
Pushing iOS - TechnoFou
http://jaymachalani.com/blog/2014/5/29/pushing-ios
======
saturdaysaint
Nice mock-ups, but I disagree with most of the premises here. As far as I can
tell, iOS doesn't have much problem with people leaving due to some quibble
with the UI's supposed lack of sophistication. I'm sure there are some
exceptions among HN readers, but among the very few people in my circles on
Android, all cite screen size as their main reason. Japan, a country that's
been at the cutting edge of the mobile market for decades, is flocking to the
iPhone now that it's available on the big carriers - not what you'd expect if
there was widespread perception of iOS as "dumbed down".

The only thing I definitively agree with is that I hope Apple supports
multiple profiles for iPad. As someone that uses both Android and iOS pretty
regularly, I don't think widgets add much that the Notification shade and
Action Center don't handle capably. I mostly hope that iOS 8 is invisible -
add some APIs for Siri and hooks into home automation, improve performance.

~~~
petercooper
_all cite screen size as their main reason._

Just one data point, but it was "keyboard" by far for me. The iOS keyboard is
horrible and very difficult to customize so I took a risk and switched at my
last update (and FWIW, I'm finding Android streets ahead in terms of
functionality). Digging the larger screen size is something that came later
for me but would definitely be another reason not to go back for me now.

~~~
nicholassmith
People leaving for keyboard reasons are generally, and I hate the term, 'power
users'. For 90% of the iOS customer base the keyboard works perfectly well,
I'm not the biggest lover of it but I think it's reasonably solid for what it
is and what it does.

~~~
jblow
I don't think this is necessarily true. Yes, people leaving for keyboard-
feature reasons are power users. But there are other keyboard reasons.

For example, iOS7 totally broke the keyboard so that fast touch-typists just
can't type on it any more. This doesn't matter on something small like a
phone, but on an iPad it is super-frustrating. Apple fixed it somewhat in
recent updates but it's still broken in a few basic ways, all having to do
with the fact that the person who programmed the new keyboard doesn't know how
typing works.

It is confusing enough that a non-power-user probably doesn't have a clear
idea why typing sucks now, they just know that letters don't come out with the
right capitals any more, sometimes extra spaces show up, and damn that shift
key is confusing. etc. It is not so much "Android is better" as it is "iOS is
not a nice experience any more".

There are similar things to do with web browsing. Web browsing is supposed to
be one of the few things these devices specialize in, but on my iPad Air it is
terrible. If I go to a web site with images on it and scroll down, most of the
images don't load for a _LONG_ time, leaving me with mainly a blank page. When
iOS7 came out the browser crashed _all_ the damn time. Now that is mostly
fixed but it still crashes sometimes.

Meanwhile there are all these timing-based gestures that are thrown off by
browser performance problems, leading to bad user experiences. For example, I
want to scroll down a page, so I press on the screen, drag, and release. Well
oops, some piece of JavaScript ran right then or something, causing the
browser's timing to get confused (maybe it counts frames and only a couple of
frames went by), so instead of a drag it interprets this as a tap, which for
some reason causes me to select some garbage on the page that I don't care
about. Well now I am in select mode and things get only more confusing from
there (especially if more performance hitches are happening). This happens all
the time.

When you can't even scroll down a web page reliably, and yet that is one of
the main use cases you are selling your product for, you can't claim it is a
luxury product. You aren't delivering a luxury experience so you can't charge
a premium.

Apple has gotten away with this in the past, in similar situations, though,
because of newness and shininess. As Marc Andreesen pointed out recently, for
the first few years you could barely even make a call on an iPhone, and when
you did it was super-frustrating. But still it caught on. I think this is just
because it was so new and exciting and there weren't real competitors yet.
Once the bloom is off that rose, in order to be perceived as a premium brand,
you have to actually deliver quality. But Apple is not delivering quality with
the OS, they are just delivering some kind of skin-deep attempt of an
appearance of quality.

I consider iOS7 to be a huge misstep and a giant missed opportunity, much
bigger even than Siri or Maps. I am not sure if fixing iOS7 would solve all
Apple's problems, but it is where I would start.

 _However_ , I don't think the thesis of this article -- lack of UI features
-- would be my first step. Because I don't agree with the article that iOS 7
is simple. In reality it's a mess, it just tries to appear simple. So the
first step is making it really, actually simple, and make it deliver a solid,
quality experience. Then you can think about adding UI features, which I would
claim people don't care about as much.

~~~
nicholassmith
This is pretty heavily anecdotal but my parents (late 50s) haven't had any
issues with the iOS 7 keyboard. As they say, it Just Works. I think it's
heavily dependent on user expectations.

------
coldtea
> _Seriously, for a device so thin in features and actual stuff to do,
> performance is disappointing._

Really? Have you checked well written apps and what they can do?

