
Sloppy UI – A collection of sloppy iOS7 UIs - romain_dardour
http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/
======
dasil003
Although I'm a perfectionist and I believe a lot of these issues should be
addressed, the tumblr itself bothers me. It's the logical culmination of Fail
culture where hipsters in armchairs laugh at the inadequacy of everything
while producing nothing. All these things could have been constructive
criticism in another context, but here they just serve to further someone's
twitchy compulsion to be entertained for another 5 seconds on the internet.

Yes I'm getting surly in my old age.

~~~
janlukacs
here's the thing though, If google would have released an UI as bad as this
(just my oppinion as an iphone user) all the tech press and the hardcore apple
fanboys would have trashed it online and offline for months. Who will be the
role model from now on for "near perfection", "attention to detail"? Just look
at this:
[http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/hon.jpg?...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/hon.jpg?w=600&h=600)
and tell me how you feel about it :)

~~~
coldtea
> _here 's the thing though, If google would have released an UI as bad as
> this (just my oppinion as an iphone user) all the tech press and the
> hardcore apple fanboys would have trashed it online and offline for months._

Google HAS produced a UI as bad as this. Actually worse. The Android UI, up
until 4 was amateur hour. And still is not up there yet.

It's just held in much less scrutiny compared to Apple, because nobody expects
much better.

~~~
jusben1369
Apple is really defined by _superior_ design. Google is defined generally by
_superior_ engineering. A better point to make would be if Google revamped
their search engine and it was meaningfully degraded experience for search.
They'd be criticized and rightly so as that's what they're supposed to do
better than anyone else.

~~~
coldtea
> _Apple is really defined by superior design. Google is defined generally by
> superior engineering._

Wait what? When did that happen? When did Google get "superior engineering"?
For search, web etc, perhaps. But as far as iOS vs Android is concerned that
was never the case.

For starters, Apple design and engineered the iPhone first. Google's Android
FIRST came out a whole year later. Early Android prototypes, shown by Google
just before the iPhone was announced had half-size screens and physical
keyboards, just like the rest of the smartphones of the day.

Since then Apple has consistenly beat Google on hardware features, from the
retina display (with much better color rendition to boot) to camera
innovations, the motion co-processor, a working fingerprint sensor (for a
change), and 64 bit ARM (which means far more than "being able to see more
memory which isn't even installed") etc. Consistently better battery life.

Well, maybe it's not a fair comparison, because Google is not a hardware
engineering company. They had to buy Motorola, which wasn't the best in the
business itself, anyway. But the above are still true for Samsung offerings
too.

On the industrial engineering side, Apple's designs, machining, fit and polish
is unsurpassed on the Android side. Including materials used.

In the software side it's the same story. The iOS Cocoa API is leaps and
bounds ahead of the Android API. It was never plagued with issues with scroll
lag and display latency (and also audio latency, which is why 90% of
Audio/MIDI apps are for iOS). Doesn't have a nightmarish GC experience to tend
to for more involved apps. More fit and polish overall. Heck, Android even
gets 80%+ of all the mobile malware around.

The major points for Android devices were not better engineering per se, but
stuff like bigger screens, different configurations etc. And extra features
that got marginal use, like face unlock and near field communication, stuff
that Apple could have if that's how they rolled.

Some good stuff Android had first was because Apple went conservative to
implement them when battery life better permitted them (like background apps
-- Android just unleashed them and the hell with it, Apple trying to get the
juice, and hence experience, right first).

There's one genuine thing Android had going for it, and that's the Intents
system in my opinion. The "quick settings change panel" was also another good
one. I don't think we can go much further.

~~~
Osmium
> the motion co-processor

Agree with your general points but the Moto X also has a pair of interesting
co-processors: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/the-iphone-5s-the-
mot...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/the-iphone-5s-the-moto-x-and-
the-rise-of-the-co-processor/)

Personally, I don't think Apple's getting anywhere enough credit for their in-
house processor design at the moment. If that's not engineering talent I don't
know what is. Just look at the Anandtech review for proof of that:

[http://anandtech.com/show/7335/the-
iphone-5s-review/5](http://anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/5)

------
coldtea
This is quite bad -- only a small percentage are genuine examples of sloppu
UI.

It seems to be put together by one guy (instead of user submissions like
similar sites) and not quite design savvy at that.

Case in point:

1)
[http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61441688489](http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61441688489)
(this is supposed to show "poor alignment")

2)
[http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439801745](http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439801745)
(this is supposed to show "stray dropshadows" \-- didn't they guy get the memo
that the iOS 7 UI uses them to show a 3D layer hierarchy?)

3)
[http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439835569](http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439835569)
(this is supposed to show "poor contrast". Isn't it obvious that the top bar
should not be visually striking and distracting?)

4)
[http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61440586435](http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61440586435)
(... this is considered "sloppy").

5)
[http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61440527405](http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61440527405)
(flat information hierarchy -- one of the few genuine sloppy UI examples).

