Forget the fact that Android is chewing away significant portion of the smartphone user mindshare. And, forget that with the backing of HP, WebOS has returned from the grave. Forget that Windows Phone 7 is poised to strike with all the weight Microsoft can muster to get back into this market. Forget also that, while seemingly delayed, MeeGo looks to be a solid contender, especially in Europe.
Forget all of that.
What I want to talk about is how badly iOS is showing its age. Compared to these newcomers, the overall design paradigm for Apple’s (now flagship) operating system seems woefully outdated. Even tacky.
“one of these things is not like the others…”
All the chrome bezels, faux 3D curves, high gloss glare and reflections from some unseen omnipresent light source are becoming visually tired, and really when it comes down to it, busy and ugly.
On the cusp of the teens of this new century Apple, the longtime herald of good design, has fallen behind. And to the likes of Microsoft and the open-source community no less! Plotted on a continuum Android would be little more than a contemporary to iOS (albeit much faster evolving) and WebOS a hybrid middle-ground; half copycat and half innovation. But, beyond that things become steadily more progressive. Enter MeeGo and Windows Phone 7.
Just look at any screenshot from WP7 or MeeGo or even the latest Ubuntu release and you will see what I mean. Websites like GDGT and others (Joystiq, Ars Technica, the new Twitter, Facebook to a degree…) have been leading the way in this shift toward usability through minimalism for a while now.
The shift from glossy photo-realistic interface is long overdue. Our movement away from hyper-realism reflects a maturation of our expectations of technology as a consumer and end user.
In decades past, as the personal computer and it’s amazing bedfellow the internet were going through their growing pains, the layers of gloss impressed us. Comments like “Look at these graphics” or “it’s so realistic” were commonplace, and rightfully so. Nothing like these achievements had ever been made.
Just like painting during the Renaissance, the ability to mimic reality was one of the measures by which we gauged progress and ability. But, once achieved, those abilities become the norm and the user/viewer looks harder at what can be done with the technology rather than what the technology can do.
This is an important shift. A shift from simple justification toward exploration, diversity and focus on functionality. Examining and questioning core principles about what technology is and what it should do for us will, hopefully, follow.
Apple’s effort to force us all to embrace design and function may have blown up in its face. While they still hold the reigns in the realm of hardware design (firmly rooted in the explorations and divergences of the past) they are losing ground in what is arguably the most important space in the age of slates and touchscreens: the interface. A generation of designers, artists and programmers grew up using Macs and now they have taken the torch. And they don’t all work at Apple. Nor do they all have Steve Jobs to contend with.
UPDATE: This line from Notion Ink’s Rohan Shravan’s blog on the UI of the Adam is quite promising:
“Icons are not glossy and web 2.0-ish as you find on all the current generation of devices;”
