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iOS 7 to be "very, very flat"


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iOS 7 to be "very, very flat"
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ezkcdude
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2013-04-30, 14:33

I've become a fan of flat design in recent months, and would welcome this change. What do you guys think?

Quote:
The new interface is said to be “very, very flat,” according to one source. Another person said that the interface loses all signs of gloss, shine, and skeuomorphism seen across current and past versions of iOS. Another source framed the new OS as having a level of “flatness” approaching recent releases of Microsoft’s Windows Phone “Metro” UI.
http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/29/jony-i...ook-for-ios-7/
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PB PM
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2013-04-30, 14:35

iOS's UI does need a change, it feels very dated and lots of space seems to be wasted (particularly on the iPad). Whether a M$ like flatter design is the answer to this need is yet to be seen. Let's just hope it isn't as boring as MS approach.
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addabox
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2013-04-30, 14:56

Two things:

One, I'll believe it when I see it. If I had a nickle for every "Apple will shortly do X" story I'd have more nickles than I care to manage.

Secondly, I don't think iOS as is looks "dated." It looks familiar, certainly, and I understand people like stuff to get changed up just to keep their attention. But "dated" implies there has been some kind of general design language shift across (at least) consumer electronics and that iOS therefore looks "old fashioned" in the manner of a car design from 10 years ago.

That manifestly is untrue. MS has its Metro (or whatever) visual style, but given the market share numbers it hardly can be considered to be the new thinking. It's just an outlier. And I'm not even sure what to say about Android, in that there are many looks, often on the same screen. So how can iOS look dated if there isn't any consensus as to how a "modern" mobile OS ought to look?

Sorry to go on about something so relatively trivial, but that "dated" thing always bugged me, since the way it gets used it seems to mean something like "I get bored if my software doesn't routinely present me with new stuff to look."

That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated
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Mugge
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2013-04-30, 15:33

I personally hate UI cruft so I wouldn't mind seeing a more no-nonsense iOS UI and I think that can be accomplished without compromising the current familiarity of iOS. As what to expect from Ive, I think much can be learned by simply looking at the current hardware designs. The mantra seems to be that features/details need to serve a purpose in order to get included in the design. Pretty straight forward logic if you ask me.

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Matsu
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2013-04-30, 16:12

I once wrongly believed I would have really really flat abs, but I'm too well fed.
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addabox
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2013-04-30, 16:16

However, software isn't hardware, in that there are levels of abstraction and interaction in software that have no analog in hardware.

You can't just "go minimal" in any meaningful sense (that is, beyond just making icons and widgets look flatter) with iOS in the same way that Ive has pared down laptops. There may be ways of making iOS work better, with less cruft, more access to options, easier paths to functionality, etc., but I don't know if putting Ive in charge necessarily leads to that. It might, or he might have the right people working for him, but it's by no means a slam dunk.

Now, if the idea is just to make everything look "cleaner", that's trivial, and I'm sure Ive is up to the task.

That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated
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Chinney
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2013-04-30, 20:20

I like the cruft.
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Moogs
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2013-04-30, 22:45

Some flattening would be good. If it ends up looking like the colored boxes in Winblows 8, I'll never use it.
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Kickaha
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2013-04-30, 23:12

Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox View Post
It looks familiar, certainly, and I understand people like stuff to get changed up just to keep their attention. But "dated" implies there has been some kind of general design language shift across (at least) consumer electronics and that iOS therefore looks "old fashioned" in the manner of a car design from 10 years ago.

That manifestly is untrue. MS has its Metro (or whatever) visual style, but given the market share numbers it hardly can be considered to be the new thinking. It's just an outlier. And I'm not even sure what to say about Android, in that there are many looks, often on the same screen. So how can iOS look dated if there isn't any consensus as to how a "modern" mobile OS ought to look?

Sorry to go on about something so relatively trivial, but that "dated" thing always bugged me, since the way it gets used it seems to mean something like "I get bored if my software doesn't routinely present me with new stuff to look."
Bingo. What most people call design is actually *fashion*. "It looks dated." So? Is it broken? Is there a better way for it to work? Or are you just bored and think your intrinsic self-worth is somehow lessened because you don't have the shiniest new thing that was changed just to be different to drive a wedge between you and your money, you attention-span-deficient marketing-susceptible narcissistic consumer-whore?

I say it with love.

But seriously, WTF?
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drewprops
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2013-05-01, 00:28

I don't know if anyone has said this yet, but if Ives goes to such extreme effort to make the hardware so effortless and beautiful, what if he helps approach software design in a similar machine-like fashion?

The most important thing I want from my software interface is to NOT EVEN NOTICE IT.

