Some things are blindingly obvious in hindsight, and Iconfactory principal Craig Hockenberry and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber made one of these points about the flattening of iOS.
“The flattening of Apple’s user interface that began in iOS 7 was as much a strategic move as an aesthetic one,” says Hockenberry, with Gruber adding that “iOS 6-style skeuomorphism would’ve felt downright gauche on the watch.”
Not just gauche, but also hard to read on such a small display. I think both are right: while Ive may have preferred the minimalism of iOS 7 and 8 on the larger devices, what was a preference for the iPhone and iPad was a necessity for the Apple Watch.
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That doesn’t make any sense. The Apple Watch has a substantially different user interface design anyway.
Different but mostly consistent
I don’t really get this argument either. What of all the skeuomorphic watch faces? 3D animated emojis? Skeuomorphic fitness badges? None of these things “fit” into a flat iOS, and all are solely available on the Apple Watch.
You need to look up the word skeuomorph first of all. Secondly, skeuomorphic design is still very much a part of iOS. Note how the notes app resembles a note pad? How the mail app is an envelope… the list goes on and on. They got rid of the overly tacky skeuomorphism, and made everything have a more minimalistic look, and it’s all so much better looking thanks to that.
@o0smoothies0o In your opinion. I still think it looks like shit. As much as I prefer iOS 6, they could have done a better job “simplifying” things.
Maybe if the stock iOS UI was used on the watch I could buy into this. It was more about making the UI scalable to a variety of device sizes (think iPhone 6, 6+, mythical iPad Pro, Watch, etc) without having to create new sets of assets for every independent resolution.. 2x.. 3x… 10x… 9000x.. whatever. If Apple is going to have many devices with differing resolutions on the market simultaneously and still maintain support for older lower resolution devices it makes a LOT of sense to remove bitmap assets wherever possible.
If you look up the meaning of the term skeuomorph, one might actually say that the Apple Watch is an outright example for skeuomorphism. The (analog) watch faces, the crown, the expensive bands and high end models… all the effort to make a small ipod like gadget look like a “real” watch.
True :-)
Several of the things you mentioned are not computing skeuomorphism so yeah