> _The Google Chrome browser scrolling is horrific at times with a HUGE
> delay._

How is that an iOS's "performance problem"? Use Safari. It's not like iOS
doesn't offer the best scrolling experience compared to Android/Chrome.

~~~
renata
It's iOS' performance problem because Chrome is forced to use a UIWebView
instead of the Nitro engine:
[https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/ios/overview](https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/ios/overview).

~~~
SoftwareMaven
It would be wonderful if Apple virtualized the UIWebView process so it could
safely use nitro. Not only would it help Chrome (not that I bet Apple cares
:), but also a huge number of applications. And, if apps were fully
virtualized, it could possibly open up new, interesting possibilities that
have been heretofore deemed unsafe.

~~~
joshschreuder
It does indeed help a large number of apps (though more and more are going
full native since the Facebook app drama).

Jailbreakers have had this for a while now with Nitrous, a tweak which unlocks
the Nitro engine to all apps.

------
mhenr18
This idea is cool, except for the gesture. There needs to be a way to summon a
block with one finger so that one-handed use is still possible.

I'm assuming that the drive to stay as close to the current experience as
possible influenced that - there's currently no "free" one-finger
gesture/action on the home screen. I don't know how to pull it off, but
needing to use two hands seems like it kills off the notion of doing things
quickly.

edit: Although it's worth pointing out that while it's a cool party trick,
it's not something I'd use day-to-day. Changing the Control Centre to let me
keep applets open within it for things like 1Password or composing a message?
_That_ would get used every day.

~~~
andrewfong
+1 for control center applets. Android apps often do this by overloading the
notifications pull down, but I always found this annoying since it got in the
way of the actual notifications. A swipe left on the notifications tab or an
extension of the control center for a "quick access" area would be great.

------
Geee
I have yet to see a situation where widgets are actually useful.

~~~
chris_overseas
I find them useful. Here's how:

\- Weather info. Before heading out for the day I can see instantly if I might
need a jacket or umbrella later.

\- Tube status. I can see at a glance if there are any problems on any
underground lines. If there are, I can click on the problem line to get more
detailed information with a single touch.

\- Calendar. Shows me my schedule for the day.

\- Music. Control playback without having to launch an app.

I also have widgets I tend to only use when I'm travelling, showing currency
and timezone information.

~~~
sebii
Weather and Calender you can check from notification center and Music from
control center. It's just a swipe down or a swipe up. If there are any
problems on the subway, you get a push notification. You find all your
notification in notification center, also your last messages and so on.

~~~
chris_overseas
Sure, and the lockscreen is another place to put information like this.

> It's just a swipe down or a swipe up.

That's why I prefer a widget (or lockscreen), there's no swiping required at
all. As for getting push notifications for the subway... No thanks, I don't
want a notification every time some subway line is running a little slow. I
only want notifications for events I care about, with few or no false-
positives.

~~~
bob_loblaw
To have those push notifications work properly, you would need something like
Google Now. You don't want notifications for the nearest tube station, you
only want those for the stations you use on a regular basis. So Apple would
have to know your daily routine for this to work properly. Apple is not keen
on tracking copious amounts of its users data, so they may be opposed to this
from the beginning. Then they have to have a web service to properly handle
all of this. Poor web services is the biggest flaw of the Apple ecosystem.

------
pseudometa
This guy needs a windows phone, can we get him a windows phone?

~~~
ManFromUranus
I agree, his whole iOS blocks, is simply windows live tiles.

~~~
TechnoFou
Live Tiles doesn't have interaction with them, and they're on a diffrrent
ecosystem. This is the equivalent of "You want a notification on iOS? Get an
Android"

------
th0br0
Couldn't all that he wants be provided by implementing a "native" Apple UI/UX
on top of Android? It feels like all his points have been solved by Android
for quite some time.

Still, I like this block concept... it's a good compromise between widgets &
actually starting the app.

~~~
chris_overseas
Yes, a custom Android launcher would be able to implement this (though it
might be a little tricky to figure out how to make the transition between app
icon and widget since some apps don't have widgets, some have multiple
widgets).

Given the way the Android community has picked up on these sorts of things in
the past, I wouldn't be too surprised if someone creates a launcher that
implements this relatively soon.

~~~
rtcoms
Try Action Launcher for android
([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.actionlaun...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.actionlauncher.playstore))

Implementation here is , when you swipe up on an app icon it opens the widget
related to that app

------
bluthru
Doesn't the notification center and control center basically take care of
this? Notification center could be a lot better, but requiring a two-finger
pinch is a non-starter.

Also, what's with this made-up title?

