I hope I'm not in some crazy minority here, but I actually value stability and UIs not changing radically all the time. I feel like there's a craze afoot at the moment to "redesign everything all the time" and I'm not a big fan of it. If you're in tech, sure, it's the "price of progress" but for the lay user (i.e. the people who pay us money for software) it's just annoying.
That was my thought too. I'm a bit agog at seeing a developer lauding a platform owner for burning down the platform. If you're going to invest time and money in a platform, the last thing you want is to find out after that investment has been sunk that the platform steward likes to periodically smash everything.
Marco argues that while this behavior is bad for incumbents, it's good for new entrants, but that doesn't make any sense; if you're a new entrant, your goal over the long term is to become an incumbent. Blowing everything up may benefit you today, but if you survive long enough to see the next demolition spree, then you'll be the one getting 'sploded. It's like arguing that living next to a volcano is good for development because it periodically clears out old building stock.
A good platform is one you can build a business on. Sudden, dramatic change that flushes your investment to date down the toilet is bad for business.
A platform that is popular or has the most apps is not necessarily the "best", as Windows proves. I'm not sure that Apple ever wanted 750,000 apps on iOS. It seems that they should prefer 100,000 great apps to 750k mediocre ones.
The platform was designed the iPhone platform between 2005 and 2007, and while it served its purpose very well I don't think that we should limit innovation for the sake of supporting old apps.
I think his point was that not that the platform is being "burned down" but that it was going "arise anew, like a phoenix from the Ashes" - it's not like iOS will be gone in three months - but it will be markedly different.
Also - he was highlighting that this will suck somewhat for incumbents (which, having sold Instapaper, and "The Magazine" he is not), but that it offers great opportunities for people willing to fully commit to the new iOS 7 worldview (who in turn may be wiped out in another 8 years - but hey, 8 years is a long time.
Regarding, "If you're going to invest time and money in a platform, the last thing you want is to find out after that investment has been sunk that the platform steward likes to periodically smash everything."
Heck, based on a small sampling of anecdotes from iOS developers I know - I bet 90% of all iOS developers make the majority of their income on an app in in less than six months, fewer than 10% experience "significant income" over a full year, and less than 1% have multi-year incomes from an app that is enough to have a comfortable six-figure salary. The nature of iOS application development is different from Desktop Application Development, and, for most (excluding the top 5,000 Apps) - the real money is in new applications.
So - yes, this may be jarring for that 1% - but the other 99% have a great opportunity opening for the next six - nine months.
I agree with you. The iOS aesthetic, though imperfect, was stable and quite nice. In my opinion, Apple should have merely eliminated some of the more egregious skeuomorphisms and brought their apps more in line with the semi-flat look that the OS has had for years. This sort of total visual upheaval is superfluous, if not detrimental. From what I've seen, it looks insultingly bad.
There are better ways to allocate development time than reimplementing an already-fine OS.
I have to disagree. Inside-app navigation in iOS is, truth be told, bodgy and confusing. Throw on top of that the need to handle notifications and app intercommunication and multitasking better and some systematic rethinking was really needed. I agree that graphically the new "commercial-art retro-chic meets skinny Helvetica" look feels like hard going - "it's sorbet and Love Hearts for dinner, everyone!" - but hopefully they'll have tidied and calmed things a bit by launch.
I agree that there are myriad functional issues with iOS. The actual look and feel is not one, though, which is more upsetting considering that their iOS team could be spending time fixing more pressing problems in OS functionality.
Just because a change was necessary doesn't mean this change was necessary.
I'm still flabbergasted that Apple did their big overhaul (apparently) without addressing inter-application communication, default apps, Siri APIs or most of the other "power user" issues that would have helped them grow their computing paradigm. To me, increasing the scope and power of iOS devices while maintaining the predictability and control that are at the heart of Apple's take on mobile/touch-based computing is the problem Apple has to solve over the next few years. Judging from what I've heard about iOS 7, it sounds like Apple couldn't disagree more.
