First, the lock screen.
Let
me start off by saying that I wholeheartedly agree with you. I don't
understand why Apple would go to the trouble of building a secure
platform, and then develop a super-convenient method of unlocking the
device that only required the tap of a finger, only to then, by design,
make so much information accessible without needing to authenticate.
I
suppose the answer is convenience. It's almost as if Apple realizes how
complex iOS has become, with information buried in every nook and
cranny, and it now wants to make that information plainly visible.
Problem is, putting it on the lock screen makes it plainly visible to all.
Ever
since Touch ID was introduced, you just tap the Home button, and then
you're into your device, but with iOS 10, you can unlock the device and
still be on the lock screen. You have to tap the Home button again to
get to your apps. I get why Apple did this -- because people would just
blow past anything on the lock screen, like notifications and such, but
in iOS 10, Apple wants to make more use of the lock screen. But it feels
more like Apple wants to force me to use the lock screen rather than
make it a useful feature. You can still blow past the lock screen --
just tap and hold the Home button -- but I feel like I'm forced to
change how I work because Apple wants to show me the new lock screen's
cool features.
A few days ago I thought I'd get
used to this feature and be able to blast past it, but a few days on
from that optimistic prediction and I'm not so confident anymore.
I also hate to think just how many bugs and lock screen bypasses are in all this new code.
The
lock screen also highlights another problem in iOS 10 -- how much space
notifications take up and waste. Information is displayed in huge
"flash card" style panels, but the text is tiny and there's tons of
wasted space. Also, while these panels might work out great in Apple's
lab during testing, if you get a lot of notifications then they really
become unwieldy to use.
Also,
when you swipe to view or clear the notification, you get to see a
jumbo set of buttons, but once again featuring a tiny font.
There's
also a lot more horizontal swiping in iOS 10. In fact, horizontal
swiping seems to be the new vertical swiping. For example, from the lock
screen you swipe left to access the camera, rather than swiping up. I'm
not sure what this is supposed to accomplish, especially since you seem
to have to make a huge, exaggerated swipe. I used to be able to access
the camera from the lock screen with my thumb when I had to swipe up
pretty reliably, but my success rate with this new swipe is much lower.
This is, to me, the perfect example of change for the sake of change, with an added twist of not really working all that well.
And then there are the horizontal scrolling inconsistencies.
For
example, on the lock screen, a horizontal swipe takes me to the camera,
but once in the Camera app, horizontal swiping is used to switch
between different camera settings. Instinctively, I want to swipe out,
but I can't and have to use the Home button. It's a minor gripe, but it
highlights a big disconnect between the developers who wrote the code
for the lock screen and the developers who work on the Camera app.
This all feels weirdly inconsistent.
Then
there are interface contradictions where I'm shifting from the new look
to the old look. Take, for example, switching from the Notifications
panel, with its new look, to the search box, which retains the old look.
This may be because the interface is incomplete, but I'm guessing
that's not the case.
Apple also seems to have
tweaked the app opening/closing animations, making them even more
gratuitous and annoying. While I'm not sure whether this actually slows
down opening/closing apps, it's now really gaudy and very tasteless.
I'm
also not a big fan of the new Messages app. Here too we're seeing the
gaudy deprecating important features. For example, you can't seem to
select text to copy from a message anymore, you have to copy the whole
thing. This is because of the popups to allow you to send canned
responses to messages.
But all this pales compared to what Apple has done to the Control Center box. Behold this monstrosity.
There are so many things wrong with this that I don't know where to begin.
- Why is the Night Shift button so crazy big?
- Do
the colors on the circular buttons for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and such
mean anything in particular (beyond the fact that the setting is
on/off)?
- Why has the volume control been shifted over to a
second screen along with the other media controls (the volume control
slider is really useful right now given that the iOS 10 beta seems to
have a problem with the hardware volume control buttons at times)?
The new Control Center panel is so bad that I'm left to assume one of two things:
- 4:00
pm came around on the day that the code for the beta was supposed to be
finalized and this panel had not been done, so someone knocked this
together in a few minutes as a placeholder.
- Someone let their young child design it.
I
don't understand why this panel wastes so much space, and I don't know
why it has to extend over two panels (why can't it just vertical
scroll?).
The iOS 10 Control Center ranks not
only as one of the worst user interface designs by Apple, but as one of
the worst by any major software developer.
Now,
I'm hoping that the iOS 10 public beta is just an early release, and
that the interface is going to see a lot more refinement over the coming
months. But with only two months left before release (probably less
than that because iOS 10 will need to be loaded onto the millions of new
iPhone 7 handsets in advance of them being sold), I'm not holding out
much hope to be honest with you.
