
iOS 7 looks familiar - vxNsr
http://chris.millr.org/ios-7-looks-familiar-cant-quite-put-my-finger-on-it/
======
greghinch
These arguments always strike me as coming from people who don't actually
understand what design is. The folks who think that design is the font face,
the weight of lines, the colors used. Those are all facets of design, but they
are essentially just tools to accomplish the goal: experience and engagement.
What you are noticing are just trends, and this is nothing new. Look back over
the history of even just twentieth century graphic/print design, and you will
see how marked trends define periods in time. The fact that one product or
group uses the same or similar elements to another does not say that one is
the copy of another, simply that they are both products of the same era.

I haven't used iOS 7 yet, so I can't say this with certainty, but based on my
experience with Apple, I feel pretty confident to say that they may have
integrated similar graphic motifs you're familiar with from other platforms,
but the end experience will be leaps and bounds better than others who've
tried to implement the same elements. There is real thought put into how a
person will best use this product, not just how clean and pretty the UI can
look.

~~~
Geee
No, this isn't true this time. I have been using iOS 7 on iPhone 5 for a day
now, and I have mixed feelings. I have always trusted Apple to 'get it right'
and be delighted with thought-out details and just no-frills great UX.

I know it's Beta, but it honestly looks and _feels_ like Android with a bit of
lag here and there, some stuttering animations, confusing unlock and answer
call screens, too thin fonts for my taste, icons and iconography aren't that
great either (opinion), completely unnecessary eye-candy with animated
parallax background which doesn't even work very well, etc.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that bad, but 'leaps and bounds better', I say
no. I'm sure they'll redefine the design for final product though.

~~~
ruswick
> _I know it 's Beta, but it honestly looks and feels like Android with a bit
> of lag here and there._

This sort of lag has been a common artifact throughout the iPhone's history.
Crashing apps, lag, and outright unresponsiveness are daily occurrences on my
iPhone 5. It's honestly gotten to the point where, if I didn't have an
astronomical amount of money tied up in their ecosystem, I'd switch to a Nexus
4 tonight.

~~~
nbuggia
I have one that I would be happy to trade for your iPhone 5. While the nexus
is a great device, it has tons of lags, and hangs. Android seems to be an
amalgamation of rough edges - and I love google! For goodness sake, to add a
telephone number to a contact you need to select 'add field' and then select
the field type before you can enter the value. Okay, I'll stop with my rant,
but seriously, I would live to trade. The screen and FF of the nexus are
perfect IMHO.

~~~
inthewind
At least you are in agreement that all of those devices are buggy! I for some
reason just can't stand the rough edges, and am still waiting for a smartphone
that I want - and I've been waiting for a long time.

Having said that I do use a Blackberry (but not really out of choice,) and it
also drives me nuts!

I'd have thought that the number one priority for most of these UI developers
would be to make something that was intuitive and very usable. Getting the
phone part of the phone nice would be a good start.

Adding contacts, viewing call logs, checking balance, turning on and off
answerphones etc.

Being able to read the display in sunlight. Being able to use it as a clock,
and it be readable. Not having the thing beep at 4am to tell you that it's
running out of battery etc.

There's loads of directions these UIs could go in. And they could be
completely different to one another, but share some underlying principles.
Like intuitive computer game interfaces, that you pretty much pick up
immediately.

What I have been most impressed with is watching babies/toddlers play with
iPhones. Which suggests the interface is pretty good. Though there have been
cases of kids racking up huge account costs. But how about an easy way to
child lock the damn thing, or make this harder.

And how about a phone that doesn't crack when you drop it. I watched someone
destroy his Galaxy S the other morning, and he wasn't that pleased about it.

Hope I've suitably ranted for you.

------
shurcooL
I don't understand this obsession with complaining about copying or imitating
in design. As long as good things are taken and worse things are left behind,
the consumers benefit.

It's like being upset that the 2014 cars have the same steering wheel and
pedal layout, or that a manufacturer "stole" the idea of using a USB port in a
car.

~~~
tolmasky
I can't speak for other people, but I can perhaps share some insight from my
feelings. Just to get it out of the way, it is a bit annoying to see a company
that is normally absolutely obsessed with others copying them now doing the
same. But as eyebrow raising as that is, its not really my main concern.

 _My_ personal issue with this design is that it signals the coming of a
boring lull in mobile design. Its the death of distinction. Android, Windows,
and iPhone now largely look the same (to me). In fact I think the Windows
stuff actually looks better. Its upsetting because there are surely more than
just _two_ possible designs ("flat" or "skeuomorphic"). Did iOS need a design
overhaul? I don't know (I'm personally of the belief that it was missing key
features and services more than a new skin). But if for the sake of argument
it did, then this just frankly feels lazy on Apple's part. It was the most
obvious direction to go in, and its been done. Aqua and iOS 1 were different,
fresh, and represented an original vision for UIs. Even if you didn't like
them it provided something to contrast to. This just provides something to
compare to :/

~~~
Finster
I feel like your argument basically distills down to: "All flat designs look
alike."

