Good reading on iOS 7
So, it’s been a week since Apple announced iOS 7. I’ve written a bit about it and I’ll end up writing more. I’ve got a few things I’m working on right now.
But there’s already been some smart chat about it, and a lot of super dumb stuff. I won’t link to the dumb stuff here but I thought I’d round up some things that are actually intelligent.
iOS 7: Thoughts and Questions by Viticci
iOS 7 is not about the icons, labels as buttons, translucency, questionable Lock screen gestures, or a new Spotlight as design choices taken individually – it’s about a single, precise idea: to make iOS simpler and more enjoyable, but at the same time more useful.
Fertile Ground by Marco Arment
Apple has set fire to iOS. Everything’s in flux. Those with the least to lose have the most to gain, because this fall, hundreds of millions of people will start demanding apps for a platform with thousands of old, stale players and not many new, nimble alternatives.
Press coverage is disproportionally focusing on the Home screen (about which more in a moment), but the reality of day to day usage is that you’ll spend time in apps. Where there were previously gloomy cubbyholes and low ceilings, there are now floor-to-ceiling windows, skylights, and clean surfaces.
‘This Is Our Signature’: iOS 7 by John Gruber
There is a deep intellectual rigor to the design of iOS 7, and it’s hard not to see it as being profoundly informed by Ive’s background in hardware. In hardware, design is limited by physics: weight, density, size, connections, seams. Software doesn’t face those design limits. The old design of iOS 6 took advantage of that lack of limits, to its detriment.
iOS 7 is the most skeuomorphic, most liberating version ever by Rene Ritchie
iOS is now an object inside and out, one that exists to drive focus to the content, media or app, or both, but still and always delight to the user. It’s just taken it all to a much more visceral level. It’s scary, but it’s the future.
Apple has kept all the right things, and built a new experience celebrating the values behind them. iOS 7 is truly the sum of its parts. On their own, many of these new elements — parallax, translucency, animations, motion — might seem out of place, even gimmicky. Together, they put forth a clear vision, one that’s reinforced by one of the best marketing videos I think Apple has ever made.
Don’t worry about iOS 7 by Jim Dalrymple
There are a few things you need to remember about iOS 7. First, it’s nowhere near finished in terms of design or functionality. Apple engineers stopped adding or changing the operating system before WWDC so they had a stable build to show during the keynote. It’s not done.
Apple’s confidence by Jim Dalrymple
One thing that became very clear to me early on in today’s keynote is that Apple was having fun again. They were really enjoying themselves.
Oh and if you’re interested, here’s a couple of things I wrote last week about it:
- iOS 7 and the evolution of the information appliance
- Why does the design of iOS 7 look so different?
- Why developers need Apple to add ‘video screenshots’ to the iOS 7 App Store