
iOS 7 As Defense - mh_
http://www.marco.org/2013/06/27/ios7-as-defense
======
Zikes
Nobody will be mimicking iOS 7, because iOS 7 is already mimicking other UIs.
Flat UI design has already been established by Windows Phone, Windows Desktop
OS, and Android's Holo UI.

As has been stated by others, none of the animations are so GPU-heavy that
they are impossible to implement on other devices, but they are not all
terribly desirable, either.

The parallax effect, in particular, was already available as a live wallpaper
app on Android and sales of that app did skyrocket after WWDC, which really
only means that most Android users had that feature available and in use
before most iPhone users did. I tried it out myself, and after the gimmick
wore off I went back to one of my many other wallpaper options.

A variety of other effects and animations are already in use by the _many_
replacement launcher applications available on Android, and in many cases they
are customizable by the user for optimal speed and performance.

These iOS 7 articles really should be focusing on the features that will be
making a real difference in this OS, like the task switcher, control center,
improved notifications, etc. Those are the things that will continue to
provide value to the user once the "new and shiny" lustre has worn off. I
don't care if they're copies or rehashes or interpretations of features other
phone OSes have had for years, they are what will make a real difference to
the user.

And for the love of god, implement an Intents feature already.

~~~
coldtea
> _Nobody will be mimicking iOS 7, because iOS 7 is already mimicking other
> UIs. Flat UI design has already been established by Windows Phone, Windows
> Desktop OS, and Android 's Holo UI._

Er, "Flat" is a visual style.

It's not something that you "imitate" (any more than anybody making an action
movie is "imitating" a previous action movie director), it's guidelines to
implement your design on.

Such styles come and go with design fashion. The trend has swing towards
flatter styles, and Apple obliged. Like when in 2004-5, with Delicious Library
et al, the trend swung towards ornaments and skeuomorphism and Apple again
obliged (and even snatched D.L's designer).

Plus, none of the above UIs made even a dent on the market. So not really
inviting to "imitate" a success point of view.

(With the exception of the "Windows Desktop OS". But that sold because it's
the "next version of windows", not for it's flat facade, which was universally
hated so much by desktop users that MS is reverting in 8.1 to let you have a
start menu and boot directly to the classic Windows desktop view).

~~~
Zikes
> Plus, none of the above UIs even made a dent on the market.

[http://www.icharts.net/chartchannel/worldwide-smartphone-
os-...](http://www.icharts.net/chartchannel/worldwide-smartphone-os-
share-2012-q1-2013-q1_m3zryyngc)

It's a small dent, but if you look really closely you can see Android in dark
blue.

~~~
coldtea
Was talking about the flat UI (Holo in this case) -- which is half of that
blue and even less, and was not exactly received with cheers and shouts when
it was released.

------
Kylekramer
It is amazing how much the Apple focused bloggers resemble political spin
doctors these days. Create a talking point full of pro-Apple assumptions such
as iOS 7 is an resource intensive OS that only Apple could support (another
currently popular talking point is "iOS 7 isn't flat, it has depth" as if
other OSs don't). Of course Android mostly sells cheap phones, that is given.
Doesn't matter what the actual sales figures are. Forget the old argument that
Apple places battery life over silly resource intensive things like widgets.
Hammer it home with multiple articles (this is essentially a rewrite of the
popular article from yesterday: [http://www.allenpike.com/2013/ios7-catch-me-
if-you-can/](http://www.allenpike.com/2013/ios7-catch-me-if-you-can/)) and
back patting links and retweets. Charge people thousands of dollars to get
into your inner circle of spin via sponsorships of your blog or podcast,
rinse, repeat.

------
pdenya
I think every point is overstated.

\- Most high end apps already have custom views, they're not relying on
standard UIKit elements: Evernote, Tweetbot, Fantastical, Spotify, Audible,
Alien Blue, etc.

\- Web apps can skimp a bit on the transitions without feeling useless and out
of place and they won't have any trouble reskinning. Especially for the
standard blog template he mentions.

\- As far as the 1 pixel lines, maybe it's a stylistic element that android
can't copy easily but I don't see this as a huge advantage

~~~
Groxx
I'm not sure where the 1px-difficulty comes from. You can easily make e.g. a
separator in a list that's 1px:

    
    
