Has Apple made a mess? UI Discusion.

Posted by IRON MAN on September 21, 2012 01:22 am 70

I would call Apple's UI theme slightly insane right now.

In 2007 the iPhone was shown and with that a new UI with a very glossy and slick vibe and theme.

That carried till iOS 3 with minor tweaks until..

Well welcome to the mess iOS 4.

Don't quote me on this but I do believe that beta for iOS 4 had this:

This is what the Multitasking app switcher and the folders had as the background image, this fitted in with the sleek and glossy theme. Right?

Game Center was added to iOS giving a water down Xbox live to iPhone.

In the beta Game Center looked like this:

Once again sticking with the theme..

Then at WWDC in 2010 Apple unveiled the iPhone 4 and also the new UI design language for OS releases.

Apple switched the metal for stitched cloth in multitasking and folders:

They completely changed Game Center:

This had been carried over to iOS 5 with notifications:

And siri:

So what the hell happened?

Why is this bad?

How did it cause the mess?

Skeuomorphism is poison. Right J-Tops!

I can understand why Apple picked skeuomorphism as a UI design language. The iPhone was all ready easy to use and adding skeuomorphism lets people who have never used anything technological grasp what this application does.

Why this is bad. It just looks plain ugly replicating real objects and turning them into a frankensteined virtuel naff monster made out of stitched cloth and suede. Its a waste of pixels the iPhone screen is small and limited so you need every single pixel for the information but with skeuomorphism you have to add things that are only logical in the real world, nobody needs virtuel suede for their calendar or ripped paper in notes.

This has messed up iOS big time, leaving a big gap between the glossy and sleek apps and the ~~replicator~~ skeuomorphic apps. When going from Game Center to Phone is jaring since the look is compete different and makes iOS a odd experience.

What I am saying is GO HARD OR GO HOME.

Right now Apple are slowly changing iOS into a skeuomorphism beast. This is making Apple boring and obvious, my prediction is that Apple will be going under similar surgery as Michael Jackson instead of going from black to white, iOS will be going from metal to pleather. (Now they just need a Doctor but not the one that kills them.)