
Why iOS 7 is making some users sick - jarofgreen
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/27/ios-7-motion-sickness-nausea
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eknkc
I'm honestly curious about this, not trolling or something;

How can a person survive the daily life if a couple of animations on a screen
makes them sick? What I mean is, if the zoom effect makes someone dizzy I'd
expect them to be dizzy around moving cars, approaching trains or watching
sports, playing games etc..

But it seems that this is common enough. Is it the bright small screen itself
causing such an issue? You know like some people getting nauseous when they
read in a car. Or is it just that 3D effects?

~~~
cpks
I used to get car sick as a kid. I haven't felt queasy from motion in over a
decade. IOS 7 was the first thing that brought that feeling back. I think the
problem isn't so much with motion as it is with the unnatural motions. You
move the tablet, and the background only shifts a moment later. You rotate the
tablet, and the rotation of the screen isn't smooth but jerky. IOS is very
tactile. In IOS 6, I felt like I was moving things around. In IOS 7, the lag
and jerkiness make it feel somehow wrong.

Either way, I suspect Apple will either want to release an update which gets
rid of the lagginess and jerkiness, allow the user to disable animations, or
face an ADA class-action lawsuit.

If they do plan to fix this, I wish they'd go against convention, and pre-
announce it. I need to know whether I should replace the iPad with a Nexus 10
(something I've been considering regardless; I have a Nexus 4, which is
wonderful; but hasn't been worth the $$$).

Somehow, the Surface, which has much the same feel as the IOS 7 in terms of
being a little bit slow, laggy, and occasionally stalling out, doesn't suffer
this fate.

(I have an iPad 3; and iPad 4 is twice as fast, so perhaps it doesn't suffer
from this problem).

~~~
ForrestN
Something's wrong with your setup I think. I have an iPad mini with much less
power than an iPad 3 and there is never any lag to speak of with the ios7
animations. Parallax works exactly as it would in real physics to my eyes.
Maybe take it in to the apple store and say it's performing slower than it
should?

~~~
lbradstreet
The iPad 3 is pushing 4x the number of pixels as the iPad mini as it's retina.
I'm not surprised by this at all.

~~~
ForrestN
Makes sense! Didn't think of that.

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code_duck
I find all of these visual effects to be disorienting... And superfluous at
best. I was closing my eyes when switching apps for the first few days also.
I'm disappointed Apple provided no way to disable the zoom animation - just
like I would on a desktop OS, the first thing I tried to do was disable that
option. The parallax scrolling of the icons over the background when the phone
is titled on the home screen is bizarre. I'm not sure what Apple intends
there.

~~~
theguycalledtom
Yes, I felt a bit ill during the first day but I have since got used to it.
However, I think it's mainly because I've subconsciously learnt to not pay
attention during the animations.

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devx
I don't have that problem myself, but just watching the videos of iOS7 made me
think I'd be very frustrated to see all those 1 second animations long
everytime I do something. I don't think I could handle seeing those animations
hundreds of times every day, and for a couple of years of owning the device.

I want my phone to do stuff fast, especially if it has a benchmark-breaking
chip inside. What's the point of having such a fast chip, if you can't _feel_
it's fast in everyday use?

Whoever is in charge of the design of iOS7 clearly had no coherent vision
about what iOS should do, like Scott Forestall (and Steve Jobs) did. The UI is
all over the place, and it seems filled with random design gimmicks of the
2005-era (translucency, parallax, zooming in and out, very bright colors, etc)
to make it "feel cool" or whatever. Reminds me of Vista and all of those crazy
Linux environments.

I want my OS to help me do stuff fast, and productively, not show me a circus
on the screen, with everything I do.

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nwh
Settings.app > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion

Doesn't remove all the whsihy in and out of Springboard.app ones though, so
you'll have to wait for a jailbreak to be completely animation-free.

~~~
return0
Can't find the setting on iphone 4 running 7.0.2

~~~
jeffwass
How do you find overall ios7 performance on the iPhone 4? I have a 4 but am
reluctant to upgrade to ios7, fearing it may be too slow on the hardware.

~~~
chj
My two cents: don't do it. Sickly slow.

~~~
Mikeb85
Is this iOS 4 on the 3G all over? My wife refuses to ever update iOS because
she saw what happened to my 3G (it became so slow it was barely usable)...

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longzheng
Normally I am usually very susceptible to motion sickness from FPS games,
reading in cars/trains and theme park rides which can all easily make me feel
like throwing up, but I've not had effects of any degree from using iOS 7
since the very first betas.

