, 9:38 PM
There has been much talk of Microsoft as the model of a floundering corporate, stagnant and lacking leadership.
So, and this is perhaps a small detail, it does seem somewhat interesting, that both Google and now Apple, appear to have adopted Microsoft's flat UI approach.
by badclient on 6/10/13, 7:24 PM
Wow. Apple basically took all the shitty parts of Google's design philosophy and scaled it to epic proportions of fail.
Take a look at the text screenshot. It is hard to tell where I should touch to start typing. It is hard to tell where the buttons are. Overall, this is incredibly shitty UI.
by Zaheer on 6/10/13, 7:17 PM
Looks a lot like Windows Metro interface.
by ary on 6/10/13, 9:34 PM
Some here have said that iOS 7 has gone too far in the "flat" direction, but my feeling is that the move is an intentional repositioning on Apple's part. Removing most of the "texture" from the user interface has (outside of aesthetic concerns) been done primarily so that it can be added back in a new way in the future.
Ever since I saw this demo video for Senseg [1]:
http://news.cnet.com/1606-2_3-50115714.html
I've thought long and hard about how Apple might use this in future iOS devices. This clean slate design feels to me like the first step to something more. I personally hope it has a lot to do with haptic feedback as adding another user interface dimension to these types of devices would be incredible.
[1] http://senseg.com/
by shawnjan8 on 6/10/13, 7:10 PM
So, this update might actually get me to switch back to iOS from Android. Anyone else?
by mixmastamyk on 6/10/13, 9:14 PM
Don't mind the flatness.
As someone who uses their ios devices mostly at night, I'm not looking forward to everything having a white background though.
I wish there was a theme that could be enforced on all apps that could be swapped at appropriate times. You know, like Windows 3.1 in 1990.
by tiredoffps on 6/10/13, 7:19 PM
Not liking the design. The flat design mocks that were made by random people on Dribbble are better. The gradient in the mail icon is too much. It's like someone's first design in Photoshop back in 2000.
by bane on 6/10/13, 7:54 PM
I was hoping this would be cool to help apple get over the incredibly tired skeumorphism fetish Apple's stuck in.
but seriously meh...
it's like somebody discovered the 2 and 3 color gradient fill in illustrator and called it a day
the new airdrop stuff is cool, but no substitute for a proper intent architecture
and the backgrounds are now all white
meh
by ahsanhilal on 6/10/13, 7:37 PM
1. The multi-tasking, switching between apps thing is exactly as it is in the android. 2. The tabbed view in safari pretty much mimics Chrome
So much for apple creating their own distinctive UI/UX. I don't think you can convince a lot of people that Apple does things differently or 'in their own unque way' that easily with this update for ios. And I say this as someone who owns and develops for iOS only.
by volandovengo on 6/10/13, 7:16 PM
Very unimpressed. They put lipstick on a pig. iOS was in need of a big update and this isn't it!
by mongol on 6/10/13, 9:23 PM
Feels like KDE4, in a way. I think the graphical approach KDE took with KDE4, with new icons for example, made it look worse. It feels very much like Apple is no longer leading in the design department.
by emp_ on 6/10/13, 7:16 PM
The flat trend was widely expected since Ive's comment, the Windows Aero overlays were kind of ironic in a silly way, a great direction nonetheless.
by janlukacs on 6/10/13, 7:23 PM
First feeling when i saw the icons: Shock! I still can't believe they came up with this mix of ios+windows+android UI. The whole thing looks like the phone of a 16y old girl. with candy on top. and syrup. As for the OS part, i think i no longer understand versioning.
by ben1040 on 6/10/13, 7:26 PM
So they sold the 4th generation iPod Touch up until twelve days ago, but they won't support iOS 7 on it?
http://www.apple.com/ios/ios7/features/
by theboywho on 6/10/13, 7:15 PM
I'm sorry, is this windows phone ?
by pizza on 6/10/13, 7:24 PM
This looks like it's going to make a lot of nerds angry.
by electrichead on 6/10/13, 7:35 PM
I still can't get over the choice to push in Bing. I know that both companies are hoping that the collaboration is going to equal good things for both of them but really, it is likely going to go the other way.
by encoderer on 6/10/13, 9:58 PM
All I have to say about the redesign is: What looks cheap in still may seem anything but when its animated on a retina screen with the weight of the device in your hand.
