Mike Wehner of TUAW took the Moto 360 for a spin. The upshot is this:
My experience over the past week has taught me a lot about the future of smartwatches, the importance of intuitive software on a tiny device, and all the ways Apple could make just about every other smartwatch — including my new Moto 360 — look like a joke.
At the heart of the problem is the fact that the phone, the watch and the software that drive the Moto 360 are made by 3 different companies.
It starts with the software. Syncing the Moto 360 to Android Wear on my smartphone was needlessly complicated. At one point I was told via pop-up notification to uninstall Android Wear, update Google Search, then reinstall Android Wear, in order to get it to work properly. My phone was telling me I had to delete software that was built specifically for it, in order to get it to function as intended. I have to admit that I laughed.
This workflow fragmentation is never going to be solved completely. This is a huge advantage for Apple.
I can trust the old Apple, the Scott Forstall era, to get this right (albeit with too much skeumorphism ha!) The new Apple who designed iOS 7? Not so much. I ground my teeth too many times with it to know Apple had changed. Though I like Apple Watch interface and hope it still knows how to design intuitive software I just don’t hold my hope up too high.
My mother is a 72 year old computer illiterate and she has no problems using iOS 7. This whole iOS is no longer intuitive meme is BS in my opinion.
Tomorrow I will post a picture showing one thing that is unintuitive about iOS 7. It’s one of too many in iOS 7. This is not bad-design icons but real life usage. It’s getting late here.
iOS is definitely still intuitive. Not a lot has changed about how it works; most of the stuff that made it so great is still there. And if you turn on button shapes, it’s a lot closer to the way it used to be.
However, I do freaking miss the old look. The color, the detail, the warmth. It looks so sterile now. So much white.
I disagree. Tomorrow I will post a sample. Yes, button shapes help but that showing the basic thinking of iOS 7 was wrong in the first place.
“This workflow fragmentation is never going to be solved completely.”
Typical Google. Workflow fragmentation won’t be solved because of Google’s product mentality: “No, it’s not a great experience. But hey, it’s free. And we can just call it a beta. Ship it. We need to put ads on it ASAP.”
Kind of a clumsy hijack attempt here, Tom. Off-topic and outdated. Really seems like you were saving it for just the right moment that never arrived, so you put it up on a post about Apple Watch.
Oh, and yeah, your post is also a classic “concern troll.”
i do as well, and my mother does have issues as a new iOS user. in another thread i pointed out the text vs buttons issue. sure, turning on button-shapes helps some, but also hinders since it’s butt ugly. and worse, it doesnt resolve all instances of text being uses as an actionable item in iOS; there are some that aren’t Buttons but are still tapable text.
so, no, not a BS meme. a real UX issue. im the biggest apple defender on these various forums (under various handles), but this is real from my perspective.
We’re already on 8.0.2, 8.1 tomorrow.
Guess what, my mother had issues operating iOS 6 too. Quit acting like Forstalls iOS was flawlessly designed and executed. Because it wasn’t. Almost every software release from Apple has included head-scratching design decisions. Because they’re not perfect, no matter how much they try to be. Forstall was hugely responsible for the original OSX Aqua interface, which was highly flawed at launch. It was bold and ambitious, but terribly flawed. Just like iOS 7 was. And its been refined since then, and will continue to be. You can already see huge refinements to the design language in Watch OS, which I imagine will find their way to iOS’ design language soon enough.
And Linux nerds will love it as long as it’s not Apple.
THIS.. I can agree with. The most head-scratching though is they changed little things that “works” in the old design and made it worse for no reason. Well, I hope now that Jony Ive has a couple of years of experience in software he might want to re-visit and improve it, seeing how important iOS is to Apple. (btw, I like Watch OS and think it’s super.)
No, they will love it because its “open”
At one point I was told via pop-up notification to uninstall Android
Wear, update Google Search, then reinstall Android Wear, in order to get
it to work properly
God help them all.
“No reason”? No.
A reason you either dislike or don’t know? Yes.
I guarantee you Apple – just like every other software company – does not change features or modes of operation “for no reason”.
I dunno. Lots of unix nerds (of which Linux nerds are the biggest subset anymore) love Apple hardware, and actually love OSX.
I like reminding the more doctrinaire ones that OSX is the most popular Unix(tm) in history* – and the kernel and basic userland is open source.
The only non-open parts to speak of are the UX layers; anyone who wants to, God help them, can run X11 over Darwin, or even on OSX.
(* And the only one to ever in history have desktop popularity among actual normal human beings.
Full disclosure: I ran Linux as a hobbyist/server platform at home for about 15 years, before finally deciding a Mini running OSX Server was a better choice and less hassle.
But I was never a unix snob, since I ran MacOS/OSX and Windows as well the whole time.)
Some segment of the population is salivating over this. They don’t want to use their tech, they want to tinker with it.
Exactly Jim. “It’s not what your tech can do for you. It’s what you can do for your tech.” Or something like that.
I actually can think of one. The “We’re-so-cool-we-don’t-care-why-the-old-version-did-it-the-way-it-did-we-just-gonna-do-it-our-way-so-we-changed-it-just-for-change-sake” reason.