This is exactly the wrong attitude in my opinion. How does it help users to all of a sudden have most apps feel ancient? Is it really something to be proud of? That for the next year we'll be working on replacing existing utilities so that they feel "right" and "fresh" instead of doing what we should be doing: thinking of actual new software that is worthwhile to write.
I've been saying this for a while but I think what is happening, and what many developers haven't noticed yet, is that we have exhausted the utility of software for software's sake. The interesting stuff happening in mobile now has nothing to do with "design" in the traditional sense any more. Its not enough to just have a coder and a designer on the team. The really cool stuff is all about what your phone actually allows you to do in the real world. Look at apps like uber, postmates, spotify, and twitch.tv. Most of these have terrible UI's, but that's not the point. The point is that they allow you to do things. I can have a car on my doorstep! I can listen to almost any song I want. They're not just another calculator app or news reader, so who cares if its not the prettiest or easiest thing to use in the world. They are an interface to actually useful services. Software was interesting on its own a decade ago, but the industry has grown up, its time to do things now. That doesn't mean that "UI and UX" don't matter, it just means their definition changes and grows beyond just how you tap things on glass and what pixels you choose to animate.
The reason that iOS 7 seems comforting in the way its described in this article is because it gives developers who haven't realized this something to do again. Marco is absolutely right, for a long time it has felt like all the major categories have been covered on the app store. That's a good thing! It means we've solved lots of problems. We shouldn't daydream of a day when those problems get artificially unsolved so we can have another shot at them. We should move on.
> I've been saying this for a while but I think what is happening, and what many developers haven't noticed yet, is that we have exhausted the utility of software for software's sake...
> Software was interesting on its own a decade ago, but the industry has grown up, its time to do things now.
Smartphones are important because they allow people to use computers in a manner that wasn't feasible in the past because of the size of computing devices.
However, smartphones have not produced any important innovations from a software point of view. They are not innovative because they don't need to be; they are simply the logical consequent of the advances in the miniaturization of hardware.
The market saturation you describe is not the result of a glut of innovation, but rather is just a consequence of developers porting existing desktop functionality onto a smartphone. You can take pictures and use voice recognition software to ask where nearby restaurants if you carry around a desktop or a laptop; you just probably wouldn't want to.
Actually, smartphones are a good example of how non-innovative and illogical the computing world can be.
Underneath the touch-based interfaces, they run on a kernel written in a memory-unsafe, non-garbage collected, insecure, and inexpressive language that was designed to target the PDP-11. Because the operating system is so flawed and incompetent that it can't be trusted to prevent rogue processes from stepping on others, you end up with a lack of a useable file system and awful communication between apps. Of course, the joke is that these restrictions are almost worthless because you can almost always bypass the system security and jailbreak the device; then maybe you can do something useful with your phone without.
Its part of a larger trend in the computing world to ignore history and reinvent wheels, and call it innovation. Case in point: web apps, which, unless you are replacing a legacy application, are a terrible idea. Not only will they always face latency issues, but they also use awful languages designed to serve and manipulate text and are at least twice as slow as native code. Software on smartphones is interesting in the same way that a "Hello world!" program is interesting to C programmer; the programmer is so surprised that he has fought an unfriendly, unintuitive system full of kludges and managed to output text to the screen without the program crashing and dumping core that he doesn't notice how trivial the output is.
Of course, what we have today is better than nothing. In a way, the massive and unnecessarily resource intensive process that we have now is uplifting because it shows the determination of the human spirit; just imagine what we could accomplish if we invested in the right things.
I think Marco is saying this is good from an independent ios developers perspective, not necessarily from a users perspective. As somebody who makes his living as an independent app developer, I'm sure he's thrilled about this. Its undeniably an opportunity for independent developers who don't have to maintain an existing app. Whether its good for users or the ecosystem in general is a totally different discussion.
> How does it help users to all of a sudden have most apps feel ancient?
It helps users in that the "new design" is an improvement over the "old design".
A case study, the Windows file picker dialog:
Win3.1 dialogs felt foreign to 95, while XP-style apps feel foreign to Vista-style apps. There is no debate that from win3 to win7 the file picker dialog got improved each time. Easier item selection, easier reading, easier tree traversal, quicker arrival to favorites...
