Apple After Seventeen Months of Tim Cook

You already know what this is. An assessment of Tim Cook as CEO of Apple. So how has he fared? Well that’s the point of this article. His suitability for the role of CEO has always been debated and popular opinion is that he is no Steve Jobs. While this is true in both good and bad ways, I think it is unfair to compare him to his predecessor at the slightest opportunity. Some say he is doing extremely well on account on the company’s balance sheet. Others say he just hasn’t had enough time to mess things up yet. And where do I stand? Well it’s a 50-50 situation but recent events have me leaning towards the latter view.

Rules of Interface Design and their Application to Mobile Platforms

Rules for Interface Design

For a user interface to qualify as truly well designed, it must satisfy all the following conditions viz:

a)	It must employ the same design paradigms and methods across all device types and form factors.
b)	Its functions and features must be intuitively laid out in such a way that they would suggest themselves to a new user of the platform.
c)	Any function or feature can be accessed in the barest minimum of steps.
d)	No gesture or control should have multiple functions or multiple contextual functions.
e)	It must ensure the same standard layout to all users regardless of user customizations.
f)	It should offer a very efficient method of multitasking.
g)	It should avoid the use of unintuitive and unnatural gestures.
h)	Its iconography must use symbols that have a universal connotation.
i)	It must display system status at all times.
j)	It must have robust app management.
k)	It must have good multimedia compatibility.
l)	It must have its own unique appearance and methods from other UIs.

  

We shall look at how the above rules apply to the major platforms. The platforms to be covered are:

i	Google Android	vi	Jolla Sailfish
ii	Apple iOS	vii	Ubuntu for Phones
iii	Microsoft Windows Phone	viii	Blackberry 10
iv	Nokia Belle	ix	Amazon Kindle Fire OS
v	Firefox OS

Google Android

Android has moved leaps and bounds since its release in 2007. Though some would argue about its somewhat fragmented nature, it is in terms of usability and flexibility, the best mobile OS out there. In my honest opinion,  in today’s age, you are not short-changed if your device stills runs on version 2.3 aka Gingerbread. The current version v4.2 aka Jelly Bean is a very mature OS. However there are some problems.

i) Split Status Bar

The split status bar is not very good design as it has two swipe areas which are not obvious. Swipe down on the left part to access notifications and swipe down on the right part to access quick settings and toggles. The toggles pane itself requires users to swipe/scroll sideways to access other toggles (GPS, etc).

ii) Multiple Homescreens

There is truly no need for multiple homescreens. Their presence only serves to allow alteration/adulteration the specific user experience that the OEM has tailored for the user. It also causes disorganization. I believe multiple homescreens exist primarily to provide a space for widgets; the majority of which are useless and unnecessary. There are only two widgets (or mini apps as they are sometimes called) that are needed: Weather and Music. Every other app should be controlled when it's in the foreground. Any info from it should be posted in Notifications.

iii) No Unified Notifications Centre

The Notifications pane in Android is not system wide. Some third party apps still handle their own in-app notifications. Another problem of this is that the Title bar is cluttered with different notification icons such as that for Google Play, Gmail and on-going downloads. All of this should be in notifications.

iv) No Robust/Integrated App Management

The app grid/drawer simply displays installed apps and allows deletion (uninstalling). You have to go to settings to see how much storage space an app is using.

v) Sideways App Grid

Apps icons are displayed/laid out in a sideways (page turning) fashion. You swipe/scroll sideways to access/display more app icons. While this is space efficient, it is of limited utility when trying to design a robust and integrated app manager. Another hidden/less obvious flaw of this style/layout is a limit on the number of apps that it can display. With this layout, the largest phone screens can display 35 app icons per page (7 rows of 5 icons each). The number of pages the layout allows is 9. This creates a theoretical maximum of 315 icons that can be displayed/installed. When this page limit is reached on iOS devices, the user is then left with no choice but to start grouping each app into folders. This contravenes the rule of ensuring the same standardised layout to all users regardless of user customizations or user events.

Apple iOS

iOS (formerly iPhone OS) revolutionised user interface design by bringing touch based interfaces to the mainstream when it was released back in 2007. Five years later, the UI is beginning to look archaic as it has stayed mostly the same. It has failed or refused to keep up with proven trends. Today, iOS's layout is beginning to look as archaic as Nokia's Symbian S60v3 looked when the iPhone OS debutted. These are some of its shortcomings.

i) Multi-nested Settings Menu

The Settings menu in iOS is a pure reflection of Nokia's Symbian. An example is changing app notifications or messaging settings or access point settings. Changing any of these requires drilling into the settings menu. iOS has too many sub settings/sub screens.

ii) Long Winded Process to Accomplish Simple Tasks

This is one of the aspects in which iOS has lagged behind proven trends. Changing something as casual as screen brightness requires a long winded trip to the Settings menu. The same applies to activating bluetooth and Wi-Fi. This add unnecessary steps to the process of navigating the UI. A good UI should allow access to any feature or function in the barest minimum of steps/gestures.

