Why are people arguing that icons should be intuitively tell you what the app is about? Since when was that the goal of an icon (in paritucal an app icon)? It should be easily distinguishable from other icons. If I don't know what the icon means it will take me exactly 1s to find out by clicking on it, after that I will know what the app icon is for, and I only care if I can distinguish it easily from other icons, so I don't accidentally start a different app.
I strongly agree. But (having just replied to someone else about ideography) it leads to an interesting thought. Once you learn them the app icons become a shared legible writing system. Going to drive to the store? Go lang, Google Drive, Play Store. You get the idea.
It's a trademark violating abomination but I think we ought to give it a try.
But... your point is valid. I didn't interpret the original comment as being limited to app icons, but on another read you are right; it does emphasize them.
Apple's guidelines have long been flouted by Apple itself, not to mention that they're replete with stupid ideas.
I've developed a few iOS apps, and one of my favorite Apple "guidelines" (which they essentially enforced at the OS level without developer choice) was that, upon launch, your app should show a fake UI while doing startup tasks in the background. The recommendation was part of Apple's admonishment against splash screens. Think about how dumb this is, and how it makes your app look inept. Apparently plenty of developers did, and shunned this dumb idea; because Apple then forced it on developers whenever technically possible.
Upon your app going into the background or being kicked out of memory, Apple will take a screenshot of what your app is showing. When the user returns to your application, Apple will present this old screen shot; but none of the controls on it will work. The user can tap away furiously, but nothing will happen. When the app returns to functionality, the screen will be replaced by the real UI.
The problem here goes beyond ineptitude into a major privacy issue. You can think you "closed" or changed what an application is showing before handing your device to someone, only to find that Apple still shows a screen shot of its old contents in the open-apps stack. This could be a disaster.
Sure, NP. Not attacking you at all. Just Apple's hypocrisy.
But all of Apple's UI missteps probably don't compare with the festering rot of glaring incompetence that has destroyed Windows and Office in this millennium alone.
Yes, was very fortunate to ditch windows decades ago. I've heard to latest iterations are atrotious.
And I agree with you about Apple's hypocrisy. They often have one set of rules for themselves that is very different than the set of rules they apply to others.
Atrocious is the word. It's incredible how much time in my day is wasted just hunting for shit in Explorer, scrolling through screen after screen of redundant shadow copies of my user directories... many of which are "prohibited." Or bringing my Explorer windows back to the foreground.
Or trying to make fonts work.
Apps now lack menus and title bars. it's often impossible to tell what app a window belongs to! WTF? Critical functions are now buried under hamburger buttons all over the place.
The File dialog in several apps (notably Office) has been replaced with a bizarre full-page text-based mess, which doesn't show where you are or let you navigate the file system to where you want to be.