Surely, that's not the case. And as I've been messing around with IOS7, I'm
noticing a lot more than just a graphical redesign. This is also a usability
redesign. Little things like including a contact button at the top of the
Messages app itself rather than at the top of the message view. IOS7 is full
of these little tweaks that have been standard fare in the jailbreak
communities.

To boil it down to "a boring lull in mobile design" is to really ignore the
quality of the IOS7 redesign.

~~~
tolmasky
I think you may have made my point better than I did: I'm just not that
impressed with Apple finally cribbing off the jailbreak community, and I
sincerely hope that the future of iOS is not endless tweaking held up as some
paramount of interaction design. Am I happy with these changes? Sure, the same
way I'm happy that Mac OS X has finally fixed the multiple-display bug that
has plagued it for 3 years. But these (long overdue) changes a bold OS do not
make. And perhaps the argument is that Apple is not trying to make a bold new
OS. _However_ , that is definitely what it is presenting iOS 7 as, so I feel
that I have a right to disagree.

I think the community in general has felt that iOS 7 was Apple's chance to
respond to the criticisms (fair or not) that iOS was stagnating, and I feel
that that is what Apple feels it has accomplished. I feel they have done so in
the shallowest way possible. To me they presented a corporate image of playing
catchup: catching up to Windows and Android visual design cues, catching up to
jailbreak experiments that have been happening for years, catching up to
interactions we saw in Web OS ages ago. I'm not saying they shouldn't have
done this, I'm saying that in my eyes these are bug fixes and there exists an
Apple that pushed further. There are a million things I wish Safari did every
single day that I use it, and quite frankly "3d tab organization" is not one
of them.

This is my point, I think people are not seeing the actual usability
improvements that could have taken place. You think design is more than just
visual stuff, its usability. I agree, I just think its more than making things
take 3 taps less. Remember the original iPhone and iOS, it was a completely
different way of interacting with your phone that allowed you to do NEW things
you couldn't before. Google is now exploring real new territory with their
excellent services like Google Now. If Apple wants to keep fighting services
and infrastructure with "design", that's fine, but its going to require more
than endlessly spinning its wheels trying to figure out the "best" weather
interface possible and micro-optimizing insignificant interactions with the
OS.

~~~
gfodor
Have you actually used the beta or are you another person basing opinions
about an operating system based upon screenshots?

------
vxNsr
Not to be partisan, or anything.

The thing that stood out the most for me was slide-up to unlock, that's been a
Windows thing since they began their redesign with WP (from WinMobile).

Still I think that somehow Apple did a better job with the flat UI, I'm
currently using Windows 8 (by choice) and my phone is a Lumia 521 (again by
choice), and I always feel that something is off with the WP/W8 buttons, they
just seem too flat or too... just off -- I can't explain it but I get this
weird feeling everytime I see them, the buttons and controls just don't feel
polished enough.

When I first installed W8 on my laptop, I thought it might be because it's a
beta product and not finished, then when they shipped those icons, I thought
it was just my screen (my laptop is a four year old dell inspiron that shipped
with vista, incidentally it runs W8 better than it did W7, and better than
vista before that), but now that I have a new smartphone the niggling is
justified -- there _is_ something odd about the buttons, especially when
compared to the new iOS7.

~~~
kennywinker
Irony: it only looks like it's slide up to unlock. It's actually slide
sideways. My twitter stream right now is full of people pointing out how
deeply confusing that little arrow at the bottom of the screen is.

See it in action:

[http://appadvice.com/appnn/2013/06/slide-to-unlock-
appadvice...](http://appadvice.com/appnn/2013/06/slide-to-unlock-appadvice-
goes-hands-on-with-ios-7s-new-lock-screen)

~~~
cheald
This is something that really, desperately confuses me. Apple is supposedly
the king of intuitive design, and yet here, you have literally the first
interface people will see on the phone, with an interaction model which is
completely impossible to intuit, and only works for people who are already
trained in how to complete the action.