iii) Lacklustre Task Manager

A good UI should be intuitively laid out. Features should naturally suggest themselves to a new user. This design rule was not applied to the layout of iOS's task manager. A user unfamiliar with iOS will be at a loss when trying to multitask or switch apps. An unfamiliar user will be inclined to first return to the home screen and then navigate to the icon of the app he wants to switch to. Activating the task manager involves double-tapping the home button. The layout itself is lacklustre. Running apps are represented by their launcher icons. This is behind the current trend of displaying live representations of what the app is doing. Even Nokia Belle does its better by displaying a static screenshot of every running app's present status.

iv) Multiple Functions for the Home Button

A good UI should eschew acsrubing multiple functions to a control or gesture. This often leads to a confusing UI. A single press of home button returns the user to the homescreen. A long press brings up Siri. A double tap brings up the task manager. Pressing it in combination with the power button takes a screenshot.  Double-tapping it in the lockscreen brings up music controls. Only the first function is self evident. All the others are not.

v) No Robust App Manager

There is no fully integrated app-manager. Sure you can delete or rearrange apps in the App store icon is. But there is no way to know how much space an app is using neither is there any way to set app permissions from here. If you want to do either of these, you must first go to the home screen, and then go to Settings and then drill down to apps permissions section. All this round tripping is completely unnecessary by current standards and practices.

vi) Poor Multimedia Compatibility

iOS has very poor compatibility with codecs and containers. It doesn’t support DivX or the ubiquitous MKV or FLV. This is really obtuse of Apple. Any mkv must first be converted to a compatible format before it can be watched on any iDevice. This is one major reason why I abhor iOS devices. Converting is a thing of the past. A true multimedia device must support all the major and popular codecs. Apple’s refusal to support all codecs is just obtuse. Video conversion is now something meant only for video production professionals. 

Microsoft Windows Phone

Windows Phone debuted a very clean and lean interface that employed pleasing and subtle animations and transitions. The live tiles are also a wonderful idea but Microsoft got carried away and got a few things wrongs.

i) Flawed Home/Start Screen

The Home screen allows customisation by allowing the rearrangement of all the icons/ tiles. And this is a problem. It allows a user to move the icons for phone, contacts (People) and messaging. I believe these are the core functions of a phone and as such should not be trifled with. To be fair, this is a problem common to all the other platforms. The design of Windows Phone allows these icons to be pushed further down in the home screen, and even out of view. The point of the homescreen is to provide shortcuts to your favourite/frequently used apps. However, there is no limit to the number of tiles you can pin to the homescreen and this becomes counterproductive. Proper interface design should be able to display all shortcuts in one page. But with Windows Phone, you can scroll downwards on the homescreen to get to your favourite tile. I think this defeats the purpose and takes the short out of shortcut. As all shortcuts should be displayed at once, the only limit to this should be screen size.

ii) Flawed App List

This one is a common problem with all the platforms. A good UI should be able to differentiate between system modules and apps. In WP, the Settings icon is listed in the apps list and it gets is pushed further down as more apps are installed. The location is already flawed as a good UI should provide quick access to system settings. Though the settings icon can be pinned to the homescreen, it just further pushes down other important tiles like phone, messaging and so on. 

iii) No Unified Notification Centre

This is something that still has not been fixed even in Windows Phone 8.

iv) Lack of a Robust App Management

To install an app, the user has to go back to the home screen or app list and then navigate to the Windows Store app. There is also no way to know which how much space an app is using.

v) Inconsistent Gestures and Task Management

Swiping from bottom to top is inconsistent. It minimizes some apps while it closes others.  And there is no definitive way of closing/exiting an app. Also, all the gestures are not self-evident.

vi) Lack of third party browsers

The only browser for Windows Phone is Internet Explorer (IE). This browser is very limited. It doesn’t even provide for saving web pages. And for some reason, Microsoft doesn’t allow third party browsers, not even Opera Mini. Their stance on browsers is even worse than Apple’s iOS which allows Opera Mini. The workaround for saving pages is to use services like Evernote.

vii) Poor Multimedia Compatibility

This is a just like Apple’s iOS. No native support for MKV, FLV and other popular codecs and containers. What’s most annoying about this situation is that the hardware can support it (most MKV files use the H264 or X264 codec). Microsoft and Apple just refuse to implement it in software. And let’s be honest, WMV (Windows Media Video) is useless. Only Microsoft uses it. However, the announced availability of VLC media player for the platform should fix all this.

Nokia Belle

Nokia Belle, more popularly known as Symbian Belle is one of the best things to come out of Nokia. This OS is a complete revamp of Symbian and represents a milestone because it finally delivered on Nokia’s promise of Symbian not needing very powerful hardware. I used a Nokia C7-01 (680 MHz processor with 256MB RAM) running Belle Refresh as my main phone for a month and I can tell you, it was very usable and not so anachronistic when compared to Android.

