The relevant paragraph from the original WSJ article:
"Some suggested that in Apple’s next mobile operating system, Ive is pushing a more “flat design” that is starker and simpler, according to developers who have spoken to Apple employees but didn’t have further details. Overall, they expect any changes to be pretty conservative."
I wouldn't exactly say that switching to a completely flat design as implied in the headline is a 'conservative' change.
It's quite obvious that they are unlikely to go down the overly skeuomorphic route as seen in the Podcast app, so this is a fairly 'safe' rumor to spread. But of course, it incites the usual skeuomorphic vs flat arguments with the added bonus of accusations of 'copying' the Metro style.
There are many misconceptions in regards to categorizing flat vs skeuomorphic design, here is a good article that explains the differences pretty well.
Why do I have the impression that if they go flat, they'll be hailed as geniuses and Microsoft will be forgotten forever?
(This comment guaranteed 100% conspirationist and crazy)
Possibly because they'll do it right and not have the amorphous mess that is Windows 8?
There's sparks of brilliance in Metro, but it's too goddamn flat. It's not obvious what parts of the UI can be clicked and manipulated.
Apple is also hailed as genius for "inventing the tablet" even though Microsoft tried to make tablets happen for a decade before the iPad. It's just an example of execution having more impact than conceptualization.
>Apple is also hailed as genius for "inventing the tablet" even though Microsoft tried to make tablets happen for a decade before the iPad
The iPad has more in common with the Newton, which came years before the Tablet PC.
Tablet PCs, while great (I liked them anyway, especially with OneNote) might have been called a tablet, but it had little in common with the tablet concepts as presented in the iPad. Tablet PCs didn't even get capacitive touch until after iOS devices came out. They were wholly stylus-based until then -- no pinches or swipes.
>Tablet PCs didn't even get capacitive touch until after iOS devices came out.
That's not true, I own a HP Tx2 which was released before the iPad and it has a capacitive touch screen it works great and before it there was the dell XT2 too.
Yeah you're right, The dell XT with capacitive touch was released in december of 2007 with a capacitive screen, the iPhone was released on june of 2007, I thought the op meant the iPad.
Well I did have a capacitive touch screen "tablet PC" (Panasonic Toughbook). But that's pretty much irrelevant since the UI didn't have pinches and swipes and wasn't designed primarily for use with fingers.
There still were Tablet PCs with capacitive display before though, for example the ThinkPad X60 Tablet had an optional MultiTouch display and it came out in 2006.
Dismissing Microsoft's metro design by calling Windows 8 is a typical example of a straw man that you get to see here on HN. Flat design as it is done in the Metro UI on Windows 8 is gorgeous particularly on touch based machines. The fact that there also exists an older UI is because of the legacy that Microsoft has to support It's the price you have to pay for being in business for 30 years. I clearly see the need to go to non-metro UI diminishing as new updates and apps come along. Command line UI lingered on for a while after windows 3.1 came and the legacy UI will probably have the same lifeline.
I'm talking about Metro. It's very pretty, but it's not all that functional. It uses space poorly and it's hard to distinguish what is manipulable and what is not. It's particularly problematic on WP8, because at least on a larger screen the physical separation of the UI elements gives some clue to what does what. E.g. the "people" app on WP8 is quite a mess. It's not at all clear how to get around in it.
E.g. the "people" app on WP8 is quite a mess. It's not at all clear how to get around in it.
I just looked at the People app. I don't find anything confusing in it at all. Virtually everything in there is tapable. I didn't see a single thing in there that I thought someone would be confused about (at least with respect to the UI -- it's a bit confusing as to what content gets streamed in, but that has nothing to do with Metro).
Its not a price anyone has to pay, its a choice made. Plenty of companies have been around a while and choose not to support old stuff - cutting or keeping the ties is part of the design.
Why do you think Microsoft invented flat UI design?
I for one will miss the current iOS design. I'm 1 year into Android and I'm still way faster on iOS. There is a clear distinction between what is interaction vs. what is not and my eye instantly maps out the interactive elements on the screen.
Each to their own, I am the complete opposite. I came from an iPhone and switched to Android. I am much faster on Android, task switching is worlds apart, animations are faster and smoother, the apps I use follow Holo design language (this is by choice) meaning the UI is consistent and beautiful. I'm not saying it's perfect, there are some things I miss from iOS like unread badges (easy to get back with Nova Launcher however) and I did like Airplay, Android certainly has plenty of room to refine and improve, but it would take some massive and fundamental changes for me to consider switching back to iOS.
