Dear Apple,

One of the most impressive things about your company is your inclusive stance when it comes to users. OS X and iOS alike both have plenty of options for the visually impaired, people with motor issues, and those who require other kinds of assistance when using technology.

Despite this, I worry a little about iOS 7, on the basis of my own problems with motion sickness. I’ve heard the parallax effect (a known trigger) can be disabled, but Charles Skoda has written about new motion-sickness triggers in Messages, and this on a system already packed full of large/full-screen transitions, which are also a big problem on OS X.

Perhaps this is down to pain points. Maybe no senior figure at Apple has similar problems or knows people who do. But every time I accidentally invoke full-screen on my iMac or forget to close my eyes during an iPad Kindle page transition (mercifully, iBooks uses a page-turn animation under iOS 6), I wish you could feel what I feel—that sense of nausea that knocks me for six and makes using a device or Mac anything but pleasurable. And then I wish you’d do something about it.

I should state for the record that I’m perfectly aware my problems aren’t life-threatening and aren’t nearly as serious as those that affect many, many other people. I’m certainly not comparing temporary dizziness and sickness to being blind, say; I’m not suggesting motion sickness is as severe as motor limitations that would limit someone to not being able to use a keyboard, mouse or touchscreen with any degree of precision. However, accessibility is fundamentally about catering to all, and by peppering your operating systems with so much animation that cannot be turned off, you continue to make things a little less magical for many people.

By default, I wouldn’t want anything to change, but it can’t be beyond the abilities of Apple engineers to provide settings that disable certain animations or switch them to something that’s not likely to trigger problems (crossfades rather than full-screen slides, for example); and like other aspects of accessibility, such controls would potentially benefit other users too, who for their own reasons would prefer a system without screens and panels sliding around.

Yours hopefully,

Craig Grannell

Further reading on this site

Why iOS 7 is making some users sick
What Apple should do regarding motion sickness triggers in OS X/iOS 7

The Macalope, on Apple innovation being roundly dismissed by tech hacks:

This is probably how this is going to go down. Apple remakes a product category every three to six years. During the “lulls,” as it iteratively improves its products, pundits will shout “Where’s the innovation?!” While we all point out the logical fallacy, they’ll pretend not to hear us. Then, when Apple does remake a category again, they’ll say “The old Apple is back!” When, really, it never went away.

Not quite. When Apple does remake a category, most hacks still say “Where’s the innovation?!”

• It’s just an MP3 player—those have been around for years!
• It’s just an expensive mobile phone—it’ll never catch on!
• It’s just a massive iPod touch—who would want one of those?

Rinse. Repeat. Apple’s screwed if it does and screwed if it doesn’t. Well, apart from in terms of sales, profit and the exec team rolling around naked on piles of lovely, lovely cash and skeuomorphism’s dead corpse.

Time  yesterday published Matt Peckham’s piece For iOS 7, Apple Needs More Than Game Controllers to Win Gaming. Within, he mentions the third-party controller API alluded to at WWDC 2013, but then makes claims about iOS gaming that don’t sit right with me. He makes all the usual arguments:

• Apple barely cares about gaming and treats games like any other apps that happen to be on the App Store (inferring this is a bad thing);
• iOS has interface issues that stop “major gaming franchises [being] ported over unaltered”;
• Most people “don’t buy iPhones, iPads or the iPod Touch to game foremost”;
• Apple should be more serious about gaming, notably in making it easier to “connect your iOS devices to a larger display”

Not doing these things, he argues, is a missed opportunity, and he reckons iOS games

feel stuck in 2007 with chart leaders like Angry Birds, Temple Run, Plants vs. Zombies, Fruit Ninja, Tetris, Cut the Rope, Doodle Jump and Bejeweled—not exactly arguments for design vibrancy

He concludes:

It’s a shame, in 2013, that a company known for leading in so many other ways seems content to follow here, at best dabbling in the most lucrative segment of the entertainment industry.

