They’ve been calling it “black and white and flat all over”, the next best thing since the original iPhone or plain ugly, although considerably more practical. The colorful new iOS 7 design has been sparking debates following its debut, earlier this week, at the World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
If you ask designers and graphic artists, Apple’s iOS 7 lacks a nuance of finesse, but the new features show there’s promise for improvement. If you ask users, you’ll get a straightforward answer that the looks aren’t all that great, yet it could be something they’d live with, in exchange for the added functionality designer Jony Ive implemented. All in all, it looks like nobody agrees with Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, when he says the new iOS 7 design is “the most significant iOS update since the original iPhone”.
If you ask designers and graphic artists, Apple’s iOS 7 lacks a nuance of finesse, but the new features show there’s promise for improvement. If you ask users, you’ll get a straightforward answer that the looks aren’t all that great, yet it could be something they’d live with, in exchange for the added functionality designer Jony Ive implemented. All in all, it looks like nobody agrees with Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, when he says the new iOS 7 design is “the most significant iOS update since the original iPhone”.
Cap Watkins, ETSY design lead, feels iOS 7 is “unpolished by design”, whereas Phill Ryu, iOS app designer, takes a more practical stand and signaled a frustrating and confusing visual feature in the new iOS 7 lock screen. The legend says “slide to unlock” whereas the arrow below the text suggests you could unlock it by sliding up.
The truth is that there’s something about the new iOS 7 design that put a lot of people off and it is mainly because of the icons’ new look. “The singularly biggest issue – apart from the color – is that so many of the icons are clearly intended to be round, but are crammed inside rounded rectangles” notes Ben Moss of Webdesigner Depot. “Apple set out with good intentions, but their fear of profit margins kept them from designing something truly exciting” he adds.
Yet, at the same time, despite the overall criticism the colorful new iOS 7 design has been getting, Forbes’ Anthony King believes the new look is “subtly dimensional and exquisitely modern”. Jony Ive’s design for iOS 7 “aims to be an unobtrusive interface that elevates content” with hallmarks such as “translucency, levity, expansiveness, fluidity and surprising depth”.
But, enough with designers and media’s points of views! What do you think of the new colorful iOS 7 design?