~~~
coldcode
I often have trouble watching many FPS games much less playing them. Been
using iOS7 since the early betas and I never even considered any of this an
issue, nor did any of my coworkers many of whom upgraded early as well. The
parallax view is a pretty pointless trick. I wonder how much of this is real
and how much is suggested by all the articles? It's hard to imagine that a
real problem wouldn't have been seen by people at Apple and all the developers
who like me have used it for months. It's strange to think a small device's
virtual motion could cause that much reaction.

~~~
to3m
Perhaps these people are looking at it wrong?

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Synaesthesia
The primary culprit is the app zooming effect, which can be rather
disconcerting for users. Hopefully Apple will supply an update allowing one to
toggle that particular animation off.

I remember getting severe motion sickness the first time I ever saw Doom being
played, and again with Quake, although those passed with time. It's very
unpleasant!

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Stay as far away from the Oculus Rift as you can, then...

~~~
Synaesthesia
Oh yeah, I got over that nausea very quickly. I do wanna check out the Oculus!

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acqq
I feel some of the symptoms myself! Not as strong as some descriptions in the
article, but definitely I do.

I have an older iPhone with iOS 7, so I don't see the parallax, but as I
wanted to talk about the parallax effect with somebody, I've searched for
video with the parallax effect on YouTube -- and just watching _the video_
made me feel slightly sick. Maybe holding the phone in the hand and seeing the
parallax as the response of my own motions wouldn't produce the same effect
but that video did. "OK it moves, now more under it should be visible, ah it's
not" \-- it hit some kind of an "uncanny" by me.

Second, I have big problems with automatic sliding of the lower tabbar and
upper urlbar in and out in Safari. For example I keep the finger on the text,
wanting to scroll, but I read the top part of the page -- now the movement
that should enable me to see more of what I'm looking at effectively causes
the sliding in the opposite direction exactly obscuring what I want to see. So
this effect where I do something in order to see more but the "automatic
sliding" kicks in and "helpfully" obscures exactly what I'm trying to see also
produces a strange feeling. I can't call it dizziness but certainly a
conflicting one.

Safari in iOS 6 never had such effects -- "obscuring" _against_ the actions of
the user never happened.

Otherwise I don't have problems with iOS 7 animations, except that general
impression that they take "too long," after using iOS 6. But maybe it's only
on the older phones so.

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crazygringo
I find it rather bizarre, that for all the talk of flat design, simplifying,
getting the interface out of the way, etc. in iOS 7 -- they _upped_ both the
"in-your-face"-ness and the duration of the animations. The effects don't make
me sick or anything, but the zooming in and out of apps and folders seems just
as superfluous and distracting as leather stitching ever was.

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LinaLauneBaer
The parallax and blur effects can be turned off in the preferences (enabling
high contrast disables the blur effect for example). If memory serves
correctly both settings can be found in the accessibility tab.

~~~
jarofgreen
Article says:

"The lack of a solution is the bigger problem. Apple provides a "Reduce
Motion" option within the iOS 7 Settings app, but it is poorly labelled; it
merely disables the parallax effect, but doesn't stop zooming or sliding.
Apple did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Which for now,
leaves affected people on their own."

(I haven't got iOS7 so can't check)

~~~
nwh
That's right, just the parallax effects are gone. The main annoying ones that
take a full second or so are the ones in the unlock screen, and they can't be
disabled.

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skc
I just get the feeling that someone at Apple probably should have spoken up
but didn't. Who's going to tell Jony Ive that his UX might be causing motion
sickness.

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gurkendoktor
I think that if nobody had spoken up, the "Reduce Motion" option wouldn't even
exist (or bold text, for that matter).

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officemonkey
I can't wait for presbyopia to hit Jony Ive. The clock on the lock screen was
nearly unreadable without my glasses until I found the bold text setting.

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joe5150
I've already toggled "Reduce Motion" on, not because the movement was making
me ill, but just because I thought the effect looked somehow bad. The parallax
effect on the homescreen is nice enough, but far too subtle to justify having
to also look at the dumb wiggling modals that it produces. I'd be interested
in hearing if other people find the effect genuinely pleasant to look at.

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chilldream
> ...with icons apparently floating above subtly animating wallpaper

Now I'm wondering if I have a vision problem I didn't previously know about.
I've been unimpressed with the upgrade myself, and one of my biggest
complaints is that everything looks so flat that I have a hard time telling
text and icons from the background.

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agumonkey
I wish I could see it live, on videos I find it cool and unsickening. It
reminds me of holograms (probably mathematically similar), or the eye focus
over interference patterns trick in physics book which let you see depth on a
flat surface, again very similar to iOS7 parallax.

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sixQuarks
These people are going to have a really hard time with Oculus Rift. Sucks to
be them.

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millerm
I, for one, do not believe these complaints at all. But, I cannot speak for
others. I just don't feel that the field is large enough, and the exposure is
long enough, to actually disorientate or to confuse one's equilibrium.