I get the desire to eliminate depth, but that little slide gutter and right-
pointing arrow tell you exactly what you need to know. The iOS7 UI instructs
you to do the wrong thing!

~~~
sosuke
The text slide to unlock has a shine animation that moves from left to right.

~~~
cheald
I get that, but I think it's very difficult to make an argument that given a
new user, it would be interpreted as an interaction cue rather than just
visual polish.

The presence of the up arrow is actively misleading, from a UX perspective.
It's like having a slide toggle that you have to double tap to activate!

~~~
Samuel_Michon
iPhoneOS/iOS has been around for 6 years. 600 million devices have been sold
that all have the same ‘slide to unlock’ mechanism. Now that the majority of
phones being sold are smartphones, Apple must’ve felt that it’s OK to remove
some of the training wheels. Whether that’s wise remains to be seen. Microsoft
finally removed the ‘Start’ button from Windows, but that has been met with
quite some resistance, from new and experienced users alike.

Few people read user manuals, which Apple knows. It doesn’t even ship a
physical user manual with their iOS products (just a thin quickstart guide).
There are in-depth user manuals available for download[1], but the percentage
of iPhone owners who read it must be negligible. I often meet iOS users who
don’t know that double-tap on the Home button brings up the app switcher.

As the OSes on these mobile devices become more capable over time (and the
interaction model grows more complicated), users may need to start treating
them as computers that require learning beyond trial and error.

[1]
[http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iphone_user_guide.pdf](http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iphone_user_guide.pdf)

~~~
gurkendoktor
Once people treat them as the complicated computers they are, we can start the
countdown to post-post-PC devices.

Especially because there is no reason to drop the visual slider, or to make
all the visual hints on the screen super low-contrast (on the new starry sky
background at least).

------
marknutter
Cached:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:chris.m...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:chris.millr.org/ios-7-looks-
familiar-cant-quite-put-my-finger-on-it/)

------
jroseattle
The similarity to Windows Phone and some concepts I first saw on Android were
what caught my eye here. And do I think that's a bad thing? No.

I think what has everyone generally up in arms is that, with Apple, they never
look like they're copying anyone. Until they do.

And what frustrates others is when users try to explain away how it's not
really a copy, it's something different because it's done oh-so-much better.

I don't really care all that much, but one thing is certain -- the new iOS7
design looks more like designs of competitors than it does the previous iOS
line.

------
richkuo
In a general sense, this is natural design evolution - where Darwin's mutation
and natural selection concepts can be applied (generally) to the evolution and
advancement of good/effective design.

The windows phone likely took some of its design concepts from previous iOS
and Android designs, and now iOS7 is 'evolving' the same way.

This (evolution) can be described as a recursive process: keep the things that
work (natural selection), try something new (mutate) with the things that
didn't work.

I would also like to note that I find iOS7's weather app design closely
resembles Yahoo's weather app, more so than the Windows' phone.

~~~
JosephHatfield
The Yahoo Weather app is quite well done and I think one of the best weather
apps on the iPhone. Apple couldn't have chosen a better weather app to "steal"
from.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
Apple likes Yahoo!’s Weather app so much they gave it a Apple Design Award.
Their review:

“Yahoo! Weather stands apart with its simple, uncluttered, and beautiful
visual design. This highly-rated app displays weather details with stunning
photography based on time of day, location, and current conditions. Yahoo!
Weather has great layout and typography, compelling animations, fast image
processing, and clear iconography. This attention to detail means that in a
saturated category, an app can rise above the crowd.”

[https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/events/awards/#yahoo-
weathe...](https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/events/awards/#yahoo-weather)

------
_progger_
It's a cross between WP and Android. It's a very strange feeling when you
realise you could do a better job at UX design then a multi-billion company.

~~~
rimantas
Then why don't you do it? Redesigning the entire OS is a bit more complex than
proclaiming that it is similar to something and you can do it better.

~~~
_progger_
My point is that you could expect such an obvious decision as making a mix of
UX styles of two other competing platforms to be executed a bit better.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Design always looks easier than it really is. Even the most shanzhai designers
must work very hard to copy a design given other constraints (cost) they are
limited by. And the imitation often misses many details.

------
Recoil42
The lock screen looks much closer to Android's than it does Windows Phone, as
Droid Life points out: [http://www.droid-life.com/2013/06/10/that-moment-when-
ios7-b...](http://www.droid-life.com/2013/06/10/that-moment-when-ios7-became-
android/)

~~~
makomk
I actually first saw the new lock screen linked by some random comment poster
on one of the tech sites and had to double-check that it wasn't some Android
variant and that they weren't having me on. Not joking.

