I have the feeling that iOS 10 will be one of the best iOS versions ever.

[ThunderMasterMind]

I and so have many others have been using iOS 10 since the 1st dev beta came out. Currently we are at Dev beta 3 and Public beta 2. I have gotten so accustomed to the new features in 10 to the point to where iOS 7-9 all feel clunky, like unfinished projects. When 7 came out back in 2013, it didn't feel like iOS at all. I was so attached to 6 and older that I couldn't enjoy anything in 7 at all. I have always hated flat design with a passion and wanted to break something when I found out that my all time favorite design was getting replaced by the most ridiculous, soulless, and goofy UI ever. I hated every moment I had with 7-9, but when 10 rolled around and actually started feeling like something Apple made, I really liked it. I still don't like the icons, and app design, but the new widgets, banners, notification center, control center, and app animations, and much more really make the OS feel complete. It looks great and and works tremendously well. iOS hasn't felt alive since iOS 6. To me it felt like it was there, just because it had to be, but 10 feels like its alive with all the awesome interactions you can make with it, the more life-like sounding Siri, and nice smooth animations that actually run around 60fps as opposed to 30- on 7-9. It feels friendly.

If 3D/Skeuomorphic design was still tied into iOS, polished and fine-tuned with all the new features in iOS 10, This OS would be perfect to me. Its great the way it is, but that one little thing would set it off for me. I would love it. You are probably thinking, "how would that design tie into 10 and look good?", Well its hard to explain and I'll probably have to make some skits showing what I'm talking about.


Can't stress this enough, iOS 10 is great!!

 

[Ulenspiegel]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience with iOS 10.
I enjoyed it, especially your comment on 3D/Skeuomorphic design.
Reading your post I will for sure download and use it when it comes out.

 

[bigjnyc]

I'm on the complete opposite side of the spectrum as you, iOS 6 felt old and outdated, when iOS 7 came out it was like a breath of fresh air and like stepping out of the 70s and into the 2000s. iOS 10 to me feels unfinished and clunky (at least the new features)

 

[T5BRICK]

I've actually enjoyed the "flat" design that Apple and others have been moving towards. In my opinion, Google actually does it better. But either way, I absolutely hated the skeuomorphic design in iOS 6 and prior and it was far beyond time for a change.

Anyway, iOS 10 is just another step along the way. I do like the features that it adds. It's fairly smooth and seems to run just as well as iOS 8 or 9 on my iPhone 6+.
[doublepost=1469401509][/doublepost]

iOS 10 to me feels unfinished and clunky (at least the new features)

It is unfinished. Hopefully the kinks are ironed out over the next month or two.

 

[ThunderMasterMind]

I'm on the complete opposite side of the spectrum as you, iOS 6 felt old and outdated, when iOS 7 came out it was like a breath of fresh air and like stepping out of the 70s and into the 2000s. iOS 10 to me feels unfinished and clunky (at least the new features)

Fairly odd thing to say thats for sure. I personally like for things to look natural and blend in with the real world. Flat designs look old to me because, well hello!! the 80s screamed flat. The design techniques companies are using now, with un-natural looks and simple linear gradients looks bad and looks like they just did it to get finished quickly. iOS 7 was a good example of this with its terrible looking white UI with blue links everywhere. I do quite a bit of web design and iOS 7's default app UI looks like an html file without its stylesheet in place. Once I noticed that, I couldn't forget it at all and it bothers me so much. When I finally got a jail-break on my 7 devices, I set apps to use the legacy UI just so I could get away from that bad image.

The way things look right now is way to similar to Luna blue from Windows XP. XP looked fine then, but looks old next to Aero from Vista and 7, but looks fine oddly enough next to 10 and 8.


By far, my favorite UIs has to be Aqua from OS X Lion, Aero glass from Windows Vista, and Aqua? from iOS 1-6.

