
Jony Ive’s new look for iOS 7: black, white, and flat all over - uladzislau
http://9to5mac.com/2013/05/24/jony-ives-new-look-for-ios-7-black-white-and-flat-all-over/
======
cfqycwz
As much as I (And, I'm sure, many here) loathe the recent overuse of textural
design in Mac- and iOS, I think it's also important to note that similarly
dreadful results can be achieved through equally slavish devotion to flat
design. The most important thing is _functional_ design--design that conveys
its purpose in the most concise and clear way possible. Flat isn't important,
texture isn't important--what's important is clear communication of purpose.

I think Ive's background as an industrial designer prepares him well to do
that, as the design of his products testifies. But this article makes the
rumored redesign of iOS sound like change for the sake of change--a dogmatic
revolution against textural design instead of a reasoned reconsideration of
Apple's recent design principles. If that is the case, I think Apple will meet
some bad press from angry customers, much the same way Facebook does whenever
they do one of their redesigns.

~~~
atirip
"I think Ive's background as an industrial designer prepares him well to do
that, as the design of his products testifies"

Yeah. My MBP is grey, dull, solid brick of aluminium. It is not fun to use
like older pre unibody ones. It is cold, bland, unfriendly solid block of
greyness. I do not get layd using this, none of my friends say wow. How do you
wow a brick of aluminium. No details. Nothing. And not fun, not fun at all. Is
it wrong to desire nice, fun tools?

~~~
mrbrowning
Eh, it's a natural progression given their design goals -- I think the central
principle behind Apple's design, one even more basic than their idolization of
Dieter Rams, is to capitalize on a trope you see in a lot of science fiction:
technology that is so advanced as to defy compartmentalization, as if the
driver of their functionality is external to the universe itself. Thus the
black slate design, the aluminum unibody, the elimination of removable
batteries, the thinness obsession they have with the MacBook Air and the iMac.
This works especially well for them because technology isn't actually at that
stage, so creating the illusion this way really does make their stuff look
more _advanced_ (note how that's far and away the most prevalent word in their
ad copy, by the way) than competing products to your average consumer.

------
DanBC
During my Windows 2000 days (up until about 2005) I really wanted a monochrome
and flat interface. I tried really hard to get black and white flat icons, and
to turn the interface as monochrome as possible.

I suck at design, so my attempts were hideous. I was so bad at design that it
was very obvious that my scheme was totally broken.

People trying flat UIs today are good at design. But the flat UI paradigm
hasn't had all the UI testing that other UIs have had. I really hope there are
feedback things built in, so that companies can learn from users about what is
good and what needs more work.

It's very easy to look at an almost good design and not spot the stuff that'll
trip up users. And this stuff rolled out by Apple and MS and Google will
inspire other designers. Icons and themes and schemes etc will be heavily
influenced by what those companies are doing. So I hope we're not taking a
step back.

~~~
Shivetya
the article and your comments bring back memories of my model 50Z PS/2 which I
had attached to the black/white monitor, think it was VGA

------
jere
Ugh, the flat vs skeuomorphic debate seems like a false dichotomy. I hate flat
design. Isn't there a middle ground? If you think this looks great, more power
to you, but I'll stay far away: <http://uxmag.com/uploads/clum-flat-
design/UX-11.png>

I like gradients. I like borders. I like physical metaphors. The tabs in
Google Chrome look really great because of all three. I understand moving away
from heavy skeumorphic design. But I don't get jumping to flat design. Why
copy the person with 6% market share?

~~~
mieses
Speaking of hate and like, I hate that the popularization of the word
"skeumorphism" gives engineers a false sense of confidence and understanding
when discussing design. The designers and writers that use this word make
their living from the tech industry so they understandably pander to this
engineering culture.

On the other hand, many designers read HN so they can talk nonsense about
engineering topics. It goes both ways.

~~~
jere
Really? I don't doubt there are plenty of bad desigers on HN (myself
included), but skeuomorphism is a useful word that describes a real and easily
defined phenomenon.

------
mikeash
Wow, yet _another_ speculative article about iOS 7's UI overhaul with _no
images whatsoever_. How uninformative.

I'm glad we only have to endure this silliness another couple of weeks.

------
kylec
"Black, white, and flat" makes me think it'll look something like this:

<http://jomsurf.com/an-iphone-with-the-1986-mac-os/>

~~~
eddieroger
I have never wished iOS could be skinned more than when I saw this the first
time. I think it'd be so cool to walk around with System era Mac OS on my
iPhone. Of course, it will never be that pixelated, but I love the retro feel
and familiarity of something long gone.

~~~
micampe
Agreed. You can have a small glimpse of that with this app I linked in my
other (surprisingly quickly shot down) comment:
[http://appadvice.com/appnn/2013/04/feeling-nostalgic-
about-t...](http://appadvice.com/appnn/2013/04/feeling-nostalgic-about-the-
classic-mac-os-download-classic-note-for-ios)

------
adventured
If Apple isn't very careful, iOS is going to come away from this looking like
a freak circus of poorly integrated design. They could get everything right
with the hardware, but if they make the software even the slightest bit
undesirable, it'll drill iPhone 5S sales.

I'm not sure this is a case of if it ain't broke don't fix it, but when you're
selling a hundred billion dollars worth of one phone model, it certainly
warrants caution. One bad generation of phones from Apple and the chain
reaction could easily be apocalyptic (they have no moat protection, unlike
Microsoft with Vista; the smart phone market is moving at warp speed; Android
is an inch away from a global monopoly already; Apple's brand is known for
very cool design, lose that and sales will plunge, no matter how much cash is
in the bank).