I want pure muscle memory.

There's a reason that we like buttons and gears and such - we can anticipate where they are and grab them and flip them and punch them without a thought. THAT is the thing that we've sacrificed with touchscreen displays.

If the software behaves in a dependable fashion then I will be very happy.


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Chinney
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2013-05-01, 07:11

Well said Drew.
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Wrao
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2013-05-01, 19:45

If this does happen, which, really we don't know if it will or not. But if this does happen, I really hope we can trust Ives' judgment to not make a mess of it. Honestly, there is a lot of anti-skeuomorphism sentiment floating around seemingly only since nerds learned of the existence of that word(and association with Apple maybe) but lost in all of that bickering is the fact that skeuomorphic designs have a lot of sense about them and can and are often very good, useful and worthwhile.

Yeah, sometimes it crosses the line or becomes a little arbitrary in weird ways, but for many things it is wholly appropriate.

I think Google has pushed anti-skeuomorphism and minimalism too far honestly and almost all of their web services that have been redesigned have become more frustrating to use for me. Google also has pursued 'flat' in its design language arguing that these devices are not supposed to mirror or mimic things in the real world and must instead devise entirely new paradigms of thinking about them. Microsoft as well with their Metro nonsense has also pushed for a 'so flat and so minimal' approach that just sort of defies logic. And I'm sure both of these companies could throw internal testing figures at me and claim that their market research and surveys and committees preferred this and whatever, but it doesn't make Metro any less crap or Google's 'disappearingly minimal' approach any less pointless.

I say BS to that, many designs (and elements of design) in the real world exist because they are particularly good or useful and essentially 'timeless' for that reason, if and when that transfers over to a different form factor, it should be embraced, not arbitrarily discarded.

So, if this does happen. I hope we can trust Apple to do it right, they shouldn't need to be doubted really with the pedigree they have, but I think there have also been enough examples of their software kind of 'slipping' as well and we should hope that doesn't happen here, and that 'change for the sake of' isn't the prime motivator.
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PB PM
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2013-05-01, 20:08

Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox View Post
Two things:
Secondly, I don't think iOS as is looks "dated."
Never said it looked dated, read my post again. I said it feels dated. Apple is an initiative company, or so they would have us believe, so they need to take steps to keep people believing that. Don't get me wrong, I generally like the UI of iOS, but anyone that doesn't believe that some areas of it could use improvement, well I'm not going to waste my time with such people.

Last edited by PB PM : 2013-05-02 at 00:18.
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Chinney
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2013-05-01, 21:15

Also well said Wrao and PB. I must be in a good mood today, as I am agreeing with everyone.
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kieran
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2013-05-01, 21:38

I love the look of the flat apps like Twitterrific and Letterpress. I'd be very happy to see all of iOS go that direction.
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Dorian Gray
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2013-05-02, 06:23

Wraos and drewpropss: the man’s name is Ive!

Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox View Post
Secondly, I don't think iOS as is looks "dated." It looks familiar, certainly, and I understand people like stuff to get changed up just to keep their attention. But "dated" implies there has been some kind of general design language shift across (at least) consumer electronics and that iOS therefore looks "old fashioned" in the manner of a car design from 10 years ago.

That manifestly is untrue. MS has its Metro (or whatever) visual style, but given the market share numbers it hardly can be considered to be the new thinking.
Since when has new thinking been defined by market share? I don’t recall that being the case when Apple’s new and innovative Mac OS X had 1 % market share. I don’t think it’s any truer now.

Metro is a signpost to the future, whether or not Windows Phone 8 gains much market traction. It has already profoundly affected user-interface design by others, including, now, it seems, Apple. And that’s as it should be, because Metro is good. It’s based on sound principles – the functional and aesthetic discipline of print design – while allowing digital to be digital rather than mimicking everyday chattels. I think it’s nothing less than the best thing Microsoft has ever done.

It’s crazy to call Metro fashion, since the whole point of it is to reject fashion and ornamentation. It’s supposed to be the design to end all design. It won’t be, of course, but it’s obviously a fundamentally different approach to other operating systems, akin to the difference between the 2001 iPod and everything before it. The original iPod wasn’t perfect and it continued to evolve for a decade, but it radically changed the way consumer electronics devices were designed, and I think Metro will have a similar impact on future software design.

Android, by contrast, is a lowest-common-denominator mess, with shiny bits, matte bits, textured bits, flat bits, 2D bits, 3D bits, faux 3D bits… There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it. The fact that Google’s own promotion page for Android 4.2 is headed by a 3D rendering of an android with a glass torso filled with jellybeans, the whole ensemble lit by an imaginary soft-box, tells you all you need to know.