------
mtgx
Another one:

[http://www.droid-life.com/2013/06/10/ios7-vs-android-a-
quick...](http://www.droid-life.com/2013/06/10/ios7-vs-android-a-quick-
comparison-after-the-wwdc-keynote/)

~~~
emehrkay
Apple clearly took ideas from Google/Android. However, Apple's offerings look
to have a level of polish that the Android ones do not have. Each and every
comparison on that page looks like Google's engineers' visuals vs Apple's
artists' \-- thats the thing that "regular" people will instinctively
gravitate to -- the one that is pretty.

~~~
JacobSkyler
The only Android screenshots that look less pretty to me are the ones taken in
the middle of doing something, e.g. the Android lock screen notifications
which is in the process of being pulled down vs. the Apple one which looks a
lot cleaner because it's fully extended.

------
skeletonjelly
Mirror anyone?

Edit:

Text: [http://chris.millr.org.nyud.net:8080/ios-7-looks-familiar-
ca...](http://chris.millr.org.nyud.net:8080/ios-7-looks-familiar-cant-quite-
put-my-finger-on-it/)

Images:

[http://chris.millr.org.nyud.net:8080/wp-
content/uploads/2013...](http://chris.millr.org.nyud.net:8080/wp-
content/uploads/2013/06/01-Weather.jpg)

[http://chris.millr.org.nyud.net:8080/wp-
content/uploads/2013...](http://chris.millr.org.nyud.net:8080/wp-
content/uploads/2013/06/02-Call.jpg)

[http://chris.millr.org.nyud.net:8080/wp-
content/uploads/2013...](http://chris.millr.org.nyud.net:8080/wp-
content/uploads/2013/06/03-Multitasking.jpg)

[http://chris.millr.org.nyud.net:8080/wp-
content/uploads/2013...](http://chris.millr.org.nyud.net:8080/wp-
content/uploads/2013/06/04-Lockscreen.jpg)

------
jwarren
Everyone is so quick to judge the static pictures. But Apple took great pains
to point out how this is a reactive system, how movement, suggestion and
gesture follow the user's interactions. Sure, the current culture of design
appreciation that they played a big part in has now started moving faster than
they are. But that's mistaking visual decoration for how something works.
Based on past experience, I trust Apple to make it more than skin deep.

------
CanSpice
During the WWDC keynote I tweeted this:

"Not sure what's worse about WWDC keynote days: Apple fans cheering for new
features or Android/WP fans saying "we have that already"."

It's boring and repetitive and expected. Yeah, they mimic. Big deal. Get over
it.

~~~
infinitone
Samsung would like to have a word with you. (motioning the lawsuit that Apple
took up against them last year over petty things like rounded corners)

------
nikster
iOS7 after day 1.

This Steve Jobs quote comes to mind: "Design is not how something looks;
design is how it works"

Everything about iOS, and all the included apps, has been taken apart, and put
back together. Everything has been questioned.

This is amazing because I think it's the basis that will take Apple and/or iOS
to a whole new level. iOS 7 is not an evolution - it's a revolution.

~~~
jmduke
_iOS 7 is not an evolution - it 's a revolution_

What the hell does that even mean?

We can wax poetic about design and UX or we can accept that what they did was
change the way something looks and feels, which is ultimately not the same
thing as changing what something does.

I'm not underplaying the importance of design, but I think calling something
that ultimately does not affect the capabilities of the device a 'revolution'
is a bit of an exaggeration.

~~~
nikster
Repeat as you maybe missed it the first time around: "Design is not how
something looks; design is how it works"

iOS 7 doesn't change the looks. It changes how everything works. All the built
in apps have been changed completely. The entire OS layer has been changed
completely.

A revolution is not poetic - it means a significant change where all the old
paradigms are thrown out and replaced with new ones.

I was up until 1:00 am yesterday night finding more and more features and
changes, and I am still finding more changes. I know it's not technically but
it certainly feels like iOS has been re-written from scratch.

------
jsz0
You could put Android, WP and iOS side-by-side and they are going to look (and
work) more alike than different in most areas. That's what happens when these
products reach a huge mass market. There is too much risk (for established
players) to diverge too far from what is familiar to so many people. Also why
it's so difficult for non-established players to compete. They can't diverge
very far from what people are familiar with. We're locked into basically the
same SmartPhone flavors until the hardware changes so radically that the
software has to change radically to accommodate it.

------
gte910h
The OS looks far better on a device in front of you than on a static picture
on a website or on a projector on a wall.

