MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Do You Prefer iOS 7 Looks Over Previous iOS Versions?

Faterson · 09-29-2013, 01:42 AM

I don't really trust such research findings myself; they are by necessity biased, depending on the criteria one sets for such an evaluation.

I'm noticing that Elegance is not on the list of those guys' criteria -- and how could it be, being a purely subjective value? I just find iOS 7's flat look ugly, and there's hardly a way to quantify ugliness, is there?

Also, I find it perplexing the research findings apparently do not mention at all the thing that seems to generate most complaints about iOS 7: the use of ultra-thin, light-coloured fonts on blindingly all-white or dull all-grey backgrounds. A similar issue is replacing visually clear buttons with simple text that does not look like a tappable button at all. I would expect such fundamental issues at least to be mentioned in the "user friction" section, but they are not. To me, those are all big-time user interface and usability failures.

From among the 4 criteria they do use, customisation is the most important for me. In this criterion, they give Android the highest mark -- however, it seems absurd to me to say that Android gets 7 out of 10 points for customisation, while iOS 7 gets 6 points out of 10 -- only 1 point fewer. Due to the completely locked-down nature of iOS, the real ratio must be something like 4 to 8.

Finally, please note that the research specifically dealt with Samsung's flavour of Android, and Samsung is known for putting lots of bloatware (and a complete TouchWiz overlay) on their devices. The ratings would need to be corrected for "pure" Android such as that (in version 4.3) on my 2013 Nexus 7; a good number of the issues mentioned in the PDF report do not exist in that version of Android.

09-29-2013, 01:42 AM	#71
Faterson pokrývač škridiel Posts: 1,525 Karma: 3300000 Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Bratislava, Slovakia Device: 3iPad, SamsungNote & Tabs, 2OnyxBoox, Huawei 8″, PocketBook	I don't really trust such research findings myself; they are by necessity biased, depending on the criteria one sets for such an evaluation. I'm noticing that Elegance is not on the list of those guys' criteria -- and how could it be, being a purely subjective value? I just find iOS 7's flat look ugly, and there's hardly a way to quantify ugliness, is there? Also, I find it perplexing the research findings apparently do not mention at all the thing that seems to generate most complaints about iOS 7: the use of ultra-thin, light-coloured fonts on blindingly all-white or dull all-grey backgrounds. A similar issue is replacing visually clear buttons with simple text that does not look like a tappable button at all. I would expect such fundamental issues at least to be mentioned in the "user friction" section, but they are not. To me, those are all big-time user interface and usability failures. From among the 4 criteria they do use, customisation is the most important for me. In this criterion, they give Android the highest mark -- however, it seems absurd to me to say that Android gets 7 out of 10 points for customisation, while iOS 7 gets 6 points out of 10 -- only 1 point fewer. Due to the completely locked-down nature of iOS, the real ratio must be something like 4 to 8. Finally, please note that the research specifically dealt with Samsung's flavour of Android, and Samsung is known for putting lots of bloatware (and a complete TouchWiz overlay) on their devices. The ratings would need to be corrected for "pure" Android such as that (in version 4.3) on my 2013 Nexus 7; a good number of the issues mentioned in the PDF report do not exist in that version of Android.