>UX/UI & Branding Architect

You're a designer.

~~~
TechnoFou
No offence, but a designer posts a drawing on Dribble. A UX Architect,
explains every step in the process and how and why it works that way.
Notification Center gives you information that happened, but not that you
might need and the two finger pinch is to limit the number of buttons required
for the action. It is also a natural action to make something bigger to see
more, like a picture. The beauty with this concept, is that if you don't like
it, you don't have to use it, everybody's happy!

------
nicolasd
Nicely done, I am impressed.

Because everyone is mentioning that's like Android's Widget-Concept, and
Android already solved this - that's not the case in my opinion. I think it's
too complex for users to know what a "widget" excatly is. This is more the
concept of: Show me a little bit more than the app-icon - and that's it. Imho
the user would understand the concept immediately and don't have to know what
actually a "widget" is, or how to remove it.

~~~
mahouse
To be honest, it's exactly the same as Windows Phone tiles, if you haven't
tried it already.

~~~
potatolicious
I could be wrong, but I thought WinPhone tiles aren't interactive? Tapping on
them only leads to the application, they are otherwise read-only.

The designer here is suggesting that the tile contain specific interactive
elements (quick reply, play/pause, next song, etc).

------
Greenisus
That's a clever approach to widget-izing apps, but I suspect that using the
pinch gesture on such a small touch target could be problematic.

In the iOS Human Interface Guidelines, Apple suggests that your touch targets
have a minimum size of 44x44 points.
([https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userex...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/LayoutandAppearance.html))

If you look at the icon size list at
[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userex...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/IconMatrix.html),
you'll see that iPhone 5 icons are only 60x60 points (divide the pixel sizes
by two to get the point size). I imagine that 60x60 is simply too small for a
two finger gesture to work well.

Maybe this would work better with a one finger touch and drag gesture where
the drag direction dictates how the icon will grow into a widget (but with
icons on the top and bottom rows only able to grow in one direction). It would
need to be a quick gesture, though, since tap and hold triggers that app
reorganization mode of Springboard.

~~~
dmur
A well-articulated point, but I disagree with ruling out the concept on this
basis. Affordances could be made to make this sort of concept more usable. For
example, the pinch could work when the user is approximately within the icon
dimensions (e.g. only one finger is actually on the icon, the other is close
to it) rather than the "strict" implementation requiring both fingers to be
within the icon's dimensions.

~~~
Greenisus
Good point, but I'd worry about overlap, since you'd likely be touching two
icons at once with an approximate touch. I suppose you could take the center
point between the two touches and expand on whichever icon that lands on (with
boundaries of course; it would be strange if you pinched the edges of the
screen and it expanded an icon in the center).

Another thing that's bothering me about it being a two finger gesture is that
the entire point of this feature idea is to be able to see things quickly at a
glance. I would imagine, then, that in these scenarios most people would be
holding their iPhones with one hand and only touching the screen with one
thumb. This wouldn't be such a big deal on iPad, but I think it would be on
iPhone. That makes me feel more strongly that some kind of one finger gesture
may be a better way to do this.

Other people in this thread have pointed out some good points too about
discoverability: which apps support the feature? How would the API be designed
in a way that's performance and power efficient?

This is definitely fun stuff to think about :)

~~~
geon
> I would imagine, then, that in these scenarios most people would be holding
> their iPhones with one hand and only touching the screen with one thumb.

I don't think it was meant to be used frequently. More comparable to press-
and-hold to enter the app removal/dragging state.

------
mortenjorck
Good process leading to this, even if I disagree with some of the conclusions.
It's nice to see speculative designers actually considering (and then
documenting) the environment their concepts would have to work and compete in,
rather than just pushing out a cool-looking set of Dribbble mockups with no
context.

I don't think Apple is going to add functionality to the home screen. It's
always done one thing, and I imagine UX leads at Apple would probably consider
anything else to be overloading its scope.

That said, there is absolutely a good use case for widgets on iOS. The old iOS
5-6 weather widget was great, and the text-adventure version they replaced it
with in iOS 7 is an inferior experience. Notification Center is almost
certainly the best place for widgets: The iOS 7 calendar widget is a great
example of the potential, and I really hope they finally open up the NC widget
APIs in iOS 8.

~~~
Smudge
I can't stand the notification center. Even in its current form it always
seems overcrowded with stuff I don't care about. Opening up the API for any
app to eat up even more real estate would, in my opinion, be extremely
misguided. If anything it needs to be dumbed down even further.

There are two separate concerns here:

1\. Notifications. Telling me that things have happened, when they happen. The
notification center could (nay, should) excel at this, but currently it's only
doing _okay_. I wish I didn't have to keep micromanaging my preferences to
prevent apps from spamming me with useless stuff, but at least it works.

2\. Persistent info. Stocks, weather, headlines, deadlines, etc. I don't want
this stuff in the notification center. It gets in the way of everything coming
at me from concern #1. I want to be able to find this elsewhere, without
having to dig down into each app. And I definitely don't want apps trying to
tell me persistent info in the form of a notification. I don't need to be
notified that it's sunny out, or that something interesting (but not directly
related to me, or actionable on my part) happened inside of one of my apps.
But having to drill down into each individual app for this info is also a
pain.

This is where I love Microsoft's live tiles. The ability to peek inside of an
app from the homescreen is awesome (way better than having to add separate
widgets, a la Android, each with their own design patterns and set of
controls). I'd use Windows Phone for this reason if it had the same app
ecosystem as iOS, but of course I wouldn't expect it to. Currently my primary
device is running Android, which, for me, is a nice trade-off between app
availability and base OS experience. But if iOS were to add that ability to
"peek" into any existing app to see what's happening, I'd definitely consider
switching back.

------
nicholassmith
Some weird comments in there, but I do like the blocks concept, but removing
the text for just app icons isn't going to be really helpful if an app updates
and changes the icon and the user doesn't know where the search pull down is.

