[coldtea]

>I feel like the redesign of their UI hasn't gone far enough

In 7 months (after Ive got in charge)? Let's see any team in the world do better in the same time. Not to mention that if they had gone further, people would also complaint ("oh, this is not the iOS we knew and love at all anymore").

People talk about Windows Phone similarities. It took Microsoft 4-5 years AFTER the iPhone was introduced to copy all the basics (that all modern smartphones copied anyway) and get something out there compelling enough to consider buying (and it's not like many people did buy it, anyway).

In contrast, this redesign took Apple only 7-8 months. Along with new features and lots of behaviour changes in the UI.

This is essentially version 1 of the new UI. It will be polished further in iOS 8.

>that there attempt to copy other trends is different than what apple has done before.

Didn't Apple adopt the Delicious Library skeuomorphic real-life look around 6 years back? Including snatching the Delicious Library graphic designer from the company he worked in?

How do we know this is about "copying other trends" instead of what Ive would have liked to do all along, if he was in charge for the UI?

[spaux]

This wasn't supposed to be read as a bash against apple or the iphone, just an observation. When the original design was done, the world was a very different place where apple was very clearly ahead. With this UI it seems to me that the differences between ios android and windows phone are pretty minor. I used to tell people that you'd get an easier experience with apple, and a better experience with the right android phone. More recently, I've found myself telling people that it really doesn't matter as they are all awesome phones, but if you could get an iphone at the same price as others, it's probably worth it to you. Now it seems like that last clause isn't true anymore, at least not to me.

[coldtea]

>This wasn't supposed to be read as a bash against apple or the iphone, just an observation. When the original design was done, the world was a very different place where apple was very clearly ahead. With this UI it seems to me that the differences between ios android and windows phone are pretty minor.

Well, as Jobs said, the iPhone was ahead of the industry by about 5 years. Those 5 years have passed.

Did anyone think the competitors would never catch up? It's not like Windows for the desktop is like XP anymore. It has also seen much more refinement and maturity, and could be compared far more favourably to OS X.

That said, Apple / iOS retains the benefits of the 5 year head-start: iOS is more coherent and mature, the whole ecosystem is bigger (from apps, to accounts on file, to third party peripherals, etc), etc etc.