      <View android:layout_height="1px" />
    

If anything, I'd argue it's easier than in iOS. And then there's this:

> _Most Android phones have high-DPI screens, too, but their feature-checklist
> battles have actually driven many of them to have too-dense resolutions for
> 1-pixel lines to be useful._

Seriously, _what_? They're not _that_ much higher-DPI than the retina screens.

~~~
smackfu
I think the theory here is that screens with non-square pixel layouts can't
really do one pixel lines in either vertical or horizontal. Practically, I'm
not sure that is a real issue with current high end phones.

------
toddmorey
Here's what I think is interesting. When design works, when it's value is
immediately obvious (like the magsafe power connector), very little is ever
said about motivations. But when design is controversial or has dubious merit
(the blurring effect and translucency), there are a lot words spent on finding
the motivation: they were playing defense, they wanted to distance themselves
from competitors, they wanted to show off the hardware, etc.

I don't think there's ever been a design brief at Apple that has focused on
the competition or this sort of flash over substance. I don't think Ive would
have accepted the mission to make it different, well, just to be different.

I think the goal at Apple is ALWAYS the same: to delight. To create "wonder"
as they like to say. Is this UI as successful as the previous UI with that
objective? Ultimately, that's the only criteria by which iOS7 will be judged.
I see subtle genius in places, a lot of rough edges, and some genuine
missteps.

------
skc
Quite the bubble Marco lives in.

He's somehow managed to convince himself that the iOS7 UI is the one that
others will try and copy.

Backwards.

~~~
eclipxe
Agreed. I'm a fan of Marco and I think he's a smart guy, but the iOS7 lovefest
from him, Gruber, and others is really starting to make their "Apple can only
do right" stance even clearer.

I've used iOS7 for a bit now and it is actually a pain to use. Slow, clunky,
disorganized, limited. It no longer feels "premium". When I first picked up
the original iPhone, there was a sense of "wow" and "this is wonderful". That
feeling is not there in iOS7 and frankly hasn't been there in quite a while...

~~~
clarky07
You are using a beta. Betas have always been absolutely terrible.

I hear 6 years later how everyone absolutely loved the first iPhone, but
frankly I didn't think it was that great(slow, touches seemed off a lot,
typing was awful, no 3G), and very few people actually bought the damn thing.
It wasn't until the 3G and 3Gs that it actually took off.

------
vectorpush
_Since iOS’ launch in 2007, people have devoted a lot of time and money to
copying the UI. Samsung, of course, is the biggest offender, but the copying
has gone far beyond them: almost all modern smartphones and tablets have parts
that resemble the old iOS UI_

Jesus, do people actually buy into this crap? The iPhone UI was never anything
special; the mobile UI metaphor has remained pretty much unchanged since long
before Apple got into the game.

[http://www.newsrover.com/images/screenshots/palm9.gif](http://www.newsrover.com/images/screenshots/palm9.gif)

~~~
rimantas
[http://www8.pcmag.com/media/images/266029-apple-
newton.jpg](http://www8.pcmag.com/media/images/266029-apple-newton.jpg)

And somehow Samsung phones did not have that interface prior to 2007.

~~~
vectorpush
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Psion_Series_3a.jpg](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Psion_Series_3a.jpg)

What's your point? This is not to say that the industry wasn't heavily
influenced by Apple's success, but imitating a paradigm that has been around
for decades doesn't make one an Apple copy-cat. This is in the same vein as
claiming anything with a solid black rectangular bezel is an Apple rip-off.

------
ultimoo
TL;DR -- iOS 7 will leverage newer iPhone's Retina display and faster GPU for
displaying a slick new UI that Android won't be able to copy.

I like the progress iOS and Android have made over the last few years. I've
tried both and enjoyed features that each had to offer. I have also enjoyed
reading posts from Marco's blog in the past.

However, I am frankly tired of all this flurry of blog posts going gaga over
iOS 7 and failing to make a point.

