I do not think of it as a fail. The UI is attractive simple and easy to understand so is that really a fail?

Damn right. windows phone 8 is actually very usable once you get the jist of it.

Usability is essential if you want a great UI. While I might have lots of Apple kit I do appreciate the look of Metro. It is a very good way of putting a lot of different information on screen at the same time. As such it is practical for home and lock screens.


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Well Windows 8 Phone sales have hardly set the market alight compared to Android and iOS. Why would you change a popular OS to look like an unpopular one?

It's not MS that is being copied, at least not directly. The same is happening in web design and desktop environments.

The "flat" look is fashionable now that we're moving away from the skeuomorphs of the '90s. As Jon pointed out earlier: "OS X has been getting 'flatter' pretty much since it started"

Artificial 3D effects are redundant now, and the "live" aspect of tiles is an obvious level of functionality similar to the popular widgets that Android has always had.

Although it's funny that widgets never really took off with '98 and Vista. The desktop really isn't used in the same way on a phone...

Mac OS has them too. Equally never really seems to have gone anywhere. I haven't seen a desktop implementation that wasn't clunky as hell though.

Yes while iOS has kickstarted a resurgence of smartphones Android basically copied iOS, at least to start with. Microsoft re-entered late but with something very different and novel.

I liked this chap's pondering on skeuomorphism and realism:

http://sachagreif.com/flat-pixels/

I bought the precursor to Widgets called Konfabulator which was then bought by Yahoo and become the Yahoo Widget engine. I think that I only really use one widget regularly and that is freespace. When Apple did their widget thing I installed a few but rarely use them now.

Wiki suggests that dates to only 2003.

Windows '98 was in '98, and they had them earlier in 1997 with IE4 bringing Active Desktop to Windows '95. I played with simple weather apps and news streamers on the desktop, then hardware monitoring, but very early decided I just don't need stuff sat on my screen 24/7. At most, it can sit in the notification area until I want it or something happens.

I'm generally not looking at a screen unless I'm doing something other than admiring my widgets.

A very interesting essay. I like the clean lines of the flat style. It is a lot easier on the eye.

I have inherited the iMac at work and have to use it for graphics work. I was surprised how bad OS X now look, not the OS itself, but the applications, like contacts, calendar etc. The old font rendering issue is also a problem for me, the blurry fonts give me a headache very quickly. I've turned off font hinting below 12 point fonts, but it still makes the screen seem out of focus, compared to the crisp fonts on the Windows machine next to it.

I hope the next versions of iOS and OS X come out of this overblown realism era and get down to making a good user interface, without all the visual frippery.

In some respects I agree. The skeuomorphic look can be interesting at first but can also make screens busier than they need to be. A flatter screen might keep older machines up to speed as the flatter graphics will be easier to process, both for the computer and user.


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Just had a bit of a play with iOS 7 beta on a colleagues phone.
I like it.
I haven't played with Windows Mobile so I can't make any sort of comparison.

I think that duplicating the Nike Fuelband is necessarily a great move either.
































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