And it gets worse when hardware companies ‘skin’ it, which they inevitably do. Samsung’s TouchWiz is disgracefully bad. Check out the gratuitous inside-out 3D effect when swiping screens horizontally, seen here, if you can stomach it.

I’m really looking forward to iOS 7.
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drewprops
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2013-05-02, 07:51

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorian Gray View Post
Wraos and drewpropss: the man’s name is Ive!
Can I just call him "Burl" for short?


...
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billybobsky
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2013-05-02, 08:47

I have never liked skeuomorphic designs. From my families first Mac in 1989 to my current one now, the apps that look the most horrendous and sacrifice the most amount of function for their aesthetics are the ones that attempt to pull physical object logic into what is a finite 2D plane. The aesthetics of any program should be based upon the program's primary function, with considerations thrown in for user interface realities -- edges are infinitely tall for mouse/trackpads, interactable elements need to be apparent (a problem, I suspect, with Windows 7), etc etc.
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addabox
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2013-05-02, 12:48

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
Never said it looked dated, read my post again. I said it feels dated.
Not quite getting the distinction. Is there some aspect of iOS that "feels" dated to you outside of how it looks? If so, given that this is a discussion of updating how it looks, maybe you could clarify.

Quote:
Apple is an initiative company, or so they would have us believe, so they need to take steps to keep people believing that. Don't get me wrong, I generally like the UI of iOS, but anyone that doesn't believe that some areas of it could use improvement, well I'm not going to waste my time with such people.
And I didn't say that iOS couldn't use improvements, I just objected to the use of the term dated in relation of mobile operating systems.

That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated
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addabox
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2013-05-02, 13:06

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorian Gray View Post
Since when has new thinking been defined by market share? I don’t recall that being the case when Apple’s new and innovative Mac OS X had 1 % market share. I don’t think it’s any truer now.
New thinking isn't defined by market share, but being left behind to become dated certainly is (perhaps a better term than market share would be "ubiquity.") Some unusual piece of design, no matter how interesting or innovative, doesn't suddenly render everything else dated if those innovations aren't widely adopted. Just kind of a matter of how that term gets used.

Quote:
Metro is a signpost to the future, whether or not Windows Phone 8 gains much market traction. It has already profoundly affected user-interface design by others, including, now, it seems, Apple. And that’s as it should be, because Metro is good. It’s based on sound principles – the functional and aesthetic discipline of print design – while allowing digital to be digital rather than mimicking everyday chattels. I think it’s nothing less than the best thing Microsoft has ever done
Well, clearly you're fond of the Metro look, but I think you're wildly overstating its influence to date. We don't know what Apple is going to do, so you can hardly preemptively claim that whatever changes are made will be Metro influenced. iOS may well be made "flatter", but Ive is famously a long term proponent of minimalism, and given the chance was very obviously going to make any software he could get his hands on "simpler." And later you dismiss Android as a mess, so I'm not getting how you can claim Metro "has already profoundly affected user-interface design by others." If not Apple and Android, who?

Quote:
It’s crazy to call Metro fashion, since the whole point of it is to reject fashion and ornamentation. It’s supposed to be the design to end all design. It won’t be, of course, but it’s obviously a fundamentally different approach to other operating systems, akin to the difference between the 2001 iPod and everything before it. The original iPod wasn’t perfect and it continued to evolve for a decade, but it radically changed the way consumer electronics devices were designed, and I think Metro will have a similar impact on future software design.
That just sounds like boosterism with hand waving, sorry. I don't see any evidence whatsoever that Metro is the wave of the future. The comparison to the iPod is just peculiar, in that the iPod represented an integrated system of digital music acquisition and playback that vastly exceeded its OS. The OS, while elegant and handy, was probably the least of it.

Also, I never called Metro "fashion", I just questioned whether or not it made any sense to call iOS dated when the other candidates for "what modern ought to look like" (a necessary condition for datedness, I would think) were a) poorly received and b) hideous.

Quote:
Android, by contrast, is a lowest-common-denominator mess, with shiny bits, matte bits, textured bits, flat bits, 2D bits, 3D bits, faux 3D bits… There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it. The fact that Google’s own promotion page for Android 4.2 is headed by a 3D rendering of an android with a glass torso filled with jellybeans, the whole ensemble lit by an imaginary soft-box, tells you all you need to know.

And it gets worse when hardware companies ‘skin’ it, which they inevitably do. Samsung’s TouchWiz is disgracefully bad. Check out the gratuitous inside-out 3D effect when swiping screens horizontally, seen here, if you can stomach it.