~~~
md2be
Why not just have a scroll-over function?

~~~
nicholassmith
To reveal the text? I'm not sure how workable that is, as the tap and hold is
for movement and would show text below your finger anyway.

------
jimmcslim
I love the general concept and agree that iOS is sorely in need of more
customisation, and that Windows Phone probably has the right balance already.

"But, if you want more information about an app, you can simply pinch the app
icon bigger and it will now become an iOS Block."

I physically tried this and it just feels awkward. The 'pinch to zoom out
gesture' on iOS (e.g. maps, photos) generally has your fingertips about 1-2cm
apart in my experience. To pinch an app icon seems quite clumsy and difficult
for my medium size fingers... if I had big beefy sausage fingers I can imagine
it would be quite a challenge!

~~~
criswell
You wouldn't need to touch the icons directly. I imagine it would pick up the
icon in the middle of a spread or pinch gesture as long as the touches started
within like N pixels (based on the size of the app/icon) of each other.

I really think it's a really great idea.

------
GyoFar
The production of this concept is nicely done, but I don't think the concept
is particularly good or original at all. As someone has already mentioned,
Action Launcher [1] on Android has a very similar feature. You can access
widgets with the flick of a finger, not by pinching, which makes them a lot
easier to access.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.actionlaun...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.actionlauncher.playstore)

------
madoublet
For those not familiar with WP8, this is exactly how Windows Phone tiles work
with a few minor interaction details. It does introduce a cool peek concept
not available in tiles.

------
blt
Tighten up your writing style son. Extremely flabby.

------
cones688
BlackBerry 10 has had this for the last year or two, but who cares right?

[http://developer.blackberry.com/design/bb10/active_frames.ht...](http://developer.blackberry.com/design/bb10/active_frames.html)

~~~
md2be
So long as the author wasn't aware of this, what difference does it make"?

------
burgreblast
As users become more proficient with interfaces, it's nice to see
functionality evolve from a simple "off | on" to a gradient between "less and
more".

------
pavlov
So these proposed blocks are non-overlapping app windows, neatly tiled within
the icon grid.

Isn't that basically what Xerox Star did in 1981?
[http://www.digibarn.com/collections/screenshots/xerox-
star-8...](http://www.digibarn.com/collections/screenshots/xerox-
star-8010/xerox-star-8010-01.jpg)

Or -- the horror -- MS Windows 1.0 in 1985:
[http://fulupik.chez.com/perso4/Images/infor_win101tile2.gif](http://fulupik.chez.com/perso4/Images/infor_win101tile2.gif)

------
calewis
I stopped reading after the venn diagram showed that the windows phone was
good for experience and customisation, are you joking?

------
miralabs
Android widgets..unless I'm missing something here.

~~~
czr80
They're widgets without:

\- the need to install something explicitly (separate from the app)

\- the need to name them "widgets" (to the user they're just a fancier icon),
which reduces the apparent complexity to the user

\- they are completely invisible unless invoked by the user, thus preserving
the simplicity iOS

\- they have a natural and fixed size that helps preserve the visual aesthetic
of the grid layout, without special efforts by the user

...and probably more - that's just off the top of my head.

I don't know if they're a good idea, by the way. But it's not good to just
dismiss them as "android widgets".

~~~
Touche
They are Android widgets, but less discoverable. Actually they are not
discoverable _at all_. I don't see how this preserves "iOS simplicity" to
introduce a feature that is not simple and can only be known by word of mouth.

~~~
spader725
I would argue that iOS users also don't know that they can double tap the
iphone home button twice to pull up the ability to kill an app without someone
telling them that functionality exist or they accidentally find out. This
widget concept would be no different.

------
ulfw
Microsoft called. They want their Live Tiles back.

------
lasermike026
Isn't WWDC next week?