What is true for this dialog is true for the whole system. rundll32 tabbed preference panes survive in Win8 to this day. They felt like they came from the future back then on win95, while today they're old and crufty, alien and inscrutable.
This is not change for the sake of change. Design is how it works. Good design is thorough and holistic. If you only improve part of the system, you end up with a hodgepodge of UI versions with no conventions across the board and only results in an overall bad usability and maintainability.
I agree with you, but I think that an occasional design shakeup hits people on a different level, subconsciously. A new look affects the feel of an application, which can actually affect how people view the substantial portions of an app.
That's a valid point, but isn't this a forum of mostly developers and tech-savvy people? While your point stands, I have a feeling that a lot of readers of HN will be looking at this from the OP's point of view.
It seems hypocritical to laud fragmentation when it happens in iOS and decry it in Android. These changes seem similar to the Android differences in gingerbread and post-honeycomb. The resulting effect on developers will be the same. iOS 7 has made it apparent which bloggers are unable or unwilling to be fair in their criticism when it comes to Apple. The mismatched gradients on the new icons are beautiful to them, the wire frame and confusing UI elements are revolutionary, and fragmentation is simply just creating fertile ground for change. Great.
This is a very a good point. As a major Apple fan I completely agree with you. After looking over the iOS changes I see absolutely nothing that is more "revolutionary" than what we have now in iOS6, or even what Android and Windows Phone offers.
At best, it looks like iOS7 is nothing more than a mix of Android and Windows Phone plus a few extra UI elements.
I am not a big fan of Marco's obsession with drama but I do respect his opinion and find his take on certain thing within the tech industry enlightening. Unfortunately, this post does seem like nothing more than turning a blind eye to what Apple has done with iOS7.
Android would not have a real fragmentation issue if 70% of all users could easily update and did so within 12 months. Important distinction that negates this argument I think. (I am Android user for day to day phone)
Fragmentation implies "fragments". iOS 6 has a 93% install base. An ever-shrinking 7% isn't much of a fragment to worry about. iOS 7, due to it's new shiny factor, will likely see an even faster adoption than iOS 6.
I think you forgot the part where Android fragmentation leaned more towards the 3 year old version. 2.3 is still huge. If Android had simply evolved fast and all the new phones had the new Android the problem wouldn't be so bad.
"iOS 7 is different. It isn’t just a new skin: it introduces entirely new navigational and structural standards..."
Beyond the parallax effect, what are these new navigation and structural changes? I'm not trolling here, I'm genuinely curious. I'm about to build a new iOS app and I did not see major navigation or structural changes that would drastically affect how I design an app's UI or UX.
Yeah, I think this is somewhat of an overstatement. UINavigationController? Still there. UITabBar? Still there. UIHamburgerController? Not there. Another radically different way to organize UIViewControllers? Nope.
That being said, there are a few new things that do stand out:
1) Everything is supposed to be fullscreen as often as possible, with the chrome hiding as much as possible. "Deference to content."
2) Transitioning between view controllers should ideally "zoom" in to new content. Like the calendar app zooming into a day view from a month view or a year's worth of photos zooming into a collection of chronological "collections." In other words, your transitions should communicate _how_ the view controllers relate more than just you're replacing one with another.
3) Text Everywhere. (only new on iOS)
4) More abstract but also more physical (read: mimicking the laws of nature, like physics, rather than mimicking things humans have made, read: skeuomorphism)
SpriteKit is going to be huge. Expect about a year of getting developers ready with it, and good at it, then Apple TV may have something awesome for us.
I'm getting pretty tired of blog post titles that give no real hint at all as to the topic. My mind labels them as "pretentious" because they're pretending to be deep when they're not; by that I mean that rarely do the posts offer up any kind of non-trivial insight. (Compare with PG's similarly titled essays.) Earlier today we had "Two i's" from DHH's crew (where you had to infer from reading the post that it was i for interesting and i for important). Dustin Curtis recently had "Glass". Please, you will still be the coolest people on the planet if you don't try to title your posts per the ineffable style of Apple product advertisements, and as a bonus we will even like you and your work a little bit more.
Marco's not attempting to communicate clearly in the sense of "push data down foobarbazqux's infohole." He's trying to communicate clearly in the sense of "grab foobar's attention, state his perspective provocatively, and attempt to not only reach an audience but make them think and talk."