I’m really looking forward to iOS 7.
So right, we agree on all that, but again there doesn't seem to me to be any consensus, at all, as to how a modern OS "ought" to look. I get that you feel that Metro gets the nod, but "ought" has some component of popularity beyond the particular tastes of a given user.

That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated
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Kickaha
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2013-05-02, 19:43

How it ought to look, feel, operate, or behave, please for the love of god.

Fashion is dated.

Design is improved upon.

Don't confuse the two.
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PB PM
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2013-05-02, 20:50

Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox View Post
Not quite getting the distinction. Is there some aspect of iOS that "feels" dated to you outside of how it looks? If so, given that this is a discussion of updating how it looks, maybe you could clarify.
As I noted in my first post, the huge amounts of wasted space (on the iPad) would be the first thing that stands out to me.

Then there are menu items that just don't make sense. Like are Do Not Disturb settings under piracy settings? To me it is a lot of little things in the UI, not so much big things. Why are some things toggle switches (ON/OFF type stuff) and other similar functions separate lines with a check mark beside the one of two options? It's just a lack of unity within the overall package really.
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screensaver400
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2013-05-02, 23:09

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
As I noted in my first post, the huge amounts of wasted space (on the iPad) would be the first thing that stands out to me.
Are you referring to the space between icons on the home screen or something else?
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PB PM
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2013-05-02, 23:21

Mostly on the home screen, but there are other aspects of the UI (some menus) where there is a lot of unused space.
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addabox
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2013-05-03, 01:20

Quote:
Originally Posted by PB PM View Post
As I noted in my first post, the huge amounts of wasted space (on the iPad) would be the first thing that stands out to me.

Then there are menu items that just don't make sense. Like are Do Not Disturb settings under piracy settings? To me it is a lot of little things in the UI, not so much big things. Why are some things toggle switches (ON/OFF type stuff) and other similar functions separate lines with a check mark beside the one of two options? It's just a lack of unity within the overall package really.
Don't disagree with any of that, but that's also where I wonder if Ive is particularly suited to solving those kind of software problems. Clean things up, make icons more minimal, sure. But I'm not sure how one applies an austere sense of clean design to a problem like how to access settings.

That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated
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Dorian Gray
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2013-05-03, 04:55

Quote:
Originally Posted by drewprops View Post
Can I just call him "Burl" for short?
Only if his name had an s.

Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox View Post
And later you dismiss Android as a mess, so I'm not getting how you can claim Metro "has already profoundly affected user-interface design by others." If not Apple and Android, who?
Third-party developers of apps and websites, who are usually smaller and more agile than OS developers like Apple and Google. But doing something like Metro is far harder than it looks. It’s a big idea rather than a ‘skin’, and a lot of the designs influenced by it are inevitably superficial copies that are not actually very good. That doesn’t mean they weren’t influenced by it.

A few years ago Apple’s rounded corners, textures, and drop shadows were being copied by every second website, but who’s copying that today? Now websites – like the BBC and Hulu – use grids and careful typography and ‘put content first’. Good ones have activated white space and do away with navigation bars.

Of course many websites are in a messy transition period (like the Android OS), in which they use a bit of everything with no real discipline. EasyJet isn’t sure whether to copy Apple or Metro.

Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox View Post
I don't see any evidence whatsoever that Metro is the wave of the future.
You’re not looking then. Metro is being aped left, right, and centre. Googling “metro-inspired design” gives me 50 million hits. Lots of iOS apps in the App Store are taking cues from Metro, including that Letterpress game that Apple is itself advertising on its homepage. Metro is the toast of the design world right now. Writers are going on about the new Microsoft, now with design.

Quote:
Originally Posted by addabox View Post
The comparison to the iPod is just peculiar, in that the iPod represented an integrated system of digital music acquisition and playback that vastly exceeded its OS. The OS, while elegant and handy, was probably the least of it.
Yeah, I meant the whole iPod – hardware and software together – was to MP3 players what Metro is to chrome-heavy design today: a new way of thinking that is so obviously superior that it will inevitably influence the future.

The above doesn’t mean I think Windows Phone 8 is perfect. Obviously it’s far from perfect. Apple will almost certainly do a better job (not least by preventing network operators from adding bloatware). But the Metro design is like a glass of ice-water in hell.
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Chinney
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2013-05-03, 07:15

No doubt iOS can be improved upon considerably. Its current design is a legacy of early efforts in portable device OS's and its continued hold is, ironically, a negative by-product of Apple's early success in making the technology mainstream. It is difficult to depart from initial success, but I think that Apple can do better.