~~~
myko
Everything except the home screen icons/default background. Those are still
fairly hideous.

Still time to fix it though, I don't expect Apple to leave it in this state.

I'm more concerned with why hasn't Apple made lower case keys show up on the
keyboard yet? This is a no brainer.

~~~
omni
As I look at the upper-case keys on my 2012 Macbook Pro, I'm not sure why you
think they are going to do this.

~~~
myko
The keyboard could easily switch between upper and lower case depending on
what the user is actually entering. Why wouldn't they do that? It just seems
like an easy win.

~~~
kunai
I don't really see how this is a huge step up in terms of usability...

~~~
snprbob86
I think I'd actually find it quite distracting while I am typing.

~~~
snowwrestler
WebOS doees it and it's incredibly distracting; it looks like every key
jitters slightly every time I hit the shift key.

------
tomelders
You first have to start with the fact that _every_ smartphone has copied the
iPhone†

From there, it's impossible to see how Apple could possibly change anything
without someone somewhere claiming that they've ripped off something from
somewhere else. But the people they're allegedly _ripping off_ have in turn
_ripped off_ Apple, rendering the entire debate pointless.

†Not that it's a bad thing, once the iPhone came out, everyone else had to
copy it. The first iPhone was the starting point for how all smartphones from
that point on _shoud_ be.

------
mambodog
Considering iOS 7 is a 'flat' redesign, it's hardly surprising that it bears
stylistic similarities to other flat mobile UI designs.

The flat trend in web and app UI design has been building for the last couple
of years. We're at a point where flat is simply the present zeitgeist of UI
design.

However, 'flat' largely covers superficial aspects of design. Where iOS still
differs is in the actual meat of the design; the interactivity and user
experience.

Also, as the page was down for me, here's the Google cached page:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FATZrqh...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FATZrqhzREAJ:chris.millr.org/ios-7-looks-
familiar-cant-quite-put-my-finger-on-it/)

------
andyharl
"Good artists borrow, great artists steal." ~ Pablo Picasso

All these interfaces are pillaging the Bauhaus! Shame on them! Shame Shame
Shame! (-;

[http://www.effectiveui.com/blog/2013/04/26/an-historical-
per...](http://www.effectiveui.com/blog/2013/04/26/an-historical-perspective-
of-flat-versus-rich-usability-design/)

In all seriousness though, there isn't any original design. To think that the
goal of design is to snatch something from thin air in moments of lighting
like brilliance is a gross misconception. Designing is solving problems.

------
daddy2twin
Flat design has been around for a while. I remember seeing them on phones
before iPhone 1, and also on various Linux desktops. People says Microsoft or
Google did this first hasn't been around enough.

Personally, I like previous version better.

As for other features, iPhone jailbreaking community should take more credit
then Google or others, quick access to wifi and other settings. I remember
seeing them on jail broken iPhone way before Android.

------
batbomb
Get over this already. "Flat" design or whatever the hell we all want to call
it has been the application of the International Typographic Style to UI
elements across phones.

If you are worried about somebody ripping somebody off, worry about the works
from Jan Tschichold, Adrian Frutiger, or Josef Müller-Brockmann being ripped
off, not MS, Apple, Android, or whoever else.

------
snowwrestler
Where oh where did Microsoft get the idea to totally rebuild their mobile OS
around the concept of a full-face capacitive touch-screen?

~~~
DaemonHN
I don't see what this has to do with iOS7 looking similar to Windows.

See: [https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-
quoque](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque)

------
wisty
Honestly, I think iOS has gone too flat.

Flat is beautiful, and easy to use, if it strips away non-functional chrome.
It's even more beautiful, but a little hard to use, if it obscures the
controls. A pro user (say, one who's trained on a previous version, and knows
what functions are available) might feel at home, but it's just not intuitive
anymore.

------
hdra
I actually think the homescreen icons look kind of similar to the one in
Symbian (especially Safari - Ovi Maps).

------
shortstuffsushi
When I see the new screenshots, I can only think of the old, maybe 2003 era
Microsoft Powerpoint themes. I haven't quite been able to pin down what about
it is drawing the parallel for me, but it is.