Clearly he's succeeded, from the conversation going on in this post. Marco is occasionally pretty obnoxious, and his ideas are frequently not always well thought-out, but I like writers who attempt to be not only clear, but compelling.
Paul Graham has plenty of terrible essay names, and plenty of terrible essays at that. One of the things that frustrates me about him as a writer is that on occasion he attempts to strike an "objective" tone while offering a skewed and entirely subjective perspective. Besides, conveying pure abstract information should not be the point of an essay. Tone, emotion, purpose, and construction should all be deliberate. Otherwise you get Mashable—ultraspecific titles geared to ultraspecific articles which are so drained of anything beyond pure bullet-point content that you could train a machine to read and interpret it. It's such a waste.
It takes you two seconds to click on a link and look at it, ten seconds tops to decide if you're going to gain something by reading it. If you're clicking on so many links per day that twelve seconds here and there is putting a dent in your productivity/well-being, then there is a worse problem here than ambiguously-titled essays, and ironically, it's a problem that you'll start to solve by seeking more challenging pieces of writing to tackle to distract yourself from the constant useless information mill that the Internet so readily provides.
You would, of course, prefer something like, "iOS 7 reset creates new opportunities for Developers" or "iOS reboot creates conditions ripe for disruption" or, ....
Honestly - "Fertile Ground" is a pretty damn good title. I can already imagine people casually discussing it at WWDC "Did you catch Marco's "Fertile Ground" post?"
Look to other operating systems that evolved their UI in similar fashion and a few of their dominant software players over the years:
Windows-Office, Quickbooks, Quicken, IE/Chrome/Firefox/Netscape (which have shifted favor over years, but not because of UI changes in the OS)
Mac OS (X and classic)-Adobe PS, Illustrator, ProTools, Office
UI changes, even major ones, have had little to no effect on the dominant software titles for those systems. There have occasionally been new categories of software introduced. For instance, high quality video editing software for the home market, which was made possible by better home cameras and major advances in speed and resources of home computers. Pervasive internet allowed the browser wars to happen. It wasn't minor UI changes in the OS that allowed new players to come onto the scene, it was major technological advances.
If you go back far enough, you can argue that the change from command line to GUI allowed for just such a revolution described (it definitely did: Wordstar/Wordperfect lost to Word, Lotus lost to Excel, AutoCad nearly lost its throne, etc.). But, nobody in their right mind is arguing that iOS 6 to iOS 7 is the difference between DOS and Windows 3.1 or between an Apple IIe and Lisa or the first Macintosh.
History isn't always the best indicator in the tech industry, but in absence of other indicators, I'll bet on history repeating in some form.
The chrome around something like Photoshop is a small part of the entire experience, and unlikely to change a purchase decision. This is not true for many smartphone apps, where the look and feel is one of the key features and selection criteria. Apps that don't update will feel crappy and old and that'll put them at a major disadvantage.
This will be a chance to catch any "lazy" dominant apps if they don't upgrade soon enough. I'm not sure if there are any dominant players that are lazy - seems like you'd need to keep on your toes if you're gonna stay dominant. So not a whole lot might change, anyways.
There were some notable changes in the Classic-to-X change. Quark XPress replaced by InDesign, BBEdit replaced by TextMate. Probably a few others, too.
Adobe's tools stood unchanged in the X switch, in no small part because they got X versions out pretty quickly that felt relatively at home. Quark, IIRC, took forever to make an X version, so Adobe was able to bring out an X page layout app and eat their lunch. Of course, it didn't hurt that everyone pretty much loathed XPress, especially its heaviest users...
I hope I'm not in some crazy minority here, but I actually value stability and UIs not changing radically all the time. I feel like there's a craze afoot at the moment to "redesign everything all the time" and I'm not a big fan of it. If you're in tech, sure, it's the "price of progress" but for the lay user (i.e. the people who pay us money for software) it's just annoying.
There's a huge tendency for designers to overstate the importance of "looking modern" as an actual end. A lot of people honestly wouldn't care if the buttons on their phone were modelled to look like 3d photorealistic rainbow poop. The designers tell them they don't need cases but they all buy the most garish hideous cases to say nothing of the bedazzler people.