~~~
romain_dardour
Poster here: Indeed it's just me submitting. But it's open to submissions.

I'm not answering every single case you mention. The examples I posted show
how inconsistent the UI is.

Taste is in the eye of the beholder and I didn't mention what I find ugly but
what shows a lack of afterthought.

Just one example here to answer, "Poor Contrast"
([http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439835569](http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61439835569))
On an iOS device, this is not "Subtle" but unreadable.

~~~
huhtenberg
For what it's worth, I think nearly all your examples are spot on. These _are_
sloppy jobs that I would've personally been ashamed of releasing to the
public.

That said, noticing alignment issues and font inconsistencies is not given and
a lot of people won't give a damn about them.

~~~
joering2
Steve Jobs would have. And then unconsciously everyone that ever bought or buy
Apple products for that perfectionism that has been inbreed in their spirit.

Jobs is definitely gone. Had he be around, you would've seen tons of cartoon
boxes and pink slips delivered to One Infinite Loop. If he would've ever let
update like that released into cyberspace (he wouldn't've).

IOS7 clearly shows that John Ive is lost without Jobs.

------
devx
Most things about iOS7 seem inconsistent, and like they were rushed - which
they were. I mean Johny Ive was head of UI for like 9 months only, and had to
change everything in iOS in that period. These changes should've arrived in
iOS8 in order to be well thought out and mature enough, but for some reason
they decided to push them to iOS7.

~~~
untog
If they removed the new design, iOS7 would be a really underwhelming release
for users. The background downloading would clearly be the banner feature..
but aside from that?

~~~
cageface
Personally I would much rather they just removed some of the gradients and
textures and instead focused on improving things like inter-app sharing,
notifications, the keyboard, widgets/live tiles etc.

------
nextstep
The "no return key in the twitter compose view" is intentional. That is a
keyboard style option, and Twitter it using it to discourage users entering
return characters in tweets. This is not even Apple's app.

A lot of these "sloppy UI" examples are in non-Apple apps, intentional, or
otherwise misleading from the screenshot.

~~~
romain_dardour
Newlines are supported on twitter in 3rd party apps, but not in the twitter
card nor twitter app indeed.

Also, the blog is not called "Apple Sloppy UIs", but "Sloppy UIs". That still
qualifies.

~~~
awj
> Also, the blog is not called "Apple Sloppy UIs", but "Sloppy UIs". That
> still qualifies.

Tagline to the blog: "We love Apple. We think this is the best way to point
out what's not up to their standards so _they_ can fix it." (emphasis mine)

Do they expect Apple to fix the UI of other people's apps?

~~~
matthewaustin
Apple's idea behind their App Store is that every app is reviewed to make sure
it's up to their standards. They also provide a myriad of built-in UI elements
and a Human Interface Guide that is supposed to direct developers in the
design of their app interfaces.

One could postulate that Apple can fix third party apps by altering the
available UI elements and interface guidelines. In fact, this type of
alteration was done for iOS7 to guide developers into updating their app
aesthetics to match iOS7.

------
da_n
Good collection. iOS7 is an obvious improvement over previous iOS versions
(perhaps with the exception of the icons) and has done a good job of bringing
iOS up to date visually. Worth remembering that there are a lot of
inconsistencies in Android, a good article is here:

[http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/18/ux-things-i-hate-
abo...](http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/18/ux-things-i-hate-about-
android/)

Don't get me wrong, I much, much prefer Android and can't ever see myself
moving back to iOS, but always good to measure things in balance, nothing is
perfect.

~~~
leokun
I'm the same way. I love Android, and will probably never move back to iOS,
but after having seen an actual phone with iOS 7 all my scepticism about the
new UI disappeared. It's a very beautiful UI. I was right there though
laughing at the ugly icons (which I still think are ugly) thinking iOS 7 was a
disaster until I actually looked at a phone and swiped around.