Even now, it looks a lot better in video than in still.
by Osiris on 6/10/13, 7:26 PM
It appears that they still haven't changed the keyboard layout. You'd think in 7 revisions that they'd make some adjustments to the keyboard. I am not a fan of the always uppercase.
by grandalf on 6/11/13, 2:31 AM
I can't believe everyone is going negative about this. In my opinion, the skeuomorphic aspects of IOS (and OSX) are among the biggest technology related annoyances I experience in 2013.
Imagine if Google Voice appeared as an antique telephone in the lower corner of the gMail app, and if each message was displayed as an envelope addressed with comic sans.
Flat design is simply, objectively better. The version shown today will likely evolve subtlety as Apple puts its unique stamp on flat.
by drinchev on 6/10/13, 7:11 PM
I love the update on their website too... They've managed to flatten everything.
by mrbill on 6/10/13, 7:22 PM
Still not moving back from Android (love my Nexus 4, 7, and 10) but this will be nice to play with on the iPad Mini I picked up a couple of weeks ago so I can stay current on iOS and help Mom with stuff remotely.
It's interesting to see how iOS and Android each go back-and-forth swiping features from each other (or from popular accessory apps; Apple's the worst at doing that).
by josephagoss on 6/10/13, 11:53 PM
I really like it....
I suppose coming from a art background as well as a computer science background gives me a different perspective.
Its a good way of keeping up with the new trend of flat design without losing the iOS look and feel, my biggest fear for Apple is that they would have made a rip off of windows mobile, but here they haven't, they have made a really good balance.
by twoodfin on 6/10/13, 9:24 PM
The biggest surprise for me was the apparent introduction of a "double tap" action to switch between apps in the new multitasking view. I couldn't understand what the advantage of that was over a single tap.
Has Apple used "double tap" in iOS before? It seems like something they'd studiously avoided in the past.
by _pius on 6/10/13, 7:25 PM
The black iPhone is dead.
by mcintyre1994 on 6/10/13, 9:35 PM
Two things I hope to see in Android here, multitasking UI and tabbed notifications.
After Google poached WebOS staff, their card UI is really nice and pretty Palm-like. For some reason they haven't shamelessly stolen the WebOS multitasking UI like Apple just have. I really hope they do, because it'd fit Android perfectly.
That notification bar is really nice too, although it seems to be missing quick actions like Android has. 'Today' and 'missed' tabs seem like a good idea though, I'd like to see them on Android, and I'm sure Google could use Now to make the 'today' one seriously useful.
by Spectral on 6/11/13, 1:53 AM
This honestly just looks like they are taking a bunch of apps, each with their own individual uses, and deciding which ones they want to include as part of the core package and over glorifying their uses. I can see a lot of these features being cool at first, but quickly to be turned off and remained unused in order to conserve battery. Nice presentation and seems like it'll do well selling to the general public, but doesn't seem to amount to much actual material benefits when you think it through. Of course, this is all still speculation so we shall see.
by pallinder on 6/10/13, 11:29 PM
A couple of things after having played around with it on my iphone 5 for a while.
1. It "feels" slower, might be because it's not 100% optimized yet, but what I suspect is causing this feeling is the new animiations. Everything just feels sluggish, kind of like using an android feels to me.
2. It appears harder to locate things in apps.
3. The paralax animiations arent all that obvious and doesnt add as much depth as I initially thought it would.
4. Some of the app redesigns are really nice (address book for instance).
5. The thin font is really hard to see sometimes.
6. The new design of the notification view is really nice.
That's it for now.
by mcintyre1994 on 6/10/13, 9:41 PM
New multitasking is really nice, Google should have kept that orientation etc instead of how they did it. The notifications look good too, although they seem to be missing quick actions?
by sktrdie on 6/10/13, 9:58 PM
The part that most worries me is that this doesn't seem like such a different interface from things I've already seen.