Citation please? Cannot seems like an unreasonably strong claim.
Given the way older iOS devices are often sluggish on newer OS releases, it seems entirely possible that the animations on the switched-from device were slower and less smooth than the animations on the switched-to device.
I can see how my comment could be interpreted as hinting that Microsoft invented flat UI design, yet it wasn't the point I was trying to make as it is most likely untrue :)
What I was going for here is that even though they didn't CREATE the movement of flat UI design, they most certainly helped its most recent resurgence in the "collective mind" by placing it back on the map with their Metro interface (which I think is actually pretty sweet yet still bears the marks of the older OS UI designs of the XP/Vista/7 era).
And I somehow feel that there's a difference in treatment between Microsoft and Apple (case in point is Microsoft brilliant technology for on-the-fly translations in video conferences which blew my mind). Just to be clear about my intentions with this here comment, I dislike Windows as an OS, switched to Linux about 10 years ago and I am currently and happily running OS X, this is not fanboy-ism.
Using my Dad's iPhone tonight was absolutely infuriating. I finally gave it back and told him to figure it out himself. That interface, the lack of a back button, it's so damn frustrating.
The IM button with my old email address magically taking me to Facebook was one thing, still no freaking clue why it took me to Facebook. And then I couldn't go "Back", because there is no "Back". I tried the in-app back button - no, that was a huge mistake. So I double-tapped the home key and choose Phone or Contacts or whatever it is... and guess what? It was a completely different contact. What the hell? How am I supposed to get back to where I just was?
Don't even get me started on the Android "back button". I am still regularly baffled by its behaviour. Especially when combined with the "app within an app" you get when one app launches into another. Except not really.
Android Police has a great writeup on Android design weirdness with a section titled 'The Back Button - Let's Just Rename It "Shuffle" '
It goes backward. It goes wherever you just were, unless it takes you up a level, and if you just press it again, it takes you back to the app you were in. It's really not hard.
Contact app -> app an email address -> Gmail Compose window -BACK-> Contact app on the contact you were just on.
It takes you backward, it is what makes intents and app interaction work. I can understand why its confusing to an Apple user because there is no equivalent functionality in iOS.
Here, pretend there is no back button, yay! Android works like iOS and I'd go freaking insane. It sure as hell beats what happened to me in iOS tonight, who on Earth finds that usable? Every time one app invokes another I'm expected to go back to the homescreen and drill back down into the original app? Just shoot me.
> It goes backward. It goes wherever you just were, unless it takes you up a level, and if you just press it again, it takes you back to the app you were in. It's really not hard.
And there's no way to tell if you're at the first "point" of the current application(in which case it will switch you to the previous one), or if it will go back to another place within the app.
And the Android OS doesn't determine what the back button does. Individual applications do. So you're dealing with an OS control button that's extremely context sensitive and application specific. You don't know what the button's going to do until you use it in any app.
That's not quite the whole story. Some apps can inject extra state - so when I get an email, pull down and click, read the email and hit "back" it takes me to the inbox. Back again takes me right back where I was.
I mean, come on, someone give me an example of going app->app and the back button not getting you back to where you came from.
I don't think this is exactly what you are referring to, but there are apps, like feedly, where the back button brings you back to the home screen, and not back one screen. I don't know if this is because these apps are "ports" from iOS, or the devs are ignoring Android specific features to make it easier for themselves, or something else.
It's not Android's fault but it does frustrate me that different apps treat the hard button differently. FWIW I would rather have it this way than the way Apple handles it.
>Here, pretend there is no back button, yay! Android works like iOS and I'd go freaking insane.
That's not really true. The vast majority of iOS apps with nested pages will have breadcrumb navigation at the top, with a big button either saying "Back" or telling you exactly where you will be going back to.
When you launch from one app into another, that's a different matter. I agree that can be annoying/confusing. But no more annoying/confusing than I've found with Android, where I've had some apps go back to the calling app and others going back up their internal chain (to what would normally be the parent screen of the one that you've landed on).
I don't think you have to worry about it. They aren't going to make radical changes for the sake of tech geeks who are bored if the rest of the customer base likes things the way they are.