 

[ipottersmith]

I'm on the complete opposite side of the spectrum as you, iOS 6 felt old and outdated, when iOS 7 came out it was like a breath of fresh air and like stepping out of the 70s and into the 2000s. iOS 10 to me feels unfinished and clunky (at least the new features)

Completely agreed

 

[februarian]

UI design is forever evolving. What worked previously doesn't necessarily have to work today and vice versa. I don't think Apple has ever taken any missteps with iOS. The sudden, drastic change with iOS 7 was sorely needed as the former was stuck in time. 7 basically established the design language that would run course from there on. iOS 10 is a refinement of the elements set in 7 and this time derived from the point of view of legibility and feel to the user's input. I'd say it's doing pretty well on those fronts.

 

[LordQ]

I respect the past and embrace the future. That being said –and as a designer– I really loathe the way Craig talked about beautiful edge to edge design in iOS 7, only to make everything floaty, rounder and bolder three years later

Other than that, iOS 10 is lovely.

 

[ThunderMasterMind]

I respect the past and embrace the future. That being said –and as a designer– I really loathe the way Craig talked about beautiful edge to edge design in iOS 7, only to make everything floaty, rounder and bolder three years later

Other than that, iOS 10 is lovely.

I still don't understand why they say "edge to edge" design. If they mean that this design shows more detail, they are lying out the ass. This designs detail is nowhere even close to as edge to edge as 6's was. This design makes it 10x harder to distinguish what's what (Instagram 8 is a great example of this) and has blow the idea of a button out of proportion, unless you turn on button shapes, but then it makes everything else look goofy. That's one thing I will never understand the logic behind. If you change a setting to fix something in 7-10, it's messes something else up. No matter what, this UI always feels like it's missing something no matter what. I don't understand why.

It would probabaly be easier to make a YouTube Video about this explaining what I mean, and what I feel this OS is missing.

 

[EJ8]

It would probabaly be easier to make a YouTube Video about this explaining what I mean, and what I feel this OS is missing.

Undoubtedly. I don't understand anything you are saying nor do I see any such problem(s) with iOS 10.

 

[ThunderMasterMind]

Undoubtedly. I don't understand anything you are saying nor do I see any such problem(s) with iOS 10.

Yeah. The OS itself is fine… functionality, friendlyness, and such is fine, but the icons and app designs don't really fit with everything else with the exception of a few. I feel like the icons could use some work, and i think the app UIs themselves could use some depth to match the new designs and such in iOS 10. Ever since 7 came out, the UI to me has felt incomplete, but its probably just me comparing the UI to a web page without a stylesheet, which is a white background, black text, and blue text links you can click on, but like I said above, it'll make more sense if I give visual examples of this.

 

[marvz]

I still don't understand why they say "edge to edge" design. If they mean that this design shows more detail, they are lying out the ass. This designs detail is nowhere even close to as edge to edge as 6's was. This design makes it 10x harder to distinguish what's what (Instagram 8 is a great example of this) and has blow the idea of a button out of proportion, unless you turn on button shapes, but then it makes everything else look goofy. That's one thing I will never understand the logic behind. If you change a setting to fix something in 7-10, it's messes something else up. No matter what, this UI always feels like it's missing something no matter what. I don't understand why.

It would probabaly be easier to make a YouTube Video about this explaining what I mean, and what I feel this OS is missing.

Thankfully you don't design any apps!
You don't get the evolution of software design. We have reached a point where "everybody" is familiar with software interactions and what something is used for. We don't need that skeuomorphic design for telling us what is a button and what not. We are at the point where the content is key not the buttons. And that's the reason why flat design was a step in the right direction (still too many colours). The new Instagram app is a perfect example of the content-is-key-approach. Black and white UI and colour only for the content. Some time ago Gurman reported that Apple was also testing this and we have a little of that in the new Music and News apps. Airbnb is also a perfect example of how an app should look like today.

 

[PhiLLoW]

The " press homebutton again to unlock"-feature still feels wrong for me

 

[Sirious]

The " press homebutton again to unlock"-feature still feels wrong for me

They have added an option in settings to change it back to the old method in the latest betas (not slide to unlock).