Sign me up as skeptical re: the coming app store revolution.
I noticed something curious on page 10 of Apple’s iOS 7 Transition Guide[1], in the section “Things Every App Should Do”:
”Examine your app for hard-coded UI values – such as sizes and positions – and replace them with those you derive dynamically from system-provided values. Use Auto Layout to help your app respond when layout changes are required.”
Now, I may be reading too much into this, but the use of the word ‘when’ sounds to me like Apple is preparing products with other resolutions than are on the current iOS devices. I think there would be a market for a budget iPhone with a smaller screen, and a high-end iPad with a larger screen.
Also, the icon size for apps is different in iOS 7. It’s going up from 114x114 to 120x120.
Unless Apple has significantly improved new app discovery on the App Store, I don't think we are going to see any changes.
The algorithms that apple uses for the top lists promote established players, the search functions suck, and the interface for scrolling through lists of apps are so slow and clunky that it discourages users from exploring beyond the first 5-6 results in any list.
So when Android is fragmented, it is awful and is the reason the platform sucks. When iOS is fragmented, it's innovative and fresh, masterfully executed to bring new opportunities to developers. Got it.
How do you even draw such a connection in your head? Nobody once, ever, has said that the new UI that came with ICS was a bad thing. The problem is that even now, years later, the most in-use Android version is three years old.
Android fragmentation is about VERSIONS. APIs, bug fixes, security updates, and available features to a lesser extent. It has NOTHING to do with look and feel. At all. This tactic from Android fans is sad. Just expand the definition of fragmentation until it no longer means anything.
Ridiculous. When 90% of devices are using the latest OS within a year of release, trying to call that fragmentation is complete bullshit. No platform in history has been able to tout those kinds of upgrade numbers, and it's a distinct advantage for both users and developers.
Android Fragmentation is a problem because what version do you write your application for? 2.3? 4.0? Ideally 4.1/4.2, but that will miss 70% of your market who CAN'T upgrade because their Telco is not offering 4.1/4.2. Not because their hardware can't support it.
Anybody on an iPhone 4, 4S, or 5 who wants an iOS 7 app, can have it within a day of the iOS 7 release.
The downside of offering only one major phone a year, is that you don't occupy much shelf space in a best buy/AT&T - and someone casually looking for a phone, instead of a particular phone, is 90% unlikely to chose you.
The upside, is that when you offer a new OS - everyone gets to upgrade.
It's not even comparable. Android has many more levels of fragmentation than iOS ever will and Google knows that they screwed up. You have display resolution * display density * OS version * carrier OS modifications * device hardware (hard keyboard/buttons/trackpad/...).
Another point that I think has been understated thus far:
Android, WP, and iPhone's visual philosophies are closer now than ever before. I can only assume this will lead to fewer "ecosystem-exclusive" apps, which I think is a net positive for everyone.
You give way too much importance to the visual part, the reason for some apps to be ecosystem exclusive are technical or legal limitations. Writing this on a rooted Android phone with third party keyboard, through a vpn...
I keep hearing about these similarities, but most seem superficial/only visual. How menu/table UI systems work aren't necessarily similar. How does that help apps get on every system?
I felt this way after IOS started to flourish in 2008-2009.
"Why didn't I start building iPhone apps back then."
Now IOS7, and Marco saying this, I can anticipate the same sensation if I don't hop onboard after this refresh.
This is wrong. The vast majority don't want their OS (whether it is phone, desktop, laptop, etc.) to suddenly change. They want stability. They have invested the time and effort to learn the UI and integrate it into their lives, change disrupts this and wastes their time.
If you force them into learning a new way to do things you have just reduced the friction of them switching to some other platform. And that's how you lose customers.
It's honestly not that different. Messaging is just as easy as before. Using Calendar is just as easy as before. All of the apps that aren't Apple's are the exact same and will be for the beginning of the official release. You underestimate people and their ability to adapt to change.
