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.
I think the visual explanation here offers credence to the criticism. This certainly isn't "hipster" culture - this is design critique.
The worse thing would be if people blindly said things like "iOS7 is just not intuitive" and went on to drink their PBR and evangelize about Phonebloks - instead, these are real examples of why iOS7 could be better.
At the very least, this thread is instructive for learning designers. I know as a younger programmer and designer, when someone said that "JavaScript has the weirdest quirks", it was useless unless someone showed me the quirks. Along came Douglas Crockford's Good Parts, which, while critical of the bad parts, was very instructive. I think this can function in similar ways.
It's not just "Fail" culture rearing its stupid head - the tone is far from embarrassing to Apple, and instead is generally descriptive of legitimate design failures.
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?... and tell me how you feel about it :)
Criticizing Apple for poor design is like criticizing IBM for being unreliable: rather important because that's why people chose them in the first place. I'm still hoping that iOS 7 is an elaborate prank, and will be replaced by something worthy of Apple before the majority upgrades.
Not everyone can offer constructive feedback, but most people can have the problems brought to their attention and understand them. Even if you had constructive criticism, how exactly would you go about alerting a developer at Apple?
I think that it's more complicated than just criticism of a less than perfect UI. I think it's an expression of the Apple community's concern that without Steve Jobs, Apple will no longer be able to produce the highly polished products that the community has come to expect.
It probably took hours to create this tumblr and the author did not get paid. I think this tumblr is fantastic. We need more people like this. Ready to call out crap.
2) 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?)
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.
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.
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:
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.
It's perhaps because they pushed a whole UI redesign out in the matter of a few months. And it's multilingual. And it cannot take into account 3rd-party apps and their inconsistent designs.
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.
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.
It is worse in touch devices. At least in a desktop webapp you have the option of waving your mouse cursor over suspect areas and can get some kind of feedback (a balloon text or some change in the status bar etc.) On a touch device, you won't know until you touch!
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.
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.
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.
I didn't buy the "Go easy! It's still only beta!" stuff. The changes that happen in beta are along the lines of "Apps no longer crash while activating the radio while audio is playing." not "Complete icon redesign".
However, some of these (Z-Index? What?) should've absolutely been fixed before GM.
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.
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.
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
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. =/
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.
How many of these failures 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.
[+] [-] dasil003|12 years ago|reply
Yes I'm getting surly in my old age.
[+] [-] jcutrell|12 years ago|reply
The worse thing would be if people blindly said things like "iOS7 is just not intuitive" and went on to drink their PBR and evangelize about Phonebloks - instead, these are real examples of why iOS7 could be better.
At the very least, this thread is instructive for learning designers. I know as a younger programmer and designer, when someone said that "JavaScript has the weirdest quirks", it was useless unless someone showed me the quirks. Along came Douglas Crockford's Good Parts, which, while critical of the bad parts, was very instructive. I think this can function in similar ways.
It's not just "Fail" culture rearing its stupid head - the tone is far from embarrassing to Apple, and instead is generally descriptive of legitimate design failures.
[+] [-] janlukacs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdash|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ynniv|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lewispollard|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahunt09|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MartinCron|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wehadfun|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcphilip|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lechevalierd3on|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|12 years ago|reply
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 (this is supposed to show "poor alignment")
2) 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 (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 (... this is considered "sloppy").
5) http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/image/61440527405 (flat information hierarchy -- one of the few genuine sloppy UI examples).
[+] [-] romain_dardour|12 years ago|reply
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) On an iOS device, this is not "Subtle" but unreadable.
[+] [-] madeofpalk|12 years ago|reply
http://sloppyui.tumblr.com/post/61658685474 This is the most outrageous. Apparently this mid-transistion screenshot demonstrates something poor. What? I have no idea. Is it sloppy in the same way this http://i.imgur.com/e5Vyv5z.jpg is sloppy?
[+] [-] sspiff|12 years ago|reply
There are also quite a few genuine design errors (Z index of updates available, alignment in the timer, ...) on the site.
[+] [-] ygra|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riffraff|12 years ago|reply
I may be confused by wording here, sorry: which one does "had to" mean:
* there was some external force pushing him (I'm thinking CEO rather than bloggers' complaints)
* he couldn't resist the urge
It somehow feels like the latter is what really happened, but I do not have any sources for that, and would be happy to know.
[+] [-] nextstep|12 years ago|reply
A lot of these "sloppy UI" examples are in non-Apple apps, intentional, or otherwise misleading from the screenshot.
[+] [-] da_n|12 years ago|reply
http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/18/ux-things-i-hate-abo...
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.
[+] [-] whizzkid|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jpea|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crb|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rimantas|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reddit_clone|12 years ago|reply
It is worse in touch devices. At least in a desktop webapp you have the option of waving your mouse cursor over suspect areas and can get some kind of feedback (a balloon text or some change in the status bar etc.) On a touch device, you won't know until you touch!
[+] [-] hemancuso|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mvkel|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] miguelrochefort|12 years ago|reply
The most frustrating part is that Apple fanboys now justify their love for iOS 7 using the exact same arguments they used to dismiss Windows Phone.
[+] [-] idProQuo|12 years ago|reply
However, some of these (Z-Index? What?) should've absolutely been fixed before GM.
[+] [-] noamsml|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chockablock|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yardie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thiagoperes|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ps4fanboy|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicholassmith|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
Done is better than perfect.
[+] [-] hahainternet|12 years ago|reply
Seems they're losing that attribute without gaining the others.
[+] [-] huhtenberg|12 years ago|reply
Apple's new MO it seems.
[+] [-] romain_dardour|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrislomax|12 years ago|reply
It's not a big deal but I thought Apple would be well on top of stuff like this
[+] [-] gurumeditation|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gurkendoktor|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
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|12 years ago|reply
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.