In many ways, Belle is better than iOS. Its multitasking was well implemented. I was constantly running the video player, app store, music player, Opera Mini and email and the phone switched seamlessly between all of them. This was a no-no on previous versions of Symbian with its frequent out of memory dialog box. What really hurt Belle was that the platform had already been deprecated before it was released and so developers had already moved on.  The phone also had partial support for mkv and flv. And this was all on a 680MHz processor with 256MB RAM. The last generation Symbian phones (700, 701, 808 Pureview) came with 512MB RAM and had their processor clockspeed increased to 1.3GHz from 1GHz with the Belle update. I can only imagine how much better than user experience must have been and what might have been had the platform survived.

i) No Unified Notification Centre

The only real flaw of Nokia Belle was the lack of unified notifications.  Only SMS and missed calls and alarms showed up in notifications. Email was mysteriously left out. Even WhatsApp was also not included.

Firefox OS

There’s not much to say about this platform as it has not been yet been released. However, all demos and hands-on videos show it to be nothing more than an iOS clone with a sprinkling of Android. The only thing it has going for it is that the whole OS is based on HTML 5.

Jolla Sailfish

Sailfish is another yet to be released platform. It is however made by a team of people who worked on the ill-fated MeeGo from Nokia and Intel. It too relies heavily on gesture control. However, it shares similarities with other platforms. For example, its lock screen is unlocked in the same way as Windows 8. It has a few flaws such as:

i) Inconsistency

From the homescreen, you can swipe from top to bottom to view notifications like in Android. However, you can also swipe sideways from right to left to get to notifications. You can also peek at notifications in a similar way to Blackberry 10 OS. Also, going back to the homescreen uses different gestures in different parts of the UI. In the app list/grid, you swipe up completely but in contact profile view, you swipe right to left to go back to the homescreen. 

ii) Hidden System Status

The Sailfish UI has a fundamental flaw in that you cannot see your network reception or battery level until you peek at notifications. The same applies to the time which you cannot see until you peek at notifications. This is a big fail in the sense that primary and critical information that should be displayed at all times is hidden from view and tucked away in notifications. Also the ambience feature seems to be an unnecessary and confusing gimmick.

Ubuntu for Phones

This is another yet to be released platform but it has been previewed quite extensively. It also relies on gesture control for everything and employs the 4 sides of the screen in what Ubuntu has termed ‘EdgeMagic’. Canonical also got carried away with excessive and unnatural gestures. That being said, it does offer quick access to system components such as network settings, alarms, etc.

i) Multiple Functions for a Single Gesture

A short swipe from the left displays shortcuts to your favourite apps while a long swipe from the same left side of the screen displays all our apps.

ii) Unnecessary Extra Steps

The menu controls for any app/module you are in are hidden by default. A short upward swipe from the bottom of the screen is needed to display them. While I understand the need to maximize screen real estate and provide a clean and lean appearance, this has inadvertently added an unnecessary extra step to the UI navigation process.

iii) Different Design Paradigms

Canonical, the firm behind Ubuntu has said it hopes to create the same user experience across all device types and form factors. This has turned out not to be the case. There are differences in how running apps are displayed between the desktop version and the phone version.

Blackberry OS 10

Also unreleased but the internet is saturated with several leaks and hands-on videos. Presently, Research in Motion (RIM) is in dire straits and needs BB OS 10 to be well received. It will definitely make some fans stick to the platform and it might also draw a few new users but it won’t do much on the long run. Why? What I’ve seen of BB OS 10 so far is a mishmash of features and functionality. The gesture control swiping is too heavy and unnatural and will likely confuse many people. The structure and layout of BB OS 10 can be described as amoebic. There are no real boundaries to any of the modules. From the notifications, you can jump to contacts and from there to the calendar.

Amazon Kindle Fire OS

This is a surprising entry considering it is a fork of Android. First off, I don’t find the scrolling ribbon to be very effective as it adds more unnecessary steps to the navigation process. However, I envisage a potential problem with this interface. Should Amazon decide to make a phone in the future, I suspect it will not be uniform with their tablet interface. The phone interface will have a few major differences. This is because Amazon’s interface or skin was designed for tablet screens and as such takes advantage of all the extra space a tablet screen offers; space that a phone screen would not have. Consequently, their interface might not scale too well on a smaller screen for a phone.

Conclusions

It is clear that gesture control is the next big thing in user interfaces. However, what many are calling gesture controls are nothing but swipe movements. Proper and authentic gesture control must be natural and self-evident and this is where Windows 8, BB 10 and Ubuntu get it wrong. As said in the beginning of this article, proper UI design must encourage consistency and its methods must be natural and self-evident. In Ubuntu for phone, there’s no indication of all the different swipes. Another problem I have with Ubuntu for phones and BB10 is their four sided swiping. Swipe from the left to do this, swipe from the right to do that. I suspect all of this will be at variance with the left and right swiping of photos to go to next and previous. In other words, how will the left to right and right to left gestures work when viewing pictures of playing music?

Another potential problem with all the gesture swiping is lack of uniformity across the various platforms. Swiping from the left or from bottom to top will accomplish very different things in different OSes. Contrast this with the various WIMP (Windows Menus, Pointers, Icons) model of desktop OSes. You click on an icon to select it regardless of OS. But with gesture control, UI designers are forgetting that proper gesture control must be a reflection and extension of natural human movement. This is part of what the concept of Human-Machine Interface is about. With all the different swipe based interfaces however, using each one will be like speaking a different language. A lot of confusion is on the horizon.

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