Thousands of developers will be perfectly happy to drop iOS 5 and 6 support and remodel their apps for iOS 7 – myself included – because:
a. The new APIs and Xcode look lovely to work with.
b. Dropping support for iPhone 3G and 3GS devices four years after they were released doesn't feel unreasonable.
c. Apple has a long history of featuring apps that use their latest APIs. Having your app featured is still the only reasonable hope to make money in the App Store, unless your business model revolves around selling Smurfberries.
d. Many developers will have been holding back from making major app changes because they were waiting to see how iOS 7 would change the design language. Now that they know, they can spend the Summer redesigning.
e. Apple are openly inviting developers to "reimagine your apps on iOS 7" - that's the language they've used in their developer emails.
f. A successful developer with a widely read blog has just come out and said that everyone who drops support for older iOS versions to build afresh on top of iOS 7 stands to gain a lot.
So there will probably be a huge host of "new, nimble" apps with new takes on tired old setups come Autumn.
But I bet a lot of torch app developers are feeling very hard done by.
iOS 7 is in many ways a new beginning for both Apple, its users, and its developers, but I think the OA is relying a bit too much on hyperbole. In the DP, there weren't really too many navigational changes, and the UI was still instantly familiar. Yes, there are new APIs and other neat fancy rendering stuff, and you can't discount the influence of the application's look and feel, but... it didn't feel very different, at least with regards to an experience perspective. It looks markedly better (apart from about 5-6 odd-looking icons on the home screen), and designing around that will perhaps be the most daunting challenge.
It will separate the best from the worst, however, and this beginning, this chance to start fresh, is what I look forward to.
As a developer who hasn't published an app in the iOS App store, I love the point that Marco's making. One of my biggest biggest hesitations in developing an iOS application has been, how the hell can I differentiate myself? By being one of the first iOS 7 apps! I don't have to have some crazy sense of design, or think too hard about what gradients I use, since my app will stand out from the start. I think that's one of the main points in the argument.
As a developer who has friends who have developed "non-trivial" iOS apps, damn. This is pretty spot on exactly what happened (happening still even) on Android with pre/post 3.0 applications. Making sure that the UI works on both categories of devices is just awful. There are a few projects out there to help (ActionBarSherlock, HoloEverywhere), but it takes a lot of diligence, ESPECIALLY if you're trying to do combination tablet and phone apps.
A lot of the posts I've read on this thread are missing the point of the post. It's not just about change, its not about fragmentation, its about the excitement for newcomers to join an ecosystem that has felt super saturated for years. It may not actually shake the foundation of the app store, but it at least allows for new talent to enter on the same playing field as those who have been developing iOS applications for years. That's just exciting.
That's where the opportunity is. If "eventually" is six months, then you have six months to make your mark. By then, if you play your cards right and/or you get lucky, you can get in a good position and try to hold it, which you may not have had the chance before.
[+] [-] tolmasky|12 years ago|reply
This is exactly the wrong attitude in my opinion. How does it help users to all of a sudden have most apps feel ancient? Is it really something to be proud of? That for the next year we'll be working on replacing existing utilities so that they feel "right" and "fresh" instead of doing what we should be doing: thinking of actual new software that is worthwhile to write.
I've been saying this for a while but I think what is happening, and what many developers haven't noticed yet, is that we have exhausted the utility of software for software's sake. The interesting stuff happening in mobile now has nothing to do with "design" in the traditional sense any more. Its not enough to just have a coder and a designer on the team. The really cool stuff is all about what your phone actually allows you to do in the real world. Look at apps like uber, postmates, spotify, and twitch.tv. Most of these have terrible UI's, but that's not the point. The point is that they allow you to do things. I can have a car on my doorstep! I can listen to almost any song I want. They're not just another calculator app or news reader, so who cares if its not the prettiest or easiest thing to use in the world. They are an interface to actually useful services. Software was interesting on its own a decade ago, but the industry has grown up, its time to do things now. That doesn't mean that "UI and UX" don't matter, it just means their definition changes and grows beyond just how you tap things on glass and what pixels you choose to animate.
The reason that iOS 7 seems comforting in the way its described in this article is because it gives developers who haven't realized this something to do again. Marco is absolutely right, for a long time it has felt like all the major categories have been covered on the app store. That's a good thing! It means we've solved lots of problems. We shouldn't daydream of a day when those problems get artificially unsolved so we can have another shot at them. We should move on.
[+] [-] LowKarmaAccount|12 years ago|reply
> Software was interesting on its own a decade ago, but the industry has grown up, its time to do things now.