 

[orioncrystalice]

I actually picked up a silver 9.7 iPad Pro partly in anticipation of what iOS 10 will mean for my productivity.

Re: the design, I agree with the fans of 7. The stock photo of the 5S running 7 with that amazing wallpaper is already iconic, IMO. The performance of 7 at times was another story...... but I'm glad we got here.

Now, all I really want (really really want, like really bad, super bad) is to choose which iCloud Photo Library folders sync with each device..

 

[ThunderMasterMind]

Thankfully you don't design any apps!
You don't get the evolution of software design. We have reached a point where "everybody" is familiar with software interactions and what something is used for. We don't need that skeuomorphic design for telling us what is a button and what not. We are at the point where the content is key not the buttons. And that's the reason why flat design was a step in the right direction (still too many colours). The new Instagram app is a perfect example of the content-is-key-approach. Black and white UI and colour only for the content. Some time ago Gurman reported that Apple was also testing this and we have a little of that in the new Music and News apps. Airbnb is also a perfect example of how an app should look like today.

That's practically the same thing Apple said about it. I understand that Skeuomorphic design is out, but I still feel that depth to UI elements, light affects and shadows for example are still relevant and still loook nice. 3D effects and textures may not be necessary, but it does look nice. Skeumorphism was a little rediculous in some cases in iOS 6, but it easily could have been fixed without going crazy. I thought Apple was supposed to think different. Not the same. Oh well, it's a copy game anyway, it's just gotten 10x worse in the recent years.

 

[marvz]

That's practically the same thing Apple said about it. I understand that Skeuomorphic design is out, but I still feel that depth to UI elements, light affects and shadows for example are still relevant and still loook nice. 3D effects and textures may not be necessary, but it does look nice. Skeumorphism was a little rediculous in some cases in iOS 6, but it easily could have been fixed without going crazy. I thought Apple was supposed to think different. Not the same. Oh well, it's a copy game anyway, it's just gotten 10x worse in the recent years.

The point is that's better than skeuomorphic design and you don't get it.

 

[Jayson A]

The only thing I miss from pre-iOS 7 days is drop shadows under the icons.

I noticed that Apple has been adding more drop shadows in iOS 10, but the icons are still too flat on the home screen. There's no depth there (which looks weird because the background and icons moves as you tilt the device)

So why don't they put drop shadows under the icons so that they stand out better from the wallpaper. It takes so long to find the perfect wallpaper that doesn't make the icons hard to see.

 

[Natya Sadella]

Xd you really need button shapes to recognize its a button? Wtf

Ios 7 felt like a whole new phone to me. So modern. But apple could do a lot more. Like putting those new ios 10 widgets directly on the homescreen instead of a 3d touch.

 

[TheAppleFairy]

It's going to be the best, until iOS 11.

 

[HCO]

iOS 10 is a lot better than 8or9 it is what everyone really has been waiting for with the quick reply, the message previews the webiste link previews, the widgets, but more can be done with 3D Touch & widgets. There is work still to be done.

 

[lagwagon]

It's going to be the best, until iOS 11.

You have that backwards. iOS 10 will suck and everyone will complain about it. And then when iOS 11 beta starts, iOS 10 will become the best because iOS 11 will be the new thing to hate on. It happens every year.

 

[Jayson A]

You have that backwards. iOS 10 will suck and everyone will complain about it. And then when iOS 11 beta starts, iOS 10 will become the best because iOS 11 will be the new thing to hate on. It happens every year.

You're partially right.

People hate change as it is, but when iOS barely changes visually, yet the performance is much worse... what are we supposed to think?

Okay, I updated to iOS 9. Looks exactly the same as iOS 8, yet runs very poorly, what the hell?

I think THAT'S why people had a problem with iOS 9. It's not that we complain, just because it's new... we complain because they keep making things worse with each update.