~~~
rimantas
Let me help you to find a point: iOS 7 was made this way to differentiate
itself and make it harder to copy either on Android on via the web stack.

~~~
untog
Is that really believable, though? Android devices have capable GPUs, and I
don't think the web has ever been a real threat to "legitimate" iOS apps (if
Apple cared to destroy webapps they could in a second).

The more laughable notion is that Android would want to copy iOS 7. Samsung's
shenangians aside, Android now has a cohesive UI in Holo that most new apps
are using. There's no incentive to mimic iOS.

------
gdubs
I don't see iOS 7 as a grab-bag of eye-candy features. Having gone to all the
UI sessions at WWDC and having used it for a few weeks now, I think what Apple
did is make a design language / system. It's about how all the pieces work
together, not so much what you think of one particular icon or another. It's
aimed at a generation of users who already intuitively understand touch
interfaces, which will allow developers to innovate new UI concepts that
aren't as constrained by faux physical realism. If there's a "killer feature"
that other platforms need to worry about, I'd say it's TextKit -- Apple
historically excels at typography.

~~~
rimantas
Alas, this point will be lost for the most of the commenters there. Quite a
few probably don't know much about iOS 7 than "it is flat", so even this tiny
bit of knowledge is wrong. As for UIKit Dynamics, TextKit—I think only those
really interested get what it will mean for the future apps.

------
lucian1900
So the high DPI on Apple's devices helps keep their stupidly thin lines hard
to copy, except on Android devices that have even higher DPI, where the lines
are even thinner? Where does he come up with this?

Also, there has been plenty of copying in all directions. And not just iOS7,
Apple have already copied Android's notification bar piecemeal. And that's
fine, of course.

------
revelation
What a bizarre article. Samsung TouchWiz is based off Android AOSP and had the
4.0 UI long before Apple copied it for iOS7.

~~~
myko
What? Samsung TouchWiz still looks like an iOS 6 and below (ugly) clone.

I'm hoping they try to copy iOS 7 in their next devices - then maybe their
devices will look as nice as AOSP.

------
largehotcoffee
_while high-end Android phones have mostly caught up in GPU performance, and
recent Android versions have improved UI acceleration, most Android devices
sold are neither high-end nor up-to-date_

Stopped reading.

------
computerbob
can this get flagged as fanboyism blog spam...wow this is just terrible

------
gurkendoktor
I can't believe nobody has pointed this out: _The iPad mini does not have a
Retina display_. The iOS 7 home screen labels look gross on it. Apple is not
making the competition obsolete, but its own devices (intentionally or not).

------
pearjuice
A defense against Android it is, but Marco as a huge Apple fanboy wouldn't
even want to admit this if he were shot otherwise. I have absolutely no
problem with Apple reiterating their products and software but what I cannot
stand is them acting as if they were the first whilst most of the time it is
clear that they are imitating the competition and just rebranding it a bit.

The worst of all of this is, is that nobody seems to mention this but when it
happens in the other direction (the competition imitating Apple), it will
cause serious outrage.

------
madoublet
What am I missing here? I haven't dug too deep into iOS7, but on the surface
it looks like a cosmetic upgrade with new icons, a parallax background effect
on the home screen, a blur effect for overlays, and some smooth transitions.
None of this hasn't been seen before, and a lot of it looks derivative. I
viewed it as a "catch up to Android/WP8" not a step forward.

------
malandrew
Or it could be that Scott Forstall is out and a new tastemaker is in?

Occam's razor, anyone?

------
programminggeek
iOS is not defense, it's about improving the product. Thinking just in terms
of corporate strategy doesn't really get to the heart of what Apple does -
make the product amazing almost in a total vacuum. That keeps them from
chasing features or markets.

Thinking that Apple's design is made to do something Android can't do and to
make devs rewrite their apps is an incredibly cynical view of what Apple does.

I think Apple is trying to really move their platform forward for their
customers. They aren't fighting android, they are building better products for
their paying customers.

------
ziko
Before I read the article; why does the permalink symbol looks exactly like
the infinity symbol (∞)?

~~~
arscan
Because it is an infinity symbol (U+221E).

I guess the idea is that the permalink will last for an infinite amount of
time. I personally think its pretty clever.

------
olgeni
Maybe the app review process is so computationally intensive for the same
reason.

------
corresation
Some incredible conjecture here. Assuming that Android is caught with its
pants down and will desperately try to "catch up" with Apple (the other
scenario is that Android has diverged dramatically, and if anything this is
Apple catching up with Android, but I hardly expect someone like Marco to ever
spin it that way), the notion that the new UI rudiments on iOS 7 are intense
on GPUs -- and thus out of the capabilities of lower-end devices -- is
incredibly presumptive. I haven't installed the beta of iOS 7 on any of my
devices to pull the metrics, but it looks incredibly mild on the GPU (effects
like layered blurring or transluency are an absolute laugh for any modern GPU,
even on very low-end devices). This does not look demanding on the shader or
fill rate whatsoever, which of course Apple would avoid because the GPU can be
very expensive on the battery, and can monopolize the memory bus.