Android exasperates the problem by occasionally having interactive elements which look exactly identical to non-interactive elements. In "Settings>About>Phone Identity" I see 6 cells in a table. None of them look interactive. I would be 83% correct. One of them is. What is its behaviour? Tap to find out! Tapping "Phone name" results in a dialog with keyboard entry.
Also, in some menus the cells have a switch on the right side. Tapping the switch of course toggles it. But for some of them, tapping the cell that contains the switch will toggle the switch and for others, there's an entirely other context hidden behind that cell! Tapping the cell brings you to another screen, instead of toggling the switch. How are these discoverable? This is insane.
I doubt they'll go as flat as Microsoft did, it would create a mess of designs on iDevices. I think it will mostly be like Apple's new update to the Podcasts app - remove all the gimmicks, but keep the shadows and gradients on the same level as on OS X (outside of iCloud apps).
Apple can really do no wrong. It's impossible to think of any proposal Apple could have which would not receive this response, unless it was inoculating orphans with polio or something.
Not only does Apple get criticized all the time, they get criticized the most by their own fans, as five minutes spent on any popular Apple forum would illustrate. Anyone who thinks that they get a pass for everything is intentionally ignoring both the media and the users.
One of the biggest Mac writers even has a blog and defunct podcast called Hypercritical to talk about what Apple does wrong. There's a lot of loyalty, and some blinded by it, but it's often tempered with the realisation they aren't perfect.
Antennae gate, flash not on iOS, maps, no new Power Mac, new magsafe plug, new smaller idevice plug, making a bigger iphone when they said they wouldn't, making a smaller ipad when they said they wouldn't, introducing reading list in the face of instapaper-like services, the crappy icloud service, crappy mobileme service, the gizomodo raid, the lack of blocks on children buying in app stuff, blocking 3rd parties if they don't give 30% of in app purchase price to Apple, taking 30% of app price, imessage bugs, email search, ITUNES (all of it).
Apple has done some things that infuriate me -- for example, I still haven't upgraded to iOS 6 due to the whole Maps thing. However, I think I speak for even the most jaded Apple users when I say that I trust Jony Ive's design sense implicitly.
Apple has been known to get a lot of things wrong, sometimes really important things, but never anything along these lines. I expect to be blown away.
John Gruber has already declared that Apple is at the forefront of flat design. I think he dismissively mention Microsoft once in his post on the topic.
Wow, I've been using the new update all day and never noticed that they changed the look until just now after reading your comment and looking directly at it.
Sometimes skeuomorphism is useful, when used right. For example, Microsoft's Fresh Paint app for Windows 8. Extreme skeuomorphism which actually combines well within the flat W8 interface, screenshot: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Freshpain...
You have got to be kidding. That looks terrible and wastes half the space on the screen. It's not even very good skeuomorphism, the drop shadows aren't in a consistent direction, and the layering of the brushes and canvas doesn't make sense.
Other than the paint mixing area, how is that any better than something like SketchBook Pro? I can't even tell which controls will bring up submenus or secondary controls.
I've always thought that iOS elements looked like Playmobile gear, and clashed horribly with Ive's sleek hardware design. It will be interesting to see the changes Ive will make, and how much better they'll mesh with his hardware.
That's not a copy, that maybe you can call it… inspiration. By no means is identical in shape, color and functionality. But we're here discussing something much more higher than a single feature, we're talking about the entire GUI foundation.
Notification center isn't designed similarly to Android's equivalent... Like, at all. They function similarly, but if you're referring to Apple copying functionality then you've missed the whole point of this discussion.
The x buttons that are nearly impossible to activate, that you actually have to hit twice perfectly to do what you want, the ones that break their own UI guidelines of how big something should be so that people can use it? I feel your pain.
And please get rid of that ridiculous blue! Anyone using Messages, Mail and Contacts on iPhone has this eye soar sticking right in front. How in the world can someone pick such a strange color and then add that stranger blue bar(I know its automatic) at top.
I would be happy to see flat design, but in increments only. And maybe it is time for Apple to leave "best for beginners" ideology and care a bit about advanced users. Give us a little freedom, let me change my default apps, let Siri do more things and small things like that.