Smartphones are important because they allow people to use computers in a manner that wasn't feasible in the past because of the size of computing devices.
However, smartphones have not produced any important innovations from a software point of view. They are not innovative because they don't need to be; they are simply the logical consequent of the advances in the miniaturization of hardware.
The market saturation you describe is not the result of a glut of innovation, but rather is just a consequence of developers porting existing desktop functionality onto a smartphone. You can take pictures and use voice recognition software to ask where nearby restaurants if you carry around a desktop or a laptop; you just probably wouldn't want to.
Actually, smartphones are a good example of how non-innovative and illogical the computing world can be. Underneath the touch-based interfaces, they run on a kernel written in a memory-unsafe, non-garbage collected, insecure, and inexpressive language that was designed to target the PDP-11. Because the operating system is so flawed and incompetent that it can't be trusted to prevent rogue processes from stepping on others, you end up with a lack of a useable file system and awful communication between apps. Of course, the joke is that these restrictions are almost worthless because you can almost always bypass the system security and jailbreak the device; then maybe you can do something useful with your phone without.
Its part of a larger trend in the computing world to ignore history and reinvent wheels, and call it innovation. Case in point: web apps, which, unless you are replacing a legacy application, are a terrible idea. Not only will they always face latency issues, but they also use awful languages designed to serve and manipulate text and are at least twice as slow as native code. Software on smartphones is interesting in the same way that a "Hello world!" program is interesting to C programmer; the programmer is so surprised that he has fought an unfriendly, unintuitive system full of kludges and managed to output text to the screen without the program crashing and dumping core that he doesn't notice how trivial the output is.
Of course, what we have today is better than nothing. In a way, the massive and unnecessarily resource intensive process that we have now is uplifting because it shows the determination of the human spirit; just imagine what we could accomplish if we invested in the right things.
[+] [-] ben336|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lloeki|12 years ago|reply
It helps users in that the "new design" is an improvement over the "old design".
A case study, the Windows file picker dialog:
Win3.1 dialogs felt foreign to 95, while XP-style apps feel foreign to Vista-style apps. There is no debate that from win3 to win7 the file picker dialog got improved each time. Easier item selection, easier reading, easier tree traversal, quicker arrival to favorites...
What is true for this dialog is true for the whole system. rundll32 tabbed preference panes survive in Win8 to this day. They felt like they came from the future back then on win95, while today they're old and crufty, alien and inscrutable.
This is not change for the sake of change. Design is how it works. Good design is thorough and holistic. If you only improve part of the system, you end up with a hodgepodge of UI versions with no conventions across the board and only results in an overall bad usability and maintainability.
[+] [-] mchanson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rustydoorknobs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Skywing|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huhtenberg|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] thisisdallas|12 years ago|reply
At best, it looks like iOS7 is nothing more than a mix of Android and Windows Phone plus a few extra UI elements.
I am not a big fan of Marco's obsession with drama but I do respect his opinion and find his take on certain thing within the tech industry enlightening. Unfortunately, this post does seem like nothing more than turning a blind eye to what Apple has done with iOS7.
[+] [-] jusben1369|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chasing|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gfodor|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jbail|12 years ago|reply
Beyond the parallax effect, what are these new navigation and structural changes? I'm not trolling here, I'm genuinely curious. I'm about to build a new iOS app and I did not see major navigation or structural changes that would drastically affect how I design an app's UI or UX.
[+] [-] newhouseb|12 years ago|reply
That being said, there are a few new things that do stand out:
1) Everything is supposed to be fullscreen as often as possible, with the chrome hiding as much as possible. "Deference to content."
2) Transitioning between view controllers should ideally "zoom" in to new content. Like the calendar app zooming into a day view from a month view or a year's worth of photos zooming into a collection of chronological "collections." In other words, your transitions should communicate _how_ the view controllers relate more than just you're replacing one with another.