All of my iPad games ran perfectly on 9.2.1, but 9.3 messed that all up. Then, 9.3.2 came out and messed up auto-brightness. When can we have a release that not only FIXES bugs, but doesn't break other things in the process?

I know that nothing's perfect, but I have lived through EVERY SINGLE iOS update and Apple used to be much better at making the OS fast and stable with minimal bugs. I will admit however, that I haven't loved every update, but Apple was overall more consistent and cared about user experience and smoothness.

 

[lagwagon]

You're partially right.

People hate change as it is, but when iOS barely changes visually, yet the performance is much worse... what are we supposed to think?

Okay, I updated to iOS 9. Looks exactly the same as iOS 8, yet runs very poorly, what the hell?

I think THAT'S why people had a problem with iOS 9. It's not that we complain, just because it's new... we complain because they keep making things worse with each update.

All of my iPad games ran perfectly on 9.2.1, but 9.3 messed that all up. Then, 9.3.2 came out and messed up auto-brightness. When can we have a release that not only FIXES bugs, but doesn't break other things in the process?

I know that nothing's perfect, but I have lived through EVERY SINGLE iOS update and Apple used to be much better at making the OS fast and stable with minimal bugs. I will admit however, that I haven't loved every update, but Apple was overall more consistent and cared about user experience and smoothness.

The cycle of hating whatever new OS comes out and the previous one becoming "the best" didn't just happen with iOS 9. It happens every year. The latest OS is always "terrible" until the next latest comes out. People just like to do their rooftop shouting no matter what it is that gets released.

Older iOS 's were a hell of a lot simpler. The difference of say between iOS 5 and iOS 10 is night and day when it comes to complexity. So naturally there will be more bugs than there used to be. That is unavoidable and is impossible to squash them all. The difference between iOS 7 and 10. There have been countless under the hood changes people don't see and it's pretty much mostly been rewritten in the few years since 7. (Even 7 to 9 there have massive foundation changes but not much to its "look") Just because you can't physically see a change doesn't mean there hasn't been big changes in code or been completely rewritten to lay the work for future advancement. It seems people just assume "it looks the same, so that means nothing should be different" like in your example of 8 to 9.

 

[Jayson A]

The cycle of hating whatever new OS comes out and the previous one becoming "the best" didn't just happen with iOS 9. It happens every year. The latest OS is always "terrible" until the next latest comes out. People just like to do their rooftop shouting no matter what it is that gets released.

Older iOS 's were a hell of a lot simpler. The difference of say between iOS 5 and iOS 10 is night and day when it comes to complexity. So naturally there will be more bugs than there used to be. That is unavoidable and is impossible to squash them all. The difference between iOS 7 and 10. There have been countless under the hood changes people don't see and it's pretty much mostly been rewritten in the few years since 7. (Even 7 to 9 there have massive foundation changes but not much to its "look") Just because you can't physically see a change doesn't mean there hasn't been big changes in code or been completely rewritten to lay the work for future advancement. It seems people just assume "it looks the same, so that means nothing should be different" like in your example of 8 to 9.

You and I both know that there are more changes under the hood that affect performance. I get that. I'm talking about the average person who updates and doesn't really see much of a difference (people tend to think they need to see a difference visually to understand why their device doesn't respond like it used to).

Let's also not forget about how iOS 9 took away the ability to tap the screen while an animation is happening. Even though people don't need to be taping that fast to experience the input blocking. Something as simple as switching apps. I'm scrolling through my apps, I tap on one, but instead of getting the app I want, the screen just stops scrolling and I have to tap it again. Not only that, but if I happen to move a little while I'm trying to tap the app, it will just scroll a tiny bit more and STILL won't let me into the app until the screen stops and I have to tap it again.

So if I were the average customer, I might get frustrated that things are lagging and not responding to my taps right away. That seems like a step backwards in my opinion.

So no, the complaints are valid. If Apple actually made an OS that was BETTER than the previous one, then there wouldn't be much to complain about.

Nobody is going to say "But I liked the fact that my screen didn't respond to my taps right away!"