I work on cross platform design for a fortune 500. We keep our eye on this kind of thing.
In conversation, the consensus among my peers was that the separation between iOS and OSX is destined to be impermanent. Phones are becoming more complex, and more integral to our every routine. But more significantly, they're raising a new generation of digital natives that have different expectations about UI and its scale, density, information architecture, onboarding, collaboration, and storage, to name a few.
These mobile-first expectations are flavoring desktop software, and smoothing over the once rough edges of highly-compact power user software. Gmail's redesign, and most redesigns really, demonstrate this. Less information, displayed in a more opinionated way, with whitespace and garnish and a focus on golden-path big-brother-knows-best presentation over configuration and optimization for power users.
Desktop and mobile trends are slowly converging, and I think that when it comes, that convergence from apple risks being abrupt and unapologetic. They're like that – with flash, the headphone jack, and the touch bar. They wait a long time, but when they make a move, they really rip the bandaid.
I find this future to be sad and scary, for the most part. But I agree that the icon grid home screen abstraction feels more like a "because it's always been that way" thing than anything else. It's a holdover from the blackberry days. Given how far mobile apps have come in the mean time, the mobile phone's desktop/start menu is ready for some new abstractions.
I see a conversational, transactional OS leading the way to the next generation of UIs. No more cockpits. Not sure Apple has laid any groundwork for that. Amazon is positioned.
Can you talk more about this? Conversational as in "voice/nonphysical primary input"? or "user offers abstract intent and computer sorts it out" instead of "user negotiates with computer via GUI", both, more?
For iPad, it's primarily clunky and a huge waste of space.
For iPhone, I'm certain there is a better way to discover and open apps than what was devised a decade ago. The current pull-down search is useful, but as a naive idea: some sort of search & auto-complete on the home screen would be great.
EDIT: Bonus - Trying to organize your apps is a nightmare. How do you organize a bunch of icons split across multiple screens?
On Android I have a 7 icon dock (3 are folders of each <=4 apps) and swipe up for an alphabetical list.
The alphabetical list is my main criterion, I don't think anything beats it. The dock is just a handy shortcut to a few common things, but even the coach tracking app I use every working morning and most of those afternoons isn't in there (that's much more frequently than I use some that are) and it's fine.
Grid of all app icons was designed at a time when 'apps' were newNd nobody had many.
I don't have many, I only recently got 'smartphone' again, but still more than I care to spread over a grid.
(The only annoyance is some daftly named apps, like 'Credit Card' instead of '<Provider> Credit' or something.)
In conversation, the consensus among my peers was that the separation between iOS and OSX is destined to be impermanent. Phones are becoming more complex, and more integral to our every routine. But more significantly, they're raising a new generation of digital natives that have different expectations about UI and its scale, density, information architecture, onboarding, collaboration, and storage, to name a few.
These mobile-first expectations are flavoring desktop software, and smoothing over the once rough edges of highly-compact power user software. Gmail's redesign, and most redesigns really, demonstrate this. Less information, displayed in a more opinionated way, with whitespace and garnish and a focus on golden-path big-brother-knows-best presentation over configuration and optimization for power users.
Desktop and mobile trends are slowly converging, and I think that when it comes, that convergence from apple risks being abrupt and unapologetic. They're like that – with flash, the headphone jack, and the touch bar. They wait a long time, but when they make a move, they really rip the bandaid.
I find this future to be sad and scary, for the most part. But I agree that the icon grid home screen abstraction feels more like a "because it's always been that way" thing than anything else. It's a holdover from the blackberry days. Given how far mobile apps have come in the mean time, the mobile phone's desktop/start menu is ready for some new abstractions.