The dust is settling now after the much-awaited iOS sneak peak at the last WWDC. Several betas have come out and they are improving the product in every iteration. The opinions were widely polarised initially and the dust seems to have settling now. I am humbled too and ate my words - nothing new as these situations are so associated with anything that Apple does. It's always been part of the magical story of the company that Apple is. I remember how surprising it was to see the new look and feel - it did look a bit of android (lock screen) and windows (fonts in Contacts, white background) in parts. The home screen and the actual app’s interface looked two extremes. The fact is I, like many others, refused to accept the simple fact that iOS has entered a new phase of life - in Six years it matured and grew.  iOS now clearly understands the crowd it caters to. Look at the two design issues I mentioned above - at the first look it seems like the lock screen is like one that they have in android, but the fonts? They are different. Remember the Roboto - See how subtle and beautiful the difference is. 

The era of instant gratification has caught many of us unawares and we missed the larger picture. We couldn't understand, to bring such a visible change, how confident the management and the engineering teams were, how much they trusted their intuition and how they visualised the future. I didn't see it, I admit .

Apple. You taught me many things over the last 6 years.

Tags: Apple, iOS, Review

iOS 7 is a big departure. But while doing this apple has managed to confuse some of us a bit. There are of course many mind blowing changes - like the one for the Photos app (renamed cutely as "Moments").  Or the Weather app - it literally killed my favourite weather app from Yahoo . The new Music app is perhaps the best app for music - even better than my favourite Ecoute. iTunes radio is also well designed. 

Then what's my issue?   My thing starts with the Home screen itself. There are two extremes there in terms of look and feel. While calendar or clock looks simple there is extreme textures in use in the case of Passbook or Store icons. Reminders and notes look odd too - they all look totally contrasting. Some of the colour choices are confusing - while I am not expecting to see pure black and white in use, considering how minimal are the options for customisation they had to strike a balance. This is what was playing in my mind while I was listening to the keynote last night. The control centre looked a lot like Windows phone to give another example. 

I understand it was almost like this we felt when the iOS came out first. It will definitely go through many iterations in next few years before it settles for a permanent look. But iOS rarely changed its standard set of icons in all these years.

Otherwise iOS is something only Apple can visualise and execute. The design shift is quite visible and detailed. They have gone for an all-flat approach that works brilliantly in most of the cases. I am waiting for my first hands on experience at the moment - it could change my opinion .   

Tags: Apple, iOS

Tags: Apple, Technology, Reviews