It's weird. The iPhone 5s seems to be without a doubt the overall best phone
out there. The low light camera, the processor, all that stuff blows me away,
but yet I don't want one. I think the iPhone is like a really fancy and nice
race car, that I can do nothing but admire, but all I want is a truck. Android
is my truck.

~~~
bdcravens
I'm sure you won't have to wait too long for those hardware improvements to
come to the Android platform. The rapid iteration of the Android platform
means that hardware advantages are generally short-lived.

------
whizzkid
Isn't Apple hiring the best/smartest/creative developers?

How are these small/annoying issues are passing the test cases?

Don't they have the same development cycle as they had while developing the
first Iphone which was a huge thing at the time.

~~~
coldtea
> _How are these small /annoying issues are passing the test cases?_

Most of those are neither sloppy nor issues. The blog does a bad job of mixing
a few real issues with a lot of stuff he just doesn't like personally.

------
crb
I'd love to see a similar set of "'iOS 7-updated' apps running on iOS 6 or
earlier."

Before I upgraded yesterday, there were a couple of apps I saw (I think it was
Shazam) where they must have emulated the iOS 7 feel, rather than using
system-native widgets, so the result was a "business in front, party in the
back" mishmash of UI on the same screen.

------
electic
The whole iOS7 UI is not intuitive at all. Look, I love flat UI but when I
became and engineer and founder, started talking to customers, I realized that
customers are simply not as aware as the people that designed and made
software. They don't know what to click, they sometimes don't even know they
can click something, and they often get lost. When you go to a Microsoft store
and see people playing with Windows 8, you see this and it really hits you.
People are lost, randomly clicking on text thinking it is a button. While
Windows 8 and iOS7 look good in many ways, I think this release is a step
backwards for people who might not be very tech savvy.

~~~
rimantas
Yeah, remember when noone could use the webe, because links were not in the
form of buttons?

------
hemancuso
From what I hear nothing has helped improve Apple's autocorrect more than
[http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/](http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/)

I must imagine that this tumblr is already being poured over in Cupertino and
radar's are being filed in right now. This tumblr is a good thing.

~~~
lostlogin
That site is hilarious. What blows my mind is how autocorrect so often
defaults to lewd and totally inappropriate statements. It's like it's trying
to cause amusement.

------
mvkel
Great examples. I hope you're sending these to Apple!

One I noticed is a very slight difference in weight between the carrier text
and the data status.

It's so slight, almost the difference between "sharp" and "strong" in
Photoshop.

Also, people, easy on the "way to criticize but not offer any constructive
criticism!" OP is effectively filing a ton of bug reports, which is a good
thing.

------
vicbrooker
Personally I think that it's a bit misleading to lump bugs and questionable
design choices under the same 'sloppy' banner.

Good quality criticism regarding choices developers and designers have made
have lead to some of the best debate and discussion I've seen on HN.
Conversations that focus on criticizing execution (for example the UI bugs in
the tumblr) have been some of the worst.

As a developer I would get huge value out of having a nuanced discussion about
the pros and cons of iOS 7's language, particular as we begin (or have begun)
redesigning our apps - hopefully that is something this tumblr can evolve into
eventually.

------
nnnnni
See, this is really frustrating...

I mentioned this SAME STUFF (specifically the horrible lack of contrast)
months ago just to be met with downvotes and handwaving dismissal.

NOW people agree. Better late than never, I guess.

~~~
noamsml
But months ago these were quirks in a beta release. iOS7 is now released
software, and it's expected to have matured.

~~~
nnnnni
The problem is that it looked like a very poor design decision rather than a
beta version quirk even back then...

------
thiagoperes
I'm really disappointed that Apple released the GM version of iOS 7 as final.
So many bugs and glitches.

~~~
potatolicious
I hear that. There is still one _huge, gaping_ bug where UITextViews do not
scroll if you type past their bounds. Seriously, Apple released that.

------
ps4fanboy
"Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right." \- Steve Jobs

------
nicholassmith
Some I definitely agree with (mixed font casing), some I don't, and some are
plain bugs which are annoying but not a question of sloppy UI. There's a lot
slipped through that it's slightly inconsistent, but there was plenty of
inconsistent design through iOS1-6 as well and with OS X.x in it's various
releases.

Design over a large product like iOS or OS X is hard, it takes time to get all
the edges smoothed down and given that iOS 7 is probably the result of a year
to two years of work it's not a surprised it's rough. If it's a bug (or a UI
niggle) report it to Apple, they may or may not be listening but it's a better
solution to highlight it with them directly, as well as on Tumblr.

------
tzaman
So what - if I didn't visit the link, I wouldn't even know about these
"sloppy" features.

 _Done is better than perfect_.