That said, if the debate is whether the "better" is necessarily "flatter", I am not automatically on board with that. Contrary to what is suggested by some above, non-flat design elements are functional if done correctly, as they provide important visual cues. They also can make the final result softer and easier on the eyes. Nothing wrong with that at all. Brutalist design may appeal to some, but it is just a fashion in its own right, and not necessarily a naturally better one in terms of functionality and long-term appeal.

When there's an eel in the lake that's as long as a snake that's a moray.
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drewprops
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2013-05-03, 07:37

So many "flat" rumors dropped so quickly at the same time that its hard to resist thinking the internal rumor management team had been instructed to put the buzz out there in advance of a new flat OS and a new "very, very flat" iPhone.


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Last edited by drewprops : 2013-05-03 at 13:37. Reason: petulance
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Kickaha
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2013-05-03, 11:44

Oooh, good prediction there, 'props.

Metro is the culmination and application of grid-based design applied to an OS. It's not a *new* idea, but it's a new application, and one that was done rather well. But it ain't perfect.

Now we'll see if it can be improved on by a competitor.
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addabox
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2013-05-03, 12:12

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dorian Gray View Post

You’re not looking then. Metro is being aped left, right, and centre. Googling “metro-inspired design” gives me 50 million hits. Lots of iOS apps in the App Store are taking cues from Metro, including that Letterpress game that Apple is itself advertising on its homepage. Metro is the toast of the design world right now. Writers are going on about the new Microsoft, now with design.
Good lord. I mean...... the first couple of pages of those Google hits are, variously, MS sites, stuff about apps designed for Windows 8 and sort of random blog stuff to the effect of "I like Metro." There's literally nothing to support the contention that Metro is being "aped left, right and center." Letterpress does have a certain Metro-ish feel, it is, you'll note, one app.

Now given it's the look of Windows 8, and Windows is a fairly ubiquitous cultural phenomena, I'm not surprised that there may be a certain amount of "boxes of primary color" design work going on. That is also most certainly a fad for things like ad layout (which is always looking to capitalize on whatever transient but passingly familiar notions of cool might be ambient, but is just as quick to move on to the next thing). If anything, I would guess the unpopularity of Windows 8 and Windows Phones would lead to designers eschewing Metro-ish stuff, to avoid being associated with those failures.

Quote:
Yeah, I meant the whole iPod – hardware and software together – was to MP3 players what Metro is to chrome-heavy design today: a new way of thinking that is so obviously superior that it will inevitably influence the future.

The above doesn’t mean I think Windows Phone 8 is perfect. Obviously it’s far from perfect. Apple will almost certainly do a better job (not least by preventing network operators from adding bloatware). But the Metro design is like a glass of ice-water in hell.
So is it the obvious visual cues that are getting copied left, right and center or the actual workings of Windows 8? The former is pretty trivial (colored boxes in closely spaced grids, large sans-serif type), but it's the latter that has actually been relatively poorly received, both in market share and critical response (or, as you may prefer, "Windows 8 disaster" yields 55 million hits).

And acting as if it's already been established that whatever Apple may do is some variant, possibly even an improvement, on a Metro theme is just daft. Metro didn't spring clean, spare and modern on an unwitting design world. It sprung a kind of eccentric, form over function version of same. What distinguishes Metro, far more than big colored panels, is the idea of an infinite contiguous surface that the screen is a window onto, oversized, clipped typography acting as a cue towards same, non-intuitive icons combined with gestures, live panels that attempt to cram a bunch of continuously updating information into illegible spaces, and "semantic zooming", with variable results.

I don't see any of that taking the world by storm. I get that you really, really dig Metro, but confirmation bias does a revolution make . And the fact that the primary standard bearer, Windows 8, the new iteration of the overwhelmingly dominant desktop OS on the planet, has been met with indifference bordering on hostility ought to at least give you pause in your assumptions of popularity and influence. And mobile? Really? Irrelevant Windows Phone is showing everybody the future, and is the toast of the town? So much so that Apple is hustling to do their version? As I say, Good Lord.

None of that means that there might not be a general trend towards "flatness" in UI design, but that's just a trend like any other. Less drop shadow and shading and gradients. That's pretty much it, and outside of "the new spring colors" not all that interesting. I mean, it's fine and all but by no means a revolution. What remains to be seen is how one manages functionality, and if there is a useful analog for any of this in how the software presents options and allows you to do tasks. I'll be interested in what Ive has up his sleeve, although as I've said I'm not sure what his design chops can bring to the table on that count. What I do know, however, is that the Metro thing of giant sliding panels is not going to be it.

That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated

Last edited by addabox : 2013-05-03 at 12:25.
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