Fun fact: this was originally done in Square's Card Case (by Robert Andersen, who coincidentally used to work at Apple). The hologram on the credit card used to change with the angle of the phone.
In-app hologram when you edit your credit card. Unfortunately this is not in the shipping build of Pay with Square, but it was there in Card Case (and was epic!).
Back in the heyday of the Cray 2, I randomly wondered what could be done if the total processing power of a (then) supercomputer was thrown at providing a user interface. What nuanced details could be achieved? Today, we see the result (iPad 2 ~= Cray 2), brought into sharp relief with this article.
I don't think I buy that this isn't "newsworthy" for tech. This is a responsive aesthetic, previously relegated to the occasional experiment, adopted by the trendsetter of UI design in their flagship software. Not the story of the decade, but definitely of note to anyone who dabbles in mobile at least.
I personally like the touch, but I think the sentiment is right. Extreme attention to detail in one spot = interesting, a few people notice. Extreme attention to detail in one spot by Apple = $$$ advertising revenue because everyone wants to see what Apple is doing.
The amazing animator David O'Reilly came up with a similar concept about 3 years ago.. I think this was just a video he made and timed his movements to it
Am I the only one who doesn't like this feature?
My understanding is that sampling the gyroscope that frequently is a battery killer (e.g: the reason those REM Sleep alarm clocks will suck down 90% of your battery in 8 hours)...
Over the course of a day this is probably a fairly significant amount of battery power wasted on eye candy...
On the other hand, I never leave my phone in the music app, screen turned on, unplugged — I get in, find the thing I want to play, then either lock the device or switch to another app. So I'm not too worried about it. But, still.
EDIT: Comments elsewhere on this page seem to imply that the extra power usage is miniscule.
Processor cycles are plentiful, yet our systems don't run noticeably faster than they did in 1999. Batteries have come a long way, yet battery life is not getting any better.
I can imagine an entire interface taking advantage of this; the subtle drop shadows on buttons shifting slightly based on the devices gyroscope. Heck, even based on where the sun is at your location. It could really add to the level of immersion.
So just when other OSes (WP7, e.g.) ditch the physical metaphors realism in UI in favor of more minimalistic/reduced graphics style Apple comes in and doubles down.
Personally, to me, it's superfluous, but I can see some people liking it --however, I think it has to eventually retrench.
Yep, Apple is still big on physical metaphors. See iBooks, etc. I'm not a fan. Build a UI that does X as well as possible, not that emulates IRL thing Y that does X.
I think it often serves a real purpose. Shadows and textures are useful for subtly separating foreground and background and bringing relevant content into visual focus.
Sure, but you can use them more effectively if you aren't caught up on making them look like something else. iBooks, for example, has the page crease in the middle, page images around the outside, and goofy animations when you turn the page. It probably helps sell iPads but I think it distracts from what I'm trying to actually do, which is read text. Some day it will look as goofy as the old music player plugins that would add pops and hissing like from a vinyl record player.
I personally think skeuomorphism used well can be a good thing, but it has to be used well. Does the leather texture on Lion's iCal harm the app? IMO, no (though the specific choice of texture and color could be argued with), and I think textures/colors like this can give an app a "face", something to visually distinguish it, and that's important. But the stitching underneath it? It's superfluous, takes up extra space, and adds significant distraction and visual noise. Glad to see it's gone in Mountain Lion.
Likewise, I thought iBooks on iPad looked great at first glance, but over time the extra visuals got annoying and cluttery. I was very happy to see them add Full Screen Mode.
Very little to none - accelerometer packages also handle some power management themselves, typically with various 'modes' of accuracy and sleep/awake states. There are a number of embedded devices (my FitBit, for example) based around MEMs accelerometers and tiny batteries with a charge that lasts days, if not weeks.
Compared to everything else that's going on (backlight, CPU, WiFi or the cellular modem) it's peanuts.
Probably a negligible amount. The accelerometer in HTC phones uses only 200μA when active, and only wakes itself when there is motion. I don't know exactly what part an iPhone uses, but it'll be similar. Compared to the CPU's power usage, which will definitely be running if the screen is on and the app is in use, that's nothing.
The accelerometers in phones have wake-on-motion built-in. They use essentially no power when there is no motion, with a sleep/wake delay of something like 1ms. Even when the accelerometer is powered up, it uses negligible power compared to the CPU/display/radios.
The reason you wouldn't want to use the accelerometer all the time in an app is that it keeps the CPU from sleeping, since the CPU has to be awake to read & process the signals from it. Keeping the CPU awake when it could otherwise be sleeping is going to drain battery far more than the accelerometer itself.
This skeutomorph litmus test mentality is a fad. Skeutomorph free interfaces have been around for a long time. Some really interesting programs have had them (Ableton Live and Osc music control interfaces come to mind) but they haven't proven to be a decisive advantage or even had a radical effect on user sentiment where they've been applied. In music software, the impossibly skeutomorphic Reason (you literally connect dangly patch cables to connect audio effects) is thriving alongside Live and the consensus is that there's actually a place for the different styles.