~~~
hahainternet
Funny, because I thought that the whole point of buying an Apple product is
that even if you lose features and interoperability, it's incredibly well
polished and thought out.

Seems they're losing that attribute without gaining the others.

~~~
coldtea
> _Funny, because I thought that the whole point of buying an Apple product is
> that even if you lose features and interoperability, it 's incredibly well
> polished and thought out._

Actually you only lose features you wouldn't want in the first place and would
drag the whole thing down (less battery life, bulkier, etc). Not having FM
radio for example is like not having a floppy disk drive an modern PCs.

As for "incredibly well polished and thought out" it still is. For one,
there's much more to a mobile OS than graphic design. How it works and feels
is much more important than how it looks ("design is how it works").

Second, most of those are some guy's pet peeves, not genuine problems. If he
cannot understand why a red carret matches blue text, that doesn't make it
into a genuine problem. Same if he didn't get the memo that drop shadows are
used to add a depth to the UI layers and thinks they are stray leftovers.

~~~
Oletros
> Actually you only lose features you wouldn't want in the first place and
> would drag the whole thing down (less battery life, bulkier, etc)

And why I wouldn't want them? Are you deciding what I want or not?

~~~
coldtea
> _And why I wouldn 't want them? Are you deciding what I want or not?_

No, Apple's deciding and the market votes with his wallet (and judging from
their actually buying stuff --and at the quite expensive end of the market at
that--, it has voted much in favor of those decisions for a decade or so).

There's always some people, call them sui generis, or mavericks, or loonies,
that do want a floppy drive in their laptop, and not even because they have a
specific business needs. They just love these flexible plastic suckers. Others
can't live without physical Blue-Ray disks (just as some people swore by
Betamax or quad cassetes).

And in the case of phones, some just got to have a 440 dpi screen (despite not
seeing much different from 300), near field communication, wireless charging,
4G support in 2009 when it would burn through batteries of the era in 1 hour,
and what have you. It's their choice. Just not a very popular one, or what
most people would call sane, especially going forward.

So, feel free to use whatever, just don't complain if it's not what the era
you live in deems relevant.

~~~
Oletros
> No, Apple's deciding and the market votes with his wallet (and judging from
> their actually buying stuff --and at the quite expensive end of the market
> at that--, it has voted much in favor of those decisions for a decade or
> so).

So, when Apple said that the MINIMUM screen size for tablets was 10" people
talked with their wallet and this was the right size.

When Apple released iPad Mini people talked with their wallet and this was a
right size along the regular iPad?

> There's always some people, call them sui generis, or mavericks, or loonies,
> that do want a floppy drive in their laptop

Really, do you have top put a nonsensical analogy to try to defend the
indefensible?

~~~
coldtea
> _So, when Apple said that the MINIMUM screen size for tablets was 10 "
> people talked with their wallet and this was the right size.

When Apple released iPad Mini people talked with their wallet and this was a
right size along the regular iPad?_

Is there even a question here?

Nobody said "10 was the one and perfect size until Apple added 7". Just that
Apple releasing a 10" only, for the first versions of the iPad, was a wild
success.

Apple had decided to release a 10, and then they decided to add a 7 to that
line. Both were mass bought. So clearly both were good market decisions.

Other vendors had a 7 even before -- their sales were 1/10 the iPad 10
available at the time or less.

> _Really, do you have top put a nonsensical analogy to try to defend the
> indefensible?_

The "indefensible" being a company offering a specific feature set of their
choice and not every possible feature desired by some users or offered by some
competitor?

If the resulting products sell well, then surely, they didn't make a mistake
in ommiting stuff.

I don't know how you can defend the contrary. Based on some unalienable right
to get what you like in a specific product from a specific brand?

------
chrislomax
Another one, if you go to the timer app from the slide up control center, the
"pause" is 2 pixels out of being centered. You can just about tell with the
naked eye but if you open it in photoshop it's 2 pixels out.

It's not a big deal but I thought Apple would be well on top of stuff like
this

------
gurumeditation
Would they have preferred the metal and glass meets billiard room look of
iOS6?