~~~
general_failure
calm down. they know what they are doing.

~~~
hnriot
Maps

~~~
mikeash
The design of Maps is great. It fails in other areas.

~~~
danenania
"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it
works."

~~~
jvzr
It "works" well, albeit the data it is working with is flawed (depending on
where you live).

~~~
mikeash
Right, functionality is just fine, it's the underlying data that's lacking. If
one is going to include map data as part of "design", then it seems that
there's nothing that "design" doesn't cover, at which point it becomes a
meaningless word.

~~~
danenania
Design covers the full experience of a product. If the data isn't up to snuff
then it's poor design to rely on that data for key functionality.

~~~
mikeash
Is there anything that isn't "design", then? Does it then mean anything?

~~~
emp_zealoth
Not really. But I'd say that it has been ripped off any semblance of sanity by
Apple and such. I came to know it's meaning as made cleverly to work just as
needed/expected, not "OH SHINY, but a bit lacking in usability here and there,
still, SHINY"

------
basseq
Corinthian leather and green felt are one thing, but I worry that Apple may
swing too far on the pendulum. I don't want an entire OS that looks like
Letterpress, and if I did, I'd buy a Windows Phone.

I think there's a place for textures and visual concordances that doesn't get
into skeu territory. See also: the definition of skeuomorphic design (i.e., ≠
textures).

------
QuantumGood
Most people who "agree" with Ive don't seem to share his (stated) reasoning. I
mostly hear of visual distaste for skeuomorphism, but the article points out

"Ive's…reasoning behind his distaste for the texture-heavy (skeuomorphic)
interfaces [is that] software designs filled with physical metaphors do not
stand the test of time."

Considering how long Apple has used skeuomorphic design, it will be
interesting to see how long Ive's vision lasts. I wouldn't be surprised when
as many years have past, that there will again be change.

~~~
untog
I'm surprised he would care about the "test of time", when he's designing an
OS that updates every year.

~~~
bornhuetter
The basic look of iOS is unchanged since the first version. OSX has basically
stayed the same for over 10 years. Apple like to find what they consider to be
a great UI solution and stick to it for long periods of time.

In contrast see Windows 2000 vs XP vs 7/Vista vs 8, and Android 2.x compared
with 4.x

~~~
rahoulb
The "find a good design and stick with it" idea seems to be an Apple trait, as
it applies to hardware just as much as software.

The Mac Pro design debuted with the Power Mac G5 in 2003, the Macbook Pro
design comes from the Titanium PowerBook in 2001, the same year as the iPod
Classic.

The newer designs are the iMac (2007 for the current metal incarnation), Air
(2008), AppleTV (2010) and iPhone (iPhone 4 in 2010, although you could argue
that it hasn't really changed at all since 2007).

The exceptions are the iPod Nano and Shuffle, which they don't seem to know
what to do with.

------
ChrisClark
We still don't know exactly what it will look like, but depending on how flat
it is that sounds just like Android.

Might be a mix, Android's black/white scheme with the perfectly flat Windows 8
design.

~~~
julianozen
I imagine black and white wont be like windows phone, but will be more like
the current iPod music app or the podcast app where they're dark and light,
not completely flat, and still maintain shadows and gradients.

~~~
ChrisClark
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. A lot more like Android than Windows Phone.
Android isn't pure black/white, but dark/light with hints at 3D while
remaining very flat. <http://i.stack.imgur.com/WYvUq.png>

------
jfb
tl;dr: We don't have any idea, so we're publishing speculation to drive
pageviews.

------
untog
It'll be interesting to see how third party apps look. I can imagine the
launch of iOS7 resulting in a clean, sleek OS with textured, brightly coloured
apps.

------
frou_dh
The "linen" Notification Centre pulldown has always looked awful. The other
(pretty nice) uses of linen (multitasking bar, folder contents, Safari runoff
area) have the impression of being embedded beneath the rest of the UI, while
NC is the exact opposite. Secondly, it has a really harsh light to dark
gradient on it that makes the top look almost like worn denim. I hope it's
canned with extreme prejudice.

~~~
julianozen
This is true. Linen (and texture in general) is a fantastic as a way to
represent the virtual seams of an OS. It's just really really poorly used in
certain areas like login screens and notification center where it dominates
the interface.

------
valgaze
Steve Jobs in 2002: "Design's a really loaded word, I don't know what it
means. And so we don't talk about it much around here, we actually just talk
about _how things work_ Most people think it's how they look, but it's not
really how they look, it's how they _work_ "

Video: <http://youtube.com/watch?v=sPfJQmpg5zk>

------
tuananh
I don't think there will be dramatic changes in UI in iOS 7. Otherwise, all
the apps would need to be updated (at least, recompiled) to make it doesn't
look like alien.

~~~
twoodfin
Apple loves giving developers reasons to refresh their apps.

------
julianozen
So it should mostly look like the iPod app and the podcast app. Great

~~~
atirip
The new podcast app is dull, grey and boring. Stopped using it. Yeah, really.
The reels were fun. That's not so bad as iPads clock/timer app though. That
one i must use and i cry a bit every time i use it. It so flat, so boring and
so ugly and so grey.

~~~
mixmastamyk
I liked the reels but they made scrubbing difficult and hid the podcast image.

If they could keep it as one of the views that could be cycled through it
would be great.

------
micampe
Here are some screenshots of iOS System 7
[http://appadvice.com/appnn/2013/04/feeling-nostalgic-
about-t...](http://appadvice.com/appnn/2013/04/feeling-nostalgic-about-the-
classic-mac-os-download-classic-note-for-ios)