3) Text Everywhere. (only new on iOS)
4) More abstract but also more physical (read: mimicking the laws of nature, like physics, rather than mimicking things humans have made, read: skeuomorphism)
[+] [-] greendestiny|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennyg|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarbazqux|12 years ago|reply
I'm getting pretty tired of blog post titles that give no real hint at all as to the topic. My mind labels them as "pretentious" because they're pretending to be deep when they're not; by that I mean that rarely do the posts offer up any kind of non-trivial insight. (Compare with PG's similarly titled essays.) Earlier today we had "Two i's" from DHH's crew (where you had to infer from reading the post that it was i for interesting and i for important). Dustin Curtis recently had "Glass". Please, you will still be the coolest people on the planet if you don't try to title your posts per the ineffable style of Apple product advertisements, and as a bonus we will even like you and your work a little bit more.
[+] [-] unalone|12 years ago|reply
Clearly he's succeeded, from the conversation going on in this post. Marco is occasionally pretty obnoxious, and his ideas are frequently not always well thought-out, but I like writers who attempt to be not only clear, but compelling.
Paul Graham has plenty of terrible essay names, and plenty of terrible essays at that. One of the things that frustrates me about him as a writer is that on occasion he attempts to strike an "objective" tone while offering a skewed and entirely subjective perspective. Besides, conveying pure abstract information should not be the point of an essay. Tone, emotion, purpose, and construction should all be deliberate. Otherwise you get Mashable—ultraspecific titles geared to ultraspecific articles which are so drained of anything beyond pure bullet-point content that you could train a machine to read and interpret it. It's such a waste.
It takes you two seconds to click on a link and look at it, ten seconds tops to decide if you're going to gain something by reading it. If you're clicking on so many links per day that twelve seconds here and there is putting a dent in your productivity/well-being, then there is a worse problem here than ambiguously-titled essays, and ironically, it's a problem that you'll start to solve by seeking more challenging pieces of writing to tackle to distract yourself from the constant useless information mill that the Internet so readily provides.
[+] [-] ghshephard|12 years ago|reply
Honestly - "Fertile Ground" is a pretty damn good title. I can already imagine people casually discussing it at WWDC "Did you catch Marco's "Fertile Ground" post?"
[+] [-] SwellJoe|12 years ago|reply
Look to other operating systems that evolved their UI in similar fashion and a few of their dominant software players over the years:
Windows-Office, Quickbooks, Quicken, IE/Chrome/Firefox/Netscape (which have shifted favor over years, but not because of UI changes in the OS)
Mac OS (X and classic)-Adobe PS, Illustrator, ProTools, Office
UI changes, even major ones, have had little to no effect on the dominant software titles for those systems. There have occasionally been new categories of software introduced. For instance, high quality video editing software for the home market, which was made possible by better home cameras and major advances in speed and resources of home computers. Pervasive internet allowed the browser wars to happen. It wasn't minor UI changes in the OS that allowed new players to come onto the scene, it was major technological advances.
If you go back far enough, you can argue that the change from command line to GUI allowed for just such a revolution described (it definitely did: Wordstar/Wordperfect lost to Word, Lotus lost to Excel, AutoCad nearly lost its throne, etc.). But, nobody in their right mind is arguing that iOS 6 to iOS 7 is the difference between DOS and Windows 3.1 or between an Apple IIe and Lisa or the first Macintosh.
History isn't always the best indicator in the tech industry, but in absence of other indicators, I'll bet on history repeating in some form.
[+] [-] MichaelGG|12 years ago|reply
This will be a chance to catch any "lazy" dominant apps if they don't upgrade soon enough. I'm not sure if there are any dominant players that are lazy - seems like you'd need to keep on your toes if you're gonna stay dominant. So not a whole lot might change, anyways.
[+] [-] egypturnash|12 years ago|reply
Adobe's tools stood unchanged in the X switch, in no small part because they got X versions out pretty quickly that felt relatively at home. Quark, IIRC, took forever to make an X version, so Adobe was able to bring out an X page layout app and eat their lunch. Of course, it didn't hurt that everyone pretty much loathed XPress, especially its heaviest users...
[+] [-] bitops|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Steko|12 years ago|reply
Sign me up as skeptical re: the coming app store revolution.
[+] [-] Samuel_Michon|12 years ago|reply
”Examine your app for hard-coded UI values – such as sizes and positions – and replace them with those you derive dynamically from system-provided values. Use Auto Layout to help your app respond when layout changes are required.”