Having an unfortunately difficult time finding a relevant link :(

------
andyhmltn
You see the thing is that it's nothing like windows phone. Having had it all
day, I can definately not see any such 'copying.' The style of the design is
not the design itself. To copy is the act of replicating something.

------
brown9-2
The incoming phone call and last screenshots are unfair - the iPhone of today
would look a lot more similar to Windows Phone and iOS 7 if there was a facial
photo of the caller and if the background image was a bunch of dots.

------
smegel
I'm not convinced. They seem to share a very high level "clean" theme, but
there are enough differences to make me feel it is not a knock off. It does
make their old design look rather gaudy though.

------
Oculus
"We(Apple) have always been shameless about stealing great ideas" \- Steve
Jobs

We progress by improving upon the current best. Clearly Apple felt that
Microsoft had taken some steps in the right direction.

------
emehrkay
Ha. Apple removes some gloss and all-of-a-sudden it looks like OSes that post-
date it.

~~~
nivla
You do realize that there is more to flat design than just removing gloss? If
I were to agree with your statement then I would say the opposite is also
true. Draw a rectangle, add some gloss and voila.. Apple's design right?

~~~
emehrkay
Put the iOS images side by side, shit even ignore the ios7 images, and the
difference is gloss(and button shape). My point is that layout/placement of
elements seem to be a constant, while it is actual dress that is the
differentiator. Functionally it seems that iOS hasn't changed. The lock screen
looks different, but seems to behave as it does now (the bokeh effect is the
only thing that compares from this article). And I can't fault them for taking
WebOS' multitasker, every small-screen os should use it.

------
6ren
good artists copy, great artists steal (and yes microsoft does work worth
stealing).

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU)

~~~
Tomis02
Yes, and when Apple steals it's called "innovation".

------
outside1234
no, you don't understand. when Apple copies people it is "amazing" and
"revolutionary". when other people copy Apple it is a "lawsuit" and "evil."

get with the program. :)

------
Sealy
I'm getting a 404 for that link. Anybody got a mirror?

------
pizu
Noooooooooooooooo? OMG!

------
harel
Apple on Anderoids

------
taktix
I have the Lumia 920 and Microsoft absolutely nailed the design of the OS. It
works seamlessly with Office Live/Online/365 whatever the heck they call it
too. The home screen of the phone agitates my OCD something fierce because I
have to get it just right or... I'll... die...

Seriously though, its a great phone and if you need one for work like I do,
might as well get one you really like.

~~~
Gigablah
Lumia 900 owner here. OS is nice, but the apps... just as an example, I got
really frustrated with IE this morning because it didn't recognize StartCom as
a trusted certificate authority, and it doesn't cache my response (to ignore
the warning and browse the page anyway). The https page loaded the first time,
but subsequent pages just showed blank screens. And that stupid SSL warning
page just kept popping up.

It's 2013 and I can't browse certain web pages with my expensive smartphone...

------
philthesong
We are talking about smartphone screens. There are not lots of flexibilities
for UI design. You either slide up or to the side for a lock screen. And what
about time?

~~~
cheald
Sure there are. Android has seen a lot of different lock screen types - drag
the small circle out of the big circle, drag the small circle into the big
circle, "rotary dial" unlock, pattern unlock, and Samsung's (or was it HTC?)
"fling the whole screen" unlock style.

Contextual gesture unlock/launch mechanisms are actually pretty popular.
Here's an example with 4 options, but that is by no means the only option set.

[http://cloud.addictivetips.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/05/MI...](http://cloud.addictivetips.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/05/MIUI-4-Launher-Port-Android-Lock-Screen.jpg)

~~~
SEMW
The reason for all that creativity is to try and get around Apple's
breathtakingly broad patent for unlocking a phone by moving along a
"predefined displayed path".

[http://www.google.com/patents/US7657849](http://www.google.com/patents/US7657849)

------
bane
You know, I can see that. If Android is ripping off iOS that really means that
for iOS to step up and get modern, Android isn't the template to follow --
Android is stuck with innovating off of iOS's past accomplishments...it's
innovating while walking backwards.

WM, being a ground-up re-imagining of how smart phones work _is_ looking
forward...better to co-opt some of those ideas instead...be in a position of
innovating while walking forwards.

~~~
cheald
What makes you think that Android is ripping off iOS?

~~~
bobsoap
Perhaps the same thing that seems to have convinced most every Apple user that
their products are magical and categorically superior to every other product
in existence: good marketing paired with illusory naivety on the receiving
end.

