At the risk of a whole new tangent....taking a step back, could it be argued that to an extent, perhaps too much is being expected from a mobile UI. I'll acknowledge that the world is moving towards mobile, sure sure sure. But. Now interfaces/UI are being catered to iPhone/iPad/Android to the point where there are noticeable detriments to the desktop experience at times.... Unarguably, the desktop experience allows much "more" such as the ability to hover a mouse over something (and see indications before clicking) as well as more real estate, more storage (and freedom from the dreaded "cloud music" experience Apple keeps shoving down our throats), the ability to quickly type lots of data in vs. tap tap tap and/or dictate.... So I ask....with the obvious physical size & input limitations of mobile, at what point are we expecting too much from mobile devices, resulting in a sometimes too complex mobile experience and then a degraded desktop experience?
Just a question to ponder...
Currently, 4 different actions can result from swiping offscreen to onscreen from top, from bottom, from left, and from right at times...yet bezels are getting smaller (and phones more fragile, which is an entire other design rant), which reduces the ability to easily swipe from an offscreen area onto on-screen if you're one of the conscientious objectors like me who insist on a case to protect the overly-jewelry-delicate $900 iPhone...
Seriously, just a question: Do we need to scrunch down the iMessages text input zone to 10 pixels wide so you can jam in icons for photos, emoticons, artwork, effects, gifs...and soon facebook/instagram/twitter??.....at what point has the pendulum swung too far to where the children are leading the parents around? How long will it continue to be acceptable to expect hotdogs & hamburgers & bratwursts at the company picnic to work equally well in the hamburger bun?
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Well said.
Ha, that comment got me thinking...are we perhaps asking too much by designing something to work on both mouse & touchscreen....I feel like we've replaced our entire silverware set with sporks that have sharp edges....sure you should be able to eat soup, spaghetti, and steak with that one utensil but are you really going to enjoy it as much...and not cut your tongue at every meal?
I wish I could say I saw Fluent after that video. Who made that, some 19 year old intern who drinks 5-hour Energies like water? I couldn't see much since each screen view lasted .5 second. What did they show but a bunch of flashes? I'll look into more later now after that color strobe video.
If Microsoft produces an engaging UI that "just works" like Apple used to, and produces an ecosystem that merges my mobile device, music collection, online account (Apple iCloud) that organizes my mail, contacts, schedules...then I may finally be ready to return to windows/PC and their generally more cost-effective machines. The only thing holding me to Apple is that I *think* their interface & ecosystem works better than Android & Windows...once when my friend who's hard of hearing handed me his Android phone during a volunteer meeting so I could check the voicemail his wife left, it took me 2-3 minutes to figure out how to get to the voicemail area and listen to the message; I still cling to the idea that the Android UI is/was/always will be a a wanna-be to Apple's UI, and perhaps I should have let that go after iOS7 since J.ive changed iOS to mimic the worst of android & Windows phone. And my view of Windows may be outdated as I still cling to visions of the horrible Metro interface and its overly-amateurish white flat design indicators/icons on simple colored squares. I knew I couldn't bare to work with either UI. I'll check out this Fusion. (God, why the names for UI's...Fusion...Material Design...Jony Ive's White Crapatorium UI....how long does anyone think we'll live in this VHS/Betamax world where you can still drive your car from Maker A with a round steering wheel or from Maker B with an octogon wheel....when will there be one universal "best" UI which doesn't need a name. Just do what works, stick with it, and stop making up imagined improvements.)
Funny, I detested the signal dots since the moment they appeared. For me they're more hard to differentiate at times between a filled-in and empty dot, they take up more space than the bars did, and I think the ascending-height function of the bars' signal strength was a strong secondary-info-prompt that was very, very useful. I felt the dots were more as part of J.ive's cosmetic changeover than any improvement in function. Interesting that it's the opposite for you!
I hope so. I've kept Mavericks on my 2014 MBAir. I can't stand the look of any OS after Mavericks.
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B I N G O
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Again once again, someone deflects wanting to discuss my main point of: display/conveying of actionable items is still often too watered down, too blurred into the look of info-only text in a post-IOS7 world due to oblitterating buttons & controls in place of colored text, and instead you jump to a critique of skeumorphic graphical training wheels.
The only thing worse than those two items is going too for to the right or left...going too skeumorphic or too "airy, basic, almost context-free..." If the early iOS contacts app (like a physical address book) was too far right, the continued use of all-white too-grey low-contrast-thin-buttonless-font UI is still too far right.