The focus on flat vs skeuomorphic is partly due to designs being mainly static drawings. Most UIs have additional dimensions. One dimension that goes underused in Android is the ability to share UI among apps through the use of intent filters. That hasn't advanced much since Android was announced. Both Google and 3rd party developers under-utilize this powerful capability. Google makes a vast suite of apps now, and how often do they "borrow" an activity from each other?
Then there s the amount of direct manipulation in apps. Viewpagers are nice, but there isn't a lot of drag-drop, especially on tablets where it provides feedback and trains muscle memory. Audio ques, haptic feedback, animation, etc. are all dimensions in which apps can expand interactivity where the visual interface, on handsets, is tiny.
Skeuomorphism that is just pictures of things is obviously dissatisfying, but so is a flat UI that doesn't go beyond simple touch.
I'm not so sure I am all that excited about Ive getting into the UI design that much. Flat, reductionist design sensibilities are good, but not when they go unchecked. Is there anyone at Apple with the weight to say to Ive, "that looks sexy, but no-one gets it"?
The sad thing about this if it's true is that people will most likely claim Apple are some revolutionary company that invented flat design when Microsoft brought it to the commercial mainstream first before anyone else did. Flat design is in my opinion, Swedish design. The swedes have been designing with a flat perspective long before Microsoft or anyone else made it a trend.
Non-skeuomorphic design is not the same as flat design. The example the WSJ gives to support their idea is the redesign of the lockscreen music controls in IOS 6.1. Not only does the volume slider have a 3D look to it through the use of drop-shadows, but when you tilt the phone the reflection on the button changes.
Show of hands: How many here recall Microsoft's "Palm-size PC"? It began with a "3D" interface. It flopped and MS redid it as "Pocket PC" with a flat UI. (They also moved Start down to the lower left corner, like the PC Windows.) The more things change...
I never considered flat and skeuomorphic to be opposite ends of the same design continuum. Those aren't the only options. I'd like to think the Apple design team is going to wow us with something new. Something better.
>Really, it's apple, they've peaked already. Show me the new cool thing.
That is just conventional wisdom. Who said they have "peaked already"?
Three objections:
1) People would have said the same thing pre iPhone ("oh, they have peaked with the iPod"), and pre-iPad. And they indeed said it.
2) This iPad thing isn't even 2 years old. Yes, you read that correctly. It was introduced LESS than 2 years ago (actually closing to 2 years any day now, it was on late march 2010). Since then they have also established hi-dpi displays for phones, tablets and laptops, and of course Air-style ultraportables.
3) All the "new cool things" I've seen from third party companies all these years have been ho-hum, me-too stuff (Surface, etc) or vaporware (Google Glasses). It's like, besides Apple, nobody introduces anything that is both successful AND interesting to the mass markets anymore.
Google, for example, had it's moments with Search and Gmail. Since then, what exactly have they put out that's interesting AND has caught on with people? Android: successful but not interesting. Glasses: interesting but not successful (or even "a product"). Etc.
So much for the "consistent UI" apple fans are always touting as a win over android. Now it seems we will have some apps glossy, some flat, some skeuo, etc...
This isn't new. OSX has many different apps that still reflect trends and practices of the era in which they were made.
Consistent UI on iOS isn't about all apps looking identical, they don't and never have.
It's about functionality being consistent, and for the most part it is. Certainly more so than Android. Whether that's something you care about or not is up to you.
Tiles look great if the content is great, but just like with file previews (on Win7 or OSX), sometimes that's info that I don't need.
For example, using a desktop analogy, I'd rather not see the layout of my first page of code. I would like to know the filetype (icon is great for this often), and some other metadata so I can compare it with similar files.
"Some suggested that in Apple’s next mobile operating system, Ive is pushing a more “flat design” that is starker and simpler, according to developers who have spoken to Apple employees but didn’t have further details. Overall, they expect any changes to be pretty conservative."
I wouldn't exactly say that switching to a completely flat design as implied in the headline is a 'conservative' change.
It's quite obvious that they are unlikely to go down the overly skeuomorphic route as seen in the Podcast app, so this is a fairly 'safe' rumor to spread. But of course, it incites the usual skeuomorphic vs flat arguments with the added bonus of accusations of 'copying' the Metro style.
There are many misconceptions in regards to categorizing flat vs skeuomorphic design, here is a good article that explains the differences pretty well.
http://sachagreif.com/flat-pixels/