Now, I may be reading too much into this, but the use of the word ‘when’ sounds to me like Apple is preparing products with other resolutions than are on the current iOS devices. I think there would be a market for a budget iPhone with a smaller screen, and a high-end iPad with a larger screen.
Also, the icon size for apps is different in iOS 7. It’s going up from 114x114 to 120x120.
[1] http://es.slideshare.net/evgenybelyaev16/transition-guide
[+] [-] smackfu|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Negitivefrags|12 years ago|reply
The algorithms that apple uses for the top lists promote established players, the search functions suck, and the interface for scrolling through lists of apps are so slow and clunky that it discourages users from exploring beyond the first 5-6 results in any list.
[+] [-] cheald|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shinratdr|12 years ago|reply
Android fragmentation is about VERSIONS. APIs, bug fixes, security updates, and available features to a lesser extent. It has NOTHING to do with look and feel. At all. This tactic from Android fans is sad. Just expand the definition of fragmentation until it no longer means anything.
Ridiculous. When 90% of devices are using the latest OS within a year of release, trying to call that fragmentation is complete bullshit. No platform in history has been able to tout those kinds of upgrade numbers, and it's a distinct advantage for both users and developers.
[+] [-] ghshephard|12 years ago|reply
Anybody on an iPhone 4, 4S, or 5 who wants an iOS 7 app, can have it within a day of the iOS 7 release.
The downside of offering only one major phone a year, is that you don't occupy much shelf space in a best buy/AT&T - and someone casually looking for a phone, instead of a particular phone, is 90% unlikely to chose you.
The upside, is that when you offer a new OS - everyone gets to upgrade.
That's the Android fragmentation issue.
[+] [-] alayne|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmduke|12 years ago|reply
Android, WP, and iPhone's visual philosophies are closer now than ever before. I can only assume this will lead to fewer "ecosystem-exclusive" apps, which I think is a net positive for everyone.
[+] [-] gbog|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mehrzad|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Breefield|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bcl|12 years ago|reply
If you force them into learning a new way to do things you have just reduced the friction of them switching to some other platform. And that's how you lose customers.
[+] [-] bennyg|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modernerd|12 years ago|reply
a. The new APIs and Xcode look lovely to work with.
b. Dropping support for iPhone 3G and 3GS devices four years after they were released doesn't feel unreasonable.
c. Apple has a long history of featuring apps that use their latest APIs. Having your app featured is still the only reasonable hope to make money in the App Store, unless your business model revolves around selling Smurfberries.
d. Many developers will have been holding back from making major app changes because they were waiting to see how iOS 7 would change the design language. Now that they know, they can spend the Summer redesigning.
e. Apple are openly inviting developers to "reimagine your apps on iOS 7" - that's the language they've used in their developer emails.
f. A successful developer with a widely read blog has just come out and said that everyone who drops support for older iOS versions to build afresh on top of iOS 7 stands to gain a lot.
So there will probably be a huge host of "new, nimble" apps with new takes on tired old setups come Autumn.
But I bet a lot of torch app developers are feeling very hard done by.
[+] [-] kcoop|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ja27|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostlogin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idbentley|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kenjackson|12 years ago|reply
There are so many more interesting targets, I hope we don't focus our best on new skins for flashlight apps.
[+] [-] kunai|12 years ago|reply
It will separate the best from the worst, however, and this beginning, this chance to start fresh, is what I look forward to.
[+] [-] mangoman|12 years ago|reply
As a developer who has friends who have developed "non-trivial" iOS apps, damn. This is pretty spot on exactly what happened (happening still even) on Android with pre/post 3.0 applications. Making sure that the UI works on both categories of devices is just awful. There are a few projects out there to help (ActionBarSherlock, HoloEverywhere), but it takes a lot of diligence, ESPECIALLY if you're trying to do combination tablet and phone apps.
A lot of the posts I've read on this thread are missing the point of the post. It's not just about change, its not about fragmentation, its about the excitement for newcomers to join an ecosystem that has felt super saturated for years. It may not actually shake the foundation of the app store, but it at least allows for new talent to enter on the same playing field as those who have been developing iOS applications for years. That's just exciting.
[+] [-] jared314|12 years ago|reply
There is some money in porting something between the old and the new playing field, but the incumbents will eventually update.
[+] [-] hrabago|12 years ago|reply