| > Buttons looked like buttons That's an odd one to focus on. Buttons only ever showed in the navigation bar at the top; one rarely, if ever, saw buttons other than to go back and to edit, and since the newer design, the focus has been on swipe gestures for navigation. iOS 7 did go too far. I think people forget how much the design has improved since then, though. > There must have been a good reason All those designs looked hideous, hokey, and everybody hated them? That was made all too clear when those designs made the leap to OS X Lion. Even back in the iOS 6 days, I thought iOS was beginning to look old and tired. I think the extensive use of textures and animations (like Passbook's card shredder when deleting a pass) also limited to what extent iOS could be made to dynamically scale up between iPhone and iPad. I'm fairly certain that iOS 7 is when the foundations for this started, with a cleaner design that could more easily adapt to larger devices and different orientations. I feel like I'm making it up when I say Autolayout started with the new design, but I'm sure the new design was initially made with Autolayout in mind. It wasn't long after the new design that the first iPhone with a different-sized screen came out. Since developers started adopting Autolayout and the new sizing system (well, newer than springs and struts from before) that iPad software can now easily adjust for four display sizes and adapt to macOS in Catalina. |