What happened to the "Think Different" Apple?
by mrmagooey on 6/10/13, 11:03 PM
I feel like Control Center is Apple finally taking onboard the fact that SBSettings is one of the main reasons people jailbreak their phones. It's been interesting to see all the jailbreak features that came out like 5 years ago slowly making their way into iOS (e.g. multitasking, interactive lockscreen). Not that they really 'worked' on iPhone3 mind you, but they did exist.
by tehwalrus on 6/10/13, 10:29 PM
I... I like it. I did breifly try to use Android last year (very expensive mistake) and they've nicked the two or three good things from the nexus / flat blue 'droid theme, plus FINALLY a fast way to turn wifi and bluetooth on and off, like on the droids.
I'm interested to see how long it takes the old UI to look antiquated to me. Isn't human reaction to fashion interesting? :)
by shinratdr on 6/10/13, 7:28 PM
I love how people are simultaneously describing it as un-original and a ripoff while also invoking Android, WebOS, Windows Phone and Windows 7 Aero as to what it's "ripping off".
Maybe it's actually original? If you think this is Windows Phone, you've never spent any time on that platform. Windows Phone is defined by solid colour tiles and typography. iOS 7 isn't, at all.
by dylangs1030 on 6/11/13, 12:07 AM
What I'm excited about:
1. Being able to change WiFi, brightness and other "Settings" options from the home screen.
2. An animated weather app with cooler design and more information.
Those are two really big things for me. I don't even focus on the flat design right now - those functions on the home screen are part of why I jailbreak.
Now, if they could have Messages send popup notifications for new texts, this would be even better.
by inthewind on 6/10/13, 10:58 PM
One thing that I find a little jarring is going from a dark background to a light background. It might not be so much of an issue on a small device / screen, but it's the kind of thing that you feel in your eyes - if say you were looking at it in the dark. I'd probably rather one, or the other. Or be able to flip between the two styles.
by JosephHatfield on 6/11/13, 2:43 AM
I'm definitely not a fan of the new colors. Here are two screenshots I took of iOS 7 installed on my iPhone 5. The Apple app colors are too garish for me and white against gray is a bad combination for people with 50+ vision.
http://imgur.com/P8WxfcJ,Fec5RAH#1
by DTE on 6/10/13, 7:21 PM
Although clearly not completely resolved, there are a number of really interesting ideas at play. The programmatic and reactive color schemes that we first saw in iTunes for album art, for example is really nice.
The parallax effect looks fun but it will have to be subtle enough to not be gimmicky after a week or two.
by protez on 6/11/13, 3:11 AM
Suddenly, Android and WP no longer look so lame. Apple may have improved its UI/UX of iOS, but only at the cost of losing its distinctive taste.
The inspiration from the original design would continue along the third-party apps and some of them would gain significant users just for its non-flat graphic theme.
by Chirael on 6/10/13, 11:17 PM
Nice video but pretty surprised to see people reading off cue cards instead of talking directly to the viewer. Comes off as a little unpolished and jarring. I just kept wanting is say, hey, I'm over HERE, not off camera - who's over there that you keep talking to instead of me?
by eightyone on 6/10/13, 10:04 PM
I'll have to use the UI on a device to determine if I like it or not. All the blue, pink, and white reminds me of Flickr. I'm disappointed we didn't get custom default apps or the ability to set a custom search engine. I want to use DuckDuckGo with Safari.
by codex on 6/11/13, 5:40 AM
For ease of recognition, the positive and negative spaces of a given form should be about equal in area. In this respect iOS 7 fails miserably. It's as if they've forgotten hundreds of years of collective design wisdom.
by hoops on 6/10/13, 8:53 PM
On the theme that the "medium is the message"...
The tone of the voiceover is of one taking oneself a little too seriously, I think. What's more I felt it overbearing and that it occluded the message.
Are others liking the "medium" here?
by hoops on 6/10/13, 7:48 PM
On the theme that the "medium is the message"...
The tone of the voiceover is of one taking oneself a little to seriously, I think. What's more I felt it overbearing and that it occluded the message.
Are others liking the "medium" here?
by hoops on 6/10/13, 7:55 PM
On the theme that the "medium is the message"...