~~~
gurkendoktor
The major built-in apps in iOS 6 are just as 'boring' as the major OS X apps
are. Safari, Music, Mail, Photos, Camera, Settings, Contacts, Messages - light
grey chrome around content.

The average iOS 6 app did _not_ look like Game Center or Find My Friends
(which was not even built-in). But I guess that's how it will be remembered
now. =/

------
romain_dardour
To clarify things, we just posted this on the web site:

We love Apple. We think this is the best way to point out what's not up to
their standards so they can fix it. It's all about intellectual honesty, not
trolling.

------
ttflee
How many of these failures are due to insufficient testing on i18n?

IMHO, using texts to replace icon based buttons is clever to simplify the
working of screen resolution adaption, however, it does increase the
possibility of inconsistency between different locales. I still remember
NYTimes.app for iPad displayed ugly aligned date texts which is just too long
to fit into the space left for them, only in Chinese locales, which they do
not officially support, and I doubt that they really did testing on it.

------
mikeleeorg
Anyone know how many UI bugs were reported or seen with previous iOS versions?
I'm just wondering if this is a usual part of each major iOS rollout, or a
unique instance.

------
efnx
Many of the problems with consistency (capitalization, placement, return key
on keyboard, etc) seem to be in specific apps. In those cases it's the
designers and programmers of the company that make the app that are at fault.
It's important to be familiar enough with the iOS SDK that you know which bugs
are OS territory and which ones are app territory. I'm not trying to dis their
eye for bugs, I'm just trying to shrink the surface bugs live on.

~~~
warfangle
So, the same thing apple fanboys have been railing against android about for
years?

~~~
efnx
Maybe? I don't tend to read about iOS vs Android often. I'd say that's a
problem for any company that maintains an app store. I'm sure those
inconsistencies exist on iOS6 as well :(

------
alecsmart1
I don't understand how changing the design adds to functionality. Instead of
giving a new half baked look, Apple could have concentrated on adding features
to its existing look. Flat design is good but like most things its just a
phase. Why not add background downloading etc. to the current design. From
design point if view iOS 6 is fairly good and very consistent.

~~~
gfodor
Uh, they did. They added a whole bunch of new features, actually.

------
joeld42
If these are the worst things that people can find to complain about in iOS7,
then Apple should feel pretty proud of themselves.

------
rjohnk
What will probably happen is a quick 7.1 release to fix most small alignment
bugs, and then iOS 8 will refine everything. I'm guessing iOS 9 will be the
polished version of this UI design. Not making excuses, just postulating what
might happen.

------
bdcravens
My only issue is that this is an OS that's been in beta for a few months, and
yeah, the betas were pretty horrible in some ways. The OS has been live to the
public for a day. How do I know what version these screenshots came from?

------
37prime
Some of them are bugs found in the beta releases of iOS 7.

I am assuming that the “sloppy UIs” are from the general release.

There were tons of changes from beta 1 to the GM and there are still some UI
bugs, but they are not showstoppers.

------
antonpug
Half of these are from Beta versions and do no longer occur... But nice
catches, there are definitely somethings that could be improved, but others
are just up to personal preference and interpretation.

------
bane
Most of these are pretty good points, some are just taste differences. In a
different world, if these things were fixed, they'd belong on a "Subtle UI
Greatness" tumblr.

------
nvk
Poll: Changing to Android after iOS7 Update?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412046](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6412046)

------
aaronbrethorst
Without Apple Radar numbers next to each and every one of these pictures, this
is just unnecessary, mean-spirited trolling. "Hey, look, iOS 7 has bugs!
LOLOLOL."

------
Felix21
And they said we wont miss scott forstall who would surely not let anything
like this out of apple.

But what do I know.

------
_random_
Hire more/better designers? No-no! Let's put money in the hedge fund instead.

------
happywolf
I agree with some of the reviews here: nothing is perfect, and I do think most
of these are bugs. For example, the issue on facebook settings doesn't show up
on my i5. Get a life, or show me what kind of non-sloppy you are able to
produce.

------
enscr
The most tangential looking OS ever. Maybe iOS 7s would fix it.

------
tharshan09
why is he referring to web terms? Or does it just happen to be common
terminology across design?

------
dgesang
> We love Apple.

Stopped reading there ...

