Today, iOS 6.1 arrived. With its changes regarding the lock screen media controls, it shows that iOS is in a weird place design-wise:

What do we have here?

• Oh, the new media controls! We’re reminded of the Music app, aren’t we? Especially the ‘reflective’, metallic volume slider leaves no doubt where it comes from.
• The unlock slider, which has been unchanged since the iPhone came to be.

Is it just me, or is it just too obvious that we indeed are looking at two different design themes here? Here’s the former lock screen with media controls, for comparison. Get it? The play button and the arrow on the unlock slider appear like from the same… ‘family’, if you will. Look at the play button now, its arrow shape has nothing to do with the slider’s, for sure.

The unlock slider belongs to the ‘Classic‘ iOS theme that’s predominant in the Settings app: Pinstripes. Thick, white labels. White, unreflective on/off sliders that become blue upon activation. No transparency, no linen, no metal. 2007.

The media controls, as mentioned, destine from the Music app, and they look like it. Inconsistency, Apple? Really? Don’t get me wrong, I like the design, but frankly: It belongs in the Music app, not as general theme in iOS itself.

There were two design themes in iOS: The ‘old’ one (Settings app etc.), and the later-added linen texture stuff we all love so dearly. When you configure a new iPhone, or an iPhone wakes up after an update, there even are buttons that fit into that scheme, they appear to be more ‘flat’ as you can see in this cnet how-to. Of course, Siri also uses the linen theme and introduces a minimal element of metal.

This duality already isn’t satisfying, especially considering Apple’s focus on design. But now, as I showed above, the Music app’s design pours out of it and introduces a third design theme. This is no good.

Other iOS Problems

Looking at the Settings app and the Notifications section in it, even tech-savvy users begin to cry. I mean, there’s a ‘Do Not Disturb’ label with a slider in the Settings App. Then I tap on ‘Notifications’, and what do I see? A ‘Do Not Disturb’ label with an arrow that leads to a submenu. Are you kidding me? Of course, this is what you risk to end up with when people demand more complexity. But Apple normally doesn’t butcher good menu navigation like this, and for a reason.

The overlay that the new sharing panel is might be somewhere in the middle here. Not terrible, but also clearly not one thing: Well designed. And when new feautures aren’t implemented well, but more crammed in, as it’s the case in both these cases, that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. A few months back, Martin Weigert already feared for iOS’ well-being and had good points.

Update: This looks buggy.

Jony Ive to the Rescue!

All this makes more obvious that something needs to be done about iOS. Something big, meaning: Full redesign, optics and mechanics.

I hope I misread this and the new media controls are just Jony Ive saying ‘Don’t worry, lads. I’m here.’

Dr. Drang has a solid case explaining why it’s a good idea to go independent with your word processing, i.e. rely on nothing but plain text files:

In fact, the one constant in the history of word processors is their insistence on changing file formats. It’s the reason I quit using word processors over 15 years ago. I recognize that Adam, being a publisher and needing to work with several authors, doesn’t have the freedom I have, but as long as his workflow includes a word processor, he’s going to run into frustrations like this.

Today, I listened to the latest Talk Show in which Marco Arment and John Gruber were talking about RSS and Atom. I had no idea what the difference is, and it turned out they also didn’t.

Later then, I ‘ran into’ moeffju’s blog post about something I didn’t quite understand. But it had to do with feeds, and he closed with a derogatory comment about RSS.

See, I know when the universe gives me a hint. So I copy-pasted this jekyll-ready example atom.xml and customised it. It won’t set the world on fire, but my feed is now an atom one.

Click on picture for full album on Flickr

Since we’re a few international students here in Dublin, we want to get to know Ireland, so we jump on a train or a bus and go places. And on those trips, my iPhone gets some photo business, and I’m always surprised how good iPhone photos look on a big screen, and how capable iPhoto for me as an absolute photo beginner is.

This time, we went to Howth. Check out the album on Flickr.