The tone of the voiceover is of taking oneself a little too seriously, I think. What's more I felt it overbearing and that it occluded the message.
Are others liking the "medium" here?
by nu2ycombinator on 6/10/13, 11:25 PM
IOS7 settles it. Jony Ive is a best industrial designer but medicore UI designer.
by dexcs on 6/11/13, 6:19 AM
It's time for a 7.1 like microsoft did it with windows... I can't believe that steve controlled all this and pushed it in the right direction. And now apple takes the same route to the ground....
by nnq on 6/11/13, 6:58 AM
Metro done right! (well, much better at least)
> distinct functional layers help establish hierarchy and order and the use of translucency give you a sense of your context
...when the MS design guys ditched Aero style aesthetics of skeumorphism and transparency, they actually threw the baby with the bath water, they didn't realize that layering and transparency are the missing ingredient for adding order and hierarchy to flat design. yeah, avoiding hierarchy and "flat is better than nested" are good ideas, but for any non trivial GUI you need some order and hierarchy, and transparency is the only thing left to use for this after ditching skeumorphism. as usual, Apple gets design right! (though kind of late...)
by unsigner on 6/10/13, 9:37 PM
This is what the home screen reminds me of (NSFW): http://oglaf.com/rainbowcake/
by bosky101 on 6/10/13, 7:30 PM
i don't think you can distinguish between ios/metro/android designs any more.
the recent design shrieks of adolescence.
who here predict a wave of apps that go back to earlier designs?
by oliyoung on 6/11/13, 1:17 AM
Looking forward to seeing https://news.layervault.com/ doing code reviews.
by luisivan on 6/10/13, 9:29 PM
These gradients on icons just look ugly. Really ugly. And the interface is too ethereal, too much blurry. Some things are really cool, some aren't.
by billirvine on 6/10/13, 10:09 PM
The iOS 7 examples look like something My Little Pony puked up in a general configuration of something similar to Windows Phone 8.
Maybe Bronies are the target market?
by scopendo on 6/10/13, 9:00 PM
Sadly, for those families where the iPad is just another shared computing device, it would appear that there is still no multi-user support. Bummer.
by timsaunders on 6/11/13, 1:16 AM
Interesting that Siri, doesn't know what Google is?? Looks like Bing is going to make some traction amongst search engines.
by Watabou on 6/10/13, 7:12 PM
Some of the apps like Weather, notification center, Stocks look brilliant, other seem too white. Why is it so damn white?
by lbebber on 6/10/13, 9:17 PM
I would like to try it before commenting, but goddamn, do those icons look ugly. What the hell are those gradients?
by _pmf_ on 6/11/13, 4:56 AM
Looks very Windows 3.11-ish. Cluttered (crammed, even) screen estate and limited multitasking.
by jamestkirk on 6/10/13, 9:11 PM
developer.apple.com is down since launch. Can I download iOS7 elsewhere?
by brown9-2 on 6/10/13, 10:12 PM
Interesting that all of the demo pictures are with the white iPhone.
by mindblink on 6/10/13, 11:50 PM
[In a small voice] I like the changes.... [run and hide]
by tekst on 6/11/13, 6:39 AM
Flat, Rich Text ,Gentle Beam, mess up, etc
by United857 on 6/10/13, 10:42 PM
And still no official WebGL support...
by piyush_soni on 6/10/13, 9:59 PM
Aah ... It tastes Android :)
by LandoCalrissian on 6/10/13, 8:58 PM
The parallax effect is pretty cool.
by bhauer on 6/10/13, 9:21 PM
iOS 7 = iOS + Metro + Android = iMetroid.
Not bad looking in my opinion, if a little bit weak on color choices.
by smiddereens on 6/10/13, 9:42 PM
This is an absolute outrage! WAH!
by harel on 6/10/13, 11:34 PM
Looks like Apple on Anderoids
by dsego on 6/11/13, 12:07 AM
the icon gradients look amateurish and the safari icon is just horrendous.
by freewizard on 6/10/13, 9:44 PM
Let's prepare class suit against Apple on our sight loss.
by nu2ycombinator on 6/10/13, 9:34 PM
ios7 flat ui reminds me latest ugly gmail ui.