Regular readers will know I fundamentally disagree with this view of gaming. To take Peckham’s points in turn:

• Apple barely caring about gaming is one of the main reasons why iOS has flourished as a gaming ecosystem, especially when it comes to indies, which have crafted wildly creative, original fare for the platform;
• Not everyone wants the same titles ported over yet again, and instead hanker for a bit of innovation, even if said innovation sometimes centres around existing IP;
• Most people don’t buy iOS devices to game foremost, but that doesn’t mean iOS isn’t their primary gaming platform;
• Apple enabling you to connect your device to a TV turns it into an entirely different system, one that has a traditional controller/abstraction/screen mechanic rather than one of direct touch manipulation. It turns something intuitive, innovative and new into Yet Another Console.

My latest article for Stuff.tv explores these things. iWin: how Apple became the accidental king of mobile gaming interviews a number of leading developers, from the likes of Ste Pickford through to Sega’s European CTO, to get their take on the current state of the games industry. For the most part, the developers I spoke to also reckon Apple really opened things up, especially for indies, and that the very worst thing for Apple in this space would have been to ape Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft.

That’s not to say Apple has no problems in gaming. There are clear issues with discoverability and developers who fight hard but get nowhere. There’s also an argument Apple should care at least a bit rather than barely a jot, to create a healthier ecosystem for the indies that made it so great in the first place. However, no-one was clamouring for the Apple TV to become some kind of television console, nor for Brown And Grey Army Shooter XIV to come across in identical fashion from another format.

My latest piece for Stuff.tv:

Every detail of the six-year-old OS’ aesthetics and interaction has been overhauled. Initial responses have been mixed and frequently subjective, but people often react poorly to change. So, what’s the truth? Are the major criticisms just knee-jerk noise, or is Apple about to release a mobile dud? Stuff goes in search of expert opinion to find out…

There’s a lot to say about iOS 7 from a design standpoint, but this time I didn’t want to do so myself. The idea with this piece isn’t “yet another op-ed”, but instead talking with interface design experts like Matt Gemmell and Alex Morris, along with pointing at the very best pieces so far written on the web about the subject (including Gemmell’s superb overview).

I hope you enjoy the article.

Good grief. That’s pretty much all I could think while trudging through Jim Lynch’s misogynistic tripe, iOS 7: An Estrogen-Addled Mess Designed for 13 Year Old Girls—no link, due to trollage. To save you the pain of reading (or doing a Google search), here’s the entire piece summed up:

I AM A MAN! A MANLY MAN! GRRRR. Pastels? I SPIT ON PASTELS. Bright colours? BRIGHT COLOURS ARE FOR GIRLS. iOS is therefore for 13-year-old girls. Also: did I mention I AM A MAN? I may mention “cock” and “balls” at this point, just to show how manly I am! Also: women, eh? They’re taking over, just like they’ve taken over iOS 7. Oh, and Tim Cook? MIGHT BE GAY. I know. There’s nowhere for REAL MEN now. REAL MEN LIKE ME. Balls! Cock! GRRRR!

*scrubs self clean*

Perhaps because I’m not a raving loon, nor a sexist arsehole, I didn’t immediately think “iOS 7 is for girls” on watching the demos at WWDC. I did find some of the design a bit unconsidered (but imagine all we’re really seeing here is an iteration of iOS 7, not the final thing) and some of the colours a bit gaudy. But it seemed fresh, fun, and, crucially, something that might appeal more to more mainstream audience and a younger market.

Note that I’m not saying iOS 7 is for kids. Like I noted previously, I’m not a raving loon. However, on seeing iOS 6 and iOS 7 side by side, one looks kind of dated and techie, and the other looks fresh and young. I imagine there’s perhaps a balance between the two that would appeal more to me personally and also to most of the people currently throwing toys out of prams (aside from Lynch—he’s busy EATING BEER CANS and DOING WEIGHTS AT THE GYM and DRIVING A REALLY BIG CAR), but if iOS 7 ends up appealing to more people—and more younger people—that’s hardly going to be a bad thing.