This is all quite funny regardless. Samsung had parallax and accelerometer
(later gyroscope) based interfaces for _years_ in their TouchWiz shizzle, just
as Google heavily pushed 3D interfaces (see RenderScript). I would never argue
that it is identical to what Apple has introduced, but once against from the
zeitgeist of Apple fanatics you would believe this is the next step brought to
us from Apple.

~~~
rimantas

      > effects like layered blurring or transluency are an
      > absolute laugh for any modern GPU, even on very low-end
      > devices
    

Yet for some reason some simple scrolling still has problems on anything but
top Android devices. Now combine scrolling with that oh-so-easy translucency
and blurring.

~~~
smackfu
Yeah, scrolling is easy if the entire bitmap you are scrolling exists in
memory already. Then it's just a GPU thing, like the stuff in iOS 7. Scrolling
is a lot harder when the content that is being scrolled to is being rendered
in realtime, and when the scroll buffer is endless. Then it's not the GPU that
is the problem, but the threading interaction.

------
ninetenel
IMO after using iOS 7 on the iPhone and iPad I can say it's OK but it's
nothing great though .. a few of their new APIs are cool too I guess --
honestly I was expecting more and better from apple considering how much they
have running on the iOS game

------
counterpointer
>Most imitating efforts will need to be redone or abandoned to look current.
And what will happen if people try to imitate iOS 7?

>Presumably, Apple has a few new patents for iOS 7’s interface and behavior.
As we’ve seen, this won’t prevent copying, but it can at least increase the
cost. Any efforts to copy the new UI are going to have a dark cloud of
potential litigation hanging over them.

This is strange.

Lets see the design principles behind Metro:

1) Content over Chrome

2) Authentically digital

3) Concentration on beautiful typography (see how it caused Google and Apple
to talk about fonts in their Holo and iOS7 UI overhauls)

4) Removal of faux realistic and 3d elements

5) Flat look

6) Tasteful, subtle animations during transitions.

See the image on the left here.

[http://www.redmondpie.com/ios-7-vs-ios-6-side-by-side-
visual...](http://www.redmondpie.com/ios-7-vs-ios-6-side-by-side-visual-
comparison-images/)

Apply the above principles to it in your mind.

See how similar it is to the image on the right. Ask someone else to take
their opinion.

In fact to me it appears that Apple has in some places gone more overboard
with the above principles than even Microsoft.

From DHH's article [http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3536-apple-the-
organizational...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3536-apple-the-
organizational-rorschach)

>As we watched Apple unveil iOS7, the 37signals Campfire room quickly turned
to awe of what they had achieved. A redesign so shocking and deep bestowed
upon a product so popular left many mouths agape. Whether you happened to like
the final product wasn’t as relevant as marveling at the vision, drive, and
sheer determination to pull it off.

>Apple has a way of making people feel like that.

>But what followed next is at least as interesting: We all sought to explain
just how they did it. Is it all Ive’s eye? Is it that they explore more ideas
than anyone else? Is it never accepting “good enough”? Forgoing customer input
and trusting their own instinct? Hundreds of triple-A designers and
developers?

I needn't even quote Gruber.

This is not to say there's nothing new or no innovation in iOS 7(there is), or
even that Apple is wrong to copy(it is not) or that I think it's an exact
copy(it's not), but it makes me feel Microsoft's designers(who DHH implies are
F level) are basically chopped liver who are destined to live in obscurity.
There isn't even a passing mention of them!

Can you imagine the reactions of the above writers if the situation was
reversed? Remember "Redmond, start your photocopiers."?

I am not sure if I am missing something here, someone new to their leanings
might even mistake it to be parody or sarcasm.

~~~
untog
Agreed- you can criticise plenty about Windows Phone (and there is much worthy
of it) but they were truly innovative in many areas of UI. Sadly, they'll
never get much credit for it.

Your quotes from the 37 Signals blog are so breathless that I'm surprised the
author didn't suffocate during the keynote. Absolutely nauseating stuff.

